Opinion
Your quick guide to the honours system
Did you scan the Queen’s birthday honours list, checking enviously for names you know? Would you – like Benjamin Zephaniah (“I get angry when I hear the word empire”) or Francis Bacon (“It’s so ageing”) – spurn an honour if it were offered? Whatever you feel about the system, there is no doubt that an …
Social justice isn’t easy, but it’s important
In Museums, Equality and Social Justice, our collection of essays by leading practitioners and thinkers in the field, Richard Sandell and I argue that museums, galleries and heritage organisations have the capacity to shape, as well as reflect, social and political relations. We also believe they can have a positive impact on people who have …
One in the eye for Shakespeare
As one of the lead partners in a new project to digitise the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s historic archive for smartphone users, I’m keen to draw the attention of your readers to the recently launched Eye Shakespeare app. The app has been developed jointly by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Coventry University’s Serious Games Institute (SGI), Hewlett …
Value for money
In the past I have berated the Museums Association (MA) for organising its annual conference in such a way that the costs were prohibitive and accessible only to senior management with scant regard for their employers’ value for money. I fully expected to see the usual £1,000 package for full participation in the conference. However, unless …
Unsundered
Sunderland has not quit Tyne & Wear Museums as the city council has not taken such a decision. A group from the Friends of Sunderland Museums met the cabinet member for culture and the Sunderland City Council officer responsible for heritage to discuss the cabinet paper referred to in the article on the future of …
Lax security
The recent burglary at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, is distressing. What you may not know is that in the spring of 1994, thieves broke down the service door at the back of the museum and stole most of a valuable collection of old chronometers. The collection has not been recovered. Why was the service door …
