What the exhibitions of the future will look like: more inclusive, digital and environmentally conscious. Interview with Bernadine Wieder

What will exhibitions look like in the future? Big blockbuster exhibitions again? Small thematic insights? How much will immersiveness count? Will exhibitions know how to integrate digital, respect multiple points of view, take into account the needs of the environment? We talked about all these topics with Bernadine Bröcker Wieder, co-founder of London-based Vastari: Vastari is a platform, operating worldwide, that connects museums, exhibition producers, venues, collectors and suppliers to enable exhibition organizers to work more efficiently. Bröcker Wieder spoke about this topic in his talk A Bright, Hybrid Future for Exhibitions at the MUŻE.X - S - Shaping Museum futures conference , of which Finestre Sull’Arte is a partner. The interview is edited by Federico Giannini.

FG. The pandemic has changed the situation of exhibitions a lot: it has become much more difficult to organize them, but also to move audiences. What are the most important changes that, in your opinion, this last year and a half has brought to the world of exhibitions?

BW. I think the last year has had a very strong impact on exhibitions, because we have changed the way we look at digital offerings related to exhibitions. Even before the pandemic, we saw an increase in digital content in physical spaces (think of immersive exhibitions on artists like Van Gogh, for example), but during the pandemic all spaces were closed, so museums had to think about their digital offerings when the institution’s doors are closed. Unfortunately, however, many museum professionals did not look at the digital audience as a very relevant audience-they just looked at digital content as a tool to bring people into the physical space. In contrast, what has surprised us is the large number of audiences interested in museum content, worldwide, if that content is available online. And that changes things: your site stops being simply a billboard indicating where the exhibition is, but becomes an exhibition in itself.

So we have seen an increase in digital practices, however, you are saying that museums have mostly used digital as a means of bringing visitors into the physical museum. So I would like to know, first of all, what are the limitations of this approach, and then how and how much will technologies count in the exhibitions of the future.

During the pandemic, new exhibitions and also new kinds of collaborations have emerged, which have also been continuous sources of inspiration. We have seen museums collaborate with tech companies to enable new experiences, for example, the National Gallery in London, which partnered with Moyosa, a virtual reality studio, to create, precisely in virtual reality, a great exhibition about the museum director’s favorite works. We have seen museums collaborate with blockchain companies to create NFT, we have seen museums work with organizations like Google Arts & Culture to set up online exhibitions that the public could visit, but we have also seen institutions engaged in developing smaller digital offerings. For example, there have been museums that have offered guided tours on Zoom, using very simple technologies with the purpose of sharing some of the knowledge that is enclosed within their walls, and even that has had a big impact (and it’s proof that you often don’t need to offer very high-tech content). I think in the future we’re going to go toward museums that will have digital offerings accompanying the physical ones, there will be a lot more debate about what to show, there will also be physical exhibitions that will somehow include portions of digital. Museums that will want to choose exhibitions of this kind will be able to attract more audiences (after all, they have already experienced the benefits of digital), and in addition, if the pandemic continues, it will also be necessary for museums to have a digital offering plan. And then the good thing about exhibitions that include a digital offering is that you have more flexibility and can work differently.

Let’s leave the digital world aside and go back to the physical world and introduce a discussion that is very much felt in Italy. Before the pandemic we were used to often seeing large exhibitions with dozens, sometimes hundreds of works (I am of course talking about art exhibitions). With the pandemic, the trend (which was already in place) of focus exhibitions of a few works, often centered on museum collections, has spread further. Is this the future of exhibitions? Do you think there will still be room in the future for big blockbusters, or will we see more and more small, focused exhibitions?

The art museum world has different strategies that they are following right now in relation to their exhibition programs. Museums generally feel that whether they decide to have large exhibitions on very popular subjects, or whether they decide to focus on specialized exhibitions, the emphasis is on making sure that the exhibition program stays in line with the institution’s mission, and that the effort is recognized appropriately. In economic jargon, this would be called ROI (Return On Investments): in the case of museums, this is not necessarily a return in terms of money but in terms of research, education, social impact, and so on. This should be the main return for an exhibition. In the future there will be less room for exhibitions for their own sake.

There is also another important topic to explore: in one of your recent speeches you emphasized the need to have more inclusive exhibitions, because often exhibitions are also undemocratic, according to what you said. What is the situation in Europe now? What can be done to have more inclusive exhibitions?

I think a lot of people have come to the conclusion that being more inclusive is only about the topic of the exhibition, but in my opinion it is not only about the topic of the exhibition: it is also about the viewpoints that are displayed during the exhibition. For example, when curating an exhibition, you can have only the curator’s point of view, or you can invite other points of view, and you make sure that they dialogue with the curator’s. I give an example of how I have noticed this in the past, and it concerns the concept of “importing” and “exporting” exhibitions. In many European museums, museums in emerging countries (e.g., those in South America or Asia) are expected to import their exhibitions, and so exhibitions conceived in Europe are often developed to be sent on tour to new markets. But conversely, Western museums do not make resources available to import exhibitions into their spaces in turn. And this is not a quid pro quo, not a fair exchange. If we had a more equitable approach, I think museums would make resources available both to develop exhibitions for export and to import them. It would also be a more sustainable way to organize exhibitions. If you import exhibitions, you also import other points of view.

You just mentioned the word “sustainability,” which is another very relevant issue: those who organize exhibitions today are facing the problem of sustainability, for example, of the movement of large masses of people to visit exhibitions that are often far away. What do you think is the best approach?

Museums are moving on very different approaches to the issue of sustainability, but basically they are always trying to make sure that if they have to undertake activities that have an impact on the environment, this is in line with the mission of the institution. So, for example, big blockbuster exhibitions should be justified not only on the basis of the large audience they can attract, but also on the basis of other kinds of impact they can have. So it might be a strategy (which is already happening) to organize smaller exhibitions, as you mentioned earlier, that focus on parts of the permanent collection, perhaps with a few targeted loans from other institutions. Another thing I notice is that some museums are lengthening the duration of exhibitions: if before on average exhibitions lasted three months, you could extend the term to six months, for example. Another strategy is to decide to exhibit a digital reproduction of a work when the original is not needed, and yet another strategy is to borrow more works from local institutions, to shorten the distances over which works travel.

What about the public? If museums have to change their approaches and strategies, it occurs to me that the public also has to change its way of visiting museums and exhibitions. So how are exhibitions going to approach the public in the future?

I think in the case of the public, nothing has changed ... but change is necessary. Museums are still targeting the same audiences with their exhibitions, but they should start thinking about targeting more local and younger audiences when it comes to exhibitions in physical spaces, and vice versa if they have a digital offering they will have to think about expanding the audiences according to a more international perspective. There are still a lot of changes, and very motivating ones, that can be put in place with audiences in mind, but which have not yet been tried.

In conclusion, you talk about a “hybrid” future for exhibitions. What does that mean?

Digital and physical at the same time. Equal parts, but clearly defined.

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