Behind the scenes as a freelance exhibition organiser

This blog is kindly written for Museum Freelance by Art Consultant, Charlotte Churchill.

It was on a sunny morning in March 2019 that I first met the curator of the forthcoming 2021 Centenary Exhibition of the Oriental Ceramic Society (OCS), in the courtyard outside the Royal Academy. 

It was my first large-scale exhibition working freelance, and I was keen to make a good impression and get up to speed on the scope and remit of the project as quickly as possible. 

Later than day I would attend my first OCS lecture at The Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, and be formally introduced to over one hundred OCS members attending that day, as the person responsible for organising and delivering their special celebratory centenary exhibition!

Inevitably, I ended up working very closely with the curator and OCS President over the next two and a half years as the exhibition developed, and I am delighted to say opened, on 15 October 2021 to the public at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS. 

During 2019, I made a start by contacting all the private lenders and providing detailed information about how, where and when the exhibition would take place. I explained about the UK Government Indemnity Scheme which would be used to cover the insurance and outlined their commitment in terms of timeframe and transportation arrangements. I also formally started loan negotiations with the institutional lenders, including the British Museum, V&A, Ashmolean, Fitzwilliam and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery. 

Christie’s Asian Department provided sponsorship ‘in kind’ by hosting two weeks of cataloguing & photography for the exhibition catalogue. I organised for the private lenders to bring their loans and arranged the insurance during this period. It was wonderful to finally get to see some of the beautiful pieces, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about Asian ceramics from the specialists cataloguing the loans. 

The impact of the pandemic

A year into the project, Covid-19 struck, and the anticipated budget became uncertain. I agreed to work less than my originally contracted hours to keep things ticking along as the situation evolved. Thankfully in early 2021, the OCS decided they were going to proceed with the exhibition, and it was full steam ahead again.

Re-establishing contact with the museum registrars was wonderful, but slightly sobering, as many were still on partial furlough and had not yet returned to their museum. Thus, it was hard for them to obtain the information I needed about the objects. Slowly over the coming months as conservators, collections managers and curators were reunited with their collections the information I required about display, security and conservation requirements was provided. This information was duly transferred into the design and transportation briefs when we went out to tender for both in the Spring of 2021.

A busy few months followed during which I issued all the loan agreements, applied & successfully obtained UK Government Indemnity and well as organising commercial insurance for some elements of the exhibition.

I worked closely with colleagues at the exhibition venue - the Brunei Gallery, transport agents, lenders, designers, the curator and other OCS Council Members to develop each stage of the planning and to bring the exhibition to fruition. 

September 2021 was an intense period spent refining the installation schedule and ensuring all requirements for loan and display were met.

On Monday 4 October the day had finally come to commence the object install! A busy 8 days lay ahead of us, installing between 20-40 loans a day depending on size & complexity. We had 6 museum couriers on site and two virtual couriers during the install due to Covid. Virtual couriering was a new experience for me, and for straightforward loans when there are no anticipated conservation or display issues I feel this can work really well and has the added benefits of being more environmentally friendly and at this current time, Covid safe.

I was extremely happy, and relieved, when on schedule during the afternoon of the last day of install the final piece was positioned inside the display case, label included, and the case locked until the deinstall! 

Lessons learnt

• Take time to get to know the dynamic of the team you will be working with; some may be volunteers/giving their time for free, part time or have specific windows of time to work on your project and it can be harder to hold those people to deadlines if you need their input.  

• In this project I worked with lenders who had a wide range of technological ability. I used DocuSign for the first time for the loan agreements which worked fantastically well for some lenders, but I had to be flexible and revert to hard copies in the post for others.

• I feel Covid provided opportunities as well as challenges. Teams/Zoom meetings can work really well, and I will use this as standard practice going forward for some meetings even after Covid has disappeared. Virtual couriers have become much more acceptable, and experience has proved that for certain types of loan can work equally as well with the added benefit of helping the environment as well as saving time and money.

• For this project, I organised a large-scale exhibition at a venue I had only visited once and was unfamiliar with their staff (although I had had extensive email communication with the gallery manager). It can be a fine balance as you can’t take the risk of assuming other people’s work practises are the same, plus I wasn’t sure of the resources available in terms of staff and materials. I recommend as much communication as possible; we had a Teams meeting in which we virtually ran through the process from start to finish of a fine art lorry arriving, through the unloading, accessing the gallery, unpacking, condition checking and installing of the loan. This really helped me gain much valuable insight into their processes and identify areas I felt required more resourcing or needed to clarify.

• I used Toggl Track App to keep a record of my hours worked, it’s really easy to use and invaluable as otherwise it is so easy to lose track of how long you have worked on a project, especially if you are juggling more than one at a time.

Collectors, Curators, Connoisseurs: A Century of The Oriental Ceramic Society is now open until 11 December 2021 at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London. Tickets are free but need to be pre-booked. 

Thanks to Charlotte for taking the time to share her experience on the Museum Freelance blog. You can find Charlotte on LinkedIn, Instagram or via her website.