It’s Museum Memories day once more, another excellent initiative from the consistently brilliant Museum140 project. While the day will mostly be shared out on twitter, I though it a good opportunity to reflect on one favoured museum memory in a little more detail. Given the increasingly precarious feelings that are coming out of the museum sector at the moment, it seems timely to look back on a day which really affirmed the power of the museum as a focal gathering point for people. My museum memory is the Day of the Dead festival at the British Museum. Back in the autumn of 2009, the BM was hosting Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler, part of their Great Leaders series of exhibitions. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit each of the Great Leader exhibitions, but Moctezuma offered something special, something quite unique, certainly in my experiences of visiting museums. In association with the exhibition, the BM put on a Day of the Dead festival. Now, while I had certainly heard of the Day of the Dead, I had never participated in or really seen much about it. Intrigued, I decided that this was the day that I had to go and see the exhibition (travelling down from Wales and juggling work, it had required planning). Thinking that I would see the exhibition first and then explore the festival events, I had somewhat fortuitously arrived bright and early before the Museum doors were open. Fortuitous it was because I experienced something I had never before seen, in some two decades of museum going, a queue! Conjuring mental images of the black and white photographs of hundreds snaking around the BM gardens waiting to glimpse the Tutankhamen exhibition, there was the immediate sense that you were part of something, this was going to more than just a wander around the BM, this was an event, and an event that would be shared by thousands. Having lived about ten minutes from the BM while studying at the Institute of Archaeology, going to the BM had been a fairly regular occurrence. If not for visiting, the site provided a useful shortcut on jaunts across the city. But in what must be by now the hundreds of visits made, never before, nor subsequently, had I seen the museum filled in such a way. It was not just the fact that the museum was crammed, it was the energy of the crowd. Not forgetting the exhibition, it was excellent, but in terms of the day, the collections almost became an irrelevance. Exhibitions areas, more familiar as quiet, almost reserved centres of contemplation, were transformed into vibrant musical arenas. The Enlightenment Gallery stood out, as it suddenly becoming a buzzing hub of experimental musical exploration. Around the museum, either similar sensory events were interjected into the galleries, or more familiar talks were led around key objects, but whatever the activity, they were all eagerly consumed by a swelling audience. In the Great Hall, this giant white space, friend of the echo, became a little Mexico. Food stalls and alters filled the space, but in front of the Reading Room was what became the main centre piece of the day. While dance and music played out through the day, the event culminated in the procession of the dead, but while I could try and describe this key moment, this video from the BM presents the day far better than I might express in words. Here I found myself in the middle of a throng pressing in on a Mariachi band (intangible cultural heritage on display as well), and I seemed to be one of the few there who did not know the words to the songs! This was an international demographic, the event had allowed the BM to reach out to that wider audience, to make the world very welcome. On this one day in November, some 30,000 people came into the museum. 30,000...in a day, and it felt very special to be among that number. Perhaps at a time when museums in Britain are facing staffing cuts, collections cuts and general closures, local and national authorities might look back on the Day of the Dead at the BM, and take some time to think. The museum is a powerful thing. Underutilised, the museum can become a dark forgotten depository of poorly presented fragments. With some vision and enthusiasm, the museum can become a powerful force, an attraction yes, but much more than that, it can become the stimulus of identity, the celebration of culture, and the platform through which a sense of pride might be derived. The museum is a special thing, and before they are lost it is really worth considering just how important they can be, for the individual, for the community, and for the nation. Visiting the BM on this day was really quite a profound museums experience for me, and will be difficult to rival among my many museum memories up to this point in my life, and for the many memories yet to be made.
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Come the end of the month, British and international museum goers alike will be able to share, albeit for a price, in what promises to be an impressive heritage experience. A ship of some international significance, off display to the general public for several years while undergoing conservation and display work, is set to become the centre piece of a stunning new multimillion pound museum. Surely the historical value of this ship alone will be enough to ensure significant visitor numbers, while the significant level of support derived from local government and HLF have ensured that the museum product should be of such quality so as to provide a sustainable experience for decades to come. So, may I be the first to say, welcome to the new Newport Ship Museum … wait, there is a typo in there somewhere I’m sure. My apologies for any underhand misdirection, of course what I meant to do was to encourage visitors to welcome the new Mary Rose Museum, opening at the end of May. The Mary Rose project has really been quite an exciting one, after all, brand new multimillion pound museum do not spring up very frequently in Britain these days. Of course I’m in no position to wax lyrically about the new museum displays and interpretation, not accessible to the general public for the better part of a month yet, but what can be done is to enthuse about the way in which local support has been thrown behind this ship, and its position within the local community. Here is a little sound bite from Hampshire County Council in their deliberations back in 2009, as to whether or not they should support the new museum project: The Mary Rose Museum already plays a significant role in the cultural life of Hampshire and in its contribution to the wellbeing and quality of life of Hampshire residents and their sense of place, as well as the economic development of the county through tourism. The proposed new museum has the potential to improve on that contribution, while raising the profile and reputation of Hampshire. It is a project with which Hampshire could be proud to associate itself. The County Council has seen fit over the years to invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in supporting the development of the ship, museum and associate funding bids. Work through the Council report, and in the main, it is one of positivity, enthusiastically exploring ‘how will the new museum benefit us’, rather than dwelling on what it might cost. Citing visitor numbers pushing half a million, and the obvious associated economic benefits derived from such footfall, the Council has proven to be an active partner in developing this important ship project. There may be some lessons to be learned here for other councils, not to mention national governments, in their deliberations on whether to invest or not in such projects. Talk of economic regeneration, bringing shoppers (not to mention shops) back into town centres in near terminal decline, and establishing some sustainable notion of local pride, are all themes that can only be supported by investment in heritage projects of this nature … If you just so happen to have a medieval ship going spare, then that might be a good place to start the process. I’ve been running field trips up to Blaenafon for about five years now. In that time, the heritage landscape is one that has gradually evolved into a picture of promise and opportunity, while in one instance, with the establishment of the World Heritage Visitor Centre, it has become a world leader. It has not been an overnight success. Many will remember the short sighted attempts to reinvent Blaenafon into some quasi Hay on Iron book town, in a plan that resulted in little more than several book shops going out of business in record time. But with some joined up thinking, the heritage assets in the town have begun to be linked together to form something resembling a coherent heritage narrative. The latest addition, the slightly creepy (I can only be disturbed by silhouetted figures lurking in the landscape) Tell Tale Trail, came into operation only in the last week and points to the continued efforts being undertaken to make the most of the World Heritage potential of the industrial narrative. However, while the landscape is slowly knitted together into a patchwork of heritage visitor centres, heritage trails and conserved historic buildings, there remains one glaring oversight, the day by day decline of Ty Mawr. The images included here do not really do justice to the shameful state of this property, but do provide some indication as to its condition following winter 2012/13. Plenty of other adventuring photographers have ventured inside this building and recorded the internal deterioration, though this structure has reached a point where even I (as a fan of climbing live volcanoes, I have a slightly warped sense of personal safety) have severe reservations of stepping inside (not to mention the whole trespass issue, not that there is any indication to say that the current private owners would give a hoot one way or another). Photographs from outside though clearly indicate the severe rate of decay across the roofing. As many conservators would be quick to point out, once the roof is gone, the rest follows soon after. There are occasional mutterings in official local government documentation about the need to slow the rate of decay here, and vague acknowledgements that Ty Mawr really does matter. But it is simply the case, that for all the occasional talk, in practice, nobody cares. Ty Mawr is a big, old structure, and a financial nightmare to conserve. Even the most optimistic heritage campaigner would have to conclude that there will never be the money provided to save this building from becoming scrap and rubble, it is simply too late. Following the closure of the site as a nursing home, the unwritten intention for this site has been quite clear, ‘leave to fall apart, bulldoze, demolish, and build something new’. For someone, Ty Mawr will make a lovely development project, at least the land upon which it once stood will. For Blaenafon and Wales though, a key component of the industrial heritage story will be lost, forever. On this note, it seems that there is an opportunity with the forthcoming Heritage Bill for Wales to take action. Listing status has always been a hotchpotch piece of legislation, open to the interpretive whims of individuals, changeable as the wind. Few of us will need reminding that listed status provides no guarantees of protection, and there is nothing to compel owners to do anything to prevent the decline of properties in their care. The Heritage Bill for Wales could change this. I write this with no real sense of optimism, after all, the legislative movements in Wales since 2011 have been far from groundbreaking and we are yet to see the ‘distinctively Welsh politics’ much promised after the referendum of that year. But there is at least a chance that buildings like this, and their inevitable loss, will shame those responsible for heritage in Wales at a legislative level, to take this opportunity to enshrine in law a requirement of care for those who buy up our listed and shared heritage, rather than just demand that any sledgehammer led alterations are done so only with permission. I hope for a lot, I expect little. |
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