Horniman Museum seeks exhibition designer as part of £2.5 million overhaul

Three gallery spaces, covering 700m2, will be redeveloped over the museum’s two floors if it can secure funding.

Kirsten Walker, director of collections management and special projects at the Horniman Museum and Gardens, says that the work is subject to the approval of a stage one bid for Heritage Lottery Fund money, which she expects to hear about by the end of March.

‘We want to start as soon as possible – and the project can’t go ahead without the grant,’ says Walker.

While the total budget for the project is £2.5 million, the exhibition design consultancy will work within a budget of around £1.3 million, as the museum is also seeking to appoint an architectural design team.

Fees for the exhibition designers are expected ‘to be relative and appropriate for the construction value of the exhibition fit-out,’ says the Museum.

‘New world-class displays’ will allow the museum to engage with ‘the complexity and rapidly changing diversity of London’s population, ensuring we remain at the heart of our London community and can respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by London as a global city,’ says the Horniman.

The appointed consultancy will re-display the Anthropology collections in the South Hall, and in the 1912 building it will design a new flexible creative area known as The Studio Space.

Walker says this will be a public area ‘where we’ll work with artists and show community work in response to the collections.’

Design solutions are being sought to engage visitors with the Anthropology collections on site and online, both of which will be the responsibility of the exhibition designers.

There will also be a new history of the Horniman family presented on the South Hall Balcony.

Meanwhile the architectural team will make improvements to the ’historic gallery’ infrastructure to ensure it is ‘fit for purpose’ for displaying collections in the 21^st century.

The exhibition design team will work in support of the architectural design team as they collaborate on design and develop plans so that a Horniman consortium can bid for two stages of Heritage Lottery Fund grants.

Expressions of interest need to be registered by 8 April. You can view the full tender here.

The museum was rebranded in 2012 by Hat-Trick Design.