Re-Exhibiting the Museum Conference

Reexhibiting the Museum is a single-day conference which aims to shift the academic conversation away from the dominant narratives of nineteenth-century museum-making, too often centred around major national museums and galleries based in London. Instead, we want to bring together researchers working on museums and their collections across and beyond the UK, bringing new perspectives and centring new narratives.

It will explore diverse aspects of nineteenth-century museum formation, including colonialism, municipal and regional galleries, and non-museum spaces, to bring a fuller picture of museums and exhibitions — their displays and their visitors — to the historical record.

You can download the full programme here.

This event is made possible thanks to Researcher Led Activity Funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Tickets

General admission for this conference is £10 which includes the evening keynote lecture and drinks reception.

If you are an AHRC-funded CDP PhD student you can attend this conference for free. Please select the 'Speaker and CDP Researcher Ticket' in the ticket option.

If you are only attending the evening reception please select the 'Evening Reception Only' in the ticket options.

Location

Address - Library of Birmingham, Centenary Square, Birmingham, B1 2ND

The Library is within walking distance of Birmingham’s New Street Station, Snow Hill and Moor Street stations. For more information on access, public transport, and parking please click here.

The conference will take place in LOB101 (Level 1 – accessible via lifts, escalators, and stairs). For a floorplan of the Library, please click here.

Accessibillity

The Library of Birmingham has step-free access throughout the building . You can find a full access guide on the AccessAble website here.

Full Programme

9:30 – 10:00 - Registration

10:00 – 10:15 - Opening remarks

• ‘Thinking beyond South Kensington’ - Mary Clayton-Kastenholz (PhD candidate, Warburg Institute and Victoria and Albert Museum)

10:15 – 11: 30 - Panel 1 - Regional museums

• Chair - Dr Kate Nichols (Associate Professor in Art History, University of Birmingham)
• “Wiping out a little disgrace”: the origins and early history of Nottingham Castle Museum- Frances Potts (PhD candidate, University of Nottingham)
• ‘The nucleus of a museum’: the short-lived Leeds Free Public Museum- Dr Anna Reeve (Research Fellow, Institute of Classical Studies, University of London)
• ‘A treasure house of examples for reference and instruction’: innovation, progression, and accessibility at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery- Dr Maialen Maugars (University of Warwick)

11:30 - 12:00 - Tea and coffee break

12:00 – 13:15 - Panel 2 – Colonial museums

• Chair - Dr Caroline Cornish (Humanities Research Coordinator, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
• Palaces of Science, Tools of Empire: the Geological Museum in Britain and Beyond - Anaïs Walsdorf (PhD candidate, University of Warwick and the Science Museum) & James Kiernan (PhD candidate, University of Edinburgh and Victoria and Albert Museum)
• Exhibiting culture: Revealing Māori agency in Bristol - Polly Bence (PhD candidate, University of Bristol)
• Casting the Empire: Plaster copies of classical sculpture and colonial complicity - Amalia Wickstead (PhD candidate, UCL and Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford)

13:15 – 14:15 - Lunch break

14:15 – 15:35 - Panel 3 – Spaces of display

• Chair - TBC
• The Yorkshire Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures, 1875 - Dr Rebecca Wade (Associate Curator - Cultural Collections, University of Leeds)
• William Buckland’s teaching museum: exhibiting new scientific geology at Oxford in the early nineteenth century - Dr Susan Newell (Honorary Associate of Oxford University Museum of Natural History)
• Misattribution matters: Giotto on display in Cheltenham and Manchester - Dr Katharine Ault (independent researcher)
• Re-imagining the Nation in the Open Air: Artur Hazelius’ Skansen and the Ethnographic Turn in Nineteenth-Century Museology - Carys Tyson-Taylor (PhD candidate, University of Leicester and National Museums NI)

15:35 – 16:10 - Tea and coffee break

16:10 – 17:30 Panel 4 – Collections and objects

• Chair - Dr Oliver Cox (Head of Academic Partnerships, Victoria and Albert Museum)
• The ‘art-workman’ as expert: curating decorative art in the West Midlands - Lily Crowther (PhD candidate, University of Oxford and Victoria and Albert Museum)
• Flourishes and Fragility – Venetian Glass in Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum and the Crisis of Industrial Art Institutions, 1867-1921 - Henriette Marsden (PhD candidate, University of Cambridge)
• Inside the Black Museum: Evidence, Imagination, and the Testimony of Things - Dr Lela Graybill (Associate Professor of Art History, University of Utah)
• W. & R. Chambers museum artefacts, publications, and the meta-museum experience - Dr Rose Roberto (PhD FHEA, Northumbria University)

17:30 – 18:00 - Break

18:00 - 19:00 - Keynote lecture

• Museums on the periphery: Marginal people, objects and places in nineteenth-century museums - Professor Kate Hill (Professor of History, University of Lincoln)

19:00 - 20:00 - Drinks Reception

Organising Committee

Mary Clayton-Kastenholz (PhD candidate, Warburg Institute and Victoria and Albert Museum), Maialen Maugars (PhD, University of Warwick and Birmingham Museums Trust), Amalia Wickstead (PhD candidate, UCL and Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford).