Curating and designing permanent exhibitions

53^rd annual conference of the Estonian National Museum

April 16.-17^th 2012

Museums relevance for the contemporary society is constantly contested. In order to survive, adapt and contribute, critical reflexivity has had to be added into everyday functioning of museum institution. What is also happening in the museums is a conscious turn towards seeing museum as a public actor. Along with this, exhibitions: both their production and reception side, are becoming part of the core discussions about the future of the museums.

The annual conference of the Estonian National Museum is dealing with the issue of the exhibition production. Choosing this topic has two aims for us: firstly, we want to encourage discussion about the current perspectives in producing the exhibitions, from both theorised and more practical aspects. Secondly, our focus will be on the current exhibition making in the ENM, which is currently working on two permanent exhibitions to be opened in the future museum building.

The topic of the conference is divided into a few larger segments about different aspects of the exhibition production:

Exhibition production and design: implemented production models and communication of the knowledge within the production process; roles, experiences and identities of the museum professionals;

Museum objects and narratives: special features of the various thematic fields in the museum contexts; embodied experiences of the objects;

Visitor experience: searching for the balance between the needs of the museums, visitors, including more active participants; learning from the visitors; participatory and collaborative production approaches.

Exhibition production and design

Exhibition, in order to be a success, is not just a display of artefacts but a work, where the skills of various parties come together in the process of planning, designing and producing of the display. A success or failure of the cooperation will became visible through the dynamic and multimodal interplay of knowledge, experience, interaction and many other aspects in the exhibition space. There is no single way to successful exhibitions – exhibition production is based on different production models and production cultures. This means that on a more theoretical level, it is crucial to notice different roles, experiences and identities of the museum professionals and their cooperation partners. But the question about successful exhibition can also be discussed on a very practical, hands-on-level of exhibition production.

Museum objects and narratives

From the curatorial/museum professional side, the exhibition can be approached as a set of various thematic fields (such as history, ethnology, art, archaeology etc), each with their special features and challenges in terms of exhibition development. Curators are also those, whose role is to notice and acknowledge the distinctive role of the objects in the museum context: objects are in the centre of exhibition development as an interpretive practice. Curators work with the nature and meaning of the object as well as sensorial experiences related to them. Questions, every museum professional will face, while producing the exhibition have to do with the relationship of the exhibition and objects. What do our choices mean: are we taking objects out of their original contexts or setting them into a meaningful context? Should we make the objects ’talk’ themselves, or illustrate the existing stories with the objects? Who is interpreting objects – how and by whom parallel interpretations are created (curators, designers, visitors?)? How can we present different (sometimes contradictory) interpretations in the exhibition?

Visitor experience

Museums have acknowledged that developing their public service functions through becoming more knowledgeable about the needs of their audiences is inevitable in order to offer the visitors enjoyable experiences, access to knowledge building and empowerment. The key here is searching for the balance between the needs of the museums, visitors and more active participants from the audience side. How is that done?

Certainly, also discussions about implementation of various technological tools belong here: a special too, which also carry the burden of high expectations. Technologies with their available platforms and user interfaces are part of the contemporary exhibitions, still the constant challenge is have them designed for as many as possible, but not for everybody at once. A more general challenge regarding the technologies is how to support the development of the skills of the 21rst century: sociality, dialogue and networking in the exhibition context. 

Abstracts:

For participating please submit a 200-300-word abstract with the name and institutional affiliation of the speaker (mailing address & email address) to the conference secretary Agnes Aljas, e-mail: agnes.aljas@erm.ee. The deadline for abstract submission is 16 January 2011.

Conference team

• Pille Runnel, research director, Estonian National Museum – pille.runnel@erm.ee
• Kristel Rattus, researcher, Estonian National Museum – kristel.rattus@erm.ee
• Agnes Aljas, conference secretary, Estonian National Museum – agnes.aljas@erm.ee

 - Conference takes place in Tartu at the Exhibition House of the Estonian National Museum (J. Kuperjanovi 9), 16.-17.04.2012.

- Participation at the conference is free of charge.

- Conference will be streamed online at www.erm.ee. In case of technical errors occur in direct streaming, a recorded overview of the event will be available at the conference web page after the event.

- More information agnes.aljas@erm.ee.