Xerxes MAZDA: “May not technology be guiding you, but what you want to say”
NationalArt Museum of Ukraine has recently hosted a meeting with Xerxes Mazda (Great Britain), Head of Learning, Volunteers, and Audience Department of the famous British Museum. The lecture delivered by our guest became an exiting master class, which demonstrated how one of the most authoritative museums in the world works with the audience, explores and takes into account the needs of the audience, encourages people to come to the museum. After the lecture Xerxes Mazda answered the answers of the press and Ukrainian museum employees.
Apparently, the British Museum is all the time looking for ever new ways to draw the attention of the audience and keep it. Could you please give an example of an object which at first was not interesting for the audience and how you managed to change this attitude?
“In one of our galleries there is a stone on which women in Near East ground grain into flour. This is a very interesting item, but it does not look very interesting. It is simply a stone with a hole. That’s it. It was placed among much more interesting items. It could reveal much about the work of the women of that time and their diseases, because they worked really hard. We made this artifact more attractive simply by moving it to the center and directed some bright beams on it. New lighting and central place showed people how important this item is. The attitude of the guests changed and they became interested in the stone.”
Motivation takes an important place in your lecture. What urged the British Museum to make radical changes 20 years ago?
“This is a good question. At that time not only the British Museum was changing, but many other museums, too, in all parts of the United Kingdom. There was an internal pressure. We understood: we arranged expositions before the guests, but we didn’t know whether there was any influence or not. We were investing our lives in showcasing some things for the audience, worked very much on the exhibits, but we weren’t sure whether we were successful, whether people understood what they saw. They could have read a good review in a newspaper, or maybe this was indeed what people saw. So, the staff started taking a greater interest in their success. So, museums in all parts of the Kingdom started paying more attention to the guest, the visitor, and then the museums started to examine how much knowledge and education they could give. Therefore this way of learning the likings of the audience came from the category of education.”
How can modern technologies help here?
“Guests are attracted by the video, they are interested more in it than in the text. Therefore the use of these instruments – video, even a touchscreen – should be encouraged, but in a very careful way, you should understand why you use namely this technology. You should be guided by what you want to say rather than by technology, and whether your message will be delivered better by words, a short video, or a picture. In 5-10 years, or maybe sooner, it will be a usual thing for most of the guests to come to museum with a phone, tablet PC, or some other device. Therefore we should find the way to display the video – in galleries or via direct presentation on phones and tablets of the guests. Technical aspects will be improving, museums will be changing, however, not with the same pace as airports and railway stations, but people will expect the same changes in museums as public establishments. So, we should understand how the technology will change and apply these changes in our work.”
Continuing the discussion about technology, in 2009 you launched an interactive center. How does it help you?
“I have worked in London’s Science Museum for 13 years. It had a lot of interactive activities. Interactive centers are of great importance in many museums. The question is, who is the target audience and where it is better to place them? Everything has its pluses and minuses. If you have a big collection, you need to think whether you keep many people far from your items, whether these instruments help direct the guests to certain galleries. But if you will do so, it may distract other visitors. A center of interactive learning will have a better effect if you, for example, can afford involving many employees of your museum in it, because you will need many employees to work in one place. In the same way it facilitates your work with schools, although, of course, you want children to be standing not in front of screens, but the items, because they are unique things only you can offer. There is ample proof that these centers are very popular, but I will repeat myself, it is highly questionable whether it can be a single learning center, or its elements, scattered throughout the museum, in different halls. Yet there is no doubt that this is a useful instrument. The main thing is to ask yourself, why you want to do this, what message you are trying to deliver with the help of interactive learning, because interactive learning is very costly and requires a substantial funding.”
You have also located a virtual collection on your website. Has it affected the attendance? There is a risk that looking at the items on the Internet will be enough for people.
“This topic is very interesting for me. We have carried out a survey, but you need to understand much about this. There is no evidence to prove that if you download your collection on the Internet, people will stop visiting the museum. By placing the collection on the website you will encourage more people to come, because they will want to see a real thing – but these are completely different impressions. Please, don’t be afraid to do so. Universities are using your items more actively as examples in their lectures, students find out more, and come up with a desire to come and see. People will google certain items, they will be able to read about them, and see them first on the Internet, and later with their own eyes. This increases the chances of the guests to establish emotional contact with the item. Another interesting thing is the way virtual and real objects can work together, producing something more powerful than separately. People say that a virtual object is a weak shadow of a real item. I think it is not true: these are simply different things. There is a fact that virtual objects can do much more than real ones: for example, the item can be viewed in more detail on the screen, better than in a box, even with good lighting. If one object is here, and another – in Great Britain, it is much easier to combine them on the screen. I think as museum specialists you should find ways to use the fantastic possibilities and advantages of digital objects, but we haven’t started to do so to the full as yet.”
Please tell, what kind of experience it was to let such an original, even provocative artist as Grayson Perry [Grayson Perry is an actual artist, who often goes out dressed as a woman, a winner of the Turner Prize; in 2011 he made an installation for the British Museum. – Author]?
“We have invited him to examine the collection of the British Museum. It took him two years to study it, and in the end he arranged a very unusual exhibit consisting of our items and the artifacts he made – he is a famous artist and pays a great attention to handicraft. He found unusual connections between the items, described these connections and gave a fresh look to the museum’s items. The exposition turned out to be very interesting and very intellectual. What did Grayson do in fact? He actualized what we told about ourselves. We say that we want to help people connect various cultures and epochs, that it is possible to do so in our museum. In such a way, through uniting and connecting, people will try to understand why the world is arranged in such a way and where is our place in this world. You begin to understand your identity when you look at the items from over the world, from different times. Grayson with his unique vision examined the entire collection and illustrated how it could be done and how one can share it with many visitors. For museums exist namely for this aim – for people to come and learn something, get an emotional inspiration, a connection with the items and an impact on their lives.”
