“I’ve started here at a really key point,” says Lynn Scarff of her role as the director of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. She’s just six months into being the first female, first non-archaeologist and first external director of the organisation.
Overseeing the national museum, which was set up in 1887 and has four public sites, is a big job. But Scarff is a cool and confident character, and brings with her the experience of being the director of Dublin’s Science Gallery for nearly five years before joining the national museum.
It’s this outlook that she wants to bring to the National Museum of Ireland. “The museum has gone through quite a tumultuous period,” she says. “Following the recession in Ireland, like many organisations, we went through a severe drop in resources, which had quite an impact.”
Silver linings are Scarff’s speciality though, and her move has happened to dovetail perfectly with the release of the museum’s master vision, which she helped oversee as a board member before she took up her role as director.
Starting small, thinking big
“The master vision is a really important document in setting out our big ambition for the next 15 years,” she says. “We’re moving out of a period of the museum being very reactive into a period of trying to be much more strategic. A culture shift of that nature takes time, but it also requires everybody in the organisation singing from the same hymn sheet.”
To start that process, staff are being consulted about what the museum should be prioritising. The vision will be implemented in three five-year strategic plans.
The master vision is backed by an €85m grant as part of Project Ireland 2040, which was announced by the government in February this year. Scarff’s organisation is one of the beneficiaries of the total sum of €460m earmarked for investment in national cultural institutions.
“The huge advantage in Ireland is that we have a public who actually care about culture, so when the announcement was made around Project 2040 and all that investment in the capital infrastructure of our arts, there was no negative press,” says Scarff, who’ll be using part of the grant towards a redevelopment of the Natural History Museum, which is in the city centre.
“People have this real association with the museum and, because of the content, it’s very accessible,” she says. “What’s really exciting is that there’s a huge opportunity for us to think about how we maintain the historic building, but also look at our programming, our use of technology, the visitor experience and how we can start to draw out more of the museum.”
The €15m redevelopment of Dublin’s Natural History Museum is due for completion in 2021. Following that, the plan is to redevelop the Museum of Decorative Arts and History on Collins Barracks in Dublin, and the Museum of Country Life at Turlough Park in County Mayo.
National change
“It’s a really interesting time to be at the national museum and in Ireland because there are a lot of things shifting for us as a country,” Scarff says. “For instance, how we’re beginning to acknowledge some of the more seriously unsavoury elements of our past, like the Magdalene Laundries.”
With abortion becoming legal after the referendum in May, the mood in Ireland is changing, and Scarff’s appointment reflects that. Indeed, the museum team has been collecting items associated with the vote to help capture the historic moment. Projects such as this are key to Scarff’s agenda.
“As a museum we have a role to play in being a space where those kinds of trickier events and conversations can happen,” she says. “Culture often provides a place where we can explore those thornier issues in a more mediated and more facilitated way, which is perhaps less extreme and less polarised than when those conversations happen in a purely political context.”
Providing a space for discussion and debate is one thing, but what about all the objects the national museum holds? Scarff mentions the recent National Treasures exhibition at the Museum of Country Life, which was a huge success and entirely revolved around participatory practice.
“It was a collaboration between the museum, RTE, Ireland’s national broadcaster, and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, and it was a kind of disrupted Antiques Roadshow for want of a better description,” she says.
There was an online call for people to submit objects from contemporary life in Ireland from the last 100 years. Then there was a series of roadshows where people brought their objects in and met with historians and curators, and then a judging panel made a selection of what became the exhibition.
“The objects ranged from breast pumps used by women on Irish farms at the turn of the last century, to a Bosco mug, which was an animated character on television in the late 70s and 80s, to pornography magazines that were smuggled from the north to the south of Ireland, to a whole range of peculiar, weird and wonderful objects that people had up in their attic, in their garage or under their bed.”
Visitor numbers to Turlough Park increased 25% on the previous year. “What was beautiful about that process was the stories that those objects enabled people to tell,” Scarff says. “It’s the personal stories, social history, their family, their community that are the narratives that we latch onto as visitors. National Treasures was a real insight into how much our audience has a thirst for that.”
This kind of practice made up the core of Scarff’s work at the Science Gallery, but also in her prior role with the non-governmental organisation, Global Action Plan, who had been hired by Dublin’s city council to help develop community projects.
“My role was to work with schools, local community groups and communities, and get them to re-imagine how they wanted their new housing to look like, from what kind of trees to plant, how we engage together, to what the playground should look like and how we work together.”
This is what Scarff wants to bring to the four sites of the national museum: to activate it as a non-formal learning space, and do that through participatory practice.
Away from the redevelopment plans, Brexit is among the other issues that Scarff needs to consider.
“Logistically it’s going to be difficult,” she says. “Frankly, we would prefer that it wasn’t happening, I think it’s safe to say.”
But while Brexit could be challenging, Scarff is staying positive with so much else going on: “We’re quite lucky in Ireland at the moment.”
Lynn Scarff is taking part in Directors in Conversation at the Museums Association Conference and Exhibition in Belfast, 8-9 November. She will be talking with Hilary McGrady, the director-general of the National Trust, Kim Streets, the chief executive of Museums Sheffield and Kathryn Thomson, the chief executive officer and director at National Museums Northern Ireland
Lynn Scarff began as the director of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin in May.
She studied natural sciences at Trinity College Dublin and has an MSc in science communications from Dublin City University.
She worked as an environmental education consultant, before becoming an assistant manager for Global Action Plan in 2002, a non-governmental organisation that helps people live sustainable lives.
Scarff was appointed the education and outreach manager of the Science Gallery, part of Trinity College Dublin, in 2007. She became programme manager in 2011, then director in 2014. While there she sat on the board for the National Museum of Ireland.
The National Museum of Ireland has four sites — the Archaeology Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Museum of Decorative Arts and History are all in Dublin, and the Museum of Country Life is in Turlough Park, County Mayo.
Overseeing the national museum, which was set up in 1887 and has four public sites, is a big job. But Scarff is a cool and confident character, and brings with her the experience of being the director of Dublin’s Science Gallery for nearly five years before joining the national museum.
She started at the Science Gallery as the education and outreach officer a year before it opened to the public in 2008. The gallery presents an innovative programme that combines science and art, and Scarff was integral in making the venue a success. More than three million people have visited since it opened.
“The Science Gallery was really about creating a platform,” says Scarff. “It wasn’t necessarily about the objects or the artwork, but more about the people, the conversations, and how you create a space that propels people to talk.”It’s this outlook that she wants to bring to the National Museum of Ireland. “The museum has gone through quite a tumultuous period,” she says. “Following the recession in Ireland, like many organisations, we went through a severe drop in resources, which had quite an impact.”
Silver linings are Scarff’s speciality though, and her move has happened to dovetail perfectly with the release of the museum’s master vision, which she helped oversee as a board member before she took up her role as director.
Starting small, thinking big
“The master vision is a really important document in setting out our big ambition for the next 15 years,” she says. “We’re moving out of a period of the museum being very reactive into a period of trying to be much more strategic. A culture shift of that nature takes time, but it also requires everybody in the organisation singing from the same hymn sheet.”
To start that process, staff are being consulted about what the museum should be prioritising. The vision will be implemented in three five-year strategic plans.
The master vision is backed by an €85m grant as part of Project Ireland 2040, which was announced by the government in February this year. Scarff’s organisation is one of the beneficiaries of the total sum of €460m earmarked for investment in national cultural institutions.
“The huge advantage in Ireland is that we have a public who actually care about culture, so when the announcement was made around Project 2040 and all that investment in the capital infrastructure of our arts, there was no negative press,” says Scarff, who’ll be using part of the grant towards a redevelopment of the Natural History Museum, which is in the city centre.
“People have this real association with the museum and, because of the content, it’s very accessible,” she says. “What’s really exciting is that there’s a huge opportunity for us to think about how we maintain the historic building, but also look at our programming, our use of technology, the visitor experience and how we can start to draw out more of the museum.”
The €15m redevelopment of Dublin’s Natural History Museum is due for completion in 2021. Following that, the plan is to redevelop the Museum of Decorative Arts and History on Collins Barracks in Dublin, and the Museum of Country Life at Turlough Park in County Mayo.
National change
“It’s a really interesting time to be at the national museum and in Ireland because there are a lot of things shifting for us as a country,” Scarff says. “For instance, how we’re beginning to acknowledge some of the more seriously unsavoury elements of our past, like the Magdalene Laundries.”
With abortion becoming legal after the referendum in May, the mood in Ireland is changing, and Scarff’s appointment reflects that. Indeed, the museum team has been collecting items associated with the vote to help capture the historic moment. Projects such as this are key to Scarff’s agenda.
“As a museum we have a role to play in being a space where those kinds of trickier events and conversations can happen,” she says. “Culture often provides a place where we can explore those thornier issues in a more mediated and more facilitated way, which is perhaps less extreme and less polarised than when those conversations happen in a purely political context.”
Providing a space for discussion and debate is one thing, but what about all the objects the national museum holds? Scarff mentions the recent National Treasures exhibition at the Museum of Country Life, which was a huge success and entirely revolved around participatory practice.
“It was a collaboration between the museum, RTE, Ireland’s national broadcaster, and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, and it was a kind of disrupted Antiques Roadshow for want of a better description,” she says.
There was an online call for people to submit objects from contemporary life in Ireland from the last 100 years. Then there was a series of roadshows where people brought their objects in and met with historians and curators, and then a judging panel made a selection of what became the exhibition.
“The objects ranged from breast pumps used by women on Irish farms at the turn of the last century, to a Bosco mug, which was an animated character on television in the late 70s and 80s, to pornography magazines that were smuggled from the north to the south of Ireland, to a whole range of peculiar, weird and wonderful objects that people had up in their attic, in their garage or under their bed.”
Visitor numbers to Turlough Park increased 25% on the previous year. “What was beautiful about that process was the stories that those objects enabled people to tell,” Scarff says. “It’s the personal stories, social history, their family, their community that are the narratives that we latch onto as visitors. National Treasures was a real insight into how much our audience has a thirst for that.”
This kind of practice made up the core of Scarff’s work at the Science Gallery, but also in her prior role with the non-governmental organisation, Global Action Plan, who had been hired by Dublin’s city council to help develop community projects.
“My role was to work with schools, local community groups and communities, and get them to re-imagine how they wanted their new housing to look like, from what kind of trees to plant, how we engage together, to what the playground should look like and how we work together.”
This is what Scarff wants to bring to the four sites of the national museum: to activate it as a non-formal learning space, and do that through participatory practice.
Away from the redevelopment plans, Brexit is among the other issues that Scarff needs to consider.
“Logistically it’s going to be difficult,” she says. “Frankly, we would prefer that it wasn’t happening, I think it’s safe to say.”
But while Brexit could be challenging, Scarff is staying positive with so much else going on: “We’re quite lucky in Ireland at the moment.”
Lynn Scarff is taking part in Directors in Conversation at the Museums Association Conference and Exhibition in Belfast, 8-9 November. She will be talking with Hilary McGrady, the director-general of the National Trust, Kim Streets, the chief executive of Museums Sheffield and Kathryn Thomson, the chief executive officer and director at National Museums Northern Ireland
Lynn Scarff at a glance
Lynn Scarff began as the director of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin in May.
She studied natural sciences at Trinity College Dublin and has an MSc in science communications from Dublin City University.
She worked as an environmental education consultant, before becoming an assistant manager for Global Action Plan in 2002, a non-governmental organisation that helps people live sustainable lives.
Scarff was appointed the education and outreach manager of the Science Gallery, part of Trinity College Dublin, in 2007. She became programme manager in 2011, then director in 2014. While there she sat on the board for the National Museum of Ireland.
National Museum of Ireland at a glance
The National Museum of Ireland has four sites — the Archaeology Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Museum of Decorative Arts and History are all in Dublin, and the Museum of Country Life is in Turlough Park, County Mayo.
The Archaeology Museum has the highest annual visitor numbers at about 430,000. There are 174 staff across the four sites that are open to the public.
There is also a central resource collection and two other collections storage centres off site, with less public access.Most of the museum’s annual funding comes from the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.
