Earlier this week a rare event occurred: all the staff at the MHS (well, lots of us anyway) headed away from the Museum for a day out together. It was part pleasure, part professional – visiting the British Museum in London for some behind-the-scenes snooping around, and the chance to share a few insights with the staff there.
The Sutton Hoo helmet
The trip was arranged especially by our new director, Dr Silke Ackermann, who worked at the British Museum in a range of leadership roles for 16 years, after joining in 1995. Handily, this permitted special access and we got to see inside the BM’s new World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre, a project that has been ten years in the planning and construction. It is an impressive space, as yet unfilled with objects but primed to receive them with shelves and doorways large enough for lifting trucks to deliver even the biggest of treasures.
A curator-led talk of the redesigned Sutton Hoo displays revealed some of the nerdy display tricks that museum people are always on the look-out for; in this instance it was the use of non-reflective glass for the showcases. We also got an introduction to the current Vikings: Life and Legend exhibition, which really helped to bring its material to life.
Tea point: the most important room in the building
But it’s not always the high-impact displays themselves that catch your attention. For our volunteer tour guide Ken Taylor, the highlight was the tour of the old Victorian passageways and tunnels – made even smaller by the cable and ventilation trunking of the new facility.
“It was like walking through a scale model of the London Underground and then into the new building – what a contrast! Huge, light and airy rooms, the enormous doors you could drive a lorry through, and a lift that could transport articulated trucks down to the basement,” he says.
Getting out and about like this to talk to colleagues in other museums and pick up tips, tricks and inspiration from the way other people work can obviously be very valuable. Thanks very much to the BM for hosting us. We hope that this away day will be the first of more regular jollies to come.