National Portrait Gallery
London

Inspiring People

GuM Studio were appointed to take forward the interpretative design for the National Portrait Gallery, creating an extensive exhibition design report that was submitted to the NLHF and successfully secured Round 2 NLHF funding.

The NPG has undertaken a major £35.5m capital project and programme of activities, the ‘Inspiring People’ project, to transform the experience for visitors in the biggest ever development of the building since it opened at St Martin’s Place in London in 1896. GuM Studio worked closely with the client to realise the Interpretation Plan developed by the National Portrait Gallery working with interpretation developers, Narrative Threads.

Initially the brief was to develop transformational interpretative designs for four galleries in detail to provide the NLHF with a flavour of the approach that would be taken in the remaining 29 galleries.

GuM was able to develop the following:

• Carry out extensive work for the overall visitor route, space allocation, gallery adjacencies, gallery experiences, audience group visitor journeys as well as some key interpretive features that could appear in the remaining galleries.
• Establish bite-size gallery visits for different user groups for example if a visitor had a half an hour visit – what might they see?
• A Star Portrait trail helping to establish what creative treatment could be applied to these portraits/objects in particular to help make them stand out.
• Ensuring that the sitters and the artists of the portraits were all able to come to life. For example, if the sitter was boxing – we were keen on including a 3D glove in a case or as a handling object that could then allow added interpretation and the history and development of boxing could be further explored.
• Working within the framework of the chronology, our first action was to ensure that the thematic development outlined in the content matrices would be both clear and exciting for the visitor. Where we felt necessary, and working with the curators, we were able to simplify some of the themes.
• Help introduce break-out spaces within certain spaces to encourage visitors to pause, reflect and perhaps focus on a particular theme that wasn’t part of the chronology but more thematic such as the development of photography, or looking at miniatures.
• Work and help establish the key messaging so that the visitors take away the most important content from each gallery.