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World of Stories: LORD Cultural Resources Planning & Management Develops Museums Throughout Asia-Pacific

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World of Stories: LORD Cultural Resources Planning & Management Develops Museums Throughout Asia-Pacific World of Stories: LORD Cultural Resources Planning & Management Develops Museums Throughout Asia-Pacific By Chuck Sutyla, Principal, Asia-Pacific Tarantulas, robots, and "People Power" have all figured into the many projects that LORD Cultural Resources has done throughout the Asia Pacific region over the last decade. These are all exhibit elements that the public has the opportunity to experience: tarantulas in the Tai Po Waterfront Insect House (Hong Kong); robots (animatronic figures that move and speak about military tactics) at the Singapore Discovery Centre; and "People Power" film footage in the Object Theatre multi-media show for the Story of the Filipino People at the National Museum of the Philippines. What the public does not see or perhaps takes for granted is the organization and planning that goes on behind the scenes, the hundreds of hours of staff time, consultation, research, meetings and discussions, often heated, that result in the well-functioning museum facility, the successful exhibit or public event hosted by a museum. LORD Cultural Resources, an international museum and gallery consultant firm, has played a variety of roles to museums, galleries and governments to facilitate this process. LORD Cultural Resources Planning & Management Inc. of Toronto is internationally recognized for excellence in planning and managing museums, art galleries and heritage exhibits. Founded in 1981 by Barry Lord and Gail Dexter Lord, the company has completed more than 850 assignments in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa. Its owners also publish museum planning and management guidebooks, which are among definitive texts in the field. With 20 employees in Canada and 15 others around the world, Chuck Sutyla, Principal Asia- Pacific calls the company a "micro-multinational". LORD Cultural Resources Planning & Management Inc. • 1 LORD provides consulting services in three broad areas, Management Consultancy, Exhibition Development and Facilities Planning. The three streams provide an integrated approach, and combined with LORD's specialized work in cultural and heritage tourism their advice can help position museums to be vital and active participants in both their local and national scenes, as well as important tourist destinations. Being a viable tourist attraction is becoming increasingly important as museums and art galleries attempt to generate more revenues and to tap into the every-growing tourist market in Asia. LORD's work in Asia began in 1990 and the focus of activity moved throughout the region. "We were initially located in Singapore through their early heritage planning period," said Chuck. "We prepared the Master Plan for the National Museum Precinct, which positioned the institutions in the forefront of the active heritage and recreational district of the downtown area. The government approach to museums was re-defined under the National Heritage Board and three constituent museums – the Singapore Art Museum, the Singapore History Museum and the Asian Civilization Museum – for all of which LORD produced the Functional Briefs and other planning documents. Subsequently, on LORD's recommendation, the National Heritage Board established an Artefact Repository with state-of-the-art conservation labs and storage facilities to house the collections. LORD provided a detailed Functional Brief for this collections management facility. While based in Singapore, we also provided numerous heritage training workshops of three to five days duration, which were attended by museum workers from throughout the region. This served to strengthen the network of museum professionals along the lines advocated by ICOM Pacific." LORD Cultural Resources Planning & Management Inc. • 2 The Functional Brief for the Singapore Art Museum was a first for museum facility planning in Asia. It detailed every functional requirement of each room in the renovation and expansion of the historic St. Joseph's Institution Building. The Brief set new standards for preventive conservation in the tropics by detailing separate relative humidity and temperature levels for those areas where works of art from the temperate zone may be shown, and those areas where materials that originated in the tropics will be kept. Consequently New York's Guggenheim Museum lent 65 works of art for the 1996 opening, the first time that works of such quality had been safely exhibited in the tropics. With such world-standard environmental controls, security and artifact handling facilities, the Museum has gone on to borrow other major exhibitions from German and French museums. "The Singapore Discovery Centre, which also opened in 1996 is a state-of-the-art 1,000 sq.m. exhibition centre, complete with animatronics, advanced multi-media, a 350-seat IWERKS theatre and a 59-seat simulator ride show, all on the theme of Singapore's Total Defense Strategy, the recent history of the island Republic, the need for such a Strategy, the tactics and technology implicit in it, and the promise of peace for the whole region of South-East Asia. LORD did the range of planning starting with the Business Plan, the Exhibition Plan, all the Design and Tender Documents, as well as the Functional Brief for the building. We then provided the Project Management through to opening. "Our next concentration of projects was in the Philippines beginning in 1997," said Chuck Sutyla. "The National Museum of the Philippines project was one of many of our projects world-wide that have been associated with major celebrations in the host country. In 1997, LORD was invited by the Presidential Committee to Assist the National Museum, under former President Ramos to provide overall advice on the development of the National Museum of the Philippines, as well as the major exhibition for the Centennial of the Philippines. As with Singapore, our Master Plan proposed a series of three museums in the remodeled historic buildings, in this case a human history museum, a national gallery and a natural history museum in a new museum precinct in Rizal Park in the heart of Old Manila. The Functional Brief for the first building, the National Museum of the Filipino People set the museum standards for the refurbishment of this historic building, and LORD was contracted for the design-build of the important permanent exhibition, The Story of the Filipino People, which opened to great acclaim during the June 1998 Centennial. The Asian Economist magazine listed it as a "must-see" cultural tourism attraction for visitors to Manila." LORD then went on to provide Functional Briefs for the Ayala Museum of Philippine History and the Lopez Memorial Museum and Library, and space planning advise for the President Roxas Foundation, all important private museums, archives and art galleries in the Philippines. LORD Cultural Resources Planning & Management Inc. • 3 "About this same time our exhibit work in Hong Kong increased, also linked to a major celebration, this time in preparation for the Millennium. In 1996, LORD outbid eight other firms to become the design management group for Hong Kong's Heritage Museum, a HK$720 million venture designated as the Millennium Project for Hong Kong. We had been involved with this museum since 1993 when the initial interpretive plans and collections policy were being developed. We were subsequently engaged to provide a detailed Functional Brief for the new museum, and to work with Hong Kong's Architectural Services Department on detailed design of the building, right through to the tendering process. Scheduled to open at the end of 2000, the museum and its exhibits promise to be major additions to the cultural life of Hong Kong." LORD has already completed one project in China, the Liaoning Provincial Museum for the World Bank. The Hong Kong projects, especially the Heritage Museum, are seen as an opportunity to present examples of a full planned museological approach to the increasing numbers of visitors from the Mainland. "We hope visitors from the People's Republic will tour the museum and be excited by it," Chuck says. "At the same time we're very humble because China has its own rich museological tradition that must be respected." LORD has built its global reputation on the principle of respect for other cultures. "Our attitude of respect for other cultures, not trying to impose our views on others, is a tremendous asset in projects abroad," said Chuck Sutyla who trained as a cultural anthropologist. "For example, in designing the Hong Kong Heritage Museum LORD took pains to incorporate the concept of Feng Shui, the Chinese art of placement, in making decisions about building layout. While many layouts were possible, Feng Shui dictated that the museum face the river. Respect for culture was more than a demonstration of goodwill; it was the way it should be done." Two other Hong Kong projects that open for the 2000 Millennium celebrations are the exhibitions at the Tai Po Waterfront Park Insect House and the International Wetland Park Visitor Centre (Phase 1), which interprets the nearby protected Ramsar site and Mai Po Marshes. LORD Cultural Resources Planning & Management Inc. • 4 Besides an exhibition project for the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange and an exhibition planning workshop in Kuching, Malaysia, the other Asian country, which has seen much of the LORD presence, is Korea. "After preparing the Exhibition Plan for Korea's first Children's Museum, we were thrilled to be hired to do "turn-key" exhibit planning and fabrication services for the exhibits based upon our plan," said Chuck. The Samsung Children's Museum in Seoul has proven to be tremendously successful and is attracting 300,000 visitors annually." Another Korean project, perhaps summarizes LORD's overall approach to museum development, that is the planning of the actual museum facility, which is fundamental to both the safekeeping of the collections, and the exhibitions and public programmes that follow. In 1995 the Korean Institute of Architects invited Barry Lord to join them in the Architectural Competition for the world- wide search for an architect to design Korea's new National Museum.
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