Re-Exhibiting the Museum: New Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Exhibition, Collection, and Display.

'Re-exhibiting the Museum' is a single-day conference which aims to shift the academic conversation away from the dominant narratives of nineteenth-century museum-making, too often centred around major national museums and galleries based in London. Instead, it will bring together researchers working on museums and their collections across and beyond the UK, bringing new perspectives and centring new narratives.

It will explore diverse aspects of nineteenth-century museum formation, including colonialism, municipal and regional galleries, spaces of display, and case studies on objects and collections, to bring a fuller picture of museums and exhibitions — their displays and their visitors — to the historical record.

This event is made possible thanks to Researcher Led Activity Funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Programme

9:30 – 10am Registration

10 – 10:15am Opening remarks
Mary Clayton-Kastenholz, PhD candidate, Warburg Institute and Victoria and Albert Museum
‘Thinking beyond South Kensington’

10:15 – 11:30am Panel 1 - Regional museums
Chair: Dr Kate Nichols, Associate Professor in Art History, University of Birmingham

Frances Potts, PhD candidate, University of Nottingham
“Wiping out a little disgrace”: the origins and early history of Nottingham Castle Museum

Dr Anna Reeve, Research Fellow, Institute of Classical Studies, University of London
‘The nucleus of a museum’: the short-lived Leeds Free Public Museum

Dr Maialen Maugars, University of Warwick
‘A treasure house of examples for reference and instruction’: innovation, progression, and accessibility at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

11:30am – 12pm Tea and coffee break

12 – 1:15pm Panel 2 – Colonial Museums
Chair: Dr Caroline Cornish, Humanities Research Coordinator, Royal Botanic Gardens

Anaïs Walsdorf, PhD candidate, University of Warwick and the Science Museum
James Kiernan, PhD candidate, University of Edinburgh and Victoria and Albert Museum
Palaces of Science, Tools of Empire: the Geological Museum in Britain and Beyond

Polly Bence, PhD candidate, University of Bristol
Exhibiting culture: Revealing Māori agency in Bristol

Amalia Wickstead, PhD candidate, UCL and Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Casting the Empire: Plaster copies of classical sculpture and colonial complicity

1:15 – 2:15pm Lunch break

2:15 – 3:35pm Panel 3 – Spaces of display
Chair: TBC

Dr Rebecca Wade, Associate Curator (Cultural Collections), University of Leeds
The Yorkshire Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures, 1875

Dr Susan Newell, Honorary Associate of Oxford University Museum of Natural History
William Buckland’s teaching museum: exhibiting new scientific geology at Oxford in the early nineteenth century

Dr Katharine Ault, independent researcher
Misattribution matters: Giotto on display in Cheltenham and Manchester

Carys Tyson-Taylor, PhD candidate, University of Leicester and National Museums NI
Re-imagining the Nation in the Open Air: Artur Hazelius’ Skansen and the Ethnographic Turn in Nineteenth-Century Museology

3:35 – 4:10pm Tea and coffee break

4:10 – 5:30pm Panel 4 – Collections and objects
Chair: Dr Oliver Cox, Head of Academic Partnerships, Victoria and Albert Museum

Lily Crowther, PhD candidate, University of Oxford and Victoria and Albert Museum
The ‘art-workman’ as expert: curating decorative art in the West Midlands

Henriette Marsden, PhD candidate, University of Cambridge
Flourishes and Fragility – Venetian Glass in Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum and the Crisis of Industrial Art Institutions, 1867-1921

Dr Lela Graybill, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Utah
Inside the Black Museum: Evidence, Imagination, and the Testimony of Things

Dr Rose Roberto, PhD FHEA, Northumbria University
W. & R. Chambers museum artefacts, publications, and the meta-museum experience

5:30 – 6pm Break

6 – 7pm Keynote lecture
Professor Kate Hill, Professor of History, University of Lincoln
Museums on the periphery: Marginal people, objects and places in nineteenth-century museums

7pm Drinks

Organising committee: Mary Clayton-Kastenholz (PhD candidate, Warburg Institute and Victoria and Albert Museum), Maialen Maugars (PhD, University of Warwick and Birmingham Museums Trust), Amalia Wickstead (PhD candidate, UCL and Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford).

To register, please follow this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/re-exhibiting-the-museum-conference-tickets-1684522535249?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl