How the sale of Nationwide Gallery benches sparked a dialog on museum accessibility

This month, the Nationwide Gallery is promoting its acquainted crimson leather-based benches via public sale home Bellmans.

In accordance with the museum, the choice is a part of a cautious, year-long evaluation and is meant to rationalise gallery seating all through its areas. The evaluation evaluated the location and grouping of benches, accessibility for guests, and designs’ longevity, security, compliance, and refurbishment necessities.

The 11 benches to be offered, that are reproductions of Victorian designs, made principally within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, have estimates of as much as £1,200 every. The transfer comes amid the Nationwide Gallery’s ongoing redevelopment, which has up to now seen the disclosing of a refurbished Sainsbury Wing, by Selldorf Architects, and contains plans to gather extra fashionable and modern artwork.

Nevertheless, the alternative of the gallery’s seating has sparked a minor controversy on social media, with opponents of the change bemoaning the loss.

‘The change is symptomatic of a far bigger situation with the way in which we conceive museum areas,’ says artwork historian and curator Isabelle Kent. ‘Museum areas are usually not utilitarian, so that you can come, see, and go away. They’re leisure areas for individuals to get pleasure from, discover, or just be. The underlying concept of museums is misplaced when they don’t seem to be comfy areas to be in.’

The brand new oak seating boasts a way more minimal, rational design that’s backless. It’s partly a response to well being and security, together with hearth threat; the earlier wooden and leather-based furnishings had been troublesome to scrub and should have attracted pests, which may pose a menace to work.

Tracy Jones, head of communications at The Nationwide Gallery, tells Wallpaper*, ‘Benches had been assessed by historic info, accessibility, affect on guests’ circulate, sustainability, storage and movability, futureproofing and timelessness. [The old] benches had been made […] within the mid-Eighties to early Nineteen Nineties. These designs had been by no means beforehand seen within the gallery and are due to this fact not “authentic” to it.’

She continues, ‘We perceive that our guests had turn into accustomed to those benches within the galleries and consider that they’re authentic, however when the gallery first opened [in its Trafalgar Square location in 1838], it had no furnishings. Later, there have been chairs and varied different types of furnishings, altering tremendously over time.’

For all the web stir across the new, minimal design selection versus the acquainted favourites, it’s a lack of accessibility within the new seating that issues Kent, amongst others.