A way with words, some experience gained either as practitioner or punter, and a decent following on social media enable bloggers to paint museums and galleries in a whole new light.
Freed from the shackles of a “party line” or an exhibition press release, commentators ranging from student volunteers to seasoned professionals are sharing their innermost thoughts, in-jokes and inside information about life in the cultural sector.
Visitors, too, are voicing opinions on all kinds of museum experiences, from the family-friendly to the faintly ridiculous, the unmissable to the unmemorable.
As a result, many museums have developed a more human face, some unloved and previously neglected objects have a new audience, and many of these part-time cultural chroniclers have enhanced professional profiles and job prospects. It all seems to be win-win on the face of it.
Mark Carnall
Collections manager (Life Collections), Oxford University Museum of Natural History
“I do tend to get the odd bee in my bonnet,” says Mark Carnall, an irreverent and inveterate blogger on all matters museological.
While his musings on institutional websites are full of funny, fascinating insights into the dead creatures in the collections he manages at Oxford University Museum of Natural History, his personal blog catalogues the curiosities of life as a contemporary museum professional. It’s a digital outlet Carnall keeps for those propositions too provocative for official museum postings.
Alongside observations about how one should really tackle job applications and research inquiries, Carnall likes to raise the sort of questions museum folk chew over between conference sessions: “Why don’t more men work in museums, for instance,” he says. “And are degrees in museum studies really necessary?
“You can often feel nervous about putting things out there, but the beauty of the blog format is that someone can say they think I am wrong and list their reasons for challenging me.”
Carnall’s blogs also provide a vehicle for the kind of information not usually featured in gallery catalogues and exhibition labels.
“In a typical exhibition the content isn’t attributed to a source, so blogging allows me a more personal voice,” he says.
“So much of what we do is geared towards popular exhibitions, but museums often struggle with how to retain all that research when everything’s demounted and packed away in gallery stores. We can use blogs to create an anchor point for legacy content, as well as the chance to talk about the large proportion of natural history collections that may not fit the ‘star specimen’ criteria.”
Carnall’s knowledge is more often than not dispensed with a sizeable chunk of humour to attract blog readers who aren’t natural history nerds or museum buffs.
“You could go round most natural history museums with a bingo card ticking off the same specimens and the same half-dozen narratives. It’s the staff interpreting them that make an institution unique,” he says.
He illustrates the point with the “Underwhelming Fossil Fish of the Month” blog post he produces for University College London, which takes a wry look at deeply uninteresting specimens from the stores and drawers of the university’s Grant Museum of Zoology.
One of his favourite museum blog posts was published in February this year by the staff of the Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading: a mouse dodged all security measures and gained entrance to the collection, only to perish when it wandered into – of all things – a 150-year-old mousetrap that was on display.
“The ‘sensible’ old museum approach would have been to keep quiet about having a mouse in the stores,” says Carnall. “But they blogged about the incident and pointed out the unfortunate rodent was not in the object records. It was hilarious – very human – and it went viral.”
https://fistfulofcinctans.wordpress.com
http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/tag/underwhelming-fossil-fish-of-the-month
Katharine Alston
Freelance educator at the Imperial War Museums, teacher, education researcher
When teacher Katharine Alston started to supplement her young daughter’s formal education with weekly museum visits, she embarked on a voyage of discovery of her own as well.
“The critical moment came at Down House, the home of Charles Darwin,” Alston says. “We had started keeping scrapbooks about our visits, and I assumed that our day there would focus on the Origin of Species, barnacles and so on, but my daughter wrote about Darwin’s sister and how her education compared to his.”
Alston realised that family experiences and learning in museums could be a very varied and powerful force so she began to volunteer in institutions to find out more, as well as undertaking a PhD in family/intergenerational learning.
She now works part-time in digital learning at the Imperial War Museum in London, and blogs about her family’s trips to cultural attractions.
“I record what really happens in these places and highlight possible learning experiences that don’t necessarily focus on the collections. I want to encourage non-museum professionals not to be frightened, not to take things too seriously and to know that it’s OK to look beyond the actual history and possibly find out something about each other,” Alston says.
“I also hope museum people read my blogs because I champion this approach but I’m aware there’s a debate around informal learning at the moment, largely because it cannot be quantified.”
Even though she records her own activities, Alston says she’s careful not to fall into the navel-gazing trap that ensnares so many blogs.
“I also decided that I was always going to be kind, even if I was making the odd criticism. I don’t write reviews because that’s boring; all I’m saying is ‘look what happened when we went there’.”
One of her typical blog entries records a trip with her mother to the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter, built around the Scottish director’s collection of film memorabilia. “I’m not a film buff so it was about what we discussed and the objects that reminded my mum of her youth, such as the film magazines she collected, or the Mickey Mouse baking cases.”
http://artefactsobjects.blogspot.co.uk
Donna Yates
Lecturer in antiquities trafficking and art crime, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow
Having completed her PhD and looking to land a job in the field of illicit antiquities research a few years ago, Donna Yates created a new blog based on a parody of the unreliable provenances that often accompany questionable relics.
The blog now features art crime news articles, careers advice and book reviews too. “People, with what they think is ‘information’, get in touch to offer what they know,” she says. “It is often wild yet believable stories about dodgy dealers, but I also receive emails from people with photographs of supposed looting or trafficking activities.”
She adopts a very personal writing style for the blog: “In my book reviews I tend to talk a lot about what I was experiencing while reading. I now know, for example, that if you are leafing through a book about bog bodies while sitting in the middle seat of an aeroplane, someone next to you will more than likely see them and get upset.
“My blogs convey my real thoughts, not sanitised academic cogitations. I try to speak from a place of expertise but as if I were talking to a friend. My linguistic quirks – I’m originally from America’s deep south – also probably create a sense of approachability.”
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking they have to blog every day or every week, adds Yates.
“I only post when I have something to say and that in no way detracts from the value or the number of readers a post gets. Indeed, you do best when readers trust that whatever you post is solid. Quality over quantity, I say.”
www.anonymousswisscollector.com
Charlotte Morgan
Outreach intern, Mansfield Museum
Having graduated with an MA in museum studies from Leicester last year, Charlotte Morgan is currently working part-time in outreach and community work at Mansfield Museum in Nottinghamshire. Her blog Museumings has the subtitle “thoughts of an emerging museum professional”.
“I started blogging as a way of recording how I felt about visits we made as part of the course, and to write about things that wouldn’t make it into my essays,” she says. “I now use blogging as a way to track my progress at work, as well as record the events and projects with which I’m involved.
“I have never had a particular audience in mind; the blog is mostly for me,” says Morgan. “There’s a great online museum community and plenty of other great blogs around – they are an excellent place to get the latest information about exhibitions, sector developments, even jobs.”
https://charmorgan92.wordpress.com
Kristin Hussey and Terri Dendy
The Ministry of Curiosity
A desire to portray museums as hip and happening joints for London’s cutting-edge chin-strokers drives the Ministry of Curiosity blog, which began when anthropology graduate Terri Dendy and medical historian Kristin Hussey met at work in the Science Museum stores.
“We like to prompt discussions within the museum community, especially on subjects which can be a little taboo, like breaking your first object, pet hates of museum work or even rubbish canapés at openings,” says Hussey.
“We also love industry in-jokes and museum specialist nerdiness; as a non-affiliated museum blog, we can say the things other people can’t, but we like to give an insider’s glimpse into what museum work is actually like for people who aren’t in the field or would like to be.”
A key theme of the blog is gaining – and staying in – that all-important first museum professional post.
“Job descriptions and adverts can be really confusing, so we feel a duty to other young people to help demystify the process. A lot of the job-hunting resources on the site have been specifically requested by our readers. We are especially passionate about women reaching the top of any existent hierarchy in museums,” Hussey adds.
http://theministryofcuriosity.blogspot.co.uk
Claire Madge
Volunteer, Museum of London
Looking for something different to do after leaving her job in the LSE library in 2012, Claire Madge became an online evangelist for museums and the good they can do.
“It was just me writing about some museum visits,” she says. “It was like a CV, because I didn’t work for a while and I’d worried about quitting my job. I never dreamed it would get as busy as it is now.”
Madge subsequently started to volunteer at her local museum, later joining its learning and participation panel. This, in turn, led to collection care volunteering at the Museum of London.
“I was handling Roman architecture that had been found at a site just down the road from where we live,” she says. “Each week, I wrote about what we were doing, mainly just for sharing among museum staff.”
She gained a wider audience after recording a family visit to the Science Museum’s Early Birds autism-friendly events (her daughter has autistic spectrum disorder).
“I blogged about how lovely the experience was and the article was viewed more than 1,000 times in one day. I realised that people wanted events like that and that museum professionals wanted to know how to do them.
“I must admit that I’d go a bit mad if I just wrote about autism all the time, but museums approached me for advice on how they could improve what they offered.”
The blog has led to invitations to all kinds of events and conferences – “which is good because some of them can be very expensive to attend” – as well as a tour of duty as blogger-in-residence for the RAF Museum’s First World War in the Air exhibition.
“I hesitated a little because I wasn’t sure where I was going with the blog, and I need to earn money too, but I enjoy the writing and the chance to learn,” says Madge. “I got to dress the mannequins and see the planes at close quarters as well as explore the history of the Hendon aerodrome.
“I had to think about how I wrote about it all, because you can’t be gung-ho. Some of the blog posts were a challenge, especially the day I met some of the relatives of the
Red Baron.”
https://tinctureofmuseum.wordpress.com/
Freed from the shackles of a “party line” or an exhibition press release, commentators ranging from student volunteers to seasoned professionals are sharing their innermost thoughts, in-jokes and inside information about life in the cultural sector.
Visitors, too, are voicing opinions on all kinds of museum experiences, from the family-friendly to the faintly ridiculous, the unmissable to the unmemorable.
As a result, many museums have developed a more human face, some unloved and previously neglected objects have a new audience, and many of these part-time cultural chroniclers have enhanced professional profiles and job prospects. It all seems to be win-win on the face of it.
Mark Carnall
Collections manager (Life Collections), Oxford University Museum of Natural History
“I do tend to get the odd bee in my bonnet,” says Mark Carnall, an irreverent and inveterate blogger on all matters museological.
While his musings on institutional websites are full of funny, fascinating insights into the dead creatures in the collections he manages at Oxford University Museum of Natural History, his personal blog catalogues the curiosities of life as a contemporary museum professional. It’s a digital outlet Carnall keeps for those propositions too provocative for official museum postings.
Alongside observations about how one should really tackle job applications and research inquiries, Carnall likes to raise the sort of questions museum folk chew over between conference sessions: “Why don’t more men work in museums, for instance,” he says. “And are degrees in museum studies really necessary?
“You can often feel nervous about putting things out there, but the beauty of the blog format is that someone can say they think I am wrong and list their reasons for challenging me.”
Carnall’s blogs also provide a vehicle for the kind of information not usually featured in gallery catalogues and exhibition labels.
“In a typical exhibition the content isn’t attributed to a source, so blogging allows me a more personal voice,” he says.
“So much of what we do is geared towards popular exhibitions, but museums often struggle with how to retain all that research when everything’s demounted and packed away in gallery stores. We can use blogs to create an anchor point for legacy content, as well as the chance to talk about the large proportion of natural history collections that may not fit the ‘star specimen’ criteria.”
Carnall’s knowledge is more often than not dispensed with a sizeable chunk of humour to attract blog readers who aren’t natural history nerds or museum buffs.
“You could go round most natural history museums with a bingo card ticking off the same specimens and the same half-dozen narratives. It’s the staff interpreting them that make an institution unique,” he says.
He illustrates the point with the “Underwhelming Fossil Fish of the Month” blog post he produces for University College London, which takes a wry look at deeply uninteresting specimens from the stores and drawers of the university’s Grant Museum of Zoology.
One of his favourite museum blog posts was published in February this year by the staff of the Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading: a mouse dodged all security measures and gained entrance to the collection, only to perish when it wandered into – of all things – a 150-year-old mousetrap that was on display.
“The ‘sensible’ old museum approach would have been to keep quiet about having a mouse in the stores,” says Carnall. “But they blogged about the incident and pointed out the unfortunate rodent was not in the object records. It was hilarious – very human – and it went viral.”
https://fistfulofcinctans.wordpress.com
http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/tag/underwhelming-fossil-fish-of-the-month
You could go round most natural history museums with a bingo card ticking off the same specimens and the same half-dozen narratives. It’s the staff interpreting them that make an institution"
Katharine Alston
Freelance educator at the Imperial War Museums, teacher, education researcher
When teacher Katharine Alston started to supplement her young daughter’s formal education with weekly museum visits, she embarked on a voyage of discovery of her own as well.
“The critical moment came at Down House, the home of Charles Darwin,” Alston says. “We had started keeping scrapbooks about our visits, and I assumed that our day there would focus on the Origin of Species, barnacles and so on, but my daughter wrote about Darwin’s sister and how her education compared to his.”
Alston realised that family experiences and learning in museums could be a very varied and powerful force so she began to volunteer in institutions to find out more, as well as undertaking a PhD in family/intergenerational learning.
She now works part-time in digital learning at the Imperial War Museum in London, and blogs about her family’s trips to cultural attractions.
“I record what really happens in these places and highlight possible learning experiences that don’t necessarily focus on the collections. I want to encourage non-museum professionals not to be frightened, not to take things too seriously and to know that it’s OK to look beyond the actual history and possibly find out something about each other,” Alston says.
“I also hope museum people read my blogs because I champion this approach but I’m aware there’s a debate around informal learning at the moment, largely because it cannot be quantified.”
Even though she records her own activities, Alston says she’s careful not to fall into the navel-gazing trap that ensnares so many blogs.
“I also decided that I was always going to be kind, even if I was making the odd criticism. I don’t write reviews because that’s boring; all I’m saying is ‘look what happened when we went there’.”
One of her typical blog entries records a trip with her mother to the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter, built around the Scottish director’s collection of film memorabilia. “I’m not a film buff so it was about what we discussed and the objects that reminded my mum of her youth, such as the film magazines she collected, or the Mickey Mouse baking cases.”
http://artefactsobjects.blogspot.co.uk
Donna Yates
Lecturer in antiquities trafficking and art crime, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow
Having completed her PhD and looking to land a job in the field of illicit antiquities research a few years ago, Donna Yates created a new blog based on a parody of the unreliable provenances that often accompany questionable relics.
The blog now features art crime news articles, careers advice and book reviews too. “People, with what they think is ‘information’, get in touch to offer what they know,” she says. “It is often wild yet believable stories about dodgy dealers, but I also receive emails from people with photographs of supposed looting or trafficking activities.”
She adopts a very personal writing style for the blog: “In my book reviews I tend to talk a lot about what I was experiencing while reading. I now know, for example, that if you are leafing through a book about bog bodies while sitting in the middle seat of an aeroplane, someone next to you will more than likely see them and get upset.
“My blogs convey my real thoughts, not sanitised academic cogitations. I try to speak from a place of expertise but as if I were talking to a friend. My linguistic quirks – I’m originally from America’s deep south – also probably create a sense of approachability.”
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking they have to blog every day or every week, adds Yates.
“I only post when I have something to say and that in no way detracts from the value or the number of readers a post gets. Indeed, you do best when readers trust that whatever you post is solid. Quality over quantity, I say.”
www.anonymousswisscollector.com
Charlotte Morgan
Outreach intern, Mansfield Museum
Having graduated with an MA in museum studies from Leicester last year, Charlotte Morgan is currently working part-time in outreach and community work at Mansfield Museum in Nottinghamshire. Her blog Museumings has the subtitle “thoughts of an emerging museum professional”.
“I started blogging as a way of recording how I felt about visits we made as part of the course, and to write about things that wouldn’t make it into my essays,” she says. “I now use blogging as a way to track my progress at work, as well as record the events and projects with which I’m involved.
“I have never had a particular audience in mind; the blog is mostly for me,” says Morgan. “There’s a great online museum community and plenty of other great blogs around – they are an excellent place to get the latest information about exhibitions, sector developments, even jobs.”
https://charmorgan92.wordpress.com
Kristin Hussey and Terri Dendy
The Ministry of Curiosity
A desire to portray museums as hip and happening joints for London’s cutting-edge chin-strokers drives the Ministry of Curiosity blog, which began when anthropology graduate Terri Dendy and medical historian Kristin Hussey met at work in the Science Museum stores.
“We like to prompt discussions within the museum community, especially on subjects which can be a little taboo, like breaking your first object, pet hates of museum work or even rubbish canapés at openings,” says Hussey.
“We also love industry in-jokes and museum specialist nerdiness; as a non-affiliated museum blog, we can say the things other people can’t, but we like to give an insider’s glimpse into what museum work is actually like for people who aren’t in the field or would like to be.”
A key theme of the blog is gaining – and staying in – that all-important first museum professional post.
“Job descriptions and adverts can be really confusing, so we feel a duty to other young people to help demystify the process. A lot of the job-hunting resources on the site have been specifically requested by our readers. We are especially passionate about women reaching the top of any existent hierarchy in museums,” Hussey adds.
http://theministryofcuriosity.blogspot.co.uk
Claire Madge
Volunteer, Museum of London
Looking for something different to do after leaving her job in the LSE library in 2012, Claire Madge became an online evangelist for museums and the good they can do.
“It was just me writing about some museum visits,” she says. “It was like a CV, because I didn’t work for a while and I’d worried about quitting my job. I never dreamed it would get as busy as it is now.”
Madge subsequently started to volunteer at her local museum, later joining its learning and participation panel. This, in turn, led to collection care volunteering at the Museum of London.
“I was handling Roman architecture that had been found at a site just down the road from where we live,” she says. “Each week, I wrote about what we were doing, mainly just for sharing among museum staff.”
She gained a wider audience after recording a family visit to the Science Museum’s Early Birds autism-friendly events (her daughter has autistic spectrum disorder).
“I blogged about how lovely the experience was and the article was viewed more than 1,000 times in one day. I realised that people wanted events like that and that museum professionals wanted to know how to do them.
“I must admit that I’d go a bit mad if I just wrote about autism all the time, but museums approached me for advice on how they could improve what they offered.”
The blog has led to invitations to all kinds of events and conferences – “which is good because some of them can be very expensive to attend” – as well as a tour of duty as blogger-in-residence for the RAF Museum’s First World War in the Air exhibition.
“I hesitated a little because I wasn’t sure where I was going with the blog, and I need to earn money too, but I enjoy the writing and the chance to learn,” says Madge. “I got to dress the mannequins and see the planes at close quarters as well as explore the history of the Hendon aerodrome.
“I had to think about how I wrote about it all, because you can’t be gung-ho. Some of the blog posts were a challenge, especially the day I met some of the relatives of the
Red Baron.”
https://tinctureofmuseum.wordpress.com/