Reading Museum

I lived in Reading about 15 years ago, but I don't think I ever went to the museum. Recently I rectified this and I'm glad, because Reading Museum has had two good ideas for hanging art. Sadly, a strict no photography policy means I can't illustrate them but they are worth discussing.

The first is in the main body of the museum. There are spaces where art is hung as in a conventional gallery but for much of the space, paintings are shown individually, in a display case alongside related artefacts from the Museum's collection. The paintings and objects end up contextualising each other and the display is visually richer than if the artefacts were left on their own. I do think the provision of context is massively important as it can fundamentally change our understanding of ambitious paintings. Equally, if the painting happens to be a very ordinary portrait of an industrialist then the objects can make it seem far more interesting than it is and in return the painting can give a human touch to the artefacts and make it easier to connect to them. I applaud them for doing this instead of doing what most other regional museums do - commissioning second rate illustrations which communicate little.

The other idea could perhaps be of benefit to many museums. Thanks to a long tradition of public museums and of bequests being set against death duty in this country, many galleries, museums and public collections have far more art than they have wall space. A few highlights of their collection are shown repeatedly while the poor relations (some of the work isn't good enough, some is in poor condition and some is just too similar to other pieces in their collection) languish in vaults and stores. What Reading have done is to take a room which isn't used as anything other than a space to marshall school trips, pulled down the blinds to reduce the light levels and absolutely covered the walls from floor to ceiling salon-style with as many paintings as they could cram in. There is no attempt at curation. There are no labels except on paintings which were framed at a time when fashion meant the details of the image were written on the frame. There is no information other than a pile of photocopies crammed into a leaflet holder. The quality ranges from the decent to the painful and the condition of the work is just as varied. In spite of this, it's a wonderful thing. Every single one of these paintings would otherwise be locked in a vault unless there happened to be a temporary exhibition which could use them. Not only does it get these paintings seen, it also draws attention to the scale of the problem. Go to the Your Paintings website, search for your local museum and you will be amazed at what they have in storage - even museums which have almost no art on display at all.