Diverse Manière: exploring the learning potential of artistic interventions

at Sir John Soane’s Museum Collection.

At Sir John Soane´s Museum, very little has changed since its founder
died in 1837. The site, consisting of his house, library and private museum, was
donated to the nation in 1883 for the benefit of ‘Amateurs, Students of Painting,
Sculpture and Architecture’   together with three Descriptions that stipulated the
manner in which works were arranged. The site was planned to stay the way it
was, so that future generations could use it in the same way his founder did.

From the very first moment, then, this long-term agreement situated
Soane’s Museum in a difficult place. Not interfering with the original
arrangement could easily be turned into reproducing or even promoting ideas
behind this Collection constructed during the Victorian Period. Values that
served to justify an expanding process of colonization and dominant ideas
about civilization and progress during the nineteenth century which are not very
popular nowadays.

In this context, recent artist’s interventions at Sir John Soane´s Museum

have shown the power to spark alternative interpretative paths without
modifying the old arrangement or adding panels of written information that
would detract from the immersive experience. Particularly, a recent temporary
exhibition named ‘Diverse Manière: Piranesi, Fantasy and Excess’ explored the
use of technology in bringing new insights and illustrating ideas present in the
collection. During the months of February and March 2014, among the original
collection of casts, models and works from antiquity, a series of 3D prints were
allocated in different rooms at Sir John Soane’s Museum. These ‘copies’
created from designs in Piranesi’s 1769 publication 'Diverse Manière’ were
translated from paper into full-scale objects and placed in the museum spaces,
as if following the intricate and theatrical effects Piranesi’s etchings. It was
precisely the encounter with these objects what opened new possibilities for
visitors to engage with this Collection in alternative ways.

The nature of a Collection

Sir John Soane had a very particular way of arranging the objects of his
collection. The creation of this museum space was intentionally planned to
project a multiplicity of perspective views, potentially evoking different emotions
and associations of antiquity. According to P. Thornton and H. Dorey, this way
of understanding the space as an ‘expressive art form’, prevents the museum
from being considered as a ‘repository’1, as those described by Theodor W.
Adorno in his ‘Valery Proust Museum’2. They sustain that no matter who comes
in nowadays and what they pay attention to, visitors are allowed to establish a

1
Thornton, P., and Dorey, H., A miscellany of objects from Sir John Soane's
Museum: consisting of paintings, architectural drawings and other curiosities
from the collection of Sir John Soane. Laurence King, 1992, p. viii.
2
Adorno, T., ‘Valéry Proust Museum’, Prisms: Cultural Criticism in Society,
Neville Spearman, London, 1967, p. 177.
vital relationship with objects because the space is capable of inspiring
alternative and multiple voices. However, there are powerful ideas underlining
the gallery space that are not evident for modern audiences. The fact that
Soane did not arranged his collection chronologically or by culture, as other
famous collectors of his time, does not mean his museum is not exempt from
the influence values and ideas of the Enlightenment Period. In fact, his
arrangement was planned in a way to promote his own drawings and other
works from friends and colleagues, as he placed them next to celebrated
buildings of antiquity to construct a story that would link British artists with a
particular History of civilisation. His own museum was indeed a space that could
offer him the sense of neutrality, already designed by his culture, where objects
were detached from their original social and political meaning, and put at the
service of an hegemonic discourse.

Andrea Witcomb, a renowned cultural heritage and museum researcher,

has applied the idea of ‘stasis’ originally explained by Adorno to how museums
have traditionally avoided to question their own authority. In her opinion,
museums need to embrace change by recognizing the desire of communities to
get involve and represented in the museum practice. Moreover, if they want to
assert their relevance in society, she continues, museums have to acknowledge
the subjective politics of meaning making, and to question their capacity to
communicate effectively with audiences. But to embrace audiences and
welcome them to participate in museum processes means giving them access
to information and means to support their learning. It is necessary to question,
then, how modern visitors to Sir John Soane’s Museum can access
interpretative tools to challenge the ideas behind this exhibition space and
engage with the collection in alternative ways.

Other ways of Learning

Soane collected artworks and artefacts in very which way. Objects

frequently came from auction houses, flee markets, acts of charity and building
sites around London. While some objects were collected for their distinguished
provenance, some were chosen for their capacity to fascinate or theatrical
effect. Diverse Manière: Piranesi, Fantasy and Excess showed to be consistent
with Soane’s will, keeping the integrity of the collection while enhancing poetic
associations by using juxtaposition to generate effects and resonances, as he
used to do.

But Soane’s modus operandi was not only replicated but also updated.
3D prints merged in the intricate spaces of the museum in a both natural and
disturbing sense. Though objects affirmed their materiality in a way, the also
evidenced some kind of absence. When entering Sir John Soane Museum, the
first thing the visitor encountered was the coffee pot printed in sterling silver
standing in a glass case on a pedestal. The inscription right below indicated its
provenance and technique used to produce it. Indeed, by signalling that this
object never existed, the exhibition was opening-up a whole new other way to
introduce questions in relation to the collection and the nature of the objects. In
this sense, the print expanded possibilities to create meaning by disrupting the
‘stasis’  of the collection, as well as the composure of the visitor.
 Indeed, the inclusion of 3D copies, unrealised ornaments build by a
printer, revived issues that were present in the collection but remained
fundamentally silent to modern audiences. With few written interpretation in the
rooms, understanding needed to be achieved through visual and other senses.
How to distinguish an artwork from an artefact? Are copies as valuable as
originals? What happens when is an ‘original’   copy, and the product is created
by a machine? This temporary intervention helped to question those themes
and subvert old discourses by focusing on the possibilities this this modern
technique.

The key of this exhibition, thus, remains in preserving the original

immersive experience and focusing on the encounter between the visitor and
the object, and not to the object itself. Here 3D prints were allocated to spark a
different engagements with visitors and to create a memorable experience. By
doing so, the exhibition brought the opportunity to communicate with audiences
in a non-didactic way, activating visitor’s emotional and cognitive faculties.
Going back to Witcomb’s point of view, it is probably what happens in the
engagement between objects and visitors that museums must consider overall
if they want to maintain their relevance in the future.

Felicitas Sisinni Ganly