My placement at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) was a hugely rewarding experience which exceeded my expectations for what a CHASE placement could offer for my personal development. I was based with the World Cultures team working for curators Sue Giles and Lisa Graves, alongside archaeology curators and a rotating team of volunteers and fellow postgraduate researchers. My placement was collections-focused, with the main objectives being practical experience in collections and data management. This was tailored to my own research interests in that I was working with BMAG’s Central African collection and my doctoral work focuses on the spread of Christianity and cultural change in the D.R. Congo towards the end of the nineteenth century. As such, the placement offered the opportunity to handle and interpret historical collections from Central Africa whilst also generating information about them. The work involved finding objects in the stores, photographing them, creating entries on the Museum’s online database, interpretation and formatting this information. Thus the information I generated was made accessible via their website and opened up the potential for these collections to be engaged with and researched in the future.
The first month of the placement prioritised learning to use the EMu database and creating simple records to which my photographs and any further contextual information could later be added. During this period I worked closely transcribing from somewhat archaic index cards, the system universally used in museums to account for objects before digital information management systems were introduced. The second half of the placement was spent finding and photographing objects in the Central Africa collections. Learning to photograph objects to museum standards was surprisingly difficult and represented a significant learning curve for me. Accounting for dim lighting conditions and sometimes having to photograph objects over a metre in length from above proved challenging. My photography (and editing) skills certainly improved during the course of the placement, putting me in good stead for any future collections work. Handling and photographing objects was physically tough but intellectually stimulating and I feel as though I have gained a solid understanding of the kinds of production techniques in historical Central African material culture.
Generating information that would be useful online and being the official ‘voice’ of the museum on their catalogue felt like a huge responsibility but again was a rewarding experience. Learning to describe objects succinctly and in an engaging manner turned out to be a skill in itself. Creating online records for each object required me to work systematically and keep exceptionally good records of the work I had completed, a further learning curve in organising large amounts of data. Interpreting the objects according to BMAG’s style and standards offered a good insight into how information is managed for museum collections.
It was a huge achievement to have photographed 256 objects, making them accessible online and contributing to the body of knowledge surrounding these historical ethnographic collections. Digitisation is a immensely time-consuming aspect of collections work and while it represents a priority for most museums, the resources rarely exist to systematically digitise collections comprising tens of thousands of objects. An inevitable outcome of the placement was a realisation of the challenges that local authority museums are faced with as a result of funding cuts to the public sector. Volunteers make up a substantial part of the workforce upon which these institutions depend, now more apparent than ever. I was witness to all the positive work the Museum is currently doing in interpreting its collections and its aspirations for future projects, but this was in many ways bitter-sweet. It was combined with an acute understanding of the pressures faced by Museums to justify their continued existence, beyond their primary role as custodians of cultural heritage, places for conversation, debate and furthering human understanding.
Through shadowing the World Art curators, I was also exposed to other diverse activities that take place at the Museum. This involved attending cross-department programming meetings, witnessing curators evaluating (often bemusing) public finds, attending debates at Bristol’s ‘Festival of Ideas’, a private view for the current exhibition ‘Empire Through the Lens’, visiting off-site collections stored in an old tobacco warehouse, and volunteering at BMAG’s ‘Day of the Dead’ Mexican festival celebrations. The ways in which the museum engages with the public and local Bristol communities, both day-to-day and at specific tailored events was inspiring and seemingly one of the more rewarding aspects of the museum curators’ role.
In contrast to my relatively solitary working style in doing PhD research, the placement was a good reminder of what it means to work in a team environment towards shorter-term goals within a set time frame. My time in Bristol has led to making good friends and professional contacts that will serve me throughout the course of the PhD and hopefully beyond.
