There is sand between the pages of my copy of Nature and Culture. It wouldn’t be on everyone’s list of books for the beach, but each to their own (although I noted that Charles Saumarez Smith told the Telegraph that The Accademia Seminars: the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, c1590-1635 would be in his holiday reading.)
It’s neither a Dan Brown nor a Stieg Larsson, but don’t let that deter you. Samuel Alberti has written a very readable account of the development of the Manchester Museum, from its tentative beginnings in the first half of the 19th century to the start of its transformation, led by Tristram Besterman, in the 1990s.
What differentiates Alberti’s book from the many recent museum biographies is that it attempts an almost anatomical assessment of a museum’s component parts: the collection, staff and the interaction between them; their roles and tasks; the influence of the donor; and the impact of the visitor.
It’s as if Alberti has taken the Manchester Museum recipe and analysed the ingredients, one by one – the Heston Blumenthal of museology.
It’s a fresh approach and Alberti undertakes it with a scholarly dedication – the bibliography alone is more than 30 pages. On the way, he introduces us to some fascinating characters, traces the democratisation and the professionalisation of the museum’s staff, observes the changing emphases of the collections, and is relentless in his analysis of the ingredients that shape a museum.
He leaves no stone unturned, noting the role of the museum’s charwomen and even the intervention of a thief.
In the end, however, Alberti’s meticulous research tells us only what we all know – that a museum is a complex organism with a multitude of relationships affecting its shape, focus and style. Unless you are the Getty, it’s serendipity as much as anything else that has shaped your museum.
In his conclusion, Alberti writes that the history of the Manchester Museum is not only a history of buildings, “it is also, fundamentally, a history of people”. No surprises there. In the end it’s the chemistry of relationships and the private and public enthusiasms that drive – or hinder – events and development.
Take the Manchester Museum’s Egyptology collection, which its website enthusiastically describes as “one of the largest and most important collections of ancient Egyptian artefacts in the UK”. But just over a century ago, the position was very different.
In 1892 Jesse Haworth, a wealthy Mancunian merchant, had loaned the museum a significant collection of recent material from the Petrie Egyptian excavations. In the years that followed, more Egyptian material continued to arrive.
The museum’s committee was concerned with what it regarded as unwanted external pressure to expand its traditional natural-history remit. Swimming against the tide, in December 1908 it made one last plea, declaring the committee unable to take charge of Egyptian collections.
But the Mancunian public maintained a relentless appetite for things Egyptian, while earlier in 1908, staff had joined a colleague of Petrie in unwrapping a mummy in front of an invited audience.
In 1912, a new museum building opened, part funded by Haworth, part by public subscription. It was to house the museum’s Egyptian collection and help meet the museum’s new remit, which included “ancient Egypt, its early religion, arts and history”.
The museum committee had been vanquished. A loan, visitors and staff, donations and opportunism, rather than the business plan, had shaped museum policy. There must be a message for us all in there.
This is a specialist’s book but thankfully, unlike many of its kind, it is written in an eminently readable style and illustrated by some interesting photos, such as the wonderful cover picture of a local taxidermist proudly riding the museum’s newly preserved sperm whale.
There are no whales off the Ile de Ré today, but there was a time when they were frequently washed up on the Conches des Baleines. I knew there was a link somewhere.
Timothy Mason is a museum consultant
