Interpreting current events is a huge challenge for museums and often involves taking risks, rescheduling exhibition timetables, collecting hard-to-retrieve objects and conveying highly sensitive information and ideas at the forefront of public consciousness.
Responding to events as they unfold can take a lot of resources to do well, and budgets don’t always allow for exhibitions to be redesigned as regularly as a museum would like.
This was one of the challenges experienced by London’s National Maritime Museum when it put together an exhibition on migration at sea towards the end of last year.
Meanwhile, the Migration Museum Project faced challenges transporting objects for its forthcoming exhibition Call me by my name: stories from Calais and beyond.
Couriers in Greece were reluctant to ship 150 lifejackets that had been abandoned on the beaches of the Greek island of Kos. Money raised through crowdfunding made it possible to collect, store and ship the lifejackets and design the installation they will be used to create.
A sensitive approach was also required when engaging groups of migrants in the Calais camp, some of whom did not want their identities revealed ahead of their application for asylum.
As part of the project Multaqa: Museum as Meeting Point – Refugees as Guides in Berlin Museums, Syrian and Iraqi refugees are being trained as museum guides to provide tours at Museum für Islamische Kunst, the Vorderasiatisches Museum, the Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst and the Deutsches Historisches Museum.
The tours link historical objects to contemporary debates and focus on the cultural connections between Germany, Syria and Iraq.
"Through the depiction of such commonalities and the incorporation into a larger cultural and historical, epoch-transcending narrative, museums have the immense opportunity to function as a connecting link between the refugees’ countries of origin and their new host country, in order to create a context of meaning for their lives here," said the co-director of the project, Robert Winkler in a recent blog post.
National Museums Liverpool had to tread carefully when responding to events surrounding the Hillsborough disaster. Janet Dugdale, the director of the Museum of Liverpool says it was incredibly important to ensure that the institution’s values around social justice underpinned its approach.
The Museum of Liverpool is now in the process of reviewing existing interpretation on Hillsborough in light of the new inquest verdicts that show the Liverpool football fans were unlawfully killed at the crush at the stadium in 1989.
Janet Dugdale, the director of the Museum of Liverpool, says museums need to "understand their own motives" and consider what is in the public interest when responding to events such as Hillsborough.
"Museums need to consider what is in the public interest, what is ethical and of course take account of the law with legal advice, which is particularly important for ongoing investigations," she says.
"As with all museum work [we need] to be aware of the impact that the public platform can have on the people involved."
By contrast the New Walk Museum and Gallery in Leicester faces the challenge of charting one of football’s biggest success stories. It has postponed its summer exhibition Birds to make way for the show Fearless Foxes, which will document the football club’s extraordinary journey from facing relegation at the bottom of the league last year to becoming this season’s Premier League winners.
Matthew Constantine, the collections interpretation and learning manager at Leicester Arts and Museum Service says he hopes the exhibition will attract new audiences and show potential future sponsors what the institution is capable of.
Engaging people in a story of remarkable football victory might be easier than piquing their interest in heavy political debate. The People’s History Museum in Manchester, however, has taken a bold approach to ensuring people vote in the EU referendum.
To this end it has reconstructed the Eurotunnel in its entrance hall. When visitors walk through the tunnel they are confronted with a thorough breakdown of the key arguments for the UK remaining and leaving the EU.
The purpose of the installation is not to tell people which way to vote but that they must vote, says the curator Chris Burgess. “We want people to engage in the democratic process and we want people to engage in civil society. We have got a business plan that says that,” he adds.
However Burgess does acknowledge that because the People’s History Museum is run as an independent trust it is free from some of the “constraints” that may be placed on institutions run by local authorities.
“Traditionally museums have shied away from politics – they don’t usually do politics – but I think there is an appetite to change that.”
Responding to events as they unfold can take a lot of resources to do well, and budgets don’t always allow for exhibitions to be redesigned as regularly as a museum would like.
This was one of the challenges experienced by London’s National Maritime Museum when it put together an exhibition on migration at sea towards the end of last year.
Meanwhile, the Migration Museum Project faced challenges transporting objects for its forthcoming exhibition Call me by my name: stories from Calais and beyond.
Couriers in Greece were reluctant to ship 150 lifejackets that had been abandoned on the beaches of the Greek island of Kos. Money raised through crowdfunding made it possible to collect, store and ship the lifejackets and design the installation they will be used to create.
A sensitive approach was also required when engaging groups of migrants in the Calais camp, some of whom did not want their identities revealed ahead of their application for asylum.
As part of the project Multaqa: Museum as Meeting Point – Refugees as Guides in Berlin Museums, Syrian and Iraqi refugees are being trained as museum guides to provide tours at Museum für Islamische Kunst, the Vorderasiatisches Museum, the Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst and the Deutsches Historisches Museum.
The tours link historical objects to contemporary debates and focus on the cultural connections between Germany, Syria and Iraq.
"Through the depiction of such commonalities and the incorporation into a larger cultural and historical, epoch-transcending narrative, museums have the immense opportunity to function as a connecting link between the refugees’ countries of origin and their new host country, in order to create a context of meaning for their lives here," said the co-director of the project, Robert Winkler in a recent blog post.
National Museums Liverpool had to tread carefully when responding to events surrounding the Hillsborough disaster. Janet Dugdale, the director of the Museum of Liverpool says it was incredibly important to ensure that the institution’s values around social justice underpinned its approach.
The Museum of Liverpool is now in the process of reviewing existing interpretation on Hillsborough in light of the new inquest verdicts that show the Liverpool football fans were unlawfully killed at the crush at the stadium in 1989.
Janet Dugdale, the director of the Museum of Liverpool, says museums need to "understand their own motives" and consider what is in the public interest when responding to events such as Hillsborough.
"Museums need to consider what is in the public interest, what is ethical and of course take account of the law with legal advice, which is particularly important for ongoing investigations," she says.
"As with all museum work [we need] to be aware of the impact that the public platform can have on the people involved."
By contrast the New Walk Museum and Gallery in Leicester faces the challenge of charting one of football’s biggest success stories. It has postponed its summer exhibition Birds to make way for the show Fearless Foxes, which will document the football club’s extraordinary journey from facing relegation at the bottom of the league last year to becoming this season’s Premier League winners.
Matthew Constantine, the collections interpretation and learning manager at Leicester Arts and Museum Service says he hopes the exhibition will attract new audiences and show potential future sponsors what the institution is capable of.
Engaging people in a story of remarkable football victory might be easier than piquing their interest in heavy political debate. The People’s History Museum in Manchester, however, has taken a bold approach to ensuring people vote in the EU referendum.
To this end it has reconstructed the Eurotunnel in its entrance hall. When visitors walk through the tunnel they are confronted with a thorough breakdown of the key arguments for the UK remaining and leaving the EU.
The purpose of the installation is not to tell people which way to vote but that they must vote, says the curator Chris Burgess. “We want people to engage in the democratic process and we want people to engage in civil society. We have got a business plan that says that,” he adds.
However Burgess does acknowledge that because the People’s History Museum is run as an independent trust it is free from some of the “constraints” that may be placed on institutions run by local authorities.
“Traditionally museums have shied away from politics – they don’t usually do politics – but I think there is an appetite to change that.”