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