Posts

Staying Local

-
Image
Since I last wrote anything here, the world has opened up, given me new opportunities and milestones, and then abruptly closed down again. I’m staying local, by default, and finally have the chance to think about my fleeting return to museums in the autumn. Closed for now thanks to tier restrictions, Weston Park Museum is still the dark and silent home of The Sheffield Project: Photographs of a Changing City , an exhibition of work originally commissioned by Sheffield’s Untitled Gallery (now Site Gallery ) in the 1980s. I went in with few expectations, because I was also on shift at the time, simultaneously keeper of the exhibition and curious visitor. So I was naively surprised to be moved by the experience, despite my buzzing radio and the shrieks of children on half-term visits. Sheffield is home now, and an exhibition that goes right to the heart of the city at such an important moment in its history was always likely to draw strong emotions. Those I spoke to felt the same – each h
Post a Comment
Read more

Doing heritage at home

-
Image
'The Last Supper (via Zoom)', from @MythAddict on Twitter Obviously, too many words have already been written trying make sense of, and distract ourselves from, the horrific thing that is happening (a pandemic). There is no point ignoring that, because it defines our waking moments. For this reason I have very mixed feelings about the artistic and cultural sector's responses to it all, because on the one hand, the point of the creative industries is to reflect and respond to what's going on in the world. But on the other, we all desperately need an escape, and institutions like theatres and galleries are well-placed to provide that. And on the OTHER hand (yes, I have three, temporarily, what of it), I have a sense that perhaps these fast-moving yet underfunded industries need a little rest, and should be happy to let everyone just watch some telly for a while. We have enough to do, enough problems to tackle in our own house, before trying to put out Yet More Content. Id
Post a Comment
Read more

A future in heritage?

-
Image
This post is a little different, looking not at one exhibition or venue, but at working in museums. Specifically, this piece is about graduate anxiety, generational anxiety, working-in-the-arts anxiety, financial anxiety, who-even-am-I anxiety…sensing a theme? In an effort to alleviate some of these things swilling around my brain, I took a leap and went to a conference designed for emerging museum professionals, called Moving On Up and run by the Museums Association. It was, in many ways, completely wonderful: a beautiful venue in the form of the Maritime Museum, Liverpool; the surprise of bumping into a girl from my MA course and getting to know her outside the constrained environment of a seminar where everybody is too sweaty and close together and awkward. The topics were interesting, but I was overwhelmed by the number of people in the room. There were maybe seventy of us, but I could not stop thinking – there aren’t enough jobs for everyone here, let alone the hundreds
Post a Comment
Read more

MANCHESTER, decolonising, butterflies

-
Image
To absolutely no one's surprise, I haven't kept up with this blog. Every time I've been to an interesting thing, I've considered what I'd write about the experience, the profound and satisfying conclusions I might draw about culture/society/life blah blah, and decided not to bother. It turns out that this happens to me roughly once a day, everything from a nice bit of graphic design on a poster to a great chat with a museum visitor at work, so if anything, not writing these things down has made me notice their frequency and their value all the more. Sutton Hoo is a particularly good example of this, as I visited on a crisp day in December when the sun was low and the Vikings didn't seem very far out of reach. But I don't think it's a crying shame that I didn't write down the thoughts I had about epic stories, or the landscape, or the (truly excellent) interpretation techniques the National Trust has produced. Maybe just go yourself, if you can, and
Post a Comment
Read more

SWEET HARMONY: RAVE | TODAY

-
Image
modern art with an old-fashioned problem Derek Ridgers, Spiral Tribe. Exhibition promo from saatchigallery.com I really liked the sound of this exhibition. I like a party, I like the vibe of what we now call ‘raves’ (but aren’t really the proper free parties of the 80s and 90s). So I expected this exhibition to give me a little bit of the euphoria those parties were renowned for, albeit in a beautifully distilled and very establishment-palatable form. In that sense, Sweet Harmony was perfect: it fulfilled my expectations entirely. Unfortunately, going on a mediocre night out knowing it’ll be mediocre doesn’t fill anyone with pure joy. This exhibition had me feeling like I’d left the rave at 2am: tired, head spinning, but crushingly sober. There’s quite a few reasons for that: 1) I slept on my friend’s bedroom floor after we went for drinks, so I wasn’t quite as sparky as maybe the Saatchi needed me to be (not their fault). 2) The lady at
Post a Comment
Read more