Seven Wonders of Interpretation - Engage

08The Manchester Art Gallery Ekarved texts present a numberof distinct voices, but as with most labels these are curatorial:experts speaking to non-experts. Recognising that visitorsmight like to know who the experts were who wrote the labels,Tate has introduced texts which credit the authors. However,the addition of a name – or, in some cases, names – seemsmerely to add to the authoritarian weight of the message(and hints at curatorial vanity) rather than making the authormore accountable to the public. At the same time, it was alsorealised that non-experts could provide different insights andat Tate Modern celebrities including Terence Conran, BrianEno and Bella Freud have contributed ‘Bigger Picture’ captionswhich sat alongside curatorial labels, providing first-personviews. And at Tate Britain, visitors have been given a right ofreply in the comments boards which have become a featureof the Turner Prize exhibitions. Once described as ‘democracywalls’, these famously outspoken and revealing vox pops sitsomewhere between graffiti and serious comment, and gave uspen-and-paper blogs before anyone knew what blogging was.For the past few years, in a further initiative to involve the publicand to bring the real world and the gallery closer together,visitors to Tate Britain’s website have been invited to WriteYour Own Label, with selected entries used as captions in thegallery. ‘We’d particularly like to hear from visitors who have aspecial interest in the subject matter of some of Tate’spaintings,’ the site announces. ‘Are you interested in music,fashion, botany, theology or engineering? Have you visited, ordo you live near, a place shown in one of the landscapes? Haveyou experienced an event shown in one of the paintings?’ Suchmoves have gone some way towards reversing the one-wayflow of information from curator to visitor, while tacitly endorsingthe fact that visitors’ own areas of expertise and experience maybe of value; something that has long been appreciated andacted on in various ways in galleries outside London.The use of electronic media as a conduit between the galleryand its wider public in Tate Britain’s ‘write your own label’ projecthas been taken a step further in Leicester, where Dr Ross Parryof the Department of Museum Studies is developing experimental‘live’ labels. Using wi-fi technology, these replace conventionallabels with small-scale touchscreens. But rather than beingsimply an interactive aid for the visitor, their potential lies inenabling the curator to change, correct, update and add tothe information on a continual basis. Time will tell whether thisbecomes a solace to regretful label-writers, or a stick to beatthem with.3 Spoken wordsWhile galleries can be places for quiet contemplation, they areoften also arenas for audible dialogue, conversation, argument.It was not always so. Until the 1970s, when children started to

engage 20 Seven Wonders of Interpretationbe both heard and seen and art itself began to incorporatesound, the silent gallery could be deafeningly intimidatingand stupefyingly oppressive, drowning out thought and stiflingimagination. The reverential hush was usually only puncturedby the voice of the guide-lecturer, who delivered a monologueand rarely invited a response. The change was gradual, butwhen Tate Liverpool opened in 1988 it took the unprecedentedstep of replacing the traditional role of museum warder – theuniformed guard who in quieter galleries would while away his(or occasionally her) time studying greyhound racing form– with Live Guides, invigilators trained to talk about the workson show. Two years later, The British Art Show extended thisapproach by recruiting local MA students as Live Guides for itsGlasgow showing. As emerging artists, they were encouragedto see this as an experience which could inform their ownpractice, as well as helping the public. Other galleries began tofollow suit, and when BALTIC opened in 2002 its security staffwere presented as the Crew, a team of young people whosejob is both to look after the visitors and the art.Alongside this, a more private form of spoken communicationwas evolving. It is surprising now to discover that audio guideswere first introduced to the UK in the early 1960s – and thennot so amazing to realise that their development marched sideby side with technical innovations. It was not until the heftyportable reel-to-reel tape recorders were superseded by anew generation of cassette players that audio guides beganto be accepted as a viable interpretative tool, and even thenthe production and hardware were beyond the resources ofmost galleries. Though the efficacy of the disembodied voicein the visitor’s ear is widely debated – Does listening take overfrom looking? Does it mess with your head? – further technicaldevelopments have taken audio guides into the realm ofmultimedia, and podcasts have widened their potentialaudience, allowing people outside the gallery to downloadaudio files onto personal digital music players.4 Playrooms and learning zonesSometime in the late 1980s, the term ‘interactive’ weaselledits way into the language and practice of interpretation. Ratherthan creative or imaginative give-and-take between artworkand viewer, what it specifically denoted was computer-basedmultimedia. It has since become so embedded in galleryculture that we hardly question its meaning or purpose.Interactives (noun, plural) are hands-on, visitor-friendly.They are also high maintenance: given to breaking down,freezing, crashing and malfunctioning.The first major gallery-based computer interactive was a videodisc developed to complement Tate Liverpool’s opening displayof modern British sculpture in 1988. Using state-of-the-arttouchscreen technology, the interactive disc provided accessto a seemingly inexhaustible trove of contextual informationabout hundreds of works stored within its fathomless memory.Images, film, radio and archival material were at your fingertips.‘While galleries can be placesfor quiet contemplation, theyare often also arenas for audibledialogue, conversation, argument.It was not always so.’The National Gallery’s Micro Gallery, which opened with thenew Sainsbury Wing in 1991, provided information on theentire collection, with images of every painting. Users couldselect themes and plan their own tours, which they could thenprint out. In 2005 it was re-launched as ArtStart. In its new,higher-tech manifestation it has spilled out from its originalpurpose-built space and, as well as being given an additionalroom of its own at the other end of the Gallery, now occupiesother areas of the Sainsbury Wing. Due to ArtStart’sextraordinarily high-resolution images, the National Galleryis able to claim that ‘no other art institution offers the chance,through technology, to get so close to its paintings.’ Will thereal thing be able to live up to its virtual reality?Investment in interactive multimedia has become a featureof gallery redevelopment programmes, particularly thosethat have come about as a result of Heritage Lottery funding.Manchester Art Gallery’s major make-over included the CloreInteractive Gallery (supported by the Clore Duffield Foundation).Instead of confronting the visitor with a room full of computerterminals, this family-oriented space combines cleverlypresentedelectronic interactive games with low-tech, hands-onactivities such as dressing-up and storytelling, and evenincludes real art; each resource relates to a particular workfrom the collection.When Tate Modern’s new Learning Zone opened last year itoffered a vast array of gallery interactive edutainment, in whatTate described as an ‘integrated learning environment’. Itsscale and scope were awe-inspiring. It had copious space,09

10was lavishly designed and caused serious envy in colleaguesfrom other institutions. But while most of us can only dreamof having the same overall level of resources, this amazingextravaganza provided a shop window of pick-’n-mixpossibilities; some to emulate and some to pass by.5 The whole world in your handThe hand-held multimedia tour is only as old as this century.Combining aspects of wall labels, exhibition catalogues,audio-guides, and interactive programmes and games,it uses location-sensitive wireless technology to feed the visitoreverything they could possibly need wherever they are in thewired-up gallery. Video and still images, sound and text areavailable, plus the ability to talk (or at least send text messages)back. The information it can provide is practically limitless.While visitors may burst at the seams with this informationoverload, the medium puts increasing pressure on curatorsand educators to come up with the goods: more and morearchival and contextual material, ever-more elaborateapproaches. Enlightenment becomes heavier and heavier.Tate began it, and in its own words ‘continues to lead theinternational field in this use of cutting-edge technology forgallery interpretation.’ Other big institutions have leapt onboard. (Among the many resources included in the multimediatour accompanying the V&A’s recent exhibition Leonardo daVinci: Experience, Experiment and Design were an MRI scanand modern realisations of Leonardo’s designs for musicalinstruments, recreated by a potter.) It is cheering to see howa small gallery can both keep up with the trend and in manyrespects overtake it. Dulwich Picture Gallery’s entirelyhome-grown DiGIT programme, initially developed as aneducational tool for young people, aims to encourage activeobservation and discussion, asking questions which are‘sometimes funny, sometimes provocative, and always thoughtprovoking’. Rather than attempting to provide all the answers,it suggests follow-up activities and resources which studentscan research themselves.6 AmbienceIn the rush to supply information in every conceivable mediumand format, it is easy to overlook the impact of art’s physicalsurroundings and the effect that these may have on galleryvisitors. The buildings themselves can be intimidating, bothinside and out. The Independent’s reviewer Thomas Sutclifferecently drew attention to the phenomenon of Schwellenangst:‘It means fear of the threshold and, as I understand it, refers tothe spasm of doubt that can afflict you when you step over ademarcation between public and private space. Or even thedemarcation between a public space and a public space, forthat matter.’ He went on to say that though he was ‘long pastexperiencing Schwellenangst at the threshold of a theatre or anarts centre, there is one place where it still persistently strikes.At the door to any major art exhibition – contemporary orclassical – I feel a tremor of inadequacy, an uncertainty as towhether this is really for the likes of me.’

engage 20 Seven Wonders of InterpretationIt has taken some time for gallery design to take properaccount of the needs of the art, let alone the viewer. In the1970s the Arts Council 2 insisted that galleries taking itsexhibitions and loans of large-scale contemporary paintingsmust hang them on clean white walls, instead of dingy,pock-marked hessian. Though this radical move was as muchto the viewer’s advantage as to the works of art, the austerewhite space often proved as uninviting as the grim, badly-litgallery it replaced. While the bad old galleries generally hadseating (often clustered around huge radiators), the newgalleries had none. The visitor was stranded in pristineemptiness, unsure how to behave. Things got worse ascontemporary art seemed to produce more and more visualbanana skins.In 1982 a group of seven-year-old children at SouthamptonArt Gallery considered the problem of getting adults toovercome their reluctance to spend time with contemporary art.They suggested that visitors should be provided with a bagcontaining necessities such as new eyes, a new brain, and lips(for asking questions, and for smiling), as well as mats so thatthey could kneel down and look at things from differentperspectives, and maps to take them on interesting routesaround the works. But they realised that even with all theseamenities visitors would only really begin looking if they feltmore at home. Comfortable chairs and a friendly atmospherewere the most important provisions.Perhaps it is only once visitors have experienced this sortof welcome that they will have the confidence to appreciatea deliberately uncomfortable experience, designed to provokedisquiet and unease (or to tease), which is increasingly thegoal of exhibitions of new art.7 Oblique strategiesNot strictly part of interpretation’s brief, and probably the moreeffective as a result, these and numerous other tactics havebeen used in galleries nationwide since the 1970s:• Eavesdropping: run an event for children in order thatadults may surreptitiously benefit (not known to work theother way round)• Appoint an artist in residence• Appoint a writer in residence• Write labels that ask (open) questions• Make a deliberate mistake in a label – if the label’s worthreading you will soon hear about it• Write a label for the fire-hose/ventilation grill/thermohygrograph that people frequently mistake foran artwork• Use positive signage: Please Touch; Please Walk Across theArt Work; Please AskThis is just a start. Please add your own examples.Notes1 Manguel, A. (1998), ‘The Muse in the Museum’, in Into the Looking-Glass Wood:essays on books, reading, and the world. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf. The quotationcontinues, ‘Therefore I don’t trust the labels. A work of art itself carries nojudgement.’2 The history of Arts Council Touring Exhibitions goes back to 1942, when theCouncil for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts began to circulate artexhibitions to galleries, museums and other venues in the UK. These in turn hadtheir origins in the British Institute of Adult Education’s experimental travellingexhibitions, Art for the People, which toured from 1933 to 1944 to towns whichwere ‘too small or too poor’ to possess an art gallery. In the 1970s the Arts Councilextended the scope and range of its touring exhibitions programme, includingshows of cutting-edge contemporary work, which were intended to be challenging,alongside more ‘accessible’ exhibitions. In 1979, an Art Education Officer wasappointed to work specifically with Arts Council Touring Exhibitions, and in 1984,the Arts Council’s ‘Glory of the Garden’ regional development strategy for the visualarts assisted the establishment and funding of many new curatorial and educationposts across the country, each with a particular remit to work with contemporary artand its interpretation. Interpretation had always been at the heart of the ArtsCouncil’s touring exhibitions: in the early days, each exhibition was accompanied bya lecturer who travelled with the show to all its venues. Since 1987, when theHayward Gallery and Arts Council Touring Exhibitions were devolved to the SouthBank Centre, the touring programme has undergone various changes of identity.After first becoming South Bank Centre Touring, its name was changed to NationalTouring Exhibitions. It is currently known as Hayward Touring.Images in order of appearance1 Interpretation in the exhibition Paul Klee: The Nature of Creation at the HaywardGallery in 2002. Visitors watch a flash movie downstairs, while local GCSEstudents, trained (by an artist) to act as live guides, are glimpsed at the window inthe upper room. (Photo: Liane Harris)2 Enough to induce Schwellenangst? Gallery doors, as depicted on the cover of aguide for young visitors to Aberdeen Art Gallery, c.19803 Need you know more? ‘Basic’ label for a work in the National Touring ExhibitionYou’ll Never Know: Drawing and Random Interference, 2006. A separate labelexplained that this was one of a series of screenprints using food and other organicmaterials.4 ‘At Southampton Art Gallery lots of grownups look at a picture for about fiveseconds, so I decided to make a trap to make them stay longer. A person goes intoone of the galleries and puts 5p by the picture, and out comes a chair and someangel cake and a cup of tea. By drinking the tea and eating their cake they look atthe picture.’ Gary Houghton (aged 7), 198211