The museums that feature in Micromuseology by Fiona Candlin, the senior lecturer in museum studies at Birkbeck, University of London, are not the kind that often appear in Museums Journal. Small, quirky and often amateurish in the best sense of the word, they are, however, museums that are close to the hearts of many people, including Candlin.
She has travelled throughout the UK seeking out the owners of venues including the Museum of Witchcraft in Cornwall, Violette Szabo Museum in Herefordshire and the Vintage Wireless Museum in Dulwich, south London, among many others.
Candlin calls them small but admits that some are sizeable operations. Around 50,000 people a year visit the Witchcraft Museum, and the Ipswich Transport Museum’s collection fills a space measuring more than 2,325 sq m, for example.
Object rich and cared for by subject specialists whose knowledge and passion is often greater than their professional counterparts, the museums that Candlin describes and analyses in Micromuseology are those you wouldn’t necessarily expect to appear in the Museums Association’s (MA) Yearbook. Museologically neglected, they have often been treated as “marginal organisations”, she writes. “This neglect homogenises and limits our conceptions of what museums are and might be,” Candlin argues.
I was reminded of something that the artist Grayson Perry once said about the trouble with a lot of magazines is that they try to make everywhere standardised and suitable for metropolitan types. (Perry later rummaged through the stores of the Museum of Lincolnshire Life and then the British Museum, to create wonderfully idiosyncratic and non-conformist exhibitions.)
Many of the installations Candlin describes, woefully cluttered and under-interpreted by contemporary museum standards, are arguably a form of folk or outsider art.
Candlin, as an academic, does not pass judgement on whether membership bodies such as the MA or the Association of Independent Museums should be more inclusive and welcoming (full disclosure, I am a member of both). Reading between the lines, she appears to suggest there is a case that they should be for some of the museums she has visited.
This would be a problem for the Lurgan History Museum somewhere in Armagh, which the Guardian called “a garden-shed museum” of the Troubles. Its founder does not allow his name or his private museum’s address to be published for security reasons. Nothing is labelled in the displays, which include harps and crosses carved by IRA members when in prison, a bed sheet signed by hunger strikers and a (deactivated) rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
Candlin learned during a guided tour given by the museum’s founder “Jim” that former members of the IRA and British Army have visited, and on one occasion met and ended up talking about their experiences until late in the evening, “stopping only for sandwiches”. In how many larger museums does something like that happen?
Other small museums beyond the pale of professional standards that she describes fulfil a social need perhaps better than fully Accredited institutions with a high profile.
Take the British in India Museum, established by the late Henry Nelson in 1972 in north Lancashire. Nelson, a former Chindit, ran a bookshop and publishing business. Donations flowed in from Indian old-hands. (The British Museum sent two temples made of the vegetable material pith, presumably not accessioned.)
There are poignant letters from donors nearing the end of their life. And letters from their heirs politely asking Nelson to provide a home where long-cherished relics “will be loved”. Among these artefacts are mounted tusks donated by a Mrs Pengree, who wrote a long letter recounting how her late husband, a government official, killed not one but two rogue elephants in quick succession – he shot them with both barrels of his shotgun, a world record at the time in 1911, she wrote.
“Unlike major museums, micromuseums can be, and often are, dynamic environments,” Candlin concludes, as enthusiastic as the DIY-directors and curators she has met on her travels and bonded with over many cups of tea.
Caroline Worthington is the chief executive of Bexley Heritage Trust
She has travelled throughout the UK seeking out the owners of venues including the Museum of Witchcraft in Cornwall, Violette Szabo Museum in Herefordshire and the Vintage Wireless Museum in Dulwich, south London, among many others.
Candlin calls them small but admits that some are sizeable operations. Around 50,000 people a year visit the Witchcraft Museum, and the Ipswich Transport Museum’s collection fills a space measuring more than 2,325 sq m, for example.
Object rich and cared for by subject specialists whose knowledge and passion is often greater than their professional counterparts, the museums that Candlin describes and analyses in Micromuseology are those you wouldn’t necessarily expect to appear in the Museums Association’s (MA) Yearbook. Museologically neglected, they have often been treated as “marginal organisations”, she writes. “This neglect homogenises and limits our conceptions of what museums are and might be,” Candlin argues.
I was reminded of something that the artist Grayson Perry once said about the trouble with a lot of magazines is that they try to make everywhere standardised and suitable for metropolitan types. (Perry later rummaged through the stores of the Museum of Lincolnshire Life and then the British Museum, to create wonderfully idiosyncratic and non-conformist exhibitions.)
Many of the installations Candlin describes, woefully cluttered and under-interpreted by contemporary museum standards, are arguably a form of folk or outsider art.
Candlin, as an academic, does not pass judgement on whether membership bodies such as the MA or the Association of Independent Museums should be more inclusive and welcoming (full disclosure, I am a member of both). Reading between the lines, she appears to suggest there is a case that they should be for some of the museums she has visited.
This would be a problem for the Lurgan History Museum somewhere in Armagh, which the Guardian called “a garden-shed museum” of the Troubles. Its founder does not allow his name or his private museum’s address to be published for security reasons. Nothing is labelled in the displays, which include harps and crosses carved by IRA members when in prison, a bed sheet signed by hunger strikers and a (deactivated) rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
Candlin learned during a guided tour given by the museum’s founder “Jim” that former members of the IRA and British Army have visited, and on one occasion met and ended up talking about their experiences until late in the evening, “stopping only for sandwiches”. In how many larger museums does something like that happen?
Other small museums beyond the pale of professional standards that she describes fulfil a social need perhaps better than fully Accredited institutions with a high profile.
Take the British in India Museum, established by the late Henry Nelson in 1972 in north Lancashire. Nelson, a former Chindit, ran a bookshop and publishing business. Donations flowed in from Indian old-hands. (The British Museum sent two temples made of the vegetable material pith, presumably not accessioned.)
There are poignant letters from donors nearing the end of their life. And letters from their heirs politely asking Nelson to provide a home where long-cherished relics “will be loved”. Among these artefacts are mounted tusks donated by a Mrs Pengree, who wrote a long letter recounting how her late husband, a government official, killed not one but two rogue elephants in quick succession – he shot them with both barrels of his shotgun, a world record at the time in 1911, she wrote.
“Unlike major museums, micromuseums can be, and often are, dynamic environments,” Candlin concludes, as enthusiastic as the DIY-directors and curators she has met on her travels and bonded with over many cups of tea.
Caroline Worthington is the chief executive of Bexley Heritage Trust
