Listening to Helen

Why is a pop-up different from an exhibition? The question is what the size and focus of the exhibition is. Temporary exhibitions are the museum’s best way to billboard what they care about. Our exhibitions programme is our visible public set of identity markers. If you make an exhibition about anti-racism it is a big sign. 

My experience of experimental exhibitions is that the public didn’t take them as experiments, but as an exhibition about slavery, for example. The The Past is Now exhibition at Birmingham Museums changed things about the museum sector. It was small, but it was about how what was squished in there was framed and talked about. There is a sense in what Helen is saying that they might be lesser, but they don’t have to be. 

Phillip Roberts – Associate Curator of Photography and Photographic Technology

Helen Langwick's moment

If we were to do Bradford’s National Museum Project again, I would suggest that the midpoint output is not a...