Facing extinction
The increasing number of specialist curators losing their jobs is leaving orphaned collections that have no one to care for them. Deborah Mulhearn reports
Like many of the items they care for, it appears natural history curators are an endangered species.
A recent survey of 34 UK museums showed a decline of over 35% in the past 10 years. The number of art curators fell by over 23%, and “human history” (archaeology, world cultures and social history) curators decreased by over 5%, in the same period.
The survey was carried out for Museums Journal by Jan Freedman, curator of natural history at Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery and editor for the journal of the Natural Sciences Collections Association (Natsca). The figures do not include frozen posts.
“The responses raise interesting points,” says Freedman. “Many role names have changed, so although there may be a natural history curator in the museum, they may have moved away from the collections.
“Although a more thorough, detailed study is needed, the last 10 years have shown cuts across the board in all collection areas,” he adds.
“The picture is certainly worrying and the question is: why are natural history collections being targeted when they are so popular with the public? Perhaps some museum managers don’t understand the real potential behind each individual insect or mineral.”
Loss of knowledge
As well as the personal suffering caused, this loss of expertise has intensified the problem of “orphaned” collections, where there is no one equipped to protect and care for them, let alone use them.
The impact of this can range from reduced access, disposal and even destruction. Stories of valuable specimens being found in skips are not uncommon.
“There’s a growing misunderstanding about natural history collections,” says Graham Oliver, keeper, biodiversity and systematic biology, at Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales.
“They are not ‘stuff’ that can be thrown out because there are plenty of other specimens. They are a three-dimensional store of biodiversity. No one would suggest destroying paintings because they have no space to display them, but talk of mothballing and dispersing natural history collections is accepted. Curators must argue more strongly for their role.”
Museum-based specimens are crucial for scientific research, for medical and technological advances and DNA analysis.
These can be used for trying to bring back species from extinction through breeding programmes with other animals that have similar genes.
This is being done with the extinct quagga, a type of zebra, and the giant Galapagos tortoise Lonesome George, thought to be the last of his species when he died in June 2012. Another problem is that the link between museums and biological recording has been broken.
“As the work became more electronically-based, identification was contracted to outside agencies, and museums dropped out of the loop,” explains Paolo Viscardi, deputy keeper of natural history at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in south London. “So collections are now only superficially catalogued, or bulk inventoried.”
Poorly understood taxonomic knowledge, for example, contributed to the unchecked spread of ash dieback, he says. “Lost collections will present a major problem and university collections are particularly at risk. With no national point of information, people can only get access if they know where something is.”
Warwickshire, Derby, Sheffield, Luton: the list of regional museums losing specialist curators is increasing. Nick Moyes was made redundant from his post as senior keeper of natural history at Derby Museum & Art Gallery in 2011.
“The Museums Association could do more to highlight the continuous attrition that is happening across the country,” says Moyes.
“Objects displayed for their artistic value are lovely, but they are not enough. If you are going to utilise a collection well, you have to have specialist knowledge and not just curatorial experience. Storing and stopping the decay is not enough.
“If children don’t get the chance to interact with passionate experts they may not be inspired,” Moyes continues. “TV programmes are not the same as seeing and handling live insects or touching a prickly hedgehog. Species such as hedgehogs and bees are declining and museums have a role to play.”
Museums could be working with external organisations much more, and with living animals.
An example is the Derby Cathedral Peregrine Project, set up in 2006 by Moyes when he was at the museum and now run in partnership with the cathedral, Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and Derby City Council. The aim was to help a pair of wild peregrine falcons breed on the cathedral’s tower.
“Websites, blogging and tweeting are great ways to get your messages out,” he adds.
Regional redistribution
One suggestion is to redistribute collections into regional taxonomic centres of excellence, along with records and data. However, some museums are understandably reluctant to give up their collections.
“Moving them is not an option of first choice,” says Oliver. “But we do need to know where they all are and that they are being cared for, and that they are accessible. Museums are not warehouses, and the prospect of collections languishing unused or worse can’t be entertained.”
But regional museums also have a local narrative to tell: about changes to local environments over time, or collectors with local links. Many museums now weave natural history into their social history narrative.
“Curatorship has changed,” says Camilla Nichol, head of collections at Leeds Museums and Galleries.
“Expectations are different, and while the number of posts may be in decline – there is only one geology curator left in Yorkshire, for example – younger curators have more than scholarly skills. They are communicators who understand the need for sharing knowledge with other museums, but also, crucially, the public.”
“Our priority in Leeds is access to collections, for example opening up our herbarium under the Museums Association’s Effective Collections scheme, where visitors were able to compare past and present specimens from the same locations,” says Nichol.
Urgency
Leeds has also trained several biology graduates in curation under the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Skills for the Future programme.
“This is a small scheme that helps divert scientists into museums who otherwise would go straight from the microscope into industry,” says Nichol.
A Matter of Life and Death, Natural Science Collections: Why Keep Them and Why Fund Them? was published by Natsca in 2005. It asserts the value of natural history collections and argues that the UK has a global responsibility to its national, university and local collections in museums, herbaria and botanic gardens.
“Historic collections are now being investigated in ways never envisaged by their collectors,” the report says.
“New techniques, like electron microscopy, thin-layer chromatography, DNA sampling and so on, are vastly increasing our understanding of biodiversity and providing new opportunities for its conservation... new species are constantly being discovered both in this country and around the world.
"It is estimated that we share this planet with between 10 million and 100 million other species, of which only 1.5 million have been described.
"The only way to determine whether a species is new or not is to compare it with specimens of similar species already named, described and housed in biological collections.”
As keepers of biological collections, museums have a vital role to play in this. But it’s a role that they will increasingly struggle to fill as specialist curators lose their jobs and collections are orphaned.
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist
A stunning origami bird display is one of the ways in which the old Mammal Gallery at Manchester Museum was radically transformed into the Living Worlds gallery two years ago.
A showcase entitled Peace combines a mounted crane bird from an old display with a piece of rubble from Hiroshima and hundreds of origami cranes. It represents the story of Sadako Sasaki, who survived the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, but developed leukaemia as a result.
Sadako and her friends tried to fold 1,000 paper cranes to grant her wish to become well again, based on a Japanese story.
The idea of the display is to show how nature can help people come to terms with personal hardship and difficulty, improve health and wellbeing, and provide hope.
“We wanted to make our collections more relevant to people’s lives and the environment today rather than being a pleasant but outdated diversion, as is often the case in natural history displays,” says Henry McGhie, head of collections and curator of zoology at Manchester Museum.
“There is a huge public appetite for natural history displays, although I think that term has outlived its usefulness.
“We have tried to capitalise on that interest and, with a bit of creative thinking, to use it to connect people with nature and the environment in ways that are meaningful and constructive to them,” McGhie continues.
“To me, it’s not enough for museums to be just a ‘dead zoo’, an alternative nature. They should find ways to use their collections in ways that improve people’s lives and promote a safe and healthy natural environment.”
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery dismantled its British birds display in the 1970s, giving many of the items away to other local museums. But now they are back, and more popular than ever.
New Light on Old Bones, a project funded by Renaissance North West and the University of Manchester, encouraged the museum to unite the collection.
“Some of the birds had been offered back to us by museums wanting to dispose of their specimens,” says Vinai Solanki, curator of history at Blackburn.
“The birds had never been fully catalogued and we were struggling to find much information on them. The funding enabled us to engage a researcher who was able to provide a depth of knowledge and join the dots much quicker than I, as a non-scientist, could.”
The birds were originally housed individually in glass-fronted boxes and Solanki decided to keep the traditional style, copying the dark wood and stacking them floor-to-ceiling around the four walls of the small gallery.
“We weren’t aiming to recreate a Victorian display but it was the most efficient way of presenting the birds, and the effect is striking,” he says. “It’s particularly popular with children, but adults stare in wonderment at it, too.”
Solanki says that the project has benefited museum staff and visitors: “We now know so much more about the collection, and it’s given us the confidence to bring other items out of the store. It also showed us how to get the most out of academics that come to do research.
It’s easy to exploit material for marketing and education purposes but we learnt how we could work with the academics and their institutions, to share knowledge and use it to our advantage.”
A recent survey of 34 UK museums showed a decline of over 35% in the past 10 years. The number of art curators fell by over 23%, and “human history” (archaeology, world cultures and social history) curators decreased by over 5%, in the same period.
The survey was carried out for Museums Journal by Jan Freedman, curator of natural history at Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery and editor for the journal of the Natural Sciences Collections Association (Natsca). The figures do not include frozen posts.
“The responses raise interesting points,” says Freedman. “Many role names have changed, so although there may be a natural history curator in the museum, they may have moved away from the collections.
“Although a more thorough, detailed study is needed, the last 10 years have shown cuts across the board in all collection areas,” he adds.
“The picture is certainly worrying and the question is: why are natural history collections being targeted when they are so popular with the public? Perhaps some museum managers don’t understand the real potential behind each individual insect or mineral.”
Loss of knowledge
As well as the personal suffering caused, this loss of expertise has intensified the problem of “orphaned” collections, where there is no one equipped to protect and care for them, let alone use them.
The impact of this can range from reduced access, disposal and even destruction. Stories of valuable specimens being found in skips are not uncommon.
“There’s a growing misunderstanding about natural history collections,” says Graham Oliver, keeper, biodiversity and systematic biology, at Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales.
“They are not ‘stuff’ that can be thrown out because there are plenty of other specimens. They are a three-dimensional store of biodiversity. No one would suggest destroying paintings because they have no space to display them, but talk of mothballing and dispersing natural history collections is accepted. Curators must argue more strongly for their role.”
Museum-based specimens are crucial for scientific research, for medical and technological advances and DNA analysis.
These can be used for trying to bring back species from extinction through breeding programmes with other animals that have similar genes.
This is being done with the extinct quagga, a type of zebra, and the giant Galapagos tortoise Lonesome George, thought to be the last of his species when he died in June 2012. Another problem is that the link between museums and biological recording has been broken.
“As the work became more electronically-based, identification was contracted to outside agencies, and museums dropped out of the loop,” explains Paolo Viscardi, deputy keeper of natural history at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in south London. “So collections are now only superficially catalogued, or bulk inventoried.”
Poorly understood taxonomic knowledge, for example, contributed to the unchecked spread of ash dieback, he says. “Lost collections will present a major problem and university collections are particularly at risk. With no national point of information, people can only get access if they know where something is.”
Warwickshire, Derby, Sheffield, Luton: the list of regional museums losing specialist curators is increasing. Nick Moyes was made redundant from his post as senior keeper of natural history at Derby Museum & Art Gallery in 2011.
“The Museums Association could do more to highlight the continuous attrition that is happening across the country,” says Moyes.
“Objects displayed for their artistic value are lovely, but they are not enough. If you are going to utilise a collection well, you have to have specialist knowledge and not just curatorial experience. Storing and stopping the decay is not enough.
“If children don’t get the chance to interact with passionate experts they may not be inspired,” Moyes continues. “TV programmes are not the same as seeing and handling live insects or touching a prickly hedgehog. Species such as hedgehogs and bees are declining and museums have a role to play.”
Museums could be working with external organisations much more, and with living animals.
An example is the Derby Cathedral Peregrine Project, set up in 2006 by Moyes when he was at the museum and now run in partnership with the cathedral, Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and Derby City Council. The aim was to help a pair of wild peregrine falcons breed on the cathedral’s tower.
“Websites, blogging and tweeting are great ways to get your messages out,” he adds.
Regional redistribution
One suggestion is to redistribute collections into regional taxonomic centres of excellence, along with records and data. However, some museums are understandably reluctant to give up their collections.
“Moving them is not an option of first choice,” says Oliver. “But we do need to know where they all are and that they are being cared for, and that they are accessible. Museums are not warehouses, and the prospect of collections languishing unused or worse can’t be entertained.”
But regional museums also have a local narrative to tell: about changes to local environments over time, or collectors with local links. Many museums now weave natural history into their social history narrative.
“Curatorship has changed,” says Camilla Nichol, head of collections at Leeds Museums and Galleries.
“Expectations are different, and while the number of posts may be in decline – there is only one geology curator left in Yorkshire, for example – younger curators have more than scholarly skills. They are communicators who understand the need for sharing knowledge with other museums, but also, crucially, the public.”
“Our priority in Leeds is access to collections, for example opening up our herbarium under the Museums Association’s Effective Collections scheme, where visitors were able to compare past and present specimens from the same locations,” says Nichol.
Urgency
Leeds has also trained several biology graduates in curation under the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Skills for the Future programme.
“This is a small scheme that helps divert scientists into museums who otherwise would go straight from the microscope into industry,” says Nichol.
A Matter of Life and Death, Natural Science Collections: Why Keep Them and Why Fund Them? was published by Natsca in 2005. It asserts the value of natural history collections and argues that the UK has a global responsibility to its national, university and local collections in museums, herbaria and botanic gardens.
“Historic collections are now being investigated in ways never envisaged by their collectors,” the report says.
“New techniques, like electron microscopy, thin-layer chromatography, DNA sampling and so on, are vastly increasing our understanding of biodiversity and providing new opportunities for its conservation... new species are constantly being discovered both in this country and around the world.
"It is estimated that we share this planet with between 10 million and 100 million other species, of which only 1.5 million have been described.
"The only way to determine whether a species is new or not is to compare it with specimens of similar species already named, described and housed in biological collections.”
As keepers of biological collections, museums have a vital role to play in this. But it’s a role that they will increasingly struggle to fill as specialist curators lose their jobs and collections are orphaned.
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist
Birds of Peace
A stunning origami bird display is one of the ways in which the old Mammal Gallery at Manchester Museum was radically transformed into the Living Worlds gallery two years ago.
A showcase entitled Peace combines a mounted crane bird from an old display with a piece of rubble from Hiroshima and hundreds of origami cranes. It represents the story of Sadako Sasaki, who survived the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, but developed leukaemia as a result.
Sadako and her friends tried to fold 1,000 paper cranes to grant her wish to become well again, based on a Japanese story.
The idea of the display is to show how nature can help people come to terms with personal hardship and difficulty, improve health and wellbeing, and provide hope.
“We wanted to make our collections more relevant to people’s lives and the environment today rather than being a pleasant but outdated diversion, as is often the case in natural history displays,” says Henry McGhie, head of collections and curator of zoology at Manchester Museum.
“There is a huge public appetite for natural history displays, although I think that term has outlived its usefulness.
“We have tried to capitalise on that interest and, with a bit of creative thinking, to use it to connect people with nature and the environment in ways that are meaningful and constructive to them,” McGhie continues.
“To me, it’s not enough for museums to be just a ‘dead zoo’, an alternative nature. They should find ways to use their collections in ways that improve people’s lives and promote a safe and healthy natural environment.”
Birds of a feather
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery dismantled its British birds display in the 1970s, giving many of the items away to other local museums. But now they are back, and more popular than ever.
New Light on Old Bones, a project funded by Renaissance North West and the University of Manchester, encouraged the museum to unite the collection.
“Some of the birds had been offered back to us by museums wanting to dispose of their specimens,” says Vinai Solanki, curator of history at Blackburn.
“The birds had never been fully catalogued and we were struggling to find much information on them. The funding enabled us to engage a researcher who was able to provide a depth of knowledge and join the dots much quicker than I, as a non-scientist, could.”
The birds were originally housed individually in glass-fronted boxes and Solanki decided to keep the traditional style, copying the dark wood and stacking them floor-to-ceiling around the four walls of the small gallery.
“We weren’t aiming to recreate a Victorian display but it was the most efficient way of presenting the birds, and the effect is striking,” he says. “It’s particularly popular with children, but adults stare in wonderment at it, too.”
Solanki says that the project has benefited museum staff and visitors: “We now know so much more about the collection, and it’s given us the confidence to bring other items out of the store. It also showed us how to get the most out of academics that come to do research.
It’s easy to exploit material for marketing and education purposes but we learnt how we could work with the academics and their institutions, to share knowledge and use it to our advantage.”