Plea for an end to the "nationals debt"
Eva Bredsdorff's comment (Museums Journal August 2008, p39) that "the challenge for small museums is to keep having temporary exhibitions" rings very true.
Over the last couple of years I have requested permission from six museums represented at the National Museum Directors' Conference to reproduce images from their collections in temporary exhibitions that I have curated.
In all but one case, a fee for the use of the image (not the cost of supply) has been charged. The scales have varied, and assurances have been given that it is at a favourable rate, but that is beside the point.
Museums should not be paying each other - let alone nationals - for the use of images of objects in their collections at all. What price a dispersed national collection if even an image for exhibition in another museum is seen primarily as a source of income?
Museums that rise to the challenge of mounting temporary exhibitions need all the help they can get if they are to thrive and survive.
John Goldsmith, curator, Cromwell Museum, Huntingdon
AMA 1: exam notes
The premises related in your article concerning a revamped Associate of the Museums Association (AMA) are misleading (Museums Journal August 2008, p32).
I was on the board of studies and examiners for the old diploma and an examiner in a theoretical paper and the practical. AMA status was awarded by election following successful completion of the diploma. You could hold the diploma without being an AMA. What it attempted to be was "a licence to drive a museum".
The presumption that not being asked if the applicant is an AMA at interview indicates low esteem is nonsense. I would expect that this vital characteristic should have been covered in the person specification and subsequent application.
Mark Taylor is very wrong to imply that the practical examination only required people to say how they would exhibit an item.
The primary purpose of the practical was to discover the candidate's abilities in handling and deductive reasoning, with matters like opinions about items or interpretation a secondary factor.
You could pass the practical if you got the identification wrong, providing that you demonstrated the right knowledge of sources of expertise and the need to check your opinion.
The loss of the practical is a major factor in the loss of collections knowledge and expertise in smaller museums and the loss of a pool of such people for larger museums.
As examiners we sought to ensure that a balance between identification, conservation and use was managed. We also agreed a scheme of marking and kept copious notes to enable us to discuss the results.
What we learned was how candidates approached strange objects; how they handled them; how they understood them; and how they explained themselves. Other, written, papers tested managerial and theoretical knowledge.
The practical was a strenuous examination for both the examiners and the candidates, but it did highlight those who had an affinity with the core of the museum profession - collections. Sadly, the theoretical approach which is prevalent in modern training and testing systems is losing that ability to differentiate the passionate from the indifferent.
People who never get a real kick out of specimens have no place in our profession - they are like surgeons who view patients as simply lumps of meat. If their sole ambition is to be the senior manager of an institution, they should join a supermarket chain.
For those who have a genuine love of collections, there must be recognition that this does not preclude them from managerial skills or ambition.
These are the people we need to nurture. We do, however, need to find some way of sorting the purely managerial from the passionate curators - a term sadly forgotten.
Malcolm J Watkins
AMA 2: exam woes
I was concerned to read Julie Nightingale's article stating that the AMA is currently under review. I'm due to complete the AMA in July 2009 and this is the first I've heard of the review.
The article doesn't provide advice on what to do if you are a prospective AMA candidate.although the weblink includes a sentence to say you can complete. I would appreciate the MA's views on whether the qualification pre-September 2009 will be viewed by the sector as obsolete? And what impact will the changes have on continuing development after the AMA?
Emily Allen, exhibitions officer, Tyne and Wear Museums, Sunderland
Why we are reviewing
The review of the AMA offers us a great chance to acknowledge the hard work and achievements of those who have been awarded or are working towards the AMA, just over 1,000 people, and to make sure the scheme keeps up to date with the changing needs of the sector. Any amendments to the scheme will in no way affect the status of the current AMA.
We are consulting widely as part of the review and want as many people as possible to contribute their views, which they can do by visiting the MA's website, where people currently doing the AMA can also find information on how any amendments to the scheme will affect them.
Most people already registered for the AMA will probably not be affected by any changes, but they should contact the MA if they have any questions.
Caitlin Griffiths, head of professional issues, Museums Association
Co-operative spirit
I enjoyed reading Felicity Heywood's account of her visit to the Walter Roth Museum in Georgetown, Guyana (Museums Journal April 2008, p19). It brought back pleasant memories of my own visit there some years ago.
Walter Roth is of interest to the museum profession. He was not an explorer, though he did spend substantial periods working among Indian peoples in isolated parts of then British Guiana. Roth was a medical magistrate in Guyana from 1907 until his retirement in 1928 when he was appointed curator of Georgetown Museum.
His main contribution was three substantial books on Guyananese Indian cultures published by the Smithsonian Institution. Unfortunately the rich ethnographic collections he put together were destroyed when the museum burned down some years after his death. Luckily he made duplicate collections that can be seen in the British Museum and elsewhere in Europe.
Roth also had the distinction of laying the foundations of Queensland Aboriginal studies here in Australia at the turn of the century. Much of his work on languages and cultures was published, and provided a valuable basis on which later anthropologists and historians have been able to build.
His collections form the core of the Queensland Aboriginal collections in the Queensland Museums and also in the State Museums in Sydney and Melbourne.
The Roth family was important to the early museum movement. Walter's brother, Henry Ling Roth, was also an anthropologist and worked at the Bankfield Museum in Halifax, in the UK. Another brother was on the Benin Expedition in the 1890s from when the Benin collection in the British Museum dates.
For readers interested, The Roth Family, Anthropology and Colonial Administration edited by Russell McDougall and Iain Davidson was published by Left Coast Press earlier this year.
Barrie Reynolds, Wentworth Falls, NSW Australia
Corrections
In the project data panels that accompanied the reviews of Designs for Life, Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead (Museums Journal June 2008, p52) and Museum of Childhood, Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire (Museums Journal July 2008, p54), the display cases should have been credited to Conservation by Design.
Eva Bredsdorff's comment (Museums Journal August 2008, p39) that "the challenge for small museums is to keep having temporary exhibitions" rings very true.
Over the last couple of years I have requested permission from six museums represented at the National Museum Directors' Conference to reproduce images from their collections in temporary exhibitions that I have curated.
In all but one case, a fee for the use of the image (not the cost of supply) has been charged. The scales have varied, and assurances have been given that it is at a favourable rate, but that is beside the point.
Museums should not be paying each other - let alone nationals - for the use of images of objects in their collections at all. What price a dispersed national collection if even an image for exhibition in another museum is seen primarily as a source of income?
Museums that rise to the challenge of mounting temporary exhibitions need all the help they can get if they are to thrive and survive.
John Goldsmith, curator, Cromwell Museum, Huntingdon
AMA 1: exam notes
The premises related in your article concerning a revamped Associate of the Museums Association (AMA) are misleading (Museums Journal August 2008, p32).
I was on the board of studies and examiners for the old diploma and an examiner in a theoretical paper and the practical. AMA status was awarded by election following successful completion of the diploma. You could hold the diploma without being an AMA. What it attempted to be was "a licence to drive a museum".
The presumption that not being asked if the applicant is an AMA at interview indicates low esteem is nonsense. I would expect that this vital characteristic should have been covered in the person specification and subsequent application.
Mark Taylor is very wrong to imply that the practical examination only required people to say how they would exhibit an item.
The primary purpose of the practical was to discover the candidate's abilities in handling and deductive reasoning, with matters like opinions about items or interpretation a secondary factor.
You could pass the practical if you got the identification wrong, providing that you demonstrated the right knowledge of sources of expertise and the need to check your opinion.
The loss of the practical is a major factor in the loss of collections knowledge and expertise in smaller museums and the loss of a pool of such people for larger museums.
As examiners we sought to ensure that a balance between identification, conservation and use was managed. We also agreed a scheme of marking and kept copious notes to enable us to discuss the results.
What we learned was how candidates approached strange objects; how they handled them; how they understood them; and how they explained themselves. Other, written, papers tested managerial and theoretical knowledge.
The practical was a strenuous examination for both the examiners and the candidates, but it did highlight those who had an affinity with the core of the museum profession - collections. Sadly, the theoretical approach which is prevalent in modern training and testing systems is losing that ability to differentiate the passionate from the indifferent.
People who never get a real kick out of specimens have no place in our profession - they are like surgeons who view patients as simply lumps of meat. If their sole ambition is to be the senior manager of an institution, they should join a supermarket chain.
For those who have a genuine love of collections, there must be recognition that this does not preclude them from managerial skills or ambition.
These are the people we need to nurture. We do, however, need to find some way of sorting the purely managerial from the passionate curators - a term sadly forgotten.
Malcolm J Watkins
AMA 2: exam woes
I was concerned to read Julie Nightingale's article stating that the AMA is currently under review. I'm due to complete the AMA in July 2009 and this is the first I've heard of the review.
The article doesn't provide advice on what to do if you are a prospective AMA candidate.although the weblink includes a sentence to say you can complete. I would appreciate the MA's views on whether the qualification pre-September 2009 will be viewed by the sector as obsolete? And what impact will the changes have on continuing development after the AMA?
Emily Allen, exhibitions officer, Tyne and Wear Museums, Sunderland
Why we are reviewing
The review of the AMA offers us a great chance to acknowledge the hard work and achievements of those who have been awarded or are working towards the AMA, just over 1,000 people, and to make sure the scheme keeps up to date with the changing needs of the sector. Any amendments to the scheme will in no way affect the status of the current AMA.
We are consulting widely as part of the review and want as many people as possible to contribute their views, which they can do by visiting the MA's website, where people currently doing the AMA can also find information on how any amendments to the scheme will affect them.
Most people already registered for the AMA will probably not be affected by any changes, but they should contact the MA if they have any questions.
Caitlin Griffiths, head of professional issues, Museums Association
Co-operative spirit
I enjoyed reading Felicity Heywood's account of her visit to the Walter Roth Museum in Georgetown, Guyana (Museums Journal April 2008, p19). It brought back pleasant memories of my own visit there some years ago.
Walter Roth is of interest to the museum profession. He was not an explorer, though he did spend substantial periods working among Indian peoples in isolated parts of then British Guiana. Roth was a medical magistrate in Guyana from 1907 until his retirement in 1928 when he was appointed curator of Georgetown Museum.
His main contribution was three substantial books on Guyananese Indian cultures published by the Smithsonian Institution. Unfortunately the rich ethnographic collections he put together were destroyed when the museum burned down some years after his death. Luckily he made duplicate collections that can be seen in the British Museum and elsewhere in Europe.
Roth also had the distinction of laying the foundations of Queensland Aboriginal studies here in Australia at the turn of the century. Much of his work on languages and cultures was published, and provided a valuable basis on which later anthropologists and historians have been able to build.
His collections form the core of the Queensland Aboriginal collections in the Queensland Museums and also in the State Museums in Sydney and Melbourne.
The Roth family was important to the early museum movement. Walter's brother, Henry Ling Roth, was also an anthropologist and worked at the Bankfield Museum in Halifax, in the UK. Another brother was on the Benin Expedition in the 1890s from when the Benin collection in the British Museum dates.
For readers interested, The Roth Family, Anthropology and Colonial Administration edited by Russell McDougall and Iain Davidson was published by Left Coast Press earlier this year.
Barrie Reynolds, Wentworth Falls, NSW Australia
Corrections
In the project data panels that accompanied the reviews of Designs for Life, Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead (Museums Journal June 2008, p52) and Museum of Childhood, Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire (Museums Journal July 2008, p54), the display cases should have been credited to Conservation by Design.
Write to: the editor, Museums Journal, 24 Calvin Street, London E1 6NW, email: journal@museumsassociation.org
Museums Journal reserves the right to edit letters
Museums Journal reserves the right to edit letters
