ABSTRACT
Striking the right balance between scientific precision and audience comprehension is a great challenge for text editors in museums of technology. This article discusses how this challenge was met at the Industrial Gas Museum in Athens, Greece, and aspires to offer some useful suggestions of good practice. The Athens gasworks, the first energy-producing industry in Greece, operated non-stop from 1862 to 1984, and constitutes a representative example of nineteenth-century industrial architecture. Today the site operates as a large and popular venue for cultural and commercial events under the name of Technopolis, City of Athens. Part of the site operates as the Industrial Gas Museum, where visitors may follow the process of gas production and discover unknown stories of entrepreneurship, labor and life in nineteenth and twentieth-century Athens.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Andromache Gazi is Assistant Professor of Museology at the Department of Communication, Media and Culture at Panteion University, Athens. Prior to entering academia, she worked extensively as a museums and exhibitions consultant. She has lectured and published extensively on museum issues, and is the co-author of three books. Her research interests include museum history, memory and oral history in museums, museum text, heritage management and interpretation. She holds a B.A. in Archaeology from the University of Thessaloniki, an M.Phil. in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester.
Notes
1. For the different types of orientation in museums see the seminal discussion by Belcher (Citation1991, 90–110).
3. Parry, Ortiz-Williams, and Sawyer (Citation2007) offer an interesting account of the ‘enduring label’, while Faron (Citation2003) has called for a more inventive and adaptive use of museum text in order to respond to people’s shifting needs. See also Hoskin (Citation2013).
6. Influential publications include McManus (Citation1989, Citation1990), Coxall (Citation1990), Ferguson, MacLulich, and Ravelli (Citation1995), Blais (Citation1995a), Serrell (Citation1996), Ekarv (Citation1999), Ravelli (Citation1996, Citation2006). For a brief introductory account of the evolution of museum text see Fragomeni (Citation2010).
7. See, for example, Peterson (Citation2005), and the two special issues of Museum Practice (2007, 2011) on museum text.
12. A good rule of thumb is to limit the unknown to only one piece per paragraph; another is to put the explanation before the unfamiliar word (Kjeldsen and Jensen Citation2015, 102).
13. See, for example, Serrell (Citation1996), Ekarv (Citation1999), Gilmore and Sabine (Citation1999), Davis (Citation2000), Peterson (Citation2005), the two special issues of Museum Practice (2007, 2011) on museum text, Trench (Citation2009), The J. Paul Getty Museum (Citation2011).
14. Pioneers of coal gas production included British engineer Samuel Clegg, and German entrepreneur Friedrich Winsor. Winsor began demonstrating the use of gas to light streets in London, and in 1812 he was granted a Royal Charter to establish a gasworks. By 1820 his company, Gas Light and Coke Company, would build the world's first public gas network in London.
16. The Leipzig gasholder, for example, has been transformed into a panoramic screening room. The Duisburg-Nord gasholder operates as an indoor diving pool, while Vienna’s four remarkable brickwork gasholders today house residences, shops, and movie theaters.
17. For a history of the Athens gasworks, and the technology used on the site, see Chatzigogas and Stoyannidis (Citation2013).
18. Project supervisor: K. Bitzanis, CEO Technopolis, City of Athens. Project manager / museological study: M. Florou, IGM director. Architectural / museographical study: E. Koutsoudaki-Yerolympou, architect-museologist. Research / advice on the technology and engineering of the plant: S. Chatzigogas, mechanical engineer specializing in the history of technology. Research / advice on industrial heritage: Ch. Agriantoni, historian specializing in industrial history. Research / oral history: Y. Stoyannidis, social historian. Documentation / Collection and information management: Th. Spyridaki, archaeologist-museologist. Text editor: A. Gazi, museologist. Graphic design / 3D animation: Ch. Brellis/Antidot design. This core team was assisted by many more people who offered professional or voluntary expertise and advice.
19. Koutsoudaki-Yerolympou and Florou (Citation2013) offer an analytic account of the museological and museographical planning.
21. For a general guide to the main phases of the writing process in museums see Blais (Citation1995b).
22. Ravelli (Citation2006, 19–46) also discusses the macro-level, the mid-level and the micro-level organisation of text, but in her approach these levels mainly correspond to genre, linguistic and visual organisation, and the flow of information.
23. In their work at Riverside Museums, Devine and Williams (Citation2011) also devised a standard script template that was then strictly adopted by all team members writing text. Trench (Citation2009, 8) stresses the need to stick to an established text hierarchy, and warns against the temptation of adding extra bits of information that cannot be accommodated within it.
24. For a detailed discussion on exhibition titles see Gazi and Nikiforidou (Citation2005).
25. On the use of topic sentences see Ferguson, MacLulich, and Ravelli (Citation1995, 22–23), Ravelli (Citation2006, 30–33).
26. E.g. be clear and precise, keep sentences short, avoid subordinate clauses, favor the active voice, keep lines at 45 characters, let the end of a line coincide with the end of a natural phrase, be attentive to the sounds and rhythm, etc. See Ekarv (Citation1999), Gilmore and Sabine (Citation1999), Davis (Citation2000).
27. This is in accordance with general practice: Ferguson, MacLulich, and Ravelli (Citation1995, 62) report an average of six months for writing text for large scale exhibitions at the Australian Museum in Sydney, while Serrell (Citation1996, 117) estimates an average of five to seven drafts between the initial copy and the final text.
29. ‘You should write with the verbal and the visual in mind’ (Serrell Citation1996, 116); see also Jacobi and Poli (Citation1995).
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