Opinion
Bosnia and Herzegovina needs our help
I have just become a witness to a story of exceptional museum resilience. This happened in October, when I was a keynote speaker at the Balkan Museum Network’s Balkan Museums Without Barriers conference in Sarajevo. The story unfolded in a museum at night. Many participants joined the tour of the National Museum of Bosnia and …
Consult non-visitors as well as visitors
What do visitors really think about our museum, gallery or heritage site? It is one of the key questions that we need to answer to run a successful venue. Ahead of our Museums Association conference session, Perceptions and Prejudice: Separating Fact from Fiction, Christina Lister, a cultural sector PR and communications specialist, and I undertook …
Help us rehabilitate curating
We all agree that museums need curators, but do we all agree on what it is that curators do? Are they holders of specialist collections knowledge? Cultural programmers? Custodians? Facilitators? Communicators? All of these, or none? Through the Art and Science of Curation project, we are beginning to map the rich and diverse landscape of …
Be vocal about your ethical responsibilities
Egyptian antiquities have long attracted steep premiums at auction, but prices have never been higher. At stake are professional reputations, public faith in museums and, above all, Egypt’s heritage. But what can the museum community do? For starters, we need to be more vocal about our ethical responsibilities as stewards of the past. Recently, the …
