Monthly Archive for August, 2010

Case Study: Lindow Man temporary exhibition

Published on August 27, 2010 in Case Studies.

Institution name: The Manchester Museum

Summary: The loan of the 2500-year-old Lindow Man, Britain’s best-preserved bog body, by the British Museum resulted in an award-winning temporary exhibition at the Manchester Museum (April 2008- April 2009). Staff at the Manchester Museum had been working on the ethical treatment of human remains in museums. The exhibition Lindow Man: a Bog Body Mystery attempted to raise the issue for public debate. Following a public consultation staff decided to interpret the body from a number of perspectives, in order to show what the remains meant to different people. There was an outcry when the exhibition opened because some people didn’t like the design or the multi-vocal approach to interpretation. The issue of the sensitivity of human remains that the Museum set out to tackle became a debate about interpretation, expertise and authority.  

Download case study as a pdf: case study – Manchester Museum, Lindow Man

Keywords: Exhibition, Archaeology, Human Remains, Ethics, Museology

Background: The Manchester Museum is part of the University of Manchester.  It actively encourages students and lecturers to make use of the collections for teaching and research and attracts over 300,000 visitors a year.  Some 4.25 million objects are held in the natural sciences and human cultures collections.  These disciplines are reflected in the Museum’s mission to promote global sustainability and understanding between different cultures. 

The Museum had a special interest in displaying Lindow Man: staff helped to recover the body in 1984 and two previous temporary exhibitions  in 1986 and 1991 attracted record numbers of visitors. 

Objectives:  In displaying Lindow Man for a third time since the discovery in 1984. The Manchester Museum wanted to engage a new generation of people from Manchester and the North West with one of Britain’s most famous archaeological discoveries, to stimulate public debate about how human remains are treated in museums and other public institutions, to display the body in a respectful and sensitive manner and to explore different interpretations of the body.  The Museum wanted to reflect recent discussion about Lindow Man’s dating, the circumstances of his violent death and the interpretation of the evidence.   

Project details: The public consultation in 2007 was the first important milestone in the project. Given the potentially contentious nature of the subject matter the Museum invited a selection of different people to discuss the project. The group included museum curators, archaeologists, pagans, members of local archaeological societies and a representative from Manchester City Council. Consultation established that people wanted the Museum to treat the body sensitively and respectfully and to present different interpretations of Lindow Man.  The continuing archaeological debate about when and how Lindow Man had died meant that there was little about him that was not contested. It seemed that the most detailed forensic study of the body still had not resolved the big questions.

The Museum, therefore, took a multi-vocal approach to interpretation and invited seven individuals, each of whom had expertise or experience regarding Lindow Man, to contribute to the exhibition. They included two peat workers who discovered the body, the forensic archaeologist who examined Lindow Man at the British Museum, a landscape archaeologist, a member of the Lindow community involved in the unsuccessful campaign to repatriate the body to the North West, two museum curators and a pagan, for whom the body held spiritual significance.

Extracts from interviews held with the contributors and objects and personal mementos featured in the exhibition together with archaeological exhibits from both the Manchester Museum and the British Museum. 

The project also featured an innovative programme of education sessions and public events and activities. For example, in The Verdict secondary school students in a courtroom setting debated different interpretations of how Lindow Man had died.  A number of teams presented different interpretations of the manner his death: accident, murder or ritual sacrifice.  The team which presented the most convincing case on the day was the winner. There were also public debates, guided walks on Lindow Moss where the body was discovered, talks and seminars.

Engagement with the public about the issue of how museums treat human remains was a crucial element for funding bodies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Wellcome Trust.  Visitors to the exhibition filled in comments cards and posted them on a board for others to read and respond to.  Through the comments boards, the Museum posed several questions during the life of the exhibition such as ‘How did Lindow Man die?’ ‘and ‘Should museums display human remains?’ These questions stimulated considerable debate. The public also contributed comments and questions to the Lindow Man Blog.

Project outcomes and impact: This was the first time a high-profile project had been delivered by a team of curators and staff from different sections of the Museum, each contributing their own experience and expertise. A project team gave strategic direction whilst a content team developed the interpretative approach and the exhibits. This new way of working, different in style from traditional curator-led exhibitions, helped to develop team-working skills in the Museum.

Secondly the project engaged large numbers of visitors and other participants. Some 190,000 people participated in the project in some way. The project developed a model of exhibition making that integrated displays with education, marketing and public programmes. Rather than simply using the exhibition as a vehicle for communicating knowledge, the Museum was able to explore with audiences different aspects of Lindow Man through a range of media as appropriate.

The use of up-to-date media such as Blogs, YouTube and Flickr helped to promote discussion and disseminate coverage about  the exhibition in a stimulating way that engaged a new computer-literate audience.  This has now become embedded in the Museum’s practice.

What went well? In quantitative terms the project was a success. Visitor figures were high. There were over 26,000 hits on the Lindow Man website. The project won two awards:- the Design Week 2009  Award for Best Temporary Exhibition and the British Archaeological Award for Best Innovation for its engagement of the general public about the issue of human remains. Over 12,500 visitor comments cards were filled-in. Sixty-seven percent said they wanted the Manchester Museum to display human remains. This will guide future displays of human remains.

Qualitatively, the Museum received a great deal of thoughtful feedback from the public. Despite the clear wish to continue to see human remains on display at the Museum, many people stressed that this should be done in a respectful manner, by allowing visitors to choose whether they wanted to see the remains.  

Visitor Services Assistants stationed in the exhibition for security purposes also helped to interpret the body and answer questions from visitors.

The ‘low tech’ comments cards boards worked remarkably well and encouraged visitors to respond to the deep questions posed by the exhibition.  The shared experience of the exhibition was constantly changing.

The exhibition received good reviews in the academic literature.

What could have been done better? When the Lindow Man exhibition opened in April 2008 the Museum was criticised in strident terms on a number of Manchester websites. Critics claimed that the exhibition lacked content, that it pandered to ‘woolly pagan thinking’ about human remains and that it was ‘political correctness gone mad’.  Some questioned why it did not include an Iron Age roundhouse, a chariot and a model of a hill-fort. The aggressive tone of the criticism was unprecedented.

This criticism from more conservative quarters has prompted a debate about narrative authority and about whose voices should be heard in museum interpretation.  This is a fascinating subject for further discussion in seminars and at conferences.

The Museum could have framed its authorial responsibility more clearly. Despite its public consultation, critics said the Museum had left behind mainstream consumers of public archaeology.  The Museum revised an introductory panel following the opening to make it easier for visitors who found the exhibition challenging.  

Some consultees were disappointed with the Museum’s display of Lindow Man’s body and felt that it was not sufficiently sensitive.  The Museum’s inability to satisfy all the consultees’ expectations was an issue despite the exhibition team making it clear at the outset that it couldn’t implement everything asked of it.

Conclusions and recommendations for the future: The public consultation was a crucial stage in the project that helped create a degree of consensus about how the Museum should approach its Lindow Man exhibition and generated good will towards the project. Ideally consultation would be the foundation of all high profile projects but especially in the case of potentially contentious subjects such as human remains.

Despite the vehement criticism that greeted the opening of the exhibition from some quarters , the Lindow Man project attracted record numbers of visitors and successfully engaged the public about how human remains are treated in museums.  It is entirely appropriate for a university museum to mount an innovative and challenging exhibition of this kind. A local authority museum would likely have had its exhibition closed in the circumstances.  It is important that university museums offer exhibitions of this kind to challenge the stereotypical interpretative approach  recommended by some of the exhibition’s critics. 

Contact name and email address:

Bryan Sitch

Head of Human Cultures

The Manchester Museum

Bryan.sitch@manchester.ac.uk

0161 306 1582

Case Study: Arthur Silver Award

Published on August 27, 2010 in Case Studies.

Institution name: Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture (MoDA), Middlesex University 

 

Summary:  This case study looks at the launch of an undergraduate Award aimed at encouraging more Middlesex students to use MoDA’s collections for inspiration.  In around 2008, we became aware that we had previously tended to promote the collections as an historical resource, and that this was of little interest to one of our key target audiences, namely Middlesex Art & Design students.  Our collections are an excellent resource for visual research leading to students’ own creative practice, but we had not promoted the collections on these terms.  Middlesex students were not using the museum’s resources for their own creative work despite being on their doorstep, although they often visited museum collections elsewhere. We realised that we needed to offer a tangible incentive for students to use our collections, and that a cash prize would raise the profile of the museum and give us a way of publicising our resources to the undergraduate body.

Download case study as a pdf: case study – MoDA, AS Award

Keywords: Undergraduate – inspiration – collections – cash – award

Background: At MoDA’s core is the Silver Studio Collection, relating to the work of a commercial design studio which ran from 1880 to 1963.  The collection consists of wallpapers and textiles designed by the Studio, as well as visual reference material collected by the designers.  However, when the museum opened in 2000, the emphasis of the exhibitions was on wallpapers and textiles as a way into social history narratives, rather than as design inspiration.  This approach worked for a general audience but was less relevant to undergraduate students.

Objectives: The objective of the project was to make Middlesex undergraduate students aware of the potential of MoDA and its collections as a resource for their own creative work.  We wanted to raise the profile of MoDA’s collections among staff and students, and be more clearly integrated into the creative life of the School of Art & Design at Middlesex University.  We also wanted to make MoDA’s collections visible at key points in the academic year, notably the Art & Design Degree show.

Project details:

  1.  We discussed the idea with academic staff and agreed the format of entries for the Award.  It was important that entry to the Award would not require students to produce work in addition to that already required by their tutors.  We wanted to avoid asking students to write essays or long pieces of text, since this is not the strength of the majority of Art & Design students.  We agreed that the Award would be open to final year students only, and that their entries should relate to the work they include in their final year show.  Students do not enter their work itself (which might be a textile, a piece of jewellery, or furniture, or a garment etc), but a series of three A3 sheets which explain how they gained inspiration from MoDA’s collections; how they used this to develop their work, and how their ideas evolved to the final outcome.
  2. Having agreed the format of the Award we next had to secure the funding.  The Silver Studio collection was given to Middlesex University (in a previous incarnation as Hornsey College of Art) in the 1960s.  Descendants of the Silver family have been involved with the museum since then and are still represented on the museum’s Advisory Board.  We decided to capitalise on their ongoing interest and ask members of the extended Silver family to support this Award.  With support from the University’s Development Office we devised an appeal letter and wrote to family members outlining our request. We had agreed that we should offer an Award of £1,000 per year over three years.  With the help of Gift Aid, we needed to secure slightly less than £3,000 from the Silver family in order to make this achievable. 
  3. Once we were confident that the funding would be achieved we started to promote the Award to students.  In the first year we saw a significant increase in Middlesex students using the Study Room facilities, although only a handful of applications were received.  In the second year we were able to use images of the first winner’s work to promote the Award.  Study Room use increased again, as did the number of applications and their overall standard.  In 2010 we were able to award £1,000 to the overall winner with an additional two students being ‘highly commended’ .

Project outcomes and impact: As we prepare for the third academic year in which we have offered this Award, we are delighted to find that levels of interest in the museum by students and tutors is higher than ever.  Having struggled for years to attract attention from academics, we have now succeeded in making use of our collections a compulsory element of several third year courses (BA Fashion & Textiles and BA Illustration), thus guaranteeing that more students will enter for the Award.  We are working more closely than ever with tutors to embed the museum’s resources into teaching and learning across the Art & Design department, helping us to demonstrate the value of the museum to the University. 

We now promote the collections to students in terms of their value as a visual resource for inspiration.  We try to make it clear to students that the collections are relevant to their own creative practice and that participation does not require knowledge of facts or dates.  Thus the Award is part of a shift in emphasis in the way we present the museum’s collections to this important audience. 

What went well? In addition to fulfilling the main objective, which was to increase use of the museum’s collections by Middlesex students, we have also found that the business of handing over the Award to the winning student (£500 given at the degree show, £500 at the University’s main awards ceremony) raises the profile of the museum and provides ‘good news’ stories and photo opportunities.

Thus the Award has had a huge impact, disproportionate to the relatively small amount of money involved. 

Conclusions and recommendations for the future:  As a University museum we need to balance the needs of our public audience and our responsibility to the academic community of which we are part.  It took us a long time to realise that Art & Design students are not interested in approaching our collections in the same way as ‘general’ visitors, and that we needed to do something quite different to attract their attention. 

We hope to secure further funding to enable us to continue to offer the Award for three more years, thus building on the success of the project so far.

Contact name and email address:

 Zoe Hendon

 z.hendon@mdx.ac.uk