When Kevin Fewster started as the director of London's National Maritime Museum (NMM) late last year he was coming full circle on a number of levels.
He joined from Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, which covers everything from science to the decorative arts, but Fewster started his career in the sector in the mid-1980s at the South Australian Maritime Museum in Port Adelaide. He then spent more than 15 years working in nautical museums.
And Fewster's arrival in London also marks his return to a country where he spent three years as a child. Now an immigrant again himself, the movement of people around the world has been an important part of his museum career from the start.
"When I first got the job in Adelaide we developed a database where you could find the full name of anyone who came to that state, what ship they came on, when they came, and their occupation," Fewster says.
"It was incredibly successful and for me it was probably the key programme we did because it meant that whoever you were, you came in and we made a link with you, the past and the maritime experience.
"People would engage in really quite intimate discussions about family forebears and their family history and I used to find this fascinating - it was a wonderful, wonderful space."
He says he has thought about this a lot since coming to Greenwich. "Britain has been a supplier of migrants for hundreds of years but also now has large numbers of migrants coming here. I think migration is a wonderful way of making a direct connection with people. There is an increasing fascination that people have with their roots - people want to know who they are."
Identity is certainly a hot topic for UK museums, and London is a city of immigrants, although as Fewster acknowledges, not many of them come by sea any more.
Fewster's next job after Adelaide was in another maritime museum, this time in Sydney. He was the first director of Australian National Maritime Museum and migration was again a major theme. Its work in this area included the opening of a Welcome Wall in 1997 as a permanent memorial to the county's immigrants.
Fewster spent 11 years at his second maritime museum before joining the Powerhouse Museum in 2000, a small move in distance, but a giant leap in subject matter. The Powerhouse is Australia's largest museum and its remit includes history, science, technology, design, industry, decorative arts, music, transport and space exploration.
"The subject matter of the Powerhouse is incredibly broad and by that point I could have been typecast as a maritime person," Fewster says.
"So I thought it would be interesting, for myself as much as anything, to step outside maritime museums. It also meant my wife and I could stay in Sydney and having been there for 11 years that was something I very much enjoyed, so I jumped from one end of Darling Harbour to the other."
The move to the Powerhouse not only gave Fewster the experience of leading a major museum, it also came at a time when Sydney was preparing to host the Olympic Games in 2000.
London is gearing up for its turn in four years' time, but Fewster is careful not to go overboard on what museums can gain from the event. He says that most places have seen museum visitor numbers fall during the games and warns of the difficulties of tailoring programmes to Olympic themes.
"In Sydney the issue was that they had four themes that they wanted to promote in each of the four years leading up to the games. The problem with that is that those themes might not necessarily translate into particularly popular exhibitions or exhibitions that fit with other things you are doing.
"So there was something of a tension as to whether we fall into line with the Olympic themes or do we keep on doing what we are doing. Of course at the end of the day it all comes down to money. If there is no incentive in the programme to follow the themes, the point comes when you say 'Hang on, we are not getting special support.'"
It will be interesting to see how Fewster develops his organisation's Olympic activities, particularly as the museum is to close for a time to host equestrian events.
With the maritime and Olympic links, and his affinity with England, Fewster seems to be in the right job, in the right place, at the right time. Also in his favour is the fact that the Powerhouse, like the NMM, has a historic observatory, and it was planning to develop a planetarium, something that Greenwich already has.
He says himself that it's all been "an amazing fit". And it will surely be more fun than the immediate future at the Powerhouse, where his successor, Dawn Casey, is having to deal with an 8 per cent budget cut and a resulting loss of 30 staff.
Staffing is also an issue at the NMM in Greenwich, although it's the rather more pleasant task of appointing people rather than laying them off.
"For whatever reason, there has been a significant loss and turnover of staff for the last year and more and for a director coming in having some fluidity in staff is not a bad thing because it gives you some flexibility," Fewster says.
"Having said that, the amount of turnover of staff is certainly higher than I would have expected, so it means there are some areas, particularly in terms of middle management, where we need to rebuild our team."
Fewster is bound to have a different relationship with his staff than his predecessor, Roy Clare, who is now the chief executive of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. Clare spent most of his career in the Navy, rising to Rear Admiral before joining the museum in 2000.
Fewster started as an academic before moving into museums. But they both share an air of confidence, although Fewster's self-belief is more the relaxed Australian type.
And Fewster is not a maritime person in the sense that Clare is. He says he has developed a "passion and love" for the maritime field over the years, but his real interest in museums is related to their capacity to deliver history to a wider public. And he is keen on using popular temporary exhibitions to help bring in this broad range of visitors.
"If you are trying to attract repeat visits from your local audience, most of them will want some call to action, so for me a dynamic temporary exhibition programme and the associated public programmes that go with it are really essential to attract locals as well as tourists."
He was clearly not afraid of blockbusters at the Powerhouse, and staged shows on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Kylie. But he rejects accusations of dumbing down and points to major exhibitions such as The Great Wall of China in 2006/07 and a treasures of ancient Greece show held during Sydney's Olympic year.
"The Powerhouse has an extremely strong reputation for popular culture, but I would not deem popular culture dumbing down," he says.
Apart from working out some operational teething problems at the recently redeveloped Royal Observatory, Fewster says one of the main challenges at Greenwich is the fact that it is really three sites: the Royal Observatory, the main museum and the Queen's House.
"The evidence would suggest that a lot of our visitors don't really see them as one entity and I think we can do a lot more cross-promotion of the three sites."
Fewster will also be looking at developing the museum's online presence and was proud of the Powerhouse's creation of an online public catalogue. Lord Sterling, the chairman of the NMM trustees, says the organisation is keen to use digital technology to help make the museum "truly global".
But before world domination, Fewster is involved in the more down-to-earth task of settling into a new house in Greenwich. He has been joined by his wife, Carol Scott, who also works in museums.
"Greenwich is a nice place to live, but moving here is also something of a statement from both of us about this community."
Having spent so much of his career looking at the lives of immigrants, it will be interesting to see how Fewster settles in now he is one himself.
Click here to read the Museums Journal review of Atlantic Worlds
He joined from Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, which covers everything from science to the decorative arts, but Fewster started his career in the sector in the mid-1980s at the South Australian Maritime Museum in Port Adelaide. He then spent more than 15 years working in nautical museums.
And Fewster's arrival in London also marks his return to a country where he spent three years as a child. Now an immigrant again himself, the movement of people around the world has been an important part of his museum career from the start.
"When I first got the job in Adelaide we developed a database where you could find the full name of anyone who came to that state, what ship they came on, when they came, and their occupation," Fewster says.
"It was incredibly successful and for me it was probably the key programme we did because it meant that whoever you were, you came in and we made a link with you, the past and the maritime experience.
"People would engage in really quite intimate discussions about family forebears and their family history and I used to find this fascinating - it was a wonderful, wonderful space."
He says he has thought about this a lot since coming to Greenwich. "Britain has been a supplier of migrants for hundreds of years but also now has large numbers of migrants coming here. I think migration is a wonderful way of making a direct connection with people. There is an increasing fascination that people have with their roots - people want to know who they are."
Identity is certainly a hot topic for UK museums, and London is a city of immigrants, although as Fewster acknowledges, not many of them come by sea any more.
Fewster's next job after Adelaide was in another maritime museum, this time in Sydney. He was the first director of Australian National Maritime Museum and migration was again a major theme. Its work in this area included the opening of a Welcome Wall in 1997 as a permanent memorial to the county's immigrants.
Fewster spent 11 years at his second maritime museum before joining the Powerhouse Museum in 2000, a small move in distance, but a giant leap in subject matter. The Powerhouse is Australia's largest museum and its remit includes history, science, technology, design, industry, decorative arts, music, transport and space exploration.
"The subject matter of the Powerhouse is incredibly broad and by that point I could have been typecast as a maritime person," Fewster says.
"So I thought it would be interesting, for myself as much as anything, to step outside maritime museums. It also meant my wife and I could stay in Sydney and having been there for 11 years that was something I very much enjoyed, so I jumped from one end of Darling Harbour to the other."
The move to the Powerhouse not only gave Fewster the experience of leading a major museum, it also came at a time when Sydney was preparing to host the Olympic Games in 2000.
London is gearing up for its turn in four years' time, but Fewster is careful not to go overboard on what museums can gain from the event. He says that most places have seen museum visitor numbers fall during the games and warns of the difficulties of tailoring programmes to Olympic themes.
"In Sydney the issue was that they had four themes that they wanted to promote in each of the four years leading up to the games. The problem with that is that those themes might not necessarily translate into particularly popular exhibitions or exhibitions that fit with other things you are doing.
"So there was something of a tension as to whether we fall into line with the Olympic themes or do we keep on doing what we are doing. Of course at the end of the day it all comes down to money. If there is no incentive in the programme to follow the themes, the point comes when you say 'Hang on, we are not getting special support.'"
It will be interesting to see how Fewster develops his organisation's Olympic activities, particularly as the museum is to close for a time to host equestrian events.
With the maritime and Olympic links, and his affinity with England, Fewster seems to be in the right job, in the right place, at the right time. Also in his favour is the fact that the Powerhouse, like the NMM, has a historic observatory, and it was planning to develop a planetarium, something that Greenwich already has.
He says himself that it's all been "an amazing fit". And it will surely be more fun than the immediate future at the Powerhouse, where his successor, Dawn Casey, is having to deal with an 8 per cent budget cut and a resulting loss of 30 staff.
Staffing is also an issue at the NMM in Greenwich, although it's the rather more pleasant task of appointing people rather than laying them off.
"For whatever reason, there has been a significant loss and turnover of staff for the last year and more and for a director coming in having some fluidity in staff is not a bad thing because it gives you some flexibility," Fewster says.
"Having said that, the amount of turnover of staff is certainly higher than I would have expected, so it means there are some areas, particularly in terms of middle management, where we need to rebuild our team."
Fewster is bound to have a different relationship with his staff than his predecessor, Roy Clare, who is now the chief executive of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. Clare spent most of his career in the Navy, rising to Rear Admiral before joining the museum in 2000.
Fewster started as an academic before moving into museums. But they both share an air of confidence, although Fewster's self-belief is more the relaxed Australian type.
And Fewster is not a maritime person in the sense that Clare is. He says he has developed a "passion and love" for the maritime field over the years, but his real interest in museums is related to their capacity to deliver history to a wider public. And he is keen on using popular temporary exhibitions to help bring in this broad range of visitors.
"If you are trying to attract repeat visits from your local audience, most of them will want some call to action, so for me a dynamic temporary exhibition programme and the associated public programmes that go with it are really essential to attract locals as well as tourists."
He was clearly not afraid of blockbusters at the Powerhouse, and staged shows on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Kylie. But he rejects accusations of dumbing down and points to major exhibitions such as The Great Wall of China in 2006/07 and a treasures of ancient Greece show held during Sydney's Olympic year.
"The Powerhouse has an extremely strong reputation for popular culture, but I would not deem popular culture dumbing down," he says.
Apart from working out some operational teething problems at the recently redeveloped Royal Observatory, Fewster says one of the main challenges at Greenwich is the fact that it is really three sites: the Royal Observatory, the main museum and the Queen's House.
"The evidence would suggest that a lot of our visitors don't really see them as one entity and I think we can do a lot more cross-promotion of the three sites."
Fewster will also be looking at developing the museum's online presence and was proud of the Powerhouse's creation of an online public catalogue. Lord Sterling, the chairman of the NMM trustees, says the organisation is keen to use digital technology to help make the museum "truly global".
But before world domination, Fewster is involved in the more down-to-earth task of settling into a new house in Greenwich. He has been joined by his wife, Carol Scott, who also works in museums.
"Greenwich is a nice place to live, but moving here is also something of a statement from both of us about this community."
Having spent so much of his career looking at the lives of immigrants, it will be interesting to see how Fewster settles in now he is one himself.
Click here to read the Museums Journal review of Atlantic Worlds