To celebrate the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook’s Endeavor voyage, Royal Museums Greenwich launched the Endeavor Galleries Project, opened a new purpose-built collections and created four permanent galleries in the National Maritime Museum’s East Wing in 2018.
The four galleries - Tudor and Stuart Seafarers, Pacific Encounters, Polar Worlds and Sea Things - examine how people ventured beyond Britain’s shores to explore the world, and how Britain and its people were transformed by their encounters with explorers from other parts of the world. But instead of providing a new store and display of objects, the Museum views the project as a chance to break through the traditional museum ideology, to become a museum for everyone - by removing the barriers to make the museum more accessible, creating community ownership, representing invisible histories and collaborating to create a social and inspiring space.
Tudor & Stuarts Seafaring gallery. Image courtesy of the National Maritime Museum & Casson Mann
Removing Barriers in the Galleries
Removing intellectual, physical and cultural barriers and facilitating access were fundamental to the Endeavor Galleries’ design. Visitors want to experience a ‘sense of place’; things through which they could connect emotionally to the stories within each gallery, points of engagement that they could relate to their own lives and spaces to interact socially with friends and family.
The four galleries try to achieve this goal via different approaches. The Tudor and Stuart Seafarers seeks the design approach both dramatic (using dark woods and moody lighting) and rich with intriguing juxtapositions of objects, audio-visual interventions and graphics; The Polar Worlds tries to evoke harsh and cold atmosphere in the space with display cases in the shape of huge ice blocks. It also aims to improve the visitors’ engagement by including contemporary performance by Inuit artist Tanya Tagaq, storytelling by an Inuit or female polar scientist (instead of the traditional male), and space to rest, gather and discuss the issues facing the polar regions today; The Pacific Encounters intends to create a sense of place by metaphorically ‘flooding’ the gallery: two animated, sculptural waves are greeting the visitors in the gallery, with accessible seating strategically placed to enhance the experience; Sea Things accommodates as many objects as possible and allow visitors to get up close and even touch the real exhibits. There’s a large digital seashore that washes across and between the objects in the gallery, and multiple interactive activities such as ‘Sea People’, a co-curation project working with underrepresented communities to question what is missing from the discourse.
Sea Things gallery. Image courtesy of the National Maritime Museum and Casson Mann © Hufton+Crow
Collection Access Beyond Display
Other than ensuring the access to the objects on display, the museum also offers ‘behind-the-scene’ tours, handling sessions, seminars and workshops, from introductory to in-depth, at its Prince Philip Maritime Collections Center. All of the five conservation studios (frames, objects, paintings, paper and textiles) are designed to accommodate a large group of visitors who can observe conservation closely without interrupting the work.
Polar Worlds gallery. Image courtesy of the National Maritime Museum & Casson Mann
Creating Community Ownership and Representing Invisible Histories
While developing the new galleries, the museum consulted over 28,000 individuals from local, national and international communities, to explore the potential of its rich collections. Not only does the museum encourages debates and conversations between communities and specialists, it also sets up co-curation projects with local schools, colleges, community groups and societies, which creates opportunities for alternative interpretations and new ideas of familiar stories, objects, galleries and museums.
Community consultation also focuses on the review of design and content, to prevent inaccessible design solutions, from font sizes, illustrations, audio visual design to the overall look and feel of each gallery, with advices from the audience.
Other than community collaboration and consultation, the project also adopts flexible approaches, such as artist commission, to uncover invisible histories and new perspectives (for example of women, BAME, LGBT and disabled people) on familiar narratives.
With the Endeavor Project, the Royal Museums Greenwich aims to create a transformative and meaningful experience shaped by its audiences and communities, a space that is inspiring, engaging and relevant, where the visitors could truly feel they belong.
Source | Museum iD
Author | Mike Sarna, Director, Collections & Public Engagement (former); Gail Symington, Director, Collections & Public Engagement; Sarah Lockwood, Head of Learning & Interpretation; Birthe Christensen, Head of Conservation & Preservation (former); Philippa Mackenzie, Head of Collections Management (former)，Royal Museums Greenwich
Editor | Lu Yufan
