Putting natural history collections on the museum map
I read your correspondent’s contribution on this topic of natural history collections, Why do museums neglect the public’s favourite heritage?, with interest.
The Natural History Museum (NHM) saw an underlying rise in visitor numbers of more than 500,000 between 2005 and 2008, and a further big increase to 4.2m annual visits following the opening of our Darwin Centre in September 2009. We are convinced of a public appetite for engagement with issues relating to the natural world which well-presented natural history collections can provide.
The NHM’s 70 million collection items are an internationally important research resource and, therefore, a major infrastructure and part of the UK science base, as well as part of the nation’s cultural heritage. We recognise the need for greater coordination for museums that have natural history collections, as opposed to further centralisation, and believe this is an opportunity for national-regional partnerships.
We believe there could be enormous scientific value in terms of research use, as well as cultural and heritage value in knowing where natural history collections are, ensuring they are properly conserved and catalogued and good access is facilitated. Indeed, the museum has been a key player in ensuring that such collaboration is taking place across major European natural history collections with European Union funding.
We are keen to map where significant natural history collections are located across the UK and a major strategic theme for the NHM going forwards for the next five years will be about partnerships and the ways in which we can help coordinate and ensure the nation’s natural history collections are valued and preserved for the future. We welcome further discussion on this topic.
Michael Dixon, director, Natural History Museum, London
Museums Journal March 2010, p20
Edited out
I was looking forward to seeing St Andrews Museum’s exhibition HOTPOT [art, food + people] featured in the Opening This Month section, but on reading the entry, found that Fife Contemporary Art & Craft had been completely edited out.
Fife Contemporary Art & Craft initiated, organised and produced the exhibition, which was curated by our Scottish Arts Council trainee, Tonia Lu.
Our role as an agency working in partnership is an unusual one and we are therefore constantly striving to raise awareness and gain the recognition necessary for us to develop the service we provide across Fife.
In this case, the partnership of a contemporary visual art and craft organisation with Fife Council’s Libraries and Museums service is one which should have been of interest to the Museums Association as a different model for delivering exhibitions and bringing together different skills.
I hope that, following this letter, organisations that are interested in Fife Contemporary Art & Craft’s work with museums will be encouraged to find out more through our website and its associated social networking platforms.
Diana Sykes, director, Fife Contemporary Art & Craft, St Andrews
Museums Journal January 2010, p52
www.fcac.co.uk
Spinning the caption
As one of your more geriatric readers, I never cease to wonder at the refinement of the political correctness of many of the contributions to the Museums Journal; the earnestness, carried over from previous eras, of course remains.
In Helen Rees Leahy’s excellent article about the future of temporary exhibitions, however, I noticed a sly bit of spin in the caption to the Segedunum tombstone to young Victor. Although but 20, he died, not as a slave, but as a free man, as the inscription makes clear (in the second line). Big difference.
Max Craven, Derby
Museums Journal April 2010, p22
Remembering Ulster
Thank you for the article on the new Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I was keeper of arts at the museum from the early 1960s to early 1970s.
I was closely involved in the new art gallery being built on the upper floors of the Ulster Museum. The brown carpet in the temporary exhibition space was laid for me to help integrate the new building with the new one at that level.
The article mentions Philip King’s “trough”, which I remember buying and installing into the gallery, as I did work by Henry Moore and Isamu Noguchi.
I tried to buy for the gallery a mix of Irish, European and American works to help visitors take a balanced view of what was going on in Ireland and the rest of the world.
Acquisitions included works from Max Bill, Gainsborough’s Marquis of Donegal and Jack Butler Yeats’s Riverside, Long Ago, which used to haunt me as I walked around our rooms. We acquired a limited number of earlier European works to give perspective to the more modern pieces.
Everything I achieved was built on the foundations laid by my predecessor, Ann Cruickshank. After I became blind in 1971, the paintings and sculptures of the Ulster Museum have remained with me as a resource and inspiration.
James Ford-Smith, Cambridgeshire
Museums Journal January 2010, p44
Corrections and clarifications
DHA Design would like to point out that Arup Lighting provided the daylight control scheme in the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. All artificial lighting design, including display case lighting and architectural lighting, was by DHA Design.
Museums Journal March 2010, p49
I read your correspondent’s contribution on this topic of natural history collections, Why do museums neglect the public’s favourite heritage?, with interest.
The Natural History Museum (NHM) saw an underlying rise in visitor numbers of more than 500,000 between 2005 and 2008, and a further big increase to 4.2m annual visits following the opening of our Darwin Centre in September 2009. We are convinced of a public appetite for engagement with issues relating to the natural world which well-presented natural history collections can provide.
The NHM’s 70 million collection items are an internationally important research resource and, therefore, a major infrastructure and part of the UK science base, as well as part of the nation’s cultural heritage. We recognise the need for greater coordination for museums that have natural history collections, as opposed to further centralisation, and believe this is an opportunity for national-regional partnerships.
We believe there could be enormous scientific value in terms of research use, as well as cultural and heritage value in knowing where natural history collections are, ensuring they are properly conserved and catalogued and good access is facilitated. Indeed, the museum has been a key player in ensuring that such collaboration is taking place across major European natural history collections with European Union funding.
We are keen to map where significant natural history collections are located across the UK and a major strategic theme for the NHM going forwards for the next five years will be about partnerships and the ways in which we can help coordinate and ensure the nation’s natural history collections are valued and preserved for the future. We welcome further discussion on this topic.
Michael Dixon, director, Natural History Museum, London
Museums Journal March 2010, p20
Edited out
I was looking forward to seeing St Andrews Museum’s exhibition HOTPOT [art, food + people] featured in the Opening This Month section, but on reading the entry, found that Fife Contemporary Art & Craft had been completely edited out.
Fife Contemporary Art & Craft initiated, organised and produced the exhibition, which was curated by our Scottish Arts Council trainee, Tonia Lu.
Our role as an agency working in partnership is an unusual one and we are therefore constantly striving to raise awareness and gain the recognition necessary for us to develop the service we provide across Fife.
In this case, the partnership of a contemporary visual art and craft organisation with Fife Council’s Libraries and Museums service is one which should have been of interest to the Museums Association as a different model for delivering exhibitions and bringing together different skills.
I hope that, following this letter, organisations that are interested in Fife Contemporary Art & Craft’s work with museums will be encouraged to find out more through our website and its associated social networking platforms.
Diana Sykes, director, Fife Contemporary Art & Craft, St Andrews
Museums Journal January 2010, p52
www.fcac.co.uk
Spinning the caption
As one of your more geriatric readers, I never cease to wonder at the refinement of the political correctness of many of the contributions to the Museums Journal; the earnestness, carried over from previous eras, of course remains.
In Helen Rees Leahy’s excellent article about the future of temporary exhibitions, however, I noticed a sly bit of spin in the caption to the Segedunum tombstone to young Victor. Although but 20, he died, not as a slave, but as a free man, as the inscription makes clear (in the second line). Big difference.
Max Craven, Derby
Museums Journal April 2010, p22
Remembering Ulster
Thank you for the article on the new Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I was keeper of arts at the museum from the early 1960s to early 1970s.
I was closely involved in the new art gallery being built on the upper floors of the Ulster Museum. The brown carpet in the temporary exhibition space was laid for me to help integrate the new building with the new one at that level.
The article mentions Philip King’s “trough”, which I remember buying and installing into the gallery, as I did work by Henry Moore and Isamu Noguchi.
I tried to buy for the gallery a mix of Irish, European and American works to help visitors take a balanced view of what was going on in Ireland and the rest of the world.
Acquisitions included works from Max Bill, Gainsborough’s Marquis of Donegal and Jack Butler Yeats’s Riverside, Long Ago, which used to haunt me as I walked around our rooms. We acquired a limited number of earlier European works to give perspective to the more modern pieces.
Everything I achieved was built on the foundations laid by my predecessor, Ann Cruickshank. After I became blind in 1971, the paintings and sculptures of the Ulster Museum have remained with me as a resource and inspiration.
James Ford-Smith, Cambridgeshire
Museums Journal January 2010, p44
Corrections and clarifications
DHA Design would like to point out that Arup Lighting provided the daylight control scheme in the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. All artificial lighting design, including display case lighting and architectural lighting, was by DHA Design.
Museums Journal March 2010, p49
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
