What brings you joy in museums? This year’s Museums Association conference made me think about what has given me joy.
Comedian Daliso Chaponda asking: “How did these things get here?” raised a laugh at the World Museum in Liverpool; and sashaying into the Magnus Hastings (drag) Queen exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery brought me joy. Reading the applications for the Museum Change Lives awards was also a
genuine pleasure.
What else? The exuberant jazz hands welcome at Showtown, Blackpool’s museum of fun; keeping a straight face at the Private Parts show at Leeds’ Thackray Museum of Medicine; dancing in the dark with a VR headset on at Birmingham Museums’ In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats; going underground at the National Coal Mining Museum; being blinded by the bling of the Weapons of Mass Seduction at Leeds’ Royal Armouries; and getting to grips with our Entangled Pasts at the Royal Academy of Arts – all engaging, challenging and joyful in different ways.
Last but not least, the opening programme of the Museum of Homelessness, with its powerful storytelling sessions and its slogan “Resistance is Joy”. The museum’s poet-in-residence, Surfing Sofas, was at our conference in Leeds. What more joy could you want?