Museums are great, we (museum people) know this, we spend everyday telling people this, from outreach programmes, to print advertising, social media to competitions we’ve tried them all…

But sometimes,  shouting it from the roof tops is quite simply the most effective way of telling the world about how great our museums are.

Here are a couple of interesting examples that demonstrate this:

1. The National Museum of Ireland’s brilliant building size billboard sums up what the museum has to offer in a couple of words. Museums often struggle to produce concise yet effective visitor info but this example shows how great it can look – if done well!

Collins Barracks

2. This is actually a bit of an old one, but it fits in well with this post so here goes:

National Galleries of Scotland decorated their building with giant impressionist flowers during their ‘Impressionist Gardens‘ exhibition …it really brightened up the very traditional museum facade and no doubt prompted passing tourists to pop in for a look.

Is decorating the museum facade all a bit ‘old’ museum?

Decorating museum buildings is an interesting one, because so much of what I read, write and research is about the new museum, its about honest conversations with people. The new museum is about co creation, about multiple platforms and channels and decorating the museum building does seem a little bit one sided. The two examples I’ve shown are great but perhaps they could be even better if these museums got their community in on the action:

How can we make decorating the museum facade ‘new’ museum friendly?

In theory it’s simple: co create, talk to people, share and exchange ideas

• Local communities could decorate the museum facade for an event or exhibition
• Perhaps museums could help develop the career of an emerging artist with a design competition
• Or crowd source images and illustrations for future banners or billboards

Do you have any examples of this kind of work? If so get in touch I’d love to add them to this post…