Opinion
Don’t touch that thermostat dial
For ages, we’ve been taught that we should do all we can to keep our galleries and stores close to 50% relative humidity to save our collections from a terrible fate. Well, scrub that. Over the past 15 years or so, scientists have researched what collections actually need. They’ve found that the vast majority of …
Why private passions make good public displays
It was an almost unconscious move into the world of collecting. The collections amassed for the Collect show in 2009 at the University of Portsmouth were personal items of importance to the individual collectors. Most items were supplied by academics including Patti Gaal-Holmes’s collection of used tea bags, which she has gathered from around the …
Post-Great Transition: the museum of 2030
According to an old Tibetan saying: “If you want to know your future, look at what you are doing in this moment.” This captures our efforts at the NWFED (formerly the North West Federation of Museums and Art Galleries) to get our hundreds of members prepared for a dramatically changed future. The saying works in …
Letters
You can close our museums but you can’t take our dreams I am an out-of-work museum professional, writing an open letter to ask the government for more understanding for people in my situation. My maternity cover contract could not have ended at a worse time – a few months after the election last year. Since …
Letters
The legacy of a language Bannaghtyn. (Greetings.) You can’t tell from this written communication that I retain a Lancashire accent and occasionally use dialect phrases picked up from the county of my birth. My schoolteachers would be ashamed of me – because they did their best to stop me “talking common”. I am pleased they …