A new permanent exhibition at The Jersey Museum and Art Gallery for client Jersey Heritage is called ‘La Tèrr’rie d’Jèrri – d’s histouaithes dé not’ Île / Being Jersey – Stories of our Island’. The 485 sq m exhibition, on the Museum’s first floor, has a thematic structure, featuring a group of stories arranged as ‘narrative islands’.

Nissen Richards Studio won the commission to redesign the permanent exhibition in summer 2023. The brief stated that the existing exhibition had become outdated and a new iteration needed to be more flexible, whilst remaining extensive in scope, covering the island’s history from the Ice Age to the present day. The objects in the permanent collection also needed to be celebrated more, with their narrative to the forefront.

The design approach took inspiration from Jersey’s unique landscape and from colours and textures in particular, which meant researching new materials the studio had never used before and prototyping them to ensure they evoked a real feeling of the island. This research and exploration process also led to the creation of a specific ‘Jersey palette’, with more tonal, earthy colours in the main space and, later, a more intense palette used to represent a shift in mood. In terms of materiality, the palette was made up of design ideas directly informed by the marks, traces, grooves and layers of the island’s archaeology, whilst also considering the expanse of the island and ideas relating to drama, light and colour taken from the sea, sky and horizon lines.

Nissen Richards Studio also undertook the exhibition’s graphic design, creating the information hierarchy and panels and labels according to the chosen colour for each section of the exhibition.

When it came to content, the big question was whether to organise thematically or chronologically – and how to structure the pacing. The final answer is a mixture of both, examining the nature and history of the island through six thematic viewpoints. The exhibition is broken down into six ‘island’ spaces, with a central object case in each allowing for stories to unfold around it in a cluster.