The Design Museum has announced major ambitions to transform its main exhibition space in time for its 40th anniversary.
At the heart of a new long-term organisational strategy, called Transformation 2029, the London-based museum is working to ensure its permanent, free-to-access gallery meets the evolving needs of visitors and reflects the fast-paced evolution of the global design story.
To achieve this, and to increase access to its collection of world-class design objects, the museum will embark on a major expansion of its permanent collection gallery, as well as a full overhaul of its displays.
The museum has announced the first milestone towards realising these ambitions from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The organisation has awarded the project £267,249, which allows it to move into a full development phase. An extensive stakeholder consultation will help shape the plans.
This development phase is expected to last up to two years and will begin with the hiring of key roles. This phase will culminate with the application for a full grant of £2,700,752 from the fund. If successful, the new gallery could be open to the public in time for the Design Museum’s 40th anniversary in 2029.
Design Museum CEO and director Tim Marlow says: “Next year marks a decade since moving to our landmark home in Kensington. We have achieved many of our goals since then, and the museum has evolved into an institution that is helping to set the cultural agenda, not least through record-breaking exhibitions.
“Expanding and improving our permanent gallery for our 40th anniversary is at the heart of our new Transformation 2029 strategy to future-proof the museum for the next decade and beyond. We are delighted to have received this initial support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, and thanks to all those who contribute to the National Lottery we can now develop these exciting opportunities further.”
As the UK’s national museum of design, the Design Museum is a global hub for the transformative potential of design. Its new key strategic objectives as part of the strategy include engaging and nurturing the designers of tomorrow, advocating for design’s role in the green transition, and ensuring its long-term financial resilience. Key targets will be to increase the museum’s annual visitor numbers to 800,000 by 2029, and ‘engage’ a global audience of 10 million people.
The Design Museum’s collection gallery
The current collection gallery, ‘Designer, Maker, User’, was inaugurated in 2016 when the Design Museum relocated to the Grade II* listed former Commonwealth Institute building in Holland Park, Kensington. It had an expected lifespan of around 5-7 years. In the nine years since, the museum says its audiences’ needs, design discourse and the world have all evolved.
Johanna Agerman Ross, Conran Foundation Chief Curator at the Design Museum, adds: “Designer, Maker, User was an important collection display when the museum moved to West London in 2016, and for a decade it has been a valuable resource, including for our hundreds of thousands of annual visitors. But it is no longer reflective of where design is heading.
“In recent years, we have seen unprecedented changes to how we work and live, and also how we as a museum display and speak about design. We now have this critical but thrilling opportunity to radically address how we make design more accessible to museum visitors, and how we ensure it’s engaging for many years to come.”
The new gallery will be able to reflect changes more dynamically. Unlike the current configuration, it will be designed to be fully flexible. This will allow for the easy rotations of objects more frequently, a greater ability to quickly display new acquisitions, and more rapid display changes to tell new stories, in new ways as needed. It will mean major key developments – such as fast-moving advances in technology, material innovation and more inclusive practices – will be able to be included with ease and without being outdated too quickly.
If the project is fully realised, it will also see the full replacement of the gallery’s interpretation to enhance the relevance, resonance and accessibility of the displays. Exactly how this is achieved will be formulated through community consultation and key stakeholder engagement during the development phase. Significant and vital conservation work will also be carried out on key objects from the collection to protect them for future generations.
The new gallery and its construction will have environmental responsibility at its core, reflecting the Design Museum’s newly established reputation as a sector-leader in reforming museum practice for the green transition.
Head of Collection and Archive at the Design Museum, Tom Wilson, concludes: “The Design Museum collection features some of the most recognisable design icons of the past 100 years, such as Britain’s road signs designed by Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir, the London Underground map, and a first edition Barbie doll. All are fantastic and much-loved examples of how people connect with design on a daily basis. It is hugely exciting that we might be able to show even more of these fascinating items in the near future.”
Elsewhere in central London, The National Gallery, has announced its largest transformation since its formation 200 years ago.
Images: The Design Museum
