Postcard from America #1

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This week I am travelling around the States with come colleagues and I am going to add updates from the places I visit. I’m hoping to add some more detail and some illuminating photos once I get back to the UK. The first stop is Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.

I had read about Williamsburg but I hadn’t fully appreciated the scale of the site or how multi-functional Williamsburg is. Colonial Williamsburg has a golf course, spa, several hotels and restaurants. Williamsburg also takes the museum shop to a whole new level with a shopping area called Merchants Square.

However, the heritage interpretation, research and collections management is also something to behold. The Living History is well thought out, with a mix of first person, third person, general costumed facilitator-guides and craftspeople. The new coffee house is a particularly good example, which engages visitors in a familiar yet unfamiliar environment where revolutionary ideas took shape during the period in question. Heritage crafts are kept alive through the traditional master-apprentice system, and in the museum and collections store we also found incredible collections of objects cared for by curators and conservators in custom designed premises.

Unfortunately I only had a day there when I really needed a week. It’s a challenging site which deals with multiple historic narratives and a range of different kinds of resources and I’m sure to post more when I get back.

The Nerd and the Museum #2 ‘The Brain Scoop and Zoology collections’

Scary front cover of Milgrom's 'Still Life: adventures in taxidermy'

Scary front cover of Milgrom’s ‘Still Life: adventures in taxidermy’

I promised ages ago to post about the nerdy museum phenomenon that is The Brain Scoop. This seems like a brilliant time to post as it has just reached the next stage in its development. The Brain Scoop began only a few months ago in December 2012 when Vlogbrother Hank Green shot a video blog post from the University of Montana’s Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum. There he met museum studies student and curatorial assistant Emily Graslie. Emily’s enthusiasm secured her an invitation to start her own YouTube channel as part of the Nerdfighter family (on which more in a later post). As the museum is mostly a research collection this was a rare opportunity to display objects to the public. The series also went behind the scenes, and in a series of stomach turning episodes Emily even dissected a wolf. The video in which the wolf is skinned currently has around 217,000 views!

Spider in the Cole Museum of Zoology (Photograph taken by Fil Gierlinski)

Spider in the Cole Museum of Zoology (Photograph taken by Fil Gierlinski)

As an aside, I chatted to my colleague Claire about Brain Scoop and we compared the books on taxidermy that we had bought following Emily’s recommendations. Claire has been volunteering at our own university zoology collection The Cole Museum of Zoology and is also a digital aficionado. Check out Claire the Conservatrix to find out more.

Anyway, back to Brain Scoop. The Field Museum, Chicago became aware of the channel and invited Emily to visit. They were so impressed that they made her the Chief Curiosity Correspondent. I was a little sad to see Emily leave the smaller research collection but I’m excited to see what she comes up with in Chicago. Emily is a positive role model for young women who might be considering STEM careers. Brainscoop also makes me wonder whether students or ‘experts in training’ make more accessible role models than the established academics that we usually see on TV documentaries.

Finally, the success of The Brain Scoop demonstrates that zoology and taxidermy have a nerdy appeal when pitched correctly. Other examples which embrace the kookiness of zoology collections are my twitter favourites Glass Jar of Moles (UCL’s Grant Museum) and the Horniman Museum’s Walrus. These social media experiments work because their authors aren’t restricted by brand or ‘organisational voice’. They use their own voices and embrace their inner nerd.

Blackwell Taxidermy

Blackwell Oxford’s Taxidermy Display

Careers in museums #1 the basics

At the Open Days last week I had a lot of questions about careers in museums. We always get involved at our University’s careers fairs and we have even held our own Careers Event in the past (that’s where the photos are from). A couple of years ago I got a fellowship grant from the Center for Career Management Skills and a consultant Janet Bell came in to help us create some workshops and resources for our students. This being the digital age I thought I would make some of this information available online.

Careers Day 1

Careers Day 1

First of all a disclaimer. As we are based in the UK I am going to focus on the situation in Britain. I am also going to focus on advice for getting museum jobs. There are some really interesting and important debates going on regarding the impact of museum studies courses on the sector, diversifying the workforce and unpaid internships. I will discuss some of these issues but my main aim is to provide advice for those who are trying to break into the sector.

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Careers Day 2

There are already some great resources on the web. The Museums Association careers page is a good place to start and it’s pretty comprehensive. The Museums Association is a membership organisation for museum professionals but you can join at a low rate if you are a student or volunteer. You get a monthly copy of the Museums Journal and free/discounted entry into many museums and exhibitions. Tip: Before going into an interview in the UK have a flick through recent copies of Museum Journal and search for your potential workplace in the Journal via the website.

The other site that I always send people to is the University of Leicester’s Museum Studies Job Desk. That is where most people in the UK search and advertise. It includes information on internships and voluntary opportunities and even lists international job opportunities. Those two sites will give you a lot to be getting on with and I will talk about voluntary work in the next post.

 

Open Days

The open days were fun. I had two great students Georgia and Helen helping me out in the Ure Museum. We had a handling collection out and an iPad with apps designed by students and local schools

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Nearly everybody I invited to handle the objects said ‘I am clumsy I can’t be trusted with objects’. However, those who were brave enough to put on the white gloves were blown away by the age of the objects they were interacting with (2500 years for some of them). We even had a visit from our Twitter-bear Stu who was going around campus being photographed in different locations. Trying to get a tiny cuddly toy bear look like it is handling an object while protecting the object is really tough.

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We got a mix of people coming to talk. Some were just generally interested in the study of the past and looking at different programme options. They were amazed by the idea that you could have a museum at the end of your departmental corridor. Others were hunting out courses which offered museum studies teaching and experience. It made me realise how lucky we were to have the Ure Museum. Many university departmental collections have lost their geographical and intellectual connection to their once home discipline. Remembering this fact made me grateful for the foresight of the curators who fought to build this resource and keep it a part of teaching and research in the University.

Update and Open Days

Bolton Abbey

Bolton Abbey

I’ve been away for 2 weeks visiting the Yorkshire Dales, Scotland and Wales. This is almost unprecedented but I didn’t visit a single museum. However, I did visit lots of heritage sites such as the beautiful Bolton Abbey with its ‘picturesque if you’re looking at them/ terrifying if your actually on them’ stepping stones. I also visited White Scar Cave, Ingleton Waterfalls and took a boat out on Lake Windermere.

Lake Windermere

Lake Windermere

The natural beauty theme continued in Scotland with Loch Lomond and then again in Wales with Puzzlewood. All it takes is a bit of sunshine to remind you how beautiful the British countryside is and how hard it must be for open air attractions when the weather is not on their side. With that in mind I drove back to Reading along a motorway which looked like a river.

Puzzlewood

Puzzlewood

This week has been all systems go getting ready for our University of Reading Open Days. I am going to be situated in the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology with a handling collection to give people a real taster of what we offer here. I was in the library and ran into somebody from AACT/ iMuse demonstrating some new Ure Museum apps which were developed in collaboration with University of Reading students and local schools. I got a bit addicted to ‘Splat Medusa’ and I’m borrowing the iPad for a demo at the Open Day. I also updated the cases in the Archaeology Department for the Open Days which was made easier by getting the Lyminge Excavation Project gang to take over a case.

Archaeology case Lyminge excavation objects

Archaeology Department case Lyminge excavation objects

In other news I saw Pompeii Live at the local cinema. I enjoyed it but it set me thinking about the challenges of making an exhibition into ‘a live cinema experience’ and I’m going to post once I’ve done a bit more research. Oh and amongst all of this I was reminded that I had website training and had agreed to be interviewed for our museum blog Our Country Lives. I’d love to go and put my feet up before the Open Days kick off tomorrow but I found out about an intriguing theatre performance around the theme of objects, memories and child refugees ‘Surviving Objects’ so I ‘m off to that tonight. I will try to post something on that and the Open Days next week.

Life after Reading #1 Laura Weill

This is the first of a blog series where I find out what former students and volunteers are doing in the museum, arts and heritage sector. First up is Laura, who has just come back to work for us!

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What are you doing now?

I currently work at the Museum of English Rural Life as a project assistant on the ‘A Sense of Place’ project. I am responsible for updating the online database, making the collection more accessible for researchers and those who are unable to visit the museum. This project has a particular emphasis on place and location as a point of access.

How did your time at Reading prepare you for this line of work?

Museum Studies modules
I did the Museum Studies modules in every year of my undergraduate; mainly chosen because I enjoy museums and was curious as to what could be learnt about them. It was the museum studies module I did in my first year that made me realise museums could be the career for me. I distinctly remember being set tasks where we had to plan trails to engage audiences, which I really enjoyed. I learnt quickly that a lot more thought goes into museums and their displays than I had ever imagined. Having finished the module in the first term, I was keen to get volunteering throughout spring and summer.

Modules in following years included a task where you had to research a chosen object, update the accession file, write a label and design a temporary exhibition around it. The bit of the task I was surprised to find very difficult was being able to write a clear and concise label. I had to ensure it was accessible in terms of readability, reading age and appearance. As well make sure the language was active and engaging. I was had to avoid the temptation to write everything I knew about the object in an essay style piece of writing. This skill has proved very useful for writing object descriptions and labels. This task also allowed me to experience the online database, which I now use every day.

Voluntary
In my first year at Reading University I volunteered on various MERL events and workshops, eventually becoming a weekend tour guide. This gave me a good understanding of the collection, what has been collected and why. This basic understanding is now vital, as I work through the catalogue, ensuring I mention objects’ significance in relation to the collection. Additionally the experience of public speaking during my time as a tour guide really improved my confidence and ability to talk to the public, very important now for interacting with visitors and researchers.

Degree
I did a joint honours degree in Archaeology and History of Art and Architecture (2008-2011). Both involved many trips to museums, galleries and heritage sites, where I was able to look at exhibitions with my new ‘museum studies eyes’, assessing whether they were successful or not. My degree involved a lot of research, skills I now use when updating the catalogue. Furthermore, I came to Reading thinking I wanted to become the next Indiana Jones, a dream squashed by my first experience of practical archaeology at Silchester, where I discovered I can’t differentiate between types of soil and don’t do well knelt in the dirt in all weathers. However, whilst there I assisted on public open days which I really enjoyed.

Thesis
Having enjoyed all of the museums studies modules, and with plans to do a museum studies MA, I decided to choose a museum based thesis topic. Here I compared and contrasted three galleries within the Ashmolean Museum; a statue corridor near the entrance, modern art room on the top floor and the newly refurbished cast gallery. Here I analysed how visitors used the space and then tried to assess why they did so. This allowed me to do more in depth museum studies research and confirmed that I would really enjoy a museum studies masters.

Paid work
At the end of my first year I applied to be a Saturday gallery assistant at the Museum of English Rural Life, a position I stayed in throughout my undergrad. This enabled me to interact with the public, gauge what they enjoyed and why. I was also able to put my tour guiding stills into practice, week after week.

Additionally, with the realisation that I was not going to be a practical archaeologist, in my second year I decided to volunteer in the visitors cabin at Silchester, and in my third year was employed as the visitors manager. This involved organising school and group visits, public open days and a lot of tour guiding. I was also responsible for training students in giving guided tours. Again my time here helped develop my ability to interact and engage with the public.

What training/experience did you get after leaving Reading?

After leaving Reading I went straight on to complete a Museum Studies MA at the University of Leicester, which was recommended to me as the place to study if you wanted to go onto work in the museum industry. It was an amazing year with some really interesting modules, trips and tasks. Everything I learnt was clearly relevant to a career in museums. As part of the master I did an 8 week work placement at Falmouth Art Gallery, allowing me to experience a different kind on museum. Here I did a lot of extensive research and cataloguing, as well as marketing and learning.

If you could give just one piece of advice for current students what would it be?

My main piece of advice would be to take every opportunity offered to you, don’t waste the time you have at university- volunteer, gain skills and experience everything you can. Before my time at the Museum of English Rural Life, I was relatively shy, reluctant to interact with the public. But having been strongly encouraged to do the tour guiding course, by the volunteer coordinator at the time, I gained a lot of confidence and discovered my passion for engaging the public with arts and heritage. I was very lucky to gain so much voluntary experience, which led me to get 3 jobs while at university, a place on an MA course and my current position as project assistant. So get volunteering, not only will it look good on your CV, you may discover a hidden passion.

Being a culture vulture in Reading #3

An art historian friend visited recently and there was a concerted effort to show her the culture that Reading had to offer. Walking around Reading with an art historian you become much more aware of the buildings that you usually ignore. She had made the journey because of an exhibition at Reading Museum John Tweed: The Empire Sculptor, Rodin’s Friend. She had even got a copy of the catalogue in advance. It was great to see that the book was authored and the exhibition co-curated by a former University of Reading student, now art historian, Dr Nicola Capon. I couldn’t take photos in the exhibition but there are some in the link. Tweed is dubbed ‘The Empire Sculptor’ and archival documents provide a fascinating insight into how these kinds of projects were negotiated, and the role that they played in the expansion and expression of empire. His “ideal” statues are also just really gorgeous to look at.

The same weekend I made good on a promise to visit an open studio, after my post on ‘slack spaces’ and artist run initiatives in Reading. After tweeting on that subject, Reading-based photographer Salvo Toscano got in touch to mention his open studio. He has some beautiful photographs from further afield but I was really drawn to the images from around Reading. Salvo lives not far from the Museum of English Rural Life (where I am based) and seeing local streets transformed by a photographer’s eye demonstrated the need to look again at my surroundings. It may be dangerous for somebody as clumsy as me to walk around staring up at buildings but I’m going to make a more concerted effort to stop and (don’t laugh) admire the beauty of Reading.

Oxford underground, overground, and at night

Last weekend we had Museum Memory DayMuseums at Night and International Museum Day. It is fitting that on Friday I set myself a crazy day of running around the Oxford museums and libraries.

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The entrance to the Ashmolean’s Xu Bing exhibition

First off I popped into the Ashmolean to catch the Xu Bing exhibition before it closed. I had glimpsed the banners and mistakenly thought it was on traditional Chinese landscapes. The exhibition actually charted contemporary artist Xu Bing’s negotiation of socialist realism, pop art, French impressionist landscape painting, community art projects and calligraphy. His landscripts took centre stage. These are landscapes which use Chinese characters as marks to depict features in the landscape e.g. the character for rock to depict a rock. Maybe I’m weird but the early sketches made during the Cultural Revolution were my favourites. If you missed it there is a lot of highly quality online content still available via Eastern Art Online.

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A Case for ‘Natural Histories’ at the Oxford Museum of History of Science

Then it was off to the Oxford Museum of History of Science. They only have a small temporary exhibition space which they always use to great effect. Their ‘Natural Histories’ exhibition used items from the currently closed Oxford Natural History Museum. It explored the use of these collections for scientific research. The items which stuck with me were initially unassuming preparations signed by Darwin and Linnaeus. The display of the taxidermy really captured the romance of these collections and seems to have inspired the Blackwell art shop next door in their window displays.

Blackwell Taxidermy

Taxidermy in the Blackwells Art Shop Oxford

Quick lunch in the Ashmolean and then what I thought was going to be the boring part of the day: hitting the books. Turns out reading is a lot more fun when you can pretend to be one of the X-men as you move from historic building to secret underground facility. The Gladstone annexe is in an old book tunnel between the Bodleian and the Radcliffe Camera. I don’t think it’s open to the public but here is a sneak peek.

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The tunnel to the Gladstone Annexe

Rounded off the day listening to the wonderful Jon Whiteley talk about the history of the Ashmolean for Museums at Night. The event also celebrated the launch of the new book about the history of the museum ‘Dodos and Dark Lanterns’ (Berry 2013). I had a train to catch so I only caught glimpses of what was on offer: live music, historic costume, lantern making with families. I then ran to the Pitt Rivers Museum to see it in darkness (again for for Museums at Night). The sight of the shrunken heads by torch light was particularly uncanny. It was worth the run and I only wish I could have stayed longer.

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Best photo I could get with no flash while balancing a torch of Pitt Rivers Museum in darkness

Museum Memories Day 17th May 2013 Hashtag #MusMem

Friday 17th May 2013 is Museum Memories day. If you look at the #MusMem hashtag on Twitter you can read about or contribute your memories. The basic remit as outlined by Culture Themes and Museums 140 is as follows:

What is your most memorable moment in a museum?

  • It might have been when you had your first spark or the first time you went to a museum with your family.
  • Maybe it was when you saw something in a painting that inspired you.
  • Could be when you went to a museum with your grandparents.
  • Perhaps it was a memory when you went back to a museum as an adult.

You can find the official homepage here:
http://memories.museum140.com/

My earliest memory of a museum is going with my reception class to the National Museum Cardiff as part of a day long outing which also took in Bristol Zoo. I vaguely remember a large dinosaur and an oversized bed bug which gave me nightmares. However, my strongest memories are of buying dinosaur stationery in the shop and one of my class knocking something over and having to go to the local A&E. NB this would have been around 1986 so I am sure H&S has improved since then and my class was probably a bit boisterous.

I think about this when teaching as it reminds me that for many of our youngest visitors the content of the displays may be the least interesting part of the day. Leicester’s ‘What Did You Learn at the Museum Today?’ Project convinced me that I was not a 6 year old philistine. Flicking through my copy of the booklet ‘What Amazed Me Most at the Museum Today’ (MLA 2004) I saw that one child had listed the journey as the most amazing part of his day. In the analysis I found the following quote “children respond positively to the whole experience of the visit. The site, the journey, the activities, the facilitator and even the packed lunches are valued by pupils. All these factors combine to make the visit an engaging and stimulating break from normal school routines”. For me the social interactions, the unfamiliar scales and the experience of being able to *gasp* buy something for myself stuck with me.

A slightly more inspiring story took place when I was 17 and applying to read Archaeology and Anthropology at university. As preparation for my interview my headmaster called somebody at the same museum. I wish I could remember the name of the kind member of staff who showed me around the store and let me handle a prehistoric axe. The sense memory of the axe stays with me and always springs to mind when people talk about the power of touch.

I guess what these museum memories have in common is that they are connected not just to specific objects but to the whole experience. I often recall these memories when I think about the kids and students who come into this museum and wonder what they will remember 10 or 20 years from now…

The Royal Berkshire Medical Museum

Just back from the Royal Berkshire Medical Museum. I’ve been there before but I always seem to forget just what a hidden treasure it is. Tucked away in an old laundry room (Grade 2 listed), the museum is packed with fascinating stories and objects. The key ‘object’ is the glass jar of living leeches that are ‘fed’ by the team of volunteers.

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Live leeches

The museum is run by former members of staff on a voluntary basis. The current display was made possible by HLF funding in 2008 and the look is the result of a collaboration with local designer Martin Andrews. I know Martin from the 2005 Ure Museum redesign, and his ability to bring objects to life with a low key and low cost bit of theatricality makes him a really inspiring guy to work with. Take for example this low tech bit of reconstruction.

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Reconstruction of wartime injuries

However, the real stars are the objects. Weird, wonderful and a bit disturbing. One member of our group briefly looked up and started laughing at the faces everybody else was pulling. I love a museum that provokes a gut reaction (pun intended) and the universal subject of the body and medicine means that everybody has some kind of response.

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Scary pokey things (yes that’s a medical term)

The museum is hard to get to and has limited opening hours but try to get to it if you can. It’s often open on weekends and is to the left hand side of the Royal Berkshire Hospital’s neo-classical facade on London Road (NB no parking but good bus links). Rather than rabbit on about it I thought I would add some photos for those who might not get to see inside. Enjoy…

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Phrenology

 

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Tray of glass eyes

 

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The medicine cabinet

 

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A view through the museum (small but perfectly formed)