Letter from Curator of Staffordshire Regiment Museum on Has the social museum arrived?
The article “Has the social museum arrived?” got me steaming. I have seldom read anything so patronizing in my professional career. It seems to imply that museum curators live up to some kind of 1920s stereotype of an introverted anal academic with no interest in his (its negative so of course the stereotype’s male!) community or the stories that his museum tells beyond demonstrating his knowledge of the minute details of 18th Century porcelain (or whatever happens to be his pet subject). I am sick and tired of media-grabbing whizzkids and overpaid academics stating the blindingly obvious as if it is something new. Of course museums should be relevant to their audiences and those audiences should be as diverse and inclusive as possible. Of course collections and archives are primarily of value for the stories they contain. I don’t think I have ever met a colleague who would suggest anything different. However, suggesting that we should mount collections-free exhibitions or severely cut back on collections care is a very different thing. We live in an age of widely available multi-media information sources especially the internet and specialist digital TV such as the History Channel or National Geographic Channel. If museums turn their backs on their collections they will end up only doing badly what the internet and History Channel can do on much bigger budgets, beamed direct to the living rooms of the audience. The Black Archives Wall in the International Slavery Museum illustrated with the article is a classic example. Presented as a well designed web page this wall could have been much more powerful with links to detailed biographies, timelines of personal and topic related histories, additional images and downloads, audio/moving image material etc. etc. If we are still to suggest that people visit museums we have to use our USP which, like it or not, remains material artefacts and primary source documents. The whizzkid generation of curators don’t like this because to use a collection well to tell relevant stories that engage audiences you first have to know your collection well – something that is totally beyond a the sort of ‘curator’ who jumps from job to job every couple of years to upgrade their flimflam job title and get another couple of grand on the salary package. The reason why curators in the past have tended to be very conservative on what they disposed of and overprotective of what they conserved is because they recognized that it is all to easy to loose forever some gem of historical importance simply because they did not know enough about the object’s provenance or even what it really was. My final point is to do with the failings of the multi-media easy access world. There is very little quality control. By rooting their exhibitions and stories in the solid material artefacts and original archives museums provide the opportunity to test and check the stream of dodgy information pouring out of the web and cheap digital programming. Too many exhibitions these days are so light on content or scholarship that they are as bad if not worse than the content of wikipedia or the seeming inexhaustible supply of programmes featuring ‘the secrets of the Third Reich/Hitler’s closet’ etc. Curators have, in the past, been there to question the assumptions of general historians, teachers and programme makers so that we look at real things and not just well established myths. So in answer to the Question “Has the social museum arrived?” the answer is “Yes it has arrived. It’s been here for ages and it’s good but it’s not a substitute for the hard graft of proper museum work!”
Erik Blakeley, Curator, Staffordshire Regiment Museum, at 2008-11-20 02:03:55

Where's the money gone
Would any local authority care to come clean and say where the money it has allegedly saved by closing down or cutting back on its Museums Service was actually spent, and how this benefited the community for which it is responsible ? I gather that Oxfordshire County Council now categorises its Museums Service not as Education but as Provision for the Elderly and Infirm, and uses the increasing cost of the latter - largely due to over-zealous bureaucracy and exaggerated obsession with health and safety - to justify threatening to go back on its promise to fund new building and projects at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock.
ISIS OXON, at 2008-07-30 07:15:02

Reading James Bishop's letter in the current Museum News I Question whether National Heritage is wise to accept the Museum Association's new criteria for disposal of museum objects. Can it possibly be right for today's curators and trustees to get rid of objects which their predecessors either bought or accepted on the basis that the museum or gallery would conserve it and make it available for future visitors to see and study? I think not. Perhaps NH could think again, or at least be on guard against possible abuses of these new guidelines.
Jefferson Drew, at 2008-06-07 04:42:14

National museums benefit from government grants and thus are able to open for free, whereas smaller museums desperately need financial support to serve the public and inevitably have to charge entrance fees.
Anon, at 2008-06-06 12:31:17

So the little Woking museum won the £100,000 Museum of the Year prize. Has anybody been there? There's nothing in the history gallery except for a few old bits and pieces of household detritus local folk didn't want clogging up their sheds any longer. The Shetland Museum is full of thousands of years of history, the Commonwealth Museum's slavery gallery is revealing and shocking, the Wellcome addresses modern issues of health and well being, but they all lost out to the Lightbox which tells us nothing. What were the judges thinking?
Unconvinced of West Wickham, at 2008-06-06 11:20:35

The Livesey Museum in Southwark has closed. Where was the London Hub or MLA London when that happened. No where to be seen. Thanks a bunch. When the London Hub was set up, one of the big wigs promised that Renaissance money would be used to help smaller London museums. "The money will not touch the sides" he promised. What a joke. The "Big Four" have kept all the money for themselves and let the Livesey go to the wall and left others in the same lousy state as they were before.
Angry Londoner, at 2008-06-05 18:00:23

SOS. SOS. In case you have not noticed, a particular kind of museum is in deep trouble at the moment. These are the old county town museums. They hold important collections but are often run by impoverished District Councils. We need help.
New Road Fan, at 2008-06-05 17:58:01

Can I just say that I think the Museums Journal has been a bit feeble in the way it has dealt with Renaissance in the Regions? A handful of independent museums are making a lot of noise at the moment because there is a review of Renaissance going on. Why cannot the MJ do more to point out all the indirect benefits independent museums get from Renaissance?
Hubbite, at 2008-06-04 08:12:12

I enjoyed the piece in Museum News about authenticity in Museums. Can we have more of that please ? Some museums seem to think that spending huge sums of money on flashy displays and interactive technology (never interacts with me ) is a substitute for displaying their collections and telling us as much as possible about them in a way that actually makes sense to someone of average intelligence.
Museum Visitor, at 2008-06-04 01:22:23

Museums have had an awful lot of lottery money put into them over the last few years, I think it is more than £500 million. What have they got to show for it? Lots I would imagine. But where are the reports about what the impact of all this money has been? Comments about the value of lottery good causes still seem to be based on how much money has been spent, as if that were enough to justify saying that it has been a good thing. Should we not be able to do a little better than this?
Moneywatcher, at 2008-06-03 12:29:09

I read Museum News avidly. The part I like the most are the profiles. Museums are made all the more interesting when you know more about the people behind them and indeed behind the objects themselves. We need to know more about the people.
Abraham L, at 2008-06-03 12:05:02

Am I the only one who thinks that museums outside London have got really good in the last few years but that inside London they are getting more and more dull?
Yorkshireman, at 2008-06-03 11:15:00

As an outsider I find the museums world quite baffling.What do all these organisations within it actually do ? The Museums Association obviously publishes the Museums Journal (which I rearely bother to read) and Museums Practice (which I think is very helpful for the independent museum sector) and run a few conferences - but is that it ? I have no idea why you need them and the Association for Independent Museums, let alone all these other things I see referred to. Can anyone explain ?
Confused of Sussex, at 2008-06-02 22:03:56

Museum News is good. Can we have more of it please.
Simon X, at 2008-06-02 12:26:57

Is anyone as irritated as I am by the Museums Journal ? I subscribe because as a young professional I have to belong to the Museums Association. But I do not find much in it for me. It seems obsessed with international stuff and what museums are doing with ethnic minorities. What about everything else ? The obsession with slavery and worthy black projects and new Labour PC topics has become very very boring. Get your act together Museums Journal.
New Girl on the Block, at 2008-06-02 12:26:44

Why does the Association for Independent Museums keep whingeing about how hard done by they are ? Are they stuck in the 1980s ? Surely the differences between so-called independent museums and local authority museums are much less than they used to be ? Local government is just as commercially minded as any museum trying to survive off its admission and trading income.Independent museums have done well out of the Heritage Lottery Fund. What is their problem ?
Municipal Socialist, at 2008-05-13 12:26:57

So, we hear that the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council is about to implode. The regional agencies are all to be closed down. Most of the central London operation is being moved to Birmingham. No one has a clue what its function is anyway. Since 2000 it has worked its way through three Chief Executives and we are now on its fourth, a retired Rear Admiral. What the hell is going on ? Why has there not been a major investigation into this organisation ? Is it worth having any more ? It has had only one major success - Renaissance in the Regions - and that has succeeded in spite of MLA rather than because of it. Do we need this outfit anymore ? In eight years they have made the old Museums & Galleries Commission look good. Cannot we have that back ?
Zottopera , at 2008-05-12 15:28:40