International Museum Day takes place on 18 May and, in honour of our museum heritage, Flow is running a three-part series dedicated to museums. In the first part of our series, exhibition specialist and project coordinator Gegê Leme tells us about her work at museums.
There is a perception that creative work is imbued with an aura of glamour, that the gene of creativity takes possession of your soul in a magic moment, and great exhibition experiences are created!
This is not necessarily so. My field of work requires much hard work, effective collaboration, robust discussion and creativity.
For a long time I was faced with the hurdles and endless steps of exhibition development and museum-world thinking. It became clear that my training and experience in architecture and production design needed another layer – one that would sew together the many internal disciplines of exhibition development: museum studies.
And so, at the age of 39, I signed up for a master’s degree in museum studies at the University of Leicester in October 2010.
I intend to remain an exhibition development expert, but wished to extend my strategic reach since I believe exhibitions are only a small part of communications – be it for museums or companies in general – but one that has incredible audience reach and an enviable amount of media resources available to create enticing experiences.
In countries like South Africa and Brazil, where I am from, new thinking around museums is starting to grow. However, the general scenario is of old institutions that have lost track of their strategic focus, or new institutions struggling to find one.
There is an erroneous belief that producing exhibitions will create this focus. But it is the other way round: an exhibition development team must understand the strategic profile of the institution it is working for, as well as the audience (market) needs – and only then can it think of conceptualising exhibitions.
Having previously been involved in aspects of museum planning, delving into the theory of museum studies was a sequence of eureka moments for me, where pieces of a puzzle fell into place.
Magically, the integration of those involved in business, management, finance, marketing, production and operations with content specialists, curators, communicators, educators, archivists, scholars, architects, designers, communities and the audience seemed obvious. All are indispensable pieces of the puzzle of museum development, and being able to engage, from an informed place, with all these participants is key to successful exhibition work.
This theoretical knowledge is extremely helpful in our practical, hands-on work at Flow Exhibitions. We are already a multi-disciplinary team with various complementary skills: educationalists, communication gurus, architects, designers, content developers, managers, IT specialists, financial wizards and exhibition experts.
And being able to call on these disciplines and evaluation systems is very beneficial for projects such as the Maropeng exhibition upgrade, where a good understanding of Maropeng’s founding principles and its current requirements were needed before advising on improvements.
Projects of this scale are challenging because there are many possible solutions to the challenges, and there are differing opinions from the client about the best way to proceed. We thrive on such robust discussions because they signal there is true participation, and we do what professional best practice expects of us: consult and offer feedback to identify the best way forward. This can take time, but it pays off in the end.
Flow Exhibitions is currently embarking on a new journey – the redesign of two of the five exhibition halls at the Ditsong Museum of Natural History in Pretoria: the South African Bird Hall and the Hall of Biodiversity.
Our first engagements with the Ditsong staff showed a team of passionate professionals with high expectations and a willingness to collaborate. We are looking forward to this journey.
From a personal perspective, I am glad that my decision to become a student again is paying off – not only for me but also for the teams I work with.