London calling
Tonya Nelson has packed a lot into a career that has seen her move from Washington lawyer to head of museums and collections at University College London. Simon Stephens meets her
Tonya Nelson’s former career as a Washington lawyer seems a far cry from her current role as the head of museums and collections at University College London (UCL).
But it was her law firm giving her a six-month sabbatical following work on a long legal case that gave Nelson the chance to do a short history of art course in the UK. She enjoyed the course so then took a master’s, again in Britain, and when this was completed she decided to stay in London and look for work in the cultural sector.
But even for a high-powered former Washington lawyer with a master’s degree, finding the right job was not easy.
“I knew I wanted to work in a museum but I had a really difficult time because I was one of those people who was sort of over-qualified for an entry-level role but under-qualified for a management role, and so people didn’t really know what to do with me,” Nelson says. “I was actually about to give up and move back to the United States because I couldn’t find a job.”
But then came one of those lucky breaks that most people need in their career: she saw an advert for Diversify, a Museums Association programme to help make the workforce more diverse. Not only this, as part of the training on offer, the London Transport Museum was looking for someone with governance experience as it was moving to trust status.
“With my legal practice I dealt with governance a lot, so obviously it was great for me and one of those lucky things, because how many other people were going to have that experience?” Nelson says.
The Diversify training programme gave Nelson a broad range of experience at the London Transport Museum and it also offered the chance to be mentored by its director, Sam Mullins. Nelson has not looked back since.
She became the museum’s head of governance and planning in 2008 and less than two years later was appointed manager of UCL’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.
Nelson says the experience she gained at the Petrie was really beneficial and was a nice contrast with her previous role at the London Transport Museum, which has about 120 staff and dwarfs the Petrie in terms of size.
“The Petrie Museum employs eight people, but I thought this is a really good way for me to develop my leadership skills,” Nelson says. “I decided that it would be really great to come to UCL and work at the museum and also really great to work with Sally MacDonald [the former director of museums and public engagement at UCL, who recently became the director of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester], who is really one of the top leaders in the sector. I’ve been lucky because Sam and Sally are both really well respected and really good mentors.”
Nelson spent nearly four years at the Petrie Museum, which included initiating the first redisplay of its collection in more than 50 years.
This was part of her plan to think about how to get the most out of a museum that only covers about 550 sq metres but has 80,000 objects. As well the redisplay, she also helped make the museum more accessible and easy to visit.
Engaging audiences
“I think before, because there was so much crammed in, it almost made people feel anxious,” Nelson says. “When I first started I definitely saw people who would walk in and just walk right out because it was just too overwhelming to face.
“So we put in some tables and chairs and it was really interesting how that simple clearing out made it so people actually stayed in the museum much longer.”
Nelson was also interested in the opportunities to engage new and existing audiences at the Petrie using digital technology, which included a project to look at the potential of 3D technology.
“It was immensely exciting to be in a place like UCL where the competence around digital innovation is huge,” she says. “To be able to draw on that resource and think about that question of digital engagement was a really exciting opportunity for me.”
This drive for the museum to engage the public better tallies with the wider aims of the university and is an important part of Nelson’s role as the head of museums and collections at UCL.
“The focus now is on universities demonstrating the impact and the value of their research – it’s not OK just to do research for the sake of research anymore,” Nelson says.
The emphasis is moving towards universities showing how their research can address the key issues faced by society, whether that’s climate control, terrorism or health and wellbeing. Nelson feels museums are well placed to play a role in this.
“It fits with what museums can do in terms of telling stories about things that happen in our society and translating research into stories and exhibitions.”
The move towards being more public-facing and having an impact on society also helps address a tension that can exist within university museums – how they can simultaneously serve the needs of the university and the public.
“There was always the sort of pendulum shifting where sometimes it would be completely internally focused, and it’s all about how you’re supporting teaching and research, and then the pendulum would go the other way, and it’s all about the public,” Nelson says. “I think now we’re getting to a point where there’s actually a good balance, and it’s good synergy – it’s not as if to serve one excludes the other.”
Nelson also feels that UCL’s broad collections sit nicely with the move towards universities working across departments. The three museums that UCL has were previously very much used for discipline-based research and teaching. But this is changing.
“Where UCL is going, and I think this is a trend across universities, is towards interdisciplinarity,” Nelson says. “So one of the things that I’ve been thinking about is how we can work better across the collections.”
Collections such as the Petrie’s are also very international, which fits well with the global nature of today’s universities, which attract students from all over the world.
Many museums are also used to operating internationally in terms of sharing expertise and this is one of the areas that Nelson has been involved in through her role as the associate director of a UCL international training school for museum professionals, which has been created in partnership with the British Council.
“What we wanted to do was provide a school that would be a place for people to come and be trained and to learn from us,” Nelson says. “But not necessarily to learn those standard things, like how you hang a painting, but things about community engagement.”
Nelson says that lots of countries see museums as tourist attractions but part of the role of the training school is to get people to think differently about what their museums and galleries could be.
Sustainable museums
“We wanted say that, in the UK, this is a model that we’ve pursued that might help with sustainability because, yes, you might have a tourist attraction but you may not, and if it doesn’t become a tourist attraction well, actually, museums are really good for community engagement and for schools. So I guess it’s challenging the international community to think about different models of how museums are used.”
Nelson has a number of challenges at UCL herself, some of them longstanding ones, such as the need to move the Petrie and its 80,000 objects to a far larger space.
The university is one of the institutions, alongside the Victoria and Albert Museum, that is involved in a plan to create a cultural hub at the former Olympic Park in east London. One of the proposals is for UCL to develop a centre for culture and heritage and this might provide opportunities to move some of the university’s collections away from its cramped central London campus in Bloomsbury.
More immediately, Nelson will have a new boss in the new year when Simon Cane joins from Birmingham Museums Trust as Sally MacDonald’s replacement.
Whoever the personnel and whatever the constraints on space at UCL, Nelson has some fantastic collections to work with and she is excited about the prospect of making the most of them.
“There are some really great discussions that can be had when you juxtapose different collections,” she says. “An object can tell a million stories, and the problem with a traditional museum is it typically boxes an object into one particular story.
"So if we can find interesting ways of taking those objects and re-contextualising them and having people think that this object can say many, many different things, you could really say a lot about them, and learn a lot from them – I think that’s all for the better.”
Tonya Nelson became the head of museums and collections at University College London (UCL) in January 2014. She was previously the manager at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, one of three museums run by UCL, which she joined in 2010.
Nelson grew up in Washington DC in the US and started in management consultancy before becoming a lawyer.
It was after taking a history of art course in the UK while on a sabbatical that Nelson decided that she wanted to pursue a career in the cultural sector.
After securing support from the Museums Association’s Diversify scheme, she trained at the London Transport Museum before becoming its head of governance and planning in 2008.
UCL has a wide range of collections, including geology, archaeology, ethnography, art, science and technology. These include a collection created by Francis Galton, a 19th-century scientist whose work influenced statistics, meteorology, criminology and eugenics.
The university is responsible for three museums: the Grant Museum of Zoology; the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology; and the UCL Art Museum.
UCL Museums and Collections employs about 30 staff and is part of the university’s department of Public and Cultural Engagement.
But it was her law firm giving her a six-month sabbatical following work on a long legal case that gave Nelson the chance to do a short history of art course in the UK. She enjoyed the course so then took a master’s, again in Britain, and when this was completed she decided to stay in London and look for work in the cultural sector.
But even for a high-powered former Washington lawyer with a master’s degree, finding the right job was not easy.
“I knew I wanted to work in a museum but I had a really difficult time because I was one of those people who was sort of over-qualified for an entry-level role but under-qualified for a management role, and so people didn’t really know what to do with me,” Nelson says. “I was actually about to give up and move back to the United States because I couldn’t find a job.”
But then came one of those lucky breaks that most people need in their career: she saw an advert for Diversify, a Museums Association programme to help make the workforce more diverse. Not only this, as part of the training on offer, the London Transport Museum was looking for someone with governance experience as it was moving to trust status.
“With my legal practice I dealt with governance a lot, so obviously it was great for me and one of those lucky things, because how many other people were going to have that experience?” Nelson says.
The Diversify training programme gave Nelson a broad range of experience at the London Transport Museum and it also offered the chance to be mentored by its director, Sam Mullins. Nelson has not looked back since.
She became the museum’s head of governance and planning in 2008 and less than two years later was appointed manager of UCL’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.
Nelson says the experience she gained at the Petrie was really beneficial and was a nice contrast with her previous role at the London Transport Museum, which has about 120 staff and dwarfs the Petrie in terms of size.
“The Petrie Museum employs eight people, but I thought this is a really good way for me to develop my leadership skills,” Nelson says. “I decided that it would be really great to come to UCL and work at the museum and also really great to work with Sally MacDonald [the former director of museums and public engagement at UCL, who recently became the director of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester], who is really one of the top leaders in the sector. I’ve been lucky because Sam and Sally are both really well respected and really good mentors.”
Nelson spent nearly four years at the Petrie Museum, which included initiating the first redisplay of its collection in more than 50 years.
This was part of her plan to think about how to get the most out of a museum that only covers about 550 sq metres but has 80,000 objects. As well the redisplay, she also helped make the museum more accessible and easy to visit.
Engaging audiences
“I think before, because there was so much crammed in, it almost made people feel anxious,” Nelson says. “When I first started I definitely saw people who would walk in and just walk right out because it was just too overwhelming to face.
“So we put in some tables and chairs and it was really interesting how that simple clearing out made it so people actually stayed in the museum much longer.”
Nelson was also interested in the opportunities to engage new and existing audiences at the Petrie using digital technology, which included a project to look at the potential of 3D technology.
“It was immensely exciting to be in a place like UCL where the competence around digital innovation is huge,” she says. “To be able to draw on that resource and think about that question of digital engagement was a really exciting opportunity for me.”
This drive for the museum to engage the public better tallies with the wider aims of the university and is an important part of Nelson’s role as the head of museums and collections at UCL.
“The focus now is on universities demonstrating the impact and the value of their research – it’s not OK just to do research for the sake of research anymore,” Nelson says.
The emphasis is moving towards universities showing how their research can address the key issues faced by society, whether that’s climate control, terrorism or health and wellbeing. Nelson feels museums are well placed to play a role in this.
“It fits with what museums can do in terms of telling stories about things that happen in our society and translating research into stories and exhibitions.”
The move towards being more public-facing and having an impact on society also helps address a tension that can exist within university museums – how they can simultaneously serve the needs of the university and the public.
“There was always the sort of pendulum shifting where sometimes it would be completely internally focused, and it’s all about how you’re supporting teaching and research, and then the pendulum would go the other way, and it’s all about the public,” Nelson says. “I think now we’re getting to a point where there’s actually a good balance, and it’s good synergy – it’s not as if to serve one excludes the other.”
Nelson also feels that UCL’s broad collections sit nicely with the move towards universities working across departments. The three museums that UCL has were previously very much used for discipline-based research and teaching. But this is changing.
“Where UCL is going, and I think this is a trend across universities, is towards interdisciplinarity,” Nelson says. “So one of the things that I’ve been thinking about is how we can work better across the collections.”
Collections such as the Petrie’s are also very international, which fits well with the global nature of today’s universities, which attract students from all over the world.
Many museums are also used to operating internationally in terms of sharing expertise and this is one of the areas that Nelson has been involved in through her role as the associate director of a UCL international training school for museum professionals, which has been created in partnership with the British Council.
“What we wanted to do was provide a school that would be a place for people to come and be trained and to learn from us,” Nelson says. “But not necessarily to learn those standard things, like how you hang a painting, but things about community engagement.”
Nelson says that lots of countries see museums as tourist attractions but part of the role of the training school is to get people to think differently about what their museums and galleries could be.
Sustainable museums
“We wanted say that, in the UK, this is a model that we’ve pursued that might help with sustainability because, yes, you might have a tourist attraction but you may not, and if it doesn’t become a tourist attraction well, actually, museums are really good for community engagement and for schools. So I guess it’s challenging the international community to think about different models of how museums are used.”
Nelson has a number of challenges at UCL herself, some of them longstanding ones, such as the need to move the Petrie and its 80,000 objects to a far larger space.
The university is one of the institutions, alongside the Victoria and Albert Museum, that is involved in a plan to create a cultural hub at the former Olympic Park in east London. One of the proposals is for UCL to develop a centre for culture and heritage and this might provide opportunities to move some of the university’s collections away from its cramped central London campus in Bloomsbury.
More immediately, Nelson will have a new boss in the new year when Simon Cane joins from Birmingham Museums Trust as Sally MacDonald’s replacement.
Whoever the personnel and whatever the constraints on space at UCL, Nelson has some fantastic collections to work with and she is excited about the prospect of making the most of them.
“There are some really great discussions that can be had when you juxtapose different collections,” she says. “An object can tell a million stories, and the problem with a traditional museum is it typically boxes an object into one particular story.
"So if we can find interesting ways of taking those objects and re-contextualising them and having people think that this object can say many, many different things, you could really say a lot about them, and learn a lot from them – I think that’s all for the better.”
Tonya Nelson at a glance
Tonya Nelson became the head of museums and collections at University College London (UCL) in January 2014. She was previously the manager at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, one of three museums run by UCL, which she joined in 2010.
Nelson grew up in Washington DC in the US and started in management consultancy before becoming a lawyer.
It was after taking a history of art course in the UK while on a sabbatical that Nelson decided that she wanted to pursue a career in the cultural sector.
After securing support from the Museums Association’s Diversify scheme, she trained at the London Transport Museum before becoming its head of governance and planning in 2008.
UCL Museums and Collections at a glance
UCL has a wide range of collections, including geology, archaeology, ethnography, art, science and technology. These include a collection created by Francis Galton, a 19th-century scientist whose work influenced statistics, meteorology, criminology and eugenics.
The university is responsible for three museums: the Grant Museum of Zoology; the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology; and the UCL Art Museum.
UCL Museums and Collections employs about 30 staff and is part of the university’s department of Public and Cultural Engagement.