Exhibiting Fashion: exhibition-making and curation as a catalyst for advancing innovative museum practices

Exhibitions of fashion in museums are increasingly prevalent. They are enjoyed by visitors because they present familiar, visually appealing objects that reveal intriguing stories about personal identities and social histories, design and manufacture. They are popular with museums because they increase public profile and generate new visitors and income. Over 200 institutions in the UK hold fashion and textiles items. The majority are small and mid-sized regional museums like the partners on this project: the Beecroft Art Gallery holds the UK's leading collection of swimwear which comprises over 500 items from 1899 to the present; Manchester Art Gallery's collection encompasses a group of outstanding mid-20th century couture featuring work by Schiaparelli, Balenciaga, Dior, Cardin and McQueen; Bankfield Museum, Halifax contains exceptional local womenswear from the 19th century.

The UK's important fashion collections are increasingly on limited or inadequate display (or not visible at all) due to funding cuts to the museum sector and reductions in specialist curators. Fashion objects also present specific display challenges because of their fragility and the need to provide a replacement for the human body. Blockbuster fashion exhibitions hosted by major museums do not provide viable professional models for less well-resourced institutions without specialist fashion curators. The potential of fashion collections in many small and mid-sized regional museums remains untapped.

This research will produce an 'exhibiting fashion toolkit' that will enhance the skill sets of non-specialist curators in small and mid-sized museums and equip them to produce resource effective, engaging and innovative displays. The toolkit will be created through observation and analysis of the development of three fashion exhibitions that respond to the collections, spaces and resources at each partner's venue. The toolkit will be available free, online, as a series of short films covering aspects of exhibiting fashion, illustrated by the exhibitions staged at partners' venues. It will offer visual and spatial-based strategies, such as inventive mannequin solutions and advice for the effective staging of objects, alongside practical solutions (including online options) for exhibiting fashion.

Research will be led by the PI from an exhibition-maker's perspective, a specialist approach that focusses on visually and spatially led exhibition development. The project will interrogate and expand the PI's original museological concepts of 'threshold' (transition into the exhibition space); 'landscape' (space inhabited by object and viewer); 'object' (exhibition content); 'the body' (physical and non-physical human forms). Research activities will employ methods from conventional curatorial and experimental exhibition-making practices with an emphasis on visual and spatial strategies.

The research will be supported by the Co-I using observational methods, including experimental documentary film-making, to capture live the interactions between the PI and curators as they develop the exhibitions. This builds on the Co-I's previous experience in practice-as-research co-produced with museums and archives. Insight gained through this research will identify the particular qualities of curatorial and exhibition-making approaches and will inform the development of the toolkit. The Co-I will also assist in assessing the impact of research on participants and audiences.

Should COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing measures be re-introduced during the project time frame we will develop each exhibition as an interactive audience experience through online outputs. Project Instagram and exhibition visitor guides will give public access to the research. A symposium, conference papers, articles in journals and museum publications will target the relevant professional and academic audiences to maximise impact of the research.