Six and a half years ago, one of the most engaging and innovative displays of archaeology seen in Wales was opened. In 2007, the Origins Gallery in the National Museum of Wales became the home for the national archaeological narrative. Having previously been stretched out over multiple floors and several galleries, the archaeology collections suffered from a change in museum strategy, and were relocated into a much smaller display area, into what was always intended to be a temporary exhibition. Come the 2nd of March, 2014, there will be no doubt as to the temporary status of this display, it will close, permanently. With the closure of the Origins gallery, the city centre museum will bid farewell to the displayed archaeological materials. This is particularly significant because since the very earliest days of the national museum project in Wales, archaeology has been a significant contributor to the museum displays and collections. With Mortimer Wheeler at the helm, first as a Keeper of Archaeology, but later as Director of the entire institution, the archaeological narrative played a defining role in considerations of what Wales was built on, and where a sense of Welsh identity came from. No more. In the coming years, the redevelopment of St Fagans will come to fruition, and in one form or another, archaeology themed displays will find a new place of residence. It waits to be seen what level of prominence this narrative will have in a site that continues to struggle in efforts to shake off long standing associations with folk narratives. Yet this is the climate into which archaeology will, in the future, be seen and explored. Only time will tell if this is going to work out well for archaeology in Wales, and while there are many who have voiced concerns about this shift, we can now only get behind the project, and work hard to ensure that archaeology becomes a centre piece of the new St Fagans, rather a neglected side show, hidden in the background. For now though, we need think less of the future for a moment, and take advantage of the amazing resource that we have in Wales while we still can. At time of writing there are only 25 days left in which the Origins gallery can be explored. While St Fagans will certainly display some of these collections, it is currently impossible to say when these items will be accessible for public consumption again. The likes of the Capel Garmon firedog, the Roman Leopard Cup, stones from Bryn Celli Ddu, and the ogham marked standing stones, are only a small selection of the world class archaeological collections on display in Cardiff. Wales is culturally richer for their display. Equally, we are worse off for their now inevitable retreat. At Caerleon, University of South Wales, we have made consistent use of the Origins gallery, in terms of aiding student understanding of the early Wales narrative, but also in the exploration of a wealth of display and interpretation issues. It has been a tremendous and valuable resource on so many levels, and from a very personal perspective, I will sincerely lament the loss this archaeology gallery. So, while you still can, I implore you to visit this gem of a collection, ponder both the archaeological and museological issues, but most of all, enjoy it, as there are few finer displays of archaeology to be had on this island.
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On the 24th of January, formal public consultation on the Newport City Council budget for 2014-15 will come to a close. In the coming seven days, it is possible that the fate of the Newport medieval ship will be determined, and there is little about the consultation that should make anyone feel comfortable or positive about what that fate might be. There is now a small window of opportunity for interested parties to voice their concerns and objections to the council, and I would encourage any and all who value the Newport ship, and see its potential, be that through education, tourism or simply on the grounds of preserving the heritage landscape of Newport, to get in touch with the local authority now. In terms of why we should be concerned about the future of the ship, a brief overview of the budget proposals reveals a number of suggested fiscal cuts, which would leave the ship homeless and without any curatorial or interpretive support in the near future. ‘The Council is committed to the completion of the conservation of the archaeological timbers, however, there is no funding to progress beyond this conservation phase.’ In the budget summary, while the council maintains its long standing commitment to completing the ongoing conservation process, it is quick to state that there is no additional money for the project beyond this point. Further, there is no mention of any intent to pursue additional funding, simply that the council intent is focused on reducing ship related costs to zero. In addition: ‘Staff working on the project will be at risk of redundancy (5 FTE staff impact, 2 vacant, 3 filled). This would result in limited knowledge within the organisation about the Ship. There will be a significant challenge to transfer the timbers to a suitable institution or organisation.’ While direct costs in relation to the presentation of the ship and ongoing costs, bar storage, would be removed in this scenario (open days for instance would, of course, end), there is the additional impact of staffing cuts. During the past decade and a bit, the Newport ship team has developed into a leading authority on this particularly unique archaeological collection. The creation of such expertise does not happen overnight, yet its loss can be instantaneous. Loss of funding for the ship would rob south east Wales of an assemblage which has the potential to be a significant tourist attraction, but as significant, we would lose the world class expertise which has grown around it. This is not so much a case of creating ‘limited knowledge within the organisation about the Ship’, it is a case of decimating it. While the ship has the potential to come and go in terms of where it is stored and displayed, the same cannot be said of the expertise. Once that is gone, it is gone. In terms of display, the council proposals make a token gesture: ‘However, some timbers will still be available to see at the Museum and the digital Archive will be available through Internet Archaeology in the next twelve months.’ The display of ‘some timbers’, however many that could plausibly be (i.e. not many), would be highly limited in scope and do little in terms of the potential of the collection. Yet this ‘display’ is dependent on the long term viability of the museum itself. Further to the proposed ship cuts, are reductions to the hours of provision provided by the current museum and library service. In addition, further recommendations on staff reductions within the museum service are made. Were these factors to combine, Newport could face the loss of access to the bulk of the Newport ship, the loss of all expertise on the collection, a reduced museum coupled with a reduction in expertise and staff numbers at that museum. The picture presented is a bleak one. Especially if one considers the gradual reduction of museum staffing and hours as the first step down a slippery slope towards closure. Back at the start of the year, I reflected on the short and long term future for the heritage sector in Wales, and cited the future of the Newport ship as a test case for the way in which we could expect our heritage resources to be treated in the coming years, as the full impacts of austerity gradually reveal themselves. At present, Newport City Council are arguing a case which would significantly undermine, if not totally erode the presence of the medieval ship in Newport, with no indication in their strategy that this artefact would play any role at all in the proposed regeneration of the city. This would be as critically short sighted as the same council’s original intention to bury the timbers under concrete. All is not lost though. In the last week, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, faced with what seemed an inevitable ‘merger’ with Cadw, to be forced through by the Welsh Government, earned a reprieve. The weight of popular opinion, sent in to the Welsh Government, forced a rethink, and a stay of execution for the RCAHMW. This is what the ship, both the physical remains and the staff responsible for it, needs now. Comments can be sent in to Newport City Council via this link: http://www.newport.gov.uk/_dc/index.cfm?fuseaction=council.homepage&contentid=CONT543078 and I encourage any and all who value this unique element of both Newport, Welsh and British heritage, to voice their opinions as soon as possible. Well, it turned out to be quite a year for heritage in Wales. While there were occasions which provided cause for great optimism, there was a steady stream of reminders to highlight just how vulnerable our national heritage resource actually is. The sad truth of 2013 however, is that the real negative impacts will not truly reveal themselves until deep into 2014, if not later, as the creeping tendrils of fiscal cuts continue to slowly erode the foundations of museums and heritage organisations in Wales and beyond. Surely the most controversial moment of the year though had to be the Chartist mural debacle. I’ve promised myself on more than one occasion that I would just let the mural story go, but every once in a while we receive little reminders as to why the mural destruction was so symbolic. When Newport city council battered their way through with plans to obliterate the distinctive mural, they critically underestimated the sentiment of locals in Newport. Perhaps there were not thousands demonstrating against the council’s actions, but there were certainly hundreds, not to mention the odd Hollywood celeb to add to the mix. The anger regarding the loss of the mural stimulated a debate as to what constitutes heritage. Is a thirty year old wall mounted mural something that is worthy of protection? Is it part of the heritage landscape worth protecting? Opinion in Newport was clearly divided, with the city council making a concerted decision, that being that the mural was indeed not part of the heritage landscape, and certainly not worthy of saving. This though raises other more pressing concerns, namely what comes next? What else could a council decide to cast by the wayside in the name of development and gain? Perhaps our built heritage, in terms of castles for instance, may not seem under any immediate threat, but the heritage sector is in many respects standing on a precipice. Our museums are slowly being stripped down from the inside out, as budget cuts erode staff positions, education programmes and, in places, the very existence of museums in their entirety. Chapel heritage across Wales is gradually vanishing as more and more buildings fall out of use, while proposed developments seem to be encroaching closer and closer on to the edges of hillforts in Wales (not to mention Offa's Dyke), and it is questionable how close new buildings will get to rampart defences before new residents can confidently claim to actually live on top of an Iron Age fort. Sites and staff are threatened in a manner in which we have not experienced for several decades, and it should be an ongoing cause of concern for all in related fields. At the same time, Welsh Government moved ahead with its consultation on the Heritage Bill for Wales. Many will remember a similar white paper being drafted for heritage in the UK several years ago, before it was bumped in the list of priorities for a general election. Whether a similar fate awaits the Welsh Heritage Bill awaits to be seen, but at the very least government in Wales is actively discussing the future framework for heritage in this country, so the field is at least not being forgotten about. However, the poor old Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments for Wales looks set to buy the farm as a result of government involvement, despite almost everyone in public consultation stressing what an incredibly bad idea it would be to merge the RCAHMW and Cadw. While government is certainly focusing on heritage in Wales, the consequences may most clearly be manifest in the loss of another significant organisation. While the RCAHMW remains threatened, the archaeological trusts are fighting their corner, and the Archwilio application, developed by the four trusts, is a positive reminder both of the scale of the archaeological resources at our disposal in Wales, and the intent in this country to enhance public accessibility to those resources and archives. In this respect, Wales has forged a path as a world leader regarding accessibility. Few other, if indeed any nation, can boast the same level of access to historic environment records as Wales currently does. The next challenge is to make sure people know that they can access this information, and of course encourage potential audiences that this information is worth accessing in the first place, but perhaps that is a battle for 2014. For the moment, we can certainly welcome and celebrate the addition of Archwilio to the likes of the People’s Collection project. The real challenge for 2014 will be one of resilience. Local and national government have collectively lined up the culture sector with a succession of budget cut tipped bullets, and are only too keen to pull the trigger. What fate awaits the Newport medieval ship for instance? This internationally significant artefact is going to be evicted later this year, with no obvious home for it to go to. What happens to the Newport ship will probably serve as the acid test for the position of heritage in Wales for the rest of this decade, for if such an assemblage were to be lost to Wales, it would be an indictment on the attitudes of officials in this country regarding our heritage resource. Should the ship be saved, with an intention to display and develop, in a manner akin to the Mary Rose museum which dominated heritage headlines in 2013, then we might have some reason to be optimistic. That all awaits to be seen though, either way, some very significant decisions regarding the heritage of Wales will take place in 2014, and the ramifications will remain with us for much, much longer. Having written about the Mütter Museum last month in relation to their 'adopt a skull' programme, I've since been keeping an eye on the museum for any related developments. The museum is the perfect case study for our new year lecturers on the ethical treatment of human remains, so I'm very interested to see how the adoption scheme is received and develops. That all being said, I am now seeing the Mütter Museum in an entirely different light today, having stumbled across what I imagine (and hope) must be the single most unique museum store gift encountered yet. This is (of course) the Mega Colon! Nothing says Christmas quite like a giant plush colon to sit on the mantelpiece, and with a cute little face, this colon can look right back at you. I can only applaud the Mütter Museum for bringing us yet another brilliant museums case study...I'm yet to figure out entirely how I can build the Mega Colon museum gift into a future lecture, but I feel it simply must be done, one way or another. If you really feel that your life is not complete without a giant plush mega colon close at hand, you can order your very own from here: Merry Christmas! We’ve just started to explore some repatriation issues in the Presenting the Past module on the History Degree in Caerleon. Inevitably human remains will (and have already) come up as a discussion point, and it is a theme we also explore during our museum ethics sessions in the new year. Always emotive, divisive and thoroughly engaging, the topic of whether or not museums should display, and indeed hold human remains, is one that I feel we will always return to. Debates about the display of human remains in the new Stonehenge Visitor Centre ensure the profile of the topic remains strong, and the frequent repatriation claims to British institutions means that several institutions, at least, could publish case studies on the subject on an annual basis. It is perhaps with this in mind, that it was fascinating to stumble across the Mütter Museum, of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and their Save Our Skulls campaign. The Mütter Museum is offering what must be a unique opportunity, to adopt one of the 139 skulls in its collections. The adoption sees ‘careers’ donate $200 annually, which goes towards the ongoing conservation of the collection. Those donating will have their name included in the collection displays. The collection had originally been compiled by Dr. Joseph Hyrtl, an anatomist who, among other things, used the assemblage to undermine the ‘science’ of phrenology. While the skulls were being collated, scientific inquiry underpinned the collection strategy, and education remained an important motivation in the display of the human remains. The big ‘however’ in all of this though, is the nature of collection. As was the way of collecting human remains in the nineteenth century, ethical issues were far from being a pressing concern. Work through the catalogue of remains you can ‘adopt’ and it becomes apparent that a significant proportion of the remains displayed are those of criminals who had been executed and people who had commit suicide. It can be stated with total confidence that choice, regarding donation and subsequent display, was not afforded to the individuals represented. In Hyrtl’s own writings, there are some wonderfully macabre notes describing his own looting of graves to supplement his collection. Suffice to say, we would not accept this form of collecting today, so how does that impact on our attitudes towards this historical collection in a contemporary environment? These questions are tremendously awkward ones to resolve, and perhaps it is surprising how comfortable the College of Physicians are in asking for money for the conservation of what amounts to looted human remains. Were these to be a collection of Aboriginal human remains, we might expect the institution to be more concerned with a hasty face saving return of the remains. But then again, is there anyone left to speak on behalf of those displayed in the Mütter Museum? In many instances the skulls cannot be traced to an individual. In the case of executed criminals, would the stigma associated with the crimes committed deter anyone from coming forward and claiming a connection? If no one can make an ancestral claim, does that negate the scope for any repatriation claims? This of course does not begin to confront the issue that this is a significant historical archive of scientific research. Does the importance of the collection outweigh any wider ethical concerns that might be had? If a collection of human remains is important enough, should it be kept together, in the manner in which the scientist, archaeologist or museum curator intended it to be, regardless of the way in which it was assembled? Take a glance across the museum community and scientific institutions more generally, and you’ll find there is no consistent answer to these questions, and perhaps this is a major factor in way the questions will not go away.
'Rohan at the Louvre' - surreal and terrifying.
I’ve been quite ill this week, very annoying given that the current ‘to-do’ list includes turning around a 4000 word article in the space of a week, finalising preparations for an excavation which begins in just over a week, wading through a pile of marking freshly delivered to my inbox on Friday, oh, and not forgetting the whole ‘finish the PhD’ thing. I also seem to be spread over four separate twitter accounts, which is proving to be not just time consuming, but incredibly confusing. So, all in all, a bad week for producing an insightful blog on the heritage sector. No, instead I thought I would be kind to myself this week, and look over my ongoing research into museums in graphic novels. This has been an indulgent, wonderfully fun, and surprisingly enlightening subject to explore. Surprising still was finding a conference, Monstrous Antiquities, which might just be suitable for a paper to be presented at based on this work, always a bonus (abstract is almost ready to go - yet another thing being worked on this week). In some respects this research project has gotten out of hand. What started as a bit of an aside exploring the DC character of Hawkman and his collection of artefacts held in the fictional Stonechat Museum, has now exploded into a myriad of museum scenarios, all of which is probably going to be too much to include in one article – a good problem to have though. While this project has allowed me to revisit some favoured publications, and delve more than once into the murky waters of ebay in search of some rare edition featuring museums, it has also provided me with the opportunity to fully explore the series of graphic novels co-published by the Louvre Museum. This run of novels has been supported by the Louvre for several years now, and is based around artists being invited into the museum to explore the collections in, structure and workings of the museum. The range of interpretations has been varied. ‘Rohan at the Louvre’ is by far the most bizarre offering, with museum staff being executed by a malevolent painting one by one – a narrative I found intriguing, if not entirely useful to my research. One entry that I would certainly recommend is Marc-Antoine Mathieu’s The Museum Vaults. Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert. The Museum Vaults is probably the one entry in the Louvre graphic novel series to really explore the inner workings of the museum. Here, the Louvre is a behemoth of a structure, utterly impossible to fully explore during the course of a single lifetime. In the exploration of the museum by the titled ‘expert’, reference is made to collecting and conservation of objects. But then perhaps more mundane roles within the museum are each in turn given their own position of significance. A framer is given a moment to extol the significance of his position, while an inspired sequence provides an insight into the training of museum guardians, where the art of ‘tss tssing’ members of the public from touching paintings is meticulously practiced. A certain structured madness is on display in this imagining of the museum, and having worked in several, it is easy to think back on occasions where these extreme imaginings might not be so far removed from reality. Without wanting to spoil the narrative for anyone looking to follow this up, the novel does point toward the all consuming nature of experiencing a museum of such stature. Can we ever hope to see everything in a museum during a single lifetime? Can we ever hope to understand everything in a museum in a single lifetime? Possibly not, but The Museum Vaults makes a good case in favour of this being a worthwhile, if not impossible pursuit. So the research goes on, and I wonder if I have taken on something which will prove to be utterly impossible in one lifetime. Only time will tell I suppose on that one.
The Holy Grail, or the Canton Cup?
It’s been an interesting week for heritage, not least due to the new Heritage Bill for Wales being released for public consultation. However one of the most interesting heritage related headlines to leap out from the pages this week was one to read ‘Christian icon Joseph of Arimathea could be buried in Cardiff’. The word ‘could’ is a fascinating one. Nero 'could' have confided in his beloved pet rat in times of crises, Silbury Hill 'could' have been constructed to act as a landmark to the finest Neolithic restaurant in all of whatever Avebury was referred to as back then, and forks 'could' be used to eat soup, of course none of them did, were or are, but if you were committed enough, then you could make a case for them. Therein lays the greatest danger of Joseph of Bute, as we should presumably now call him. The things we ‘could’ do with our heritage are fairly inexhaustible, especially if you want to put ethics and reason to one side. The article above goes on to tell readers that this is ‘our’ (Welsh) heritage. Is it though? Is it really? Okay, lets for one minute take off our rationale hats and swap them for our money making hats: Crook #1 ‘If we want to attract visitors to Cardiff, why don’t we just tell everyone that Joseph of Arimathea is buried here?’ Crook #2 ‘Good point, we can’t prove it, but that doesn’t matter.’ Crook #1 ‘Another good point, because we can’t prove a lot of things, but we can still say they happened right?’ Shortly after we can expect the Cardiff City sightseeing bus tour to suddenly call in at the burial place of Owain Glyn Dwr (conveniently buried directly under the pub of the same name, so ‘they’ say), metal shavings reputed to have splintered from Excalibur itself (new to the Origins gallery in the National Museum) and the final resting place of Madoc’s hat, washed up in Cardiff Bay. If you don’t take an ethical position on anything, we really could say and sell anything we wanted to about Welsh history. Does this sound a little extreme? Perhaps, but the other story to catch my attention this week might make us think about this issue for a little longer. China and the £58m Jibaozhai Museum, which was recently forced to close its doors to the public following a scandalous revelation that the majority of the artefacts displayed, were cheap fakes. Some wonderful quotes from the senior museum staff suggest that ‘some’ of the 40,000 objects were real, but not many. It would appear that this ‘institution’ has come to embody the very worst of museum corruption and deceit – morals and museum ethics have no place here, as the development of an attractive product seems to have consumed everyone involved. International condemnation and general mockery followed shortly after the story broke. So, with China in mind, let the cautionary tale of the museum that got caught out for misleading all of its visitors be a reminder. We certainly could say all sorts of enticing things about Welsh history and its connections to the world, indeed we can do that perfectly well with our legitimate and proven historical narratives, but let’s leave Joseph of Arimathea where he belongs, wherever that might be: it is certainly not in Cardiff City centre. We do not need to pretend, or need try to dupe anyone else into thinking anything other than that, and were we to do so, we would deserve the exact same scale of international mockery and derision faced by the Jibaozhai Museum does now.
'Heritage' Minister John Griffiths views the Mold Cape.
Be forewarned - there is a touch of the angry rant about this one, though I prefer to think of it more as a passionate perspective. I find the Mold Cape troubling, a beautiful, inspiring, technically brilliant, but ultimately troubling object. For the next few months, you can see the Mold Cape in Wales. Take the chance while you can, such occasions are few and far between, and duration of such visits are frequently ‘blink and you miss it’ moments. Before you know it, it will be packed up, shipped off, and back on display in London. Yet the ‘return’ of this object to Wales, initially to the south and then up to the north, does not really feel to me like something that should be celebrated. Instead it should be something that forces anyone in Wales with a love of culture, archaeology, or Welsh history in general, to ask some serious questions, of the object, and perhaps ourselves. I won’t disguise my delight at being able to peer at the cape at close quarters in Cardiff this week. It is a stunning example of Bronze Age gold working, and rightly placed in the company of the British Museum’s – ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ series. I had the comfort and space to explore the object for roughly half an hour during this last week [while managing to drop into the Origins Gallery at other points in the week as well], after all, there was next to no one else looking at the object while I was there, so no competition for viewing rights, no shoulder barging required. And while twitter trends are probably not the most reliable means of gauging public interest in an object or collection, a grand total of some twenty tweets on the objects return to Cardiff, at the very least indicates that the social networking communities are yet to be inspired by the cape coming to Wales. So why the lack of interest? Perhaps I should put my cards on the table, if you hadn’t already guessed it, I strongly believe that this object should be living permanently in Wales, if anything, Welsh museums should be loaning the object to the British Museum and not the other way around. I have never bought into the notion that this key Welsh object being displayed in central London somehow does anything beneficial for wider appreciation and understanding of Welsh archaeology/history/culture. Yet, what might be perceived as a lack of interest at the cape’s return, perhaps indicates why it should not be here, if audiences in Wales don’t care enough to come and look, what right do any of us have to argue for its return? Well, plenty of right. I have long feared that the disconnection between audience and object is symptomatic of the lack of engagement between audiences in Wales, and Welsh history. How are Welsh children, year on year, supposed to be encouraged to engage with our prehistoric narratives, inspired by the great artistic achievements to be produced on Welsh soil, when the greatest tangible products of those periods are behind glass case, some 150 miles away, in another country? This factor I fear is the key component in understanding why interest is so ephemeral. How might we be expected to launch a meaningful repatriation campaign when so few people in Wales seem to have any awareness that this object originated in Wales? The Mold Cape troubles me, because it should be in Wales, we should be fighting for it to be in Wales, but we don't, and we seem to have no inclination to ever do so - a situation which will only be reinforced through the continued absence of such works in Wales. Political representatives in Wales seem pretty happy to go along with the status quo as well. Culturally, we remain the junior partner, in spite of a decade of devolution. This is the ideal opportunity for political and cultural voices to make the claim – but none will. In turn, this should really challenge us to ask why bother loaning the object in the first place? If we don't care enough to fight for Welsh cultural heritage to be on Welsh soil all the time, why should we then care about such items dropping back in for several weeks – as suggested above, having spent some time with the collection in Cardiff, it seems that we don't care, and that should be the most troubling element of all. We should value the Mold Cape, we should appreciate its return, but then we should do one of two things. Fight for its return, or try to understand why we are content in Wales for such objects to reside outside of the daily reach of Welsh audiences? One or the other should be considered essential for the future of archaeological and cultural collections in Wales. As I rummage through volumes of graphic novels to find museum references and locations, I'm going to be posting some of the choice examples as and when they appear. Given that repatriation themes are never far away from the headlines, this scathing introduction to the British Museum by John Constantine in Hellblazer #1 from January 1988, seems an appropriately controversial place to begin.
The PhD drafting is almost at an end. A major assault on the footnotes to come, and then it goes off to the supervisor for one last editorial battering, then back to me for a final time, and then it will be done...so in many respects, not really at the end at all, but certainly no more research to be done at least. So the mind now turns to the summer and what next? Well, there are a number of irons in the fire, most of them article driven in one form or another, as thoughts turn to fleshing out the publication list. Unfortunately, the one thing I really want to write about is probably the least practically applicable subject, in terms of my career, that I could have thought of, and that would be graphic novels. There’s a bearded American to blame for this one way or another, but that’s a story for another day. I actually started bringing in graphic novels into my teaching for the first time this year. I had stumbled across an old copy of Hawkman from November 2003, where Carter Hall (Hawkman) engages in a two page spread debate on the ethics of repatriation of cultural material. It struck me as a fairly obscure aside, but ultimately the narrative went on, perhaps unconsciously, to question the ethics of the excavation of human remains. Two themes then, that frequently engage the heritage community in discussion and publication, were being fought out in the pages of a comic. Repatriation is one theme to have been subject to very specific graphic novel treatments. The most obvious example was published in 2011 as part of a British Museum exhibition on Manga. ‘Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure’ is an entire book committed to the exploration of repatriation themes, and, perhaps unsurprisingly given the publisher, the British Museum does quite well out of the debate. Biased maybe, but a good read nonetheless. All of this got me wondering though about how museums are portrayed in graphic novels. What does the setting of Stonechat Museum in the world of Hawkman tell us about how museums are perceived? Does the museum environ reveal how wider attitudes towards museums are changing, or do they continue to reflect the dusty dark halls of stereotype? What about the activities that take place within museums. I can think of no shortage of murders, thefts and doomsday scenarios to occur within a range of unfortunate museums, but what about archiving and community outreach programmes? Okay, so the last two probably don’t lend themselves so well to a dynamic storyline, but that would make it all the more interesting should such themes ever actually get displayed, if only in the background. So, there is at least one summer plan – wading through comic books to find examples of museums, in whatever form or storyline they might come up in. Not entirely sure what I’m going to do with this research once it’s been compiled, but I’ll certainly do something! There are a good range of journals covering graphic novels now, but then this might be something, depending on results, that might sit more comfortably within a museum journal, we’ll see. However, any help or suggestions would be very welcome on this one, as there are only so many comics I can read over the summer! |
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