What do gallery workers do? Deinstalling an exhibition
Guess who’s back again. It’s time for another look into what goes on behind the scenes here at the SOAS Gallery. If you’re new here, hi, I’m Cecelia Johnson – Collections and Engagement Officer for the SOAS Gallery.
About me
I manage the Artwork and Object Collection, getting us ready to become a museum (SOON) and I work across the gallery’s fab engagement activities. But this week, we are de-installing our now-closed exhibition Pure Soul: The Jaina Spiritual Traditions. De-installing is always a fun time for me, as it means a new exhibition is going to be opening soon! This means new ways to engage our amazing visitors, staff, and students from SOAS and beyond.
But I also LOVE working with my hands and getting the space prepped for the new exhibitions. Some might think that because we are closed that means I wouldn’t be busy. But how wrong that is, often it’s the busiest time of the year for me, I am preparing loans that have to go back to their lenders, managing extra staff to help with painting walls and taking artwork down, AND working out what the new fun engagement activities and marketing for the next shows will be.
Exhibition changeover
This week my calendar is completely full. First things first are ensuring the wonderful historical material loaned to us by the V&A, Royal Asiatic Society, Wellcome Collection, and British Library is returned before all the messy work starts! You can imagine why: we need to make sure it’s not dusty and that there is nothing around (such as wet paint and wallpaper paste) that could damage the objects being packed up for their return journey.
Each institution sends one or two people to come to manage their loans. This meant I was working with them to open the display cases, go through a condition report of the object, and help pack it back up to go to its rightful home. Plus, it means I get to meet with some amazing people across multiple institutions, such as the Curators, Conservators, and Loan Managers. Each institution does things quite differently so it’s important to work with them and understand what they might need my help with.
If you came to see the exhibition, you might remember that amazing sculpture from the V&A, Parshvanatha (Figure), 12th century. Well, that is really heavy and it took 7 people to move it from the plinth into its crate for transportation. That was an exhausting day, but we still had a lot more to do!
Phew, now that’s done, and all the loans are safely back to their collections holdings, we can begin some messy work and probably my personal favorite thing of any installation and that’s stripping the walls of wallpaper and beginning a reset of the space for the next exhibition. Now we are about three days into the changeover and though messy, you can begin to work out what will go where in the new exhibition and how the space will change. It’s a really exciting point of the transition as the curator is not yet on site, but we have their plans and some of the artwork so we know roughly where things are going to be placed. Now it’s our job to begin to work to turn their vision into reality.
This is the point you can start to imagine the look of the next exhibitions and get excited about who will visit and what will they discover.
Please join us in celebrating the opening of the new exhibitions in July.
- Japanese Aesthetics of Recycling | SOAS 13 July – 23 September, ground floor galleries
- AP Santhanaraj (1932-2009) Modern & Contemporary Art from South India | SOAS 14 July – 23 September, lower galleries
Opening times: Tues - Sun, 10:30 am - 5 pm and late on Thurs 8 pm (during exhibitions only). Free Admission. Plan your visit
