Gordon MacGregor
Benighted at the museum

Rather like visiting an old friend whom we've heard has suffered a mid-life crisis – and is embarking on an unwise course of sartorial innovation – I approached the refurbished Kelvingrove Museum with some trepidation. Two hours later, having 'done' the museum experience and helped boost visitor numbers, I emerged blinking onto the cappuccino-stained streets of the West End feeling pleasantly stimulated. It had been an enjoyable jaunt but, on reflection, utterly unenlightening. Perhaps I had grown impervious to the museum's improving influence. Or perhaps the refurbishment deserved further examination...
     Anyone who remembers Kelvingrove 'pre-refurb' will notice the changes immediately. Where once the visitor was elevated into the museum via the external stair, we now access via the basement; under the feet of St. Mungo, past the shop and through the Royal Bank of Scotland gallery. The visitor is then guided past a wall-sized plaque bearing the names of those who financed the 're-display'. One might almost think that they had paid for the construction of the building. After negotiating the preamble and finally entering the main hall, the most noticeable feature is that its vast space and height – once dominated by the organ – has been defeated by a collection of disembodied, gurning plaster heads (why?). Perhaps they indicate the ideal state in which to experience the museum.
     The visitor in search of anything particular will soon discover that Kelvingrove no longer resorts to anything as base as maps. Rather, the east wing is the 'Expression' section (red); the west wing is the 'Life' section (blue). These nebulous terms sound more like the names of an underpowered hatchback. They are also reminiscent of the confusingly humanistic zones of the Millennium Dome (Mind, Body, Faith, Journey, Imagination), which left visitors feeling that they had visited a 'peculiar shopping centre'.
    
The two sections have been sub-divided into 22 themes, following a 'narrative, story-telling' approach. The themes have names like carnival rides – 'Tracks, Trails and Dinosaur Tales' or 'Strutting Your Stuff' – and attempt to convey ideas by drawing on material from all sections. This 'radical redisplay of objects' eschews the strictures of enlightenment rationality and systematisation in favour of a 'white elephant' stall approach and the result can feel like a giant Easter egg hunt. Despite the museum's claims that they must 'challenge as well as educate,' in some cases they seem more intent on baffling unwary visitors on their unstructured dérive from the 'stuffed crocodile, armour and vases room' to the 'Spitfire, seagulls and swords section'.
     If anything is sought it is found by accident, though some things should stay lost. The inclusion of an object cinema, for instance, was intriguing but turned out to be a disorientating, noisy slideshow accompanied by a relentless loop of Inuit yodelling (I was reminded of the brainwashing of Harry Palmer in 'The Ipcress File').
     The overall impression is of culture made over to reflect a paradigm of consumption and experienced in a state of distraction. If the redisplay is radical then it is the radicalism of capital. It is also redolent of radical individualism, which demands that everything external be referable to the person experiencing it.
     The 'thematic and narrative' approach may convey the personal stories behind the objects but the main drawback is that the museum scripts the story, imposes the correct interpretation, and suggests the appropriate emotional response. They even attempt to pre-empt the subjective conclusions of the visitor (one theme, for example, began with the premise that 'Glasgow is a better place for immigration'). It is the way one might organise a museum if I were catering for people with an atrophied imagination, little initiative and scant background knowledge.
     There are also some outré developments, such as The Centre of New Enlightenment (TCoNE). You can tell from its title that it must be good but what it does isn't easy to say. According to the bumph it explores themes of kindness, trust, endurance and detrmination with 10–14 year olds as part of the Curriculum for Excellence. This slightly odd agenda would appear to require a classroom and some guided tours. But at a cost of £1million (provided by the Hunter Foundation) I must be missing something. Sir Tom's influence also extends to the Campbell Hunter Wing, which attempts 'to make opportunity for all a reality rather than a dream'.
     Despite claims to greater inclusivity, the age-range catered for appears to have narrowed. The infantilist turn (which generally accompanies consumerism) extends to the descriptions of exhibits. Limited to 30 words in an Early Learning Centre font it would be unsurprising if they had been written in phonetics: (ji-raf, la-yon, spit-fa-yer). The museum explains that this approach was taken in order to 'avoid confusing language'. For example, the use of the term 'everyday dress' in the swords section had led one boy to believe that 'people who fought with rapiers wore dresses'. Rather than educate the child, the mountain – as always – came to Muhammad.
     However, culture generally means taking in something alien and beyond normal experience – not something that is immediately referable to the punter. Indeed, we might be concerned for the future of these children, who are destined to enter a world which doesn't automatically bend and conform to their needs and encounter others who have had to make the imaginative leap from an early age. An alternative approach would be to allow children to learn in a more Gestalt way, developing a broad but structured knowledge which allows them to begin to make connections in their own time, using initiative and imagination.
    
I put some of my concerns to the museum manager, Dr Neil Ballantyne, who makes a cogent and passionate defence of the new approach. He points out that the museum's organisation is based on a rigorous intellectual framework and followed the largest consultation exercise ever conducted by Glasgow Museums, He denies that there has been a 'dumbing down', but rather a variety of approaches are provided to appeal to different learning styles – reading, interpretation or interaction. Amongst these, narrative and story-telling are emphasised as these have been shown to provide the most effective way of communicating difficult ideas.
     While all of that is reasonable it might be argued that it follows the traditional pattern of managerialism. The reliance on focus groups and the evidential basis certainly provide the pretext for spending tens of millions on the refurbishment. But if there is to be a mix of styles, who decides which gallery gets which style? And with only a 10% churn in exhibits each year the thematic approach might appear limited. The alternative would be to return to cohesion and uniformity, which need not be seen as exclusive.
     The visitor who felt alienated by the museum pre-facelift will not be seduced by its being presented in jarring and disorientating juxtaposition. Perhaps the problem really lay in the perception of the building itself: a Victorian 'Palace of Arts' (not much inclusivity there) designed for the middle classes to promenade at leisure under an improving influence. There has doubtless been an attempt to avoid the museum being seen as a temple of culture for silent concentration. But the ability to compare and contrast; to see the development of objects and ideas; to take a little time, space and quiet to allow things to resonate, are not things we should jettison.
     Perhaps part of the problem is that managers are suborning the role of professional educators. The thematic approach is all well and good for special exhibitions but when applied across the board the feeling is that visitors are being forced into participating in a scripted learning experience. Whereas the museum used to be like a 3D filing cabinet from which one could draw material to back up a more general knowledge – or simply browse and wonder – the feeling now is altogether more curricular. Perhaps Kelvingrove thinks that it needs to become an education provider in order to take up some scholastic slack but it seems that it doesn't trust children to be able to do things on their own.
     While I appreciate that the museum felt it could try new things, I just hope the pendulum doesn't swing any further out and that we can return to a better balance. There is no doubt that the new museum is a great place to wear-out the kids. And visitor numbers are soaring. But whether these visitors will make return visits and, crucially, whether they take more than some overpriced booty away with them, remains a moot point.

Gordon MacGregor is a lawyer