Recent museums and galleries
Sources: Words by Andrew Barrie and Julia Gatley. Photography by Julia Gatley, Andrew Barrie Jade Shum and Cass Goodwin.
The ways in which museums and art galleries have evolved over the last generation can be seen from different perspectives. In one view, these institutions have sought to expand their offerings, bringing communities into lively engagement with their cultures, whether local or global, historical or contemporary. A less sunny version of the drive to engage is that, like so much that was once assumed to be a ‘public good’, the proliferation of recreational options and a slow-grinding funding crunch have meant that our museums and galleries must continually justify their access to the public purse, usually by meticulously accounting for visitor numbers, followers and page views. Either way, these formerly high-minded institutions are increasingly opening up to their communities and localities. They seek to create facilities, exhibits and events that will draw people in and contribute to the richness of local life, particularly for those who, previously, might have felt museums and galleries were not places for them.
In rethinking these institutions, architects have looked in two, in many senses opposite, directions.
It is possible to see museums and galleries as places of education – extensions of the sequence of learning institutions that includes kindergartens, schools and university buildings. This museum-as-school conception, which seeks to grow understanding, indicates such moves as the inclusion of ‘education studios’, like those at the Len Lye Centre, or the
