Decolonising the Archive: Cambridge Anthropology and Torres Strait Island Kastom
A recent collaborative project to publish Recording Kastom: Alfred Haddon’s Journals from the Torres Strait and New Guinea, 1888 and 1898, highlights the far-reaching value of anthropological collections for ongoing research and community empowerment. Read on to find out how the process of publishing Haddon’s journals enabled us to better understand, activate and decolonize our collections. Alfred Haddon’s expeditions to…
Supporting local museums: a guide for limestone cleaning & care
A lot of buildings and architectural features in and around Cambridge have historically been made of limestone as it was readily available and relatively easy to quarry and to carve. Today, some of these features and objects can be found in local museums, like for example, the sculptures at the Museum of Cambridge (shown above) that used to decorate the…
Plastics in Peril conference videos go live!
What if a storage container could tell you when a museum object needed treatment? Why are so many toys sacrificed in the name of conservation? Should we clean plastics like we clean paintings? Is sustainable cold storage a pipe dream? How can we get the most from collections that are doomed from the start? These questions and many others were…
