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…
Cambridge Diary: Autumn 2019
Read on for a selection of autumn highlights from across the University of Cambridge Museums… Exhibitions Happy Birthday Whipple Museum! 75 years ago Robert Whipple donated his extraordinary collection of scientific instruments to the University of Cambridge, and the Whipple Museum of the History of Science was born. The Whipple is celebrating in style with an exhibition of the founding…
