Designing open collections experiences for today's museum audiences
For collecting institutions, facility constraints can be one of the trickiest aspects of maintaining or expanding their collections. Physical space must be found, environments must be continuously controlled with great care to safeguard objects or art, and operations must be thoughtfully choreographed. Which makes the transformation of the Hamilton Collections Gallery at The Franklin Institute (TFI) in Philadelphia into an open collections experience all the more unusual.
Cultural studio leader and collections specialist Chris Wood and mechanical engineer Kevin Ricart teamed up with TFI director of collections Susannah Carroll to detail the challenge in an article for the July 2025 issue of International Association of Museum Facility Administrators (IAMFA) member magazine Papyrus. The project renovated one of the oldest wings of the TFI building into a contemporary collections environment where visitors can watch curators and collections staff in action and more of TFI's collections will be on view.