Casson Mann to create new flagship National Maritime Museum gallery

Casson Mann is working on a new Naval ‘flagship’ gallery for the National Maritime Museum in London, which is due to open in summer 2013.

The consultancy was appointed to the gallery exhibition design project around two weeks ago, having won a creative pitch from a shortlist of seven consultancies.

According to Casson Mann, the as-yet-unconfirmed budget for the gallery project will exceed £1million.

Craig Riley, associate at Casson Mann, says, ‘The title is Navy, Nation and Nelson 1688 – 1815, and it’s about the relationship between those three things. The exhibition will show new things about Admiral Lord Nelson and put into context a hero of that magnitude.’

Riley says the 450 m2 gallery space, which is situated within the existing Navigation gallery, will be very ‘object-rich’, aiming to demonstrate the effects of the Navy and Nelson on people at the time, and on the national sense of place within the world.

Riley says, ‘No single object can be ignored. One of the things we realise is that because of the relationship between the three elements you have to take the visitor to all sorts of different places, on land, at sea and below deck, so we created an interior design proposal which will have a series of places, content and narrative.

‘The spatial environment will allow visitors to move very quickly between different geographical locations – it’s as much a story on land as on sea.’

Riley says that as Casson Mann develops concepts for the project, it is likely the museum will appoint additional groups to create individual exhibits for the space.

Other aspects of the overall National Maritime Museum redevelopment has seen Someone rebranding the museum and its sub-brands in July; and the opening of the Sammy Ofer wing, also in July.

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  • Richard Endsor November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I sincerely hope that the beautiful art of the seventeenth century Dutch masters, the Van de Velde’s will be given some prominence and a lot of models that are locked away at Chatham. These are the treasures people want to see and why they are so valuable. Please use them.

  • Frank L. Fox November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I agree that the magnificent ship models and marine art should be restored to prominence. They are what made the museum memorable for decades, and I cannot believe that the current generation would not find them equally inspiring.

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