It wasn't too long ago that Nick Merriman had a big decision to make. In order to move on in his career, he had to leave something behind. A self-confessed 'yes man', he was juggling work in academia, archaeology and museology, as well as directing museums and collections at University College London (UCL). Although he enjoyed them all, he says he was still not satisfied. So, academia took a back seat, and he set his heart on becoming the director of a big museum.
Five months into the top job at the Manchester Museum, Merriman invites me into his office, which is still pretty bare, to chat about his past, his passions and aspirations.
As well as his desk that faces away from a window to the courtyard with its tall trees glowing in the sunlight, there is a small boardroom table where we sit opposite each other. He points out that he has started to bring specimens up from the backroom of the museum - the remnants of the old handling boxes.
He says taking up the post at Manchester has definitely been the right choice. Various projects and collaborations between the Manchester University-run Manchester Museum and the UCL's Petrie Museum meant that Merriman was already connected to the Manchester Museum. But he says he never thought the job would become available (Tristram Besterman, the previous director, took early retirement).
Merriman spent the past 20 years in London and admits that, for a while, he had been looking for his next opportunity there. But he soon realised he would have to leave London for the director's job he desired. 'I had been so London-focused - I'd been a bit blinkered.'
His first job in museums, fresh from an archaeological doctorate at Cambridge, was at the Museum of London (MoL) as assistant keeper (prehistory). He went on to become the head of the early London history and collections, and was there for 11 years. During this time, the director's post became vacant, but Merriman did not apply. 'I didn't have the experience or confidence,' he says.
However, he was invited to apply for the post when Simon Thurley left in 2001, by which time Merriman was at UCL. But with a domestic schedule that meant he had to work around his young children, it was not an option.
Throughout our chat, nuggets of truth that are so often held back by others wary of how they might appear, are willingly revealed by Merriman. He is refreshingly candid. 'One thing I didn't do when I was at the MoL was to develop myself in any way. I was promoted, but I had no experience. I always felt that I would be caught out.'
It was when he attended the Clore Leadership Programme (2004-06), that he understood he wasn't alone. 'What I now realise is that everyone feels that they are going to be exposed at some point,' he explains.
One of the biggest lessons the Clore programme taught him was the ability to be who he wanted to be, he says. 'There is no single model to being a leader. The best way to be a good leader is to be yourself and to be clear about who you are and what you stand for in terms of your vision for an organisation.'
His anxiety over whether he had enough knowledge of specialist areas also dissipated. 'It was a relief that I didn't have to be the world expert on finance and human resources,' he explains.
Merriman says he inherited a healthy and stable organisation from Besterman, who had undertaken a pretty severe (but necessary) restructure. This particularly affected the curatorial department, where keepers were undertaking research that was of little value to the university, which could have had a knock-on effect on its funding.
Besterman introduced less of a university and more of a museum-like structure with new departments of collections, access, and finance and administration. Merriman says the restructure was 'undertaken with some pain all round', the elements of which still linger. 'There's a legacy of a painful history and I observe there are different cultures within the three divisions.'
Merriman is now turning his attention towards tackling these different cultures. His last course as part of the Clore programme was looking at the psychologies of group behaviour.
He wants to put in place an organisational cultural change so that all the staff see themselves as a team. He hopes this will encourage everyone to move in the same direction. 'What I'd really like to do in the next 12 months is to ensure everybody understands that and everyone knows what we're about and can articulate that,' he says.
'A lot of museums work on vision, strategy and objectives, but they can be quite mechanistic. Sometimes they don't manage to achieve what they want because they haven't thought enough about the people who are going to do those things, their behaviour and values.'
The look at the institution's core values, such as behaving courteously towards all staff and visitors, and sustainability, was started with a management away day. 'I think that involved confronting quite a lot of feelings about colleagues,' he says.
It is difficult to judge how effective Merriman will be in implementing such a deep-seated mind change. He is amicable enough and is clearly in touch with the notion that people matter. But Merriman is slightly reserved, which he will have to get over if he is to connect with all levels of the team easily.
The proof will come as he roams around the teams using the Museums Association's (MA) Collections for the Future report as a template, especially the section on strengthening the sector through organisational change.
Collecting habits are becoming the hot topic for museums and are one of Merriman's ongoing interests. This month, he will be speaking at two conferences (the Museums Association and the Clark Institute) on collecting, which he researched as part of his Clore work.
There are 4.5 million objects and specimens at the Manchester Museum, and Merriman says 'it wouldn't be a disaster if we didn't collect any more'. This is likely in Egyptology, but less so in the natural sciences, where chronology is important to monitor change.
His research has shown that on average, the collecting versus disposal rate is 700 to one. He looked at the collecting history of eight museums over a ten-year period, including the Manchester Museum.
'What we haven't yet done as a museum is to undertake proactive programmes of disposal.' He is now encouraging his curators to engage with disposal as much as acquisition.
And he draws a parallel between disposal and the exercise of forgetting. Merriman says the accepted wisdom today is that there is no such thing as a collective memory. 'We still cling to this 19th-century notion that what we collect is objective and held on behalf
of a collective,' he says. Collections are often the result of an individual's passion and are partial, he adds.
'It could be that we disagree or don't find the collection decisions of individuals from the past useful. And it could be that there are things we should consciously forget through disposal.'
Merriman wants to see museums become 'freer intellectually to develop collections more for the needs of today and for the future'. He says the point of sustainability is to manage change within appropriate boundaries, rather than to 'preserve everything in aspic'.
'Heritage is one of the few areas of life in which stasis seems to be a good thing. We will never know whether we got it right. But rather than be cowardly and say I can't possibly take the decision, I would rather we have the confidence to say this is less useful and this is more useful, and expect our successors tosimilarly express judgement.'
He says it is no longer acceptable for people to say that all their collections are important. So which of Manchester's are less important? He tells me they are all Designated, which kind of goes back to his point, he laughs. At a push, he lists botanical specimens, the Linnaeus and Darwin collections, and Petrie-excavated archaeological material.
The other area exercising Merriman's mind is the need for refurbishment of the two most popular galleries - Egyptology and natural history, which missed out in the last round.
He has a lot of challenges ahead and by all accounts is as ready as he can be for them. The man who now has the former MP Chris Smith (the director of the Clore programme) as a referee still has ambitions beyond the Manchester Museum. He says he wouldn't be averse to trying his hand at running a local authority museum and wants to be remembered by the museum community as 'someone who provoked people to think about museum practice'.
For the first time in his career, he has taken a conscious step to the next level. Merriman would like a crack at running a national museum eventually, but says: 'I am only too aware that life intervenes.'
Five months into the top job at the Manchester Museum, Merriman invites me into his office, which is still pretty bare, to chat about his past, his passions and aspirations.
As well as his desk that faces away from a window to the courtyard with its tall trees glowing in the sunlight, there is a small boardroom table where we sit opposite each other. He points out that he has started to bring specimens up from the backroom of the museum - the remnants of the old handling boxes.
He says taking up the post at Manchester has definitely been the right choice. Various projects and collaborations between the Manchester University-run Manchester Museum and the UCL's Petrie Museum meant that Merriman was already connected to the Manchester Museum. But he says he never thought the job would become available (Tristram Besterman, the previous director, took early retirement).
Merriman spent the past 20 years in London and admits that, for a while, he had been looking for his next opportunity there. But he soon realised he would have to leave London for the director's job he desired. 'I had been so London-focused - I'd been a bit blinkered.'
His first job in museums, fresh from an archaeological doctorate at Cambridge, was at the Museum of London (MoL) as assistant keeper (prehistory). He went on to become the head of the early London history and collections, and was there for 11 years. During this time, the director's post became vacant, but Merriman did not apply. 'I didn't have the experience or confidence,' he says.
However, he was invited to apply for the post when Simon Thurley left in 2001, by which time Merriman was at UCL. But with a domestic schedule that meant he had to work around his young children, it was not an option.
Throughout our chat, nuggets of truth that are so often held back by others wary of how they might appear, are willingly revealed by Merriman. He is refreshingly candid. 'One thing I didn't do when I was at the MoL was to develop myself in any way. I was promoted, but I had no experience. I always felt that I would be caught out.'
It was when he attended the Clore Leadership Programme (2004-06), that he understood he wasn't alone. 'What I now realise is that everyone feels that they are going to be exposed at some point,' he explains.
One of the biggest lessons the Clore programme taught him was the ability to be who he wanted to be, he says. 'There is no single model to being a leader. The best way to be a good leader is to be yourself and to be clear about who you are and what you stand for in terms of your vision for an organisation.'
His anxiety over whether he had enough knowledge of specialist areas also dissipated. 'It was a relief that I didn't have to be the world expert on finance and human resources,' he explains.
Merriman says he inherited a healthy and stable organisation from Besterman, who had undertaken a pretty severe (but necessary) restructure. This particularly affected the curatorial department, where keepers were undertaking research that was of little value to the university, which could have had a knock-on effect on its funding.
Besterman introduced less of a university and more of a museum-like structure with new departments of collections, access, and finance and administration. Merriman says the restructure was 'undertaken with some pain all round', the elements of which still linger. 'There's a legacy of a painful history and I observe there are different cultures within the three divisions.'
Merriman is now turning his attention towards tackling these different cultures. His last course as part of the Clore programme was looking at the psychologies of group behaviour.
He wants to put in place an organisational cultural change so that all the staff see themselves as a team. He hopes this will encourage everyone to move in the same direction. 'What I'd really like to do in the next 12 months is to ensure everybody understands that and everyone knows what we're about and can articulate that,' he says.
'A lot of museums work on vision, strategy and objectives, but they can be quite mechanistic. Sometimes they don't manage to achieve what they want because they haven't thought enough about the people who are going to do those things, their behaviour and values.'
The look at the institution's core values, such as behaving courteously towards all staff and visitors, and sustainability, was started with a management away day. 'I think that involved confronting quite a lot of feelings about colleagues,' he says.
It is difficult to judge how effective Merriman will be in implementing such a deep-seated mind change. He is amicable enough and is clearly in touch with the notion that people matter. But Merriman is slightly reserved, which he will have to get over if he is to connect with all levels of the team easily.
The proof will come as he roams around the teams using the Museums Association's (MA) Collections for the Future report as a template, especially the section on strengthening the sector through organisational change.
Collecting habits are becoming the hot topic for museums and are one of Merriman's ongoing interests. This month, he will be speaking at two conferences (the Museums Association and the Clark Institute) on collecting, which he researched as part of his Clore work.
There are 4.5 million objects and specimens at the Manchester Museum, and Merriman says 'it wouldn't be a disaster if we didn't collect any more'. This is likely in Egyptology, but less so in the natural sciences, where chronology is important to monitor change.
His research has shown that on average, the collecting versus disposal rate is 700 to one. He looked at the collecting history of eight museums over a ten-year period, including the Manchester Museum.
'What we haven't yet done as a museum is to undertake proactive programmes of disposal.' He is now encouraging his curators to engage with disposal as much as acquisition.
And he draws a parallel between disposal and the exercise of forgetting. Merriman says the accepted wisdom today is that there is no such thing as a collective memory. 'We still cling to this 19th-century notion that what we collect is objective and held on behalf
of a collective,' he says. Collections are often the result of an individual's passion and are partial, he adds.
'It could be that we disagree or don't find the collection decisions of individuals from the past useful. And it could be that there are things we should consciously forget through disposal.'
Merriman wants to see museums become 'freer intellectually to develop collections more for the needs of today and for the future'. He says the point of sustainability is to manage change within appropriate boundaries, rather than to 'preserve everything in aspic'.
'Heritage is one of the few areas of life in which stasis seems to be a good thing. We will never know whether we got it right. But rather than be cowardly and say I can't possibly take the decision, I would rather we have the confidence to say this is less useful and this is more useful, and expect our successors tosimilarly express judgement.'
He says it is no longer acceptable for people to say that all their collections are important. So which of Manchester's are less important? He tells me they are all Designated, which kind of goes back to his point, he laughs. At a push, he lists botanical specimens, the Linnaeus and Darwin collections, and Petrie-excavated archaeological material.
The other area exercising Merriman's mind is the need for refurbishment of the two most popular galleries - Egyptology and natural history, which missed out in the last round.
He has a lot of challenges ahead and by all accounts is as ready as he can be for them. The man who now has the former MP Chris Smith (the director of the Clore programme) as a referee still has ambitions beyond the Manchester Museum. He says he wouldn't be averse to trying his hand at running a local authority museum and wants to be remembered by the museum community as 'someone who provoked people to think about museum practice'.
For the first time in his career, he has taken a conscious step to the next level. Merriman would like a crack at running a national museum eventually, but says: 'I am only too aware that life intervenes.'
