Soft systems in museums: A case study of exhibition planning and implementation processes

Abstract

One of the main accepted functions of museums is to exhibit things. The organization of exhibitions is an important activity: exhibitions must run to timetable, keep within budget, attract high audience figures and be academically respectable; and the implementation of exhibitions requires staff of many different specialisms to work together to a common goal. Exhibition organization is expensive in terms of manpower and resources, and complex in terms of management of people. It is in museums’ interests to investigate ways of increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of these processes, and to be quite clear as to exactly what is the ‘common goal’ of exhibitions. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the successful application of soft systems methodology (SSM) to planning and implementation processes in the staging of museum exhibitions. Aspects of SSM have previously been applied to producing a generic museum information system (Cronyn, 1989), and as the first stage in an analysis of information needs for conservation in museums (Keene, 1993: 56-82). Cronyn (1989: 17-19) h as summarized the few attempts at using systems analysis in general for information systems in museums, most of which were in the United States of America. The present paper takes as a case study the exhibition Jordan: Treasures from an Ancient Land, exhibited, with associated activities, at the Liverpool Museum, United Kingdom, 3rd May-3rd November 1991. The Jordan exhibition is here used as an example of how activities are currently carried out at Liverpool Museum (or at least how they were carried out in 1991). The study is thus retrospective, using the case study to answer questions such as: are all necessary activities being done?, are activities being done well?, are the right people doing the activities?, and is relevant information being passed on appropriately? The original study on which this paper is based (Bienkowski, 1994) contained specific and detailed recommendations for the organization of future exhibitions and indeed about all the activities carried out by Liverpool Museum and its umbrella organization, the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside (NMGM).’ While the specific organizational recommendations are particular to NMGM and have not been included in this paper, the general conclusions