Curatorial practice in popular music museums: An emerging typology of structuring concepts

Celebrating dominant (and hidden) histories

The elevation of particular narratives in popular music history, especially those concerning individual artists within museums, is a common structuring concept observed in the literature and our data. Whereas Cortez (2015) names this ‘Tribute/Celebration’, Leonard (2007) calls it ‘canonic representations’. The different emphasis is due to, on one hand, Leonard (2007) noting an exhibition type that ‘replicate[s] received knowledge about popular music histories by concentrating on events that have already been given high levels of media and critical attention’ (p. 153), and on the other, Cortez’s (2015) observation that curators were more concerned with raising the profile of lesser known artists and raising questions about the heavily debated history of popular music in Portugal (pp. 310–311). In a later work, Leonard (2010) does caution that ‘it is important that the representation of music is not determined solely by the music canon and the most celebrated of music “moments” or scenes’ (p. 180). As Knifton (2012) notes, in relation to Leonard’s research, ‘the tension here is between the celebrated and the overlooked, dominant narratives and hidden histories, and how these should be told’ (p. 22).

Our interviewees tended to emphasise canonic representations when describing curatorial processes and collection development. The Arts Centre Melbourne, for example, presents a yearly exhibition, featuring an iconic figure in the arts.

At the end of every year, [we have] a big exhibition called the Icon exhibition. So, we started with Kylie, we had Dame Edna, AC/DC, Nick Cave, Peter Allen, we’ve got Rock Chicks on now. … So, to a certain extent, those exhibitions have driven some of the collection development initiatives, particularly with Kylie, Nick Cave, Peter Allen. (Respondent 14)

The celebration of iconic figures like Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave elevates these artists in the circulating narratives of popular music history. At the Arts Centre Melbourne, the focus is on a single artist, but star performers also feature heavily in exhibitions with broader foci. ‘Stars’ are commonly used to anchor exhibit narratives and to provide ‘known’ content that will appeal to the wide audience. In some museums, such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, representing the canon is an expectation and provides exhibitions with legitimacy.

[In approaching curation of the museum] I highlighted certain things that I thought were of crucial importance and would look ridiculous if [we] didn’t have those, like the Beatles or Sun Records and stuff like that … (Respondent 12)

The interview data suggest that ‘star exhibits’ emerge due to the number of constraints curators work with (the space available for the exhibition, telling a coherent story, the sheer number of artefacts available, etc.) which impact on the choices they make about what to display (and how to display it) and what they can feasibly overlook. Take, for example, the following account from the Powerhouse Museum:

So much has happened in the world you can’t put the whole of the past in a museum. … if you’ve got a certain amount of space to tell the whole 30 year history of Australian rock music you’re not going to put in a section about Slav records or whatever. This is pretty much mainstream and you can’t tell the whole mainstream [story] let alone start telling [minor stories] … I try to avoid the rabbit holes because they can lead you away from your core theme. When you’ve got a limited space you’ve got to stick to it. (Respondent 6)

Curators are limited in the extent to which stories of lesser known artists, labels and so on can be highlighted. Overlooked narratives do feature in the museums of our study (e.g. Respondent 14 noted that Arts Centre Melbourne’s Rock Chicks exhibition was ‘partly about telling these untold stories’ of female performers) but canonic representations were more heavily weighted as a structuring concept.

Projected visitor numbers

Linked to the curatorial emphasis on the canon is the idea of ‘statistics’ (Cortez, 2015) or projected ‘attendance figures’ (Leonard, 2007) as a structuring concept, suggesting that a consideration of cultural economics is a component of curating popular music exhibitions (Frey and Meier, 2011). In Cortez’s work, there is a suggestion that popular music museums will continue to promote exhibits, or go out of their way to create exhibits, on those artists, genres or narratives that draw the largest attendance, and that they do this in an effort to remain sustainable. Musicians’ popularity, thus, equates to their ability to draw large numbers of visitors to music museums. In Leonard’s (2007) discussion of ‘canonic representations’ as a conceptual underpinning for popular music exhibitions, she notes a ‘perceived link between displaying rare or “fantastic” objects and museum attendance figures’, adding that ‘this understandably is a key consideration for both public and private museums who depend upon visitors to justify their function and to finance, either directly or indirectly, their operating costs’ (p. 155). Cortez, however, contends that this practice is not clearly evident in the Portuguese exhibitions under examination. Rather, Cortez argues that curators were unable to follow patron trends, or only did so coincidentally, due to budgetary constraints. In Cortez’s experience, the reasons behind exhibitions are more circumstantial than market oriented.

An emphasis on attracting a sufficient number of patrons to justify the existence of a museum, as well as individual exhibitions, was present in our interview data. For the majority, museums’ revenues draw on patrons’ entry fees. In that regard, they must ensure a certain amount of visitors per year and, thus, rationalise their benefits.

So it’s an ongoing sort of discussion, but the key thing for me is when I look at the numbers, can I draw enough people through the front door to justify the expenditure required. (Respondent 8)

Curators must consider the costs of developing new exhibits and the number of visitors they will need to attract in order to finance future exhibits. As Cortez (2015) highlights, the current financial constraints on the cultural sector require museums to adopt an economic strategy for their own survival. Not doing so can have very real consequences, as the short lifespan of Sheffield’s National Centre for Popular Music demonstrates – a museum that remained open for just over a year and drastically overestimated annual visitor numbers (Kam, 2004).

Our interviewees described upstream strategies for the development of future exhibits, breaking down the importance of, for example, the impact of local visitors versus out-of-towners (Respondent 10) and inter-generational appeal (Respondent 12). This goes beyond the link between attendance figures and canonic representation (Leonard, 2007) and suggests that ‘statistics’ may not be as circumstantial as Cortez suggested. However, although those we interviewed often mentioned visitor numbers in passing, particularly in regards to knowing who their patrons are, the data did not provide any insight into how exhibitions might be developed in relation to specific statistical considerations. This was even the case for museums in the process of establishing sustainable business models prior to opening:

Undoubtedly, all the museum workers who were interviewed had a sense of ‘the numbers’. What was less concrete were the conclusions that could be drawn from the rationalisations which emerged from business modelling and the relationship between patron numbers and exhibition design strategies. Statistics may well be a structuring concept in a framework for the curation of popular music exhibitions but its influence on the narratives told in music museums is less clear.

Place

‘Place’ was identified by Leonard (2007) as having an important role in the display of popular music, particularly in regards to displays ‘present[ing] a perspective on local social history’ (p. 156). Van der Hoeven and Brandellero (2015) and Cortez (2015) also observe that place is central to the collection and exhibition of popular music in the Netherlands and Portugal, respectively. It is a structuring concept that often centres on the local, considers musicians and sub-genres with connections to certain places and tends to have a temporal dimension. As a structuring concept, place can be problematic, in that it risks overestimating the significance of a place in the cultural biography of an artist or genre. For Leonard (2007), curators who attempt to reconstruct local social histories of popular music ‘tend to replicate the dominant hegemonic versions of history’ and privilege the canonic ‘at the expense of the everyday’ experiences of place and history (p. 156).

Place featured significantly in the curator accounts of exhibition curation in a number of the museums we studied, either as a way to structure individual displays, special exhibitions or full museum narratives.

We say our mission is to celebrate Georgia’s ‘legends, landmarks, and unsung heroes’. And what I’ve really always wanted to do is to tell stories about everybody in Georgia music, so we always include a couple of legacy stories. Stories about Georgia’s music heritage that we want people to know and to be proud of, and then we want them to know who’s on the charts, and then we want them to know that there are artists in every genre, but we’re all connected by this thread. It’s geographical. It’s Georgia, but it’s cultural and it’s spiritual and it’s so many things, and it’s something that emotionally connects us, which I think that’s what’s important about music, but I think your native land, there’s something very connecting, and that’s what we wanted to do. (Respondent 1, emphasis added)

As indicated in the above extract concerning the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, place was particularly important in grounding the narratives told in museums dedicated to the celebration of music from specific geographical locations, with the place in question celebrated as being a special nurturing environment for popular music of great cultural significance.

As a further example, the centrality of place was drawn out in exhibitions housed in cultural centres in regional Iceland. Respondent 11 described an exhibition held in a village in the northeast of the country which focused on two musician brothers.

The composer brother wrote jazz music, beautiful ballads and things, and then the lyrics brother, he wrote the lyrics … The lyrics were so local, down home, provincial, you know? … So they were born [in that village] … their father was from this region and then they moved regularly … but they always went back to this place of origin. … So the home town … kept the memory alive. They were very fond of [the brothers] and they wanted to do something about their history and did. (Respondent 11)

Although it is often impossible to actually account for the importance of a place in the career and history of an artist or genre, place is emphasised in exhibits as the origin of popular music product. In the case of the Icelandic musical brothers, there is an emphasis on familial roots in place (they were born in the village/their father ‘was from this region’) which cement an origin story and legitimise the localness of the brothers’ lyrical content. The focus on one place can deemphasise the impact of other places on musical output (the Icelandic brothers, for example, ‘moved regularly’), and so place-based exhibitions potentially ‘play[] down any historical discontinuities’ (Cortez, 2015: 312; Leonard, 2007).

Art and material culture

Both Leonard (2007) and Cortez (2015) identify ‘art’ as a structuring concept. The category describes exhibitions, particularly those held in art galleries (see Leonard, 2010), that are curated in the way one might approach ‘a visual art show’, in which the artefacts of popular music’s material past are ‘left to speak for themselves as autonomous aesthetic objects’ and which may also be accompanied by the work of visual artists (Leonard, 2007: 155). In our study, the link to art was made quite explicit by some interviewees.

We’ve been working on the different aspects of such an exhibition from the point of view of art. That is, the theatrical part, lighting, the scene itself, the background, the intercommunication of the singers, the visual part – fashion, the space itself, the relations between space and singers and crowd and crowd and singer, and space as a total art. … (Respondent 15)

… this is art, … we can’t run this like an amusement park, … we have to try to make [our populace] understand that this isn’t just wallpaper, or the soundtrack of their life, as important as that might be, it’s the soundtrack of the unfolding of world history … (Respondent 9)

Fairchild (2017) notes that popular music museums draw heavily on practices of art museum curation as a way to ‘display the value and legitimacy of their collection’ (pp. 88–89). The reference by Fairchild to the ‘collection’ draws our attention to the link between art and material culture. Cortez identifies ‘material culture’ as a separate concept to art, but our own findings would suggest that there is a significant overlap between the ways these two concepts contribute to the framing of popular music’s past in museums to the extent that ‘art and material culture’ can be dealt with collectively. While we do not intend to completely collapse the distinction between art and material culture, bringing these two concepts together is in line with work in museology that has heralded ‘the re-emergence of the object as a focus point for understanding museums and what they do’ (Dudley, 2010: 1).

Popular music museums are places where the story of an art form (‘unlike an art museum … hanging the art on the wall, here the music is the art’, Respondent 12) is told by way of its material culture. These are places that tend to collect impressive numbers of objects, artworks and all sorts of material culture as the basis on which to construct a myriad of stories for special exhibits and to refresh long-term displays. At the Experience Music Project, for example, the curator emphasised how ‘we only have room to display about 15,000 objects, compared to the 120,000 that we have’ (Respondent 5). As a structuring concept, the contextualisation of popular music as art (Leonard, 2007: 153) and the use of material culture in exhibits therefore require careful negotiation between the narrative value and quantity of objects and the nature of their presentation in order to create engaging displays.

And I think when we first opened, … It was like the more material you could put out, the better. And as we’ve replaced galleries, we’ve tried to use more restraint. In part, so that we don’t overwhelm the visitor, but also to give them a hierarchy of information, so they realise ‘this is significant’, it’s not lost among 50 other things on the same wall. (Respondent 5)

What Respondent 5’s comments draw attention to is the challenge for curators to harness the plethora and variety of popular music artefacts (material culture) within a museum context (art). The use of ‘star objects’ – what Pirrie Adams (2015) calls ‘the charismatic or auratic object’ (p. 120) – is a component of this approach. A discussion about the Kylie Minogue exhibition at Arts Centre Melbourne revealed a powerful example of the power of the auratic object.

The object that people were most fascinated by were the gold hotpants and the public developed this whole mythology around them, none of which was true in a way. … Some of the myths were, ‘well, they’re displayed behind bulletproof glass’, ‘they’re worth $10 million’, … –then the mystery for the audiences were around, ‘well, we don’t know who designed them’, ‘well, she just looks bloody good in them’, and then everything in between. … people are just fascinated by [the hotpants], not only by the facts, but by the invented stories around them as well. (Respondent 14)

The auratic object has also been discussed by Leonard (2014), who observed how a stage that is part of the Beatles story is displayed in such a way at the Museum of Liverpool as ‘to intensify the emotional connection that visitors might feel’, having been ‘isolated from other artefacts’, ‘spotlit’ during an audio-visual presentation and with the star object status reinforced by ‘gallery attendants [who] encourage visitors to photograph themselves beside’ the stage (p. 367). At the Experience Music Project, the decision to use star objects evolved after

… watching people go through [the museum when it first opened and] they couldn’t tell, what’s important? If it’s that great of a piece, why can’t it just be out there where I can see it in a way that I understand, ‘ok, this is significant’, and [so now] it’s displayed like that. (Respondent 5)

For a respondent from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, star objects are decided upon based on two factors: ‘part of it is [highlighting] things that we think are really valuable parts of our collection and then part of it is to try and reach out to different people’s taste’ (Respondent 12).

Narrative

Narrative is arguably the most dominant structuring concept in the curation of exhibitions in popular music museums (see Baker et al., 2016b). In Cortez’s (2015) framework, there is an emphasis on chronological narratives (p. 315), and chronology was discussed by a number of our interviewees. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, for example, did not begin with galleries that charted the chronological development of rock and roll but has since attempted to make a shift to an overarching chronological narrative.

[W]e always had the entire story from the roots of rock and roll, except basically up to the present, but it was not in particular chronological order. So at the end of last summer we started working on this redesign and we were upgrading all of the audio and video and interactive and we also started moving the exhibits around, so that it told the story in a more chronological order … (Respondent 12)

At the British Music Experience, on the other hand, chronology was important from the museum’s inception, with galleries arranged chronologically by decade. This was seen to aid the visitor experience, particularly for the ‘casual observer – they’ll probably look at the year they were born: “Ooh, I wonder if Live Aid was 1985”, or something’ (Respondent 4). The curator mused that a visitor who grew up in the 1970s, for example, might focus more of their time in the museum perusing the display devoted to that decade – chronology provides a point of reference to capture the visitor’s attention. The chronological approach can also encompass biographical narratives and social history narratives, as can be seen in Fairchild’s (2017) observations of the Beatles’ Story in Liverpool and the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum. A potential criticism of this approach to narrative, echoing critiques of evolutionary narratives in traditional museums, is that the ‘strong linear narrative’ that emerges when exhibitions are organised chronologically has the effect of ‘unambiguously plac[ing the visitor] as a receiver of knowledge … rather than in an interactive relationship to the objects being displayed’ (Witcomb, 2012: 580).

However, chronology is only one of the ways in which narratives of popular music’s past anchor exhibitions. Crenn (2015) draws attention to the thematic approach taken by curators of the ABBAWORLD exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum, noting it to be a significant shift from the chronological narrative that had been chosen for a comparable exhibition focused on the Swedish pop group that was held in Melbourne’s Federation Square. Baker et al. (2016b), on the other hand, propose three curatorial approaches to narrative: story-based, which accentuates a core story related to an aspect of popular music history; concept-based, which presents a grand narrative that can ‘corral potentially disparate stories about musicians, genres or locales into one cohesive exposition’ (Baker et al., 2016b: 6); and object-based, which primarily highlights the materiality of artefacts. The potency of narrative as a structuring concept in the curation of popular music’s past reflects the status of popular music museums as ‘new museums’ (see, for example, Bruce, 2006). Doering (1999) notes new museums’ shift away from traditional design and curatorship through an emphasis on object-based displays, material authenticity in curation, and re-positioning the museum as a leisure activity. This has also led to a break away from master narratives, with new museums seeking to represent living memory by emphasising diversified narratives, the inclusion of seemingly incompatible narratives and an openness to ‘narrative authority’ being ‘passed back and forth between museum professionals and their audiences’ (Andermann and Arnold-de Simine, 2012: 6).

A number of interviewees favoured different approaches to narrative, which can reshuffle the temporal element to rather highlight a particular concept (such as a music genre), sometimes in ways that can be experienced kinaesthetically by patrons (Leahy, 2012). The Georgia Music Hall of Fame, for example, organised its galleries around different themes.

In this example, narrative is a structuring concept used to account for the multiple ways in which popular music emerged in Georgia and is done so in a way that does not rely on chronology as a storytelling mechanism. Rather, the narrative sought to highlight the denominators behind the emergence, vibrancy and cultural and geographical context of the different music genres and scenes that could be found in Georgia, and this narrative was underpinned by an exhibition layout that promoted an embodied experience of Georgian music heritage (Leahy, 2012).

Cortez (2015) notes that in order to be viewed as successful, narratives presented in popular music museums ‘need to be based on prior visitor experiences, interests and knowledge’ (p. 318). But it is also the case that, as Leonard (2010) points out, ‘visitors bring their own narratives, histories and stores of knowledge which enable them to draw more complex understandings from the exhibits than might originally be envisioned by museum staff’ (p. 177). Narrative is therefore a structuring concept in curatorial practice in popular music museums which is very much bound up with living memory and lived experience – that of museum staff and of the visitor.

Curator subjectivity

‘Personal taste’ is recognised to be one of ‘a variety of factors’ on which curators ‘base their decisions’ (King, 2006: 239), not only in terms of the exhibition of popular music’s past but also the development of museum collections from which objects for display are drawn (Leonard, 2007; Rhys, 2011). Cortez (2015), for example, argues that ‘curator subjectivity’ has become a ‘prominent feature’ in the curation of popular music exhibitions, reflective of ‘the trend for popular music to be framed globally so as to endow the curator’s voice’ (p. 315). Indeed, Cortez (2015) writes that all exhibits ‘in one way or another, were in the end some form of expressing curatorial subjectivity or identity’ (pp. 315–316). Cortez (2015) points to curatorial subjectivity being a problematic structuring concept because exhibitions come to provide ‘only a partial understanding of popular music’ which reflects ‘the curator’s personal voices’ (p. 317). Ultimately, Cortez (2015) cautions that those working in popular music museums need to ‘manage their curatorial reflections and gestures’, and that overcoming the influence of curatorial subjectivity ‘represents the most sensitive challenge and significant commitment’ popular music museums need to undertake (p. 317).

Curator subjectivity was recognised by our participants as possibly problematic because of its potential to lead to narratives that will not resonate with patrons’ experiences and memories. A number of the curators emphasised that the stories told in music museums must connect with the recollections of visitors.

If I tell you this is the story, you’re going to say, ‘no, that’s not the story. That’s not how I remember it. That’s not how I connected to it’. So we have to make sure we’re cognisant of that. (Respondent 13)

That is not to say that curator subjectivities and personal principles are not part of these stories, but rather that these subjectivities and personal principles come to be represented in ways that have collective resonance. Indeed, team-based approaches to exhibition development, design and curation (‘We all work together on exhibits’, Respondent 7) ensure that multiple ‘personal principles’ are brought to bear in the display of popular music’s past; multiple museum worker subjectivities come to be represented. This team approach to the creation and narration of stories in exhibits was also evident in the do-it-yourself (DIY) institutions of the study in which volunteers had received no professional training in curating or museum management and often worked across different tasks collaboratively. At the Australian Country Music Hall of Fame, for example, the volunteer who held the title of Curator described the importance of drawing on the input of other people involved in the organisation.

I do discuss [exhibits] particularly with the lady who does a lot of the collection … so we’ve got to take a look to see where we can get a nice story from [artefacts] to put together [a display], … I do discuss it with the board members and with the other volunteers, because it’s not something you can do by yourself, you have to have help when you’re doing it. (Respondent 19)

Moreover, teams work within institutional bounds which can also keep curatorial subjectivities and ‘creative freedom’ in check. As the curator from the Powerhouse Museum explained, the ‘powers that be’ need to be convinced ‘that your idea and your approach to that idea are going to be okay’ (Respondent 6). Checks and balances happen throughout the curatorial process, bringing different layers to the way stories get told in an exhibition. For example, the respondent from the Powerhouse Museum went on to provide substantial detail in the interview about the creation of the written labels that accompany exhibits. The first copy is written by the curator but the labels are then edited by

Editors [who] have a really good sense of the visitor. They’re kind of advocates for the visitor really and I really am very grateful for what they do to the stuff I write. (Respondent 6)

Although the personal principles of curators might inform the starting point for the stories that will be told in an exhibition, the challenges faced by curators in bringing together the elements needed to tell those stories will necessarily result in any guiding personal principles being negotiated and contested through engagement with others.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a structuring concept that works to animate practices of popular music heritage and is one that has received limited academic attention in the context of popular music museums. Leonard and Knifton (2015) describe nostalgia as an ‘engagement strategy of museums’ (p. 163). Similarly, Mortensen and Madsen (2015: 251) posit nostalgia to be ‘an interpretive strategy for exhibiting pop/rock heritage’ concerned with ‘designing a “space for the revisit of time”‘. As a ‘positive and longing disposition towards the past’, nostalgia acts as an ‘affective trigger’ in the display of popular music’s past and can provide ‘a common emotional ground’ for the reception of exhibitions (Mortensen and Madsen, 2015: 251–252, 260). These scholars acknowledge that the ‘romanticising effect of nostalgia on the past’ can be problematic, but argue that a more nuanced understanding of nostalgia can salvage its potential as a structuring concept in popular music museums (Mortensen and Madsen, 2015: 251).

Sometimes, there is a concerted attempt by curators to remove the extent to which nostalgia will be experienced in an exhibit. This distancing is evident in Santelli’s (1999) account of the early days of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum: ‘One of the Rock Hall’s initial exhibition strategies not only challenged the intrusion of nostalgia but sought to deconstruct notions of identity that might lead to nostalgic diversions at the expense of the significance of the artifacts on display’ (p. 242). For Santelli (1999: 243), nostalgia was something to be kept ‘in check’ in curatorial practice, but as Leonard and Knifton (2015: 161) note, nostalgia can be ‘an important curatorial tool’ which fosters visitors’ ‘historical understanding’ and ‘appreciation for the social dimensions’ of popular music’s past.

Nostalgia informs curators in their decisions regarding narratives and potentially even influences ‘collecting decisions, as museums look for material which will speak to visitors’ (Leonard and Knifton, 2015: 171). Nostalgia is therefore used by curators as a strategy to improve the quality of visitors’ experiences.

The people who were in Macon and Atlanta in the 1970s and huge fans during the southern rock era, they’re still around, and they’re in their 60s, and then the people who were in Athens during REM and Pylon, B-52s era, they’re now in their late 40s and 50s, so even though the audience ages, they still love music. And I think they’re … still nostalgic about those early bands … (Respondent 1)

So, many of the exhibitions that we’ve done around rock music … really are about the personal experiences of most people. People can come in, it’s a very accessible experience, they’ve got lots of memories, brings back memories or perhaps challenges them, and it’s actually a very safe doorway for people to enter a cultural institution like this one. (Respondent 14)

For Mortensen and Madsen (2015), nostalgia re-enchants popular music heritage, and they argue that it is music museums’ mission to engage in such romantic perspectives towards popular music. As such, nostalgia can be triggered through particular elements within popular music exhibits, notably through the use of certain music (Mortensen and Madsen, 2015).

The deployment of nostalgia as a structuring concept for the exhibition of popular music lies principally in its connection to visitors’ music taste and personal memories.

As I talk to folks, especially throughout the south, I have found that people, regardless of their socio-economic background, religious background, race, gender … all tell me the same stories. They all have memories, especially if they’re within a certain age range. There was one radio station which broadcast over, I think it was 20 different countries, and all the southern states and all the Caribbean nations. And people always tell me the same stories, they remember laying in their bed, listening to this music. (Respondent 13)

People bring their own memories and project their own emotions onto the content and come away with something far richer than anything that’s inherent to the empirical quality of the object. So we’re keepers of memories but we’re also triggers of memories that people bring along … (Respondent 6)

As a structuring concept in curatorial practice, nostalgia works to connect popular music exhibits with visitors’ own memories of popular music culture. As Leonard and Knifton conclude, ‘What is at stake for the museum is how to work with such emotion, memory and nostalgia in the presentation of historical materials so that cultural heritage is made meaningful in the present’ (Leonard and Knifton, 2015: 171; see also Leonard, 2010).

Although the above examples emphasise nostalgia as an affective trigger for visitors with direct experience of the music cultures on display, nostalgia must be understood as a complex structuring concept, given its capacity to trigger affective responses in visitors with a living memory of stories being told in exhibits, as well as those with no direct lived experience of an exhibition’s content. Leonard and Knifton (2015: 164) note that popular music has the capacity to generate ‘vicarious’ nostalgia in audiences who have ‘not personally experienced the conditions in which the object was initially spatially and temporally situated’. They refer to the work of Keightley and Pickering (2006), who argue that ‘The representation associated with the image or music has now entered into a much wider network of relations through which the past is remembered and reconstructed’ (p. 153). For Leonard and Knifton (2015), the ‘transfer of mnemonic associations into collective social frameworks of past history’ is central to the work of popular music museums (p. 164).

Sound

Sound is a structuring concept for curatorial practice in popular music museums, but it is not usually spoken of as such in the existing literature. The concept of sound is certainly not absent in popular music museum scholarship, but it is most often discussed with regard to an anxiety about whether popular music belongs to the museum or the questionable quality of sonic encounters popular music museums can offer visitors (see Edge, 2000; Reising, 2001; Reynolds, 2011). A consideration of sound as a structuring concept sets aside those concerns to, instead, focus on how, for curators, sound plays an important element in approaching the curation of popular music exhibits because, as Leonard states, ‘the curation of popular music artefacts cannot stand in for, or be detached from, the sonic and bodily experience of music and the emotional and social ways in which it is experienced in time and space’ (Leonard, 2007: 148). But, equally, as Baker et al. (2016a) observe, ‘the curation of popular music’s sound cannot stand in for, or be detached from, the material experience of music culture and the individual, technological and social ways in which music’s material culture is experienced in time and space’ (p. 73, original emphasis). To put it another way, as Holton (2002) does in one of the rare scholarly considerations of sound as a structuring concept in the exhibition of popular music history, ‘images make noise and noises take on material form’ (pp. 109–110). For Holton (2002), as a structuring concept, sound ‘functions as both a narrative cohesive and dramatizing agent’ (p. 111).

Although ‘sound is a difficult phenomenon to contain in an exhibition environment’ (Mortensen and Madsen, 2015: 251), it is also ‘part of an expanded toolkit’ (Knifton, 2012: 23) for the display of popular music’s past. Despite our interviewees not overtly discussing sound as being a fundamental component of their curatorial practice – their focus tended to be on tangible artefacts – it was clear in their interviews that it is a component of exhibitions which is given considerable thought in the early stages of planning. For example, even in an Israeli exhibition which emphasised art as a structuring concept and which curated the display of artefacts ‘according to gallery criteria’ (Respondent 15), an accompanying component which complemented the overarching narrative presented was a curated soundtrack that simulated a radio station broadcast. The soundtrack was incorporated into the exhibition as a way to provide context for visitors viewing the ‘framed’ objects on display. Another example related to the Hendrix exhibit at Experience Music Project in which music was a critical component of the exhibit’s curation from the outset.

… when [the curator] curated that, [the curator] chose to have a film, one film, and that would be the music source for the entire exhibit, so that when you walked into the exhibit, you’d be immediately hearing Hendrix the whole time. … it just deepens your engagement with it, and also your understanding of what we’re talking about. (Respondent 5)

In both examples, sound can be understood as a sensory element that challenges ‘museums’ privileging of the visual’, with the aim of increasing a visitor’s sense of familiarity and connection with objects on display (Dudley, 2010: 9).

Curators are attuned to the types of soundscapes that can enhance visual displays, but note that some aspects of this soundscape can be unintended due to the issue of sound bleeding within and across the gallery space. A key aspect curators consider when drawing on sound as a structuring concept is how the listening experience of visitors can be isolated or contained within a music exhibit by way of various technologies, including sound booths, directional speakers and headphones (see Baker et al., 2016a). One curator described how the museum had opted to use directional speakers in galleries due to a desire to have patrons experience a sense of being ‘in the moment. We want people to be present in what they’re experiencing’ (Respondent 13). Another curator spoke of the important role sound booths play in large, open gallery spaces: ‘you can listen to the music as loud as you want, have enough space to dance, and have it feel communal, and yet not have it bleed into something else’ (Respondent 5). Sound has an important role to play as a structuring concept in popular music museums, given that it is widely recognised that exhibitions which incorporate aural, visual and tactile elements represent the type of ‘immersive’ museum environments that are increasingly seen as attractive to today’s museum visitor (Sparacino, 2004).