Opinion
On rabbit holes and forced marriages
Remember it’s ok to fail, was the first thing I was told when I started working for the Norwegian Museum, Library and Archive (MLA) Authority in 2007. I remember thinking how cool it was to work in a place where failure was seen as a necessary part of development work – pushing innovation and breaking …
Collections need to be put back centre-stage
The long established and peculiarly English notion that science and technology are off the scale of the cultural spectrum feels as strong as ever. And now museums are under the auspices of Arts Council England (ACE), which in turn is answerable to Ed Vaizey as minister for culture in England. Another minister, David Willetts, is …
Letters
Creating a contemporary museum habitat The recent closure of my local Habitat in Harrogate was a big come down for me, as a once stylish environment was reduced to a bargain basement full of half empty shelves and scrappy handwritten signs. As a museum curator with a passion for the development of domestic interiors and …
Overcoming the fear of tackling sensitive issues
An exhibition exploring the history of Broadwater Farm is now on at Bruce Castle Museum in Tottenham, north London. That it is on at all is a testament to the courage of the museum and the council in facing, passively at least, what they fear most: sensitive issues. No matter what the achievements before or …
Museums need to make the loans process easier
Over the past five years of work on collections at the Museums Association (MA), I’ve championed increased loans between museums and to other public venues as one of the primary means of improving use of collections. But even compared with disposal, loans has been a tricky subject on which to find agreement and to see …