Getting to work on the first day of a new job usually involves careful route-planning, but not for Ian Blatchford.
All he had to do when he joined the National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI) in late 2010 was make sure he was on the correct side of Exhibition Road, as he had spent the past eight years at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), which is opposite.
But his path into the museum sector itself was a bit more complicated than his trip to the office in the morning. “I had a strange and rather complex route as I started my working life in merchant banking,” says Blatchford, who decided that he wanted to do something more interesting with his career.
He trained as a chartered accountant and worked in finance at an marketing agency and then at the Royal Academy of Arts. From there he went to the V&A as director of finance and resources, and later became deputy director.
The directors of the NMSI and London’s Science Museum were separate roles, but Blatchford felt there was too much overlap so he combined the posts shortly after joining.
This means he oversees the National Railway Museum in York and the National Media Museum in Bradford as well as being in charge of the London institution.
So what was the appeal of the NMSI for Blatchford, apart from the straightforward travel arrangements?
“I have always seen science as being part of culture rather than some alien species and there is a particular perspective I have on it because the Science Museum was once part of the V&A. Also, I had got to that stage in my working life when I felt ready for the number-one job.”
Blatchford is a confident figure and seems unfazed by this being his first job as the top man and also by the fact that he is a non-scientist in charge of a huge science institution.
In fact, he views it as an advantage and says that it means he is not seen as being attached to any particular branch of science. He points to Neil Cossons’s time in charge of the Science Museum from 1986 to 2000.
“Recently, the most outstanding of my predecessors was Neil Cossons, who was a geographer, not a scientist. I think what that tells you is that the most important thing about running a museum like this is the ability to communicate complex ideas in an engaging way. It does not automatically mean you will run a great museum if you are a scientist.”
Both Blatchford’s predecessors were scientists. The director of the Science Museum was Chris Rapley, an expert in climate change who left in late 2010, while scientist and engineer Martin Earwicker, the boss of the NMSI, left in 2009 and was followed by two acting directors before Blatchford joined.
Restructuring the NMSI
One of Blatchford’s priorities at the NMSI was to develop a strategy to deal with the 15% cut that was imposed on all national museums by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in 2010.
He says very little had been done before he started, which meant changes had to be made in a “more accelerated fashion, so it is rather more intense and quite painful”.
But Blatchford says staff have been positive about his arrival and “they were desperate for a director who was a museum person. I think staff are torn in two directions: they are concerned about jobs but to be honest they are excited by the fact that we are doing things differently and being more ambitious.”
Beyond being a museum person, what does Blatchford bring to the job? David Anderson, the director general of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, worked alongside him for many years at the V&A.
“The first thing to say is that he is extremely bright and has the ability to get to the key essence of issues very quickly,” says Anderson.
“He is a great fixer and problem solver and is good at seeing solutions that will move an organisation forward. He is also very energetic, and impatient to see results.”
After a period of getting his feet under the table at the Science Museum, which included trips to major European science museums in Paris, Munich and Moscow, Blatchford is now making some major decisions.
One has been to negotiate the merger of the Museum of Science and Industry (Mosi) in Manchester with the NMSI.
Amalgamating the two museums has been on the cards before but it came back on the agenda when the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced in 2010 that it wanted to find alternative sponsors for the eight non-national museums, which included Mosi.
“The more we spoke to them, the more we realised there were huge synergies in terms of collections and audiences,” says Blatchford.
Blatchford has also made some important decisions about how Mosi and the National Media Museum are structured at a senior level.
In what could be seen as evidence of a ruthless streak, Blatchford’s desire for more central control of both museums has led to Colin Philpott stepping down as the director of the National Media Museum, and Tony Hill leaving his post as the director of Mosi.
Blatchford says the departure of Philpott is linked to the development of a large space for the National Media Museum at the Science Museum in London, which is to open in spring 2013. This will create the need for much closer programming links between London and Bradford.
With Hill and Philpott gone, Steve Davies, the director of the National Railway Museum, might be looking nervously over his shoulder, but Blatchford insists he is happy with the arrangements in York.
A key priority for Blatchford now is to improve the standing of curators and the collection at the Science Museum.
“For well over a decade now, the Science Museum has signalled, to its own staff and the outside world, real ambivalence about its collections and scholarship in a way that would seem truly bizarre to any art-historical based museum.”
What this will mean in practice is a much stronger emphasis on research. He also wants to attract talented young curators by adopting a model similar to the V&A’s assistant curator programme.
His plan to raise the profile of the collections will lead to a very different approach to temporary exhibitions. The museum will no longer buy-in exhibitions for a start.
“I have completely ditched that whole model and we are moving to the classic art museum model of doing great exhibitions based on real research on our own collections. That is a very big symbolic move that will be very important to the museum.”
Capital plans
As for future priorities for capital expenditure, Blatchford is particularly scathing about the various failed schemes to develop the Wroughton collections centre.
“I am supersonically clear that we are not going to engage in a massive redevelopment of Wroughton because the key priority in terms of scholarship and public benefit is the best possible display of the collections here in London.
“To be honest and quite blunt, Wroughton has been a very unfortunate distraction for the museum for ten years. A lot of time, energy and money have been wasted on the wrong project.”
Instead, the museum has been working on a masterplanning exercise with Stephen Greenberg from design consultancy Metaphor. The aim is to have more of the collection on display in the galleries in London.
Partnerships in the UK and abroad are also important to Blatchford. Close to home, he has already forged links with the Royal College of Music, which is nearby.
He also says it’s very puzzling that the museum does not have stronger ties with Imperial College, an internationally important science university that is on the same street.
“I’m very, very passionate about the Science Museum acquiring a reputation for being a good partner and an easy collaborator,” says Blatchford.
He is keen to raise the profile of the Science Museum overseas in the way that organisations such as the British Museum, Natural History Museum and British Library have done through initiatives such as the World Collections Programme, which fosters partnerships with institutions in Asia and Africa.
And of course the arts will have a higher profile at the museum under Blatchford.
“One of things I want to do is to expand our arts programming and to surprise people with how much the sciences can contribute to culture,” he says.
All this work will be done against the background of a new audience development strategy. And for Blatchford, it’s not just about numbers.
“Just having more visitors is simply meaningless. For me, it is much more about the composition of the audience and the quality of the experience.
“I am sensitive about it because for many years the Science Museum did not have a clear intellectual agenda and was pursuing audience numbers as if it was the greatest and only success measure.
"When I talk to government, cultural leaders and our supporters, people are surprisingly uninterested in the volume of visitors; they are more interested in whether you are making a difference.”
With the integration of Mosi, the departure of two directors and the abandonment of plans for Wroughton in order to focus on London, Blatchford is working hard to make a difference himself. Time will tell how successful he has been.
Ian Blatchford became the director of the National Museum of Science and Industry in November 2010. He combined the role with that of director of the Science Museum when Chris Rapley stepped down in December 2010.
He was the deputy director of the Victoria and Albert Museum from 2004, having joined in 2002 as the director of finance and resources.
He started his career in the City, working at the Bank of England and the merchant bankers Barclays de Zoete Wedd, before joining the arts council, where he was deputy finance director.
He then joined a marketing and design agency as financial controller before becoming director of finance at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1996.
Blatchford read law at Mansfield College, Oxford, and has an MA in Renaissance Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London.
The National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI) comprises the Science Museum in London, the National Railway Museum in York and Shildon, and the National Media Museum in Bradford. The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester joined the group in January.
The Science Museum was part of the South Kensington Museum, which opened in 1857 on land that is now part of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The museum moved into its own building in 1928.
The NMSI cares for more than six million artefacts covering science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine, transport, visual media and related arts.
The NMSI had 4.15 million visitors in 2010-11, a 5% fall on 2009-10 figures.
The Science Museum attracted 2.8 million people in 2010-11. The NMSI had an income of £63.4m in 2010-11, including grant in aid of £40.2m. The organisation employs about 1,000 people.
All he had to do when he joined the National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI) in late 2010 was make sure he was on the correct side of Exhibition Road, as he had spent the past eight years at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), which is opposite.
But his path into the museum sector itself was a bit more complicated than his trip to the office in the morning. “I had a strange and rather complex route as I started my working life in merchant banking,” says Blatchford, who decided that he wanted to do something more interesting with his career.
He trained as a chartered accountant and worked in finance at an marketing agency and then at the Royal Academy of Arts. From there he went to the V&A as director of finance and resources, and later became deputy director.
The directors of the NMSI and London’s Science Museum were separate roles, but Blatchford felt there was too much overlap so he combined the posts shortly after joining.
This means he oversees the National Railway Museum in York and the National Media Museum in Bradford as well as being in charge of the London institution.
So what was the appeal of the NMSI for Blatchford, apart from the straightforward travel arrangements?
“I have always seen science as being part of culture rather than some alien species and there is a particular perspective I have on it because the Science Museum was once part of the V&A. Also, I had got to that stage in my working life when I felt ready for the number-one job.”
Blatchford is a confident figure and seems unfazed by this being his first job as the top man and also by the fact that he is a non-scientist in charge of a huge science institution.
In fact, he views it as an advantage and says that it means he is not seen as being attached to any particular branch of science. He points to Neil Cossons’s time in charge of the Science Museum from 1986 to 2000.
“Recently, the most outstanding of my predecessors was Neil Cossons, who was a geographer, not a scientist. I think what that tells you is that the most important thing about running a museum like this is the ability to communicate complex ideas in an engaging way. It does not automatically mean you will run a great museum if you are a scientist.”
Both Blatchford’s predecessors were scientists. The director of the Science Museum was Chris Rapley, an expert in climate change who left in late 2010, while scientist and engineer Martin Earwicker, the boss of the NMSI, left in 2009 and was followed by two acting directors before Blatchford joined.
Restructuring the NMSI
One of Blatchford’s priorities at the NMSI was to develop a strategy to deal with the 15% cut that was imposed on all national museums by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in 2010.
He says very little had been done before he started, which meant changes had to be made in a “more accelerated fashion, so it is rather more intense and quite painful”.
But Blatchford says staff have been positive about his arrival and “they were desperate for a director who was a museum person. I think staff are torn in two directions: they are concerned about jobs but to be honest they are excited by the fact that we are doing things differently and being more ambitious.”
Beyond being a museum person, what does Blatchford bring to the job? David Anderson, the director general of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, worked alongside him for many years at the V&A.
“The first thing to say is that he is extremely bright and has the ability to get to the key essence of issues very quickly,” says Anderson.
“He is a great fixer and problem solver and is good at seeing solutions that will move an organisation forward. He is also very energetic, and impatient to see results.”
After a period of getting his feet under the table at the Science Museum, which included trips to major European science museums in Paris, Munich and Moscow, Blatchford is now making some major decisions.
One has been to negotiate the merger of the Museum of Science and Industry (Mosi) in Manchester with the NMSI.
Amalgamating the two museums has been on the cards before but it came back on the agenda when the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced in 2010 that it wanted to find alternative sponsors for the eight non-national museums, which included Mosi.
“The more we spoke to them, the more we realised there were huge synergies in terms of collections and audiences,” says Blatchford.
Blatchford has also made some important decisions about how Mosi and the National Media Museum are structured at a senior level.
In what could be seen as evidence of a ruthless streak, Blatchford’s desire for more central control of both museums has led to Colin Philpott stepping down as the director of the National Media Museum, and Tony Hill leaving his post as the director of Mosi.
Blatchford says the departure of Philpott is linked to the development of a large space for the National Media Museum at the Science Museum in London, which is to open in spring 2013. This will create the need for much closer programming links between London and Bradford.
With Hill and Philpott gone, Steve Davies, the director of the National Railway Museum, might be looking nervously over his shoulder, but Blatchford insists he is happy with the arrangements in York.
A key priority for Blatchford now is to improve the standing of curators and the collection at the Science Museum.
“For well over a decade now, the Science Museum has signalled, to its own staff and the outside world, real ambivalence about its collections and scholarship in a way that would seem truly bizarre to any art-historical based museum.”
What this will mean in practice is a much stronger emphasis on research. He also wants to attract talented young curators by adopting a model similar to the V&A’s assistant curator programme.
His plan to raise the profile of the collections will lead to a very different approach to temporary exhibitions. The museum will no longer buy-in exhibitions for a start.
“I have completely ditched that whole model and we are moving to the classic art museum model of doing great exhibitions based on real research on our own collections. That is a very big symbolic move that will be very important to the museum.”
Capital plans
As for future priorities for capital expenditure, Blatchford is particularly scathing about the various failed schemes to develop the Wroughton collections centre.
“I am supersonically clear that we are not going to engage in a massive redevelopment of Wroughton because the key priority in terms of scholarship and public benefit is the best possible display of the collections here in London.
“To be honest and quite blunt, Wroughton has been a very unfortunate distraction for the museum for ten years. A lot of time, energy and money have been wasted on the wrong project.”
Instead, the museum has been working on a masterplanning exercise with Stephen Greenberg from design consultancy Metaphor. The aim is to have more of the collection on display in the galleries in London.
Partnerships in the UK and abroad are also important to Blatchford. Close to home, he has already forged links with the Royal College of Music, which is nearby.
He also says it’s very puzzling that the museum does not have stronger ties with Imperial College, an internationally important science university that is on the same street.
“I’m very, very passionate about the Science Museum acquiring a reputation for being a good partner and an easy collaborator,” says Blatchford.
He is keen to raise the profile of the Science Museum overseas in the way that organisations such as the British Museum, Natural History Museum and British Library have done through initiatives such as the World Collections Programme, which fosters partnerships with institutions in Asia and Africa.
And of course the arts will have a higher profile at the museum under Blatchford.
“One of things I want to do is to expand our arts programming and to surprise people with how much the sciences can contribute to culture,” he says.
All this work will be done against the background of a new audience development strategy. And for Blatchford, it’s not just about numbers.
“Just having more visitors is simply meaningless. For me, it is much more about the composition of the audience and the quality of the experience.
“I am sensitive about it because for many years the Science Museum did not have a clear intellectual agenda and was pursuing audience numbers as if it was the greatest and only success measure.
"When I talk to government, cultural leaders and our supporters, people are surprisingly uninterested in the volume of visitors; they are more interested in whether you are making a difference.”
With the integration of Mosi, the departure of two directors and the abandonment of plans for Wroughton in order to focus on London, Blatchford is working hard to make a difference himself. Time will tell how successful he has been.
Ian Blatchford at a glance
Ian Blatchford became the director of the National Museum of Science and Industry in November 2010. He combined the role with that of director of the Science Museum when Chris Rapley stepped down in December 2010.
He was the deputy director of the Victoria and Albert Museum from 2004, having joined in 2002 as the director of finance and resources.
He started his career in the City, working at the Bank of England and the merchant bankers Barclays de Zoete Wedd, before joining the arts council, where he was deputy finance director.
He then joined a marketing and design agency as financial controller before becoming director of finance at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1996.
Blatchford read law at Mansfield College, Oxford, and has an MA in Renaissance Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London.
National Museum of Science and Industry at a glance
The National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI) comprises the Science Museum in London, the National Railway Museum in York and Shildon, and the National Media Museum in Bradford. The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester joined the group in January.
The Science Museum was part of the South Kensington Museum, which opened in 1857 on land that is now part of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The museum moved into its own building in 1928.
The NMSI cares for more than six million artefacts covering science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine, transport, visual media and related arts.
The NMSI had 4.15 million visitors in 2010-11, a 5% fall on 2009-10 figures.
The Science Museum attracted 2.8 million people in 2010-11. The NMSI had an income of £63.4m in 2010-11, including grant in aid of £40.2m. The organisation employs about 1,000 people.