‘Museums, Class and the Pandemic’ report launch: An interview with Dr Serena Iervolino

Dr Serena Iervolino launched the research report entitled “Museums, Class and the Pandemic: An Investigation into the Lived Experiences of Working Class Londoners” at a hybrid panel discussion held at the Museum of London Docklands on January 11, 2023. She co-authored the publication with Dr Domenico Sergi, Senior Curator (Curating London) at the Museum of London. The report is one of the outputs of their collaborative project “Inequalities, Class and the Pandemic” (2021-2022) co-funded by the Museum of London and King’s College London, which Drs Iervolino and Sergi envisaged, developed and led in partnership.

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Returning the Parthenon Marbles: A Conversation with Baroness Chakrabarti

by Kirsty Warner The question ‘should the UK return colonial artefacts?’ has been a consistent and widely debated topic. However, with large institutions such as the Ethnological Museum, Berlin and the Smithsonian Institution returning objects, there has been a growing pressure for western museums to return colonial objects accessioned to their collections. One of the…

Why should we care about stored museum collections?

Dr Anna Woodham People are often surprised to discover that behind the scenes in museum storerooms across the globe, there are millions of objects that will never go on public display. Many of these objects are duplicates, ‘bulk’ collections, such as archaeological finds, or objects which could be described as “uncharismatic”. There are also objects…

The Lost Girl – practice as research

Dr Kate McMillan  In a recent public lecture, the well-known curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud declared that when he has questions, he makes an exhibition, and when he has answers he writes a book. This statement really resonated for me, as both an artist and a writer on art. During the course of my…

Curating expertise: Towards an Interdisciplinary Museums Studies Research Agenda at KCL

Dr Serena Iervolino and Dr Stuart Dunn There has recently been much interest and attention within King’s College London to the field of museum studies. This is hardly surprising: the university sits within one of the richest and most diverse cultural cities in the world, surrounded by gems such as the British Museum, the National…

Chile: Doing research in times of social change

Catalina Urtubia Figueroa Just two months ago, Chilean president Sebastian Piñera stated in a televised interview that Chile was “an oasis in Latin America”, referring to its stable democracy and growing economy. On October 18th, it became evident that Chile was more likely to be a mirage when mass protests kicked off in Santiago due…

#KuñaJesareko: Instagram as a place for the female gaze

Jazmín Ruiz Díaz I have recently had the opportunity of presenting my book chapter The Female Gaze in Times of Selfies as a member of the Feminist & Gender Research Reading Group at King’s/Queen Mary (Liss DTP). This chapter — part of the book Amalgama: Women, Identity & Diaspora— represents the culmination of what started…

The new activist museum agenda: an interview with Dr Red Chidgey

Protest has become a popular topic of interest in the national arts and heritage sector.  In the past year alone, The British Museum hosted I object, an exhibition dedicated to protest objects running from graffiti on a Babylonian brick to a recent anti-Trump Pussyhat. The Imperial War Museum celebrated peace activism in People Power, and…

The co-created museum: art institutions’ search for new roles and relevance

Stella Toonen  When visiting museums as a child I was always fascinated by the exotic stories from far away countries or the extraordinary ideas coming from the creative minds of the featured artists. When I grew up, that fascination transformed into wanting to find out where those stories and ideas came from, and especially who…

Museums in Arabia Conference: An Intercultural Dialogue through Museum Practice

Miruna Mirica-Damian At the end of June, King's College London hosted the Museums in Arabia conference, a thought-provoking event that united scholars and practitioners interested in the development of the cultural sector in the Arabic Peninsula. The interesting mix of ideas emerging either from academic research or from work experience created the feeling of an…

Energy in Store: How can museums encourage more productive relationships with their communities?

Dr Anna Woodham @Aura Films For the last year, I have been part of a project called ‘Energy in Store’ working with the Science Museum Group (SMG) to consider how museums can better meet the needs of diverse audiences. In particular, we have been looking at new ways of working with ‘enthusiast experts’ that could benefit not only the experts themselves but also new generations of researchers, the museum and…