Touring an Exhibition

Producing touring exhibitions can be time consuming and expensive but can also have the following advantages:

Increase audiences: Touring allows an exhibition to reach a wider public in different locations. Many small- to-medium-scale exhibitions deserve a much wider currency than they can achieve in their place of origin. Visitors to an exhibition you originated, shown in other venues, can be counted as outreach participation, or as part of your total visitor numbers depending on your reporting structure and requirements.

Increase profile and maximise impact: Producing touring exhibitions can increase the visibility of the work you and your organisation do. It can be an effective way of disseminating a message or point of view, e.g. promoting an artist at a national level, publicising a collection known only within its immediate area, disseminating good practice in cultural diversity, social inclusion, etc. Touring an exhibition is also a way of getting more benefit from the investment of time and intellectual effort. A good exhibition deserves to be seen as widely as possible.

Make exhibitions more economically viable: Conversely, a tour can make ambitious projects viable and possible by introducing economies of scale, e.g. making it more cost-effective to pay for loans from a distance, to build proper crates, print better publicity. Catalogue sales are multiplied, enabling more ambitious publications. A single project manager can negotiate loans, solve practical/technical problems, arrange transport and insurance, etc. for several venues, rather than for a single showing.

Outward looking: Touring relies on developing outside contacts, both to tour and hire exhibitions and creates opportunities to partner with others, whether with a museum, curator, freelance specialist or artist. The effectiveness of a project can be enhanced by sharing skills – curatorial expertise, educational initiatives, reinforcement of press and marketing efforts – across organisations.

Increase access to funding: Organisations that tour in the hope of making a profit will find that the costs of the tour are usually more than the income that can be recouped in hire fees, even without taking staff costs into account. However, touring exhibitions can provide access to funds that are not otherwise available.

Maximises resources: Touring presents an alternative opportunity to use limited resources effectively. Hiring in an exhibition is cost-effective, and developing exhibitions through a touring partnership can enable costs and contributions to be shared.

As a tour organiser you should have a checklist against which you can assess the viability of the subject or theme of a proposed touring exhibition. Some of the check-points will be the same for any exhibition, touring or not, and may be specific to your overall aims and objectives. Specific considerations when touring include:

• Has there been a touring exhibition on this theme recently, produced by another organisation?
• Will the subject be of interest to national or international audiences?
• How much will it cost? Are there venues that can afford the hire fee you would need to charge?
• How much space is required? Are there venues with similar size temporary exhibition spaces?
• How supportive will the lender(s) be of your aims, and are they likely to be sympathetic to your idea and the need for the exhibition to tour?
• Can some items be substituted, if loans aren’t available for the whole tour, without diluting the exhibition?s message?
• Are any of the important loans large, heavy, valuable, fragile or vulnerable to atmospheric changes? If so, how would they be protected when travelling?
• Would venues need to provide specific environmental and security conditions? Or could you approach non-conventional exhibition spaces?
• Do objects require showcases, and if so, how many? Is it feasible to for venues to provide these?
• How much planning time would the venues need?

Touring exhibition producers can broadcast information about their exhibitions to a large group of potential venues or target specific venues to which they believe the exhibition will be of interest. The approach taken will depend on the time and resources available. Sending information out to lots of venues increases reach but may then require more time to respond to interested parties whose venues are not suitable. Targeting specific organisations whose venue or audiences are a good match for the exhibition can be more fruitful, but may require more initial research. Email bulletins, websites, social media and printed materials can be used to share information with potential venues. Organisations often produce a tour pack to promote an exhibition?s availability to hire. These vary in their format and content, but should provide all of the basic information a hirer will need to know, including the exhibition size, price, theme, what is included in the hire package, level of security required, insurance requirements and images. This pack can be printed for distribution or made available as a pdf. [Click here to see an example tour pack – TO ADD].

Both the tour producer and the venue need to be satisfied that the venue is suitable for the exhibition and vice versa. Along with the tour information there are two key documents that will enable both parties to assess suitability in more detail.

The nature of your exhibition, the types of object and the manner of their presentation will inform whether it is suited to museum and galleries, or if it might also be possible to show the exhibition in non-traditional venues, such as within healthcare, educational/school or commercial organisations. Exhibition organisers should also consider whether university exhibition spaces could also be potential venues. The type of venue will have an impact on the level of security and environmental control available, and will be a key consideration when assessing the viability of your exhibition idea against your target audience and potential venues.

An object list: Sent by the tour producer, this should detail the content of the exhibition and include the following information on each exhibit:

• Image
• Dimensions
• Materials/technique
• Valuation
• Credit line
• Artist/Designer/Maker
• Title
• Date
• Display information
• Environmental and security requirements
• Packing information and crate dimensions

Facilities report and security supplement documents request practical information about a venue in relation to a proposed loan. The UKRG standard facilities report will ask questions about the building where the exhibition is to be held: https://www.ukregistrarsgroup.org/resources/ukrg-docs/ (link updated 2017). The purpose of the forms is to:

• Facilitate the processing of loan requests by curatorial, conservation and security staff at the lending institution.
• Replace lengthy exchanges of correspondence between lender, organiser and venue
• Avoid expensive and impractical site visits to a venue, though these should be done if possible

Once completed keep a copy on file, and updated, so that they can then use it for other exhibitions and loans.

The venue will normally pay the tour producer a fee to hire the exhibition for a certain period; this may be for a set number of weeks or a charge per month. What the tour producer provides for the fee varies. For example some exhibitions will tour display cases and plinths and all object labels and text panels. Other tour producers will provide the curatorial concept and objects or artworks; the text for labels and panels may be supplied but the venue has to produce them along with their own exhibition design.

How much a tour producer charges a venue will vary based on what is included, the number of loans, staff time required and any funding obligations. When calculating the price of touring exhibitions the tour producer should consider the additional funds that might be required for the following items and how these will be paid for:

• Loan extensions
• Making objects stable for an extended loan
• Staff time required to negotiate loan extensions and source replacements/ additions if needed
• Packing the objects for tour
• Insuring objects in transit and at the tour venues
• Transporting the objects to venues
• Adapting or making suitable display cases/panels for tour

Tour producers should also research the market and be aware of what other tour producers charge and what is included.

The Exhibitions Group exhibitions database can be a useful source for finding out what different size and types of exhibitions are available and how much producers are charging.

This section outlines what should be included in any formal agreement between tour producer(s) and venue(s). It can be used as a starting point, before more detailed discussion of the project?s specific requirements, as needed.

A hire agreement is a significant milestone in the negotiations between organiser and venue. It specifies what the organiser and venue each agree to do. It confirms much of the detail that has been the subject of discussion between them, and it also identifies gaps that need to be filled subsequently.

It is important that negotiations are carried out in an orderly manner, that communication is open and efficient, and that both parties share the objective of close collaboration for mutual benefit. It is possible that one or other partner will try to exploit a position of relative strength and force a hard bargain, but this will only bring a temporary benefit. The other partner would then be not only unwilling to renew the relationship with a future project, but is also likely to advertise their resentment within their network of contacts.

This Hire Agreement Template is meant as a starting point for these negotiations and will expand or contract according to the nature of the project. It can therefore be used by organisers and venues as an aid to these negotiations. The clauses included aim to ensure that both parties share a common agenda and understand the other?s concerns and requirements. Like any template, there will be items that are irrelevant to the scale and type of your project and superfluous to requirements. The point here is that, if anything is omitted, it should be by choice and not by oversight.

Hire Agreements should aim for minimum acceptable standards and the venue should ensure that it fully understands the reasons behind any conditions, and should query the reason where something seems inappropriate so that it can enter fully into the commitment.

The most useful contracts for all involved are those which are finalised and then signed by both parties only after everything has been discussed in detail and exchanged in draft beforehand.

Some of this information in the template may not be known at the time that the Hire Agreement is signed and exchanged, but the Agreement can note the gap, the person whose obligation it is to fill it, and the deadline for doing so.

Download the Hire agreement template

Download the Hire agreement template (editable)

Download the Example touring pack

Author: Alice Lobb (2015)