Curating complex lives and legacies 

When: 22nd March 2024, 18:00 — 19:30

Venue: Keynes Library, Birkbeck. 43 Gordon Square. Map here.

Cost: Free, but you must book as we have limited availability.

Increasingly museums are required to address the lives and legacies of complex historical figures. They must also adhere to the demands of their key stakeholders – some of whom have a personal interest in the lives of the figures being represented.

In this discussion, Kate Clements (Imperial War Museums) and Frankie Kubicki (Dickens Museum) discuss the unique challenges of representing figures like Winston Churchill and Charles Dickens in the museum space. From appropriately addressing divisive legacies, to having insufficient collections to properly represent personal histories, this event is designed to generate conversation about how museums navigate the challenges and changing expectations of including biographical histories in exhibitions. 

Kate Clements has worked at Imperial War Museums since 2006. She has curated a number of exhibitions at IWM London, including the permanent, award-winning Second World War Galleries, the Victoria Cross and George Cross Gallery, Extraordinary Heroes, and Crown and Conflict: Portraits of a Queen in Wartime.  Kate is the author of Total War: A People’s History of the Second World War and The Royal Family in Wartime. She has also delivered digital historical content, including a popular podcast series, Voices of the First World War. Kate is currently Curator of the Churchill War Rooms.

Dr Frankie Kubicki is the Deputy Director of the Charles Dickens Museum, London. Over the last seven years she has curated exhibitions that explored Dickens’s interest in science, how his novels tracked early air pollution, and his global impact, amongst other topics. Frankie regularly speaks to the media on Dickens’s life and work, and media credits include BBC and ITV news, as well print media including The Guardian and The Times. She previously worked as Senior Curator at Keats House in Hampstead where her interest in literary houses developed.

The event is free but you must book a place to attend and we have limited tickets available. Book here.

Photo by Daniela Muntyan on Unsplash

Call for Papers: Cursed Objects in Museum Shops (3rd July 2024)

Cursed Objects in Museum Shops 

Wednesday 3rd July 2024, Birkbeck, University of London, UK.

An interdisciplinary conference organised by the Centre for Museum Cultures at Birkbeck, University of London.

Deadline for abstracts: 8th April 2024 

This symposium explores museums through the objects sold within them. Since the development of museums as public attractions in the 18th century, they have provided some form of merchandise (Larkin, 2016). In recent years, financial instability and the revenue-generating possibilities of shops have made them increasingly important to how museums operate. They are, however, under-researched in academia. 

The objects sold in museum shops can show us much about the intersection of museums, visitors’ appetites and expectations, and the power of brands. Some, such as a Van Gogh ‘ear-aser’ or Francis Bacon cushions might be classed as ‘kitsch’ and push the acceptable boundaries of taste (Monica Kjellman-Chapin, 2020). Others, like Christmas tree decorations of Winston Churchill, point to the intersections of ‘big P and small p’ politics. So too, can the objects sold in museums, heritage sites and ‘experiences’, like a Monet sleeping mask, highlight a homogeneity in art and design as a result of expired Copyright laws. These objects, far from being benign, can define and limit the imaginative possibilities afforded by museums as viscerally as the objects on display in exhibitions.    

Drawing inspiration from, and held in conjunction with, the Cursed Objects podcast this symposium aims to explore the meanings of objects sold in museum shops. This includes a broad definition of shops in museums, for example, online or physical gift shops, cafes, and kiosks. The term ‘cursed’ is used here to nod to the popular usage of the term on the internet that relates to images or things that are uncanny, complex, visceral and visually unpleasant. Rather than dismiss the items sold in museum shops as mass-produced and, therefore, less significant than museum collections, this symposium asks how material culture and ephemera can historically and in the present be used as a means to better understand museums and the cultures they exist within. 

Important questions that will be raised at this symposium include: How do (or don’t) the objects within museum shops relate to museum exhibitions? Can objects in museum shops be termed ‘material culture’? Why are some forms of merchandise found in museums that are unrelated to the institution’s primary remit? What can the objects in museum shops tell us about late capitalism? How do museum shops shape tastes in consumption historically and in the present? Who are museum shops for? Do museum-branded pencils, highlighter pens and rulers have ‘agency’?

We welcome contributions on the topics of, but not limited to:

  • Objects and material culture in museum shops 
  • Merchandise and museum brand identity
  • Expanding meanings of shops in museums (cafes, kiosks, vending machines)
  • Visitor behaviour in museum shops
  • Merchandise as a way of exploring museum histories
  • The (dis)connection between museum shops and exhibitions
  • The homogeneity of the art, design and the museum shop
  • Practices of buying and selling in museums
  • Capitalism and the consumption of history
  • Environmental impact of museum commodities 
  • Commodifying the past or ‘tea-towel history’
  • Museum shops as historical documents
  • Methods and theories of researching museum spaces

Abstract Submissions 

We welcome proposals of no more than 250 words for 15-minute papers. This Call for Papers is open to academics, museum practitioners and those working in relevant industries, PhD students and early-career researchers.

We encourage interdisciplinary and intersectional applications. This symposium will form the research basis for an exhibition at the Peltz Gallery in 2025. Multimedia presentations are also encouraged. Proposals for podcasts, short movies, photo essays, short documentaries, poster presentations and other forms of presentation are also encouraged.

Please submit your abstracts and a short bio by 8th April 2024 to museumculturesconference@gmail.com . Papers will be chosen based on how closely they relate to the themes of the exhibition by the event organisers. Should you have any questions please get in touch via the same email address. 

The symposium is open to the public and all are welcome to attend. Attendance is free, but registration is necessary as places are limited. Please register as soon as possible so that we can have a better idea of attendee numbers: https://cis.bbk.ac.uk/apex/a01u/f?p=832:110:29171667451179

Photo by Mike Petrucci on Unsplash