Telling stories at the Ashmolean Museum: an Ancient Middle East gallery for the 21st century?

Permanent galleries in museums often receive less focus and investment than temporary exhibitions but in order to meet the needs of modern museum visitors their displays need to be equally responsive to changing demographics and the political landscape. An opportunity to refurbish the Ashmolean Museum’s Ancient Near East gallery (renamed as the Ancient Middle East gallery) provides a test case for implementing a Museum-wide policy for enabling greater inclusion and diversity with its displays, audiences, and staff. The display of archaeological collections has historically been shaped by chronological and typological considerations. In order to make these objects more accessible to a non-specialist audience, a method of display is suggested based on contextualized object/label groupings for storytelling. This includes a focus on emotional and sensory engagement as well as decolonizing the collections. Such approaches require institutional commitment to invest in permanent displays as well as in new work-procedures and improvisatory practice.