Exhibition

Audience centred purpose — what do i mean and how can you do it?

Lexical bloat wasting energy on hot air

The museum sector is cursed with terminological inexactitude yet clings with stubborn fixity to words for status and power. We continually debate: what is or isn’t an ‘exhibition’, or a ‘curator’? Why do museums get so stuck in this?

Museums: let go of authoritative exhibitions

Provocative title? Maybe. And this is a bit of a haphazard post. But I’m essentially proposing that museum exhibitions should stop trying to be the sources of authoritative information to the public. Maybe they aren’t best placed to do this anymore?

They’re not ‘labels’ & they’re not ‘didactics’

The word ‘label’ to refer to ‘text in an exhibition’ is a hang-up of ivory tower snobbery and needs to stop. And ‘didactic’ to mean ‘a panel on the wall with lots of words on it’ is even worse. Ready to argue? OK.

Exhibition development approvals — how to get higher quality and happier people

How do we get exhibitions right? They’re expensive, complex and risky, and balance competing and overlapping issues to serve our audiences well, deliver our mission and satisfy funder…

Stage Struck

This article was published in Museum Practice in July 2013. I was Head of Exhibitions at the National Railway Museum during the creation of the project, and curated a session at the Museum Association conference 2012 on this topic with colleagues from Historic Royal Palaces and the Natural History Museum.