In the article Establishing the Manifesto. Art Histories in the Nineteenth-century museum by Christopher Whitehead which I already mentioned and quoted, the author also offered some recent cases where museological and curatorial projects might be read and interpreted as agents of “boundary work”. Among these, he reported about two exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and one at the Design Museum in London. The latter was the
«exhibition dedicated to the work of the mid-twentieth-century flower arranager Constance Spry at the Design Musuem in London can be seen to push the boundary of what can be studied and exhibited under the banner of ‘design history’. The controversy surrounding this exhibition, however, is an indication of the potentially difficult and contested nature of such boundary work, not to mention its interrelationship with cultural and commercial politics».
As far as design is concerned, a lot of research could be done on the “boundary work” developed within and around museums. And the Design Museum in London certainly offers an interesting case to study, in order to investigate if and how the boundaries of what is meant by the word “design” are stretched, as well as to understand how the identity of a museum of design is shaped.
In his paper, Whitehead does not mention that the ‘Spry case’ in 2004 was one main event pushing James Dyson to resign from chairman of the Design Museum «in protest over what he [saw] as a drift from serious discussion to fluff», as the Washington Post reported, or – to put it in the words of Dyson’s press release – «following concerns that focus has become styling rather than product design». The exhibition about the work of Spry was a project by the then director Alice Rawsthorne, and the case was debated quite extensively, and lots of traces can be found online, offering a range of opinions besides press releases; for instance, on imomus’ blog, the author and his readers trace the question back to oppositions as men vs. women (Rawsthorne vs. Dyson and Terence Conran); engineering, problem solving and functionalism vs. style and fashion; modernism vs. postmodernism.
In 2006 Rawsthorne resigned, and since then Deyan Sudjic is the director.
People may change, yet stretches and controversies always seem to be around the corner – see also the wikipedia voice on the Museum, where a paragraph is specifically devoted to ‘Controversy’ [September 20, 2009: The day after this post was first published online, on July 27, 2009, the wikipedia voice about the Design Museum was edited, deleting the paragraph concerning ‘Controversy’, to which I made reference; this change can be seen from the history of the wikipedia voice; the previous version, including the ‘Controversy’ paragraph, can still be read in the history of the voice]. Another good case to question could be the exhibition the last year’s exhibition on the work of the fashion photographer Tim Walker. Definitely a great work and an interesting exhibition, yet the link with design was far from being clear.
Moreover, it is well known that in the recent years the Design Museum is working to better define its identity, restructuring its collections and trying to move beyond the policy of showing just temporary exhibitions. Plans for a new ‘home’ have become crucial. After considering sites as Tate Modern and Potters Field,
«[m]ost recently, the museum —founded by Terence Conran and Stephen Bayley in the 1980s and originally located in the basement of the Victoria & Albert Museum — has again been courted by the V&A. However, BD understands that Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic, who took up the post in 2006, was concerned it could be lost within the much larger museum»,
as the Building Design online magazine reported in October 2008.
It is significant that, while it was born as a ‘Boilerhouse’ project in the basement of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s basement in 1982, today the Design Museum feels it has – or maybe should strengthen and maintain – its own, separate, identity.
By the way, it is a recent news that Kensington & Chelsea Council planners asked OMA to redraw the project, being «concerned about the height and bulk of the proposed development», as the Building Design magazine reported on July 8.
The story continues…
