Dorset Museum & Art Gallery 2024

Claire Dixon, Executive Director of the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery shares her thoughts on transforming the Museum in the heart of Dorchester, and the challenges ahead.

I joined Dorset Museum & Art Gallery last July and it is incredible to reflect back on the last 18 months and look at what has been achieved, as well as consider the challenges ahead.

When the Museum & Art Gallery was transformed and re-opened in 2021, you only have to read our reviews to see that we got a lot right. Our general audiences and visitors to the County genuinely love the Museum & Art Gallery and our reviews are consistently excellent.

However, for the first two years after re-opening, footfall was just 25,000 visitors of which only 20,000 visitors were paying admission. This low footfall meant that by Summer 2023, we faced very real risks of closure.

It is easy to see why – we had no significant marketing in place and there was no sense from the outside of the building or our website, of what to expect. For many, that made the price point difficult to understand so they did not come in. For those that did buy a ticket, it was clear that they loved the new Museum & Art Gallery, but they also expressed surprise at the scale and quality of our galleries and often found us by accident!

Driving Footfall at Dorset Museum

During my first year I secured additional funding to support our resilience. This has been used to drive new marketing and PR, invest in our shop, purchase essential items for the galleries and also invest in our staff, with new resources and training. We have also been working hard to reduce our expenditure.

A completely new website and Marketing and PR strategy had to be created and implemented at pace, to improve visitor numbers. This work has been primarily digital, targeting visitors to the County and those with interests in fossils, archaeology, Thomas Hardy and works of art. This is working – we have achieved significant growth in the last 15 months, having welcomed 46,000 visitors last year and anticipating further growth this year. We will survive for now, but we need to continue that growth and quickly, to ensure a viable future for Dorset Museum & Art Gallery, for the long term.

Delivering Exceptional Exhibitions

So what next? One of our priorities is to deliver exceptional exhibitions. This is an important way for us to engage new audiences and encourage regular visitors to keep coming back. This year we curated an exhibition about Elizabeth Frink and we hosted Wildlife Photographer of the Year, from the Natural History Museum.

In 2025 we will be working with the British Museum to open a new and funded touring exhibition called ‘Gladiators of Britain’. From AD 43, Britain formed part of the vast Roman Empire for around 370 years, during which time the Romans introduced towns including Durnovaria, or Dorchester today. They also introduced roads, permanent military garrisons, centralised government and cultural activities including armed combat as a public spectacle.

After their withdrawal in the 5th century, they left a rich archaeological legacy, including the Roman Town House in Dorchester and the Maumbury Rings – which were adapted nearly 2000 years ago from a Neolithic henge into a Roman amphitheatre – along with a wealth of artefacts. The ‘Rings’ have captured the popular imagination for centuries and provide a tangible link to one of the most enduring features of life under Roman rule, that still captures the public imagination today.

This exhibition will explore what brutal spectacles would have entertained the people living in this era by bringing together some of the country’s most iconic and important objects to tell the story of the venues and the people who died in gladiatorial battle.

The Colchester Vase records an actual battle between two real gladiators and the Hawkedon Helmet is the only confirmed piece of gladiatorial armour from Roman Britain. The exhibition will be supported with objects from our own collections.

In the Summer of 2025, we will open a Jane Austen exhibition funded by NLHF, celebrating the 250th anniversary of her birth. The exhibition will explore the sea both as a setting and character in her fictional worlds, as well as its effect on Jane Austen herself, and how it influenced and impacted her as an author.

In Persuasion, Anne Elliot is “restored” by her visit to the seaside, while Lyme Regis itself stirs various emotions in the characters, such as when Captain Wentworth is transfixed by the harbour wall around the bay. Sailors and Admirals are included in the cast of characters in Mansfield Park, while Emma first sees the sea on her honeymoon. Austen’s final – and unfinished – manuscript Sanditon is set at a “rising” fictious coastal resort on the Sussex coast.

Jane went to school in Southampton, would often visit coastal resorts on holiday and two of her brothers were sailors in the Navy. In one of only two portraits she authorised she chose to sit by the sea.

Cutting Edge Fashion & Dorset Visual Arts

Costumes will reveal cutting-edge fashion and objects such as playing cards and rulebooks explain how important evening balls were during these holidays on the coast. Diagrams and guides to the bathing machines of the time, as well as an incredible interactive display created by students at Arts University Bournemouth, will allow visitors to step back in time and try the bathing machine for themselves.

We will display paintings, postcards, books and drawings to highlight how important Dorset was to Jane Austen, and how the surrounding areas, bring greater understanding to her stories.

In the autumn, for the first time, we will be opening up our temporary exhibition gallery for local artists. Working with Dorset Visual Arts, this Open Art exhibition will showcase local artists, display their work for an extended period and reach a wide audience. We will launch the competition in January, when the judging panel will also be announced. We have an ambition to run this competition every other year, so it will return in 2027. This is a fantastic partnership that enables others to engage with our world class galleries, raise the profile of DVA and collaborate to ensure a sustainable programme.

In 2026 the Ingram Collection are funding an exhibition showcasing their collection and we are working with the British Museum again, on an exhibition about Treasure. The Royal Society are also launching a new drawing prize and they have asked us to host this in 2026, when it will be in its second year. Whilst 2027 still needs confirming, in 2028 will be marking 100 years of women’s suffrage and our programme will showcase the stories of women including an exhibition with a Dorset focus in the autumn.

Dorset Museum Challenges

Whilst the exhibitions offer us an important opportunity for growth and sustainability, I have also faced significant challenges resulting from the recent transformation project. There were three key elements of that project that had to be removed, as we went into capital works in 2020, when costs spiralled and elements had to be cut, or the project would have failed.

Firstly, the Collections Discovery Centre was meant to be across two floors, ensuring all of our collections could be moved. Reducing this to one floor means we still have an additional four off site buildings, where collections are being housed in inappropriate conditions. This includes significant amounts of our archaeology and social history collections. I am delighted to have received funding recently, for a new Archaeological Curator post for three years, that will help us to better manage that collection and move the more urgent items into our Collections Discovery Centre. For this work to reach its full potential, a new location for all of these collections will be essential I am working with Dorset Council on solutions to this and they share my sense of urgency.

Secondly, the original roof that wraps around the new extension has come to the end of its life and should have been replaced. This was not done, and we have a failing roof and significant water ingress. There are funding applications pending, that would enable the roof to be replaced but the outcome remains uncertain. If we are unsuccessful, this will become our fundraising priority.

Finally, the Victorian Hall was included in the interpretation plan and it was always intended that collections and local stories would still be displayed. Lack of funds and damp walls means the hall is currently empty. I am in the process of securing partnership funding for the roof repair, that would enable us to bring collections and stories back into the Victorian Hall and I am consulting with our local audiences, about what they would like to see in this space.

Consultation

Current feedback indicates that visitors are keen to walk on the mosaics and want these to be kept clear. Key stories that our audiences would like to see along the walls and on the mezzanine, include a more local focus on Dorchester and the surrounding villages, as well as the origins of the Museum, its founders and original collections. Another popular request from children has been real life dinosaurs and an ice rink – we won’t be able to please everybody!

I will be running this consultation until the end of the year, there are questions being posed in the Museum but there is also an online survey that can be accessed via https://forms.gle/z6X2XGMc5VkgzGNt6. If our funding bid is successful, I will be using the findings from this consultation, to inform the new displays.

One of my priorities will be to ensure the interpretation is light touch, so that we can put more of our collections on display but also keep changing them. I will be looking for ways to showcase artefacts from the stores, new acquisitions and recent finds that we can borrow to display, if we are unable to acquire them for the long term. This would be particularly relevant for fossils, for which there is no formal mechanism or funding for Museums to acquire, meaning they often get sold or remain in private collections.

I am also keen for our local audiences to be able to choose artefacts to go on display, so there is more local ownership over our displays and opportunities to empower audiences to get involved in co-curation.

So why does all of this matter?

The work that we do to ensure our financial survival, generates income that can be used to finance our core work. Dorset Museum & Art Gallery is independent and relies on very little government funding. We carry out the function of a County Museum Service, relying on our admissions, donations and membership income. We have a very small team, especially for the scale of our collections (4 million artefacts!)

Every week at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery we welcome families for free storytelling sessions. We run regular workshops in partnership with the NHS, for local people struggling with mental health challenges, homelessness and other issues. We work with schools and colleges to inspire young people into the STEM and creative industries. With universities, we enable cutting edge research that improves our understanding of the world. Our volunteers develop skills, build confidence, enjoy social interaction and share their knowledge and expertise with our audiences. There are local people visiting us because we have a changing place toilet, which means they can go into their local town and not worry about a lack of facilities. We also open up our spaces for community and local groups and work closely with other cultural partners.

We are making real change in our community and enabling social change through learning but our collections are a means to an end and only worth having, if they can be unlocked and used for the benefit of society. As we face another review of cultural funding, it is important to focus on the many ways in which Museums can play a role in changing people’s lives.

When we recall histories from across the world, it is the culture of people, that is valued. Their artefacts, language, stories, art and material culture. For as long as Museums can reflect the needs and interests of our audiences, people will keep visiting and the power of our collections and our inherent relevance and significance, will continue to be realised. I invite our local supporters and residents to engage with our consultation and let us know what you love and where we could be doing better!

Claire Dixon
Executive Director

Gallery of Images – Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

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