Most of a Museum is Hidden

When touring a museum, you may think that you have seen every object and room in the building, yet in fact, many museums have many artifacts in storage. It is not uncommon for the number of objects in storage to dwarf the number of objects on display. Especially in museums with larger buildings, there may be significant space set aside for staff work areas, offices and storage for artifacts and other stuff (furniture for events, seasonal decorations, etc.). It is also common for museums to have offsite storage for collections and other equipment. I previously worked at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, which had lots of non-public spaces, including basement workshops and studios for graphic design and collections care, in addition to offices and storage spaces. These spaces are important for the functioning of a museum, even if visitors may never see them. Many artifacts are kept in storage at museums as it is generally impractical to display them all, partly because of their sheer number, but also because many artifacts can be susceptible to damage while on display (some types of objects are damaged simply by light shining on them). Some museums have experimented with visible storage, allowing a larger number of artifacts to be seen by the public even if they don’t have the space or resources to include them all in curated exhibits.

On maps showing the floorplan of a museum, often distributed to visitors in larger museums, the non-public parts of the museum are usually either completely omitted, or shown as grey rectangles. If you compare the floorplan shown on a museum map to the building footprint, you may find that there is in fact significant extra space, which is probably devoted to staff offices and storage. You can see an example of this in this map of the Royal BC Museum.



https://rbcm.ca/museum-maps/

These spaces may be awkward to navigate, especially because museums may have one or more additions made to the building over the years. I personally found that many museums I have worked at were large and confusing enough that it took me some time to learn how to find my way around. At the Colonial Williamsburg Art Museums, there were quite a few rooms that I only discovered after working there for months, or I never even visited.

Historic house museums have their own challenge in finding areas for staff offices and storage. They are often inherently limited by the footprint of an existing building, though sometimes additions are made to the building. Historic house museums are not uncommonly located in mansions owned by wealthy people, so sometimes former servant’s living spaces are devoted to staff offices. I have worked at two historic mansions where this was the case. In both cases, they had large numbers of staff so there were numerous maids’ rooms used as staff offices.

This way of doing things can have its advantages, as the servant’s living spaces may be optimally sized and arranged for offices, in their own separate area away from the more highly decorated living spaces now open to the public, and tend to be less decorated and well preserved. However, not including servants’ spaces in the areas open to the public in a historic house museum can mean not showing the public the full story of who lived in the house.

There does seem to be some public interest in these “behind the scenes” spaces, I know that the behind the scenes tours showing the servants’ rooms, attics and storage spaces at one of the houses I worked at were enormously popular. In fact, while I was interning there, they opened the servants’ spaces on the ground floor to the public, who seemed fairly interested, even though most of the rooms were not furnished and some had been significantly renovated. Ultimately, these spaces have lots of potential to be interpreted as additional display areas to teach about an important piece of history and I think it is an opportunity that museums that have them should take.