Ane Pilegaard

Under the heading of Museum Interiors, I develop new concepts for understanding and advancing museum and exhibition design practices, focusing particularly on how historical museum spaces can meet the requirements of contemporary exhibition design. I use the term ‘interiors’ as a way of insisting on the integration between exhibition design and museum architecture, exactly because the term captures both furnishing and architectural frames. Furthermore, I understand Museum Interiors as a concept that also includes museum objects and visitors.

EXHIBITION FURNITURE 'AT HOME' IN ARCHITECTURE

I explore how exhibition furniture can be in dialogue with the surrounding architectural space. That is, how surfaces and tectonics of the furniture can pick up on the materiality and detailing of the architecture. There is also an important sustainability aspect to this. Exhibition furniture that is really ‘at home’ in the spatial and material environment of the museum building will typically have a longer lifespan than designs that are more generic in style. 

HOUSE MUSEUMS

In my research into historic house museums – that is, museums that were once home for someone, such as artists, authors, or royals – I combine aesthetic analysis, informed by my background as design practitioner, with museological theory. I have developed the concepts of ‘looking at’ and ‘being inside’ as a way of capturing the combined mode of looking at interiors that are put on display in front of you, while at the same time being inside these interiors and sensing former inhabitation.

One main area of focus in my research is the display of design objects. In a museum context, design objects present a particular case because they take up a place between art object, cultural historical object and object of use. I explore the different display principles and not least, the role of display design itself, within a design museum context, both from a historical and contemporary perspective. 

Furthermore, I bring museological theories on museum display into the context of design education, exploring how exhibition practices can be used as teaching tool - that is, how students can explore and understand their own design work, through different ways of arranging and displaying the artefacts they produce.