Heritage Unlocked - Flipbook - Page 17
Reimagining the Fitzwilliam Museum
Karen Livingstone
‘A sustainable
museum is one
where people feel
they belong’
In sharing my insights into the
Fitzwilliam Museum’s masterplan, I
want to talk about how to embed
sustainability, visitor experience and
long-term strategy within a historic
cultural institution. And beyond this,
how to position museums as anchors of
Cambridge’s cultural and civic identity.
The Fitzwilliam Museum is just one of a
group of Cambridge museums and
libraries with interesting setups and
stories to tell, and which play a key role
in placemaking within the city.
Founded in 1816 under the will of
Richard Fitzwilliam, the ‘Fitz’ has one of
the best collections of antiquities and art
in western Europe. With over half a
million objects and artworks in its care,
the Museum explores world history and
art from antiquity to the present. It’s
also one of the very few university
buildings that are genuinely fully open
to the public. Together with the other
Cambridge collections, we like to think
of ourselves as a bridge between the
academic and the civic.
When I arrived here in 2021, I
inherited a masterplan that had begun
in 2015 and was still left quite openended. It was big and ambitious, and
required a lot of demolition, large scale
new build, and deep basements. Yet
there was no real vision or operational
or financial plan for what was going to
happen inside the building, or how it
answered the key challenges that
museums face now, such as security,
sustainability, income generation,
access, representation and inclusion.
Our current approach is simple.
We’re going to make the most of what we
have. Sometimes the most sustainable
and most visionary thing you can do is
to do nothing new at all. Sustainability
starts with sufficiency, and we have
sufficient space.
So, what are we focusing on instead
as we move forward? We’ve been
gathering data on how our spaces
actually work. We’re consolidating
scattered functions. We’re freeing up
unused areas to solve our own
problems. Over 60% of our space is
currently back of house and we want to
shift that proportion by moving some
functions out of the Museum to create
more public space. And we’re focusing
on much more modest reconfigurations
that could be genuinely
transformational, involving repair,
some gentle remodelling and some
smaller scale interventions.
We believe that if we’re serious about
sustainability, the most radical thing we
can do is to stop seeing old buildings as
monuments and start treating them as
assets, as potential solutions. Our aim is
not just to make the Fitz greener, it’s also
to make it a more useful and integrated
part of Cambridge’s academic and civic
milieux. A museum that belongs to its
community as much to its collections.
To this end, the University has just
published a new civic framework where
we reflect on how we can contribute and
align with that responsibility.
Our approach is shaped by certain
key questions. What happens if we don’t
build? What do we already have that
we’re not using well? Whose future are
we designing for? And are they in the
room? If we can answer those honestly,
we can redefine what sustainability
really means for heritage institutions.
Because a sustainable museum is one
where people feel they belong.
Opposite: Roman era mosaic
niche crafted from plaster,
red jasper, obsidian, quartzite,
glass, Egyptian blue and shell,
reflecting the richness of the
Fitzwilliam Museum’s
antiquities collection
Reimagining the Fitzwilliam Museum
17
