It’s a bit of a cliche that wisdom comes with age, although a recent study by psychologists from the University of Texas did find that older people make better decisions than young adults, who are far too impulsive.
The knowledge and experiences of retired professionals in the sector is certainly proving of value in museums and galleries, as knowledge sharing and succession planning become ever-more crucial in these straitened financial times.
The Monument Fellowship scheme, which is run by the Museums Association (MA), was set up in 2006 to capture knowledge from retiring and retired specialists, and pass this on to new museum staff and the public.
The first round ran until 2011, and was funded by the Monument Trust. Arts Council England now funds the scheme, the second round of which started in 2012.
Current Fellows are sharing their knowledge on a range of subjects, from pop art to pearl molluscs, returning to their own museums or other institutions. Some may have been working at the museum on an informal basis, while others may have no direct connection.
There are 10 Fellows in England, plus three in Scotland funded by Museums Galleries Scotland and one in Wales funded by Cymal (Museums, Libraries and Archives, Wales). Fellows work with a range of staff, including collection managers, education, access and public programming teams as well as curators.
“We recognise that it’s difficult for many museums to find the time and resources to devote to the scheme, especially with the economic downturn,” says Caitlin Griffiths, a museum and gallery consultant who runs the scheme for the MA.
“They have to justify the time spent on the scheme and see tangible outcomes, so it’s important to plan it beforehand, to produce a workplan before people start.”
Changes in this current round mean that the time spent at the museum has been reduced to 30 days, so it is easier for organisations to accommodate it. The days are flexible and can be spread out across the year or taken together.
“Museums may be short staffed but the long-term benefits are worth it”, says Griffiths. “It’s particularly useful if there is a current project or exhibition, or other tangible outputs that they can see at the end, such as a web resource or redisplays.”
Griffiths visits the museums and talks through the practicalities: what they can realistically expect to achieve in 30 days; which members of staff would most benefit and how much time they need and are able to allocate; and how Fellows will access the material they need to look at – this can take a lot of time in itself.
A toolkit has been created to help museums that don’t have the resources to engage a Fellow. “One aspiration is that museums will use the scheme to road-test different approaches to capturing specialist knowledge beyond the scheme,” says Griffiths.
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist
Michael Freeman, Federation of Museums and Art Galleries of Wales
“I was curator of Ceredigion Museum, Aberystwyth, until my retirement in 2012. I’m working with seven or eight museums across the federation and I think this is unique for the Fellowship.
After 40 years of working in museums I have a lot of expertise and specialist knowledge, particularly in Welsh costume, a subject where there are very few studies but a lot of assumptions and misunderstandings.
Though the main thing I learned from 40 years of museum work is that I actually know very little about museum objects!
I am working with staff and volunteers at the selected museums, helping to catalogue their collections, and giving advice, for example on terminology, so that keywords can be used for online searches (in both Welsh and English).
I’m also planning a touring exhibition on 19th-century Welsh costume dolls, and will give public talks as another way of sharing knowledge. While the scheme is a great idea, for it to work well, it needs time.
Retired curators hold so much in their heads, but it’s difficult for working curators to spare the time for one-to-one meetings. In Wales many of the museums are small and run by one person plus an assistant if they are lucky, so it is quite a commitment.
Another major problem is the distance between museums, so it’s difficult for curators to travel to one central meeting point, and my travelling to them inevitably cuts down time spent with staff.
Brendan Flynn, Wolverhampton Art Gallery
“Wolverhampton Art Gallery has a renowned pop art collection and I was involved in developing it when I worked there in the 1970s. I am now working with a whole range of staff, from the present curatorial team to education, technical and front of house staff, revisiting the collection from a number of angles.
My reason for going back is to review the collection and look at what the vision for the gallery was at the time and how we went about the acquisitions, many of which were controversial works back then. It’s an opportunity to reflect on collecting policy, and on past and future interpretation.
I’m spending a lot of time in the store, talking one-to-one or to small groups in the presence of the art. It’s important to consider this collection in a regional context.
People are passing on and memories are fading, so it’s a record of the battles fought to acquire the pieces, thepersonalities involved, and the story of getting art into regional museums where collections were at a standstill.
There’s a lot of information in my head: conversations with artists, visits to dealers, and it’s the small change of one’s working life that can make a big difference.
Curators are rarely rooted in collections for long periods these days and this enlightened scheme partly addresses this problem.”
Fred Woodward, Glasgow Museums
“I started my career in 1958 at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington although I’d been working in museums since the age of 11, assisting with Saturday morning clubs in my hometown of Birmingham.
My posts have ranged from natural sciences to social history to art, but my specialism is freshwater molluscs, and I’ve worked in Liverpool, the north east, the Midlands, London and Glasgow.
In 1992 I took early retirement from my role as deputy keeper of natural history at Glasgow Museums, where I had been building up the shell collections.
As a Fellow, I am working at the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre with Richard Sutcliffe, research manager for natural history, and focusing on the mollusc collections.
I am talking through the specimens, while Richard makes notes and photographs notable ones.
I’m making links between the molluscs and other collections, particularly decorative arts, and in this way helping to break down barriers between natural sciences and other disciplines.
The idea is to bring out the mutuality of collections, for example between the pearl mussel specimens and how they are used in paintings and the decorative art collections. Then I will give a presentation, not just to the natural sciences team but also to the decorative arts and the learning and access staff, and the findings will go on the website.
In this way we are creating a knowledge legacy. And with the cutbacks it’s even more important that we capture this.”
Pauline Beswick, Museums Sheffield
“I worked at Sheffield City Museum between 1971 and 1994, rising to principal keeper of human history before I took early retirement and became a freelance pottery specialist.
Since then, the archaeology collection has had its ups and downs including having no curator for four years.
Last year the new director was able to fund a two-year curatorial post and asked me in to help make the collections more accessible through a Fellowship role.
I am working with the new curator, and her assistant, and the most pressing issue is to familiarise them with what’s in the collection and, with the South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire contexts, where most of the items are from.
It will be quite a challenge to do all this in 30 days but others have complementary skills in archive management. For me, it’s lovely to renew my acquaintance with favourite objects. I’ve been surprised at how much comes flooding back.
The collection has undergone two moves and is still not fully unpacked, so talking through this process unlocks a lot of information. We are linking my knowledge of the collections and people who excavated them with changes in interpretation over the years and where to go for different sources and opinions.
We will be involving more museum staff, and others, through handling sessions. Hopefully this will fire their imaginations and enthusiasm for the collection.”
Hilary Diaper, Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds
“Between the summer and the end of the year I will be working with the curator and two gallery assistants on succession planning. I was keeper of the university art collection between 1987 and 2010, but I started working with the collection in 1983, so there’s 30 years of knowledge and a lot of oral history to capture. There are 3,000 objects in the collection but there are still 100-200 pictures with little or no documentation.
First, I will help identify works of art or give my successors the tools to track the provenance. We will be looking at sources and I will write a manual or search guide to show them how to go about this. Second, I will help to organise the gallery exhibitions archive, and write a manual for this too.
I feel confident that the collection will be taken forward and made more accessible to the public, both online and through new exhibitions. It’s a lovely way to finish off my career and I feel good knowing that the collection has a future.”
Martyn Brown, Somerset Rural Life Museum
“I retired from my post as Oxfordshire County Council’s heritage and arts officer in 2011, but I started my career as curator at the Somerset Rural Life Museum. I was appointed to set it up in 1974, so I am one of the few people with memories of the early days of the museum, created from a Victorian farm and the magnificent home barn of Glastonbury Abbey.
It’s a wonderful privilege being a Fellow and having the opportunity to revisit the displays and collections that I helped set up, and which are now being redeveloped.
I am working with a skilled and enthusiastic team based at Taunton, including a senior curator, two assistant curators and a designer. I am recording the early history of the museum and selecting the themes and objects for the new displays.
I am also bringing my knowledge of the site conversion and the acquisitions to this process, but also my memories of the people who donated objects. The human side of collecting sometimes gets forgotten.
Somerset Rural Life Museum now has a reputation for its oral history archives (thanks to huge voluntary effort), which it didn’t have in the earliest days, so I am helping to fill the gaps, some of which were my doing! It’s making me realise that memories are fallible but that it can all become a valuable part of the record.”
The knowledge and experiences of retired professionals in the sector is certainly proving of value in museums and galleries, as knowledge sharing and succession planning become ever-more crucial in these straitened financial times.
The Monument Fellowship scheme, which is run by the Museums Association (MA), was set up in 2006 to capture knowledge from retiring and retired specialists, and pass this on to new museum staff and the public.
The first round ran until 2011, and was funded by the Monument Trust. Arts Council England now funds the scheme, the second round of which started in 2012.
Current Fellows are sharing their knowledge on a range of subjects, from pop art to pearl molluscs, returning to their own museums or other institutions. Some may have been working at the museum on an informal basis, while others may have no direct connection.
There are 10 Fellows in England, plus three in Scotland funded by Museums Galleries Scotland and one in Wales funded by Cymal (Museums, Libraries and Archives, Wales). Fellows work with a range of staff, including collection managers, education, access and public programming teams as well as curators.
“We recognise that it’s difficult for many museums to find the time and resources to devote to the scheme, especially with the economic downturn,” says Caitlin Griffiths, a museum and gallery consultant who runs the scheme for the MA.
“They have to justify the time spent on the scheme and see tangible outcomes, so it’s important to plan it beforehand, to produce a workplan before people start.”
Changes in this current round mean that the time spent at the museum has been reduced to 30 days, so it is easier for organisations to accommodate it. The days are flexible and can be spread out across the year or taken together.
“Museums may be short staffed but the long-term benefits are worth it”, says Griffiths. “It’s particularly useful if there is a current project or exhibition, or other tangible outputs that they can see at the end, such as a web resource or redisplays.”
Griffiths visits the museums and talks through the practicalities: what they can realistically expect to achieve in 30 days; which members of staff would most benefit and how much time they need and are able to allocate; and how Fellows will access the material they need to look at – this can take a lot of time in itself.
A toolkit has been created to help museums that don’t have the resources to engage a Fellow. “One aspiration is that museums will use the scheme to road-test different approaches to capturing specialist knowledge beyond the scheme,” says Griffiths.
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist
Michael Freeman, Federation of Museums and Art Galleries of Wales
“I was curator of Ceredigion Museum, Aberystwyth, until my retirement in 2012. I’m working with seven or eight museums across the federation and I think this is unique for the Fellowship.
After 40 years of working in museums I have a lot of expertise and specialist knowledge, particularly in Welsh costume, a subject where there are very few studies but a lot of assumptions and misunderstandings.
Though the main thing I learned from 40 years of museum work is that I actually know very little about museum objects!
I am working with staff and volunteers at the selected museums, helping to catalogue their collections, and giving advice, for example on terminology, so that keywords can be used for online searches (in both Welsh and English).
I’m also planning a touring exhibition on 19th-century Welsh costume dolls, and will give public talks as another way of sharing knowledge. While the scheme is a great idea, for it to work well, it needs time.
Retired curators hold so much in their heads, but it’s difficult for working curators to spare the time for one-to-one meetings. In Wales many of the museums are small and run by one person plus an assistant if they are lucky, so it is quite a commitment.
Another major problem is the distance between museums, so it’s difficult for curators to travel to one central meeting point, and my travelling to them inevitably cuts down time spent with staff.
Brendan Flynn, Wolverhampton Art Gallery
“Wolverhampton Art Gallery has a renowned pop art collection and I was involved in developing it when I worked there in the 1970s. I am now working with a whole range of staff, from the present curatorial team to education, technical and front of house staff, revisiting the collection from a number of angles.
My reason for going back is to review the collection and look at what the vision for the gallery was at the time and how we went about the acquisitions, many of which were controversial works back then. It’s an opportunity to reflect on collecting policy, and on past and future interpretation.
I’m spending a lot of time in the store, talking one-to-one or to small groups in the presence of the art. It’s important to consider this collection in a regional context.
People are passing on and memories are fading, so it’s a record of the battles fought to acquire the pieces, thepersonalities involved, and the story of getting art into regional museums where collections were at a standstill.
There’s a lot of information in my head: conversations with artists, visits to dealers, and it’s the small change of one’s working life that can make a big difference.
Curators are rarely rooted in collections for long periods these days and this enlightened scheme partly addresses this problem.”
Fred Woodward, Glasgow Museums
“I started my career in 1958 at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington although I’d been working in museums since the age of 11, assisting with Saturday morning clubs in my hometown of Birmingham.
My posts have ranged from natural sciences to social history to art, but my specialism is freshwater molluscs, and I’ve worked in Liverpool, the north east, the Midlands, London and Glasgow.
In 1992 I took early retirement from my role as deputy keeper of natural history at Glasgow Museums, where I had been building up the shell collections.
As a Fellow, I am working at the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre with Richard Sutcliffe, research manager for natural history, and focusing on the mollusc collections.
I am talking through the specimens, while Richard makes notes and photographs notable ones.
I’m making links between the molluscs and other collections, particularly decorative arts, and in this way helping to break down barriers between natural sciences and other disciplines.
The idea is to bring out the mutuality of collections, for example between the pearl mussel specimens and how they are used in paintings and the decorative art collections. Then I will give a presentation, not just to the natural sciences team but also to the decorative arts and the learning and access staff, and the findings will go on the website.
In this way we are creating a knowledge legacy. And with the cutbacks it’s even more important that we capture this.”
Pauline Beswick, Museums Sheffield
“I worked at Sheffield City Museum between 1971 and 1994, rising to principal keeper of human history before I took early retirement and became a freelance pottery specialist.
Since then, the archaeology collection has had its ups and downs including having no curator for four years.
Last year the new director was able to fund a two-year curatorial post and asked me in to help make the collections more accessible through a Fellowship role.
I am working with the new curator, and her assistant, and the most pressing issue is to familiarise them with what’s in the collection and, with the South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire contexts, where most of the items are from.
It will be quite a challenge to do all this in 30 days but others have complementary skills in archive management. For me, it’s lovely to renew my acquaintance with favourite objects. I’ve been surprised at how much comes flooding back.
The collection has undergone two moves and is still not fully unpacked, so talking through this process unlocks a lot of information. We are linking my knowledge of the collections and people who excavated them with changes in interpretation over the years and where to go for different sources and opinions.
We will be involving more museum staff, and others, through handling sessions. Hopefully this will fire their imaginations and enthusiasm for the collection.”
Hilary Diaper, Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds
“Between the summer and the end of the year I will be working with the curator and two gallery assistants on succession planning. I was keeper of the university art collection between 1987 and 2010, but I started working with the collection in 1983, so there’s 30 years of knowledge and a lot of oral history to capture. There are 3,000 objects in the collection but there are still 100-200 pictures with little or no documentation.
First, I will help identify works of art or give my successors the tools to track the provenance. We will be looking at sources and I will write a manual or search guide to show them how to go about this. Second, I will help to organise the gallery exhibitions archive, and write a manual for this too.
I feel confident that the collection will be taken forward and made more accessible to the public, both online and through new exhibitions. It’s a lovely way to finish off my career and I feel good knowing that the collection has a future.”
Martyn Brown, Somerset Rural Life Museum
“I retired from my post as Oxfordshire County Council’s heritage and arts officer in 2011, but I started my career as curator at the Somerset Rural Life Museum. I was appointed to set it up in 1974, so I am one of the few people with memories of the early days of the museum, created from a Victorian farm and the magnificent home barn of Glastonbury Abbey.
It’s a wonderful privilege being a Fellow and having the opportunity to revisit the displays and collections that I helped set up, and which are now being redeveloped.
I am working with a skilled and enthusiastic team based at Taunton, including a senior curator, two assistant curators and a designer. I am recording the early history of the museum and selecting the themes and objects for the new displays.
I am also bringing my knowledge of the site conversion and the acquisitions to this process, but also my memories of the people who donated objects. The human side of collecting sometimes gets forgotten.
Somerset Rural Life Museum now has a reputation for its oral history archives (thanks to huge voluntary effort), which it didn’t have in the earliest days, so I am helping to fill the gaps, some of which were my doing! It’s making me realise that memories are fallible but that it can all become a valuable part of the record.”
