Client:         Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art
Location:    Washington DC, United States
Timescale:  2021-2022

The Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art preserves, exhibits and interprets Asian art in ways that deepen our understandings of Asia, the United States, and the world.

Cultural Innovations were appointed to lead the interpretation and design on a new permanent gallery that opened in 2023 as part of the NMAA’s centennial celebrations. The ‘Connecting Stories’ gallery takes a new approach from the traditional art museum setting and invites visitors to explore the scale and diversity of Asia and Asian cultures through a small selection of objects from the internationally renowned collections. Visitors are encouraged to consider the multiple stories each object has to tell, to recognise universal themes relevant to their own lives, and to develop new ways of looking at and understanding museum objects.

The gallery has been designed as a contemporary, flexible space, allowing the museum to rotate objects and update interpretation within the overall thematic structure. Digital interactives allow deeper engagement with the museum’s collections and give the visitor tools for exploring the rest of the museum. The visitor-centred development of the gallery benefited from focus groups with potential visitors, and a temporary installation of two of the objects with sample graphic interpretation, which was evaluated by visitor survey.