Ricardo Cano, Director of EVE Museum and Innovation, as museologist and museographer, designs projects and builds museums to promote and boost the local economy in the places where the projects call.
He believes that the survival of museums depends a lot on the transformation of the local cultural tourism and becoming generators of a wealth of cultural and economic resources; not only for the museum institution itself but also for the community where the museum belongs to. He studies proposals for renovation and design of new museums critically from the perspective as an institution of resource for the creation of a cultural tourism economy. In his projects, Cano designs and develops exhibitions using new techniques of today’s modern museography, technological innovation and interactive systems for visitors of all ages.
Ricardo Cano Director of EVE Museums and Innovation
He understands that museums can not only be seen, they also must be touched, smelled, heard and even tasted. Ricardo Cano studies the best creative solutions for your museum’s functions, improvements and rejuvenation.
Eve Museums and Innovation is an entity for training and consultancy about museology and museography. But what does this mean?
I can almost answer this question with just a simple phrase: “We conceptualize the museums we would like to visit”.
In EVE, we believe that the future of memorable installations will depend on our skill to generate new sensations, create emotions, and design experiences that are powerful, inclusive, differentiating and universal.
Nowadays it is not enough to exhibit, to show passively, to arrive, see, and leave. A museum must create a community, its world, and its society, by offering extraordinary, novel and changing experiences that make us call into question our environment and make people rediscover their sensory channels and regain their sense of wonder and illusion.
What kind of services do you offer, and who are your clients?
EVE works along three strategic lines of activity: EVE Museums and Innovation, EVE Exhibit Spaces, and EVE Training, with an approach that allows us to share emotional experiences in the divulgation of knowledge by developing unique and different concepts.
Taking full advantage of the digital revolution, we strive to create new ways of bringing contents closer to collections by generating narratives and appealing museological approaches that contribute to conveying information through innovative means that stimulate the curiosity to know and learn more about them.
EVE’s team of outstanding and specialized professionals is prepared to respond to the demands of the most advanced museological projects.
Our work philosophy is to conceptualize and build each project in a very personal way and in close collaboration with promotors, conservators-restorers, communicators, museologists, museographers and production teams.
We work in multidisciplinary teams, coordinated transversally by five directorships: Cultural Management, Curatorship, Art and Design, User’s Experience, and Technology.
Depending on the type and scope of the project, the teams may include contents and engineering producers, editors, user experience designers, illustrators, digital artists, photographers, audio and video specialists, engineers, marketing professionals, anthropologists, art historians, and museographers.
We participate in all the stages of the essential functions of a museum: collecting, preserving, researching, disseminating, and educating.
Our work includes the architectural proposal, thematic conceptualization, graphic and industrial design, multimedia content, furniture, lighting, interactive exhibits production, makerspaces, assembly, setting up and operative training.
One of the most important parts of your company is eLearning. What courses do you offer and what do students need to take these courses?
We train professionals in all the fields of museology and museography, with teaching systems open to students and professionals in museums and cultural management in all Spanish-speaking countries whose goal is to improve their specialized training.
We have created the Museology Innovation Laboratory, a face-to-face concept of museology and museography research open to students and professionals in museums and cultural management in all Spanish-speaking countries whose goal is to improve their training by working on real-life projects.
Our Online teaching platform courses are:
– Museology Innovation Laboratory.
– Course on Modern Museology.
– Course on Museum and Exhibit Curatorship.
– Course on Didactic Museography and Exhibit Design.
– Course on Museum Marketing and Communication.
– Course on Museum and Exhibit Design and Visual Communication.
– Course on Interactive Museography.
– “Express” Courses (Museum Management, Museum Operations and Museum Exhibit Displays, Air Conditioning and Lighting).
The art world interests many people, but it is difficult to understand and work in it. What specializations do your courses and degrees offer?
We teach our students not only about the world of art and museums, but also about other important disciplines such as the design and production of exhibits, collection management, museum management and administration, technological innovation applied to museology, digital transformation, etc.
Our main goal is to have our students enter the labor market at a very competitive and professional level, as specialists in their subjects and fields of work, with knowledge that enables them to offer that degree of innovation to an institutional world that has sometimes lagged behind, especially considering the times of crisis the world of culture and museums in particular are experiencing worldwide.
Fairs, museums, exhibits, auctions… a worldwide artistic world where multi-million sums move. There is no doubt then that art is a big business, but can art professionals really only make a living by managing it?
Art professionals who intend to work in an art market and a reality as competitive as the ones we are experiencing in critical times like this will have to demonstrate that they have a specialized training, especially in the fields of technology applied to museums and digital transformation. Speaking other languages is fundamental, and not only English, although being fluent in it is essential. Speaking and writing Mandarin Chinese, for instance, would nowadays offer a professional opportunities that would be unavailable to another specialist who did not. Languages are very important, as is the ability to see a bit further ahead in the future and have the sensibility to determine what changes there will be in the world of museums in the next ten years.
When did this project start and what type of professionals do you have in it?
Project EVE began 25 years ago in the north of Spain and we began to open offices in other places, first in Madrid and years later in Singapore. Now we also have an office in Mexico.
The professionals who make up EVE’s organizational structure range from architects to marketing and cultural business strategists, including specialists in digital platforms and, of course, museologists and museographers specialized in developing projects for new museums.
EVE also works with other kinds of professionals depending on the project at hand. It is not the same to develop a specialized project for a children’s museum like the one we are creating in Mexico as a museum of beer such as the one we are building for a beer brand in Spain’s Basque Country. They are different and very particular projects that require hiring specialists in each one of the fields that we do not master, because you cannot be an expert on everything. At EVE, our aim will always be to surround ourselves with the best professionals available in each area so that the final outcome of the project is excellent and fulfills all its functions as expected. We always seek to have our solutions surpass the most demanding expectations.
So far EVE Museums and Innovations has only been available in Spanish. Is it going to change and expand to other languages?
Yes, we are currently searching for a partner who wishes to join us and translate all of EVE’s training courses to English and Mandarin Chinese. It will not be an easy task because there is a very large amount of material that will have to be translated to both languages. However, we have not lost hope of finding such a partner to help us finish cloning our courses to those two languages that are so needed in EVE Training, which would allow us to multiply our current market threefold.
Thank you very much for the interview, Nina. It has been a pleasure.
