The World's Mine Oyster
Client: Harley Foundation
Inspired by Lady Margaret Cavendish Holles Harley (1715-85) who founded the Portland Museum, our third re-hang for the Harley Foundation "The World’s Mine Oyster: Art, Nature and Collecting the Globe" explores the stories behind this world-class collection. Alongside object displays we have introduced discreet audio-visual points for the first time to reveal how the Cavendish family saw and used the natural world, both at home and across the world.
The new display sub-divides the Portrait Gallery into three ‘rooms’, enabling this long daylit space to cover three distinct themes, with the set-work allowing oil paintings including works by John Wootton and Melchior Hondecoeter to be displayed with sculptures and other 3D artefacts.
In the Side Gallery, we have introduced a new 10-metre wide showcase that allows the display of objects en-masse. Providing great future flexibility this case is ideally suited to Lady Margaret’s extraordinary 'cabinet of curiosities' which brings together silver gilt, ceramics, gems and objet de vertu, along with paintings, furniture and natural history specimens from Wollaton Hall.
The new scheme also extends into the Welcome Pavilion and Courtyard, where bold floor and window graphics compliment a family interactive that invites visitors to select props from a set according to their symbolic meaning and pose for a portrait.
Our role:
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Exhibition / Interior Design
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Lighting Design
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Graphic Design with Surface 3
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Design & Build
Photo credits: Harley Foundation & Jules Lister
