About Us
We are Tara Downs and Bart Sabel. Since 2012, collaborating as Miniature Museum, the crossover of art with museum and heritage situations has become our speciality, with a big emphasis on engagement.
Miniature Museum represents a fusion of our individual expertise and shared love of research, collaboration, experimentation and interactive design.
Between us we have skills in theatre design, mechanical engineering, sculpture, metalwork, electronics, automata, photography, sound and film recording and editing, as well as social anthropology, craft education, community arts and museum studies.
Bart Sabel
Bart has great expertise in practical technical skills and sculpture, loves being involved with the imaginative, conceptual sides of image-making and design and is trained in teaching craft, design and technology.
He attracts a range of commissions in his native Holland: applying mechanical engineering skills to elaborate, large-scale sets and sculptures, finding ingenious solutions to architectural and construction challenges, street-theatre designs and interactive exhibits for museums.
Tara Downs
Tara is an artist who fuses anthropological and museological studies within her work. She has worked extensively in theatre, visual arts, museums, heritage, community arts and social engagement. She holds an MA in Social Anthropology (University of Edinburgh 1991-95) and an MA in Museum Studies ( University of Leicester 2010 -13).
The Miniature Museum project is built on Tara’s MA Museum Studies research, and prototype ‘Miniature Museum of Memories’ – a story-gathering and telling cabinet of curiosities about Sharpness Docks.