How we link art to an audience

M's new collection presentation

How we link art to an audience

Sofie Vermeiren is head of the Public Mediation team, which also includes Wies De Vos. They collaborated from start to finish on ‘Collection of M’. Having been at the table from the very first discussions, they equipped the entire installation with an interactive experience tailored to a range of visitors. It was essential, because ‘Collection of M’ is truly something new.

Our focus is on allowing people to look

Sofie Vermeiren

Head of education at M

Sofie: "M manages a collection of 58,000 artworks and objects. With the best will in the world, you can’t exhibit them all at the same time. Earlier this year, we replaced the previous collection displays – 'Moved', 'Take your Time', and 'Form First' – with a single big presentation, ‘Collection of M’. This occupies the entire first floor of the museum, including the ground floor of the Huis Vander Kelen-Mertens. It was a huge undertaking, but we are delighted with the result."

Bezoekers in de zalen van de 'Collectie van M' — Wouter Van Vooren voor M Leuven

Jesus and a dinosaur

Some 300 works, dating from the Middle Ages to the present day, come together in this new installation. Sculpture, textiles, video and painting are just a few examples of the media on display. So the next question is: how do you bring them together as a coherent whole?

Wies: "The common thread is our transhistorical approach: we exhibit centuries-old works and contemporary art alongside and intermingled with one another. Not arranged chronologically, but grouped together on the basis of visual or substantive themes."

Sofie: "This mix of old and new is baked into M’s DNA. In previous collection presentations, we also provided this confrontation, but in this new one we do it even more emphatically."

"Sometimes we’ve placed works together very intuitively, because there’s a clear visual link. In other places, the link is substantive. Under a theme of transience, for example, we see a painted skeleton by Walter Swennen alongside a series of classic still lifes."

Wies: "Sometimes the link is rather more obscure. For example, you see ‘Christ with the Crown of Thorns’ from Dieric Bouts’ studio alongside a dinosaur painted by Michaël Van den Abeele. A combination that may seem random, but is not. That room revolves around ‘imagining concepts’. Both painters depict something they’ve never seen in real life."

Zaalzicht 'Collectie van M', 2024, M Leuven, foto: © Aurélie Geurts voor M Leuven

Become an artist yourself

Whichever way you slice it, 300 works is a lot. Try communicating something about that, without visitors drowning in information.

Wies: "We know so much about some of those works that we could write a book about them. But of course that’s no help to a visitor. Our focus is on allowing people to look. Many of the tools that we offer in the room are focused on that."

"In one of the rooms, there is a kitchen table with tablets. People of all ages can make their own sketches on it, using a drawing from the collection as inspiration. The brilliant thing is that your drawing disappears afterwards. You leave no trace; it’s purely about your experience in that moment. There’s a poetry to that."

Sofie: "We’ve also developed viewing plates, which offer a fresh perspective on an artwork as a kind of filter. Then you don’t provide any information at all, but instead challenge the visitor to look at an artwork differently."

Wies: "If we do choose to inform, we don’t always do it on an info label. Take the alabaster panels of the Saint Anne Retable, a 17th-century altarpiece from the church of the Celestine Priory at Heverlee. To show where it comes from, there’s a touchscreen with a 3D-reconstruction of the church. The building has disappeared, but here you can look at it from all angles."

Inclusive technology

A new app was also developed especially for this collection presentation. Death to the audio guide, long live technology?

Wies: "The app still uses audio, because we know that people think it’s a really great medium. It’s almost a logical addition to viewing. But the classic audio guide also has its limitations. The advantage of the app is that you can combine sound fragments with video clips, photos and text to offer a multifaceted experience. This makes it easy for people to choose for themselves how deeply they want to dive into something."

Sofie: "We’re constantly focused on accessibility: how do we ensure that as many people as possible can make use of what we offer. For example, a few years ago we started up sound board groups for blind and partially sighted people. And we invited them to make recommendations for the app. These were all considered when it was being developed."

App van M Leuven — © Aurélie Geurts voor M Leuven

Wies: "In the app there is an audio description, for example, a tour that describes some twenty works in a very concrete, almost physical way: where in the room is the work hanging, what size is it, what materials did the artist use, and what does it show? And so on. This means that visitors who are unable to see the works get an authentic museum experience when they listen to the tour."

Sofie: "Indeed, we notice that tools that we made for a specific target group are often of interest to a wider audience too. If we offer audio description, people with perfect sight also want to listen. As a tool that allows them to look in a different way."

Wies: "Or take the audio tour that we developed with Het Geluidshuis for the Bouts exhibition. That was intended for children, but a great many adults listened to it afterwards because it was nothing short of brilliant."

Sofie: "Our goal is always to allow people to view things differently. Visual literacy is the fancy word we use to describe it. But actually we try to encourage visitors to reflect on what they see, what is missing and what they perhaps bring to a work themselves."