Mini-Museums
Posted in Museum Expansionism on 05. Feb, 2009
© Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service (via 24hourmuseum.org.uk)
Back on the 4th January, I introduced the idea of “museum expansionism”. It was to be a general term for occurrence of museological concepts and theories going into entirely new realms.
It basically started with my obsession that museums were taking exhibitions into airports.
The sentence that seemed to catch a lot of attention was “What if you had the resources to spread a museum across an entire city?” The idea of taking the museum TO people was an attractive concept to explore for some.
Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service have started using “Mini-Museums” aimed at “introducing historic objects into community spaces”. The first one is in a shopping centre.
The Mini Museums are tall, triangular cabinets. Looking at the photo, they seem secure but also appear to be modular in their construction. It looks like bits can be easily taken apart and replaced, meaning putting up new displays could be quick. It acts as advertising too, making the museums known in the town (I would have chosen a different font, but hey).
Ciara Canning, Curator of Community History:
“The idea is that by taking objects out of their traditional museum setting we can bring our collections to the widest possible audience. Our ‘mini museums’ offer a taster of the wonderful objects which people can see in our museums and will hopefully encourage more people to visit in the future and see what else Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service has to offer”
You might be interested in this geocaching project from the Seattle area, where an arts center literally sent art on the road into the city, to be carried by regular folks from place to place. I also love the various Pub Science programs (one at The Franklin in Philly) where science educators from the museum put on lab coats and head out to bars with a sign that says, “We’re scientists. Ask us anything.” They have some coasters and flyers, but then they just work the crowd.
I’ve never really got my head around geocaching (I suppose because I’ve never had a GPS anything). But I like the idea.