Opinion
Letters
Supporting tomorrow’s curators today is crucial for our collections This letter is prompted by the very welcome points made by Stephen Deuchar regarding curatorial expertise and Maurice Davies regarding collecting at a time of financial crisis. Important positions, but there is a risk that these positions unintentionally polarise the situation on the ground, creating a …
The public’s love of local history can be harnessed for museums
When the historian David Starkey opens an exhibition with the words: “What most people don’t realise is that Canterbury is one of the most important places on God’s earth,” you know are off to a flying start. The exhibition was Canterbury: England’s Crucible – 1,000 years of the city’s history from St Augustine to the …
A slow shuffle in a forwards direction
The first Young Graduates in Museums and Galleries (YGMG) internships started in 2005. When I wrote the YGMG programme I was adamant that its students would be inclusive of all the cultures in Britain. But it is a worrying trend that, often when I speak of YGMG, many think it is confined to black, Asian …
Stopping collecting will squeeze the lifeblood out of museums
When Victor Hugo wrote that necessity is the mother of invention I doubt he was thinking much about museums and the curatorial ingenuity needed these days to keep them and their collections thriving. But if you work in museums it won’t come as a surprise to hear that acquiring new work – once the very …
Letters
Putting natural history collections on the museum map I read your correspondent’s contribution on this topic of natural history collections, Why do museums neglect the public’s favourite heritage?, with interest. The Natural History Museum (NHM) saw an underlying rise in visitor numbers of more than 500,000 between 2005 and 2008, and a further big increase …
Letters
Raising the issue of Renaissance underspendI would like to say thank you to Museums Journal for raising the issue of the Renaissance underspend and to the Museums Association (MA) for taking it up with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. I am not writing using my own name and do not feel confident in …