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SUSAN WALKER, KEEPER OF ANTIQUITIES, THE ASHMOLEAN
The Ashmolean’s dramatic transfor-
mation took a treasure trove of items
What was your role in the work?
out of old fashioned galleries and
Until the end of 2007 I led the curatorial repositioned them in a 21st century
work on the design of the new museum, setting of inspiration and learning.
organising the collections under the con-
cept ‘Crossing Cultures Crossing Time.’
Some of the galleries on the lower ground storage, which was challenging. Many of
fl oor are cross-cultural and we’ve chosen us were recent recruits to the Ashmolean
themes such as reading and writing, count- and didn’t know the collections in great
ing, textiles and the human image. depth before we started this work.
From the ground fl oor upwards we’ve
developed a ‘Crossing Time’ sequence, a
What’s been the reaction to
bit like an archeological dig. The earliest
‘Crossing Cultures Crossing Time’?
material is at the bottom and the latest
Did you do visitor research?
It’s been seen as a genuinely fresh
material is at the top. We built a sort of third of a size trial gallery approach. Of course the building is a huge
Each fl oor has an introductory gallery two years ago, a Minoan Crete gallery, and help. We have a synergy between the inter-
which highlights a number of themes of investigated what people were interested pretation and the space it’s developed in,
different cultures on that particular fl oor. in. We also tested a lot of practice issues, which works to a great advantage.
These themes reoccur as you go around such as how long it took to build the cases What’s remarkable is that the idea and
the galleries. We’ve tried to sequence the and fi ll them, label writing, panel writing, the interpretation came from the curators.
galleries In a way that emphasises the con- panel production, the whole process of It’s been developed by working with the
nections between the cultures represented building and furnishing galleries. designers and education staff and advi-
in the Ashmolean. This means the Oriental sors on interpretation.
collections are actually integrated on the
What was the biggest challenge?
Often when a big museum takes on a
circuit. I can’t think of any other museums Moving the entire collection off-site. My project of this scale, they’ll develop a cura-
which do that this way. department alone has half a million objects. torial team to do it. We’ve had a project
My principle contribution was to apply Everything had to go into storage, and the management team who’ve seen it through,
the idea to the building and then negotiate whole lot had to be put onto a computer. but the galleries still have strong curatorial
with all the curators how this layout would We didn’t have a collections management voices, which is important. It doesn’t look
actually work in terms of space. I think it system when we started this project, but over-managed, it looks fresh and thorough
does work and it connects well with the we have now. We had to develop that at the because the people who developed the
original Cockerell Building too. same time and retrieve the objects from galleries are experts in each culture.
AM 1 2010
©
cybertrek 2010 Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital 57
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