Tag Archives: Collections

Museums, Collections & Conflict, 1500-2010 – MGHG Biennial Conference 2018 Provisional Programme

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13-14 July 2018, National Maritime Museum

Tickets can be purchased online here. For discounted conference tickets and access to the Museums History Journal, membership of the Museums and Galleries History Group can be purchased online here at a rate of £15 for students, £20 for individuals and £35 for institutions. MGHG Membership runs from 1 February to 1 February each year.

MGHG members: £40 / non-members: £70 / MGHG student members: £25 / student non-members: £40

Friday 13 July 2018

9.30 – 10.00 – Registration and tea/coffee

10.00 – 10.10 – Introduction (Kate Hill, Chair of MGHG)

10.10 – 12.10 – Panel 1: New insights into the history of the Imperial War Museum

Chair: James Wallis (University of Essex) Discussant: James Taylor (IWM London)

James Wallis (University of Essex) – The Imperial War Museum’s First World War galleries – a space of conflict?
Anna Maguire (King’s College London) – Researching Colonial Experience in the Collections of the Imperial War Museums
Kasia Tomasiewicz (University of Brighton & IWM) – Methods in the Museum: Reflections on Positionality within the Imperial War Museum

12.10 – 13.10 – Lunch (not provided) – postgraduate students lunch session for pre-registered participants only

13.10 – 14.40 – Panel 2: Museums in Wartime I: Protecting museums and objects

Anna Tulliach (University of Leicester) – Assessing the war issue at the Civic Museum of Bologna (1915-1945)
Zoé Vannier (École du Louvre) – Managing a collection “far from drums’ sound”: The evacuation and management of the Near Eastern Antiquities department of the Louvre Museum during World War II
Eva March (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona) – The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and Catalan art museums

14.40 – 15.10 – Tea/Coffee

15.10 – 16.40 – Panel 3: Politics of curating and displaying war

Quintin Colville (Royal Museums Greenwich) – Medals and masculinities: representing the First World War at sea through word and object
Bridget Yates (independent researcher) – ‘The present is pretty terrible, the future is unknown, the past is the only stable thing to which we can turn’: Philip Ashcroft, Rufford Village Museum and the preservation of rural life and tradition during the Second World War
Zoe Mercer-Golden (Royal Museums Greenwich) – Treasure, Triumph and Trespass: Curatorial Challenges in the Collecting and Display of “Priam’s Treasure”

17.40 – 17.00 – Break

17.00 – 18.00 – Keynote lecture: Prof Geoff Quilley (University of Sussex)

18.00 – 19.30 – Reception

Saturday 14 July

9.30 – 11.00 – Panel 4: Collecting during conflict

Simon Quinn (University of York) – British military antiquarianism and collecting during the campaign in Egypt, 1801
Nicholas Badcott (SOAS) – Collecting on campaign in Mahdist Sudan
Amanda Mason (IWM) – Collecting Contemporary Conflict at IWM

11.00 – 11.30 – Tea/coffee

11.30 – 13.00 – Panel 5: Museums in wartime II: Keeping museums going

Catherine Pearson (Anglia Ruskin University) – ‘I knew what I wanted to do and just went ahead’: The experiences of museum staff during the Second World War
Karin Müller-Kelwing (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden: Dresden State Art Collections) – Museum without objects?
Evelien Scheltinga (research-curator) – Dutch museums during World War 2

13.00 – 14.00 – Lunch (not provided) – selection of archival materials on view in Caird Library on history of the National Maritime Museum

14.00 – 14.30 – MGHG AGM

14.30 – 16.00 – Panel 6: History of War Museums

Jacqui Grainger (Royal United Services institute for Defence and Security Studies) – A Lost Museum: the RUSI Museum, 1831-1962
Phil Deans (Newcaslte University) – From A Museum on the World’s Last War, To a Museum on the Two World Wars: Crisis Management and reinvention at the Imperial War Musuem, 1939 – 1946
Melanie Vandenbrouk (Royal Museums Greenwich) – Two world wars and art at the National Maritime Museum

Conference closes

CfP: MGHG Conference: Museums, Collections & Conflict, 1500-2010

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MGHG Biennial Conference 2018, National Maritime Museum, 13-14 July 2018

Keynote speaker: Annie Coombes, Professor of Material and Visual Culture, Birkbeck, University of London

Museums have been profoundly shaped by war and armed conflict, and have also played a significant part in shaping understandings and memories about them. Yet there has been little sustained examination of the way museums in war and war in museums has played out. Since Gaynor Kavanagh’s foundational study Museums and the First World War in 1994, and with the publication this year of Catherine Pearson’s similarly ground-breaking Museums in the Second World War, it is clear that museums have played and can play an important role in helping society address such crisis situations. On the home front, for example, museums have helped society prepare for war and armed conflict. In leading commemoration in the aftermath of war and armed conflict, museums have helped society come to terms with what happened, understand why it happened, and remember sacrifices. Yet museums have equally served as arenas where issues such as commemoration have been contested and negotiated, and where particular narratives legitimising war and conflict have been developed. This conference hopes to address a broad range of questions, including on collecting (in) war and armed conflict, on the deliberate targeting and destruction or safeguarding of museums and cultural property, and the broader range of institutions brought forth or which are strongly influenced by war and armed conflict.

We seek papers which particularly address but are not restricted to the following questions over a period from the Early Modern to the end of the twentieth century:

What have museums done during periods of conflict and what has happened to them? Have they been responsible for morale, have they been targets of attack, have they physically moved and how has their staffing been affected?
How have museums and collections acted to commemorate conflict?
In what ways have wars and other conflicts affected museums’ and collectors’ collecting activities, positively or negatively? How have wars and conflicts been collected, and by whom?
How have museums represented war, civil war and other conflicts such as rebellions? Have museums promoted peace by interpreting war?
How have museums of conflict, of the armed forces and of weaponry/armouries developed historically?

We welcome proposals for papers which deal with the history of museums and collecting in a British, European or wider context or which address the relationships between different geographical areas.

Paper proposals should be for papers of 20 minutes’ length. Proposals should be 250 words max and include the name, contact details and affiliation (if applicable) of the speaker.
Panel proposals are strongly encouraged and should consist of a panel title, proposals for 3 papers, along with a rationale for the panel theme, and contact details and affiliations (if applicable) of all participants. Please indicate whether you will provide a chair for your session or not (it does not matter which).
Poster proposals are also welcomed. Please contact Kate Hill (khill@lincoln.ac.uk) for more information.

All the above proposals should be sent to contact@mghg.info by 1 March 2018. Please note all speakers and poster presenters will be expected to pay the conference registration fee.

Further information here.