Collecting Shackleton
How do museums add to their collections? The answer varies, and it depends on the type of museum. Generally it’s through some combination of responding to offers of donations* or through projects to make carefully targeted acquisitions in an area where the collection might be lacking. *As I type this I can hear the curators and collections teams shouting at…
What’s in a label?
Sometimes we find objects in our store that have little or no known documentation – the object has in effect become ‘lost’. Sometimes, however, museum staff are lucky enough to have an old label or mark on the object. But how can we build an object biography from old labels? During the autumn term – Michaelmas Term here in Cambridge…
“Inspired”: a glimpse behind the scenes with young people
In December 2019, two groups of young people from primary schools across Cambridgeshire made a very special behind-the-scenes visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum. The visit gave them a taster of what goes into making an exhibition, and the opportunity to install their very own artworks in the INSPIRE exhibition. The groups selected were young artists who had their artworks selected for…
