To deliver a narrative and interpretation masterplan, the complete redevelopment of the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, the UK's oldest public museum.

The project was a radical transformation, moving from collections organised by discipline and geography to an approach that showed the connections between civilizations, eras and peoples. This was expressed in the single phrase:  Crossing Cultures, Crossing Time.

Narrative Masterplanning | Research | Interpretation Planning | Content Development | Design Integration | Interpretation Toolkit | Staff Training | Educational Resources

Our task was to translate the Crossing Cultures, Crossing Time idea into narrative reality across the entire Ashmolean redisplay.

This became the rationale that shaped not just the interpretation but the architectural design, the display approach and the entire visitor experience.

Crossing Cultures, Crossing Time informed decisions at every scale: views between galleries that allowed visitors to make visual connections across different periods and civilisations; interpretation and interactives that explicitly linked stories across the collection; and a visitor journey designed to encourage exploration.

We undertook the full masterplanning process with museum and architect partners, then developed the complete interpretation plan and all content across 39 galleries of art and archaeology, working with the curators on one of the largest and most complex content development projects TGA has delivered.

We also developed an interpretation toolkit enabling the museum's own teams to continue developing new exhibitions and produced educational resources for schools engagement.

Following the transformation, Alison was seconded as acting head of interpretation, leading the narrative masterplanning and reinterpretation of the additional Ancient Egypt and Nubia galleries.

The Ashmolean project demonstrated what a strong core narrative can do when it is genuinely allowed to govern everything – from label copy to institutional identity.

Crossing Cultures, Crossing Time was a reframing that made a completely different kind of museum possible.

Building a museum around what connects objects across time and culture is a curatorial decision.

Making that real for visitors requires a corresponding narrative direction.

It also needs the museum to trust that a narrative framework, developed before the architectural designs were fixed, would produce a better building and a better visitor experience than designing the spaces first and interpreting them afterwards.

It did.

Client: University of Oxford Ashmolean Museum

TGA: Narrative Masterplanning, Research, Interpretation Planning, Content Development, Design Integration, Interpretation Toolkit Development, Staff Training, Educational Resources

Alison Grey: Acting Head of Interpretation (secondment, Ancient Egypt and Nubia galleries)

Partners: TBC