ABSTRACT
In Britain during the 1980s the metaphor of the museum as a kind of shop seemed to catch the imagination of many of those involved in trying to find a place for the museum in an apparently increasingly hostile environment. In 1985, Sir Roy Strong, then director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, famously said that the V&A could be the Laura Ashley of the 1990s. For Sir Roy, this seems to have been a statement of democratizing intent, albeit a rather conservative one; something missed by the museums marketing manager who later ‘corrected’ Sir Roy’s ambition to the V&A being the ‘Harrods’ of the museum world (Hewison 1991). While analogies between museums and shops were not without precedent,1 Sir Roy’s characterization seemed to be part of a broader movement in which the metaphor of the shop was expressive, and increasingly constitutive, of an attempt in museums (particularly national museums) to reformulate their relationship with ‘the public’ and with the State. In a climate of dwindling state support and the introduction of admission charges at many nationals, museums began to a new extent to regard exhibitions as products to be marketed and visitors as ‘customers’ with the discretion to spend as they chose. In defining their future directions, museums came to foreground the question of what the public would ‘buy’; and talk was increasingly of ‘packaging’ exhibitions as ‘products’ or ‘brands’, of identifying ‘unique selling points’, and of the importance of ‘corporate image’ and ‘market niche’. As part of this redefinition, many museums employed marketing staff and carried out market and visitor research for the first time or on a new scale; they adopted corporate logos and images; they mounted unprecedentedly large advertising campaigns; they tried to make their exhibitions and facilities more ‘user-friendly’; they expanded their shops and restaurants; they set up trading companies and mail-order catalogues; and they redeployed, restructured, retrained and sometimes lost staff.
