A model of a museum gallery [opens in new window]

Drawing board

Next we plan how our exhibition will look. The curator and exhibitions officer work with a designer to plan where everything goes.

Most exhibitions will have a ‘story’ and we will want visitors to take a particular route around the gallery so the story makes sense, eg you may need to see an artist’s early work first so you can see how their style developed.

We also think about:

how many display cases we need and how they fit in the gallery
emergency exits
wheelchair access – we aim to leave gaps at least 2 metres wide
the changes we need to make to the gallery, eg painting walls

The designer creates plans and models of our exhibition, including things like display cases and information panels. Models, like the one above, are better than plans as they help us see how the gallery will actually look.

You can try planning a gallery in ‘The Case Game’ or can carry on with the tour.


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	<< Making plans

The Case Game

One of our display cases holds costumes on dummies. You can see a sketch here. It has a plinth (stand) at the bottom and a space for the lights at the top.

The Case game It would be useful to know how much space is in this case. What is the volume of one costume case (not including the plinth and lighting)? Your answer will be in m.

Remember to use your calculator.


	Clue


	Answer

The Case Game

The volume of the case is: 3.456m3

height of the case x depth of the case x width of the case

However, this gives a total including the plinth and lighting, so first we need to take those parts away from our calculations. The light box is 0.1m tall, the plinth is 0.2m tall and the total height is 2.1m. So:

2.1m – 0.1m – 0.2m = 1.8m

Our volume calculation now looks like this:

1.8m high x 1.6m deep x 1.2m wide = 3.456m


	Try again


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Drawing board

The Case Game

The Case Game

The volume of the case is: 3.456m3

Clue