The Art Newspaper

Heritage marketing: Love is not enough

There must be a way to build visitor numbers to historic sites while respecting the dignity and integrity of a building and its collection

By Jonathan Bourne. Web only
Published online: 09 December 2009

We all know that there is great need to encourage and build visitor numbers at most heritage sites so that they earn enough money to justify their existence and, indeed, survive. The question is whether you should distort the facts to make this happen.

The other day I attended the presentation by an interpretations expert at Kensington Palace on the structure of future visits to, and displays at, the palace. Kensington Palace dates back to the late 17th century and, though parts of it are still lived in by members of the British royal family, it is administered by Historic Royal Palaces, which looks after former royal properties such as Hampton Court.

I was with a small group of American, British and other European museum curators. It was a short talk on a large subject and perhaps, therefore, not an entirely balanced view. Nevertheless, our whole group felt very strongly that the theme proposed was grossly misguided. The gist was that there would be four strands to the visit bound together by “love“—this concocted for a palace built by a basically homosexual king, William III, who, though certainly fond of his wife, had married for dynastic reasons. The same palace was recently lived in by two princesses, Margaret and Diana, whose lives were famously blighted by love.

In fact, the only recorded moment of love at the palace was when the future queen Victoria first set eyes on Albert there. This was the one time Prince Albert visited the place and Victoria, once she became queen, never wanted to go there again as she had been so utterly miserable throughout her childhood with her controlling mother, the Duchess of Kent.

The interpretations expert freely admitted that she did not feel it was necessary for her to be conversant with the history of the collection at Kensington Palace to come up with ideas, but I feel that if she had paused for a moment to read a little on the history of the people who had lived there, she would have realised that, to put it mildly, love is an inappropriate theme around which to build any visit.

It emerged from discussions later that the visiting curators sensed that, in Historic Royal Palaces at least, the curatorial voice was subservient to the voice of the interpretations expert, a post which, apparently, has quite a quick turnover so that the poor curators get a little bored with continually having to explain the same histories over and over again to new people doing the same job. This communication problem, combined with the fact that an interpretations expert is trained in glibness and some curators are retiring by nature, can lead to an unfortunate imbalance in the information presented to the public.

I am no interpretations expert, but I feel there must be a way to enhance visitor numbers while respecting the dignity and integrity of a building and its collection.

The author is an expert in the decoration of historical interiors.