The term “hollowing out” is heard in many museums, but it is not a reference to some terrible pest infestation eating into objects. In fact, it is the term being used to describe the loss of expertise in museums. Particularly prevalent in regional organisations, this depletion of skill is the outcome of ongoing budget cuts in the sector and the resulting job losses.
Neil MacGregor, the former director of the British Museum, London, recently warned that the loss of specialist knowledge is making it difficult for some museums to borrow from other institutions or use their own collections effectively.
Of course, savage cutbacks have not just seen a reduction in specialist curators in museums – the loss of expertise also applies to areas such as education, outreach and audience development, all just as vital for the effective running of cultural establishments such as these.
But there is no doubt that curators in regional institutions are among those who have been at the sharp end of the cuts. And this has led to soul-searching among a number of Subject Specialist Networks (SSNs), a varied group of organisations that support subject-specific collections.
There are many questions that SSNs need to address: how can they best support museums that hold specialist collections but lack the expertise to interpret and display them? How can they help museums use collections to reach new audiences? How can these networks successfully advocate for specialist collections? How can they support museums threatened with closure or under pressure to sell items from their collections?
Addressing the challenges
Museums Journal recently attended a round table with a number of SSN representatives to tackle some of these issues and to look at what the future might hold.
SSNs are as varied as the collections they represent. There are about 45 of them in the UK and they are all run differently. Some, such as the Society for Museum Archaeology, have existed for more than 40 years. Others have developed in recent years, such as the one for Islamic Art and Material Culture, created in 2012.
Some networks are free to join, others have a subscription fee. Sizes differ too: Understanding British Portraits has about 1,200 members, while the Association for Curators of Collections from Egypt and Sudan has just 16, though its activities are open to the whole sector.
But, despite their differences, these networks have a lot in common. For instance, many engage with members and non-members in similar ways, by offering events, skill sharing, training, publications and informative websites. Many are run on goodwill, with people offering their time to sit on committees and attend meetings free of charge. This reliance on volunteers is one of the challenges they face, particularly among the smaller groups.
The Musical Instrument Collections network struggles to organise events and activities, according to its chairwoman, Mimi Waitzman, who is the deputy keeper of musical instruments at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in London. “We don’t have a dedicated website and the information online is out of date, so we need help to get ourselves up and running,” Waitzman says. “We know there is a need for musical instrument expertise in the country, especially with the demise of certain high-profile musical instrument collections such as the one at the Victoria and Albert Museum.”
Some SSNs have secured funding to support a paid professional position, which has allowed them to expand the scope of their work. But even for those networks with funding, the issue of how they sustain themselves once the money runs out remains.
Speaking out
In spite of these challenges, those involved in SSNs are passionate about their specialisms and the role that collections can play in engaging audiences. But there is a need to communicate what they offer more widely.
There are multiple Egyptian and Sudanese collections across the country, for example, yet there are few specialists working in museums. The core of the Egyptian and Sudanese network is made up of the specialist curators who do exist, says Alice Stevenson, a curator at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL, and the chairwoman of the Association of Curators for Collections from Egypt and Sudan. “We know there’s a need for our support, but it’s how we communicate that need and make contact with museums to let them know we’re here,” Stevenson says.
Funding from Arts Council England (ACE) has been helping some networks by developing skills and training so that museums can use their specialist collections better to engage audiences. The Islamic Art and Material Culture SSN secured a Museum Resilience Fund grant of just over £124,000 from ACE in 2015.
“Part of the reason for this is that there’s a clear need, because of the potential for Islamic art collections to reach out and diversify audiences, and that’s what ACE was particularly interested in,” says Rebecca Bridgman, a curator at Birmingham Museums and the chairwoman of the Islamic Art and Material Culture SSN.
Bridgman has been using some of the ACE money to work with three organisations: Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery, Wednesbury Museum and Art Gallery, and Powell Cotton Museum in Kent.
“The emphasis has not just been on helping them identify what they have got, but also on working out how to use it and how to engage their local communities,” Bridgman says. “Engagement with our SSN is a big move forward, because the perception of a lot of these networks is that they’re niche, anorak organisations, made up of people who are only interested in specific things.”
Broader appeal
The network for numismatics – the study or collection of coins, banknotes and medals – has been working hard to encourage museums to make more of such collections. Henry Flynn from the British Museum is the project curator for the Money and Medals Network. “The network exists to build and develop relationships between museums and other public institutions that have collections of coins, medals, banknotes, tokens and associated objects,” Flynn says. “It’s a surprisingly broad subject, but one that’s always been seen as niche.”
The Money and Medals Network also has arts council money, and some of it is used to map numismatic holdings in public institutions. Flynn also provides training, visiting museums to see what they have in their collections and giving advice on storage, interpretation, display, education and even outreach.
“Some people are intimidated by numismatic collections,” Flynn says. “If you’re working in a regional museum and don’t have specialist knowledge of the subject, it is likely you’ll leave the objects in storage. My role tries to encourage people to change that attitude and engage the public with these objects. Public perception is perhaps that coins are boring but I encourage people to realise that they’re not; you can tell interesting stories by displaying them.”
Such initiatives are part of a move by some SSNs to reach out to the wider sector. In some cases this has involved thinking about their identity.
The Society of Museum Archaeologists changed its name a couple of years ago to the Society For Museum Archaeology (SMA). “We were aware that the name was deterring people from joining because they felt they had to be a professional in a museum. But actually we are concerned with everybody who has an interest in archaeology in a museum setting, not necessarily just curators,” says Gail Boyle, the senior curator of archaeology for Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives, and the chairwoman of the SMA. “We are particularly interested in trying to reach people working in museums who are not archaeology specialists.”
The Social History Curators Group (SHCG), with its annual conference, website and various publications, is one of the more active SSNs, but it has also been thinking about its future role.
“We are called the Social History Curators Group, but we would like to appeal to more than just curators,” says Catherine Newley, the audience development manager at St Albans Museums and chairwoman of the SHCG. “It supports anyone who deals with social history, which is something that’s becoming more shared across disciplines. And the fact that a lot of other disciplines are starting to take a social history approach to their work is making us think about what the future is for social history curators.”
Other SSNs have been expanding their work by reaching out directly to the public.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work with fossil festivals,” says Giles Miller, a senior curator in the department of earth sciences at London’s Natural History Museum and the chairman of the Geological Curators Group. “But all these activities cost money, because people want expenses paid, so that’s been an issue for us.”
Some SSNs have been looking at how they can support members of the public who are trying to protect their local museums from budget cuts. This includes thinking about how to respond to recent developments such as Lancashire County Council’s plan to close five of its museums and Northampton Borough Council’s controversial sale of the ancient Egyptian statue Sekhemka.
“The community groups are the ones that need our help in terms of advocating for collections that are under threat,” says Boyle. “We want to tell community groups that we exist where an expert doesn’t, and they could come to our SSN for support. That’s something we want to crack.”
There are three key areas for SSNs to focus on: how to share best practice with each other, how to work with the wider sector and how to engage with the public – they are all obviously interested in widening their membership base.
Working in partnership
The round table discussion for Museums Journal has already led to closer cooperation between SSNs through the establishment of an email list so that the groups can communicate with each other better. Some SSNs, such as the Natural Sciences Collections Association (Natsca) and the Geological Curators Group, are also looking at submitting joint funding bids to ACE.
“We signed a memorandum of understanding with the Geological Curators Group a couple of years ago,” says Paolo Viscardi, the chairman of Natsca and a curator at the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL. “We’re putting in a joint bid with it for resilience funding because what we want to do overlaps so much that it seems silly not to join forces. Working together will hopefully reduce workloads and get a good outcome.”
The Understanding British Portraits network, led by Caroline Pegum at London’s National Portrait Gallery, is also hoping to build on its collaborative work.
“In March last year, we worked in a three-way collaboration with the British Art group and the European Paintings Pre-1900 network, and put together a two-day event that was hugely successful, so we’re going to reprise that model in 2018,” Pegum says. “The ubiquity of British portraits in collections means that we’re spoilt for choice in terms of linking up with other networks.”
Working in partnership with each other and the wider sector is one of the best ways for SSNs to extend their reach. “What we’re doing well at the moment is breaking down barriers across the sector as far as archaeology is concerned,” Boyle says. “We are talking to other organisations and trying to stop siloed working, because we understand that working together better is the future. We need to be able to fight each other’s corner, not just fight on our own.”
If SSNs can realise their ambitions to work more closely with each other, increase their support for museums and engage with the public, there should be real benefits for the sector.
Number of members: 193
Annual membership fee: individual subscription £20; unwaged £15; institutional subscription £25
Website: geocurator.org
Association of Curators for Collections from Egypt and Sudan
Number of members: 16 (activities open to anyone in museum sector)
Annual membership fee: free
Website: accesssn.wordpress.com
Islamic Art and Material Culture Subject Specialist Network
Number of members: 163
Annual membership fee: free
Website: krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/iamcssn/index.php/en
Dress and Textile Specialists
Number of members: 120 individual members; around 50 institutional members
Annual membership fee: individual £18; institutional £35; institutional plus (more than 10 members) £50
Website: dressandtextilespecialists.org.uk
Natural Sciences Collections Association
Number of members: 250
Annual membership fee: individual £20; student/unwaged £15; institutional £40
Website: natsca.org
Money and Medals Network
Number of members: 200
Annual membership fee: free
Website: moneyandmedals.org.uk
Musical Instrument Subject Specialist Network
Number of members: 12
Annual membership fee: free
Website: under construction, contact enquiry@horniman.ac.uk for information
Understanding British Portraits
Number of members: more than 1,250 professionals subscribe to monthly e-newsletter
Annual membership fee: free
Website: britishportraits.org.uk
Society for Museum Archaeology
Number of members: 241
Annual membership fee: full membership £20; concession (student/retired) £12; institutional or international £30
Website: socmusarch.org.uk
Social History Curators Group
Number of members: 250
Annual membership fee: individual digital/print membership £18/£32; student/unemployed digital membership £8; institutional membership £48/£60 depending on size
Website: shcg.org.uk
There will be a session at the Museums Association Conference in Glasgow (7-9 November) on the future of Subject Specialist Networks and how they can support the sector. The speakers are Caroline Pegum from Understanding British Portraits; Gail Boyle from the Society for Museum Archaeology; and Paolo Viscardi from the Natural Sciences Collections Association. The chair will be John Orna-Ornstein, the director of museums at Arts Council England
Neil MacGregor, the former director of the British Museum, London, recently warned that the loss of specialist knowledge is making it difficult for some museums to borrow from other institutions or use their own collections effectively.
Of course, savage cutbacks have not just seen a reduction in specialist curators in museums – the loss of expertise also applies to areas such as education, outreach and audience development, all just as vital for the effective running of cultural establishments such as these.
But there is no doubt that curators in regional institutions are among those who have been at the sharp end of the cuts. And this has led to soul-searching among a number of Subject Specialist Networks (SSNs), a varied group of organisations that support subject-specific collections.
There are many questions that SSNs need to address: how can they best support museums that hold specialist collections but lack the expertise to interpret and display them? How can they help museums use collections to reach new audiences? How can these networks successfully advocate for specialist collections? How can they support museums threatened with closure or under pressure to sell items from their collections?
Addressing the challenges
Museums Journal recently attended a round table with a number of SSN representatives to tackle some of these issues and to look at what the future might hold.
SSNs are as varied as the collections they represent. There are about 45 of them in the UK and they are all run differently. Some, such as the Society for Museum Archaeology, have existed for more than 40 years. Others have developed in recent years, such as the one for Islamic Art and Material Culture, created in 2012.
Some networks are free to join, others have a subscription fee. Sizes differ too: Understanding British Portraits has about 1,200 members, while the Association for Curators of Collections from Egypt and Sudan has just 16, though its activities are open to the whole sector.
But, despite their differences, these networks have a lot in common. For instance, many engage with members and non-members in similar ways, by offering events, skill sharing, training, publications and informative websites. Many are run on goodwill, with people offering their time to sit on committees and attend meetings free of charge. This reliance on volunteers is one of the challenges they face, particularly among the smaller groups.
The Musical Instrument Collections network struggles to organise events and activities, according to its chairwoman, Mimi Waitzman, who is the deputy keeper of musical instruments at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in London. “We don’t have a dedicated website and the information online is out of date, so we need help to get ourselves up and running,” Waitzman says. “We know there is a need for musical instrument expertise in the country, especially with the demise of certain high-profile musical instrument collections such as the one at the Victoria and Albert Museum.”
Some SSNs have secured funding to support a paid professional position, which has allowed them to expand the scope of their work. But even for those networks with funding, the issue of how they sustain themselves once the money runs out remains.
Speaking out
In spite of these challenges, those involved in SSNs are passionate about their specialisms and the role that collections can play in engaging audiences. But there is a need to communicate what they offer more widely.
There are multiple Egyptian and Sudanese collections across the country, for example, yet there are few specialists working in museums. The core of the Egyptian and Sudanese network is made up of the specialist curators who do exist, says Alice Stevenson, a curator at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL, and the chairwoman of the Association of Curators for Collections from Egypt and Sudan. “We know there’s a need for our support, but it’s how we communicate that need and make contact with museums to let them know we’re here,” Stevenson says.
Funding from Arts Council England (ACE) has been helping some networks by developing skills and training so that museums can use their specialist collections better to engage audiences. The Islamic Art and Material Culture SSN secured a Museum Resilience Fund grant of just over £124,000 from ACE in 2015.
“Part of the reason for this is that there’s a clear need, because of the potential for Islamic art collections to reach out and diversify audiences, and that’s what ACE was particularly interested in,” says Rebecca Bridgman, a curator at Birmingham Museums and the chairwoman of the Islamic Art and Material Culture SSN.
Bridgman has been using some of the ACE money to work with three organisations: Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery, Wednesbury Museum and Art Gallery, and Powell Cotton Museum in Kent.
“The emphasis has not just been on helping them identify what they have got, but also on working out how to use it and how to engage their local communities,” Bridgman says. “Engagement with our SSN is a big move forward, because the perception of a lot of these networks is that they’re niche, anorak organisations, made up of people who are only interested in specific things.”
Broader appeal
The network for numismatics – the study or collection of coins, banknotes and medals – has been working hard to encourage museums to make more of such collections. Henry Flynn from the British Museum is the project curator for the Money and Medals Network. “The network exists to build and develop relationships between museums and other public institutions that have collections of coins, medals, banknotes, tokens and associated objects,” Flynn says. “It’s a surprisingly broad subject, but one that’s always been seen as niche.”
The Money and Medals Network also has arts council money, and some of it is used to map numismatic holdings in public institutions. Flynn also provides training, visiting museums to see what they have in their collections and giving advice on storage, interpretation, display, education and even outreach.
“Some people are intimidated by numismatic collections,” Flynn says. “If you’re working in a regional museum and don’t have specialist knowledge of the subject, it is likely you’ll leave the objects in storage. My role tries to encourage people to change that attitude and engage the public with these objects. Public perception is perhaps that coins are boring but I encourage people to realise that they’re not; you can tell interesting stories by displaying them.”
Such initiatives are part of a move by some SSNs to reach out to the wider sector. In some cases this has involved thinking about their identity.
The Society of Museum Archaeologists changed its name a couple of years ago to the Society For Museum Archaeology (SMA). “We were aware that the name was deterring people from joining because they felt they had to be a professional in a museum. But actually we are concerned with everybody who has an interest in archaeology in a museum setting, not necessarily just curators,” says Gail Boyle, the senior curator of archaeology for Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives, and the chairwoman of the SMA. “We are particularly interested in trying to reach people working in museums who are not archaeology specialists.”
The Social History Curators Group (SHCG), with its annual conference, website and various publications, is one of the more active SSNs, but it has also been thinking about its future role.
“We are called the Social History Curators Group, but we would like to appeal to more than just curators,” says Catherine Newley, the audience development manager at St Albans Museums and chairwoman of the SHCG. “It supports anyone who deals with social history, which is something that’s becoming more shared across disciplines. And the fact that a lot of other disciplines are starting to take a social history approach to their work is making us think about what the future is for social history curators.”
Other SSNs have been expanding their work by reaching out directly to the public.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work with fossil festivals,” says Giles Miller, a senior curator in the department of earth sciences at London’s Natural History Museum and the chairman of the Geological Curators Group. “But all these activities cost money, because people want expenses paid, so that’s been an issue for us.”
Some SSNs have been looking at how they can support members of the public who are trying to protect their local museums from budget cuts. This includes thinking about how to respond to recent developments such as Lancashire County Council’s plan to close five of its museums and Northampton Borough Council’s controversial sale of the ancient Egyptian statue Sekhemka.
“The community groups are the ones that need our help in terms of advocating for collections that are under threat,” says Boyle. “We want to tell community groups that we exist where an expert doesn’t, and they could come to our SSN for support. That’s something we want to crack.”
There are three key areas for SSNs to focus on: how to share best practice with each other, how to work with the wider sector and how to engage with the public – they are all obviously interested in widening their membership base.
We know there’s a need for our support, but it’s how we make contact with museums to let them know we’re here."
Working in partnership
The round table discussion for Museums Journal has already led to closer cooperation between SSNs through the establishment of an email list so that the groups can communicate with each other better. Some SSNs, such as the Natural Sciences Collections Association (Natsca) and the Geological Curators Group, are also looking at submitting joint funding bids to ACE.
“We signed a memorandum of understanding with the Geological Curators Group a couple of years ago,” says Paolo Viscardi, the chairman of Natsca and a curator at the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL. “We’re putting in a joint bid with it for resilience funding because what we want to do overlaps so much that it seems silly not to join forces. Working together will hopefully reduce workloads and get a good outcome.”
The Understanding British Portraits network, led by Caroline Pegum at London’s National Portrait Gallery, is also hoping to build on its collaborative work.
“In March last year, we worked in a three-way collaboration with the British Art group and the European Paintings Pre-1900 network, and put together a two-day event that was hugely successful, so we’re going to reprise that model in 2018,” Pegum says. “The ubiquity of British portraits in collections means that we’re spoilt for choice in terms of linking up with other networks.”
Working in partnership with each other and the wider sector is one of the best ways for SSNs to extend their reach. “What we’re doing well at the moment is breaking down barriers across the sector as far as archaeology is concerned,” Boyle says. “We are talking to other organisations and trying to stop siloed working, because we understand that working together better is the future. We need to be able to fight each other’s corner, not just fight on our own.”
If SSNs can realise their ambitions to work more closely with each other, increase their support for museums and engage with the public, there should be real benefits for the sector.
Subject specialist networks at the MJ round table
Geological Curators GroupNumber of members: 193
Annual membership fee: individual subscription £20; unwaged £15; institutional subscription £25
Website: geocurator.org
Association of Curators for Collections from Egypt and Sudan
Number of members: 16 (activities open to anyone in museum sector)
Annual membership fee: free
Website: accesssn.wordpress.com
Islamic Art and Material Culture Subject Specialist Network
Number of members: 163
Annual membership fee: free
Website: krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/iamcssn/index.php/en
Dress and Textile Specialists
Number of members: 120 individual members; around 50 institutional members
Annual membership fee: individual £18; institutional £35; institutional plus (more than 10 members) £50
Website: dressandtextilespecialists.org.uk
Natural Sciences Collections Association
Number of members: 250
Annual membership fee: individual £20; student/unwaged £15; institutional £40
Website: natsca.org
Money and Medals Network
Number of members: 200
Annual membership fee: free
Website: moneyandmedals.org.uk
Musical Instrument Subject Specialist Network
Number of members: 12
Annual membership fee: free
Website: under construction, contact enquiry@horniman.ac.uk for information
Understanding British Portraits
Number of members: more than 1,250 professionals subscribe to monthly e-newsletter
Annual membership fee: free
Website: britishportraits.org.uk
Society for Museum Archaeology
Number of members: 241
Annual membership fee: full membership £20; concession (student/retired) £12; institutional or international £30
Website: socmusarch.org.uk
Social History Curators Group
Number of members: 250
Annual membership fee: individual digital/print membership £18/£32; student/unemployed digital membership £8; institutional membership £48/£60 depending on size
Website: shcg.org.uk
There will be a session at the Museums Association Conference in Glasgow (7-9 November) on the future of Subject Specialist Networks and how they can support the sector. The speakers are Caroline Pegum from Understanding British Portraits; Gail Boyle from the Society for Museum Archaeology; and Paolo Viscardi from the Natural Sciences Collections Association. The chair will be John Orna-Ornstein, the director of museums at Arts Council England