With Black Lives Matter protests and the toppling of the Colston statue still making headlines in the UK calls to do something about statues with racist or colonial histories grow ever more urgent. Options for dealing with these monuments are increasingly contested and […]
Blogs
Digital responses from locked-down museums
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, museums increased their digital activities. This Insight summarises trajectories of this sudden digital transformation, reflects on its consequences, and presents a project aimed at mapping museums’ digital responses to the pandemic.
Exploring Blockchain in the Cultural Sector Online Conference – 16th October 2020
We are pleased to inform you that registration is now open for the ‘Exploring Blockchain in the Cultural Sector’ conference (16th October 2020).
Museum access post-Covid: Lessons for leaving lockdown
With the cultural sector now poised to re-open from July 4 under strict(ish) guidelines set by the UK government, now is a good time revisit an online chat we had with Professor Helen Rees Leahy earlier in the Covid-19 crisis.
Rethinking the role of museums in a time of crisis
As museums around the world have increasingly committed to making themselves digitally accessible to the public during lockdown, we have been flooded by new cultural content available online. While Italian museums have been mainly involved in a “broadcasting” approach, museums in other countries have strived to enable new and different engagement with audiences. What do these two approaches tell us about the roles museums want to fulfil and the relationship they want to create with their communities?
Iconoclasm, re-interpretation, counter-memorial, or what?
In the era of Black Lives Matter, what options are available for dealing with monuments, memorials and statuary with colonialist links.
Museums and community support during transitional periods
What can museums learn from other cultural institutions addressing conflict, memory and transitional justice to support communities during transitional periods? Art, culture and heritage play a fundamental role in restorative justice, due to its capacity to create healing bonds between victims, perpetrators, society and the State. Drawing on Colombia’s experience, Catalina Delgado Rojas highlights four actions that can inspire museums to provide comfort and support to communities transitioning to a post-pandemic world.
At Home: The Intimacy of Things and Spaces in Confinement
Corners, floors, walls, ceilings: a personal exploration of how intimacy in confinement shapes our ways of looking and taking notice of the material-human-natural cultures around us. And the potential for this experience to fuel a feminist ecological imagination.
There’s a place for us… Somewhere
Marginalised LGBTQ+ people find community and connection through shared spaces and hidden networks, navigating existing heteronormative cultures and norms. These places (physical and virtual) are where we find chosen family, a sense of belonging and home.
Seeing Objects from a Safe Distance
We often refer to the ‘texture’, the ‘materiality’ and the ‘tactility’ of artworks, even though we cannot touch them. Florrie Badley considers the additional barriers facing object-based researchers due to the outbreak of COVID-19, reflecting on how we were already responding to issues of distance, separation and forbidden touch in the gallery space before the pandemic.
Museums & Memes – 2
This week’ s expanding brain meme was inspired by Helen Rees Leahy’s post on Cultural Access and the ‘New Normal’. Even though Museums can be perceived as “accessible culture”, they have also been pointed out as a centre of exclusion at different levels. During […]
Exhibitions, Emotions, and the Books of the Pandemic
The last decade has seen a growing interest amongst museum professionals in developing a curatorial practice grounded in affect. In this Insight, Susana Sanchez-Gonzalez reflects on possible currents of affection that might be elicited by books during the pandemic, and how this may inform her research on the theory and practice of book exhibitions.
Remembering 22/5/2017
Jenny Marsden reflects on the work that has taken place with the Manchester Together Archive over the last 18 months, focusing on the volunteering programme to catalogue and digitise the material, and the visits and workshops that have helped the archive team understand more about how people would like to access and use the tributes in the archive. The insight also considers the public response to the Manchester Attack in 2017 in the context of the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Curating the S(h)elf: Collecting and Displaying Objects in Times of Uncertainty
Marion Endt-Jones reflects on collections created by artists in times of personal uncertainty and crisis, as reconstitutions of self and identity through objects. What can these private ‘museums’ tell us about ways we engage with objects and collections at home during lockdown?
Museums & Memes -1
This post is inspired by a recent conversation on a #DrinkingAboutMuseums chat, during which one of the participants shared their guilt of not producing a virtual tour for their institution. The group had been discussing an article posted by Museum Hack that noted […]
How South Korea is Reopening its Museums after Lockdown
Under the new norm of ‘social distancing’, cultural institutions around the world are facing one of the biggest challenges in their history. In South Korea, museums and art galleries have been allowed to open their doors after two months of shutdown as a result of the decreasing number of newly reported COVID-19 cases. Hyewon CHOI reports on how museums in South Korea have maintained engagement with audiences during lockdown, and how they are preparing to reopen their doors to visitors.
Manchester Camerata: exploring the future of orchestral music
Rebecca Parnell reflects on Manchester Camerata’s planned programme of live activity and discusses the orchestra’s commitment to research and the possible digital future of orchestral concerts.
Cultural Access and the ‘New Normal’
Helen Rees Leahy discusses the politics and provision of cultural access during and after the Coronavirus lockdown. Her focus is on museums in the UK and the challenges they face in ensuring and expanding equitable access in a society that is both united by the experience of the pandemic and also divided by inequalities of health, space, time and wealth.
Finding Value in the Challenges of COVID-19
Frances Liddell asks what researchers can do to help the museum sector during COVID-19. In considering the materials created by museums during lockdown, she finds that her question could be answered through exploring the vast amounts of content available online.
The value of parks in everyday lockdown
Abi Gilmore considers how the COVID-19 crisis is shaping cultural participation and the practicing of public space in urban parks. She reflects on how it is also reshaping a current research and public engagement project in a Manchester park, Platt Fields, and its co-located museum, Platt Hall.