Staying alive – the challenges of closing down & reopening
Find this session's presentations here.
Closing down and reopening museums and science centres often creates massive challenges for management and involved staff. The set-ups are different – some museums close down partially, while others completely close down for shorter or longer periods. This session brings together four museums and science centres from across Europe and the United States. Experimentarium (Denmark) and Città della Scienza (Italy) have gone through a complete closure and re-opening; Naturalis (The Netherlands) partly stays open while building their new museum; and Museom of Science, Boston (USA) has renovated large parts of its exhibits and exhibit area while staying open.
Whatever set-up we choose this has enormous effects on marketing strategies, fundraising, internal communication and strategical planning before, during and after closure and re-opening. This talk will give an overview of different solutions and approaches: the speakers will share their best advice from all parts of the process - before closing down and after re-opening.
Facilitator
Head of education and public engagement
http://snm.ku.dk/english/
Session speakers
On 31 August 2016 Naturalis didn’t close for two years, or did we? We are building a completely new museum that will open end of 2018, but in the mean time we remain open with a much smaller location, with temporary exhibitions, such as the blockbuster T.rex in Town, with our own T.rex. Yuri will share how Naturalis organizes all these developments at the same time, and what impact this has on all departments of the museum: exhibition, education, exploitation, communication and business development.
The re-building of Experimentarium has been a journey of three years. We moved our exhibition to an interim location and relocated the staff in three different places for most the time. This period has been characterized by constant changes and has given us both opportunities and challenges; some were planned and some completely unexpected. This presentation will give highlights of the process and will reflect on strategy, leadership, corporate culture and competences.
Director of the Science Centre
After the arson that destroyed the Science Centre of Città della Scienza (march 2013) the strategy to stay alive was that of reinforcing the links with the different stakeholders and communities:
citizens and locals, scientists, enterprises, etc. Thanks to this Città della Scienza re-started in few months with new exhibitions; the restyling of the science festival Futuro Remoto and the opening of CORPOREA-the museum of the human body and the new Planetarium.
The Museum of Science, Boston has undergone extensive renovations and new exhibit installations while remaining open to the public. Strategies and challenges of the process will be presented
