Positive outlook for research in museums

The news that London’s Design Museum has become the first independent museum to be granted Independent Research Organisation (IRO) status highlights the growing importance that the sector is attaching to research.

IRO status is awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) on behalf of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Other cultural institutions to have received this accreditation include the Science Museum, Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Institutions with IRO status are on the same footing as universities, and are eligible for a range of funding from UKRI to sustain further research, which is important in such a difficult funding climate for the sector.

Hot on the heels of the Design Museum announcement came the news that Research England (part of UKRI) is increasing the amount of money it gives to the sector through the Higher Education Museums, Galleries and Collections fund.

This is designed to help university museums, galleries and collections meet the cost of serving the wider research community beyond their own institutions.

Following a review in 2023, funding rose from £11.7m to £14m a year, with 40 museums, galleries and collections across 21 higher-education providers receiving support.

Emily Pringle, a former head of learning and research at Tate, established the organisation’s research centre in 2014. In 2019, she wrote Rethinking Research in the Art Museum, which argued for a more democratic and inclusive approach to research.

“In terms of seeing the value of research, I think the picture is really quite positive,” she says.

But Pringle does acknowledge that there are still some big challenges for research in museums, particularly capacity.

Lack of time

“Staff often don’t have enough time to do research themselves,” she says. “Post-Covid that is a real issue because everyone is overworked and people are focused on looking after collections and programme delivery.”

One of Pringle’s calls in Rethinking Research in the Art Museum is for organisations to better value research across the different disciplines, rather than just focus on curatorial research. Linked to this, she also wants
to see museums recognise the value of practice-based research, whether that’s carried out by educators, archivists, curators or conservators.

“There are some pockets of really good practice,” says Pringle. “The Fitzwilliam Museum [in Cambridge] is doing interesting work and genuinely looking at how research can evolve, and how it can be an agent of change across the institution.”

The Victoria and Albert Museum is another organisation with a good reputation for its research. Joanna Norman, the Head of the V&A Research Institute, says going forward, collaboration will be vital.

“Partnerships will continue to become increasingly important and prevalent, as when they work well, the benefits for all parties can be significant,” she says. “Collaboration is also important and can be a positive way to manage a challenging funding landscape.

“Having said that, what’s going on in higher-education institutions at the moment is concerning and will undoubtedly affect museums and other cultural organisations, as closures and redundancies in arts and humanities departments will reduce the opportunities for collaboration.”

Norman also says that it will become increasingly vital that museums understand funders.

“We have to be alert to research funders’ priorities and to identify where research in and with museums and other cultural organisations speaks to those priorities,” she says. “Developing or deepening relationships with research funders and articulating the character and value of museum-based research is already part of our work and we seek to continue to deepen understanding across the research landscape.”

International opportunities

Digital technology also offers opportunities. Norman cites the Natural History Museum’s project to digitise most of the UK’s 137 million natural science specimens, providing international digital access to data that can support research in areas such as biodiversity and future possible pandemics.

“This kind of strategic, challenge-led approach, and considering our collections and organisations as key elements of research infrastructure, is becoming embedded in museums and other collecting organisations, and increasingly informs how we identify our research priorities and areas of interest,” Norman says.

“We are taking a much more challenge-led approach, identifying local and global challenges that our organisations and the collections we hold can help to address.”

AHRC executive chair Christopher Smith is also enthusiastic about the impact that research in museums can make.

“As they are public facing, and because of the communicative, outward nature of their work, museums – not least university museums – are ideally placed to engage wider publics and stakeholders in ‘difficult conversations’,” he says.

“These conversations may be uncomfortable or contentious, but they have the potential to build tolerance and understanding across societal and generational divides. We would like to hear more about how museums could use their collections to tell these stories and effect change.”

Asking big questions at the Sainsbury Centre

The Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia in Norwich was one of the winners in the latest round of funding from the Higher Education Museums, Galleries and Collections fund. It is to receive £380,220 annually for the next five years – up from £273,357 a year in the previous five-year funding round.

Jago Cooper, the director of the Sainsbury Centre, says the increased funding reflects the innovative ways the Sainsbury Centre team are developing research, using the collection to engage with communities, and empowering artworks to tackle some big societal questions. The “What is Truth?” programme kicked off last year with a series of exhibitions investigating how we can know what is true in the world around us.

The gallery is currently asking “what is truth?”, and in the autumn will move on to “why do people take drugs?”. Next year’s exhibitions will be “how do we resuscitate a dying sea?” and “can humans stop killing each other?”

“I formulated the argument that, by taking on these big questions, we are absolutely at the heart of using research that is embedded within museum practice,” says Cooper. “We start the process early enough to conduct proper research into the question, with the artists as researchers. We also collaborate with all of the relevant university departments on the question. We open up a call to anyone across the university and, more broadly, to anyone who’s interested in the question to come and join us.

“There are lots of strengths and weaknesses of being a university museum, but one of the strengths is that we are around some of the greatest thinkers and researchers in the world. The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, for example, is the best climate-change research centre in the country.”

The first “big question” the Sainsbury Centre tackled was: “How do we adapt to a transforming world?”. This featured exhibitions and other activities curated by Vanessa Tothill and Ken Paranada, the first curator of art and climate change in the UK.