Interpreting Portraiture Collections
Beningborough Hall Case Study
Overview of Interpretation
The interpretation has been prepared to cater for Beningbrough's principal audiences (i.e. general visitors and families with children), as well as visitors with visual impairments and elderly visitors. A number of these interactives are based on methods used previously by the National Portrait Gallery and at Beningbrough. Those that are newer were tested, in rudimentary prototype, in the summer of 2005 and the IT elements were tested at a number of stages in the winter of 2005/6.
The formative evaluation used some of the elements from this previous installation at Beningbrough, which had introduced visitors to the basic elements of portrait reading - pose, expression, costume, background, accessories/props and composition.
(c) National Portrait Gallery, London
Period Rooms
- 10 x In-Focus pick-ups covering portrait and house themes with identification of portraits on display. All available for download as pdfs on NPG website. www.npg.org.uk/live/beninfocus.asp
- Sound Guide: layered, self-directed free sound guide covering aspects of period rooms and portraiture.
- Portrait Explorer. All portraits in the house have captions on the Portrait Explorer, with a New Yorkshire feature and a Beningbrough button.
- Interpretation for Visually Impaired visitors: Sound guide with picture descriptions, orientation covering period rooms, route around house (and Making Faces) - approximately 1 hr of recording.
- Large print and Braille orientation and picture descriptions and floor plans covering period rooms and visitor route, available on request.
Key portraits in the period rooms now have a range of different types of interpretation, both written and audio, which are also accessible to visually impaired visitors.
(c) National Portrait Gallery, London
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