Blogs

A new report Whose cake is it anyway? out from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation on issues of community engagement and benefits from museums.  Of background interest.

Ken Arnold from the Wellcome Collection and Thomas Soderqvist have developed a challenging set of rules and contentions for museum exhibitions dealing with science - what would the effect be?  The rules in brief are as follows, but read the Wellcome blog for discussion:../more

1. Exhibitions should be research-led, not a form of
dissemination

2. A scientist should always be involved in the exhibition,
a technologist if it is about technology

3. Be clear about exhibitions being “multi-authored”

4. Use only original material

5. Never show ready-made science

6. Jealously guard a place for mystery and wonder

7. Reject most exhibition ideas

8. Leave out as much as possible

9. Embrace the showbusiness of exhibitions

10. Celebrate the ephemeral quality of exhibitions

11. Make exhibitions true to the geography of their venues

12. Avoid artificial lighting

13. Always involve more than one sense

14. Make exhibitions for inquisitive adults

15. Remember that visitors ultimately make their own
exhibitions

16. Make exhibitions the jumping off place for further
engagement

17. Don’t be afraid to bend, break or reinvent the rules