第六章 結論與建議
2.2. 倫敦設計博物館
Questionnaire for
A Study on Design Museums’ Cultural Values
Interviewed on Nov. 25, 2013 at Design museum London Description of the questionnaire:
Design involves activities of both aesthetical and commercial values, and the key focus of this study is how to position and develop the cultural discourse for design museums in the contemporary society and also throughout its cultural developmental process. This study’s investigation on design museums makes reference to J. Holden’s concept for cultural values, with the following three cultural value components proposed by Holden: 1. culture experience, 2. culture practice, and 3. culture identity. This questionnaire will look at design museums’ core business (collection research), and also by looking into possible innovative added values, the questions included in this questionnaire are intended to investigate from the center extending out in accordance with the following aspects and are intended to help with observing design museums’ cultural values: 1.
museum’s position and collection research; 2. design-based exhibitions; 3. design education and service; 4. business strategies and policies; 5. local design culture development. Subsequently, the collected data will be analyzed and used to develop frameworks or theories for the construction of design museums’ cultural values.
Some information about the museum:
1. In a whole there are about 100 people working in the museum but only 40 people are employed by the museum. For the new museum in 2015 it is expected to have 10 percentage of growth in getting more design and museum professionals.
2. All of design works are outsourcing, including 2D, 3D, and digital technology works.
3. Currently there are 3000 objects are in the museum’s collection.
1. Regarding the Museum’s Position and Collection Research
No. Question Culture 1 Please describe the museum’s position and mission statement
Ans:Refer to the reference information.
2 Following the previous question, under this mission statement, amongst the three components of culture
experience, culture identity, and culture practice, which one does the museum place most emphasis on? Please check the appropriate box to the right.
□ □ □
Ans: Design museum don’t regard itself as a British museum but a global design museum. It concerns not only the world design scenes but also the design culture and design
development in UK.
3 Please further explain in the last 3-5 years, what strategies have the museum employ to achieve the aforementioned mission?
4 Please explain the allotment for the museum’s current collections based on quantities and genres.
Ans:Refer to the reference information.
5 Following the previous question, what type of design works is the key focus for the museum’s design collection?
Ans:The collection has a variety of objects. Chair collection is one of the main ones. We have our criteria in getting the objects into our museum and most of them are involved with topic/theme issues. Also refer to the reference sheets.
6 Which component to the right does the museum place most emphasis on for your collected design works? Please check the appropriate box to the right.
□ □ □
7 Following the previous question, please explain the correlation between the museum’s design collection works and its design exhibition strategy.
2. Regarding Design-Based Exhibitions
No. Question Culture 1 Please explain the museum’s overall exhibition planning
strategy and exhibition focus.
Ans:Most exhibitions in the museum are not shown in a chronological way but in topics or theme oriented.
2 Please explain the museum’s curatorial and operational strategies for design theme exhibitions.
Ans:The curatorial department has only one full time curator and 2 part time curators. Most of us have design
backgrounds but not specialized in any design history.
Probably in the future office we will have curators in different design history professions, such as architecture curator. Normally we have to deal with 7 exhibitions in a year. We like the preparation time for an exhibition is about 18-20 months. However some exhibitions take only 10-12 months to finish. We think it is too short for us because many exhibitions are involved sponsorship efforts.
We started our tour exhibitions from 2001 and it came out about 100 exhibitions(or places?) since then.
3 Following the previous question, is there a permanent exhibition for design collection in the museum? Are there any special considerations for the connection between the permanent exhibition and other special design theme exhibitions?
Ans:Due to our building is quite limited, we don’t have a permanent room only showing our collections. All exhibitions are temporary ones. The one closed to what permanent exhibition concept is the one shown on the third floor called “Design museum collection: extraordinary stories about ordinary things”.
4 Following the previous question, how do you organize a design theme exhibition and how are the schedules for different design exhibitions in a year? Is there a set ratio implemented among various design works or categories?
Ans:Generally speaking, exhibitions on the 2nd floor are special exhibitions with big names or theme exhibitions, such as Paul Smith. From our past experiences exhibitions in fashion design, graphic design and architecture are more popular than others. Due to we are a design museum which concerns a variety of design fields, we have to take care of
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different design topics. Some of them link to educational issues or local design community.
5 Amongst the three components of culture experience, culture identity, and culture practice, which one does the museum place most emphasis on for curating design theme
exhibitions? Please check the appropriate box to the right.
□ □ □
6 Following the previous question, please describe in further details any successful cases.
3. Regarding Design Education and Service
No. Question Culture 1 Please explain the museum’s educational promotion
strategy and actual executions.
Ans: Refer to the reference information.
2 Please give some examples of the museum’s most innovative educational promotional activities from the previous 5 years (1-2 examples for activities such as exhibition educational, community-based, or public relation educational events). How are these differentiated from other museums’ events?
Ans:The museum doesn’t offer adult educational programs. Most of the educational programs are for students ranged from elementary schools, middle school and universities. For example, a program called “Design Ventura” is sponsored by Deutsche Bank. The program has been lasting for 10 years and it aims to teach teenagers to learn design concepts and to design objects. Some of the works created from the program had been sold in the museum’s store.
There is another project called “This is design” and it was a website aiming to help students to understand “design”
by cooperating with school teachers in their curriculum.
You can check out the website for more information.
3 Following the previous question, which component to the right is most emphasized on for the aforementioned examples of activities?
□ □ □
4 Please explain the museum’s concept behind its overall operation based on the museum’s architecture and spatial design? Are they included in your innovative
operational strategy?
Ans:The current museum building is a warehouse as you can see. The new museum is still in an existing building.
The location is around the Kensington area. The new museum has about 600 square meters for permanent exhibition, and 1300 square meters for theme exhibitions or temporary exhibitions. We will add some more museum functions in it, such as educational rooms, conference rooms. As you know we are a small private museum and we have a team in doing funding campaigns to raise money for the new museum. Our aim of the funding is about 45 million and it’s about 40 so far. We are excited about it because it’s almost there. Most of the funds are from private foundations (more culture oriented) in UK,
and only some are from other European countries, such as Swarovski foundation.
5 Please explain with examples how the museum applies contemporary technologies to its service system.
Ans:We don’t have audio guide devices but sometimes we get involved some digital technologies such as QR codes or through mobile phone system.
4. Regarding Business Strategies and Measures
No. Question Culture 1 Please explain the museum’s main source of funding; is it
acquired from the government, or from private funding through self-fundraising? What are the key sources for self-raised funding?
Ans:We are a charity and a self-funding organization. We also set up a private enterprise in running some museum functions. Our budgets come from several sources, such as museum tickets, museum shop(owned by ourselves), museum café (we earn some percentage from its earning), space rent (we have a room for conference rental). We also have sponsorship programs, such as donations, membership, or sponsorship in kinds (such as sponsors can get special openings, media exposures, special tickets, special programs...). You can check with our annual report from our website. You might get the version of 2012 issued in March 2013.
2 Please explain the position and the operational strategy for the museum’s gift shop.
Ans:We own our museum shop and we have a store manager and a purchasing person who can take care of all product selection works and make sure it runs well.
Furthermore we have a commercial director dealing with all works about these business matters.
3 Following the previous question, what differentiates this shop’s operational strategy from the shops of other potential competitor museums?
Ans:I am not sure how other museum run their museum shops but I guess that they have enterprises to deal with this as well. Such as V&A has its own enterprise as well.
4 Following the previous question, are any of the components to the right taken into consideration for the operational strategy of the museum’s gift shop?
Yes □(If yes, please check the appropriate box to the right) No □
□ □ □
5 Is the museum involved in the commercial development for products of added values inspired by its own collected works?
Yes □ (Please give examples) No ■
Ans:Paul Smith’s exhibition is the first time that we offer exhibition limited items for sale. Normally we don’t do this. This exhibition is special because that Paul Smith is
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willing to develop some products for this exhibition and all of these sale items are created by his team. We offer a small shop space for it. There is one case in the exhibition of “Designs of the year” that a Korean design created a design and at that time it was only a working model. It got a very good public feedback. So we try to put his design into production and sold in our museum shop. However, so far I don’t think we really produce products from our collections except some postcards though we have a strong collection on chairs.
5. Regarding the Development of Local Design Cultures
No. Question Culture 1 Is the museum involved in the research of local design
cultures or design resources?
Yes □ (Please give examples) No ■
Ans:We will use local design professions in helping us in design works but we haven’t executed such a research survey project.
2 Following the previous question, has the museum ever been engaged in discourses for local design cultures?
How are these discourses presented to the audience?
(i.e.: exhibition, publication, or educational events?) Ans:We bring some local design contents into our exhibitions or out sourcing design works to the local designers. Most of our visitors are the general public who are London cultural visitors, family groups, or higher educational groups. We communicate with them through some public programs. For designers, they can get involved with us through activities such as Talks or some lecturing events.
3 Following the previous question, which component to the right is the key consideration for conducting discourses related to the local design cultures?
■ □ □
4 In regards to the utilization or collaboration with external resources, how are the design resources used for
promotion? Could you give some actual cases or measures that were undertaken?
Ans:We invite designers to take part in some exhibition works, help us in different kind of designing needs. We honor them through putting their names in the exhibitions.
We also invite some designers as a speaker in Talks or events.
Thank you for your time and kind assistance.