The Geffrye Museum, Hoxton

http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/

So I visited the Geffrye Museum in Hoxton for the second time last week and again I was struck with how much I didn’t like it as a museum. Don’t get me wrong, the concept I really like. The whole idea that it ‘is devoted to the history of the home, showing how homes and gardens reflect changes in society, behaviour, style and taste over the past 400 years’. And ordinarily it would be somewhere I’d love and probably visit time and time again but something about the Geffrye left me feeling completely underwhelmed.

http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/

The museum space is an old converted alms house and is steeped in history, but in my opinion the space, or lack of it, works against it in terms of visitor experience. You progress chronologically as you move along a corridor, being immersed in different period rooms from the ‘17^th century oak furniture and panelling... to 20^th century modernity and contemporary living’. But that’s where I have issue, because the long thin corridor which you follow through the majority of the museum, I found to be claustrophobic and inhibiting. If you’re on your own fine, but if there is a group of you, you have a problem. If the stewards are around, you have a problem. And worst of all, if you have a group of school children sat sketching or handling artefacts, perform a U-turn. I’m being flippant, but I just didn’t feel comfortable or able to take my time to absorb what I was seeing.

That said I do genuinely love the concept, especially the museums emphasis on education. I can see and appreciate the opportunities it offers children to engage with history, in quite a hands-on and immersive way. On this visit, I was particularly interested to hear about Molly Harrison and ‘her pioneering work in expanding the potential of museums as centres for learning and education,’ and it wasn’t difficult to see their philosophy in action. There were a number of schools groups around and all the kids were listening attentively and engaging with the activities before them.

The online resources on the Geffrye website (the virtual tour and Kids' Zone for example) are also particularly good and extend this educational message. They would certainly make useful teaching tools. You may not be standing in the room itself but you get a good a feel for what it would have looked like and it is much easier to access the information panels by clicking around the screen. We had a moment in one of the rooms where we struggled to find any information, it was only when we went to move out of someone’s way and looked behind us, that we saw the information paddles on the window sill. I particularly like the online feature for being able to look around the authentic alms house rooms from both the 18^th and 19^th centuries. They’ve never been open when we’ve visited and given that this was the original purpose of the build it’s nice to be able to take advantage of the online resources and view these unique rooms.

I just really struggled with the cramped nature of it and feel it could benefit from having a larger space in which to exhibit the rooms, somewhat like those at the far end in the ‘new build’. I appreciate space isn’t easy to come by and the space they do have has been utilised to good effect, it’s just a bit narrow for my liking! We also visited the Museum of London on the same day (don’t worry that’s a blog for another day) and while it follows a similar chronological approach there was just more space to move around and take in what you were seeing. Perhaps I became slightly fixated on this element and it has narrowed (excuse the pun) my perception of the Geffrye, I just didn’t find it an enjoyable experience. Third time lucky perhaps?