MMCA SRI LANKA
Crafting an Educational Journey: The Design Philosophy of the MMCA Sri Lanka
At the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka (MMCA Sri Lanka), an exhibition is more than just a display; it is a meticulously crafted educational environment. Their process for making an exhibition involves the collaboration between curators, artists, designers, and translators, and this teamwork transforms complex artistic themes into an intuitive and immersive journey for every visitor.
“The involvement of the designers has a deep impact on the show, because the exhibition designer’s language fundamentally shapes the exhibition’s outcome,” explains Sandev Handy, Senior Curator at the MMCA Sri Lanka. This partnership with designers, such as architect Jonathan Edwards, who designed the past three exhibitions at the MMCA Sri Lanka, focuses on helping visitors understand the relationships between artworks and the overarching narrative.
The design process itself begins with a curatorial proposal. Edwards detailed the approach for the ‘Total Landscaping’ exhibition, noting that, “The thesis of this show distilled into three core ideas: mankind’s relationship with land, the interventions we make upon it, and the interventions we make upon each other through land. That was our foundational prompt.” Alongside this narrative, practical considerations like a desire for more colour, a chapter-based structure with porous clusters, and a tight one-week turnaround between the three rotations of the exhibition shaped the spatial strategy. The final design, selected after weeks of discussion with the MMCA Sri Lanka team and Bangalore-based designer Nia Thandapani, who created the exhibition identity, played with the ambiguous idea of a border, questioning whether it was under construction or in ruin.
The thoughtful curation of their exhibitions by the MMCA Sri Lanka is expressed through intentional design choices that prioritise accessibility. The experience often begins with a title wall, and for ‘Total Landscaping’ it materialises in a surface resembling soil with carved letters, evoking themes of land and intervention. Edwards emphasises that every element of an exhibition, from materials and colours to furniture and layout, is chosen to make visitors feel welcomed and guided without feeling directed. “These subtle gestures allow visitors to let their guard down, preventing them from feeling overwhelmed,” he notes, adding that “this meticulous process requires at least six months of dedicated design development”.
This commitment to a barrier-free experience is cemented by key educational strategies. Multilingual accessibility is paramount to MMCA Sri Lanka’s trilingual practice, with all its exhibition texts being available in Sinhala, Tamil, and English. While translation alone does not provide access, the MMCA Sri Lanka not only practises, but continues to improve the writing and editing of these texts as part of an involved translation process. Reader-friendly layouts ensure that the textual information is digestible, while the space itself is designed for public programming integration, which is another one of their educational hallmarks. Such spatial considerations by the design team are created in order to accommodate events that take place surrounded by the exhibited artworks rather than in an auditorium or separate educational space.
The MMCA Sri Lanka encourages an environment where visitors feel encouraged to explore, question, and learn. The result is a thoughtfully arranged learning experience where every element, from the title wall to the placement of a single artwork, works in harmony to create a thought-provoking encounter. Visitors leave not just having seen art, but also carrying with them new questions, perspectives, and a deeper appreciation for the stories that well-designed exhibitions can tell.
