When I started out in museums, a curator’s status was measured by their specialist knowledge and the number of books they had written.
Museum publications are important, of course, as they are something you can take home from a museum that can continue to inspire.
However, in average-sized services like Harrogate there are not enough curators and not enough time or money to develop and publish specialist knowledge.
But we’re an ambitious lot in Harrogate. Last year, the Mercer Art Gallery was awarded £200,000 from Arts Council England’s Renaissance Strategic Support Fund for a two-year project to improve intellectual access to collections.
It included the publication of 10 books – designed and produced locally and on sale for £10 – exhibitions, events and a flurry of social media activity.
The funding enabled us to employ specialist consultants and upcoming young curators to work on selected topics such as costume, sculpture, photography and literary themes in art.
It has opened up whole new areas of knowledge about our collections and made them more widely accessible in ways other than through traditional exhibitions.
For example, Laura Gray’s project on costume produced a book, a film about the town’s fashion and the invention of Crimplene, new documentation records, a social-media presence and a design project with Harrogate fashion students.
There have been discoveries along the way such as the extraordinary rarity of our Frank Brangwyn first world war posters, the connections between our marble portrait busts and spa town history and the very high quality of our Greek and Cypriot pottery.
I hope that we can inspire other museums to produce more research and books about their collections.
Jane Sellars is the curator of art at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate
Museum publications are important, of course, as they are something you can take home from a museum that can continue to inspire.
However, in average-sized services like Harrogate there are not enough curators and not enough time or money to develop and publish specialist knowledge.
But we’re an ambitious lot in Harrogate. Last year, the Mercer Art Gallery was awarded £200,000 from Arts Council England’s Renaissance Strategic Support Fund for a two-year project to improve intellectual access to collections.
It included the publication of 10 books – designed and produced locally and on sale for £10 – exhibitions, events and a flurry of social media activity.
The funding enabled us to employ specialist consultants and upcoming young curators to work on selected topics such as costume, sculpture, photography and literary themes in art.
It has opened up whole new areas of knowledge about our collections and made them more widely accessible in ways other than through traditional exhibitions.
For example, Laura Gray’s project on costume produced a book, a film about the town’s fashion and the invention of Crimplene, new documentation records, a social-media presence and a design project with Harrogate fashion students.
There have been discoveries along the way such as the extraordinary rarity of our Frank Brangwyn first world war posters, the connections between our marble portrait busts and spa town history and the very high quality of our Greek and Cypriot pottery.
I hope that we can inspire other museums to produce more research and books about their collections.
Jane Sellars is the curator of art at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate
