Opinion

No pain, no gain

Last year, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation (PHF) published a report entitled Whose Cake Is It Anyway? by Bernadette Lynch. Its conclusion raised concerns about a tendency for participation work in UK museums and galleries to be short-term, not embedded, and what Lynch calls “empowerment-lite”. To address the issues raised by the report, PHF has launched …

Head to head

Should museums be pursuing the social justice agenda?

Best of the blogs

Happy blogging

The diary of a national museum director

Part 20

Letters

The contributions made by human remains Sorcha Ní Fóghlúda’s letter recommending the disposal of the skeleton of Charles Byrne, the “Irish Giant” is a welcome contribution to the discussion on these important human remains: some clarifications may enhance this dialogue. Although it is unlikely he would have chosen to be dissected, there is no direct …

Vox pop

Has the Museums Association's Diversify scheme changed the profile of the museum workforce?

Profile image for Sharon Heal

Editorial

Vision for museums should be call to action

Letters

Return the human remains that are closer to home Following the return of human remains from UK museums to former colonial territories such as Australia, North America and most recently the Torres Strait Islands, isn’t it about time that the Royal College of Surgeons of England’s Hunterian Museum in London appropriately disposed of the remains …

Genuine participation has a long way to go

The recent Cultural Equalities Now conference, hosted by the British Museum in partnership with the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past and Diversity and Heritage Group, took a timely look at equalities and diversity work in a new legal, policy and funding landscape. Working on this with practitioners and policy makers made me …

The policy column

Both a lender and a borrower be

Head to head: Is free entry to national museums worth celebrating?

The first in a new column where museum professionals go head to head

Best of the blogs

This is from a recent post on Giles Miller's Curator of Micropalaeontology blog on the Natural History Museum's website