The Cleaning Cupboard | An Ethnographic 
Look at the Production of );Newness« at 
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum | Jennie Morgan 
The cleaning cupboard in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (Glasgow) is 
situated behind a locked wooden door in a busy thoroughfare between two gal- 
(eries. This space contains equipment used by staff as they move through the 
museum cleaning floors, stairways, lifts, toilets, and - the focus of the following 
discussion - display cases. Although located close to crowd-pleasing displays 
of stuffed animals this cupboard is largely overlooked by visitors and staff. This 
is indicative of cleaning as a kind of »invisible work« (Star 1995; Star/Strauss 
1999). 
Kelvingrove has been described as a »memorable paradigm-shifting muse- 
ım« (Gurian 2007, 358). From 2003 to 2006 this municipal museum, first opened 
°0 the public in 1901, was extensively refurbished. It was intended that changes 
would update, or »reinvent« (O’Neill 2007, 380), the museum for the twenty-first 
century. Especially striking has been the complete overhaul of display organ- 
‘zing principles. Taxonomic and chronological groupings were replaced by a 
narrative approach which juxtaposes objects from across the collections. The 
Overall aim was social in mission - to enhance physical, emotional, and intel- 
lectual access to the building and collections.! 
While the »new« Kelvingrove was clearly the outcome of ambitions held by 
individuals such as the project director, and shaped by specific policy objectives, 
by drawing attention to cleaning my aim is to foreground alternative players, ac- 
tivities, and procedures. Through this task I interrogate assumptions about who, 
Or what, might be considered to be of importance for understanding how the 
Museum has been - and continues to be - »reinvented«. By removing dirt, dust, 
grime, and fingerprints from display cases we see how staff produce, maintain, 
and sustain a »)new« museum. Cleaning helps achieve ambitions of retaining 
Msitor attraction« status and, through the manipulation of surface appearances, 
'newness«. Certainly, notions of the »new« are highly valued in contemporary 
Nuseum practice and theorizing, as is suggested by the centrality of the idiom of 
»Change« (Marstine 2006, 5-6). While analysis has focused on innovative display 
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