An interview with Will Gompertz
Behind the stone façade of a 19th century house is a museum filled with art and artefacts collected throughout the life of one man and it’s quietly enjoying record numbers of young visitors.
Sir John Soane’s Museum is the former home of architect Sir John Soane who lived there between 1813 and 1837. It features an eclectic array of the objects and artefacts that Soane collected during his lifetime. The museum’s current director is Will Gompertz who took over at the start of this year. He was previously the BBC’s arts editor and then artistic director of the Barbican. In his current role he is in charge of ensuring the museum fulfils its aim of ‘play[ing] an increasing role in educational and recreational life’.
Figures show that the number of young people visiting UK museums has been rising but it still lags behind pre-pandemic levels.
I spoke to him earlier this year to find out his opinions on the current state of young people’s changing relationship with museums, galleries and art.
Gompertz mentions that Sir John Soane’s Museum has recently experienced a record number of young visitors. I asked what the museum is doing to attract these high numbers of young people and he believes the museum has come of age in an era where people want immersive experiences.
‘[The Soane] is more than a museum, it’s almost like an installation, an experiential installation where the light, the architecture, the designs, the objects everything moulds into one and in and out of each other … for young people it’s a really immersive experience in a way that most museums aren’t,’ he says.
Immersive museum experiences have seen a surge in popularity in recent years, with some of the most popular in London being the Infinity Rooms by Yayoi Kusama, in which visitors can enter rooms constructed of mirrors, or the Van Gogh Immersive Experience, where visitors can experience a room with van Gogh’s paintings projected all around them. For young people, perhaps alienated by the idea of a conventional museum – art on walls, or artefacts in glass casings – an interactive experience offers a new and absorbing way of consuming art and culture.
Breaking down the idea of a conventional museum experience may also break down this idea of museums being ‘exclusionary’ places that were historically reserved for the white middle and upper classes. This interactive feeling that Gompertz describes at the Soane is made possible by an Act of Parliament that Sir John Soane negotiated in 1833 that guaranteed his house would remain untouched and preserved following his death and would be opened to the public. Therefore, when visiting the museum today, it has been virtually frozen in time since Soane’s death back in 1837. Because of this act, there are also no labels in the museum. Gompertz believes this creates a much more direct connection between viewer and object.
‘When we’re in a gallery, we’re looking more at the label explaining what it is than looking at the object.’
This lack of labels furthers the interactive experience. Stepping into the Soane therefore provides a very different experience to visitors from stepping into a conventional museum and this alternative might be what is attracting young people.
Social media has of course also played a part in the rise of young visitors.
Gompertz says: ‘The big thing we did which made it much more relevant [to] young people … was to allow photography, which we started to allow after Covid and now it’s become a viral sensation’.
I also ask him about this shift in young people now consuming much more art and visual culture online through social media. Does he think this is inherently a bad thing?
‘No I don’t because I think it’s an introduction to it.’
‘I don’t think there’s any harm in people enjoying art and artefacts when removed, so to speak, but there is nothing like seeing the real thing.’
He mentions an ‘extraordinary’ essay written by Walter Benjamin in 1932 called ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. In the essay, Benjamin argues that art and objects have an ‘aura’ by which he means authenticity and uniqueness. Benjamin believes that this ‘aura’ provides the essence of an object or work of art and that it is ‘jeopardised by reproduction’, whether that reproduction be a print, a postcard or a photo posted on social media.
However these days, going to a museum may seem like a luxury to some, including schools which, in the past, have been a gateway to museums.
Figures from the government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport have shown a dramatic decrease of 44.1% in school trips and other visits by young people to museums and galleries in 2022/2023 compared with 2018/2019.
‘I think for some schools it’s unaffordable’, says Gompertz. ‘It’s really for schools to take their students to a museum, particularly if you are not lucky enough to go to a school in a major urban environment.’
He then mentions a crucial factor which could determine who visits cultural institutions such as the John Soane.
‘If you visited a museum as a child the chances of you continuing to visit museums are really high. If you never visited a museum as a child the chances of you visiting a museum as an adult are low.’
This is why introducing children to museums and galleries when they’re young is so important. Who does he think has the greatest responsibility for engaging children with museums – parents, schools, the government?
‘It’s definitely a mixture… I think schools have got a role to play here. There’s a sense sometimes in our education system that the arts aren’t important.’
However, despite these low figures, there is reason to be hopeful about young people’s engagement with museums – the V&A recently opened the Young V&A, a museum in East London that is aimed specifically at children, and Gompertz states that the Soane hosts loads of school groups.
Gompertz is also very complimentary of the state of museums today.
‘What we have now compared to what we had [when I was young] is so unbelievably different… there was no Tate Modern, no Saatchi Gallery, the Gagosian didn’t exist, the museums weren’t free, so much money has been put into the cultural infrastructure in this country. The trick is keeping it going.’
