Busman’s Holiday

Working in an industry like Museums it is important to keep up to date with what other institutions are up to, to not only make sure what we’re doing is best practice but also to gives us inspiration.

Last week I visited four museums; V&A’s Museum of Childhood, The National Army Museum, Ulster Museum of Folk and Transport and the Ulster Museum.

I probably look very differently at museum exhibitions than the average person. When looking at a showcase I tend to look out how the objects are mounted, what type of lights they’d use, what type of showcase they’d use and how they’ve done their captions. When reading the text panels I’m usually trying to work out what they key messages of the exhibition are. I tend to play with all the computer interactives and children’s games too, just to see how they work.

It is very rare that I visit a museum and don’t come back with ideas that we could use in our special exhibitions and permanent galleries. It’s especially nice to visit museums like the four I did last week as they are very different collections to each other and present them in very different ways.