Past, Present, Future: Access and

MUSEUM IRELAND 2020

Past, Present, Future: Access and the museum as a third space at MoLI – Museum of Literature Ireland

Simon O’Connor

The museum of the past must be set aside, reconstructed, transformed from a cemetery of brica-brac to a nursery of living thoughts. The museum of the future must stand side by side with the library and

the laboratory. Smithsonian curator George Brown Goode, 1889

This quotation, used by the Irish Museums Association to frame its 2020 conference in Athlone, came as a surprise to me. Since starting work at the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) in October 2017, I had been describing our goal of creating this new cultural institution as a kind of third space, between the library and the museum, as a repository for the past and a laboratory for the future. For many participants at the conference, the ideas about which I spoke were not new. However, the context in which I discussed them - the creation of MoLI - was interesting. This was both because of the scale of the project, and because a philosophy of access had from the outset positively and comprehensively impacted the development of this new cultural institution.

In my paper, I suggested that when an institution’s leaders aim for ‘access at every step’ and allow this ambition to filter through its entire ecosystem, they automatically enable an outcome quite in sympathy with George Brown Goode’s ‘nursery of living thoughts’. By contrast, the relegation of responsibility for promoting access to more junior roles leads to the entrenchment of the ‘bric-abrac cemetery’ against which Goode warned. Thinking about Goode’s statement made me consider how the curatorial ambitions of museums must not only coincide with, but be the same as, their plans for access and audience growth; how this has become clear in the current blurring of lines of responsibility between curatorial, archival and education staff roles. The development of MoLI provides a useful case study of how these three goals – programming, audience development, and access – are closely interlinked.

MoLI Buildings and Ethos

The Museum of Literature Ireland project began over ten years ago, as a collaboration between University College Dublin (UCD) and the National Library of Ireland (NLI) to develop an exhibition on James Joyce in historic buildings owned by UCD on St Stephen’s Green. The original home of the university, these comprised two Georgian houses and a Victorian assembly hall. Having been restored in the 1990s, the houses were in reasonably good condition, but the assembly hall was derelict. Physical access across the site was furthermore impossible, particularly for people with mobility difficulties.

With significant funding from the Naughton Foundation and capital investment from the University and Fáilte Ireland, the two partners ultimately developed a larger scale project than had originally been conceived, requiring the

appointment not only of a curatorial team to drive the exhibition content, but also, of architects and builders to completely reshape the building. When appointed as Director, I was struck by the alignment of the project’s stars: it had an exceptional parentage in the University and a National Cultural Institution and a beautiful location with its own rich geography and literary history, and was based on a demonstrable need for the literary arts to be represented - and both locally and internationally championed - by a large-scale, public-facing institution.

Arguably though, the project’s critical assets – Ireland’s literary heritage and historic buildings of exceptional quality – were also its greatest obstacles. To both was attached a tendency for over-reverence to the extent that for some, the buildings, and the subject, felt like the preserve of an educated elite. There was, too, a perceptible distinction between Irish Literature (with a capital ‘L’), as represented by what the project team liked to call the ‘hushed Irish Poy-etry voice’, and, on the other hand, Irish writing – as represented by experiences such as hearing the sound of children laughing at Finnegans Wake.

Programming for Equality and Access

Our aim was, therefore, to reverse the treatment of the buildings and the artform as pantheons, and to build instead on their capacity to inspire. For example, aiming to make the museum accessible to as wide as possible a range of visitors, we set the reading age of the exhibitions at pre-teen and made use of restrictive word count limitations. This resulted in, among other things, a concise biography of James Joyce at only 1047 words. So that people could hear Irish writing, we deployed audio wherever possible and when the museum opened, it was fascinating to watch how many visitors preferred listening to reading. With our specially commissioned, subtitled film pieces, we also observed how many enjoyed reading and listening at the same time. This, and many similar access decisions that led to unexpected curatorial discoveries, are now being incorporated into our longer-term interpretative practice.

From the outset of MoLI’s development, the curatorial team focused on tackling the underrepresentation of the Irish language in the perceived canon by selecting artists in both Irish and English, and by providing bilingual exhibition text. We have continued to address canonical inequalities in the representation of gender and sexuality through our temporary exhibition programme, curated by female artists and on female and lesbian or bisexual writers, including, for example, Kate O’Brien, Eva Gore Booth and Nuala O’Faolain.

MoLI deliberately celebrates Irish writers who are widely and popularly known. Exhibitions in the coming years will include a specially commissioned film on beloved Dublin poet Pat Ingoldsby; Peig Sayers and the oral storytelling tradition of the Blasket Islands will be explored through newly commissioned work by the artist Gary Coyle; and MoLI will host exhibitions, curated by Pat McCabe and Sarah Webb respectively, on Brendan Behan and Chris Haughton – the latter deliberately chosen as the first Irish writer with whom many young people, as small children, have contact.

Business, Branding and Finance

It is well known that clarity of purpose is fundamental to organisational viability and longevity. To develop as a business, the museum needed a name and a brand that worked at several levels: it had to describe what was happening inside the building, to help open up the subject of Irish writing and make it accessible to everybody, and to help the public to take ownership of - and feel invested in - the future of the building and the museum. In addition, it was important that the project honoured James Joyce as the writer at its heart and in memory of whom it had first been established.

Appointed as the museum’s branding agency, Dublin’s CI Studio suggested ‘MoLI – Museum of Literature Ireland’ as a clever acronym combining both the gravitas of the partner institutions, and the museum’s playful intent, as well as the Joycean aspects at the heart of the project. ‘MoLI’ has since proven its success as a welcoming, memorable brand that recalls the first name of the muse who inspired James Joyce to write Ulysses.

In line with MoLI’s ethos, procurement support from UCD has enabled the appointment by public tender of access-centred providers. However, with no recurring funding from either partner

institution or from the State after opening, the museum’s financial viability was at first uncertain. Having an operating cost exceeding €1million in its first year, it had to charge admission, but also, if it was to be successful in its access and audience development aims, to be freely accessible where possible.

As an educational institution, MoLI takes its responsibility to young audiences seriously, and for this reason, does not charge admission to schools. In addition, carers and job seekers can visit for free, and the museum is free to everyone on Tuesday mornings and the first Friday evening of every month.

Drawing where possible on philanthropic and corporate support, MoLI’s financial model is based on achieving longevity rather than quick financial wins. By addressing local needs, aiming for universal access and focusing on attracting people to make repeat visits for a lifetime, it was, before the COVID-19 pandemic, predicted to run ‘in the black’ for its first financial year: 2019/20.

People

Writers are MoLI’s lifeblood, and living authors and poets often lead its exhibitions. This is true also of the museum’s volunteers, many of whom are UCD alumni with strong emotional ties to the buildings. For both, MoLI aims not only to be a creative experience and outlet, but to become a kind of home for these, and all other, communities.

The quality of experience for MoLI’s thirty paid staff is equally essential. The institution focuses not only on meeting immediate staff needs, but also on building career resilience and enabling its people to do great work at St. Stephen’s Green that will contribute to strong CVs and progress their careers elsewhere. Reminiscent of Goode, MoLI conceives of itself as a kind of professional studio or interdisciplinary laboratory; a place where staff have opportunities to work across front of house, curatorial, exhibition, publishing, digital, audio-visual and learning departments. In addition, its HR policies are directed at making the museum an accessible, enjoyable, fun and easy employer: working from home where possible was institutional policy even before the pandemic, and lean reporting structures, equal access to maternity and paternity leave, and flexible working hours both reflect and enable institutional agility. Staff confidence, morale and commitment are furthermore promoted by a non-restrictive uniform policy. MoLI adopts a Devil Wears Prada approach, where everyone can wear what they like, providing it is black or monochrome and accompanied by a colourful identifying badge to help visitors find their way. The showing of tattoos, piercings, or any other style signifiers that staff enjoy are positively encouraged. In this way, individuality is valued: people can be themselves at work.

Learning

When we imagine a Science Museum, we imagine kids, excitement, colour, noise, fun... but science is REALLY COMPLEX AND DIFFICULT! Why couldn’t a literature museum conjure up the same images? MoLI has always focused its energies on the youngest audiences who are its future, and on challenging a sectoral service tradition that has favoured older age-groups. Convinced that Ireland has one of the most sophisticated reading cultures in the world, the museum knows that to succeed in the longer term, it must become an indispensable treasure embedded in the hearts of its supporters from the earliest age.

In partnership with a panel of Dublin schools, MoLI’s Learning Manager Jennie Ryan has centred engagement activities on developing creativity, shared storytelling, empathy and biography. Moving away from the initially jargonistic aim of delivering the ‘democratic potential of observation’, MoLI’s learning programmes are now ‘wild craic’ for children and adults alike, irrespective of their reading ability.

Through philanthropic support, MoLI has also been able to create an immersive bursary for teenage writers, and with corporate help, has expanded learning programmes into local youth and community projects with the aim of reaching disadvantaged communities. This financial support has also dramatically increased the number of family events in the museum and helped to provide free summer camps for children. Adult literacy classes are in development: a Museum of Literature should, after all, be a place where you can read.

Environment and the Outdoors

MoLI’s desire is to create an open, accessible civic space with reading and writing at its core. With a large garden, connected by a pedestrian gate to the huge, beautiful – and free - Iveagh Gardens, MoLI is a museum in a park and an intellectual and environmental haven. Inspired by museums connected to significant green spaces in the UK, the planting of MoLI’s gardens is intended to support sensory experiences of colour, scent, sound, and biodiversity - attracting songbirds, bees, and other wildlife.

With comfortable seats, soft furnishings, smiles from staff and a good café, the museum is somewhere where people can stay for hours, and frequently do (observed dwell times often approach three hours). The right customer pricing means that a family trip to MoLI is more affordable than a Saturday cinema outing. This is a place where people not only feel permitted to be, but moreover want to hang out, and even have a quiet nap. Deliberately subverting the tyranny of the visitor number, MoLI aims for depth, rather than quantity of visit.

Conclusion

When I presented this paper at the 2020 Athlone conference, I ended by saying,

We of course have a long way to go. We are only open 5 months; many systems are bedding down… Things are going well, but already the organism is developing a life of its own, and growing in its own way, as it should.

Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed everything. But MoLI will continue to follow Goode’s beautiful idea of a ‘nursery of living thoughts’. These words give us all of the clues that we need to understand how to be accessible spaces. The nursery is a safe, gentle environment that focuses on beginnings and on young people, and that fosters and contributes to their growth. ‘Living’ gives a clear signal that our focus should not just be on the past, but on the present and future. Finally, by ‘thoughts’, Goode indicated the potential of our museums to be fundamentally creative spaces.

A final note: nurseries have parents, teachers, gardeners. If we want to foster personal and social growth in our museums, our leaders must have democratic practice at their core. Plants don’t water themselves.

Simon O’Connor is Director, MoLI - Museum of Literature Ireland