My new role as Curatorial Assistant at Penlee House Gallery & Museum has been varied to say the least.
I shouldn’t be surprised as that’s the nature of museums with a small collections management team, and it’s why I love working in them.
So far I’ve attended LOTS of meetings for our Going Places ‘Making her Mark’ exhibition. Combining with museums in Worcester and Fife on a joint project through the Art Fund has been an eye opener on collaboration. We are carrying out some evaluation on the current exhibitions to collect data, so we can compare visitor make up, travel distance, and transport modes with the new exhibition once it is installed in April. Lots of inputting to do, but all necessary to support funding requests and to see what exhibition content draws in the visitors.
There’s always work to do in the stores – boxing and wrapping objects, checking for hazards and scanning images. As I don’t know the collection this is the ideal way to get to know what’s there. We’re also looking for possible replacement objects to refresh the Social History galleries. Delicate objects can only spend a limited time on display before light can damage them, so I’m keeping an eye open to items that could be brought out instead and for items to tell new stories.
I’ve co-curated a photographic exhibition, which was a real pleasure and an honour as I’ve only been in post four months. Harry Penhaul: Life Through a Lens is a selection of images by a local photo-journalist. Some record stories of the day, like stolen cats and carnivals, others are portraits of local people.
One of the tasks I was given in association with this exhibition and the portrait exhibition running alongside was to coordinate the Tour Guides and their content for the Bloomberg Connects app.
https://www.bloombergconnects.org
I had heard of Bloomberg Connects, but not used it. The gallery uses it to give visitors a deeper understanding of their collection, by having their Tour Guides record something about a selection of the images on display. The app also means that people who can not visit the museum in person can find out more about the collection.
What’s great is that it is free to use for museums and the public, and everyone from https://www.stivesmuseum.co.uk/ to https://www.moma.org/ are represented.
I was blown away by the research that the volunteers did, and the interesting and diverse facts they included in their scripts. I spent time reading, editing and listening to them read before they sat down with the sound engineer.
What I wasn’t planning on was actually being one of the featured readers! One of the volunteers had to drop out and left us with a half written script, for what was one of my favourite images. Rather than leave it out I carried on the research and did the presentation myself. I was so nervous, but Ollie our sound engineer was very patient and put me at ease.
If you want to hear my dulcet tones, and check out the other recordings, download Bloomberg Connects, search for Penlee House Gallery & Museum, scroll down to Current Exhibition, chose Harry Penhaul and tap on Annie Trudgeon.
Leave a Reply