Moulding the museum medium: Explorations on embodied and multisensory experience in contemporary museum environments ______________________________________________________________

M.A. Museum Studies Laura De Caro 2012

Laura De Caro

14,859 words

Moulding the museum medium: Explorations on embodied and multisensory experience in contemporary museum environments ______________________________________________________________
The present study is an enquiry on the contribution of bodily and sensory forms of engagement in the museum experience. While the latter has been more often researched from cognitive and social perspectives, the recent surge in interactive displays, immersive environments and dynamic architectural forms has brought increased attention and need for a greater understanding and awareness of the physical, multisensory dimension of the museum visit. This can be explored not only in terms of hands-on displays and visitor engagement with objects, but as a multifaceted and enveloping experience, that involves the range of physical elements of the visit within a wide multisensory complex. In this work, the museum is understood as a three-dimensional narrative environment, a medium in itself, that makes use of a rich, interconnected set of media, but whose specificity is given by its sensory and spatial dimension. In Part I, the role of this bodyspace component is framed within communication and learning theories and explored through a review of publications in the fields of museum studies, philosophy, anthropology, design and architecture. In Part II, the topic is subject of a direct field enquiry, through the analysis of three European case-studies and a series of twelve interviews with museum practitioners. As the case-studies show, space and the senses can potentially take on the role of key actors in the museum storytelling process. Furthermore, they may constitute the base for an affective, identity- and meaning- centred relationship with the museum environment. The connecting capacity and narrative power of embodied involvement through space and the senses may thus suggest to practitioners a revised social role for the museum as a narrative habitat and a complex, flexible understanding of visitor learning.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The present work is the outcome of a series of inspiring encounters and conversations with museum professionals from different European institutions who have kindly and enthusiastically lent me their time and shared hypotheses and critical thinking for the purposes of this research. My gratitude for making this research possible goes to Walter Barberis (OGR, Turin), Marina Bertiglia (OGR, Turin), Francesca Boni (Palazzo Fortuny, Venice), Helle Corvest (Cit des Sciences, Paris), Carl Depauw (MAS, Antwerp), Sven Grooten (MAS, Antwerp), Henry Kim (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), Caterina Marcantoni (Palazzo Fortuny, Venice), Anna Maria Martina (OGR, Turin), Victoria McGuinness (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), Cathy Pelgrims (MAS, Antwerp), Francesco Poli (Palazzo Fortuny, Venice), Paolo Rosa (Studio Azzurro, Milan), Axel Vervoordt (Vervoordt Foundation, Antwerp), Jef Vrelust (MAS, Antwerp). A special note of thanks goes to the Director of Palazzo Fortuny, Daniela Ferretti, for her kind permission to include gallery photographs of the TRA art exhibition in this dissertation. I am equally grateful to Frazer Swift, my dissertation tutor, for his precious guidance and help and to Suzanne MacLeod for her time and invaluable advice. I would also like to thank all the assistants and supporting staff of the institutions I visited who made a fundamental contribution to this work, allowing tight agendas to meet the needs of an intense interview calendar and for providing a support system of additional materials and publications. A particular thank you also goes to the assistant staff of Neutelings Riedijk Architecten. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family for their encouragement and stimulating enquiry on the challenges of this work and Marc, my partner, for his unfaltering support and priceless critique.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION__________________________________________________________5 PART I : Understanding embodied visitor experience________________________11 Chapter 1 Communication, learning theory and the sensory museum environment ____12 Chapter 2 Theoretical foundations of the embodied experience in space______________22 PART II: A field enquiry on the role of museum space and the senses___________32 Chapter 3 Research methodology_____________________________________________33 Chapter 4 The case of Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy: Ambiance and tactile presence_______________________________________36 Chapter 5 The case of Officine Grandi Riparazioni, Turin, Italy: Media environments and sound _____________________________________44 Chapter 6 The case of Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp, Belgium: Cityscape and vision_______________________________________________52 CONCLUSION___________________________________________________________59 NOTE ON ILLUSTRATIONS_________________________________________________63 BIBLIOGRAPHY _________________________________________________________64 APPENDICES (WITH LIST OF INTERVIEWS) ___________________________________70
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INTRODUCTION

The body is provided with sensory organs for informing it of those environmental conditions which have a bearing on activities themselves. The acquisition of such information is essential for the successful pursuit of these activities, but the process of acquiring it is itself a source of pleasure. We enjoy discovering the nature of our surroundings, and it is just as well that we do, because in a state of nature, a creatures chances of survival are often dependant on its ability to exploit its environment to its own strategic advantage. We need the knowledge that comes from exploration, but we explore because it is fun. This is the basis of what I have called habitat theory (). Jay Appleton (1978)1. Exploration involves the purposeful organisation of perception, while discovery implies the retrieval and orderly arrangement of the information which results from perception () The highly complex mechanism which achieves this organisation and arrangement is the neural system, including the perceiving organs and the brain. Jay Appleton (1978)2.

In The Poetry of Habitat (1978) British geographer Jay Appleton, contributor to the field of Environmental psychology, provides todays museum communities of practice3 with an inspiring point of access into the current debate on the value of the museum experience and on ways to renew the impact and social relevance of the contemporary museum medium. Appletons reading of the relationship between Man and the environment reminds us of the centrality of the natural and built environment in the pursuit of human activities, the pleasure that derives from this enriching encounter and the role of the individuals neural system as a complex whole, composed both of perceptual and cognitive mechanisms, as the ultimate key organisational tool of all exploration and discovery. While this relationship constitutes an important component of scientific discourse, current museum research and practice have yet to fully enquire
1

Jay Appleton, The Poetry of Habitat (Hull: Landscape Research Group and Dept. of Geography, University of Hull, 1978), p. 4. 2 Ibid., p.4. 3 Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

and reach an understanding of the embodied4 dimension of the museum visit, which has been historically set aside in favour of a preponderant Western visualism5. Since Aristotle, vision has been repeatedly assigned a prime role in the hierarchy of the senses and in the construction of knowledge.6 In the museum context, this has traditionally corresponded to a fundamental reliance on visual inspection and technologies of visual communication for the interpretation of artefacts and with regards to visitor learning.7 If visualism in history has perhaps been generally overstated, by contrast to other forms of cultural sensory ratios8, a contemporary reframing of vision in the museum as integral to other sensory modalities9 has in recent times become ever more pressing. With museums increasingly encouraged by funders and stakeholders to reflect on their social value and the success of their communicative tools, the limits of purely visual engagement have become rapidly manifest, together with the need for a greater understanding of holistic visitor experience, composed by a set of personal, social and physical factors.10 Following on from Appleton, the visitors pursuit of pleasure and satisfaction deriving from exploration and discovery of the different physical components of the museum (architecture, space, display, objects) thus warrants further study in its full multi-sensory dimension, shedding light on the potential impact of physical and environmental factors in learning and meaningmaking processes. Approaching the museum experience from an embodied rather than a strictly cognitive or social perspective allows the visitor to assume an active role: no longer passive recipient of content, the visitor is recognized, in line with contemporary

Elizabeth Edwards et al. Sensible objects. Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture (New York: Berg, 2006), p.6. 5 Ibid., p.3. 6 Aristotle, The Metaphysics (New York: Cosimo, 2008), p. 1. For ground theory on the impact of visualism in Western thought see Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: the making of typographic man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962); Walter Ong, Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word (Abingdon: Routledge, 1988). For readings on the role of vision in the museum see for example Tony Bennett, Civic Seeing: Museums and the Organization of Vision in A Companion to Museum Studies ed. by Sharon MacDonald (West Sussex: Blackwell, 2011); Svetlana Alpers, The Museum as a Way of Seeing in Exhibiting Cultures: the poetics and politics of museum display ed. by Ivan Karp (Washington: Smithsonian Inst.Press, 1996). 7 Elizabeth Edwards et al. Sensible objects. Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture , p.18-19. 8 Ibid., p.3. 9 Ibid., p.4. 10 John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, The Museum Experience (Washington: Whalesback Books, 1992), p. 6.

threads of museum theory, as an actor in a dialogic and multisensory process of exploration and communication with his/her surroundings, in which he/she is fully immersed. The gaze11 towards the object in the museum treasure house12 becomes one aspect of an enveloping bodily experience within a complex environment. The museum no longer acts primarily as a place for the gathering and communication of knowledge, but for the gathering of different forms of experience, through a mix of cognitive, social and embodied forms of engagement.13 This perspective is supportive of a constructivist approach14 to museum use and learning currently developing across the museum field, and reinforces a more flexible, cultural model of communication that replaces the traditional transmission model of mass media theory.15 Shifting the centre of attention from the knowledge of the collection to the user of the museum, an understanding of the embodied dimension of the visitor further allows us to focus on one of the defining, often forgotten characteristics specific to the museum medium: its spatial dimension. Usually regarded as an index for the rich collections it beholds, the museum has been considered throughout its history as an object-based medium, implying that its communicative power be somewhat reduced to the communicative process between visitor and object. Today the rocketing development of multimedia and display techniques, parallel to debates over the possibility of museums without objects, have questioned this direct association16, so that, without ever losing their primacy as the key distinctive richness of the museum institution, objects have become part of a complex interconnected set of media. Architecture, display interactives and environments can today work in unison with objects, texts and audiovisuals to support not only distinct thematic content but opportunities for visitor meaning-making, exchange and participation.17 In virtue of its mediating capacity to tell stories and generate engagement, the museum can thus be

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Donald Preziosi, The art of art history, in Simon J. Knell, Museums in the material world (Abingdon, Routledge, 2007), p.115. 12 Andrea Witcomb, Re-imagining the museum: beyond the mausoleum (Abingdon:Routledge, 2003), p.102. 13 John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, The Museum Experience (Washington: Whalesback Books, 1992). 14 George E. Hein, Learning in the Museum (Abingdon: Routledge, 1998). 15 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Communication in theory and practice in The Educational Role of the Museum ed. by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (Abingdon: Routledge, 1994). 16 Steven Conn, Do Museums still need Objects? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), p.22. 17 Lee H. Skolnick, Towards a new museum architecture. Narrative and representation. in Reshaping Museum Space. Architecture, design, exhibitions ed. by Suzanne MacLeod (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), p.125.

read as an inhabitable three-dimensional narrative space18, part of the ecology of urban and social life, where meanings and identities are constantly constructed, contested and reinforced. The ecological metaphor adopted so far also suits our purposes for a third reason: it implies a system of constant exchange and interdependency among the populations that inhabit museum space and participate in its daily practice and use. In the contemporary museum, external stakeholders, working staff, professional consultants and audiences all contribute to the messages and social relevance of the institution. Balances of power and dialoguing forces not only have an impact on content organisation and storytelling, according to historical and social contingencies, as is the case, for example, of the representation of conflict, colonisation and minorities, but actively define the success of all museum activities and projects. Architects, curators, designers and managers, to name only a few, articulate the construction of the visitors museum experience with their own interpretation of museum purposes and communicative models. Such interpretations may work in line or in collision with the views of the museums multifaceted audiences, and while visitor studies have forcefully attempted to address this gap, the success and power of involvement of exhibitions and museum-going are still very much determined by factors associated with professional collaboration. In recent years, significant transformations have swept across the museum sector multiplying visitor numbers through marketing-led communication, large capital investments, blockbuster exhibitions and social networking and, even in times of financial restraint, this process is still ongoing. If such transformations have intensified debate over the changing role of the museum in the social landscape, then this is probably a particularly fitting time for museum practitioners to go back to the basics of the museum-visitor relation and address questions over the specificity of this medium in the context of culture-related media and production.19 In this quick-paced social and economic context, visitor studies in the UK have largely explored visitor segmentation, motivation and interests as well as the role of
18

The subject of narrative space was addressed at the conference by the same name at the University of th nd Leicester between the 19 -22 of April 2010. 19 See Michelle Henning, Museums, Media and Cultural Theory (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006). Also see Bella Dicks, Culture on Display. The Production of Contemporary Visitability (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006).

the museum as an informal learning environment. The present study hopes to encourage a widening of scope for future research, seeking contact with the embodied sensory experience and suggesting initial answers to the questions: How do museum space and the senses collaborate and contribute to visitor experience? Can the embodied dimension have a role in narrative processes and learning as well as enjoyment? What is the place of embodied experience in current museum developments? To what extent is there awareness among museum practitioners of the spatial and sensory potential of the museum environment? Setting temporarily aside practices of visitor segmentation and an approach to the senses based on the impact of single hands-on exhibition displays, a wider enquiry on the visitor journey, the involvement of the senses across the visit and the ways that architecture, space and display can play a role, may encourage a fresh look on the museum medium, imagining a more flexible set of social functions for its future, in support of its role as a learning environment. To address the focus topic of this study, namely the embodied visitor experience within the museum three-dimensional environment, a series of decisions were made necessary due to the potentially large scope of the subject and its interdisciplinary nature. While the confines of this work do not allow an in-depth study of perceptual phenomena and their gradient of success in the museum setting, nor the extensive fieldwork necessary with museum audiences to evaluate the success and impact of multi-sensory and spatial experiences, the scope of this study will be multiple: to place embodied sensory experience within the frame of media and constructivist learning theories; to understand the place of embodied experience in published work in the fields of museum studies, environmental psychology, architecture and design; to conduct a direct field enquiry, through a series of interviews with European professionals, on the use of space and the senses in three largely diverse case-studies; finally, to explore different ways to address the interpretation of the body-space component in relation to four core aspects of museum practice: narrative, ambiance, media and the city. The case-studies have been purposely chosen to provide a variety of spatial environments and sensory habitats, different histories and organisational cultures, permanent and temporary exhibition settings. Each case will be analysed in its approach to narrative and how this relates to one of the other selected themes.
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However, all three case-studies reveal to be telling across thematic divisions for, as is often the case in museum work, elements do not work independently but rather blend and interact. Equally, the interviews will show that the environment and the senses are aspects that seep through different aspects of museum work and should thus not be relegated uniquely to the responsibility of the architect and/or designer. Greater understanding and attention across the practice would thus help dialogue and the end results of collaborative processes. While the focus of this study is the embodied visit within the museum environment, its purpose is, finally, to test the malleability of the medium in conversation with museum practitioners. In 1969 Marshall McLuhan, one of the fathers of media studies, had already identified this very special trait of the museum in a seminar entitled Exploration of the ways, means and values of museum communication with the viewing public at the Museum of the City of New York, where he spoke, together with designer Harley Parker, to an audience of museum directors about the modular quality of the museum.20 The museum was presented as a distinctively flexible medium of which we can change the rules; and that is, by its very nature, a means of access to the sensory and intuitive perception of all things.21 The title Moulding the museum is thus a reminder of the immense heritage and histories that provide the mould out of which todays museum institutions are cast, but which can, nevertheless, give shape to something contemporary, not reducible to a superficial make-over of architecture and display but to a potential revision of values, where visitor, object, medium and professional boundaries each find their place in a revised contemporary museum ecology.

20

See Bernard Deloche, Franois Mairesse, Vers une nouvelle gnration de muses? in Le muse non linaire. Exploration des mthodes, moyens et valeurs de la communication avec le public par le muse eds. by Bernard Deloche, Franois Mairesse (Lyon: Alas, 2008). (Transl.from original). 21 Ibid., p.15.

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PART I

Understanding embodied visitor experience

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Chapter 1 Communication, learning theory and the sensory museum environment

Museums today, in my view at least, should be part of the world, a part of the times in which we live. Even if they have historical collections, they still need to emphasize the fact that you are looking at them from where we are today.Olafur Eliasson (2008) 22 Many factors combine to create perception and experience. ()When people visit a museum, they look at the paintings or artefacts there. They give themselves up to the immediate experience, responding to the stimuli of the setting. Normally, they select these experiences from a desire to be there, do that, learn this. These desires usually spring from within, but occasionally are motivated from without. In either case, the experience perceived is a constructed reality. John Falk and Lynn Dierking (1992) 23

A vast array of transformations have inundated the museum world in the past fifty years, bringing considerable challenges to museum professionals who had to ride with difficulty the wave of change from object-based professional practice to reconsiderations of social purpose and communicative efficiency. For some, as for Josie Appleton, writing in Museum and their Communities, the people-centred approach currently attempting to classify and segment not the collection but the public24, in the intent to play a greater role in social cohesion and contemporary society at large, may run the risk of dissolving the museum into its community, blurring the museum out of existence25, impeding it to fully run the functions it responds to best: to

22

Olafur Eliasson, cited in Peter Samis, The Exploded Museum, in Digital Technologies and the museum experience. Handheld guides and other media eds. by Loc Tallon and Kevin Walker (Plymouth: Altamira, 2008), p.3. 23 John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, The Museum Experience (Washington: Whalesback Books, 1992), p.100. 24 Josie Appleton, Museums for the people?, in Museums and their communities ed. by Sheila Watson, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), p.117. 25 Ibid., p.117.

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preserve, display, study and collect treasures of civilisation and nature.26 Others, like Harold Skramstad at the 150th anniversary symposium of the Smithsonian Institution, have argued that not only was the museum a wholly pointless institution unless it helped to solve peoples real problems, but also that if it was to survive it had to do so in some way that was unique to itself and not redundant with what other kinds of organisations might have to offer.27 Decades after the 9th ICOM General Conference of 1971 and the 1984 publication Museums for a New Century28 by the American Association of Museums (AAM), inviting membership to firmly establish their educational role in the service of society, today learning has become generally accepted as the primary function of the museum, allowing discussions to focus onto the ways for such learning to actually take place and whether learning is the only significant role that contemporary museums may have. As stated by Lois Silverman, Museums in a new age can become places that actively support and facilitate a range of human experiences with artifacts and collections - social, spiritual, imaginal, therapeutic, aesthetic [experiences] and more.29 Within the frame of such discussions, spatial and sensory factors that make up the holistic embodied experience of the visitor may emerge as increasingly relevant in the future - especially with regards to recent experientially-based approaches to practice affirming a role at the very core of communicative and learning processes. Not only can they contribute, we would argue, to the understanding of the museum as a medium unique to itself, but also play a significant part in learning, understood here, in line with John Falks reading of this process, as a constant and complex lifelong series of experiences.30 Strengthening reflection on the place of the embodied experience in communication and learning may thus encourage practitioners in the

26

Josie Appleton, Museums for the people?, in Museums and their communities ed. by Sheila Watson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), p.125. 27 Harold Skramstad cited in Stephen Weil, Making Museums Matter (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 2002), p. 70. 28 See Joel N. Bloom, Museums for a New Century. A Report of the Commission on Museums for a New Century (Washington: American Association of Museums, 1984). 29 Lois Silverman, Visitor Meaning-Making in Museums for a New Age, Curator: The Museum Journal, September 1995, Vol.38, Issue 3, p. 161170. 30 John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, Lessons without Limit. How free-choice learning is transforming education. (Plymouth: Altamira, 2002), p. 47.

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future to imagine new roles for the museum, with a more complex understanding of what it does best. In recent decades the idea of the museum as a means of communication has consistently gained ground, however Eilean Hooper-Greenhill explains how communication theory applied to museum work is still in need of considerable development, Most branches of mass media now have extensive texts of methods, but in museums this is only just beginning. There is a need for new methods of communication to be tried out, evaluated, tested.31 Historically left outside the confines of media studies for their focus on real objects32, museums have long been associated with simple unidirectional models of communication, such as the Shannon and Weaver model33. This view has only recently given way to a more flexible cultural view to museum communication as, a cultural process that binds people together within particular spaceframes, and as part of specific ritual procedures. Meanings are accepted as plural () open to negotiation, diverse rather than unified, and are seen as legitimately subjective.34 As Hooper-Greenhill notes, the parallel shift from positivistic, didactic, transmission models in communication and learning theory to models that acknowledge people as active in making sense of social environments35 is part of a wider postmodern stance, that sees reality as a plural and relative, as a social construct subject to change. For museums, this means conceptualizing visitors as participative in meaning-making, as actors in the communicative and learning processes encouraged by the museum. In terms of embodied experience, this cultural view of communication allows the figure of the visitor to be read as one that enables museum space, architecture and objects to communicate, to be inhabited, to assume value. The visitor acts as the vector that allows meaning to develop through movement, linking elements according to personal, social and physical factors. While the museum is the facilitator of
31

Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Communication in Theory and Practice, in The Educational Role of the Museum ed. by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (Abingdon: Routledge, 1994), p. 30. 32 Michelle Henning, Museums, Media and Cultural Theory (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006), p.72. 33 See Denis McQuail, Swen Windahl, Communication Models for the study of mass communications (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1993), p.16. 34 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museum learners as active postmodernists, in The Educational Role of the Museum ed. by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (Abingdon: Routledge, 1994), p. 70. 35 Ibid., p.71.

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communication, in other words the medium, the visitor is the activating element of the communicative process, that makes museum communication meaningful through a process of selection, reception, regeneration of ideas. Furthermore, a communicative reading of the museum should not be limited, as Hooper-Greenhill suggests, only to exhibitions, for not only objects or audiovisual media but all the sensory stimuli of the museum visit, from the welcoming staff and orientation to the building, bookshop and displays, become part of the holistic communicative experience of the visit.36 This view appears valuable for museum staff not simply in branding and marketing terms, but in order to understand the interconnectedness of different elements as part of one communicative experience. In this perspective, the embodied dimension of the visit plays a role in all museum typologies, allowing the visitor to select and compose the elements that will articulate his/her personal constructed experience of the museum visit. As Michelle Henning notes, one limit of communication theories applied to museums is the tendency to focus on the communication of information and not account for the experiential and affective appeal of museums and exhibitions. 37 In such theories, material objects are treated, she explains, as concrete instances of an abstract schema38, while exhibits experienced bodily, through the activities and sensations they engage, may instead constitute a significant part of the museum experience equally to the more explicit messages of the exhibition.39 Yet it is notably the material aspect of museums that seems to distinguish them from other media, as the latter detach objects, scenes, people from fixed place in time and space and allow them to circulate as multiples40. Traditional museums certainly prioritized objects, permanence and [the] unique and in such contexts media may have seemed to threaten the aura of original objects.41 However, today museums are becoming increasingly mediatic, bringing objects closer to the visitor through reconstructions, display devices and new media, certainly sharing with other media a distinct recording and storage function, to bring the past into the present and preserve the traces of
36

Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Communication in Theory and Practice in The Educational Role of the Museum ed. by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (Abingdon: Routledge, 1994), p. 40-41. 37 Michelle Henning, Museums, Media and Cultural Theory (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006), p.2. 38 Ibid., p.71. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid.

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culture. As Henning reminds us, the history of the modern museum corresponds chronologically with the history of recording media.42 But what is characteristic of the museum medium in terms of visitor experience? Eilean Hooper-Greenhill has highlighted the immense advantage of museums to enable mass media communication as well as natural face-to-face dialogue with guides, staff and amongst visitors.43 Stephen Weil extends this view further, reminding us of the relative informality44 of the museum environment, where traditional rules of conduct have been tempered to make visitor experience more relaxed and enjoyable. This is something the museum seems to share with television, which, having become part of our daily life, elicits dialogue, listening, questioning, zapping in other words engagement and selection as a medium part of our habitat that we need not leave, we could say, when the programme is over. In his 1967 seminar at the Museum of the City of New York, Marshall McLuhan had explained this clearly: while the traditional museum is, in his view, a derivate of print, exclusively linear and visual, detached from the environment and precluding any chance for further sensory engagement, the museum of the future has potential to become a cold medium45 - similarly to television - polisensory and requiring the active participation of the subject. The linear museum of conservation and cataloguing would thus give way to the exercise of perception, thats what the museum world could focus on46 to allow the functioning of all the senses, the full range of human explorative tools.47 McLuhans museum is one with no prescribed paths and without panels, where the objective knowledge of the collections is not as important as the lived sensory experience, and where space does not simply coincide with visual space.48 For McLuhan, the true artefacts produced by Man create environments and not simply objects within such environments. For different reasons, biological or physiological, people dont perceive environments but only the content of
42 43

Michelle Henning, Museums, Media and Cultural Theory (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006),p.74. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Communication in Theory and Practice, in The Educational Role of the Museum ed. by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (Abingdon: Routledge, 1994), p. 29. 44 Stephen Weil, Making Museums Matter (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 2002), p. 67. 45 Please refer to the theory of hot and cool media, in Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1994), p.22-32. 46 Marshall McLuhan et al. Le muse non linaire. Exploration des mthodes, moyens et valeurs de la communication avec le public par le muse (Lyon: Alas, 2008), p.40 (Translated from original). 47 Ibid., p.40. 48 Ibid., p.61.

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such environments.49 In this line of thought, the museum is viewed as a context for social practice, a living and sensory environment where, in virtue of its collections, media and of its spatial dimension, a range of sensory experiences can be lived in a variety of participative ways. As stated by John Falk and Lynn Dierking in The Museum Experience, in learning theory the role of physical engagement has been analogously often forgotten, People learn within settings that are at once physical and psychological constructs. The light, the ambience, the feel and even the smell of an environment influence learning. These influences are often subconscious though sometimes very powerful experiences that are the hardest to verbalize can be the easiest to recall. For this reason, the role of the physical context upon learning has been one of the most neglected aspects of learning.50 In their Contextual Model of Learning51, learning is understood as an active process of assimilation of information with an equal degree of attention for the influence of personal, social and physical contexts. Learning is read by these authors as a freechoice process, in which the learner has choice over what, why, where, when and how he/she will learn. It can happen in any context, formal or informal, whether dedicated to learning experiences or not, and it happens continuously. Falk and Dierkings intent is to present a fuller picture of the visitors total museum experience, recognizing variables of motivation, beliefs, attitudes inherent to the personal context as well as influences of the social and physical contexts - whether these are conscious or not on the part of the visitor -Each of these contexts is continuously constructed by the visitor and the interaction creates the visitor experience52. According to these authors, where one is has an enormous impact on how, what and how much one learns, and this should push museum practitioners to focus efforts on the creation of an environment, in which the visitor becomes part of a seamless array of mutually

49

Marshall McLuhan et al. Le muse non linaire. Exploration des mthodes, moyens et valeurs de la communication avec le public par le muse (Lyon: Alas, 2008), p.48 (Translated from original). 50 John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, The Museum Experience (Washington: Whalesback Books, 1992), p.100. 51 John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, Lessons without Limit. How free-choice learning is transforming education. (Plymouth: Altamira, 2002), p. 47. 52 John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, The Museum Experience, p. 3.

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reinforcing contexts53. As they underline, Museums use space in creative ways, so it is critical to learn more about the effects on learning of physical space and ambience54. Such perspective, endorsed by environmental psychology, reconnects with Mihaly Czikszentmihalyis flow theory, whereby embodied engagement and its explorative nature can potentially contribute to provide the visitor with a sense of being freed from worries, of feeling competent and in control of the situation, of finding tasks appropriate to personal abilities and obtaining feedback from the environment.55 In other words, by working on physical aspects and visitor embodied experience, the museum can generate an environment for discovery, learning and creativity56, allowing visitors to retain more, enjoy more and make the visit relevant to their skills and knowledge. Attending to embodied and experiential factors also responds to models of learning such as David Kolbs Experiential learning theory and learning styles and Howard Gardners Theory of multiple intelligences.57 In Kolbs theory, learning is grounded in concrete experience, which is the first step of a cyclical process that allows reflections and observations to be distilled into abstract concepts and reapplied in concrete contexts. He also identifies different learning styles, distinguished within a spectrum of forms of engagement with the outside world, underlining the variety of personal approaches to interpretation and a varying balance between watching and doing, thinking and feeling, in the process of grasping and transforming experience.58 Gardners theory, in line with such thinking, identifies seven forms of intelligences, among which particularly the visual-spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic and musical present distinct sensory and spatially-defined qualities.59 As Falk and Dierking accurately summarize, Learning and memory are subjective and contextually influenced60.
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John H. Falk, Lynn D. Dierking, The Museum Experience (Washington: Whalesback Books, 1992), p.130. Ibid., p.112. 55 Falk and Dierking, Lessons without Limit. How free-choice learning is transforming education, p. 17. 56 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, Creativity. Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 143; see also Alan Hedge, Human -Factor Considerations in the Design of Museums to Optimize their Impact on Learning in Public Institutions for Personal Learning ed. by John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 1995), p.113. 57 David A. Kolb, Experiential learning: experience as a source of learning and development (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1984); Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind. The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York:Basic Books, 2011). 58 See David A. Kolb, Experiential learning: experience as a source of learning and development. 59 See Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind. The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York:Basic Books, 2011).

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The perspectives on the museum and the learning theories presented above are also strongly echoed by the more recent constructivist approach to museum practice. As expressed by George Hein in The educational role of the museum, constructivism recognizes that both knowledge and the way it is obtained depend from the learners, not simply adding new facts to what is known, [they] constantly reorganise and create both understanding and the ability to learn as they interact with the world61. Hein invites practitioners to reflect: What is done to acknowledge that knowledge is constructed in the mind of the learner? How is learning itself made active and how is the environment designed to make it accessible?62 He encourages a perspective coherent with Howard Gardners and David Kolbs learning theories and strongly recognizes the role of place, architecture and atmosphere on the learning process, declaring that museum spaces are often designed with little concern for the needs of visitors for privacy and comfort in order to learn.63 In his view, the constructivist museum should include at least some spaces as settings for relaxed, engaged activity which can take time and in which visitors would feel safe64. In this theoretical frame, studies in environmental psychology, such as those assembled in two meaningful collections of essays - Falk and Dierkings Public Institutions for Personal Learning65 and the interdisciplinary journal Environment and Behavior (November 1993)66 constitute an important knowledge-base to grasp connections between learning and environment. In the first publication, Alan Hedge explores the human factors of the museum visit, with reference to Csikszentmihalyis theory of intrinsic motivation67, understanding flow as a confluence of mental and

60

John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, The Museum Experience (Washington: Whalesback Books, 1992), p.112. 61 George E. Hein, The constructivist museum in The Educational Role of the Museum ed. by Eilean HooperGreenhill (Abingdon: Routledge, 1994), p. 76. 62 George E. Hein, Learning in the Museum (Abingdon: Routledge, 1998), p.156. 63 Ibid., p.159. 64 Ibid., p.160. 65 John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, Public Institutions for Personal Learning (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 1995). 66 Stephen C. Bitgood, Ross J. Loomis, eds. Environment and Behavior, Vol.25, n.6 (1993). 67 Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (New York: Plenum Press, 1985), p.29.

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physical processes that produce optimal experiences.68 He suggests that settings should be designed to provide the basic requirements of flow: purpose, attention, challenge, involvement, feedback, immersion, control and sense of time.69 He also significantly highlights the importance of direct experience on learning processes, as attitudes formed through direct behavioural experience are a better predictor of later behaviours than attitudes formed through indirect experience70. In the second publication, Marilyn G. Hood analyses psychographic characteristics, such as attitudes, values and concept of self, exploring how these relate directly to environmental elements, which she defines the comfort and caring factors of museums.71 However, particularly important is Gary Evans Learning and the Physical Environment72. An environmental and developmental psychologist, Evans identifies six links between physical settings and psychological processes: cognitive fatigue, distraction, motivation, emotional affect, anxiety and communication.73 Contributing to the study of visitor holistic experience, Evans reframes the museum environment not only as an intellectual, social, emotional setting but as a physical entity functional to the stimulation of reflection and learning processes. Making reference to Stephen Kaplans equally important study on the museum as a restorative environment74, Evans ultimately widens the perspective on the holistic museum experience connecting learning to the museums restorative function, so that physical and embodied factors, by fundamentally counteracting perceptual overstimulation and cognitive fatigue, allow renewed visitor engagement and learning.75 In full recognition of these studies, which, it seems, invite practitioners to locate physical engagement not simply at the lower levels of Maslows pyramid of basic

68

Alan Hedge, Human-Factor Considerations in the Design of Museums to Optimize their Impact on Learning in Public Institutions for Personal Learning ed. by John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 1995), p.113. 69 Ibid., p.113-115. 70 Ibid., p.116. 71 Marilyn G.Hood, Comfort and Caring. Two Essential Environmental Factors , Environment and Behavior, Vol.25, n.6 (1993), p.710-723. 72 Gary W. Evans, Learning and the Physical Environment in Public Institutions for Personal Learning ed. by John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 1995). 73 Ibid. 74 Stephen Kaplan, The Museum as a restorative environment, Environment and Behavior, Vol.25, n.6 (1993), p.725-741; also see Stephen Kaplan and Rachel Kaplan, Cognition and environment (New York: Praeger, 1982), p. 71-95. 75 See Gary W. Evans, Learning and the Physical Environment, p.124.

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needs, but at its different steps in the pursuit of satisfaction76, Heins constructivist theory places the visitor and the museum environment at the very core of an interactive learning system. Eliciting comparisons between the old and the new, between the familiar and the unknown, one underlying idea seems to emerge from his discourse: that the museum places itself right on the edge between past and present, between knowledge developed and knowledge to be created, and that the point of junction in between is the multisensory, sensing being of the visitor.

76

American psychologist Abraham Maslow formulated a scheme indicating the basic human needs. Starting from the bottom of the pyramid, these are: physiological, safety, social, esteem and self-actualisation. See Abraham Maslow, Motivation and personality (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). For an explanation of his theory see also Graham Black, The Engaging Museum. Developing museums for visitor involvement (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), p.32-33.

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Chapter 2 Theoretical foundations of the embodied experience in space

All architecture functions as a potential stimulus for movement, real or imagined. A building is an incitement to action, a stage for movement and interaction. It is one partner in a dialogue with the body. Bloomer and Moore (1977)77. We hear space, we can smell it and in Louis Kahns vivid phrase to see is only to touch more accurately. Colin St John Wilson (1989)78. As place is sensed, senses are placed; as place makes sense, senses make place. Steven Feld (2005)79.

Framing embodied experience within communication and learning theories may be a useful exercise to widen the scope of such theories and develop a body of work complementary to current thought and practice, attending to aspects of materiality and embodiment in the museum, by definition, the most material of media. This intent implies, as Sandra Dudley explains, a perceptual shift, from an information-based understanding of museum experience to a more holistic understanding of experience and knowledge80 as sensed and grounded in bodily form, in dialogue with cognitive processes. A number of publications within and outside the field of museum studies may offer possible stepstones to the achievement of this purpose. Studies on embodied experience may appear, spread among different disciplines, as varied and fragmented, nevertheless they share one common desire: to relocate materiality and sensory experience at the centre of meaning-making, in our relationship with the physical environment as well as in our engagement with objects, narrative and socio-cultural settings. While this perspective does not exclude vision

77

Kent C. Bloomer and Charles W.Moore, Body, Memory, and Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), p. ix. 78 Colin St. John Wilson, The Natural Imagination, Architectural Review, Vol. 185, n. 1103 (1989) , p.64-70. 79 Steven Feld, Places Sensed, Senses Placed. Toward a sensuous epistemology of environments in Empire of the Senses. The sensual cultural reader ed. by David Howes (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004), p.179. 80 Sandra H. Dudley, ed. Museum Materialities. Objects, engagements, interpretations (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), p. 3.

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nor diminishes its importance, its purpose seems rather to reach a more complete understanding of human experience, of how the individual, who knows and lives through the whole sensory register, is in contact and dialogue with the external world and, in the case of museums, how narrative and experience are vehicled, in first instance, through such multisensory understanding. At the core of this approach is a phenomenological attitude to experience that echoes 20th century philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Maurice MerleauPonty. In his text entitled Body and Space, Heidegger reminds us that in Greek thought space was conceived in relation to the body, and it is only with the physics of Galileo and Newton that space becomes a uniform three-dimensional expansion for the movement of distinct elements with no fixed location.81 Despite the many differences between Greek thought and contemporary thought, he explains, space is represented in the same way, that is, starting from the body.82 Space is a three-dimensional extension, space makes space83, it provides the possibility of coming close and moving away, it provides directions and limits, the possibility of distances and varying sizes.84 According to Heidegger, the availability of space for the individual, that characterizes the individual in his being-in-the-world, even today remains largely unnoticed.85 In Maurice Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology of Perception, the origins of space are equally located in the movement of the body, which he regards as producing space. He speaks of body schema, a largely unconscious repertoire of learned skills and bodily capacities, that gives us a sense of our abilities in relation to the environment.86 Developing on Merleau-Pontys extensive work on space and place87, Ed Casey affirms that we should understand the human beings relation to space in terms of embodiment: to be embodied is to be emplaced, to operate within a circle of engagement in which challenges are presented to the body to be resolved through

81

Martin Heidegger, Corpo e spazio. Osservazioni su artescultura-spazio (Genova: Il Melangolo, 2002),p.29 (Translated from original). 82 Ibid., p.29-30. 83 Ibid., p.33. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid., p.35. 86 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phnomnologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p.114. 87 Ibid.

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further action.88 He explains that for Merleau-Ponty perception is inextricably interwoven with the sense of action within an environment89, so that what counts is not the body as a thing in objective space, but as a system of possible actions 90. In anthropology, Setha Low defines embodied space as the location where human experience and consciousness takes on material and spatial form () the existential and phenomenological reality of place: its smell, feel, colour and other sensory dimensions.91 Such definition places the body at its centre as a physical and biological entity, lived experience, and a centre of agency, a location for speaking and acting on the world92. Other studies within the field of anthropology, such as Thomas Csordas Embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology93 or the collection of writings Senses of Place, edited by Steven Feld and Keith Basso94, also attempt to locate the body at the core of our engagement the environment and our identity-making processes. While embodied sensory experience has acquired attention in different fields of human research, museum theory and practice have only recently witnessed interest in this topic. In one important collection of writings focused on the subject of embodied relations with objects, Museum Materialities. Objects, engagements, interpretations, Sandra Dudley explains how the material turn of many disciplines in the last twenty years, typically that of material culture studies, has mostly brought an understanding of material objects as part of social life, for their acquired meanings and values, paradoxically leading attention away from, the tangibility of material surfaces, encouraging us instead to leap straight into analysing the role of objects in social and cultural worlds, in the process missing out an examination of the physical actuality of

88

Ed Casey cited in Glen A. Mazis, Humans, animals, machines. Blurring boundaries (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), p.45. 89 Ibid. 90 Edward S. Casey, The fate of place. A philosophical history (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p.232. 91 Setha M. Low, Anthropological Theories of Body, Space and Culture, space & culture, vol.6 (2003) n.1, p.9-18. 92 Ibid., p.10. 93 Thomas Csordas, Embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology, Ethos, vol. 18 (1990) n.1, p. 5-47. 94 Steven Feld and Keith Basso, eds. Senses of Place (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996).

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objects and the sensory modalities through which we experience them.95 According to Dudley, despite a renewed focus on the material that contrasts a dominance of language and vision in theoretical discourse, questions regarding the way that objects carry meaning and feeling and the specificity of the museum as a place for person-object engagement, still remain, to be thoroughly addressed.96 Within museum-related literature, the topic of sensory engagement has been more deeply enquired in connection with indigenous cultures and colonial pasts, as in the fundamental collection Sensible Objects. Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture, as well as within applied approaches to object handling displays, initially developed in science museums and centres.97 While the former tackles the subject of cross-cultural interpretation and the clash between different sensory systems engendered by colonial encounter, the latter bring forth analyses on the potential of touch as a multiple means of access to interpretation, feeling and reminiscence.98 In both cases, multisensory exploration, similarly to the more established understanding of multiple intelligences and learning styles99, becomes a sensitive, democratic tool, to address the needs and interpretive discourses of different museum populations. No longer considered a necessity uniquely for visually impaired and differently able audiences, multisensory exploration is here reconnected to the very purpose of the museum100: providing multiple readings of objects and stories, respectful of different cultural sensory ratios and moving beyond traditional Western-centred interpretations of material culture. In these terms, physical and sensory engagement are understood in terms of spatial

95

Sandra H. Dudley, ed. Museum Materialities. Objects, engagements, interpretations (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), p.2. 96 Ibid. 97 See Tim Caulton, Hands-on exhibitions. Managing interactive museums and science centres (London: Routledge, 1998); Helen J. Chatterjee, ed. Touch in Museums. Policy and Practice in Object Handling (New York: Berg, 2008); Elizabeth Pye, ed. The power of touch (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2007). 98 Ibid. 99 See Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind. The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York:Basic Books, 2011); David Kolb, Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1984). For an explanation of Kolbs theory, see also Graham Black, The Engaging Museum. Developing museums for visitor involvement (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005). 100 See Constance Classen Museum Manners: the sensory life of the early museum, Journal of Social History, Vol.40(2007) n.4, p.895-914; Susan Stewart, Prologue: From the Museum of Touch in Material Memories. Design and Evocation ed. by Marius Kwint et al. (New York: Berg, 1999).

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politics, community ownership and social agency101. To this purpose, an expanding literature in the history and anthropology of the senses, notably the writings of David Howes and Constance Classen, provide a fundamental repository of interpretive readings on the senses, revealing their assigned meanings in history and across cultures.102 The topic of embodied experience has also successfully concerned museum education departments, looking to channel visitor experience across a range of multisensory possibilities. In her article published in Art Education, Professor Olga Hubard explains that, as cognitive science confirms the rootedness of concept and reason in the experience of the body103, a reconsideration of the status of the body in the construction of knowledge offers important opportunities in art education.104 Despite, she says, education largely continues to be driven by Cartesian views that consider logical reasoning as the only way to knowledge, There is a sense of immediacy in the way the viewers begin to apprehend an artwork: a physical, sensorial, and often emotional, engagement that precedes the conceptual.105 In the art museum environment, typically that of the white cube, Hubard identifies means to facilitate embodied engagement and responses to artworks, through discursive and non-discursive approaches.106 Her writings bring out an important aspect of embodied experience: that perceiving in bodily terms does not forcibly imply physical contact, but rather an understanding through physical means, for example identifying aspects
101

See for example Viv Golding, Learning at the museum frontiers. Identity, Race and Power (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009); Richard Sandell, Constructing and communicating equality. The Social Agency of Museum Space. in Reshaping Museum Space. Architecture, design, exhibitions ed. by Suzanne MacLeod (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), p.185; Jennifer Barrett, Museums and the Public Sphere (West Sussex: Blackwell, 2010), p. 81. 102 For reference purposes, some of the most fundamental writings are: Constance Classen et al. Aroma. The Cultural History of Smell (London: Routledge, 1994); David Howes, ed. Empire of the Senses. The sensual cultural reader (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004); Costance Classen and David Howes, The Sensescape of the Museum: Western Sensibilities and Indigenous Artifacts in Elizabeth Edwards et al. Sensible objects. Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture (New York: Berg, 2006), p.199; Mark Smith, Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching in History (Berkeley : California Press, 2008); Mark Smith, Sensory History (Berkeley : California Press, 2008); Mark Smith, Listening to Nineteenth Century America (North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Richard Rath, How Early America Sounded (New York: Cornell University Press, 2003). 103 See Antonio Damasio, Descartes error: Emotion, reason and the human brain (New York: Random House, 2008); Francisco J.Varela et al. Embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience (Chicago: MIT Press, 1991). 104 Olga M.Hubard, Complete Engagement: Embodied Response in Art Museum Education, Art Education, Vol. 60, n.6(2007), p.47. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid., p.48.

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such as texture and size, or using sensory experience to imagine and relate to fictional or past environments. Today these kinds of approaches are making their way in educational departments across the sector, extending the possibilities offered by the experience of hands-on exhibits. It is clear, however, that understandings of embodied engagement in the museum have, to this date, been primarily focused on the interaction with artworks and objects, with scarce attention for the potential of museum space, of overall bodily engagement within the museum, to contribute to holistic visitor experience. This will be the central focus of the case-studies that follow in Part II of this work. Embodied experience of space and architecture has suffered a scarcity of literature, within and outside the museum world, possibly and partly due to hard-todefine notions of bodily engagement and sensory spatial experience. Kent Bloomer and Charles Moore explain, It is not surprising that forms are more often the focus of our attention than space or movement in space. Space is typically thought of as a void or as the absence of solid, and movement thought of as a domain separate from its existence in space.107 In 1977 Bloomer and Moore publish the results of their research in Body, Memory and Architecture, addressing an important gap in architecture education: the understanding of how buildings are experienced, rather than how they should be built. They observe that reference is seldom made to the unique perceptual and emotional capacities of the human being108 and that even historians are mainly focused on the cultural influences of building styles and landscape109. Architecture, they affirm, is commonly read as a specialised system, sustained by a defined set of tools and goals, rather than as a discipline responsive to human desires and needs. 110 The human body, our most fundamental three-dimensional possession, has not itself been a central concern in the understanding of architectural form111. Written in a time when architectural and environmental psychology112 were gaining ground in response to the relentless building of the previous decade, Bloomer

107

Kent C. Bloomer and Charles W.Moore, Body, Memory, and Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), p.57-58. 108 Ibid., p. ix. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid. 112 See for example Rikard Kller (ed.), Architectural Psychology. Proceedings of the Lund Conference (Strondsburg, Pennsylvania: Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross Inc., 1973).

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and Moores words appear starkly contemporary, in our time of capital funding for iconic architecture and computer-based design methods. As they explain, in its beginnings all architecture derived from a body-centred sense of space and place113 and it is with the dawn of industrialisation that the function of architecture to extend the human self and order114 came to be gradually replaced by a specialised architecture.115 This turn also came with a growing predominance of the visual sense. Other means of sensing objects came to be considered secondary in the articulation of knowledge and, by the 19th century, three-dimensional forms were automatically treated by architects as visual problems.116 As Robert Sommers states in Personal Space, The doctrine that form follows function () became a useful antidote to needless ornamentation. Yet it is curious that most of the concern with functionalism has been focused upon form rather than function. () Relatively little emphasis is placed on the activities taking place inside the structure. This is predictable in the case of the architect who, in his training and practice, learns to look at buildings without people in them. () Once the structure is opened for public use, the architect disappears from the scene.117 If recent decades have brought evolutions to the architectural profession, Richard Toon explains that contemporary architectural texts dedicated to museums mostly present images of faades and architectural details118, while architectural histories and typologies, which make up a large part of contemporary writing on museum building119, tend to largely focus on the architectural object, its form and its line of
113

Kent C. Bloomer and Charles W.Moore, Body, Memory, and Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 5. 114 Ibid., p.15. 115 Ibid. 116 Ibid., p.29. 117 Robert Sommers, Personal space. The behavioral basis of design (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1969) p.3. 118 Richard Toon, Black box science in black box science centres in Reshaping Museum Space. Architecture, design, exhibitions ed. by Suzanne MacLeod (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), p.26. 119 Some examples are Douglas Davis, The Museum Transformed (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990); Michaela Giebelhausen, Museum Architecture: A Brief History in A Companion to Museum Studies ed. by Sharon MacDonald (West Sussex: Blackwell, 2011); Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Insight versus Entertainment: Untimely Meditations on the Architecture of Twentieth-century Art Museums in A Companion to Museum Studies ed. by Sharon MacDonald (West Sussex: Blackwell, 2011);Victoria Newhouse, Towards a new museum (New York: Monacelli Press, 2007); Stanislaus von Moos, A museum explosion: fragments of an overview in Angeli Sachs and Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, eds. Museums for a New Millennium. Concepts, Projects, Buildings (London: Prestel, 1999).

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predecessors, with reduced consideration for how such architectures may be practised, used, inhabited.120 It is also true that the immersive possibilities offered by digital technology and the vast array of museum architectural forms of recent years, in contrast with the recurring architectural models of the past, have provided renewed possibilities to place the visitor at the core of architectural planning. One might argue that it is, in fact, very much thanks to these transformations that spatial, embodied engagement is slowly gaining greater attention and significance. Some architects, like Tadao Ando for example, place special attention to the lived experience of architectural space. In an interview he states, The challenge is to conceive a space sufficiently generous to allow each individual to become the centre () to put people sufficiently at ease to allow them to explore and find their own way inside the building.121 Analogously, Peter Zumthor affirms, Im interested in spaces () that make me slow down a little, that make me stop, take a chair and start reading () spaces that invite me to blend into them. Like everyone, I know immediately when Im called by a space, but I find it difficult to define the precise qualities that provoke that sensation () There are spaces that () give us a sense of freedom, of dignity.122 As Juhani Pallasmaa explains, we tend to neglect the fact that we exist through our senses and cognitive processes, that we confront spaces and buildings with all our senses, in their multisensory, lived essence, qualities of space, matter, scale are measured equally by the eye, ear, nose, skin, tongue, skeleton and muscle. Architecture strengthens ()

120

One inspiring reading on the wider relation between space and social practice is Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Malden: Blackwell, 2011). 121 Tadao Ando cited in Michael Auping, Du bton et dautres secrets de larchitecture. Sept entretiens de Michael Auping avec Tadao Ando lors de la construction du Muse dArt Moderne de Fort Worth (Paris : LArche, 2007), p. 55 (Translated from original). 122 Peter Zumthor in Mohsen Mostafavi and Peter Zumthor, Thermal Baths at Vals (London: Architectural Association, 1996), p. 65.

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ones sense of being in the world, and this is essentially a strengthened experience of self.123 Making reference to James Gibsons five sensory systems124, Pallasmaa understands the senses as aggressively seeking mechanisms, and architecture as involving several realms of sensory experience which interact and fuse into each other. 125 For the museum field, this perspective may suggest a reading of objects, displays and architecture as a continuous flux of sensory stimuli: through the senses we seek out, give shape, select our experience, within a complex environment inscribed by the assignment of meaning, social hierarchies and personal preferences. Exhibition design manuals are not unfamiliar with this point of view. Here, the human being is a design factor that influences and relates to all other composition-related considerations.126 In the history of exhibition design reflections on the impact of space have brought remarkable transformations, from the innovative exhibition designs of El Lissitzky and the avant-garde in the 1920s to the white cube of the 1960s127, which has recently witnessed the birth of its negative, the immersive black box128. Today design manuals are moving towards performative spaces and simulated experiences, blurring the boundaries between market-led display and museum exhibitions.129 Reconnecting to the spectacle of visual display of early museum development130, there is large recognition among designers of the museum as a spatial medium, although sometimes implying that the new medium of brand experience is now people131 and that sensory marketing is only one fashionable aspect of a wider experience economy.132
123 124

Juhani Pallasmaa, The eyes of the skin (West Sussex: John Wiley & sons, 2005), p. 41. American psychologist James Gibson categorized the senses into five sensory systems: the visual system, the auditory system, the taste-smell system, the basic-orienting system and the haptic system. See James Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966). 125 Juhani Pallasmaa, The eyes of the skin (West Sussex: John Wiley & sons, 2005), p. 41. 126 David Dean, Museum Exhibition: Theory and practice (London: Routledge, 1994), p.39. 127 Brian ODoherty gives a telling account of the white cube phenomenon in Inside the White Cube: the ideology of the gallery space (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 128 Richard Toon, Black box science in black box science centres in Reshaping Museum Space. Architecture, design, exhibitions ed. by Suzanne MacLeod, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), p.26. 129 David Dernie, Exhibition Design (London: Lawrence King Publishing, 2007), p.4-5. 130 Steven Conn, Do museums still need objects? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), p.215. 131 David Dernie, Exhibition Design, p.10. 132 See David Howes, HYPERESTHESIA, or, The Sensual Logic of Late Capitalism in Empire of the Senses. The sensual cultural reader ed. by David Howes (ed.) (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004), p.281; Constance Classen, et al. Aroma. The Cultural History of Smell (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 203.

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In the newly published Museum Making, Jonathan Hale offers an important point of junction between theories of embodiment in space and the museum sector. Citing Merleau-Pontys idea that knowledge derives from the interaction between the body and the space around it, Hale raises a fundamental question on what the museum, as a three-dimensional spatial medium, can offer storytelling and narrative, within a spatial and, therefore, bodily framework133, in ways that text alone cannot provide.134 Within an inspiring collection on writings about the museum as a form of narrative in space, soliciting wider research on the embodied and spatial nature of the museum medium, Hale provides a theoretical understanding of the basic perceptual relationship of individual and environment, of visitor and museum. In the future and beyond the current work, a sound understanding of these notions will hopefully come to enrich current trends, in museum architecture and the design of creative spaces 135 which, very much like theatre, are increasingly eliciting performance, inhabitation, in a metaphorical open circle136 with diversified audiences.

133

Jonathan Hale, Narrative environments and the paradigm of embodiment in Museum Making. Narratives, architectures, exhibitions ed. by Suzanne Macleod et al. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), p.199. 134 Ibid. 135 Stephen Greenberg, The vital museum in Reshaping Museum Space. Architecture, design, exhibitions ed. by Suzanne MacLeod (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), p.229. 136 Ibid. See Andrew Todd and Jean-Guy Lecat, The Open Circle: Peter Brooks theatre environments (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

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PART II

A field enquiry on the role of museum space and the senses

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Chapter 3 Research methodology

While Part I of the present study focused on the place of embodied experience within different theoretical frameworks and literature, Part II extends enquiry within the museum by shifting the focus from theory to practice, through the analysis of three European case-studies and a series of twelve interviews with practitioners from the sector (see appendices). The topic of museum spatial and sensory engagement would warrant further study and articulated research, possibly within the frame of a PhD. Within the confines of this paper, fieldwork intends to achieve two primary objectives: firstly, to explore the contribution of space and the senses in different museum contexts and their connections with narrative; secondly, to investigate intentions in the use of space and the senses among a range of museum professionals. The links between the two will be further discussed in the conclusion, identifying trends and suggesting developments for the future. The case-studies selected to fulfil these objectives were chosen amongst a spectrum of personal visitor experiences for their distinct and largely diverse spatial and sensory qualities. Such characteristics qualify three very successful initiatives in terms of visitor numbers, that offer a particular blend of permanent and temporary exhibition settings and the treatment of different thematic nuclei in the domains of art, social history and ethnography. They are, namely: The TRA exhibition in Palazzo Fortuny (PF), Venice, Italy; The Fare gli Italiani exhibition at the Officine Grandi Riparazioni (OGR), Turin, Italy; The semi-permanent displays of the new Museum aan de Stroom (MAS), Antwerp, Belgium. The underlying hypothesis of this research is that the tight connection between these cultural projects and their hosting spaces - an historical Venetian residence, a dismantled industrial warehouse and a newly constructed iconic building - and the nature of these situated embodied visitor experiences, may have played a significant
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role in pushing these events at the peak of local cultural initiatives in their host cities, providing thus possible models of practice for the future in the wider museum field. Purposely excluding science museums to maintain focus on the holistic sensory experience of museum settings and exhibitions less accustomed to hands-on displays, the selection of the case-studies provides a range of examples of sensory engagement: touch, sound and vision, and how these interact with both narrative and space. Each case will be interpreted in special relation to one of these sensory modalities, and will be investigated, respectively, with regards to ambiance, media and the city as three key themes, identified during the interviews, that lie at the core of these three forms of embodied visitor experience. The recurring structure of the chapters that follow includes an introduction to the case-study, its spatial characteristics and narrative objectives, and an analysis of the exhibition settings in spatial and sensory terms, with the contributions and comments from conversations with museum staff. Within this frame, Palazzo Fortuny was given a more phenomenological reading, while OGR and MAS suggested a more analytical approach to museum space. Each of the cases could have been approached in a range of modalities: for example through the analysis of audience surveys or data collected through on-site observation. However, following the aims of this enquiry, a series of interviews resulted as the best usable form of data collection. While embodied museum experience is commonly associated to the domains of architecture and design, within this work it is discussed in interview with a range of staff members and consultants, by means of recurring themes and questions, but within unstructured conversation. Given the perceptual and largely unchartered nature of the topic, this qualitative approach to primary sources was opted for, with the advantage of allowing a greater articulation of question and response and space for personal perspectives. The sampling design includes four professionals for each institution: the Museum Director, the Head of Design, a Curator and the Head of Education. Each of them was contacted by email to demand a face-to-face interview and consent was requested for all recordings and transcriptions. As follow-up to a series of conferences, additional encounters have also enriched this research with specialised perspectives, providing a wider comparative lens and allowing for a more critical eye when approaching the case-studies.137
137

Following the Narrative Space Conference held in Leicester in 2010, Im thankful to Victoria Mc Guinness and Henry Kim of the Ashmolean Museum renovation project (Oxford, UK) for their time and availability; to

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The methodology underlying this research implies a phenomenological and subject-centred attitude, considering both visitors and staff as embodied subjects working with space and the senses, and the museum as an environment, a spatial medium for constructing knowledge and experience, beyond a more traditional approach to museum space as facility138. It also implies a postmodern reading of social and historical contingencies, whereby, as some interviews suggest, projects often result from personal ambitions, team work and debate among museum populations. Closer to research than to evaluation, but within limited space, this qualitative enquiry attempts to reveal views and visions as well as practice and methods. In the future, these contributions will require further confrontation with audience evaluation, statistics and participant observation in the museum spaces. Despite the fact that, to this date, evaluation work with audiences carried out by the institutions remains limited139, a range of secondary sources was used, such as catalogues and articles, exhibition guides and publications provided by the museum staff. The opportunity to visit the spaces with members of staff and share opinions with different visitors and gallery attendants also proved invaluable. Finally, due to the discursive nature and diversity of the on-site interviews, these have been included in annex, in abridged and translated version.

Hoelle Corvest, Head of the Accessibility Dept at the Cit des Sciences (Paris, France), speaker at the ICOM Brussels conference on disability (2011), for our meeting and the opportunity for a personal visit to the Cit des Sciences with a visually impaired member of staff; and to Marc Crunelle, architect and professor of Spatial Perception, Universit Libre de Bruxelles (Brussels, Belgium) for the inspiring conversations. 138 Within the field of visitor studies, the area of facility design constitutes an area of enquiry distinct from audience research, exhibit design and program design. While these are not mutually exclusive, an embodied understanding of the visitor inevitably overcomes such distinctions. See Stephen C. Bitgood et al. Environmental Design and Evaluation in Museums in Stephen C. Bitgood, Ross J. Loomis, eds. Environment and Behavior, Vol.25, n.6 (1993), p.683-697. 139 In all three cases visitor research only includes visitor counts based on ticket typology. Having recently opened, the MAS will begin evaluation work later this year.

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Chapter 4 The case of Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy: Ambiance and tactile presence

Early 20th century residence and workspace of Spanish-born painter, photographer and designer Mariano Fortuny, Palazzo Fortuny (PF) is one of the most representative icons of fin de sicle Venetian culture. With an original structure in Venetian gothic style (Fig.1) and a permanent collection of Fortunys paintings, fabrics, lamps and cabinets, the building develops on four floors: these originally corresponded to Fortunys typography on the ground floor, his showroom and private quarters, his textile production and study rooms, and his painting atelier in the attic.140 Today only the grand salon on the first floor, left intact by will of his widow141, is where Fortunys presence is most manifest, together with his studiolo, a small enclosed space filled with books, objects, drawings and typography tools in the style of a cabinet of curiosities.
Figure 1

Donated to the City of Venice and administered by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Palazzo Fortuny constitutes both a museum and an important temporary exhibition space, running projects parallel to the years of the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art142. As Francesca Boni, Assistant Director, explains, in continuity with the activities of its owner, PF aims to host exhibitions with interdisciplinary ambitions, where themes are not presented in a static, pre-defined way, but where visitors engage in an overall experience of discovery, making connections with the spirit of invention and experimentation that characterizes the
140
141

Francesca Boni, Assistant Director (Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 16 November 2011. Ibid. 142 Ibid.

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history of the building143. She affirms, This is not a white cube and will never be. What happens here has to blend with what is already present.144 The proposal for an exhibition by Flemish interior designer Axel Vervoordt constituted thus an opportunity, as co-curator Francesco Poli recalls, for the whole building demanded to be lived, interpreted, used in original ways.145 The longstanding collaboration between PF and Vervoordt resulted in three successful exhibitions - Artempo (2007), In-finitum (2009) and TRA Edge of Becoming (2011) germinating from universal concepts of time, infinity and transformation. TRA Edge of Becoming, focus of the current study, explores the theme of inner transformation by means of experience, the overcoming of thresholds as passageway to new experiences146 and is conceived as a journey of self-reflection, making use of exhibition space in terms of passage between different states147. Such transformation reconnects to the history of Venice as a meeting place of cultural confrontation between East and West, and as a harbour for art, ideas and trade, in Vervoordts words, a symbolic gateway between cultures148. With its vast variety of objects from Raku pots, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Buddhist sculpture to photographs, oil paintings and video installations, TRA moves across time and space, juxtaposing
Figure 2

ancient and contemporary works of art (Fig.2).149 It is an art exhibition that, distinctively, tries to

reconnect art to a human creative and transformative nature and that understands all art as eminently contemporary.150
143 144

Francesca Boni, Assistant Director (Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 16 November 2011. Ibid. 145 Francesco Poli, Co-Curator (TRA exhibition Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 22 November 2011. 146 Axel Vervoordt et al. TRA Edge of Becoming Exhibition Catalogue (Milan: SKIRA, 2011), p. 3. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid, p.7. 149 Francesco Poli, Co-Curator (TRA exhibition Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 22 November 2011. 150 Ibid.

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With his experiments in theatre and indirect light, the ghost of Fortuny151 hosts this project as master of the house152 but is also one of its contributors, with his works included in the catalogue: the connection [with Fortuny] is with he who is always on a journey, who experiments and lives his works in the fullest of ways 153. As Poli explains, this exhibition involves the whole identity of the Palazzo () it is a genre () a reference point for a certain way of making exhibitions.154 PF is a particularly telling case for our purposes for its constructivist approach to visitor experience and the sapient use of embodied visitor engagement to enhance involvement and enjoyment. What is characteristic of this case is the articulation of a forceful, contrasted ambiance, that acts upon and becomes part of the visitors multisensory experience. Within a range of sensory stimuli, the distinctive tactile quality of the museum environment works here in unison with the material nature of the objects and artworks chosen to bring a potentially defining difference to their interpretation and storytelling capacity. Due to this aesthetic dimension, an experiential approach to museum space was opted for in this section.

Tracing a visitor journey

From the very beginning of the visit, the guest explores the dark halls and corridors very much as a flaneur, moving casually, discovering artworks hidden in niches almost by surprise. Sound emerging from the video installations is alternately present and the sound of the water entering the building from an adjacent canal provides the subtle soundscape to the ground floor. One may have the impression of walking in PF as one walks in Venice (Fig.3): following a path, hoping it is the right
Figure 3
151

Francesco Poli, Co-Curator (TRA exhibition Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 22 November 2011. 152 Ibid. 153 Francesca Boni, Assistant Director (Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 16 November 2011. 154 Francesco Poli, Co-Curator (TRA exhibition Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 22 November 2011.

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one and deciding to make a divergence to see what is around another corner. As Boni explains, This is what is asked, a lot needs to be discovered here.155 The only obligatory form of orientation is the vertical movement up the floors, through which PF provides constantly changing perceptual settings, from dimly lit, crude environments to spaces whitewashed by light, equally enhancing material presence, There is an idea of ascension to the top () It is the architecture of Palazzo Fortuny itself that is structured in this way, we move from the colder area of the ground floor in brick, towards the open space at the top, a space for meditation. This is one possible reading but not the only one.156 From the harsh brick niches (Fig.4) of the ground floor, a space more easily associated with contemporary art settings, passing by the natural calmness of the colder inner court, the visitor is hardly prepared for the theatrical richness and intimate setting of the salon (Fig.5). Here, as on the ground floor,

Figure 4

no text panels, labels or modern glass cases can be found, only Fortunys brut wooden furniture and his thickly decorated fabrics adorning the walls, acting as a backdrop to contemporary paintings and videos hanging from the ceiling in a dense, traditional fashion. It respects the taste of Fortunys belle poque where, today, Vervoordt installs Mayan sculpture adjacent to Picasso or Fontana. Common to these pieces recalling the private wunderkammer rather than
Figure 5

155 156

Francesca Boni, Assistant Director (Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 16 November 2011. Francesco Poli, Co-Curator (TRA exhibition Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 22 November 2011.

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a museum collection - is thematic continuity, that appears decisively reinforced in this rare opportunity for confrontation across epochs and styles. Here artist, collector and visitor meet in virtue of a human common ground, in the humane setting of a home. It is not a space for mass audiences but, it seems, for individual meetings. According to Boni, such characterized spaces are a strength, They represent a great stimulus () whatever you put on the first floor () blends incredibly well () it finds a harmony with that place.157 A successful visitor experience, she suggests, may not need panels or labels, You may just want to take in the atmosphere () youre not obliged to find out whether Rodin did that statue in that given year. You can just be captured by the excitement that all these works generate. Finally its not that important, () there are more than 400 works, I challenge anybody to take home more than ten memories158 For those who want to know more, booklets are available in the gallery. As Vervoordt and Poli explain, art is something that should be lived, the white cube is only one alternative to the display of art, it is precisely this contextualisation () that really created the magic and success of the exhibition.159 Throughout the floors, comfortable sofas, tables and benches are placed for the public to sit, rest, read the catalogue or, as Boni suggests, take out a pocket book (Fig.6).160 Time is purposely slowed down, the sound of the city seeps in through the windows, light,
Figure 6

shade and darkness are used to enhance

contrasts and elicit meditation. Curtains demand to be pulled, doors need to be opened the body seems to find here a spatial dimension it easily recognizes. Nothing
157 158

Francesca Boni, Assistant Director (Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 16 November 2011. Ibid. 159 Francesco Poli, Co-Curator (TRA exhibition Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 22 November 2011. 160 Francesca Boni, Assistant Director (Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 16 November 2011.

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is artificial, everything can be trusted as authentic, contemporary art seems in this setting - as Head of Education, Caterina Marcantoni explains - more approachable by the public, in a space stripped bare of conventional distances.161 In PF, bents, cracks, layers and the space in-between recalling the Japanese concept of ma162 are experienced through bodily proximity and as storytelling cues. It is indeed a home, where even guided tours are as discrete as possible, taking the form of living room conversations, provoking rather than predicting questions, explaining how the exhibition functions rather than what it contains.163 Despite the apparent emptiness of the second floor, here the materiality of surfaces is radically enhanced (Fig.7): thick peeling strata of hammered plaster reveal layers of frescoes, patchworks of sharp earthly colours; the recurring signs of old supporting beams, the powder-like softness of the wall paints and stuccos, the roughness of the wooden frames, furniture and doors each detail catches the eye and attracts the hand, like the velvety textures of dresses
Figure 7

and sculptures on the previous floor. Coming in contact with surfaces, materials, objects and private alcoves, in PF the visitor seems invited to inhabit space as a unified whole, in sensory interaction (Fig.8). While this exhibition has not been targeted for the younger public, touch here is not visibly prohibited but
Figure 8

161

Caterina Marcantoni, Head of Education (Palazzo Fortuny - Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia),interview with the author, 18 November 2011. 162 Axel Vervoordt et al. TRA Edge of Becoming Exhibition Catalogue (Milan: SKIRA, 2011), p. 3. 163 Caterina Marcantoni, Head of Education (Palazzo Fortuny - Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia),interview with the author, 18 November 2011.

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rather left to the discretion of gallery staff and the etiquette of the visitors. This allows for the visitor to come and feel he is in a home. Be calm. () We tend to look at the watch even when were doing something for the spirit164. In an attitude of critical restoration, Boni explains, structural details from different epochs are left untouched (Fig.9), to allow the building to continue to tell its stories () giving value to the pre existent.165 What about the conservation of the collection? With the exception of the air-conditioned ground floor, she reassures, humidity and light are acceptable even for the fabrics and the artworks acclimatised to the space. Here attention for materiality and ambiance fall in line with the experiential objectives of Palazzo Fortuny and suggest embodied confrontation with the highly textured artworks chosen by the curators. On the last floor, worn wooden pillars
Figure 9

(Fig.10) from the canals frame the display elements, extending the emplaced experience of PF within the wider experience of Venice, together with the views running along the sides of the attic. Without doubt, the success of the TRA exhibition owes much to the highly suggestive environments of PF and
Figure 10

shared narrative goals and readings of its spatial potential by designers, curators and educators. Suggesting a daily inhabitable environment, embodied and tactile engagement, even when strictly visual, lies here at the centre of curatorship and design, as well as at the core of the museum mission. As Francesca Boni importantly

164 165

Francesca Boni, Assistant Director (Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 16 November 2011. Ibid.

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highlights, working with the multisensory in PF also means connecting with the city, its difficult to imagine [PFs] overall sensory experience outside of Venice.166

166

Francesca Boni, Assistant Director (Palazzo Fortuny), interview with the author, 16 November 2011.

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Chapter 5 The case of Officine Grandi Riparazioni, Turin, Italy: Media environments and sound

Built between 1885 and 1895, the Officine Grandi Riparazioni (OGR), or Railway Repair Works, constitutes one of Turins highly preserved traces of its fervent industrial past. Originally part of an industrial complex of 200,000m which, throughout the 20th century, fuelled the development of this urban area and employed large segments of the citys immigrant population, the 22,000m H-shaped building of the OGR was chosen in 2011 by the City of Turin as the main site for the cultural events of the 150th Anniversary Celebrations of the Unification of Italy167. Part of the events programme for the Celebrations, the year-long exhibition Fare gli Italiani, The Making of Italians was hosted in one of the extensive naves of the building, a 200mlong open space (Fig.11), characterised by cast iron columns and rail tracks, left mostly, to this day, in their original state. As one of the three most visited exhibitions in Italy for nine consecutive months, reaching a total of 362,000 visits168, Fare gli Italiani constitutes a particularly significant example for our purposes for its potential of engagement, solidly grounded in embodied and multisensory visitor experience, and as a model of best practice, both in the use of media-intensive environments and sound-based forms of storytelling. As Design Director Paolo Rosa explains, the task was a challenging and important one: the exhibition team was asked to tell the story of 150 years of Italian

Figure 11
167

See the OGR website http://www.officinegrandiriparazioni.it/wp-content/themes/ogr/images/ogrinterna-1.jpg Last access 21/04/2012. 168 Data kindly provided by the OGR Marketing Office.

44

history in an exhibition that only occurs every fifty years, in the vast spaces of a factory with a specific historical dimension and a title referred to the making of Italians, meant to exclude any celebratory or rhetorical ambitions.169 In tight collaboration with Walter Barberis and Giovanni De Luna, historians and curators responsible for the project, the team worked around the core questions: How have these 150 years of national history brought Italians together? Have they been successful in achieving the process of Unification?170 Space and content, Barberis explains, influenced each other from the outset, for this piece of industrial archeology suggested special kinds of solutions, different from those of a traditional exhibition of objects (Fig.12).171 Also from the beginning, the exhibition was defined to have a media-rich articulation, which called for the participation of Studio Azzurro, one of Italys most renowned art collectives and design
Figure 12

teams, founded by Paolo Rosa and his

partners in 1982 with a mission to research polisensory environments and connections between physical space and the electronic image.172 Studio Azzurros early experimentation in video environments, theatre and performance sharply impacted their recent collaborations (Fig.13). with the museum world Maintaining

central focus on the interaction between the individual and the virtual space of
Figure 13

169 170

Paolo Rosa, Head of Design (OGR Studio Azzurro), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. Walter Barberis, Curator (OGR), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. 171 Ibid. 172 Studio Azzurro Bio, with kind permission of Studio Azzurro. For additional information please see website http://www.studioazzurro.com/. Last access 21/04/2012.

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video projections, it lead to the more recent development of narrative habitats173: a special form of multisensory, sensitive environment that reacts to the presence of the individual in seemingly natural ways, without the presence of hands-on interactives, blending thus technology, narrative and space in an embodied, immersive whole.174 The 10,000m exhibition space of Fare gli Italiani was transformed in a journey across the morphology of Italy175: against a dark backdrop, visitors are confronted with a theatrical landscape of bright thematic islands, connected by chronological self-lit panels, or
Figure 14

currents176. Making full use of heights and offering viewing platforms (Fig.14), or belvedere177 running across the exhibition space, visitor are invited to reflect on the thematic variety of the Italian territory, an open, visible scenario made possible by the OGR space, where one can move around freely, encountering unexpected corners () reverberations () objects178. The narrative structure of the exhibition fourteen is thus organised stations around (Church, thematic

Migration, Industry, Mafia, etc.) that explore social cohesion and separation using two fundamental communicative channels: involvement an immersive suggesting through media-rich emotional and environment,
Figure 15

physical

multisensory interaction and offering a

173
174

Paolo Rosa, Head of Design (OGR Studio Azzurro), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. See Fabio Cirifino et al. Studio Azzurro. Musei di Narrazione. Percorsi interattivi e affreschi multimediali (Milan: SilvanaEditoriale, 2011). 175 Paolo Rosa, Head of Design (OGR Studio Azzurro), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. 176 Walter Barberis, Curator (OGR), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. 177 Paolo Rosa, Una mostra per fare comunit in Fare gli Italiani 1861-2011. Una mostra per i 150 anni della storia dItalia (Milan: SilvanaEditoriale, 2011), p.7. 178 Ibid.

46

point of access to the theme; secondly, a series of balustrades 179, low self-lit glass cases presenting a collection of texts, photos, objects, videos and audio descriptions that constitute the documental base for each theme, with a distinct internal chronology. Between stations, the chronological panels (Fig.15) enlarge the interpretive lens on the social events and phenomena discussed, offering timelines, pie charts and other important didactic material for visiting schools.180 As Rosa explains, it is not despite but thanks to emotional forms of engagement that in-depth information is sought out, We come into a world and firstly, we breathe in that world, secondly we want to understand it. The two dimensions are not in contrast.181 Through a well defined dramaturgy, enabling both freedom of choice and surprise, the visitor is offered a dynamic space of sound and image, opportunities for media-based physical engagement and for varying levels of involvement with exhibition content.

Planning for participation and embodied experience

In contrast with Palazzo Fortuny, the organisational structure behind Fare gli Italiani did not include permanent staff acquainted with the characteristics of the space, but rather a temporary Committee, an operational taskforce supporting the overall mechanics of the Anniversary Celebrations. In this context, the strong curatorial position of Barberis and De Luna182 and Studio Azzurros capacity to translate intentions in enjoyable and instructive visitor experiences, lie thus as a distinct operation to that of the Committee organisers, who, as Director Anna Maria Martina and Head of Education Marina Bertiglia explain, saw the use of the OGR mainly within a regeneration politic for abandoned industrial spaces nested in the fabric of Turins city centre.183 Nevertheless, common to the individuals involved was the recognition that choosing a space such as OGR implied a different communicative intent, placing industry within a reflection on identity-making processes, and that this demanded an exhibition project centred on social participation rather than objectbased narrative. As Barberis explains,
179 180

Walter Barberis, Curator (OGR), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. Marina Bertiglia, Head of Education (OGR Comitato 150 Anni), interview with the author, 22 November 2011. 181 Paolo Rosa, Head of Design (OGR Studio Azzurro), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. 182 Walter Barberis, Curator (OGR), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. 183 Anna Maria Martina, Director (OGR Comitato 150 Anni), interview with the author, 22 November 2011.

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For us, the object was relevant only insofar as it was indicative of and informative on the presence of Italians () something closer to elements of scenographic narration than to a symbolic dimension. () Garibaldis swordno, not at all! () But it was also not our intention to have a continuous interference by multimedia systems. This was the great contribution of Studio Azzurro () The only real fundamental object of the exhibition is in fact the building.184 The recurring image of the exhibition thus becomes social plurality185, a narrative polyphony186 of personal stories and memories that connect historical facts to the complexity of the Italian territory and the experience of single individuals (Fig.16). Local associations and institutions initially read the project as an opportunity to contribute in a fair-like succession of stands, however the curators strongly underlined that the exhibition was to be a journey with its
Figure 16

own narrative187, about Italians rather than representing the interests of given groups.188 Within this operative context, embodied visitor experience enable and thus a multisensory form of engagement

participation in direct and vivid response to the narrative objectives of the exhibition. As
Figure 17

in Palazzo Fortuny, the use of sound and touch are recognized by the curators,

184 185

Walter Barberis, Curator (OGR), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. Paolo Rosa, Una mostra per fare comunit in Fare gli Italiani 1861-2011. Una mostra per i 150 anni della storia dItalia (Milan: SilvanaEditoriale, 2011), p.7-8 (Translated from original). 186 Ibid. 187 Walter Barberis, Curator (OGR), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. 188 Ibid.

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designers and educators of OGR as having cognitive value for multiple audiences189, potentially functional to a certain storytelling and communicative objective, and not simply as an impressive tool.190 For Design Director Paolo Rosa, the use of immersive media environments is not born from a research of spectacle191 but from the intent of activating a poetic, evocative dimension, that may touch a highly diverse public, placing the body, the senses and memory in direct connection with content. Firstly, the body of the visitor is placed, as in the section on Cities, on a 1:1 ratio with the figures projected on the screens (Fig.17), facilitating specular relations between real and imaginative contexts. Secondly, the unitary experience of the previous generations is enacted in bodily terms, through moments of aggregation, listening, movement and lifting objects. For example, in Cinema, the reconstruction of an open-air cinema allows visitors to aggregate and comment the classics of Italian film; in School, by rubbing a sensitive blackboard, the visitor reveals changing class pictures of different generations (Fig.18); in Migrations,
Figure 18

a large net full of luggage hanging from the ceiling releases

video projections of fallen suitcases that, cued by the movement of the visitor, tell stories of immigration connected to the projected objects. Each time, a full-size object is used as representative icon of the theme (the parachutes of war or the earth pit of Mafia killings) around which narration unravels. Visitors are invited to sit on the sand bags of World War I barricades and listen to voices reading letters to the front, or, take a chair in the
Figure 19
189

Marina Bertiglia, Head of Education (OGR Comitato 150 Anni), interview with the author, 22 November 2011. 190 Walter Barberis, Curator (OGR), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. 191 Paolo Rosa, Head of Design (OGR Studio Azzurro), interview with the author, 21 November 2011.

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Political Participation section and listen to the political propaganda that preceded the Italian Constitution. In the Mafia section, confronted with an endless library of trial case folders, one can pick up folders and place them on sensitive platforms (Fig.19), activating large screens with pictures and data on victims and perpetrators. As Rosa explains, the intent is to create antibodies192 to the isolating effects of technology and find uses for media within relational spaces193, where design and curatorial interventions are responded to with positive acts, experimenting different time frames and ways of being in physical and social spaces.194 These bodily operations not only place media, as Rosa adds, at the core of our cultural heritage but assign touch and sound a privileged place in visitor meaning and identity-making the processes, war, through taking old personal Two stimulus-generated responses: tuning in to radio news of finding photographs, ones

memories among advertised objects and old television anchormen (Fig.20). distinct sonic modalities characterize

narrative: sound showers that provide, at the beginning of every section, a historical portrait of the theme discussed; and, to
Figure 20

follow, a rich variety of personal stories and witness accounts in the form of political speeches, song, recollections of students, combatants and blue-collar workers, voices of emigrants and of radio and television programmes, remembrance is an ingredient of history, explains Barberis that needs to be treated () sorted, because remembrance is an experience that cannot always be generalised195. For Rosa, the voices of this Italian landscape could not be ignored, already filling the spaces of the OGR on his arrival, we could not remain indifferent the empty silent spaces of OGR immediately spoke to us of incessant work, of frantic movement, of metallic

192
193

Paolo Rosa, Head of Design (OGR Studio Azzurro), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. Ibid. 194 Ibid. 195 Walter Barberis, Curator (OGR), interview with the author, 21 November 2011.

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sounds and the bright glow of the blowtorches () of how enchanted stillness () can reveal the vitality of its past196.

196

Paolo Rosa, Una mostra per fare comunit in Fare gli Italiani 1861 -2011. Una mostra per i 150 anni della storia dItalia (Milan: SilvanaEditoriale, 2011), p.7 (Translated from original).

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Chapter 6 The case of Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp, Belgium: Cityscape and vision
Inaugurated in May 2011, the Museum aan de Stroom (MAS), or Museum by the River, is a newly-built 60m-tall tower block (Fig.21) standing boldly on the edge of Antwerps harbour, designed by Dutch architect Willem Jan Neutelings to provide a new home for the citys maritime, ethnographic collections .
197

and

folkloric

Initially planned as

the new site for Antwerps Maritime Museum, the MAS project soon grew in ambition, springing from the idea of a museum for the city and with the city198 that would put in
Figure 21

connection its

different

local

collections and tell the stories of Antwerp, multicultural citizenship and its international port. As maritime collection curator Jef Vrelust explains, the Port was now something between the city and the world.199 Seven months from the opening and with a total of 620,000 visits, the MAS constitutes an extraordinary success not only for the provision of more adequate museum spaces for collections and audience reception, but for the creation of a rather uncommon kind of social space. As the interviews reveal, embodied visitor experience and multisensory exploration with a distinctive use of vision - play an enhanced role in this context, subtly channelling the museum mission and encouraging spatial appropriation.

197

Mark Lamster, Museum aan de Stroom by Neutelings Riedijk Architects, Antwerp, Belgium , The Architectural Review, 29 June 2011, http://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/culture/museum-aande-stroom-by-neutelings-riedijk-architects-antwerp-belgium/8616613.article. Last access 22/04/2012. 198 Carl Depauw, Director (MAS), interview with the author, 15 December 2011. 199 Jef Vrelust, Maritime Collection Curator (MAS), interview with the author, 15 December 2011.

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Among the constitutive components of the MAS experience200, architecture fares certainly first. In The Making of the MAS, architect Neutelings explains the project was no less ambitious in the construction brief than in its narrative task. The new MAS was asked to respond to multiple objectives: Be a proper custodian for the citys heritage, as former spaces could no longer fulfil their function; Be an inspiring storyteller201: tell the story of Antwerp in the world and the world in Antwerp202; Be a meeting place, a place of vitality for repeated visits; Be a powerhouse of urban development203 for the old harbour district, fallen in decay with the redevelopment of the port facilities; and finally, an iconic architectural symbol, responding to the citys need for a stronger image.204 From a distance, as Mark Lamster affirms in The Architectural Review, the MAS may appear like a Chinese puzzle205, designed as a stack of independent boxes recalling the theme of the warehouse, each floor is imagined as a treasure chamber206 for cultural goods207. The choice of the tower leaves the wider perimeter of the area free for circulation, allowing the creation of a square, external pavilions and views on the surrounding docks. Within the structure, each box is turned by the architect by ninety degrees (Fig.22), creating the space for an
Figure 22

external

spiral

gallery

around

the

exhibition rooms, with constantly alternating views on the four sides of the building,
200 201

See Sam Steverlynck et al. The Making of the MAS (Antwerp: BAI, 2011). Ibid., p.45. 202 Carl Depauw, Director (MAS), interview with the author, 15 December 2011. 203 Sam Steverlynck et al. The Making of the MAS (Antwerp: BAI, 2011). 204 Ibid., p.45. 205 Mark Lamster, Museum aan de Stroom by Neutelings Riedijk Architects, Antwerp, Belgium , The Architectural Review, 29 June 2011, http://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/culture/museum-aande-stroom-by-neutelings-riedijk-architects-antwerp-belgium/8616613.article. Last access 22/04/2012. 206 Sam Steverlynck et al. The Making of the MAS (Antwerp: BAI, 2011), p.47. 207 Carl Depauw, Director (MAS), interview with the author, 15 December 2011.

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as one moves up the floors towards the 360 rooftop views. As Neutelings affirms, the structure bears similarities with the Centre Pompidou in Paris for its external navigation circuit but in spiral form208, allowing contact with the city, the harbour and all of its surroundings.209 By doing so, the MAS abolishes the traditional sequence of viewing galleries, allowing the visitor to choose a personal journey up this tower of tales210, so that each time you open the door it is like Alice in Wonderland, discovering another story of the city211. Within this frame, the Antwerpbased design team B-Architecten was asked to create semi-permanent exhibition displays on six floors for the different museum collections. Yet, as Head of Design Sven Grooten explains, it was a challenging task in communicative terms, that required the reorganisation of the collections.212 Rather than assign
Figure 23

floors to the single collections, thematic displays were chosen, reshuffling objects as part of one unique collection (Fig.23) and shifting the focus on the stories they could tell. Bringing considerable transformations to the task of curators, the MAS display was thus conceived following a recurring grid for each floor, in a reorganisation of space according to narrative and dramaturgical intentions. Sections entitled Transition, Focus, Wow!, Concentration, Knowledge and Traces guided curators and educators in working with display: for example, while Knowledge offers access to follow-up material, provides children with a place
Figure 24
208 209

to play and a space for adults to wait for each other

Sam Steverlynck et al. The Making of the MAS (Antwerp: BAI, 2011), p.51. Ibid. 210 Ibid., p.29. 211 Ibid., p.47. 212 Sven Grooten, Head of Design (MAS B-Architecten), interview with the author, 21 December 2011.

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before progressing in the visit; Traces (Fig.24) is where visitors can leave their personal contribution, for example leaving messages or touching textiles on the floor of the Open Storage to see its effect in time. Common to these sections, as to the architecture brief, is the intent to place the visitor firmly at the centre of planning. For Grooten, exhibition spaces are not places where in-depth knowledge is communicated, a function well fulfilled by other media, but where an experience-based approach must prevail, connected to theatre and dramaturgy, museums are becoming stages where exhibits take the place of actors () to tell a story and not the story. Like in a threedimensional theatre play, you enter a world that you dont know yet.213

Body, vision and the city

The subject of discovery pervades the MAS, as Depauw explains, developing around the thematic axis of the city. To this purpose, vision and architecture play a consistent role in the narrative of the museum, constantly connecting the inside with the outside. This occurs, first of all, through the exceptional viewing experience of the visitor (Fig.25), who moves up the floors of the building with views constantly changing in a spiral rotation and always in connection with the narrative themes on each floor.
Figure 25

As one arrives to the Port section,

for example, one is confronted with the complete extension of the harbour, allowing vision, and imagination, to extend further, in contrast with the short visual range experienced in the galleries. The constant alternation of light levels between the black boxes and the day-lit viewing galleries also adds to the strength of this visual experience, moving towards the climax of the 360 rooftop views. The building thus acts as a narrative cue, allowing, on every floor, a regular contextual return to the city, inviting reflections on its past, its art and commercial activities.

213

Sven Grooten, Head of Design (MAS B-Architecten), interview with the author, 21 December 2011.

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This permeable, transparent membrane of glass between the museum space and urban spaces is also meant to encourage participation, it is important for buildings to become part of the public domain () to give something back to the public. 214 By designing the square and the external pavilions for small temporary displays, Neutelings takes the museum experience outside of its walls, while inside, the experience of the city remains always explicitly present (Fig.26). These visual and architectural interventions are born out of the museums ambition to revitalize215, to be seen less as a museum and more as a place where things happen216. With opening times from 9:30 am until midnight, the eight-floor viewing gallery is conceived and used by the
Figure 26

public as a vertical public street.217 As Cathy Pelgrims, Head of Public Work,

explains, visitors come to bring in their dogs during closing time on Mondays, they come to take wedding pictures and request to install chess competitions in the viewing galleries. As all interviews confirm, the success of this unusual museum format lies in its capacity to attract different publics, as a city space that knits museum work within a wider range of urban activities. Communities of Jains, Muslims and Orthodox Jews have come for the first time to the museum, Depauw narrates, and by allowing these groups to participate in the storytelling and curatorial activity, the MAS seeks to tighten the connection between inside and outside even further, allowing embodied as well as identity-based forms of ownership. Narrative inside the exhibition galleries also makes a strong use of vision. Here, like in a shopping street218, viewing lines and attracting elements map navigation in space, among theatrical thematic agglomerations. Mimicking Alice in Wonderland, in the galleries as in the open storage, a constant interplay takes place between seeing
214 215

Sam Steverlynck et al. The Making of the MAS (Antwerp: BAI, 2011), p.67. Ibid., p.30. 216 Ibid. 217 Carl Depauw, Director (MAS), interview with the author, 15 December 2011 218 Sven Grooten, Head of Design (MAS B-Architecten), interview with the author, 21 December 2011.

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and discovering the hidden: dark areas and inbetween spaces allow visitors to hide, to walk behind things, to sit in privacy and watch passers-by (Fig.28).219 These in-between spaces hold the additional function of providing sonic accounts and alternative stories, so that between the artefact collections a more personal dimension finds its place, for example
Figure 28

through

voices sharing views

on the afterlife. The recurring invitation to seeing and being seen, to being here and participating, is thus reinforced by a wider palette of sensory tools, in respect of multiple learning theories, as Pelgrims confirms.220 With a dedicated graphic designer and an inhouse composer for the creation of gallery
Figure 29

soundscapes, different floors and sections of the

narrative grid are enriched with ambient sounds, colour coding and interactive touch screens. In the Port section, drawers and glass-free displays (Fig.29 and 30) populate the horizontal plane. Here small perforated glass cases can also be spotted to contain the smells of the port and its exotic merchandise. Not only are collections thus mixed amongst themselves, but they fall within a wider range of media and simple explorative tools, making use of touch, sound and smell to connect more efficiently with varying audiences and interests. As Depauw suggests, I think people dont
Figure 30

think that this is a museum because we

219

220

Sven Grooten, Head of Design (MAS B-Architecten), interview with the author, 21 December 2011. Cathy Pelgrims, Head of Public Work (MAS), interview with the author, 15 December 2011.

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work with all the senses.221 Neutelings confirms that architecture projects should also reinforce this approach, because the experience of architecture is one that strongly involves sensory involvement, Its a mistake to think of architecture as purely visual. You also relate to the sound and scent of a room. The scent alone of the materials we use is very important.() Humidity and temperature play much more of a role than is commonly assumed.() It is not just what is visually attractive but the total experience that is of crucial importance when getting a feeling for a space.222 It is perhaps, thus, not by chance for many MAS visitors to feel the red sandstone walls as they come into the viewing galleries. By Neutelings design, these in-between spaces also offer a dynamic climate, allowing the visitor to feel the changing seasons, rather than be cocooned in central heating and air conditioning223. As the architect affirms, Our goal was to create a place good to live in, work, relax. If you get that right, it does become a landmark, but if you start off making a landmark, all you get is crazy shapes.224 In this perspective, the MAS constitutes an important statement regarding the way that new iconic structures, equally to pre-existing spaces, need not be solely formal exercises, but can instead be designed to place the visitor at the centre of an embodied, sensory and narrative experience, with an understanding of the added value of inhabitable public spaces.

221
222

Carl Depauw, Director (MAS), interview with the author, 15 December 2011. Sam Steverlynck et al. The Making of the MAS (Antwerp: BAI, 2011), p.69. 223 Ibid. 224 Ibid., p.73.

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Conclusion

Architecture is not the embodiment of information, it is the embodiment of meaning. - Alberto Prez Gmez (1987)225 These [cultural] places are also not places: they are the processes of a community making something of itself. David Carr (2006)226

The present work has attempted to place embodied and spatial engagement on the foreground of museum experience, by means of different methods of enquiry: questioning theory, confronting museum staff, asking spaces themselves what role they play in museum narrative and storytelling or as a characteristic component of the museum medium. The primary result of this triangulation theory, practice and experience - has been the confrontation of ideas and questions with the perspectives of some of todays leading edge museum practitioners, as well as the chance to locate embodied experience within an array of research themes that may, in the future, bring a defining difference to museum practice and its contemporary social relevance. Within a wider research scope, each of the case-studies presented here could more thoroughly reveal its potential to speak about space, senses and narrative, through the analysis of specific on-site characteristics and in greater dialogue with its users, allowing the voices of diverse museum populations to participate in the understanding of these museum spaces. In the frame of this research, the contribution of the interviews and the case-studies has been to show some of the distinctive ways in which multisensory engagement can bring choice, discovery and surprise to the museum environment and how the latter, far from being a neutral container, a white or black box, can be used in sapient ways to be one of the actors of storytelling, a narrative habitat in continuity with the mission and messages of the cultural project.

225

Alberto Prez-Gmez, Architecture as Embodied Knowledge, Journal of Architectural Education, Vol.40, n.2 (1987), p.57. http://www.designspeculum.com/POD/perez%20gomez%20embodied.pdf Last access 22/04/2012. 226 David Carr, A Place not a Place: Reflection and Possibility in Museums and Libraries (Lanham: Altamira, 2006), p. 126.

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In terms of research results, it is telling for the designers of the three cases to come from domains quite diverse from that of exhibition display, but to all share an interest in dramaturgy, in the recognition of movement in space, in tempos and phases, with moments of climax and development that always place the visitor centre stage. More surprising, perhaps, is for the curators and educators interviewed for this work to attest with satisfaction the added value, in cognitive terms, of affective and multisensory forms of engagement. Interviews show a common recognition for the capacity of sensory tools to enable more in-depth exploration, implying not only that learning is grounded in the affective as well as the cognitive dimension227, but that pleasure, learning and discovery work as an interconnected whole. If text may be thus best suited to convey elaborate information, meaning can be generated through a considerably more complex range of tools, which may come to include all of the physical components of the museum experience. The role of materiality, in the context of the case-studies, seems to have been particularly enhanced, with a revised role of the museum object, the abolition of distancing mechanisms where possible and the sacrifice of some of the objects aura in favour of less symbolic messages. With regards to the museum environment, the case-studies equally prove to be a particularly fortunate set, whether for their historical dimension or for their creative potential. Taking research one step further, in the frame of audience-based surveys, they would well profit from direct comparisons with more traditional museum settings, in order to generate more composite research results. What they tell us in this context is that the success of a cultural project may be connected not only to what one finds within the gallery walls, but to how the project finds its place, physically and metaphorically, within a certain urban and social environment, whether it creates continuity with the distinct character of Venice, or of Turins industrial past, or whether it makes a bold new statement for community participation long awaited by the city. The possibility for context, content and container to truly speak with one voice is thus one of the underlying achievements of the present case-studies, that helps underpin the connection-making quality not only of vision, but of a wider sensory framework and of inhabitable, immersive environments.

227

For a theoretical approach to affective learning also see Barry Lord, The Manual of Museum Learning (Lanham: Altamira, 2007), p. 16.

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Recalling the initial purposes of this enquiry, the role of space and the senses in the museum appears multifaceted. On one level, it serves the basic function of providing visitors with a welcoming setting as well as an important varied mix of explorative tools in respect of learning styles and multicultural audiences. Yet, on different level, it also allows spatial appropriation and full multisensory bodily engagement to enrich learning, discovery, memory, characterizing our relationships with and within the social environment of the museum. Sound, touch, smell can each provide distinct forms of involvement, favouring tighter relations, for example, with the ephemeral and immaterial; evoking the materiality of things past; endorsing a more personal dimension or emotional feedback228. They may bring, in Paolo Rosas words, an important poetic229 dimension to the narrative habitat and make the museum more eligible to becoming, in the future, a social, cultural and physical space for ritual.230 In addition, the embodied and the multisensory may also work to the benefit of the public image of the institution, without necessarily depending on extensive investments but, rather, on a change of attitude, that may distinguish it, and the storytelling experience it offers, from other analogous cultural spaces231. From a communicative perspective, by coming into closer contact with the basics of the visitor-museum relation and recognizing its ecological or territorial232 function of place-, habitat-, identity-making, the museum seems to find its place more firmly among other mass media, not only for its direct links with recording, reconstruction and discovery, but in virtue of its emplaced social experience. In wider terms, when discussing the specificity and malleability of the museum medium, the interviewees explain that a distinction must be made between what the museum is now and how it may be envisioned for the future233: many would conceive it as a culture-centred meeting place, counteracting the current predominance of

228 229

Walter Barberis, Curator (OGR), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. Paolo Rosa, Head of Design (OGR Studio Azzurro), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. 230 Ibid. 231 Caterina Marcantoni, Head of Education (Palazzo Fortuny - Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia), interview with the author, 18 November 2011. 232 Paolo Rosa, Head of Design (OGR Studio Azzurro), interview with the author, 21 November 2011 233 Anna Maria Martina, Director (OGR Comitato 150 Anni) and Marina Bertiglia, Head of Education (OGRComitato 150 anni),interview with the author, 22 November 2011.

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commercial spaces234, allowing rest and contemplation but also ritual and active participation, in all cases bringing what Barry Lord summarised as a transformative235 experience. Its malleability, as the interviewees explain, will very much depend, in the future, on the vision and imagination of its working populations: as the MAS Director affirmed, we are confronted in museums with an enormous challenge and thats the mental transformation of the curators. 236 Nevertheless, in order to take museum learning and experience to a different level, the whole organisational complex could profit from greater dialogue with external collaborators, architects and designers that, whilst working in relay, respond to the common goals of the institution through a set of specific attitudes and understandings of the museum environment. The theme of spatial and sensory involvement may thus best be explained by these figures, but more thoroughly grasped across professional boundaries, in support of a more flexible and complex understanding of museum learning. Within the scope of future research, points of contact between theoretical understandings of the human-environment relation and professional museum practice would also bring an incisive impulse and a tangible base for development. The application of studies in environmental psychology and in the anthropology of the senses, for example, could significantly enrich practice. The present fieldwork has recognized among professionals a distinct sensibility for the subject of embodied sensory experience and an appreciation of its links with successful visitor participation. If some organisations and research teams across Europe are currently studying the subject of holistic visitor experience from a scientific perspective, for example through the use of sensitive gloves, eye movement indicators and the identification of technical factors contributing to ambiance237, the present three case-studies and interviews seem to reveal, instead, the value of a more intuitive, phenomenological perspective to museum work. Once again, it is architect Tadao Ando that well explains this aspect,
234 235

Paolo Rosa, Head of Design (OGR Studio Azzurro), interview with the author, 21 November 2011. Barry Lord, The Manual of Museum Learning (Lanham: Altamira, 2007), p. 16. 236 Carl Depauw, Director (MAS), interview with the author, 15 December 2011. 237 See for example, the eMotion project by the Institute for Research in Art and Design (Basel, Switzerland) http://www.mapping-museum-experience.com/en (last access 22/04/2012); a summary of research on imagination by Colette Dufresne-Tass, particularly the method of Thinking Aloud and its connections with observation http://www.montrealceca2008.org/13.html (last access 22/04/2012); research by the Laboratoire CRESSON (Grenoble, France) in Christophe Dessaux, ed. Ambiance(s). Ville, architecture, paysages in Culture & Recherche, n.113 (2007).

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In the museum, the core subject is the relation between the works of art, the people and the space. () It is an important issue, because if [people] dont perceive their own presence, their own importance, they will not be open to what is around them.238

238

Tadao Ando cited in Michael Auping, Du bton et dautres secrets de larchitecture. Sept entretiens de Michael Auping avec Tadao Ando lors de la construction du Muse dArt Moderne de Fort Worth (Paris: LArche, 2007), p. 121 (Translated from original).

63

NOTE ON ILLUSTRATIONS
The vast majority of the images included in this work were made by the author with permission of museum attendants. The image of the OGR space on page 44 originates from the OGR website239 and is the only image taken from external sources. Palazzo Fortuny Director Daniela Ferretti kindly granted permission for photography within the gallery spaces of the TRA art exhibition for the purposes of this study.

239

http://www.officinegrandiriparazioni.it/wp-content/themes/ogr/images/ogr-interna-1.jpg (last access 21/04/2012).

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APPENDICES

Index of the interviews

Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy____________________________________________73 Francesca Boni, Palazzo Fortuny Assistant Director___________________________73 Caterina Marcantoni, Head of Education, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia____81 Francesco Poli, TRA Co-Curator___________________________________________86 Axel Vervoordt, TRA Designer and Curator _________________________________94

Officine Grandi Riparazioni, Turin, Italy__________________________________98 Walter Barberis, Curator_________________________________________________ 98 Anna Maria Martina, Director of OGR and Marina Bertiglia, OGR Head of Education_________________________107 Paolo Rosa, Head of Design, Studio Azzurro_______________________________ 114

Museum aan de Stroom (MAS), Antwerp, Belgium_________________________123 Carl Depauw, MAS Director_____________________________________________123 Sven Grooten, Head of Design, B-Architecten______________________________ 130 Cathy Pelgrims, MAS Head of Public Work________________________________138 Jef Vrelust, MAS Curator_______________________________________________146

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Interview with Francesca Boni Assistant Director Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy 16th of November 2011, Venice Translated from Italian, abridged version

LD: Ms Boni, what do you think are the fundamental messages of the TRA exhibition that also represent Palazzo Fortuny as an institution? FB: Palazzo Fortuny is first of all the home of Mariano Fortuny, who was a great experimenter. He was not only an artist, not only a painter but also, so to speak, an inventor. Therefore there are issues such as reflected light or his experiments in theatre and this year we have a good example, because we have restored a model of the Theatre of Feasts. So the connection is with he who is always on a journey, who experiments and who lives his works in the fullest of ways: what he did with photography would influence his textile prints or a discovery made on photography would have an impact on his theatre work. Everything would come together in his work. LD: So he was interdisciplinary at his time. FB: Yes, this is therefore an interdisciplinary place. In continuity with the activities of its owner, this place continues to host exhibitions with this ambition. Theyre not static, there is the intention of interacting with the visitor. This is what is asked of visitors, a lot has to be discovered here. But thats how it should be, we dont have to give a pre-defined image of what we want. It should be an experience. LD: This exhibition has a very strong character, a very strong curatorial presence. Additionally, this place also has a strong character, a historical depth FB: Yes, this is not a white cube and it never will be. Whatever happens here has to blend with what is already present. Thats the idea. LD: How is this project different from other projects that have taken place here? FB: Palazzo Fortuny has a planning schedule connected to the years of the Venice Art Biennale. So the exhibitions done with Axel Vervoordt coincide with the years of the Biennale. In the years in which the Biennale doesnt take place, we organise exhibitions on fashion and design, that coincide with the Biennale Architecture. LD: Do the latter focus on the work of Mariano Fortuny?
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FB: Not necessarily, but we have a moral obligation - respectful of the conditions defined by Fortunys widow at the time of the donation of the building to the City of Venice to leave the first floor as it is, in memory of Fortunys life here. The furniture, the textiles, the glass cabinets are original of that time and those remain. LD: Does the choice of placing human production and creativity at the centre of the exhibition contribute to the blurring of boundaries between museum objects and ordinary objects? FB: Yes, it is an attitude of research towards human creation at large. It is a recurring fil rouge in Palazzo Fortuny, because it is in line with Marianos work and his interdisciplinarity. LD: An interesting characteristic of this building is that every floor is completely different. FB: Absolutely, this is not due to the exhibition. The acquisition of the building by Mariano Fortuny occurred in phases, starting from the top floor. He had installed his painting atelier on the last floor and successively bought the lower floors. In the Venetian building, the ground floor is usually used as a depot, while here it hosted a typography. This was the last floor he bought. On the first floor he had installed the more formal area of presentation for guests and clients, because lets not forget that this was a place of production. Here he printed the velvets, while the cotton fabric was printed on the island of Giudecca. The entrance for the clients was thus from the garden, while the current entrance is that of the typography. The private quarters were in the rooms that today hold the offices and in all the side rooms of the building. The hall of the second floor was the production space and this table we are sitting at is an original table from Fortunys atelier on which the textiles were printed. The second floor was filled with tables and there were almost 200 workers there. Some also lived here, so it was a real workshop, where experimentation, production and sales all took place. So it is a house, but it is also an atelier, a factory. LD: What about the colours of the different areas, are they original? For example the third floor? FB: No, the third floor was repainted during the Infinitum exhibition, inspired by the colours of Venice. The wooden pillars are also original from the Venetian canals. They are called bricole and they were in a depot near the airport. The wood is alive, it has been in the water, it had its bugs and so forth The wooden platforms are also from the canal, usually used to make temporary passages or wharfs. The idea is to use materials from this area, for example the
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door done by Yannis Kounellis full of rocks, it has been filled with local material. LD: From your perspective, are such highly characterized spaces a potential or a limitation to your exhibition work? FB: Normally, they are a strength. They represent a great stimulus and usually whatever you put on the first floor, whether its a dress or a statue, it blends incredibly well. It is absorbed by the place and finds a harmony with it. It is actually rather incredible, how such a characterized space works. LD: Do you think it allows visitors to engage with the works? FB: This is our attempt. Many limitations such as stands, signs, things made to ensure distance it is all against our idea of exhibition. It is a house and in a house you would never find captions on the wall. I do realize it may constitute a problem but it is also a stimulus. You have this booklet with the information and if you want to take a look at it you do. Otherwise you may want to just take in the atmosphere of the place, youre not obliged to find out whether Rodin did that statue in that given year. You can just be captured by the excitement that all these works generate. Finally it is not all that important, also because there are more than 400 works. I challenge anyone to take home more than ten memories. It is the environment that captures the visitor, not the single piece I think. LD: In terms of the relationship between art works and space, was the succession of doors on the second floor pre-existent? FB: Yes, they are all original rooms, some of them were kept closed for curatorial reasons but they are part of the pre-existing structure. Of course the people in charge of the exhibition tried to make use of this presence in the best way. LD: It is also true that it doesnt happen very often in museums to be able to open and close doors and to find yourself alone in a closed space. This seems to be one of the elements that add to the inhabited dimension of Fortunys house. FB: Thats correct. LD: You can also still see pipes, holes in the walls, sinks FB: Yes, this is done purposely. In an attitude of critical restoration the building must continue to tell us stories. There are different kinds of holes on the wall: the plaster is hammered to hold successive layers, while the other holes that you see higher up are the signs of an old mezzanine floor. For a certain time before Marianos arrival, the City made this a home for the poor and there were almost 200 Venetians living here. Normally the Venetian building of the Gothic
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period is composed of two noble floors, because typically, two members of the same family lived with their families on two different floors. The last floor was for the servants quarters as were the mezzanine floors. Although we have three main floors, each of these is doubled on the sides, so it is a very large building, more than what one would immediately perceive during the visit. LD: During the curatorial process, has the physical and bodily dimension of the visit been taken into account? Beyond the corporeal movement through the galleries, could the museum space could be one of well-being, of pause? FB: We have some visitors who arrive at the ticket booth and ask how much time it takes for the complete visit. Our staff replies It depends on you, you can take one hour or three. We tend to look at the watch even when were doing something for our spirit. Its true. No one can tell you how much time it will take because you can say there is nothing interesting on the second floor and then stay one hour in front of a single piece on the third floor. But we do pay a lot of attention to this, because the visitor must come and feel he is in a home. Be calm. LD: What do you do to encourage this effect? FB: We put two very large sofas on the first floor and there is more seating everywhere in the halls. It is also the fact of feeling free to move around and not having too many works in cases. We try to reduce the distance and thus make people feel at ease. People can also stop at the bookshop and read a book The tables of the second and third floor are there in respect of Fortuny, but also as an invitation to the visitor You can sit down, talk, we leave catalogues there and other books on the single works, but people could read their own book there. Nobody would stop you, quite the opposite. LD: Even if we dont necessarily touch anything, the museum itself seems rather tactile. In Infinitum there was a table on the first floor, full of objects, anatomic models, sketches it was in a way a cabinet of curiosities. Do you find the model of the cabinet is coming back? FB: Yes I think so, it is purposely done. LD: With what objective? FB: To surprise maybe, and make people stop and think. It also places attention to the space that we leave in between, which is not casual. For Infinitum we worked on the experience of ma: for example, the connotations of this table are perceived only in terms of its relations with the contextual space. We look at the space. The emptiness. Otherwise it would only be bi-dimensional. We understand it because of the emptiness, otherwise we would not appreciate it.
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So the ma is the attention for the space in between and the valorisation of the objects through this means. LD: There are rules of access and security as well. FB: Yes, it is a public space so under a certain limit of space and dimensions we just cannot go. This is a limitation but it is also a means that pushes us to think things differently. LD: What about the second floor? Why leave it empty? FB: It has always been an empty space. We are restoring the faade and now light runs across it like a Venetian portego. There have been times when there was no glass on the windows and it was left completely open. LD: There is also a strong repeating transition between light and darkness. How was it part of the planning? FB: It is a way of giving value to what is a circumstance of the building itself. But we could make all the rooms black if we wanted. We choose to give value to the pre-existent. LD: In terms of visual stimuli, it has a very strong impact. FB: Yes, the theme of passage is very strong throughout: between life and death, between a moment of life and another, it refers to ones own personal credo regarding afterlife. So the ground floor is rather oppressed by this idea and the strength that comes from the rocks, the materials, then as you go up everything becomes lighter, there is a form of sublimation. LD: What differences can you see between your approach and that of exhibitions that make use of panels? FB: There is really a distinction in the mental approach I would say. For the exhibition with panels, one would usually construct the exhibition space. Here, we have to confront the space. It is not always easy but when it works it is much more exciting. LD: You have taken off the captions, the panels, the glass cases FB: Yes, it is the idea of the house. In a house, I would not put panels, I would try to explain things in other ways. On the first floor, with the Fortuny textiles on the walls, we are obliged to hang works with fine cables coming down from the ceiling. LD: Is it also a manner of hanging paintings typical of that poque? Like in the museums of the 19th century?
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FB: Yes, with paintings tightly hung together, even down to the floor. Fortuny would have had his atelier with paintings lying on the floor. It is no longer possible and we had to give up this possibility but sometimes it would be useful. It would give the feeling of the atelier, also with several paintings aligned together progressively against the wall. LD: In terms of conservation, I notice that you have open doors leading to the balcony, theres air coming in. FB: Yes, the great majority of the works are adapted to this environment. LD: Is it a rather humid environment? FB: Not really. The most humid area is the ground floor but we have air conditioning there. The noble floors do not suffer from great humidity. Even the textiles do not suffer, the light is under 50 lux in the Fortuny room. What they do suffer is dust, but in Venice we have no cars so that is a rather favourable situation. LD: How do you judge the visitor experience in Palazzo Fortuny? Do you think the richness of the display and lack of indications may generate a sense of confusion? FB: Yes, I think so. In fact people are invited to get lost, like in a labyrinth. In a way, it is a search of ones self, at least for an hour. Indications are ok on the highway, where you want to get out at a certain exit. While I think it is wonderful here that one may even get lost. The functional approach to space is connected to security. One needs to know how to get out if something happens. But I dont want to tell you where to go. It is very sad to have someone suggest only one way of seeing things. LD: Do you think that an exhibition like this one can touch everyone or does it have a certain target? FB: It can touch everybody but with different levels of interpretation. LD: Have you done any visitor evaluations? Now that youve seen the space inhabited by the visitors, do you think you would have done anything differently? FB: We have comment books and we read those. Mostly they mention things like too much light, too little light. Some people unfortunately complain that there are no captions on the first floor, they dont understand our different approach and the difficulty of putting captions on the textiles on the walls. It is most interesting to hear those that say I came back three times to this exhibition and discovered new things each time. LD: What about the relationship with Venice? In what way is your offer different from other tourist hotspots?
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FB: Well, we are a niche museum. People have to look for us and they have to find us! With this trilogy we reached a good number of visitors. We are around 55,000 in the exhibition period, from June to November. That is a lot for us. The budget is also higher so communication is more pervasive. LD: In your opinion what is the role of the museum today? Is it the fact of making experience of real objects or do other factors play? FB: It is an opportunity, without doubt, to see artworks that come from different places, all in one place. This can be one motivation. The almost tactile perception of the artwork to see it in real and realize just how big or small the works are LD: Do you think that the involvement of different sensorial modalities has become a necessary aspect in the construction of cultural spaces? FB: My very personal view is that involving all the senses is an objective that we should all work towards. It is not easy, especially in a complex environment, a complex architectural structure where we have to show works with difficult characteristics, but this must give us an additional stimulus in this direction. There are times when the architect needs to take a step back, letting works and space speak to each other. Works find their place. LD: In visitor studies there is a certain focus on segmentation and the attempt to address the needs of specific groups, interests, etc. Do you think that the sensorial has the capacity to touch upon a wider human dimension? FB: Certainly! Well, this place was not conceived for children for instance, as much as other houses may be full of things and were not built to childrens scale. But for what concerns the human dimension, I completely believe so. Who has an encyclopaedic knowledge will notice certain details, who doesnt will come and find what most surprises him LD: Do you think that the house medium contributes to this? FB: Without any doubt, it is a more democratic medium! LD: One very last question: do you think that a place like this would be possible outside of Venice? FB: Here it is contextualised, it is a gothic construction that is typically Venetian, with the water, the pavements its difficult to imagine its overall sensory experience outside of Venice. It is not just the building, it is the water that comes in, what you see when youre inside, what is seen from the outside, it is a constant interplay between the inside and the outside. This is a grand building, but it is not the universe, like Versailles, of a person so far out from
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common life. Mariano grew out of the classic culture that surrounded him, here in Venice, so it is difficult to imagine this place somewhere else. LD: Thank you very much Ms Boni.

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Interview with Caterina Marcantoni Head of Education, Palazzo Fortuny, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Italy 18th of November 2011 - Venice Translated from Italian, abridged version

LD: Mrs Marcantoni, you are responsible for the education program of a number of institutions here in Venice, amongst which Palazzo Fortuny. What are the characteristics of this cultural site and in what ways does this define the education work you do there? CM: At Palazzo Fortuny we have always done less educational activity than in the other museums. First of all this is because it is very difficult to have the spaces for educational activity there. We did it once, for the exhibition on Isabelle de Borchgrave, an artist that produces dresses made out of paper. It was a creative workshop where the participants could produce their own paper dresses with paper and colours, finding inspiration in the work of the artist, despite this is done following a highly complex technique. The workshops were for a public of adults and children. LD: Were most of the exhibitions done in Palazzo Fortuny, before the recent trilogy project, focused on the work of an artist? Hence has the educational activity mostly focused on the work of a specific artist and his or her working techniques? CM: Yes, I would say so. Before the trilogy that is what most often occurred, focusing on technique. What we usually do at the museum are the guided visits to the temporary exhibitions. LD: Is the choice of focusing on technique due to the fact that Palazzo Fortuny was not only a home but also a place of production? CM: Yes, surely. But it also very much depends on the nature of the exhibition. We also organized a series of seminars on Mariano Fortuny and his production. We presented him as a man of his time, living between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. The seminars were on different topics, issues concerning the world that rotated around the figure of Fortuny: Fortuny and Wagner, DAnnunzio, Proust but also his working techniques, therefore his contribution to the world of decorative arts and the Viennese Secession. We wanted to show how he was connected to a world that is largely lost after the First World War, even though he dies at the end of the Second World War.
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LD: How do you judge the TRA exhibition in terms of visitor experience? How did you approach this project? CM: Well, we did not work very much for these exhibitions, other than organizing guided visits which had to carefully respect the environment and ambiance that the exhibition curators had tried to create. The exhibition purposely has no captions, no indications So we had to deal with that, providing suggestions for interpretation but also leaving the visitor free to move around on each floor in an disorderly fashion. Rather than direct the visitor, we wanted him/her to pose us questions. LD: So you offered the possibility, in other words, to have someone in the halls respond to the questions but allowing the visitor to navigate the space freely if he/she wanted to, without a fixed route? CM: Exactly, it was important to allow the visitor to reflect on the dialogue between the works, between the contemporary and the ancient LD: Do you think that this very unusual exhibition modality offers an added value to the visitor experience? CM: In my opinion it has certainly helped boost the museum. The dialogue between the contemporary and the ancient is something that can work very well. There is a two-way dialogue that enriches the reception of contemporary art, which is not always easy to read, and more ancient art. LD: Would you say it gives an additional interpretive key? CM: Certainly so. It is also true that as I often work with schools and families it must be said that exhibitions by Vervoordt are not easily accessible to these groups. Only secondary schools can be brought here, with smaller children it is more difficult as things can be easily touched. LD: In your work, is the physical and sensory component of the visit taken into consideration? CM: Certainly. I think that educational activity in a place like this must be extremely discrete. Could you imagine a guide explaining every work in a loud voice on every floor? I think education here should be minimal. It can give indications but not explanations. In Palazzo Fortuny a very specific approach was undertaken. In this case, we did very little education work and it mostly focused on explaining the way the exhibition functions, rather than providing information on the artists and works. It works in a different way. I think this exhibition is

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great there, it functions well there, because it is a very special space. In a typical museum gallery, where there is nothing at all, it would not work as well. LD: Do you think that the physical and sensory engagement of the visitor in the museum experience can impact success and allow cultural initiatives to touch a larger and more varied public? CM: Yes, I never really thought about it but it could very well work. LD: Speaking about sensory engagement, Palazzo Fortuny has a very strong tactile component. CM: Certainly so. LD: There are no glass cases, there are textiles on the wall and even the walls CM: are pealing and full of traces and sediments of time indeed LD: You may also find an art work next to a sink and you find yourself opening doors in a way that would rarely occur in a traditional museum. Do you think all of this contributes in putting the visitor at ease? In a highly domestic environment? CM: You know I think it plays an incredibly important role. What people like about Palazzo Fortuny is, in my opinion, precisely this: the idea of coming to be physically part of a space. Nobody complains about the crusts on the walls and I think that is a good indication of this. It is also this image of decadence that is associated to Venice. What I can say is that to have, within a museum system like our own, a museum like this one is of great value and we should be able to communicate it more successfully to the wider public. However, while I was trying to give a more spatial reading of other museum spaces through dance and music, there was not much openness or determination by Palazzo Fortunys administrators to do more educational activity there. I cannot say that there was an intention to involve our Dept for these exhibitions and I think there was the fear that the founding idea and atmosphere of the exhibition would not be fully respected. I asked a collaborator to prepare some didactic material on the exhibition to hand out at the entrance, so that either at the beginning or at the end of the exhibition people could read a little more about the intentions and theme of the exhibition. You could also bring it home and have a chance to think further about what you had seen and experienced. However it was not felt that this material was in line with the spirit of the exhibition and it was decided not to make use of it. Instead, the guided visits that we did were very much appreciated and it proved to be a very successful initiative.
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LD: Within this exhibition trilogy, Palazzo Fortuny has been furnished with sofas and tables, benches, areas of rest and reflection. During these guided visits did you make use of these spaces, did you invite people to stay, extend their visiting time? CM: Yes, we did not use the tables to work but we did our guided visits in the form of informal conversations and on that occasion we did indeed make use of the livable space of the exhibition. We wanted to initiate conversation. Although I must say our guided visits are never very didactic, we always try to stimulate dialogue, even with schools. But in Palazzo Fortuny, even more than in other cases, we wanted to create a kind of living room conversation and within that frame it often came about that a visitor would make a comment or speak about the feelings a certain work provoked. People seeing this exhibition entered a certain kind of climate. LD: In your opinion, what role does the museum have today? Do you think that the use of spaces alternative to the classical white cube - such as Palazzo Fortuny but also post-industrial spaces - is becoming a common reality or are they isolated experiments that will not modify the way we conceive the museum institution? CM: You see, in a museum system as that of the Fondazione Musei Civici, which includes a wide variety of institutions, I think that working on the specificity, as you say, of each museum is a winning approach. Palazzo Fortuny can be considered a museum, even allowing visitors to come in for free, a museum where people could really come in and out freely, look, breathe in a different atmosphere and enter the world of Mariano Fortuny. Why not allow them to simply enter this world? LD: Do you think there is openness for this kind of transformation and attitude among curators? CM: By the curator of Palazzo Fortuny, yes, I think so. I think she would like the idea, although it may also be an uneasy issue to imagine people coming in and out rather freely. But its true that in some moments of the year, when there are no exhibitions, it could be left open to visits. LD: It could function as a space for the slowing down of rhythms, a space of wellbeing, so to speak. Do you think this would be valuable to the learning experience? Or do people come uniquely to learn about the objects on display and this is the key to their motivation for the visit? What is your experience in this? CM: It is a difficult issue and we have to speak first of all about Venice itself. What is the museum that people visit most here? Palazzo Ducale, and why do they visit
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it? Because it isnt a museum, it is a monument. I keep on rep eating this. The people who come to Venice come to breathe in history, Venice is history, it is different from every other city, where you can move on foot and where you can find ancient street names Sottoportego della sora Bettina this is what it is and this is more valuable than the Tintoretto or the Veronese. Regarding the need for pause you find me fully in support of this idea. For example, the Correr Museum has a joint ticket with the Palazzo Ducale. In Palazzo Ducale it would be difficult to create moments of pause, given the number of visitors passing every day, however at the Correr Museum I can see this happening very well, with great spaces for rest where a person can sit and focus even just on a single work! Instead, what I see happening is that curators have to exhibit as much as possible, the more they put the happier they are. They have to show everything and I dont think thats a good approach. A museum should not be this, we have so much visual pollution going on in our cities and people need to rest their eyes. Especially if the visitor has been to Palazzo Ducale first, he/she will have a visual overdose! So I think were not making enough profitable use of the fact that we are a museum system composed of ten different cultural sites that can each offer something a little special. The specificity of the Correr Museum, which is a place I love, could indeed be this: having places for rest and reflection. I think Carlo Scarpa had had this intuition in the Correr Museum. Everything is small, cosy Especially in a city that can be explored on foot, why not allow people to access the buildings with ease and stop there Make places comfortable, with places to sit, relax for a moment Absolutely, there should be more of that, its true. LD: Thank you very much Mrs Marcantoni. CM: It was a pleasure.

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Interview with Francesco Poli Art critic and co-curator of the TRA exhibition, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy 22nd of November 2011, interview recorded in Turin. Translated from Italian, abridged version

LD: Mr Poli, what was your role within the curatorial team for the exhibition TRA ? FP: This is the second exhibition I co-curate in collaboration with Axel Vervoordt for Palazzo Fortuny. The first one was Infinitum, two years ago. TRA. Edge of Becoming is an exhibition on the theme of the threshold, between objects - it is intended both in musical and architectural terms and it is also very Zen, referring to the concept of ma. It is an exhibition that develops in a transversal manner across different epochs, with works of art that are sometimes very ancient and sometimes modern or extremely contemporary. These works are set in spatial contexts and situations where an aesthetic tension is created between them, according to similarities but also contrasting elements. All the themes of these exhibitions are rather evanescent, difficult to grasp or to set a frame around. Different aspects of these themes are selected and worked around to say things in the setting of the exhibition. The concept of the exhibition was conceived by Axel Vervoordt, who had conceived the exhibition format for Artempo already. Vervoordt is part of a great tradition of interior designers, he defines himself a tastemaker and is also a collector. He has a foundation and a collection of ancient art. But his primary occupation is to design very prestigious houses, he creates an atmosphere, an ambiance, a world. He creates this through elements of interior design and also through objects that contribute to the creation of this atmosphere. This is important with regards to what my role was in the project. From the perspective of interior design, he creates spaces for life and for aesthetic pleasure. So on the one hand, he is a collector of ancient and modern art, but he also comes with a sensitive approach to space. His idea of space is a space for life but also for the spirit. Yet he was also interested in exploring the possibility of creating narrative paths, storytelling, with the help of specialists like myself to feed in different perspectives to the project. Im an art critic and historian specialised in contemporary art. Our other collaborator was Rosa Martinez, a very important independent curator who was also curator of the Venice Biennale a few years ago. So we were both asked to give ideas, developments, suggestions around the themes of the exhibitions. The fourth person on the team was Daniela Ferretti, the director of Palazzo Fortuny, who
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is also an architect and who made several important exhibitions. She is in a way the master of the house. We were all asked to suggest and discuss which artists would better suit the exhibition and that could be asked to participate, sometimes with works made especially for the exhibition. LD: Did you ever have a chance, before Infinitum, to work across epochs, putting different timeframes in contact with each other, in this rather interdisciplinary modality? FP: Yes, I believe that all contemporary art must have the capacity to be present in our lives, to be alive, to be a stimulus in the construction of meaning and sense of life, a contribution to the continuous invention of the world in which we live in, this is what art should be. So when you have a painting of the 16th century, if it has an energy, a charge, then it continues to be a source of inspiration, of stimulus and life. Artworks live through the constant reinterpretation that we make of them, generation after generation, and it is in this perspective that they can be contemporary. LD: Did you imagine only one possible route? FP: No, not at all. Well, yes, there is an idea of ascension to the top. Infinitum was the first exhibition for which that last third floor was opened up. This ascension wanted to contrast a more harsh, physical presence of the architecture, and it is the architecture of Palazzo Fortuny itself that is structured in this way, as we move from the colder area of the ground floor in brick, towards this open space at the top, a space for meditation. This is one of the possible readings of the visit but not the only one. I think one of the things that contributed to the success of the exhibition because both Infinitum and TRA had an extraordinary success was the possibility to explore the space as a flaneur, moving around the space in casual ways, without having to follow a sequence, which in fact is purposely inexistent. It is the floors that provide a sequence and of course there were groupings, for example in TRA there is a series of doors on the second floor so it is a freedom of movement around the space that allows us to select the focus of our attention. LD: Do you think this is something that can be transposed in other spaces? FP: This is an important question. Of course there was a very strong relation between the space and the conception of narration. Palazzo Fortuny is the house of Mariano Fortuny, it was donated to the City of Venice by his widow and many of the elements of the building remain. So did his personal studio, his library, the furniture, objects, paintings and textiles he designed. This is the idea of the Director, to give the feeling that the former master of the house, Mariano
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Fortuny, that his ghost, in a good sense, is still somewhat present and hosts a number of cultural events in his house. So there is already an atmosphere, a stable ambiance part of the very structure of the place, that creates a very special place unlike any other. Many people have said this. It is a highly characterized space. The presence of Fortuny the decorator, with his style, his textiles can also be rather heavy. But if you try to welcome that presence rather than reject it, it becomes one of the many readings and aspects of the experience of Palazzo Fortuny. Some things can come in relation with this preexisting reality and others develop in complete independence from them. The ground floor and the third floor have almost nothing of Fortunys living environment. LD: At the second floor you can already work quite independently from that heritage. FP: Yes, indeed, it is really only the first floor that is largely characterized by Fortuny. This year we also opened up the space on the theatre on the first floor, with these incredible frescoes as theatre backdrops. This taste from the Belle poque emerges quite strongly, Fortuny had been one of its great protagonists. LD: Coming from the world of contemporary art, how did you relate with such a rich and characterized space? FP: I was coming in with colder works, from land art, arte povera, minimal art movements not characterized by such a defined aestheticism. It is precisely the contextualisation of such works that really created the magic and success of this exhibition I think. The moment in which all of this comes together cannot be described or predicted in a project draft LD: It is the works that decide. FP: Precisely. You need to look at them, to move around its a visual and spatial dimension, and also one of dialogue between things. There are some solutions that work especially well in a few spots and sometimes you have to change things according to composition. For example there was this one video by a French artist that we could not place on a platform and we placed it amongst the paintings, as one of the frames and I think it worked really well. Maybe I had intended it to be placed differently, but finally it is fine this way. The artist was happy with this solution! Usually artists would like all the space for themselves, instead he was happy with this more intimate solution that gave a certain tension to his work. LD: Why was it chosen to do this exhibition in this specific space? Did the concept come first?

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FP: I think Vervoordt fell in love with this space and Daniela Ferretti found this would be an excellent opportunity for Palazzo Fortuny, because only the first floor is really Fortunys house and the rest of the building demands to be lived, interpreted, used in original ways. They try to do this sometimes, organising smaller exhibitions in the years alternative to the Venice Biennale. But this exhibition is a different thing because it involves the whole identity of the Palazzo. It is not by chance that you have chosen it, it is a genre, it has become a genre of how to make exhibitions, a reference point for a certain way of making exhibitions. LD: Do you think that thematic exhibitions today can bring art more successfully closer to the public? FP: Yes, I truly think so! I am very much in favour of thematic exhibitions. It generates a transversal relation with the artworks across time, so it works well to construct thematic exhibitions. I think thematic exhibitions are something that we will see much more of with time, for two main reasons: there are of course exhibitions that focus on the work of a single artist, and others that pick themes of contemporary events, which are fine. However what is contemporary is not only what is of present time. Without falling into the risk of simply working on aesthetic associations, there are ways of creating confrontation between past and present in harsher ways, that say things by juxtaposition. This is something which is already happening more and more often in modern and contemporary art museums. It should be done more often with classical art, to actualise that art and create a tension. LD: Dont you think that museums tend to reinforce this subdivision? FP: Certainly, thats why we need intelligent people in museums, people with a certain open-mindedness. But at the same time it must not just be a patchwork, it needs to derive from a solid cultural background. In exhibitions the physical spatialization of the works of art, beyond theoretical texts, is truly important. We are human beings, sensorial beings and the exhibition has the potential to speak directly to us, unlike a book which is a form of mediation towards art. LD: In your opinion, what kind of experience does an exhibition like that of TRA give the visitor, on a sensorial level? What is the added value of this kind of operation? FP: First of all we must say one thing: Palazzo Fortuny is in Venice and in Venice people enter Palazzi and churches with a certain reverence. During the Biennale there is the explosion of contemporary art in parallel to other exhibitions of great cultural value. When you enter Palazzo Fortuny, () there are no indications on the artists, in our case we wanted people to look at the
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works and not worry about who made them. This was the idea of creating more direct engagement and the other was that of allowing people to wander and get a little lost. But there has been a good positive reaction from the general public, without prior and extensive artistic knowledge, they have been fascinated by this. It is a big wunderkammer after all, a big cabinet of curiosities. It needs to be. It is a room for meditation, for continuous surprise, its a bit like a labyrinth. LD: Do we run a risk with thematic exhibitions of creating articulated connections that the public has difficulty grasping, for example through the physical tension between works? FP: That is always a risk. It is like my teaching practice, it is not simply a way of communicating notions. If I can capture the curiosity of one student it will already be a great result. As you teach you decide what you want to focus on, why you think it is worthwhile mentioning and whether it can be interesting for others. It is generating interest that then opens up horizons. LD: How is the white cube different? What kind of objective does it pursue? FP: In reality it is the artists that obliged galleries to become this way. The first white cubes were the artists studios in New York, in the lofts. They were avant-garde galleries opened in spaces that cost very little. Then they eventually became living roomlike spaces. And then there were other realities, such as the Guggenheim in New York, a white spiral really, where the architect went so far as to say that he did not care about the artists, at a time when the great majority of works were sculptures and paintings He did it because it is a work of art in itself. Like much of todays museum architecture, like Frank Gehry, like Zaha Hadid. But while there was true structural invention in Frank Lloyd Wrights building, todays computerized organic architecture is so autoreferential LD: In your perspective, why does the museum need to be a symbol of architectural progress? FP: You touch upon another large chapter. The commissioners of these buildings are asking architects for the new monuments, the new cathedrals, and if I was an architect I would do the same, I would do the most creative thing I can imagine. Museums become auto-referential monuments because that is what commissioners are also asking. For example the Muse du Quai Branly in Paris, by Jean Nouvel, is a structure made to attract tourists, it is a monument. It is an intervention connected to the city, like in the case of the Guggenheim in Bilbao. A museum of figurative art is made from the objects it contains. However if you go inside the Guggenheim in Bilbao there is almost nothing there, there is no collection. The white cube, to go back to your question, can be a wonderful thing, a space of equilibrium, that works wonderfully for certain
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forms of art like minimalist art, for instance if we think of Donald Judd. It was a season, a great season that was functional also to the need of having larger spaces. It is born out of the need of the artists who wanted to make environmental interventions. LD: Do you think that a heavily characterized space like Palazzo Fortuny can do what the white cube did really well, and that is, focusing the attention of the onlooker? FP: Well, the question is a difficult one! The two things do not represent two opposites. All historical spaces are largely characterized and in Italy we are particularly rich in such spaces, but it must not be intended as something in opposition to the pure, sacred, neutral space of the white cube, where a sort of mysticism takes place, a purified reading of the object there, objects seem to acquire a magical fetishistic nature. It was not born this way! Today there is an aesthetic interpretation of these spaces in these terms. But lets take a step back. The white cube is born out of the needs of artistic research and the collaboration and sensibility of the gallerists of the time, those that were not just merchants but who created a culture, trying to create the optimal conditions for the art of that time to grow and develop. It is indeed a separate space, an abstract space, that is also a consequence of that season of artistic production, very essential, like minimalism and arte povera, and so forth. But what happens? That artistic research has slowly evolved out of such mechanisms, maintaining the churchlike space of the white cube, but starting to inhabit hybrid spaces, other spaces, part of daily life. They started with urban interventions, old abandoned factory buildings because the artistic operation has always wanted to come in dialogic and direct relation with the real. At a certain point any space becomes a good space, a hotel for example, any space characterized by a function, that enhances the artistic operation as the work of art enhances the dimension of reality. So the privileged identity of art is nullified in such contexts. Of course then you always have to come back to the den, to the museum, to the gallery, because if art was only hosted in hotels and squares it would reabsorbed by the flux of daily life. This is the operation that artists make: the space of art is not only the container of art but it is also its content. A clear example is environmental art: the context where the work is placed is part of the content of that artistic operation, space becomes a part of the work. The idea of site-specific works refers back to this. These relations with space go back to the very origins of the museum. Take the Louvre, the first public museum born out of the French Revolution. It was already a very radical intervention meant to make works accessible to everyone, but in doing so, it created a distinct separation between the works
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and their original context, which was the church as well as the house. So it has always been an operation that tore the work of art from its context, setting it in an abstract and conceptual environment. The difference between ancient art and contemporary art is that older works were mostly made under request for a specific person, family, context. After the Second World War artists started making works of art for the museum. Before that some artists had developed the culture of the Salon, hoping their work would one day reach the rooms of the Louvre. It had never been that way before. Now the Louvre commissions works of art by the greatest contemporary artists and makes them part of their permanent displays because they have understood one thing: we must continue to cultivate the myth of art. That is what I think. You bring liveliness to art not working uniquely with the art of the past but together with that of the present. Art must always be in the present. With the past you create noble connections with the contemporary, and with the contemporary you vitalize the past. LD: Can this use of other spaces, that comes into tension with the operations carried out inside the museum, bring the public closer to artistic intervention? FP: This idea was theorized also by some artists, like Thomas Hirshhorn, who did something in this direction in the suburban neighbourhoods of Paris. He constructed a hut-like structure, that was very well protected, where he exhibited works from the Pompidou by artists such as Mondrian, Beuys it was the idea of the precarious museum. But it is an artistic intervention that has very high costs and that is backed up by collectors and funders. It is hardly a way of bringing people closer. LD: I wonder whether the museum could in time become, not the substitution of, but in continuity with the spaces of aggregation of the church, of the public square, a partly free space where one can go to think, rest, much like the botanical gardens. We thus go in the museum to feel at ease, to make connections, to inhabit a public space that belongs to all of us. FP: That is my idea too. Museums should embrace this function.Without any doubt, but not at the cost of reducing a certain level of cultural intervention. You need to create engagement, interest. But many people still go because they are obliged to or following fashion trends and advertising. The problem is many people still have a tick-the-box attitude, Egyptian Museum? Saw it. Natural History Museum? Saw it. And they never come back. LD: I wonder if it would be possible to consider the museum in terms of habitat. I spoke about this with Paolo Rosa from Studio Azzurro. FP: Paolo Rosa is a genius in his work. The exhibition here at the OGR in Turin is a wonderful success. I completely agree on that idea. It has to be an active space, continuously regenerated to create curiosity. But each place has its
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characteristic, its own internal nature it may work best with slow rhythms or a quicker pace, there may be small interventions and big renovations, there are no given rules. Its the same thing with the use of tactile and sonic elements, every time it is a test. Greenaways intervention at the Castle of Venaria outside Turin is an interesting addition to the traditional panel format. Wherever you work you need to have a consciousness of the characteristics of that place, not simply the aura, the greatness of its reputation. That is just scenography. One must have a critical attitude, the ability to see things from a distance. LD: Thank you Professor Poli for this interview.

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Interview with Axel Vervoordt Designer and curator of the TRA exhibition, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy 26th of November, interview recorded in Antwerp, Belgium. Abridged version

LD: Mr Vervoordt, you have built a prestigious career as an interior designer and art collector. What do you think most characterizes your approach to design? AV: I always had a love of very simple things, even as a boy. My mother would put a nice basket, like in an old 17th century picture, next to beautiful silver and blend it all, but she also had a great sense for simple things. Its in that taste Ive been educated, with a love for the very pure I was then introduced to Fontana and emptiness, the Zero Movement I was twenty-one when I bought my first little Fontana, I was very impressed by it, by this extra dimension, this concept of space giving an extra dimension. Collectors never use things, here we use everything. Everything is meant to be used. I taught my collector clients to live with things, its not like in the museum, where you dont touch. In the fairs, I made things look very livable. Art is made to be lived, it is about giving expression, offering a mentality. Artists, designers, sculptors look upon you today as somebody who has taken their work and placed it in an environment where everybody can appreciate it. Gallery owners would not appreciate it, they would say its decorative, its putting the painting above a chest of drawers and it treats art as decoration. That is why I did Artempo, to show its not at all about that, its about living with art, its about getting the essence of art, art is timeless and should not always be placed in a white cube. I think art is interaction, art is human and a human being is interesting when hes in interaction with others. Its all about teamwork, even art. Im interested in this dialogue between the very primitive and the very sophisticated, very natural, very human. I like to give a lot of space to what is not perfect - I dont think perfection exists, we human beings are not born to be perfect. We can try to achieve perfection but this perfection is something unknown and I think we have to see the beauty of the imperfection. The infinity and the divine lie within that part that we can never achieve. If you leave enough space for the unachievable, there is the divine, there is the magic in art. LD: How did your relationship with Palazzo Fortuny start and what were the elements about this building that struck you most as the place where you wanted to build your project?
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AV: I knew Palazzo Fortuny for a long time, I had seen the Peter Greenaway exhibition and I had always been in love with the Palazzo. I wanted to do Artempo and thought about where at the Arsenale? or at the Canale? - but I preferred to have a non-restored palazzo, with pealing walls that looked like abstract painting, so we would have this contemporary feeling and also the older context. I was also intrigued by the personality of Mariano Fortuny, a very inventive creator - his paintings, his photographs and textiles - he is also a very good fashion designer. He is a rather complete person, there was quite a similarity with such a pluralistic person, so I thought of him as my client and it felt a bit like continuing his collection. The house corresponds to the personality of Fortuny. I did everything I could there to keep Fortuny alive. There is something Spanish, Italian, Eastern, Western, contemporary, old all these possibilities especially using the second floor Initially the mayor of Venice said its impossible to show this to the crowd, its not restored. But that was exactly what I wanted. This is why we wanted to do Artempo, because those walls for me were like a fresco that took 600 years to make! Its the story of all of us. LD: Why did you choose Venice? AV: We do all our exhibitions in London, Paris, New York. I think I wanted to explore my concept of Artempo, between old and new, during a contemporary art fair, because for me it was a very contemporary idea. LD: We spoke about that with Francesco Poli, the way art is always contemporary and how it is parallel to your thinking in the way everything is a trace of something handmade, of something that has an intention in it. In that sense then ancient art can be contemporary? AV: Absolutely. LD: What were the challenges of this trilogy? AV: Artempo was the strongest for me. The big work was making things work together, see if you like the interaction, its big work. The curatorial team was very important in selecting art, finding the right pieces and making me discover art that I did not know that was very important. But the hanging I like to do myself, its very difficult to do it with three people. One thing I can say is that we made a few white cube rooms and none of the artists wanted to go there. We thought this artist is such a purist, we have to make a separate room because hes going to hate it but everyone wanted to be mixed with everything. We had so many wonderful discussions about it, but I felt that with Artempo we didnt say everything we had to make Infinitum.
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LD: Do you find this characterized space creates limits to your work? AV: No, I like it, I think its interesting, its the harmony of the total image which is very important. LD: Do you think it would work in historical exhibitions too? The trilogy touches universal themes, it touches on human nature and the theme recurs as we move around the house. Can we extend this experience outside this specific case? AV: I did it purely out of instinct, maybe thats why its so renewed. I try to share the things I feel, my main purpose is to explain as well as I can explain it. You can never do it for everybody. LD: What about the use of the cabinet of curiosities? AV: It comes when it needs to be there, its not something I purposely decide to put or not put. I like the white cube too sometimes, like we did in Artempo. I have nothing against it, but you just have to use it in the right way. There are some works that really need white walls. Like in this house I have spaces of different nature and the two can coexist. I think the white cube gallery still has a lot of value, if all exhibitions were mixed it would be terrible! It would not be interesting, its also interesting to have one space for one artist. I dont necessarily want everybody to do it my way. LD: People stayed as much as twothree hours.240 Do you think the ambiance contributed? AV: I think so, I think people just have a feeling they could even live like that, that they would like to come and live here. LD: In what way does this method contribute to the medium exhibition? It works as a house, a collectors house, an atelier in what way is it functional to making exhibitions today? AV: I think its not easy for everybody, because you have to accept the presence of Fortuny, although thats mainly on the first floor. We also have the ground floor, but its a lot of presence and it is not easy to create a dialogue with that presence, people must not be overwhelmed either. LD: Did you purposely make different floors? AV: Yes, it was philosophically important. LD: What about the ground floor?

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Personal communication from museum attendants.

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AV: It was more museum-like. I think people need to put effort on the first floor, where there are no tags.. they dont need to know who made it, they have to feel what it is and then they can look it up afterwards. There was also a certain importance given to materials and water an attention for the natural elements, connected to Japanese culture. The concept of ma, I feel it very strongly. It is this energy in-between, which I cannot describe, you cannot capture it but you feel it, its a qualitative difference. Its not visual, its about energy. LD: Thank you Mr Vervoordt.

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Interview with Walter Barberis Curator of the exhibition Fare gli Italiani, Officine Grandi Riparazioni, Turin, Italy 21th of November 2011, University of Turin, History Department. Translated from Italian, abridged version. LD: Professor Barberis, if I understand well you are curator of the Fare gli Italiani exhibition at the Officine Grandi Riparazioni (OGR) together with Professor Giovanni De Luna. You both teach Modern History at the University of Turin and you were asked by the National Committee for the Celebrations of the Italian Unification to develop an exhibition project on the last 150 years of Italian history. WB: Thats correct. LD: To start with, what were the first ideas at the core of the project in terms of narrative planning and what was the impact of this industrial space in your project? To make one example, was the idea of creating thematic stations determined by the nature of the space or did this depend uniquely from the messages and objectives of the exhibition? WB: I would say the two aspects, space and content, influenced each other from the very beginning. We started thinking about how to develop an exhibition idea some time before the spaces for the exhibition were identified, however the definition of the right spaces came shortly after, so as we were deciding what would be best, we started spending time in the spaces of the OGR and become aware of its specifics. It would be absolutely incorrect to say that we were not influenced by the spaces of that incredible environment. It had a very strong impact on our work, not only for the charm of this piece of industrial archaeology but because 10,000m is a space that suggests special kinds of solutions, different solutions from a traditional museum exhibition of objects. LD: Did you, for example, consider constructing temporary wall structures to divided the space of the OGR? WB: No, we didnt and for a very specific reason: we didnt want the exhibition to appear like a fair where each stand would correspond to a specific theme. Secondly, the solution that was proposed to us from the beginning was a project that would make use of heights. Working on heights implies following a series of accessibility regulations: if you want to take a person on a wheelchair at a certain height you have to develop platforms that rise for a certain length. This length corresponds to the
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greatest height of the platform, so that area will no longer correspond to 100m, but will be 100m in addition to all the areas of passage overhead. These platforms need to be particularly long because they respect regulations for access by a diversified public. This is also the reason for the presence of additional staircases between the higher platforms and the ground, respecting fire safety regulations. These access requirements have certainly intervened largely in the planning of the exhibition. Concerning the initial development of the exhibition concept, at the beginning of the planning we were pressured by a number of institutions and associations to include certain themes that would correspond to the interests of groups who wanted to be represented in the history of these 150 years of Italian Unification. At the beginning there was a spread of this idea that the exhibition would work as a fil rouge, as a way to connect the projects of a number of associations who imagined to represent their point of view and contribution to the history of Italy. There were some good intentions. For example, the Italian Jewish community wanted to show that they had also contributed to Italian Unification, so they wanted to a space and so forth. We had to clarify this was a misunderstanding, specifying that the exhibition would indeed be an exhibition and not a fair, and that it would not, therefore, represent the specific interests of any given group or association. LD: Do you think that this misunderstanding derived from different conceptions of what an exhibition is? Was it the nature of this given space that invited people to this interpretation, unlike exhibitions hosted for example in the Gallery of Modern Art? WB: I think the concept of exhibition was not clear to a number of people at the beginning of the project. They questioned themselves whether there would be space for interventions. This was the first aspect regarding which we had to take a clear position. The exhibition was to be a journey with its own narrative, we had to understand what to say and how to say it. We then chose two approaches: the first, and apparently the easiest, was the chronologic approach. We felt it would not be appropriate for the nature of this project to avoid the development over time as one of the fundamental interpretive keys of the exhibition. A historical exhibition can consider the passage of time as a more or less valuable aspect of its narrative, but it cannot ignore that there is an evolution and direction in history determined by the very passage of time. This aspect was then discussed through a process of elaboration of the exhibition with the people in charge of display. We finally agreed on the solution of the self-held Plexiglas, wave-shaped panels that we
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called currents running across the whole exhibition, providing chronology and factual content. As we thought about the content of the exhibition we decided to follow one key rule: we were going to avoid all kind of textbook narration, of political nature, that would expose us to the risk of being judged as ideologically oriented, as culturally influenced by a specific school of thought. We would have reduced a project with didactic and learning objectives to criticisms that we hoped to avoid. So, we questioned ourselves on whether we could take the visitor by the hand and invite him/her to an experience, first of all of confrontation, of education, information and engagement, starting from two fundamental questions: How have these 150 years of national history brought Italians together? Have they been successful in achieving the process of Unification? That was our greatest ambition: to see whether we could bring forward a certain development of this idea what has kept us together and what hasnt with some simplification and yet not excessively simplifying, through the interplay of communication, information and emotional involvement. On the basis of this idea we let this chronological narrative run parallel to a number of thematic areas, that would allow us to develop stories and hypotheses around our central question. Then immediately came the confrontation with the space, which brought us for example to a reduction of the number of themes. LD: Despite the size of the space? WB: Yes, because as a consequence of the normative restrictions aforementioned some areas took up really vast spaces, and size also largely depended on the specific story we wanted to tell. We had, for example, chosen to give space to the theme of Sport as one of the things that had contributed to the Unification. Another typically Italian theme, that brought many moments of solidarity within the population, was that of the natural disasters. For spatial reasons, we had to give up this theme. However we identified those moments that we judged particularly relevant to the theme of Italian cohesion and included them in the chronological panels, which were also structured around this key tension between cohesion and separation. LD: I understand there is also a chronology within each theme, for example the thematic station regarding School. WB: Thats right, within each thematic station there are two organisational principles: one is emotional engagement and visual impression, through the presence of
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multimedia solutions and the very presence of the visitor, physically, at the centre of the installation. For example, at the beginning of the exhibition there is a theatrical scenario that immerses the visitor and suggests a certain perspective on the theme. For each of our themes, we looked for an element that would make a strong visual impact and that would thus have a strong capacity to engage and suggest the theme that we wanted to then develop further. On the other hand, with tools that we called balustrades (cases with integrated supporting text, photos, video and sound) we tried to communicate some essential didactic and informative elements within each of the thematic stations. These balustrades are organised thematically but with their own internal chronology, that is, a story of the evolution of the theme. There is a story of the Industry, of the first Migrations, of the First World War, of the Mafia LD: Within each station the story is also told orally, on the one hand by a narrative voice that recalls that of television documentaries, and at the same time through a personal depiction of the topic. For example in the section on the First World War, we hear the voices of the people writing to each other during the conflict WB: Thats absolutely right, we have in such cases opted for a witness account, for a form of narration that would be as direct as possible. So, for each station, we have two different forms of narration: a more traditional historiographic depiction and another more subjective perspective. Remembrance and history are two different things: the former is subjective and the latter generalising and interpretive, critical and organised. Remembrance however is an ingredient of history, that needs to be treated, manipulated, sorted, because remembrance is an experience that cannot always be generalised. LD: What about emotional engagement through the exhibition? Is it a means to activate our subjective recollection or understanding of those events? WB: Yes, its meant to be evocative. The exhibition tries to provide some fundamental elements of documentation, in other words it gives evidence, guaranteeing a certain level of documentation to the project and making reference to a reality that is, generally speaking, unquestionable. There are a number of events, problems and questions that are presented with this approach, thus ensuring a certain degree of certainty to our communication, from an educational perspective. Inversely, we have often adopted a more subjective, personal perspective and an alternative look into the themes to suggest how Italian citizens lived those experiences on the personal level. In other words, we tried to show how the
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multiple readings and perspectives within the population contributed to make one unique story, recognizable in general terms, as well as, in some cases, very different life stories. There have been moments in which the experience of the Italian citizens was extremely varied. In the case of the Second World War, we chose to represent the unitary experience of Italian people through the bombardments and other aspects that made the behaviour of Italian people similar in the everyday life. Our problem was that the Second World War exposed Italians to radically different experiences. In 1944 southern Italy is liberated by the Americans and Sicilian farmers see American soldiers face to face. A farmer in Cuneo, Piedmont, sees the Germans fleeting and burning his house down. They are two different wars. Inversely, what are the elements of cohesion and homologation in this great geographical dispersion in terms of behaviour? We have chosen to depict the differences in the more historical panels and, conversely, in the installation, say more about those elements that kept Italians together. These elements are the experience of the bombardments and the use of the radio as a generalised practice, that made Italians similar in their consumption of information, entertainment, through the daily habit of making use of this medium. LD: Yes, the parachutes and radio installation appear to be ways of inviting the visitor to retrace some of the daily practices of his fathers, moving up the ramp and hearing the bombardments, looking up at the planes overhead or picking up the headphones and adjusting the frequency as one would have done then. What differences does this kind of three-dimensional experience bring to the visitor compared to other forms of visit in more traditional spaces, for example Turins Museo del Risorgimento? WB: For me it is absolutely fundamental! I say so having discovered this myself and not being a theoretician of such practices nor moved by a fervour for such new tools. We knew from the beginning that we did not want to create a traditional museum journey, filled with relics. Garibaldis swordno, no, not at all! LD: Yes, what was your relationship with objects? WB: For us, the object was relevant only insofar as it was indicative of and informative on the presence of Italians. They were something closer to the elements of scenographic narration than to a symbolic dimension. It was not fundamental for us to have relics, in fact the opposite is true: we didnt want our exhibition to resemble a museum exhibition of objects that are recognized as having an intrinsic value for their role as witnesses of something. This was
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not our intention. But it was also not our intention to have a continuous interference by multimedia systems, as this was not part of our imaginative dimension. This was the great contribution of Studio Azzurro, the team responsible for the display, with whom we worked especially in the last year of planning to discuss how the content we had defined could be portrayed. LD: Do you think that were moving more and more towards new forms of museum display or was this case maybe the result of the practical issues? WB: No, I think in this case it was really the result of conceptual choices. I dont think that budget influenced this media-rich choice, nor did the fact that it was going to be a project unusually extended in time. It was a particular and chosen working modality. We were doing a historical exhibition. We constructed a path whose ambition was to be informative, suggestive, and provocative. It was an intervention meant to provoke thinking and involvement by the public, and in parallel, to provide didactic support for the public introducing the ideas and themes of the exhibition. We wanted to provide orientation but without exceeding. I can tell you that those people who saw this exhibition have proven to have a much more satisfying experience than what would usually occur in a traditional museum. I would like to clarify: it does not always coincide with simple interaction. It is not necessary for the public to intervene actively, even though it is of course a successful means through which the public participates in the mechanism of the exhibition and, within certain limits, this works well. But I wouldnt say that each visitor creates his/her own exhibition, the exhibition should maintain a certain capacity to provide orientation. You need to have the courage to say what you want to say. LD: You touch on an important issue, because as museum practitioners explore new ways and ideas on how to exhibit content, there is a certain line of thought that says Lets give the visitor space to create his/her own exhibition. WB: Exactly, Im strongly, very strongly against this approach, which excessively embraces relativism and is in my opinion rather irresponsible. Cultural communication must take on the responsibility of presenting an idea. It should result from honest and clear intentions and it is a responsibility, it is not just a random operation, it is an initiative that carries a signature. LD: What about from the perspective of the learning experience? Do you think this kind of multimedia operation can contribute to the sedimentation of concepts and memories? For example, the section on Theatre and the City is something that has channelled certain concepts for me and that has given me a certain
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visual anchor for my understanding of the variety and specificity of Italian cities before Unification. Is this mostly relevant for a media-savvy generation? WB: I think it is not just a phenomenon that concerns your generation, but rather that the interplay of images is an essential operation. That is, it is essential for history to sediment images, to produce images, and that images to produce history. LD: Do you think that the use of media risks reducing content? That it works towards a simplification of our depiction of history? WB: No, I think it is a central element of communication. LD: So it did not constitute, in a way, a limiting intervention for you to narrow content research down and adopt media tools that channel content in this manner? WB: No, the two communicative modalities are complimentary and each has its own objectives. When some people criticized us, saying the exhibition is too popular I took it as a compliment! This is what an exhibition should be, otherwise I write a book for experts. It is clear that a good project of communication implies good research, because the clarity derives from the confidence in ones own research. LD: What was your target? Did you consider younger and older publics? WB: We tried to address the project to multiple audiences and decided to train a number of educators to lead visitor groups, especially school groups. This enables the group to profit from the exhibition at the level of content detail judged most suitable for that group. For the foreign public we opted for audioguides. LD: We are increasingly witnessing the presence of tactile and sonic elements within exhibition spaces. Do you think this is a valuable contribution as an alternative perceptual and explorative tool or the result of a current trend to make exhibitions as interactive as possible? WB: No, I think it really does have cognitive value. From my point of view, which is that of the historian and not that of the museum professional, the possibility of having multiple tools in alternative to traditional tools, which are the tools of written communication, the possibility of collecting impressions connected to tactility or sound gives great added value. Again, we must specify: as long as this specific tactile or sonic operation is functional to a certain storytelling and communicative objective, and not simply used as an impressive tool. We have to be careful to adopt these communicative tools in a significant and structured way.
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LD: The archive folders in the Mafia section seem to me a good example. WB: Yes I think so, we were trying to communicate a number of issues there: first of all, that the Mafia was a phenomenon with solid roots in Italian history, that the Italian State had started a battle against the Mafia and repeatedly brought its members to court. Each of these folders was a legal case against the Mafia and we wanted to give a sense of just how many these cases were. We scanned all the original folders and reproduced them physically to be exactly identical to the originals, even though the public might not imagine this. Then we came up with this system to open the folders and tell the stories they hold. LD: Did you consciously decide to make the exhibition multi-sensorial? WB: Yes, indeed, but with the help of Studio Azzurro, who provided us with possible options. We feared that it would result too superficial, focusing too much on the visual impact and evocative dimension and too little on a correct communication of the historical facts. In other words, an excessive dose of emotional engagement and sensationalism. So this is, summing up, the essence of our work. LD: One last thing the newspapers say the exhibition will move from the OGR. Do you think the exhibition will lose something in this passage? WB: No, it has been decided that the exhibition will stay for one more year at the OGR. It will reopen as it is and in the same space. As the loan period for the works of art in the first hall will now expire we have to develop a new plan for that room. LD: From a technical point of view does the building give problems? WB: It gives many problems. We will have to protect our technical equipment from the cold and humidity! LD: In your opinion would the exhibition lose something from the narrative perspective? In other words, what role does the building of OGR have in the conceptual construction of the exhibition? WB: It would lose something without any possible doubt. It is absolutely fundamental, because it is a shell that already tells the story of 150 years of Italian history, a story of an industrial world long gone and where Italian history has also taken shape. Our history has grown and it emancipated itself also thanks to the passage from a rural, agricultural and illiterate Italy, peripheral and poor, to an urban Italy, transformed by industrial and post-industrial development. Our first schools were professional schools because we needed workers and
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middle classes. Therefore we can say that the only real, fundamental object of the exhibition is, in fact, the building. LD: Thank you very much Mr Barberis for our conversation.

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Interview with Anna Maria Martina, Director of the Officine Grandi Riparazioni (OGR) and Marina Bertiglia, Head of Education. 22nd of November 2011, Committee for the Celebrations of the 150 years of the Italian Unification, Cultural Department, City of Turin, Italy. Translated from Italian, abridged version.

LD: Mrs Martina, Mrs Bertiglia, thank you for your time. My first question for Ms Martina is why were the OGR buildings chosen as the site of the Unification celebrations? What were the objectives and in what way did this space make the difference? AMM: The OGR is a wonderful building that represents the industrial past of Turin. The 22,000m of the overall structure are part of a larger area, of 200,000m, built at the end of the 19th century for the construction and maintenance of railway material and therefore managed by the Italian railways. Of this larger area what remained was this H-shaped building, composed of two great rectangular spaces with a smaller connecting area. Each of these are of 10,000m, the smaller area is of 2,000m. The building was in disuse for more than 20 years now and had become a cathedral of an industrial past, a fascinating structure that was highly run-down and to which we did not make any radical change. We only ensured all safety measures were taken to make the place habitable for the celebrations. For example, we substituted broken glass with Plexiglas panels or a layer of concrete to cover the floors that were full of fissures and cracks. So the building maintained all its characteristics, this enchanting and mysterious look, that allowed the exhibition to be hosted in a unique environment. The container thus becomes an important component of the visit. LD: The choice of Studio Azzurro certainly reflects the intention to create an immersive, sensorial, engaging environment. Was it purposely decided not to make a traditional museum-like exhibition? AMM: It is clear that when you choose a space such as this one for an exhibition, youre already thinking it is going to be a special project. The planning of the exhibition was thus meant to respect the building, without violating its nature or characteristics. This is why we asked Studio Azzurro to develop the project, while we could simply have asked an architect or a designer to make a proposal. All these different elements are connected. LD: Does this project, with its immersive dimension, fall within a larger political vision of rehabilitation of post-industrial spaces through the development of
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cultural projects? What is the added value of reutilising spaces such as this one from the perspective of the Cultural Dept of the City of Turin? AMM: It must be said that some of these choices are often somewhat obligations, behind which there isnt always an articulated reflection. But it is obvious that in a city that sees its industrial past slowly disappear many areas of the city fall in disuse and cease to assume any productive function. We thus have to think about how to use these areas. Some of them have been converted to residential areas, while others that remain available can be used quite nicely for cultural, artistic and animation events connected to contemporary culture. LD: I wonder if the use of these spaces can also contribute on a more metaphorical level, seeing these buildings come alive again, providing an additional layer of meaning to the cultural initiatives that they hold. MB: Can I mention a few things? I think that the case of the OGR - while it is not an isolated case, because it falls within a greater project of reutilisation of city spaces is rather special for its position in the fabric of the city. It is currently an area of great urban transformation and I think that this choice was driven by the idea that this new area, cutting across the city because it coincides with the old railway tracks, should be promoted. So the elements that you have highlighted, with regards to the connection between the Unification celebrations, the building of the OGR and this special exhibition on the history of Italians, also connects to this particular story of Turin. I think this element largely played a role. LD: Do you think that the use of industrial spaces can shorten the gap between cultural initiatives and the visiting public? AMM: The theme is complex, because we cannot use the exhibition Fare gli Italiani as a true example of what occurs elsewhere. It is a rather special case. Imagine if we had to display paintings! We could not use a space such as the OGR, so it cannot really be a model for wider practice. Even just the microclimate is not favourable to other forms of cultural intervention. Thats why we had to build a box-like room for the paintings on loan. This shows the relation between content and container. There is content that well adapts to environments of this type, other forms of narrative may need enclosed spaces for its communicative purposes. Fare gli Italiani had to be in the dark because of the rich use of multimedia made by Studio Azzurro. So there is a strong relation between container and content. Fare gli Italiani was conceived to adhere very strongly to the identity of the OGR. There is an extremely tight connection between space and display. But this is not always possible or, for other forms of content, a new building
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would work best. One example is the wonderful Neues Museum in Berlin that is very far from the case of the OGR but that seems to me as particularly well suited to its purpose. LD: Yes, in Berlin the architecture reflects a certain grandeur that also informed the restoration process. AMM: Surely, thus it reflects a tight relation between content, container and the space. Thats why there can be no absolute answers. LD: What do you think was the experience of the visitor of the Fare gli Italiani exhibition? How was it a project different from other exhibition projects here at the Cultural Dept? How did it touch its public? AMM: I think its success comes from the simple, clear use of very varied interpretive tools to present complex themes. It managed to communicate to a vast public, through different levels of narration, a variety of complex themes. MB: Usually people expect historical exhibitions to be largely dominated by chronology. The successful choice of the curatorial team was the thematic display, because this made the content approachable from a thematic perspective that brought it closer to the experience of the visitors. Themes like Work, the School, the Church are themes that run across the lives of every citizen LD: There is also a rather special core question: through what means have we become Italians? So it is an historical exhibition but the core centre is the Italian citizen. MB: Thats right. LD: Is there a growing need, in your opinion, for more spaces made for sociality? To meet, play, converse, possibly as a physical complement to the social networks that tend to push sociality increasingly outwards rather than inwards in the spaces that we actually inhabit. What role does the museum have and what role can it have in the future? AMM: We must think in perspective, because one thing is what museums are today and another is what they could be. The OGR have represented a great space of encounter rather than a museum. It worked thanks to the success of a largely innovative and attractive exhibition, on a theme that excited the wider public, and through events, through the restaurant it has been a meeting place for adults and children as well, through the educational workshops. Not all museums are like this, unfortunately, but it is true that the great ambition is for museums to become such meeting places. Today the meeting places of the city are mostly the squares, there is an extensive use of the agora.
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LD: Thank you very much Ms Martina. This concludes a first series of questions on the place of the OGR in the cultural activity of the city. I would now focus with Ms Bertiglias help on the educational activity at the OGR. It seems that a very strong choice has been made, namely to host these educational workshops in an extensive space with separate classrooms installed inside the OGR. What has been the thinking behind the educational programme of the OGR? MB: The creation of the spaces and of the education programme were born in parallel to the creation of the exhibitions. But the key term that has kept all these strings together has been experience. All our events are collected under this expression Experience Italy and the term experience is to some extent synonym of learning. Having an experience thus means learning and we decided that it would be great to have a space where, during the celebrations, schools would have the opportunity to engage in different kinds of experiences. The other interpretation of the term experience is that the schools could bring their own experiences, so that the more institutional account provided through the exhibition would blend with personal stories. So some of the workshops were made available to the schools to present their own projects. LD: In what ways did the immersive, media-rich spaces of Fare gli Italiani contribute to the educational programme you envisioned? Did you work within the exhibition space and in what way? MB: As an educational team we followed every step of the development of the exhibition and this was extremely interesting for us, as we participated to the meetings with the curators and various content experts to get a sense of what the messages of the exhibition would be. When the exhibition was ready we considered how to create guided visits for the schools. The exhibition is very long and unlike the guided visits for the general public we decided to offer different possible school visits through the exhibition. We programmed visits that would be more compatible with the level of attention of the school children and we prepared additional material that could be taken home, leaving the groups free to make full use of the immersive qualities of the exhibition. While the key focus of the exhibition was this immersive nature, we wanted to guarantee a certain number of didactic tools, starting from the timelines in the exhibition which are a wonderful learning tool. So we tried to suggest ways in which the teachers could also play a role in the exhibition. LD: Did you mainly work with the self-held panels and the chronological organisation of content?
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MB: We mainly worked to create this additional material for teachers and also creating a web platform that would allow not an online visit but a presentation of the themes of the exhibition and their content. There was also a tagging system that allowed some level of participation by the teachers and their classes. We created a kind of guided social network in other words. LD: What role did the immersive dimension play? From the education perspective, do you think that it provided a tool that would not only capture the attention of the students but also make them more available and attentive to the didactic content of the exhibition? MB: Yes, this is indeed what happened. The school children found something that corresponded to their expectations and that they were used to, in communicative terms. It is a direct language form that created the conditions for their interaction. I have seen very small children arrive at the area on Immigration and immediately understand where the interactive component was and how it worked. This is something that adults did not usually have. In parallel to this the teachers could find within the exhibition spaces a vast array of tools to develop on the topics. So the immersive component could be introduced or followed by a more structured educational component that is closer to what is done in school, through the use of texts and so forth. LD: So rather than being distracting the immersive component worked in favour of content development? MB: I would certainly say so. This is one of the aspects of this exhibition that make it a model for future projects, with regards to the ways in which a cultural offer can be integrated to an educational offer. LD: We spoke with Mr Barberis and Mr Rosa on how much the modern exhibition should actually teach and how much it should rather evoke or suggest. Mr Rosa for instance suggested that people may no longer need the museum as a source of in-depth knowledge because they can have that information through other forms of media, so in his opinion the exhibition has a different function, that of evoking and creating the curiosity for more in-depth study. What do you think? MB: I agree. We have always told the schools that what we offer is informal learning. This is also the reason why we worked closely with the architects to ensure that the classrooms were not classrooms. We wanted it to be a different place from what children would find in schools. So we too were influenced by the space! We wanted a place that would allow participants to perceive the difference between a formal learning space and an informal learning context. We wanted
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colourful, technological and transparent spaces that would best work with the content and activities that would evolve in those spaces. LD: How do you judge multi-sensorial involvement in the exhibition spaces? For example the use of touch and sound within the spaces of OGR. Do you think were moving more and more towards a conception of multi-sensorial experiences or are they perhaps interpreted as a trend, that adds little to other forms of communication? MB: I think neuroscientists are right when they say that intelligence is multi-tasking, which to me not only corresponds to the ability to organise and manage several activities in front of a pc, but rather to the ability to make use of all the sensorial potential we have. LD: Some authors have developed the idea of multiple intelligences. MB: Thats right. We developed opportunities for moments of play and for example in the workshops on migration song was one of the central tools, recovering songs from the migrant communities.. LD: Do you think these tools have a greater chance of touching a wider public? MB: I see this within the context of the kind of society in which we are immersed. We live in a society that is highly multi-cultural, so an approach that takes on different forms and makes use of different language forms is much more correspondent to the needs of a multi-cultural society than a uniquely cognitive approach. The latter places an accent on linguistic competences and does not encourage other forms of communication that each culture may interpret and assign value to in different ways. In a multicultural society these forms mix. LD: Ive been thinking about the concept of habitat which I also found in the texts by Paolo Rosa. In what way do you think the museum today can be said to contribute to daily life? The OGR is in a way a transformation of the museum concept. MB: I think it is fairly established now that the museum, much like the school, is no longer a place for a uniform transmission of knowledge, as it was 100 or 50 years ago. The sources of information and knowledge are diverse. With some differences between the cultural and educational fields, both the school and the museum can help create a certain hierarchy of information, at a time in which Internet research gives equal value to Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. If I only make use of that system I dont have a way of evaluating the information I receive. Those organisations that have a social role can help young people identify hierarchies. The success of the exhibition Fare gli Italiani is such, in my view, for its ability to address a very complex theme, that of identity. It provides different interpretive tools and provides clarity through
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categories, in the same way that a school that works well helps children make necessary distinctions within knowledge systems. It is a new approach, that implies all that we have said. LD: Thank you very much Ms Bertiglia.

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Interview with Paolo Rosa Head of Design Fare gli Italiani, OGR, Turin 21st of November 2011, Studio Azzurro offices, Milan, Italy. Translated from Italian, abridged version

LD: Good afternoon Mr Rosa. In the publications regarding Studio Azzurros artistic production one comes across a number of recurring concepts, such as theatrical modality, performative experience, narrative habitat, as well as the passage from the museum of collection to museum of narration. If we had to identify the key components of this passage, what would they be in your opinion? PR: From my personal perspective, this transformation occurs with a gradual decrease in appeal of museums, that is of thematic museums, not contemporary art museums. This is due to the fact that outside the museum the spectacular and communicative dimension has known a considerably rapid growth, and that unless you are strongly passionate about its content or are a museum professional, it is difficult for the museum visitor to recognize within its walls the language forms that currently pervade our reality. This is a matter of fact. The museum responds to a logic that is somewhat out-of-date, based on the classification of objects and a strong didactic approach, the need to explain its objectives are primarily connected to issues of identity and education. By identity I mean the exhibition of local and national heritage and its explanation through the tools of classification, because the museum develops between the 18th and 19th century. In my opinion this logic of explanation and exhibition have in a sense disappeared, not because the need for identity or education/information has diminished, but they have changed in time. The arrival of new technologies, which at the beginning were adopted in a very utilitarian fashion, introducing databases and digital access to information, has opened up the museum to the possibility of generating a new evocative, narrative, immersive and experiential dimension in the museum visit. This tendency was already gaining ground in science museums, with an interest for more experiential and engaging visits, and with the gradual development of these technologies the crossing of boundaries has become more and more common, the need to tell stories about the object, what context does that object refer to, why it was made that way, and so forth, started to become more and more important in different museums, not merely through the use of illustrated captions but through a more engaging form of narration that recreates the experiential dimension of that story or object.
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In this context, I think there is the need for a fundamental transformation in the conceptual base of the museum, shifting the axis from a collection-based approach to a narration-based approach. Why? Because the kind of informative support traditionally provided in the museum can today be communicated through the web with incredible success and richness. So, experiencing the museum can become not just an informative experience but an emotional and collective one, that also strengthens a sense of ritual. Through this modality we can then present concepts and some of the more scientific/cultural messages, that can then be researched in more depth, for example from home, by means of other tools. LD: Would you say that in much the same way as theatre has gone through a process of transformation, reflecting on its traditional practices and rituals and their place in contemporary society, the museum is witnessing a phase of redefinition of its role? PR: Absolutely. The museum that embraces these new practices is one that frees all its imaginative and evocative potential, no longer asking the visitor to learn through didactic panels and a sequence of cases, but asking him/her to be somewhat the protagonist. Even more so in those museums that see immaterial heritage as cultural heritage and that do not have objects to exhibit. Here the evocative dimension has been favoured. I must also say from experience that there is more openness to this approach in thematic museums than in contemporary art museums. LD: I noticed that in your work, at the OGR but also in other projects, the image of the body recurs quite often. Is this a way to come closer to the museum visitor? Does it derive from your theatrical/video experience? In the City section of the Fare gli Italiani exhibition you have placed transparent screens at ground level on a 1:1 ratio with the scale of the visitor PR: Yes, we have always worked that way, since the Il Nuotatore installation we created for Palazzo Fortuny in Venice. The ratio 1:1 with the visitor is a way to create a mirror effect, so that the narration is not passively experienced but through this contact it is produced together with the visitor. This is the objective we had given ourselves. This is true of the first installations we did but even more with the latest, where we could use technologies that allow much greater interactivity. The 1:1 ratio favours this specular experience, in which you recognize yourself in the image, you find yourself in the same situation and the limit between visitor and image blurs. Its true that, although I didnt do it with a conscious intent, it indeed refers a lot back to our experience in theatre in 19841985 where there was a dialogue between the actor on the scene and his reflected other projected on a screen on the backdrop, forming a kind of circularity between real and virtual.
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LD: Yes, I was wondering whether this was a conscious intent at the OGR, because the museum as medium, and more than other media, seems to be placed at meeting point between the real and the imaginative. More specifically, the OGR project is particularly aimed, to my understanding, in creating a direct continuum between Italians of today and our fathers, reconstructing the physical and sensory practices of past generations: looking up to the bombardments, tuning the radio in wartime, sitting in front of an open-air cinema, looking down at a pit where the bodies of the victims of the Mafia there are many moments throughout the exhibition where historical reconstruction is channelled through sensorial, physical involvement. PR: We have always worked on the meeting point between physical and virtual, on the poly-sensory experience: we try in other words to immerge the visitor in physical situations, in what we recently defined as narrative habitats: in contexts that are fertile, that invite engagement through the convergence of these two worlds, the real and the imaginative, that are no longer clearly distinct. We do so attentively, to avoid the negative aspects that can be associated with the use of technology and the confusion between real and virtual. For example, technology has brought a process of increasing isolation and personalisation of technological interaction, so that the user is more and more immersed in the computer screen with looser links to the outside world. In university people sit together and focus each on their own screen, which is becoming smaller and smaller. Or these social networks, where you have the impression of being connected with many people at once but in fact youre connected to a computer. So we try to develop antibodies to this tendency of technology to separate the individual. We counteract this process with interventions of an opposite nature, creating opportunities for sociality. These narrative habitats respond to this intent, the creation of contexts that was already part of our sensitive environments experiments and which is even more the case for our museum projects. LD: Do you feel that this approach has gained ground in recent years or is it still rather new in the museum world, according to your experience? PR: With regards to museums I think the need for change has been felt very strongly, in old museums as in new ones. The need, for example, of telling stories through immaterial traces in the many empty spaces that were left during the process of deindustrialisation. They may contain wonderful stories but very little remains to bear witness. So reconstructing, regenerating stories, experiencing spaces that evoke, are all significant modalities.

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LD: Do you think these tools work especially well to tell universal stories, stories that touch the intimate dimension of the individual? Or according to the approach adopted they can work equally well to tell historical facts? PR: I dont think the two things contradict each other. Even from the perspective of the artist creating an instrument that comes in dialogue with the visitors, that has the chance to build this box that is then presented to the public, it is a great opportunity to integrate other materials, content that is neither universal or historical in nature, but rather territorial, connected to local experience. Through these media you have a chance to say something regarding your territory, regarding stories that youve heard or experienced, fragments and stories from a specific place and time. In OGR, it was a rather brave choice of the curators not to opt for a celebratory exhibition, I dont think they would have called us in that case. Within this choice we hoped to come into dialogue with this historical content and knowledge, and like all forms of dialogue it means that you acquire something and offer something else in return. It is through this exchange that the value and approach of your intervention emerges. Dialogue does not always come without moments of conflict, but I think we overcame these well, without radicalising our positions but finding ways of surmounting differences through different proposals. Some of the themes became clearer thanks to this confrontation, and our images, visions, methods sometimes helped make content choices because it gave the curators something in return that they could also work with. Inversely we learned a lot from them and sometimes with difficulty, because they were worried historians would not find information they deemed essential, but we tried to make the chronological panels different from ordinary panels. LD: Did you ever discuss the risk that the exhibition would be too spectacular, without enough historical or sociological content? I was surprised to notice that a great portion of the visitors of OGR spent a great amount of time reading the panels, despite the presence of spectacular and interactive stations. PR: Not despite, but also thanks to the stations. It is as if we come into a world and firstly, we breathe in that world, secondly we want to understand it. The two dimensions are not in contrast. Firstly I hear the dialects, I see those examples, I experience the surprise of the City section, secondly I want to understand the sequence of those facts, the nature of that specific content. We experienced this in the experimentation of the 1980s, understanding that there can be narrative islands in which you immerge yourself to bring out more content. If we had only suggested didactic panels it would not have been an exhibition of equal success, people go to that exhibition with the intention of understanding, not being passive.
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LD: So the evocative dimension acquires the function of access to further content? PR: Yes, it provides access, as well as the experiential dimension. In some museums, visitors become participants, generating changes in the museum. LD: How do you see these tools in relation to visitor segmentation? Were some tools considered for younger or older publics? I have the impression that exploring the physical and sensorial dimension pulls on the human factors that contribute to our experience rather than age and cultural differences. PR: Well, it is true that the experience of someone who is 60 is quite different from that of someone who is 12. But they are worlds that can come into dialogue, and I would like to defend, in this case, the language forms derived from the development of new technologies and of the media system. It is a universal language with which I can speak to the old and the young, to someone here and someone on the other side of the world. There is a language that is becoming universal, fragments of language that we have not learned to master completely yet, it is a multimedia language that we have difficulty talking about but that we all understand. We must be aware of this change. We have worked on the basis of this idea for years and we have come to the conclusion that for us the public is undifferentiated. It is an experience that is, by definition, free from concepts of target and segmentation. This is the incredible result of technology that also produces targets in other domains! LD: To my understanding, one of the things that differentiate the work of Studio Azzurro is that in the moment in which it is commissioned to do a project, your commissioners are probably asking for forms of spectacle proper of the media world that would impress the public and what you give them, through the same technological tools, is something quite different. How do you communicate to your commissioners that difference between the spectacle of advertising and television and the kind of intervention you try to put across? PR: Well, thats a really good question! I think the key is using that technological tool and its specific language to generate a poetical dimension. Different tools and narrative forms can be used in different ways, but when such tools successfully suggest something, provoke a feeling, youre moving into a sphere that is something else from sheer spectacle. It is touching emotional chords and it is at that level that it really makes a difference. The difference that people see in our work and that I can see as a result is this utilization of media forms - that are made use of, usually, to create special effects or to be consumed as spectacle, as you say often in rather simple ways, but in order to make that shift from the research of spectacle to the spectacle of research. That is when it becomes a poetical construction.
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But there is also something I wanted to tell you before, regarding the exhibition Fare gli Italiani. At a certain point I came to the realisation that what they were asking us was not a celebratory intervention, they were asking us to tell the story of 150 years of the history our country in an exhibition that is only done every 50 years. It was something very important in which it would have been easy to slip into a rhetorical dimension. The way we approached it was: we are here in the spaces of a factory, which in itself sets a certain historical dimension; the exhibition is called Fare gli Italiani , the making of Italians, and we always considered the museums in which we worked as workshops so, we told ourselves that we would have to find ways by which a visitor leaving the exhibition would not so much leave knowing everything on the history of Italy, but feeling a little more Italian, feeling that he or she could do something to feel and make others feel a little more Italian. I was very impressed and happy to hear throughout the exhibition, going there as a simple visitor, that people were saying exactly this, that they felt a little more Italian by the end of it. This for me is the greatest result. We can receive wonderful reviews from critics and magazines, but when I hear the public make that reflection, move through the threshold of emotional involvement, that is the biggest reward. The staff in the exhibition spaces told me You have no idea just how many people come up to us to give us other fragments of stories related to the thematic stations, regarding the bombardments, or immigration, it opens a whole world of memory. At least 3 or 4 people per day would come to them and say You know as these things were happening we were in the shelters! It is also true that an exhibition such as this one will not stay on top of the charts among the three most seen exhibitions in Italy for nine full months if it wasnt for an incredible spreading of the news by word of mouth. Everywhere I moved in Italy people would come to me and say Oh we heard it is having enormous success! LD:A few other questions before I leave you to your meeting. What were the potential and limits of the OGR space? How was it different to other museum spaces and do you think you could do a similar operation in a traditional museum? PR: That space immediately spoke to me. It happens to us often for our installations to ask the space itself to tell us something and the OGR told us many things, we could imagine the work routine, the voices, this invisible dimension and spirit of the places it emerges if you can read it and it tells you how to proceed. That space gave me the impression we could not close it up into rooms, and we imagined it from the very beginning as a landscape, contained within this immense factory, a landscape that would recall, as well, the morphology of Italy, with areas of different height, passages, areas in dark to be discovered
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LD: Enhancing the presence and value of what was already present in the architecture? PR: Absolutely. Giving the idea of unity, of a whole always visible from the area in which you find yourself. Each area has its specifics but you never lose this overarching vision of different times and spaces. LD: Do you think this kind of setting is a step forward from other operations such as the white cube, with the necessary distinctions between the needs of the art museum and the history museum? PR: Without any doubt. The white cube is an invention of the art world to suit the needs of artworks that if placed within the spaces of the OGR would die under the weight of the history of this space. Our critical position towards art museums derives from these considerations: they are very often either make reference only to themselves, making spectacle of themselves, for a generally elite public. We saw it with the big archistars Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and the MAXXI in Rome museum-artworks. LD: I was impressed by the use of the word habitat which is rather rare in museum literature, and I wonder to what extent the museum could well become a public social space that could assume the secular role of the church or the public square as areas of aggregation, exchange and discussion. The museum is becoming more open, transparent, not only in terms of architecture and access but also transparency of processes, such as with the open storage, or free entry for those institutions that can afford it - all of this moves towards a conception of what the museum is which is still rather new PR: Absolutely, I agree and I think I have expressed it in several occasions, also through the book Museums of Narration, because I think it is a fundamental thesis: the construction of places for rituality which have ceased to exist and have been substituted by the great commercial spaces, as this has become the new religion.. We have to work to create once again spaces for a new sociality and why not have the ambition for these spaces to be connected to culture and not just entertainment. Why not imagine culture to really be at the centre? Not a centre, though, where you feel the weight of knowledge, of ready-made discourse, but a place where you can contribute, learn, dialogue with and have fun with too, in a place where you have experiences with other people, finding once again a ritualistic dimension. That is my great illusion. But let me say one last thing regarding this idea of museums as places of ritual: why is this important? Because in these places you can find not only elements of history, experiences and stories, but you can find connections with your present and with your future. Museums that truly make use of technologies are also meta120

museums, they speak about their primary content but they also tell you about technology itself, they update you in different language forms, so they allow you to experience the language of our contemporary world. Thats why people can then come back. Because they know they will learn from those different forms in time and as these evolve. They will no longer feel there is always the same thing to find there. LD: Have you ever thought about the physical experience of the visitor in terms of what this adds to the daily practices of life? What does it bring on the experiential level? For example we spend much of our time in front of the computer, we use the city in a very functional way, in other words we have practices that reduce the richness of our everyday experience, not just within the city space but in social terms and in domestic spaces. PR: Absolutely. Relational space is at the core of our work, where our intervention is responded to with a positive act, with involvement, an unexpected response from the visitor, for me that has great aesthetic value. This breaks with the idea that someone is telling you things you have to learn, or that there is a predictable communication between institution and audience where you cannot dialogue. So in this context the museum becomes a fundamental space, a space for relations, where you experiment different timeframes, different ways of being with people, different ways from what we are currently accustomed to with technology. LD: It seems that the museum, instead of becoming a centre of reference is actually trying to move outside of itself, and goes online, where works can be consulted in virtual tours. PR: Thats one of the phenomena that I really dislike. I think of it this way: the museum has one extra room, that is virtual, but it is not this room that replicates what is in the other rooms. The museum must be a unique experience, it should be lived there, physically, within that specific space and I go there and in doing so I engage in a ritual part of my daily life. Then I can go online, to make further readings, to go more in depth, linking my experience with other museums that are in the world. Today we have the opportunity to open up to an incredible amount of knowledge. But the practice of museum-going occurs there, physically and in relation with others, also through the use of multimedia but not in a space uniquely devoted to simulation. LD: One last question: why do people go to museums if once they get there they quickly scan objects and panels retaining very little of the content curators mean to communicate? PR: Its the appeal of marketing, its in my opinion a rather perverse system in which museums try to increase quantitatively visitor numbers. But on the other hand, people also have a true need to confront themselves with their culture, with stories
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and narration, with their own identity and it is an attempt to visit themselves, their interiority. To do so there is a need for more than just entertainment, like the soccer match or commercial phenomena so common these days. There is a need for recovery, for a secular spirituality that offers greater horizons to the self, and a different base for relations with others. LD: Do you think the transformations of the museum move towards this? PR: I would say that in time the museum could become all of this. LD: Thank you for your precious time.

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Interview with Carl Depauw Director of the Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp, Belgium 15th of December 2011, MAS, Antwerp Abridged version

LD: Mr Depauw, the first important issue is the project of urban regeneration that concerned the MAS. I understand this was the first objective of the museum project? CD: There were three objectives. The first was to create an architectural icon. At the beginning it was asked Why should we build a new museum in Antwerp? - it was more than a hundred years since a new museum had last been built in this city. The first idea for a new museum dates from 1994 and then until 2000 there was a political discussion. The question was why to invest in culture while citizens were complaining on the problem of cleanness and safety in the city. So that took six years and in 1999 they decided they would build the new museum. They chose this place and gave themselves three objectives: the first was to create an icon and that is why they opened an international architecture competition. Secondly, if we are to place the museum in an area such as this one, then it should become a stimulus to the whole neighbourhood. Five years ago you would have been shocked by the vastness of this area, nobody lived here, nobody came here. This was the old warehouse area, the old city stopped there. One hundred years ago this was a very lively area, people worked here and the harbour was next to the city and the city next to the harbour. But then there was a gap in the 70s. With a new type of architecture, this cultural impulse becomes a stimulus for others to invest in this area. This is what is happening now. The third objective was to create a new museum that would improve in terms of audiences. Before we had collections held in buildings that were totally inappropriate to receive visitors: small, narrow, old-fashioned, old buildings that were never meant to act as a museum, an old castle, an old guild house LD: You felt you needed a museum that would be built purposely to house those collections. CD: Better housing of the collections and better reception of the audiences. That is why we have a big entrance where people can meet and discuss the walking boulevard up the floors, it is a public street that makes it a lot more accessible and enjoyable to stay here.
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As much as I have deep respect for conservators and curators, they focus on the collections rather than on the audiences. This is a tower. Why did the architect come up with a tower? Because he wanted to make a confrontation with the warehouses. Historically we had warehouses where cultural goods were stored and now we have a warehouse of cultural goods. In a way I offended the curators by considering this as a cultural shopping mall. This is a shopping centre. What do you shop? I like to make the comparison with Alice in wonderland. Every visitor has to behave and we would invite him to behave like Alice. She comes in and we seduce her to go in one of the boxes. This is the museum part. So it is like standing on a shopping street and inviting people to go shopping, the one interested in old-fashioned clothes, the other in second hand, the other very innovative, clothes you almost cant wear but its nice to have so every level has a different kind of story. LD: Were you concerned with making connections between the parts? On the one hand, you communicate everything together as the MAS, but it is also very separated because there are different boxes. Is it a challenge? CD: It is more difficult for the curators and conservators than for the audiences. In our communication we invited people to come to the MAS but even after youve been here you havent seen anything yet. That was our message: there is so much to see, so much to do, so much to experience, that you, Alice, as a free visitor, you decide how and where and for how long you want to stay. It is a museum in which we like to give an extreme feeling of freedom. For us to be honest it doesnt matter where people go. What we notice now already, among Visitor Services, is that people say this is so much, there is so much to do and experience that we cannot do it in one day, we have to come back and thats perfect because we love repeating visitors. From my point of view the major success of the MAS is that here we reflect the fact that Antwerp is a very cosmopolitan city. There are 160 different nationalities living here. Antwerp is a relatively small town but it is interesting because you can find the world in 15-20minutes walk. You can meet people from all over the world in a very small town, and this has been the case for centuries, so this is what the MAS is about. We invited different communities to think about how this could become their museum. This is a museum for the city but it is especially a museum with the city. So we invite communities to come up with stories which to them reflect the city. LD: What about the collection? What role does it play? CD: Everything starts from the collection, but from there many stories can be told. We started to think, where are the gaps in our collection? We have the biggest Jewish orthodox community after Israel and New York. This is very important
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for us, they play a very important role in the city and it has been so for ages. How come we do not have Jewish collections? How can we become a museum of the city if we dont have that? This is our work in progress. If you stand on the first floor, you will see our mission statement: what is this museum about? It is about Antwerp, a city next to a river with a world port. It is a small town but it is on the world map because of its port and it is through the port and the river that we have so much diversity, so many communities. We call it our elevator pitch. Youre on the ground floor and youre going up to the fourth floor and you ask me what is the MAS? I have four floors time to tell you very briefly what the MAS is about. This is the framework we work with. All the areas before the fourth floor are related to that overarching theme: the open storage, the temporary exhibition But in my point of view the success of the MAS is that it is very personal. We had a marketing plan based on 250,000 visitors in one year. We are now seven months from the opening and we have reached 700,000 visitors. Thats good, high visitors numbers are good. It is important to have a certain number of visitors but it is equally important to take care of them. So we did that, by inviting them to participate in the storytelling and also, another success and Ive been working for the museum field in Antwerp for more than 20 years is to see Jewish people in the museum. I had never seen that before in Antwerp. I had never seen Jains and Muslims in a museum here, but they work and live in the city. Round the corner from the museum there is an old couple who has a small shop of cheese and bread Franz and Helene, and they never go to a museum, they are totally unaware about culture. Suddenly they say to me, Well, we went to the MAS and we enjoyed it and have to come back. So we have found new visitors to our museum. LD: Why do you think that is so? The architecture, the boulevard, the collections? CD: I think its because of the combination. I think the ingredients for the success of the MAS are the location, the architecture, and the feeling that Ive heard among many people, We came to the MAS but this is not a museum. It is an experience. This is what we wanted to do. I think people dont think that this is a museum because we work with all the senses. You can touch things, you can hear things we have a house composer so most of the senses are added to the experience feeling, smelling, hearing, looking at things. We didnt want our objects to be behind showcases. We have worked with scenographers. LD: It is a bit like a cabinet of curiosities in some areas. CD: Yes. We asked our scenographers, who are not traditional museum scenographers, but who work for fashion designers, and I asked them to put
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more of opera and theatre in the museum. These are two environments where authors and artistic staff have imagination. This is something which has lacked in the museum field: imagination. LD: In what way is the MAS more theatre? CD: It is more theatre in our scenography, the power of display on the fourth floor - in the beginning, when we presented it to the conservators, they were absolutely in shock. They thought people would no longer pay attention to the objects. But it doesnt work like that: people are attracted by the scenography and they come to the object. It is complementary. LD: Its like the building itself. CD: Thats right. A lot of international journalists asked us Arent you afraid that the building is suffocating the objects? But if we just look in terms of who is coming to the MAS, the walking boulevard and the architecture are the seducers. About 40% of visitors go through the boulevard and up to the panoramic rooftop. Thats free access. About 60% buys the ticket and has the ambition to go into one of the boxes and see the exhibitions. LD: I have the impression the MAS is one of a few rare cases where there is a very physical openness, transparency, that makes people watching outside want to come in and participate. Of course this is easier when constructing a new museum building, but again it is rather unusual to see the architect literally move outside the museum and build the public square and pavilions around it. Do you think this is a valuable experiment? CD: I guess you could say its a way to put more of the museum experience outside the museum, like in the pavilions. They are sponsored by private partners, but they are filled with things that are complementary with the experience of the MAS. LD: What about this idea of container boxes? Was it the idea of the architect? Did you have other ideas? CD: Well, the project started in 1999 and the first idea was to create a warehouse made of containers stacked one above the other and make a story regarding the maritime history of Antwerp. I found this interesting, but too thin. I saw many more opportunities in other collections. In 2005 there was an exhibition in the Ethnographical Museum on the Moroccan culture, and Moroccans are the largest African community living in Antwerp. This exhibition was anthropological and it was looking at the aesthetic dimension of the collection. But it didnt create a bridge with the community and I found that a pity. Because if you do an exhibition for
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Moroccan culture one of the target audiences should be the Moroccan community. Thats why I suggested the ethnographic collections should be associated to the stories of the MAS and have not an inward story but an outward story. That could connect Antwerp with the world, so it was functional to the completeness of the concept. At the beginning people were asking, Can this museum attract international audiences? and when I decided to use the ethnographical collections to add these new stories, given also the architecture, I was convinced that this could attract international audiences too. Why? Because we have a thematical tower, in which we have themes related to Antwerp but they are also universal themes. It doesnt matter where they come from, people always find a trace of their culture in Antwerp. The Chinese can find out how the Chinese ship models were housed here, Indonesians can find out how the collection was based in Antwerp. People find their stories here whether they live here or not. Among the comments we receive from visitors is the satisfaction of finding themselves represented. Thats not so common, maybe you find that in the British Museum, but the approach of the British Museum is completely different. LD: What about the open storage? How did this start? CD: This is a story Im really proud of. Again, with a great respect for the conservation and preservation department and the things they do, for them the museum is a place where it is not allowed to let people in. A place where nothing can happen, in the dark, and thats the best situation for the objects. Suddenly the Director wants that they think about the possibility of mixing the depot and an exhibition space. That discussion took one year. The conservation department thought this would be totally uninteresting. Its dangerous! Because people can touch. So I asked Can we not organise it in a way that people cant touch? So they said Ok well do it that way, but why would it be interesting for them to see our working spaces? Precisely that is interesting, you go there every day and for you that space is normal. But for the visitors this is a unique experience, this is Alice in Wonderland. At the end I was happy to be able to develop that project of the open depot and after six months it was clear that it was the major success of the MAS. The great majority of our visitors go to the open depot. Its because people like to open drawers and go on exploration, its Alice in Wonderland. LD: What about this contrast between the public boulevard and the black box? Do you think it is necessary to create black boxes?

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CD: There was one remark by an architect and journalist who said its a pity that you dont have open windows but this is exactly what we chose. Because if you let in daylight it results in measurement mistakes, conservation and restoration issues. LD: It is also more immersive. CD: Yes, we planned the visit so that a visitor spends about 40 minutes in a black box. We then made it so that when a visitor comes out of the black box into the boulevard - that is one third of the building - this part is constantly connected to the outside. This is much more than most museums have. LD: I was thinking about the ratio between open space and collection space. Are museums going more towards larger public spaces and smaller collection spaces? CD: It was the architect who did the trick: one third boulevard/windows and two thirds collection space. On the other hand, the idea of the architect was to fill the boulevard. The MAS in your hands young people who have competed with an artist, their works are exposed over the escalators as you may have seen. I was concerned that if we didnt plan for young people, they would not come after the opening because they would find nothing for them. We thus worked four years with a team of young people between 16 and 22 years old and they did interventions around the MAS, like on the staircases. We invited them to become curators too and this is very important for us because we do think long term and if we do not invest in youngsters, who go to our theatres, to our museums. Nothing is permanent here. Everything is semi-permanent. If you come in five years youll see that everything has changed. Its a combination between a museum and what is called a kunsthalle in German, a cultural centre. This is what we would like to do. My ambition is to make the collections more dynamic, make acquaintance with the audiences, give them a good reason to come back, so that one will say to the other what, you havent been to the MAS this year? because things change here, they dont stay the same. That is also unlike most museums, where things stay unaltered for 20-30 years. This is what we dont want to do and the flexibility of the building gives the opportunity to do that. With these boxes, you can always change box. Its a contemporary museum, its about the past, the present but also the future. You cannot make it more dynamic only with old collections, you need to invite contemporary artists because they pose questions, they start to debate on issues you would like to bring in. We do it for audiences. We see that our audience is very mixed and I would dare to say that it is not easy in a museum with such a cultural mix of
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audiences. That has to do with building with the community, with the stories we bring, but I think that a good healthy mix of old and modern art people come for the contemporary art and they are confrontated with old art, and viceversa. LD: You see that happening in all the floors? CD: Yes, always. Everywhere we have old and modern. Even on the 8th floor - the section on Life and Death, based on the pre-Columbian collection of Paul and Dora Janssen - has a contemporary accent. The entrance is contemporary, on modern Indians, the Kayapo what do they tell us today, how important are they for us now, for the city community? This is the contemporary introduction to the old collections from 2000-3000 years ago. LD: Is this attitude transforming the way that curators work? CD: Yes. I believe that we are confronted in the museums with an enormous challenge and thats the mental transformation of curators. Im still convinced that some of the curators need to focus on some specific themes, but at the same time I believe that we are now in a time of transition and there will be a time, we will reach a moment in which we will invite curators to act with a more open mind. This is just what is happening in our society. People are multi-shopping, travelling. My generation would go to the south of France or Italy for 20 years. But now young people are travelling, they want to go to Peru and Australia, its a more open mind. LD: Is it not also the hypertext, the Internet that has contributed? CD: Yes, thats it. So, in a way this museum wants to reflect what is happening in the society and for the conservators its a very tough task to operate that mental switch. At the beginning the conservators were worried, Right, we have our black boxes and are people coming in? and now they see that 60% of them go for the exhibitions. What a relief! LD: Thank you very much Mr Depauw.

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Interview with Sven Grooten Project Director MAS design, B-Architecten, Antwerp, Belgium 21st of December 2011, B-Architecten offices, Antwerp Abridged version

LD: At what moment of the project were you asked to collaborate and what was the brief for you and your team? How did you choose to approach it? SG: The architecture project was run by Willem Jan Neutelings. We were uniquely responsible for the scenography, for the design of the exhibitions, so we were involved when everything concerning the building had already been determined. All the design decisions for that were made by the Director Carl Depauw and the architect. You know the collection of the MAS has four sources: the Ethnographical Museum, the National Maritime Museum, the Ethnological Museum, as well as the Paul and Dora Janssen Arts preColumbian art collection. The first thing I asked Carl was his vision, because I firmly believe that an exhibition and we have done others is not a tool to share knowledge, for which there are other tools such as books and internet, and so forth. The exhibition for me is a kind of experience that you deliver to the visitor, it is a three-dimensional experience. More like a three-dimensional theatre play, more than a focus on the object with all its beauty. Thats the way that I like to visit museums, so its like a performance of one hour, one hour and a half, with more than one sense involved, so smell and sound are very important. Also, it is essential that you treat, in a very aesthetic way, the theme of the exhibition to tell a story and not the story. Because sometimes museums are still based on the 19th century concept of telling the story. For me its more like a theatre play or like a movie, a story of a certain period and in one or two years we can tell another story. So I asked Carl Depauw what is the theme of the museum? If someone visited the MAS with which story should he or she go home? He said Antwerp in the world, and the world in Antwerp so if you visit the museum you have to understand what is the position of Antwerp in the world, because Antwerp left its traces everywhere in the world by artists, technicians, scientists, by medicine, culture, the harbour But the other way round as well, the world left its traces in Antwerp by immigration, Napoleon, the Spanish, the Dutchyou still see the traces of these stories in the city. So this is the baseline of the MAS.

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This is how it was organised before we started: the offices, the open depot, the temporary exhibitions and five levels of somewhat permanent exhibitions: the city, the harbour, Africa and Oceania, America and Asia. This is how they proposed it. These last three levels reflected exactly how the ethnographical museum was organised three years ago. In this way each Director has his own level and its easy to share and organise the museum. I say ok, but if someone is visiting the museum the standard situation is maybe a family with two kids or just a couple visiting Antwerp how long are they visiting the museum? Maximum 2 hours. If you go to the MAS, the vertical boulevard is free and you can go to the roof so thats part of the two hours. The open depot is always for free too, so when you dont have to pay people will walk through. Maximum one and a half hour is left. This is a fact. Secondly, if you want to communicate the story on Antwerp and the world, the visitor has to visit at least the floor on the city, on the harbour and one of the other three. LD: So thats maximum half an hour each. SG: So thats too much. Each floor is 800m and its impossible to do it! I said you will never be able to tell your story on Antwerp and the world because everything is separated. As part of our approach, although this was not what they asked us, we said you have to consider the 4 collections of the 4 museums as one collection and pick out elements that you think are important to tell a story on one floor and each story on one floor has to be a thematic exhibition - for example now theyre very interested in power, life and death, universal themes that can interest a lot of people. Then you can choose elements from all your different collections and on one floor you will have stories about Antwerp, the world, about the history and about the future. So that if you visit just one floor you will always be able to find the story of Antwerp in the world and the world in Antwerp. We proposed different themes and that the collections be mixed, so that youre not just piling the old museums one on top of the other. For the visitors its a new museum, they dont care about the old organisation, it is a chance to pick out the best objects to tell one story on each floor. This was an earthquake in Antwerp. A tradition of maybe sixty years totally changed. LD: Did you find availability? SG: I must say that both Carl, the City Mayor and the people responsible for the museums of Antwerp were very open to this. I have to say that for the local museum directors, who thought they would each get a floor for themselves this was harder to accept. Carl and the City Mayor were very quickly convinced that this would be the only right way to make a new museum.
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Secondly, this is the model of the floor plan for all the floors. Here you have the boulevard, the people movers and the area with all the elevators and technical equipment. Here is the entrance door to the exhibition. What we did before designing for the collection was to say: consider the objects as equal and not have four different collections; secondly, the museum is a threedimensional theatre play and you need a kind of dramaturgy, an order in which the curator has to put the objects . LD: Second earthquake. SG: Thats right! There are also technical issues you should know about: the boulevard is too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, its a semi climate, therefore you need a transition area, an in-between space. You have that at the beginning and at the end of the visit on each floor and, from there on, it is a climatised space. So for technical reasons we cannot place objects in the transition areas and the boulevard. The transition area is also a part of the fire escape route so youre not allowed to put anything if there is panic When you see the groundplan designed by Neutelings you can identify seven spaces. Among these, two are transition spaces. The first and last usable spaces are three meters high, theyre low spaces. Then theres the Focus area which is very narrow 2,70m by 13m. So what we call the WOW! space is the only big space we have, it is 39m x 18m. The Concentration space, the second largest space is somewhat a squared space. I like the building. It is like a movie, everything that you know is left somehow behind, there is no glimpse to the outside or loss of concentration. Its a kind of black box. So the idea is that when you go in, youre immediately impressed by an installation or an image that is a direct confrontation between the visitor and the theme that you want to tell. You dont read any text before, its a visual confrontation, you may get a little confused, and only in the second space, the Introduction space, you will find the texts on what the exhibition is about. LD: Was this space somewhat conceived in this way to start with? SG: Willem Jan had no idea about the collection when he was designing the museum. He had some ideas but they changed completely. We were in good terms with Willem Jan, it was a pity that we didnt get the commission earlier so that we could work together on the fine tuning of the museum. The bad thing is that he had no idea what would go in, but the good thing is that the museum is a kind of black box with a certain flexibility. Of course its not that flexible, because it has wooden floors and these golden things on the walls its not at all a black box but it was the taste of the architect and we had to deal with it. All the exhibitions we design are temporary and you have to change it because it has to live, its a story and not the story.
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Getting back to the grid, then you have the focus space, which is a strange space in the architecture. We called it focus so you can concentrate on a certain topic depending on the theme. But then you come to the Wow! space and we call it that way because we would want people to come in and say Wow! so it has to be impressive. When you enter this space you need to be able to say Ok, I have 4 or 5 or 3 sub-clusters so that its very easy to understand. You go from cluster to cluster, sub-theme to sub-theme. When we have groups of 15-20 people, they can easily stand here and have a short introduction about each theme. So it is really designed for the Wow, the overview and to make it easy to understand for the people. Then you go to the Concentration space, it is where you go somehow deeper. Here it is more like a classical museum, it is more information, its more difficult. Then you go to the Knowledge space, and as the architecture is lower again, we couldnt show a lot there. When you visit an exhibition with someone, at some point you always lose track of the other person. Visiting an exhibition is a kind of individual experience that you do. It is always a pity that you cant meet again. So the Knowledge space is a place where there are always chairs or benches with computers, books, magazines so that you can just wait for your partner or friend to finish. Then you can also re-discuss things and go back. At the same time you can also go more in detail, to the websites of other museums where there are more collections. It is also important to have a tool for the kids, so that in a creative way they can do something related to the theme. The last space is called Traces where each visitor can leave his/her traces: reflections, thoughts The first time I saw it was a long time ago in an exhibition in Barcelona and there it was with these post-its - of course you find jokes and quick comments, but among them I also so some very beautiful thoughts. With this key and with the themes, all the curators had to reorganise their exhibitions: they have to say Right, what will work for the Wow space? The focus? I know its dangerous to say this, but for me organising an exhibition is like creating a shopping centre: its about eye lines and circulation, how you walk through and what attracts people to go somewhere. It is a museum that in the beginning wanted to attract 300,000 visitors a year and now its much more, so it needs to have this level of efficiency for the routing of people. It cant be a labyrinth when you have these ambitions. For us, it was also important that as you go from one space to another it is also a totally different kind of experience. We used a colour scheme for the floor plan to keep areas distinct. Each space has its own aesthetic qualities, it is each time a different tool and not just one layer. The curators all have all the levels and the collections are mixed.
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LD: What about height? Why was it a limit? SG: Its a technical issue its about lighting. If a floor is three meters high and you put spots on the object the visitor is in the shadow. So normally for an exhibition space you would need 4-5metres. In these low areas you just cant put objects because you cant read them. There is nothing to hang a spot on. It is a very simple technical thing. LD: What were the potential and limits provided by the architecture if you had to indicate a couple of things? What did it give you more than other spaces and in what did it give you less? SG: We had to invent a function for these two transition spaces because were not allowed to do anything there. Theyre quite big, 60m in which you cant show objects. Secondly, the focus space is a dead end. Normally you dont have dead ends in an exhibition. Because people have to enter and have to come back. You can do it, but with a width of 2,70m wall to wall, if I put objects it becomes smaller of course. We tried to place eye catchers to push people to go in that direction, just as in a shopping centre. LD: Did the curators want to keep the sections within the floor distinct, as in Life and Death? SG: You see, it is easy to make an exhibition for specialists, but its much more difficult to make exhibitions for 600,000-700,000 people visiting in 6 months. Its more difficult to design exhibitions for people who know nothing about the objects. You need to give them a hand. Therefore, for Power we made these three huge structures, one about Antwerp, one about Japan and one about Africa and we designed each of them so that from the outside they look kind of the same, but when you enter its totally different. For me it was important that you dont mix the objects from Antwerp and Japan and Africa because technically they have a lot to do with each other but content-wise not really. It is not a depot. So you have three different stories about power and thats what keeps it together. LD: In this work, Im looking into different understandings of the use of museum space, for example in terms of space syntax, rhythms, moments for rest and reflection SG: Well, in Power we created these cupolas, theatre of the power and power of the theatre, awe introduced these really huge benchesYou can lie down. Its 30m wide and you can see how people move from one cupola to the other. Its a viewing of the spectators as well as of the big images on the cupolas. There are
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also small chairs in the dark spaces, where you can somehow hide yourself and look into space. You can walk everywhere behind too. For me, the in-between spaces are very important. If you enter the Wow space with the white cylinders, in the in-between you have these sound showers and small seating. There, the theme is life after death and how we relate to that, what our beliefs and different philosophies are. In the cylinders you have these scientifically correct answers, depending on which religion or philosophy, and what you hear in these in-between spaces is witness accounts from people all over the world and what they believe about life after death. When you enter the Wow space, you hear these small voices from time to time, you may be attracted to them or ignore them. LD: So the structure, spatially, is organising knowledge - you have a centre, the institutional knowledge if I may say, and we always come in and out of it and have our own personal approach.. SG: Thats right. Then when you come out from one cupola, you are attracted by the Buddha in the next cluster, its all about view lines. Then when you enter a circle you have the noise of that religion. At the beginning we spoke about thematic organisation, secondly the dramaturgy and thirdly we asked to work with one graphic designer for the whole project as well as a composer, who made music for all the floors. He made a very beautiful sound sculpture, it is also a way in which the three religions are talking to each other, connecting somehow through the Gregorian chant, going to the muezzin and the Jews and back, but just soundwise. It can be a very sensitive issue. The different religions are opposed to each other but they share much more than they admit. Even these large tables, precisely the same size, they go towards each other and when you are in the middle, it is the best place to hear the music. LD: Did you have acoustic problems within the exhibition spaces? SG: Not really because we asked for all the walls to be sprayed with acoustic material. LD: In terms of the multisensory, you were saying that sound allows you to have multiple perspectives and oral stories. What else did the multisensory add? In the Port area, for instance, there is smell, you have touch, what was that meant to achieve? Was it the curators decision? SG: Of course every time we take a decision it is always a long confrontation, even in positive terms, with the curator. For us sound is important, we introduce it as much as possible, and also all these drawers that you can open, this kind of hands-on things that people have to discover. You have different visitors,
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children from 5 to 14 years they like to open things and this way they can discover things. There are also touch tables that you can play with. LD: Do you think these things are only for the younger public? SG: No, I like them as well! But its true that every time you make an exhibition its always the same thing, its a kind of fight. For the curator everything is important, you cant make a choice. Its a clich. The other museum staff wants the public to be able to touch and discover everything because it is important that there is no border between the public and the story. It has to be very accessible. The conservators say Dont show anything, everything is too sensitive. The light, the sound, the smell, the temperature of the people, its too much for the objects. These three groups of people have totally different approaches. You have to start dealing with it and designing it. For example the curators can write two pages on one object and the education people say no, no, 10 sentences maximum. Its always trying to find the right balance between these three forces in the museum. LD: I noticed the design solutions for the upper floors take quite some space. It was a strong design decision to leave so much movement and circulation space rather than a more packed installation, more similar to the Port section.. SG: This is important. We did calculations and drawings to see what it is like with people, counting so many visitors a day. When we started with the estimation of 300,000 visitors a year, we calculated that there would be permanently 200300 people in the exhibition. So we started putting two-three hundred people on the plan and saw what was left over! We did a lot of tests during the development of the concept, finding a kind of balance. One curator gave us an enormous list of objects and we drew every object to show him it would not be possible. Its either less people or less objects, or finding a balance. The harbour was the most critical. Its a very horizontal exhibition and we had to find the balance. LD: Do you find that visitor experience has become more personalised? For example with audio guides, people seem to have a very autonomous experience. Do you work more for community groups or individual experience? Is the shift from object-based to experience-based visits connected to that? SG: The exhibitions that we design are always without audio guides. For me an exhibition is a public space where you can share, I dont believe its individual. Its like a theatre play and its nice to go there with some people and share what is going on. The audio-guide makes it too individual, private and thats what I dont like. LD: How is museum display different from commercial displays?
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SG: The main difference of course is that commercial displays are trying to sell and this one is trying to tell something. The only difference is an s! But I do believe a museum has to be a public space with a strong experience where a story is being told. I think you have to create a world.. for me its theatre play and that has nothing to do with shopping malls. The reason why I used the term shopping mall is because you have to, without arrows and a lot of text, you have to guide the visitor in a certain way so that he understands the story, with view lines and more light and dark so that people go in a certain direction. These are the tools that we wanted to use. LD: Do you think it would be an advantage for designers to have a museum staff that better understands the issues concerning design, space and the senses? SG: In these three years that we were designing the MAS I had the chance to discuss with many people and the meetings with Carl and Cathy and Jef - they understood immediately what we were talking about. They have the same ambition. There were more traditional people and it was much harder to convince them. What was nice was that one of the most conservative people came up to me two weeks after the opening and said Yes, you were right. Some people are not able to read a plan, their job is different and they were rather worried. Now they see this is a good way to do it for a museum of ethnographical art. At the beginning they were afraid it would be too basic or easy. LD: What do you think makes theatre and cinema closer media to the museum? Is it the moment of the lights switch off and people know something is going to start? Is it the idea that people come in expecting a story..? SG: It is what you said, yes, and most importantly that you enter a world that you dont know yet. It is a form of alienation a little bit. What is nice at the theatre is that the actors are real, while in the movie you know its not real. In an exhibition I feel were closer to theatre than to a movie because you feel that they tell a story and you know its not a fake, although its not true! And in a museum it can also be that way. Of course we dont know everything yet about the objects we display, so today we say we think it is that and maybe in 100 years well say Oh now we know but maybe 100 years ago we also said Now we know. Its interpretation, and thats what I like in theatre as well. Each time you play Shakespeare its another interpretation of the same piece and its like that in the museum as well. The object is the same but you can give different readings. LD: Thank you very much Mr Grooten.
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Interview with Cathy Pelgrims Head of Public Work, Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp, Belgium 15th of December 2011, MAS, Antwerp. Abridged version

LD: Good morning Ms Pelgrims. Can you explain what is meant by Public Work? CP: Its a specific term used in Belgium and it is actually the Educational Dept, education and access. We dont use the term education because that focuse s too much on formal learning and school programs and we do more. To start with, were part of the team that made the exhibitions, with a Head of Presentation or curator, co-curators, then there was a representative of BArchitecten, responsible for the scenography, and one member of our department. That was one of the big tasks we had, always taking the side of the public in developing the exhibitions. The first thing was to deliver them our principles: we dont focus for the scenography on groups of seniors or schools, we focus on individual visitors and we base ourselves on Kolbs learning styles. His theory says that every individual person learns in a certain way: some people are thinkers and they have to read texts; others are doers, they need to do things, they want to touch, open drawers and thats another way of learning; and so on. There are four types and we took that as our starting point for the presentation and we gave that to the B-Architecten. They translated it very nicely in a grid on each floor. LD: What about Gardners theory on multiple intelligences? CP: Yes I also read Gardner and tried to put that in, but not in a mathematical system by which we had to count so much for this and so much for that. In Holland ten years ago there were some museums who experimented quite deeply with that, but its not so rigid, it was more about paying attention to it. In some floors it is more successfully used than others, it depends on the themes and sometimes curators were very open to that and other curators werent that much. The Port is the section that goes the furthest. You have cases where you can smell, you have a lot of drawers, you can sit on the big objects in the Concentration Room, you can touch them if you want. It isnt promoted but its ok. You have letters from the Pope that are spoken out loud in Latin, you can read them as the voice moves through them and follow the translation. So Im glad that the B-Architecten picked that up, in their own way and managed to put that grid on each floor.
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LD: Do you think it is important for the visitor to have this recurring structure? CP: I think it helps, although its not a complicated museum because each floor is the same. You come up and come out of each spot in the same position. I think it is reassuring. I suppose. We havent had visitor evaluations just yet because weve just opened in May. We will start in 2012. Regarding our function as a Department we were also involved in the MAS User: the architects were there, the construction firm was there, the technicians and computer specialists were there with a group of people that would represent the users of the upcoming building. Then we evaluated the building plans and tried to change some things for instance at the beginning there werent many toilets in the building. There were even less toilets downstairs so there we could really force the architect to change that. LD: What about the lifts? I was told they are only for disabled visitors. CP: Yes, if you tell them you really cant take the escalators they will have someone accompany you with the lift but the structure of the building is made so that you have to take the staircase, its in the architects design. LD: Were Neutelings Riedijk available and open to these discussions? Was there a discussion at the very beginning on how the building was going to be used? In terms of fatigue? CP: I arrived when the plans were finished, but I think in 2004 we had the plans evaluated by a studio specialised in accessibility. They gave some tips as well as legal consultation regarding access. But we do notice now that it is not completely accessible. LD: What are the successes and failures of this museum in terms of audience experience? CP: The building is a huge success. We noticed that while it was being built.Antwerp citizens are rather critical, they would say Oh what is that ugly building, that tower put there... Then we opened it for architecture visits, people could have guided tours just in the boulevard and they could enter in an empty museum room. Everyone who came out would say how great it was, the view, the spiral to go up, the view from the terraceI think visitors feel happy with the building, they feel good, they find it fantastic and want to come back. Some people have said they feel as if they are on vacation when they come at this site. We have two kinds of visitors: on the one hand we have visitors who can come in freely, they just come for a walk around the boulevard. From 10am to 5pm during museum hours they can also go into the open storage, thats free too, and they can reach the roof. Its not statistical information but some people tell
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me I come every week, I go for a walk to the roof so it is very much used tha t way. It is also the only tower in Antwerp that is so easily accessible. You can climb the cathedral but you have to make a reservation for it, you have to pay and queue. Its a really steep and small way going up LD: So the MAS has a strong function in the city? CP: Absolutely. Thats a real advantage. Now we see that most of the people really like the scenography and the things to discover. Concerning what is negative: we have a whole new MAS story and a lot of people they dont know what to expect. There are all kinds of collections coming together and a lot of people still ask what the MAS is about. During the opening and promotion we focused on the building, on the landmark, and now we are in the next phases and it is my colleagues from marketing and communication who are going to focus more on the content. To explain it, we have our elevator pitch on the first floor, thats what the MAS is about. But most people vaguely know we have collections from the National Maritime Museum, some people know what collections it holds but not what the MAS is about. I must say once they come and have a guided tour they are positively surprised, Oh so you can look at it from this perspective! regarding Antwerps collections. If you tell them the story, theyll say, Yes of course, its an international city, it has collections from the whole world so you can also see the world. They get it immediately. LD: It doesnt stop them from coming though, they come for the building? CP: People come because its a hype. Its definitely a hype. Last week we reached 620,000 visitors. Half of them, we counted them, come for the free walk in the boulevard. The other half comes for the museum. LD: Do you think the objective was to create an icon that would be a point of reference for the area? CP: Definitively. It was one of the criteria for the architectural contest. It had to be a landmark. This was the only proposal which suggested a tower and this was one of the reasons it was picked. It doesnt take up the whole area between the docks, we have the pavilions now and the square but the other proposals were of much lower structures and they covered the whole area between the docks. Another criteria was to make a connection between the content of the museum and the city. Youre in the museum, you have the history of the city then you go outside on the boulevard and you see the contemporary city. LD: Regarding this constant dialogue between the inside and the outside: I was reading the press releases and it said it is like a street that people can explore. Was this something very conscious, to generate more transparency between the
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inside and the outside, so that the museum is no longer one closed building with a collection? CP: Yes. We didnt have a chance to discuss it with the audience yet. What I can say is that the architect wanted to go further, displaying objects in the boulevard. We discussed it but you may have noticed it is a semi-climate in the wintertime its cold and in the summer the south side heats up. Ecologically this is fine, because we dont have to maintain the temperature in the boulevard but its almost impossible to put pieces of the collection. It would have to be objects from the harbour, or porcelain or stone, but it was also technically not easy to plan. You cant put small things in that huge boulevard so you should have big objects and it was not easy to bring them in. We would have had to bring them in before the glass was there! We also noticed that people are so fascinated with the view that we didnt need it. But there is some art on the walls by a famous Antwerp artist. In 2013-2014 we will change to another Antwerp artist. The architect also designed cases in the boulevard, over the escalators we have a special program for young people aged between 15 and 25. It was with youth workers who work in difficult neighbourhoods in Antwerp, people we engage with to create works for the museum. It was a group of 80 people. The architect imagined those cases for MAS objects but they have no climatisation, so he wanted to go further but he didnt design a building for that purpose. LD: What about this connection between inside and outside an idea of the architect or part of the brief? CP: No, it was the architects idea. Regarding the connection between inside and outside, we also have a function that is maybe not visible, concerning the heritage in the city. In Belgium, you have museums, archives and buildings with objects stored, and on the other hand there is also a heritage platform. Cities in Flanders like Ghent, Brugge and Antwerp, we are heritage fora. That means we have a responsibility for the heritage that is located in the city: other museums, archives, but also heritage circles, local organisations, so everything that is alive in the city. We dont have to take it to the MAS but we give advice, we bring people together, it is really a forum. Sometimes you can see it in the museum, for instance on the fifth floor there are two big heads of giants from 300 years ago, used for local processions. This is a tradition that is very alive in the city of Antwerp, different parts of the city have their own giants so my colleagues are trying to put all that heritage together and maybe it will be a publication or a movie or an exhibition in the cases in the boulevard about the heritage on giants. That is also a connection
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between the inside and outside. We also have a section on the religions of the book and the section on Jewish heritage was made with the Jewish community. They gave us objects in loan, wrote the texts with us and thats also our forum work, but the big public doesnt see it. When we tell them, they find it very interesting and thats also very unique. But it could also be an exhibition in the district house and not here. LD: Do you think that the tendency towards the black box is bound to get stronger, that is rather inevitable given the conservation requirements of the collection? CP: I dont know, but there are two movements I would say. There is a new museum in Leuven called M and there the architect made a radically opposite choice of opening it up, placing windows but having to blind them because of the excessive sunlight. In the MAS we have some remarks from visitors or also from architectural critics - the contrast is indeed very big between the box and the boulevard. But I dont suffer from it, I kind of like it to be a treasure box, you come in from the boulevard, this is the museum room and from here on its a different atmosphere. The atmosphere on each floor is so different that it doesnt bother me. LD: Being an icon building and not a classical museum building, do you find this has brought in new audiences? CP: Yes, we have a broader public. Although Im sure that not everyone in Antwerp has come here. From the migrant communities, not everyone will have come yet. But the content of the museum, the story of the museum is very interesting for those groups, so thats our job as public workers and education staff. We are cooperating with classes of newcomers so every newcomer to Antwerp has to follow a course of Flemish, like in Holland. Its compulsory and in a years time it can be about 5000 people coming to Antwerp. Now we have contacts to adapt a guided tour which tells the story of the MAS. But its a very large scale of people because you have highly educated non-Dutch speaking people and newcomers who are illiterate in their own countries. So you have to adapt the guided tours but we have funding for this project, so that starting in 2012 each newcomer will come to the MAS. Our guides already adapt and make the visit interactive. You know thats a great present from the architect, to be able to say You can come here, its always free, you can always come for the walk. LD: I notice here that everything is in Flemish, there is a strong focus on the local target more than the international. CP: Also the international, but we didnt choose for that in the museum rooms. We have the Belgian law, you cant put Dutch and English for instance, you have to put French and German too because we have three national languages. So if you put English or Spanish you have to put German and French. Its
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impossible to put four languages in the rooms. Thats a point of criticism we get from visitors, but you can buy a MAS guide and there you have all the room texts in your language. Well, not in Italian! You also have the MAS I-pods, or with your own Smartphone you can read the QR codes and get the translations of all the labels. At the desk we also communicate in four languages, we use signs and images as universal languages. LD: Did you also consider disability? The visually impaired for instance. CP: I try to. We have some facilities, not as developed as in England, but we have guides who make visual descriptions and we can hire guides who make use of sign language. That is one of the possibilities. Regarding different publics, we notice that many people come here for the walk and ask What is the MAS about? What is the temporary exhibition about? Theyre not prepared, or they walk in with their dog and are surprised, Oh you cant walk in with your dog? No, its a museum! I think its another type of visitor. Or they stand outside on a Monday when its very usual for museums to be closed on Mondays! We have to put a huge sign every Monday and people still come in! They say But if I want to go to the zoo on Monday I can do that, so why cant I come to the MAS? Thats how I feel that we have another public. Of course we hope that next time they come for a walk theyll say Lets buy a ticket, lets go to the museum and that gives opportunities. In other museums you dont go there if you dont need to be there. You wont pay to go in if you dont see the exhibition. LD: Usually, as soon as you go in, there is a ticket office and a person checking tickets. CP: Thats right. Also we have questions from a large number of organisations who want to do something here. It can be couples who want to take marriage photos, so we have a lot of them on the weekends taking pictures! In the boulevard they can, there are no problems, its a street. But we had the question Can we do a chess contest in your boulevard? so that was on the 8thfloor where its bigger, it was with young chess players. That was interesting so we agreed, it was busy, everyone came to see and we could not say no entrance to the 8th floor to other visitors. We had a jazz concert for free, we have 500 bikers coming in 2012 outside! That is also the icon value of the MAS. Now its so attractive everyone wants to do anything here. The square downstairs really works too, even if we dont have Italian summers everyone sits on the benches at lunchtime taking the sun while children play football. LD: I see that you have sensory tools, what do you think is the significant addition to narrative of the multisensory? Do you think it is for a general public or maybe for children?
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CP: I think it is for a general public and if you start from learning style s, youll find it very good for some kinds of people. Not especially for children, its more about learning styles I think. LD: Do you find that in the museum staff there is a sensitivity and awareness for physical engagement, rhythm, doing things, or is it typically more about content and panels? CP: It really depends. We have several kinds of conservators. We did a test at the beginning and you find that curators are generally thinkers, who write difficult long texts and they will insist that you have to put things in text format otherwise people wont understand! Others wanted to do things, so that was our job as well, to find a balance between those intentions. LD: What about sound? Do you find that oral narration makes people stop more, take more time, understand better? CP: We use it in several ways. B-Architecten will tell you that in the Wake-Up area at the beginning of each floor we have soundscapes, for example in the Port section there is a famous quartet who composed the soundscapes. BArchitecten asked them to do that. Also, on the 7th floor, with the religions of the Book, you have a compilation of religious music. That it is more for the atmosphere but we also use audio tools to explain in a different way the stories we want to tell. In certain areas, as on the 7th floor, you have sound showers with personal accounts and views on life and death. Its about 10 or 12 people from all kinds of religions telling about their personal belief in life after death. Thats an extra layer you put on, another way of telling your story than putting it in text or showing it with objects. LD: Also the connection between the ancient and the contemporary? CP: Yes, certainly. LD: I see that throughout the building you have videos with contemporary practices and rituals, for example next to the masks that are used. So this connection intent is very strong. CP: Personally I would have wanted to have it more strongly. It works in several areas and in other clusters, themes it doesnt work out that much because of curators choices. LD: Are the floors of the themes are related to the view? CP: Yes. The sixth floor is especially like that, so is the fifth floor. Certainly. For the future, we will pursue our mission, talking about Antwerp and the world, by

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the port, and I would like to stress more the contemporary collections in connection with the different local communities. LD: That is all. Thank you again for your time.

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Interview with Jef Vrelust Curator of the Maritime collection, Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp, Belgium 15th of December 2011, MAS, Antwerp Abridged version

LD: Mr. Vrelust, were you a member of staff in one of the museums that today make up the MAS? What were the challenges and opportunities you considered when you first arrived to the MAS and has this changed your practice? JV: I started working for the MAS eleven years ago, but in the National Maritime Museum. The MAS didnt exist at the time and the City had made the decision to build the new museum about the city of Antwerp and the maritime collections. So I started in the Maritime Museum and began looking at the collections, thinking about the possibilities that we could elaborate in the MAS. Maritime Museum was a rather old fashioned museum, it existed for 50 years. It was in the Castle, the oldest building in Antwerp. There was an association, the Friends of the National Maritime Museum and they were not very amused by the new plans and the idea of closing the museum there. They are quite powerful because lots of their members are captains of industry in the port of Antwerp. It was not so easy to talk to them and to have them cooperate for the MAS. LD: Was the exhibition in the MAS going to be very different from what was shown there? JV: Yes, people were worried that it was going to be less. They were especially afraid for the collections of ship malts and maritime paintings. They wanted to know how much of the collection was going to be visible in the new museum. When youre making a new museum you dont care about numbers, you think about the concepts, you want to tell a new story and you will use everything that fits in the new story, but of course people want to know. The concept changed a few times in seven years lets say. I worked until 2003 and then there was a crisis in Antwerp and the plans for the MAS disappeared. People in the City werent sure about the MAS anymore. Sometimes the question seemed whether they would build a new museum or a football stadium. In 2005 the idea of the MAS was back and funds were found to build it. We had Carl Depauw as Director so MAS started over again. We started to make a new concept and in 2007 the City decided to incorporate the ethnographic collections. Before that it was a city museum with a strong maritime component, then it became a museum on the city and the port and the world.
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LD: How much is permanent today of what I see in terms of the distribution of space between the collections? JV: Its not so easy to say. A lot has to do with funding. In the past permanent exhibitions would last 25 or even 50 years. I think thats an impossible idea, things are going to be old fashioned very soon. For conservation reasons too, ship models cannot be left there for more than a few years. LD: Do you think the objects adapt to the environment as well? JV: Yes they do, changes are dangerous. LD: I was reading the press release of Neutelings Riedijk and they called the MAS a flexible machine adaptable to the changing visions of the curators. When you arrived and in this first period of planning, did you feel that this place was flexible with what you wanted to do? JV: What he means with flexible is that every floor is like a black box, Its empty, you use it as a museum, its fine but museums only exist for a few decades and my building is there for hundreds of years So if you want to make a supermarket of it in a few years, why not, thats possible. He sees the galleries as flexible so theyre empty, we dont have any windows, any lighting, everything needs to be added according to the vision of the curators. It s not really like that, when you look at the galleries of course, because the architecture is quite present in the building. LD: You mean for example the way the structure cuts through the gallery and creates a corridor? JV: The structure with the big iron pillars is one thing. You also have strange small rooms.I think B-Architecten did a really good job in dealing with these limitations. We started working with them in 2007-2008 so they couldnt really change things. Only for the visible storage they did. Scenographers have a different vision on the use of the building than the architect has. You could say that at the end of the building process one could make some small changes but it is not easy to influence an architect to change his plans in the ultimate phases of a building process. So we have some small changes that are not really visible, such as extra electricity. We could have said it would have been nice to make a staircase between two floors for instance, it could be useful, but I dont think that its possible with this building. Its hanging on the iron structure, all the parts fit in the iron structure so you cant change things so easily on the inside. LD: What was your relationship with B-Architecten? JV: I made an overview of what the MAS was, what we expected from the scenography. We also gave input from the public, how we want to work
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together with the public, so readability, accessibility.. and also care for the collections. That was the most difficult part for B-Architecten. They did a really good job in making a scenographic approach, theatrical too, but theyre not really interested in heritage or the objects. Thats not necessarily a problem, in many exhibitions you see people working with objects that are even too focused. So I think its really good that you have one atmosphere, I think thats a key word in what B-Architecten did. I think we chose them because some people feared it would be difficult to make a museum about the world and the city and the port. For me that was not a problem because I was not attached to one specific collection, it was not important for me to defend it. I worked with the maritime collection of course, but I wanted to make interesting stories that would be interesting for everyone, that fit in the larger story and that larger story is now a lot larger than it was. The Port is now something between the city and the world. LD: Are you a specialist of Port history? JV: Im an art historian. While working with the maritime collections, I was interested but not specialised. Im rather a generalist than a specialist. LD: Did you specifically consider issues of space, lighting and ambiance? How much did you encourage these aspects or, rather, focus on the care of the collections? Was it a unique responsibility of B-Architecten? JV: I spent quite a long time telling the story that I wanted to tell in the exhibition to them, explaining to them. It was not very easy. At first they were asked to make a concept as master scenographers, for the use of the building and the collections in scenography, but they were not asked to design it themselves. It was more about the grid for each floor, the atmosphere, the concept for the general presentation. But they would not deal with what object would go where and especially how. That was for other designers. Then we decided to let them do everything, it would be easier in management. I always wanted them to decide on the scenography: this is my story, these are the objects, they have to make it stronger. It took a long time, I think for them the floor about the Port was easier. I think they had more work with the other floors. LD: Why? JV: Because on other floors there were often different curators working on one floor. It looked like there was no end. LD: Do you think that having one theme on one floor helped in the variety of tools that you could have people engage with?

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JV: No, I think those tools were something I really wanted to have there, in one story, but I wanted the overview as well, I wanted to keep that one story in one floor and not have different boxes with different stories. I worked together with a port authority, its delicate of course, because the port is always growing, always expanding. They are sponsoring us, so they have a say and I decided to make that story with them, discussing everything. That was really nice. LD: So it helps you rather than being a limit. JV: Of course. At the beginning it looked as if there would be problems, they brought their lawyer with them to discuss the villages that are disappearing in the port area. Same thing with the dock workers, with the unions, it was not always that easy, but were just a museum. That doesnt mean that we dont LD: What about the area on the dock work, did you decide on that with them? JV: Yes, we worked together with retired dock workers. They are working with the old objects from the port, that they used when they were working there. They know what it is, how it works and they explain it to us. They also come every week working on the objects, painting them againI had them make the selection of the objects as well for that section. Of course they made a longer list than what we could display. It was a good thing to work together. On one side there is a more romantic view of the dock worker, who was considered the typical Antwerp worker, there are postcards and various depictions. On the other side there is a documentary that we made regarding work in the port and that brings together all the stories that we collected. Each large object also has a small video next to it to show how people used those objects. LD: Do you consider the gallery, the objects, the ambiance as one unique form of physical experience? Your gallery is the one that has more multisensory elements, do you ever think of the visitor being a body in an immersive environment, taking a journey? JV: Yes! I think so. I worked very closely with Cathy Pelgrims, and that was a good thing. Everything I wanted to tell in the exhibition I told her first, and she played that role very well thinking from the visitors perspective and thats really essential in making exhibitions. LD: In what way was she of help? JV: She helped me make things more clear What do you want to tell? What do you want people to know after they visit? Do you really need all those? I was not really thinking in one format, I was making selections, thinking about storylines
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and I wanted them to become clear. Of course I need educational and scenographical assistance to get it right. LD: What do you think is the significance of the oral dimension? I see youve put song, the reading of texts, the televisions Why do you think the museum needs an oral dimension? And why smell? JV: I think it is really important to go far back in history and still have oral accounts of it. In the middle of the floor Im talking about technologies that were introduced in Antwerp in the 1870s. There are still people alive that worked with those things. So they can tell about it better than I can. My job as a curator is looking for those people and making them tell their stories, but they have to tell it themselves to the audience of today so that we can go back until the 19th century with people still alive. It is really important to have different perspectives from the people who have worked in the port as a dock worker or an engineer, different perspectives on what a port is or what it means to people. Thats why we had interviews with the sea men from Congo as well. LD: Do you think the black box has become necessary? JV: For the things I want to do, I think the black box is more suitable than the white cube. Here in the MAS people visiting are not the museum visitors as we knew them, a lot of people come and they dont really know how to behave in a museum. It looks different here, but we havent done the research yet. We will monitor it closely next year, it is more a feeling. What is also nice is to see that the port is important in a lot of peoples lives, because they worked there or friends and family worked there. If people in groups come visit this floor and they have a guide, almost every time there is someone in the group who has something to say about it. Thats also an interesting thing for the whole group, so he can tell the story as well. I wanted the floor of the Port to be different than how it was in the Maritime Museum because Im convinced that ship models are interesting for everyone but if you put it away in glass showcases, people just see a lot of glass cases. Its more difficult, its an extra barrier to look closely. Its more interesting also for children and families. LD: Does that give you problems if people try to touch? JV: Yes, but we have an electronic alarm system that gives out noises if you get too close. LD: What about the open storage? What is the thinking behind that? Is it a trend? JV: I think its a trend. It gives a look behind the scenes and you see it more and more. Its something more exclusive, I think that museums behind the scenes are more interesting. But for the MAS it was also a decision connected to the fact that we were building an expensive building and we wanted to be open for the
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public. The first design of the open storage was by the architect, it was the one floor that he designed and he really made it like an exhibition. We decided not to build it like that because it was not a storage, it was a floor with a lot of objects just in showcases. We wanted it to be a real storage to use, its one of the best storage spaces in Antwerp because of the air conditioning system. Its really perfect for the most vulnerable objects, wood and paper, textile as well. The public can only visit a small part of the floor. LD: Do you think that the function of the museum is slowly transforming itself? In these 10 years that youve worked at the MAS, did you feel what you were doing here was going to be radically different from what youd seen before? Did working here change your ambitions as a curator? JV: I think it will depend from what people expect they can find here. I think I started with a more traditional view on things, working with objects, museum collections and giving them a place in the museum. But now I think there is really a huge potential in telling stories and to connect them with a lot of identities in the city, in the world. So that everyone can come into a museum and say hey, thats my story. We really have to explore that and thats what makes it worth preserving all those objects and to use them in exhibitions. LD: What do you think made that change? Your exchange with your colleagues, or how this place was going to be built? JV: I think its a combination, it grew out of not being a specialist, I worked with a lot of collections and didnt know what many things were, but I found people who could tell me because they worked with them or gave them to the museum. So I really think the role of the curator is not only working with objects but also with stories. [visit to the galleries] LD: Do you think that curators feel the pressure of working beyond their discipline? JV: Yes, surely. Not everyone feels comfortable. I think you have to ensure a combination in your organisation to have some specialists, but also some people working in different directions and thats not always easy. We have 470,000 objects, they are really very different so if had to have specialists for all the objects you would need 250 curators! LD: Carl Depauw was telling me you have an in-house composer? JV: Yes, I wanted to use this film in this room because its like a generic image, its the port of Antwerp but, if you dont know, it could be any port. That was the feeling I needed for this room. Youre outside, you see the port of Antwerp outside, but you really have to go inside the story, the theme of the exhibition
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and this is like a passage, not only for the climate, but also for peoples minds. Its busy in the boulevard, you need a transition and I wanted to use this video which we filmed in 2002. It was a really small boat, we sailed through the port and filmed with three cameras. Every quay of the port of Antwerp was filmed so it lasts for a very long time. But you dont know if youre arriving or departing from the port. Visitors mustnt wait until the film is over. LD: Cathy told me that B-Architecten created a grid on each floor. I wanted to ask you about this area and your approach to content. JV: This area is called the Focus Room. Its a difficult, strange place. You have large museum rooms but on each floor you have this, which is a kind of appendix. BArchitecten suggested to use it to work on one theme connected with the main theme, but if people dont visit it they dont miss something really essential. Now the story of the port is about trade and you also have illegal trade. We work together with the customs in the port, and they have a lot of goods that are fake. These are fake Winnie the Poohs. Its illegal, they seize it and it has to be destroyed, so we were asked if we wanted them. But we want to change regularly, look in their warehouses and see what is new. Next time it may be sigarettes... Its really great what they keep in store. LD: This wall is made the same way for the whole museum? JV: Yes, its the architects choice for the whole museum. It looks like wood, but its concrete, made with rubber mats with a woodprint in it. LD: Do you find that people pay attention to the drawers? Do you find that visually this organisation works? JV: What works most is the colour coding. We have six chapters in this story, each has a table like this, with a title and introduction, a world map. The idea of Antwerp as a world port expands in time, as more areas of the world are discovered. B-Architecten worked together with another graphic designer who suggested working with different colour labels for each chapter. He took flags from ships and made a different motif for each section. Over here people are not used to working with drawers in museums. In England of course it is that way. When a British curator saw the MAS, he said if we make it like this in England everything would be destroyed immediately, because people think it is allowed to touch anything that they can touch. LD: Did you have the drawers because you wanted to maximise space or maybe because you wanted people to touch? JV: Its both. We only use the drawers for vulnerable objects, that can only have 50 lux. The light only goes on when the drawers open.
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LD: This is for smell. Do you find people understand and use it? JV: Yes but were just starting here. In England theyve been doing it for years and its really a success. LD: What about children? JV: Most of the time they come in groups and teachers tell them what is allowed and what is not. That works very well. They start running and screaming but if you ask them what it means to be in a museum and what is allowed they can say all those things. LD: This large screen, was it an idea of the designers? JV: Yes, they really wanted something on every floor that would be really Wow! Theyve been looking for objects to make that effect but then suggested a gigantic projection. I think it works really well. You see people sit down and watch the whole movie. It was never really intended that way. Its important for the atmosphere of course, but they also wanted the timeline, even if not too educational. People like to have it, if they dont know history all that well, it makes them feel safe when it is there. Its a kind of orientation in time but also in place. LD: What about the songs? Was it an idea of the unions? JV: No it was an idea that I had when I was researching. This is a device for taking grain out of a ship and putting it in another ship. When it was done by hand a lot of people were needed, but one machine could do it as well. So the manual practice was ended at the end of the 19th century and the dock workers protested. This is a protest song about this machine taking away the work. I found the song in our collection and I could find the melody as well, because this song was referred to in an old English tune. So I asked a choir to sing it again and record it. We put a little karaoke, you can sing if you want! LD: What about working on heights? JV: In general the B-Architecten wanted to keep it rather horizontal here, like the port is. So were not really working with verticality. When you look from the MAS at the port it is stretched out, despite there is work with machinery and so forth. This is the only room where you can see through the whole room. LD: What about here? JV: Its the last chapter, I chose to work only with film and ship models because it is a different story when dealing with objects of the past 50 years if you had to pick one object that is really important and changed everything it is the container. It would be stupid to put a container here, you can show things
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equally well with models and video. While the heritage of the port in the past was engravings and paintings, now it is film. These are films from different companies in the port from the 1930s until today. Most were never used again after they were recorded. LD: Are all these touch screens rather expensive options? Were you free to decide for the best medium without excessive budget constraints? JV: We had one budget for the whole scenography. On some floors the scenography is more expensive, as the big round cupolas on the upper floors, so there isnt that much technology there. LD: What about these little videos? JV: These are the retired workers we work with, showing how they work in the museum store at the port. Sometimes it is open to the public there. LD: Do you think it would have made more sense for the people of the port to have this museum in the dock area? JV: They wanted one museum only dedicated to maritime shipping and stories. They needed that. But since the opening I havent heard from them, I dont think they were expecting this. I also made sure that there are more ship models on display here than at the National Maritime Museum. LD: Do you think that being in the same place with other collections adds to the story? JV: For me it really does make sense. I worked with the people from the ethnographic museum for the cluster about Congo and that was really interesting. People also better understand why there are ethnographic collections in Antwerp, it is because it is a port. Collections were created because of the interest in other parts of the world. So it really works. LD: Each floor then has this area, is it mainly for children? JV: It has two functions: one is for kids, most of the time theyre faster than their parents so they come to the end and have to keep themselves busy. We have childrens books, the computers, rocking horses! But on the other hand it is also a place where you can get more information. And of course you can leave a message in a bottle as you come out! LD: This is so successful that the bottles have finished! JV: Indeed!

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