Museums change lives
October has seen my one-year anniversary at Royal Museums Greenwich. It’s been a very busy year. The longitude exhibition Ships, Clocks and Stars has opened, and I’ve had the great privilege to be involved in many fun events in the Longitude Season. I’ve watched my coffee-house research become a physical space in the exhibition, complete with engravings, soundscapes and shadow windows.
Alongside this, I’ve re-hung two galleries in the Queen’s House as part of opening up the Orangery entrance for the summer, allowing me to get my teeth into the museum’s collection of Tudor and Stuart portraits, views of Greenwich, and marine paintings by the fabulous Willem van de Veldes, father and son. I’ve co-curated The Art and Science of Exploration, 1768-80 exhibition, as part of the museum’s Travellers’ Tails project surrounding our new Stubbs kangaroo and dingo paintings, and that’s also involved some really enjoyable events. And I’m curating the next contemporary art show for the QH to open in March 2015. I’ve also been having a fabulous time writing for Apollo. Lots to be getting my head around and teeth into.
So, the beginning of this month was a perfect time to attend the Museums Association conference for the first time: to step back and look at the bigger picture. I joined the MA as a student while doing my masters, and it’s been an invaluable resource ever since. I’ve learnt so much from the journal’s news, commentary, reviews and discussions. Even the way in which the content has included more and more digital media over the years has been revealing. I was really looking forward, therefore, to experiencing the full force of conference. Speaking at my first one was, perhaps, rather ambitious!
In the University of Cambridge Museums' ‘The Art and Science of Curation’ session, I spoke with Mark Carnall and Jenny Powell about our thoughts and experiences of being a curator. I chose to speak out of the discussion piece that I wrote for the website, and concentrate on what I think it means to be a young curator today. I talked about how careers are now so much more fluid, how we need to be expert in different working and social situations, different audiences and agendas, as well as collections, and about how important I think a social media presence is in establishing a personality as a young curator, both liberating and vulnerable.
It was humbling to see so many conference attendees come to our session, with people sitting on the floor and crammed around the walls. This was especially, as the conference left me overwhelmed with hope and enthusiasm for our sector, despite the inevitable and nuanced discussions of the impact of funding cuts. The keynotes by Antonio Vieira and Mat Fraser had the lecture theatre in tears and on its feet, after powerful, personal discussions of what museums can and should be doing in and for under-privileged or woefully badly represented communities.
But it was also the smaller sessions. The groups tackling how to make museums more financially resilient while socially responsible, how to work effectively with other sectors, whether academic or political, how to be honest about the impact of cuts, how to work with different collections, technologies and buildings. ‘Museums Change Lives’ was the rallying cry of the conference, and I certainly left with a renewed purpose and belief in why I do what I do, why museums matter and are worth fighting for.
Museums do change lives. If nothing else, Royal Museums Greenwich have certainly changed mine!