The sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens, and copies of them, are controversial objects. Countless organisations across the world display casts of them, often full sets, but …
John Cake and Darren Neave (known as the Little Artists) question what it means to be an artist in a climate where art is a commodity. For just a few pounds, these works suggest, you can own …
The Scottish islands of St Kilda were evacuated of human inhabitants in 1930, due to a decline in local industries and the lure of life on the mainland. People left behind their cats, who found it hard to survive …
Portugal’s national day is celebrated on the anniversary of the death of their much-celebrated poet, Camões (10 June 1580). His epic poem The Lusiads recalls …
Not all written interpretation needs to be printed on panels and labels. In 1901, the girls who grew up at Lyme Hall, Cheshire, were educated at home by a governess …
Some museum objects are so large they cannot be moved. You might be expect to find an organ in a chapel, church or cathedral, but the National Museum in Cardiff has one right in the middle …
20 May is official World Bee Day. To see hundreds of honey bees in a museum, head to the Horniman’s Nature Base, a super gallery for exploring the natural world …
The current civil war in Yemen is a humanitarian crisis. Aside from the violence and destruction of the conflict, inflation and access to of food, water and healthcare are having direct physical and psychological effects right now on the country’s men, women and children. These worn Yemeni Rial …
What a splendid way of bringing together words and objects in an interactive that rhymes and encourages visitors to touch …
Happy birthday Frank Auerbach, born today in 1931. Auerbach really is a prolific painter, working every day and, when making portraits, returning to just a few sitters, time and again. JYM stands for …
George is not only the patron saint of England. He’s hugely venerated in the eastern orthodox church. A few years ago I came across this row of icons of St George in a little church in North Cyprus …
Are you as tall as a cave lion, a dwarf mammoth or a woolly rhinoceros? This attractive wall graphic invites visitors to place themselves in the context of Ice Age natural history by …
The figure in The Scream isn’t actually screaming. Instead, the hands are placed over the ears, to shield them from an infernal shriek …
Dove Cottage is full of character. Some 100 years after Wordworth lived there, this poster captured the intimacy and charm of the place. And it still looks pretty much the same today. …
A favourite interpretation technique of mine is the object collage. When it’s tough to choose just one object to place on display, why not place a whole load of them together? …
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (formed in 1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his colleagues) sought a wholesale reform of British art. And it had a huge impact. The works by these avant-garde artists …
The first stamps used in the Irish Free State were actually overprinted British stamps. King George V has been blotted out by red text reading ‘Rialtas Sealadaċ na hEireann 1922’ …
While museum collections preserve evidence of the past, it doesn’t mean that we have to agree with everything that’s gone before us…
One of the most common complaints in feedback from museum audiences is that we never provide enough seating. Here’s a clever idea that responds to that, while still being a piece of interpretation …
This sign reads ‘welcome’ in Urdu. It hangs above one of the entrances to the art gallery, its bright neon beckoning visitors in – well, at least visitors who have a grasp of ceremonial Indo-Persian …
What materials do car engineers use to design a new model? metal? fibreglass? It turns out, Jaguar build their life-size models out of …
If you’ve heard of the city of Jingdezhen, you may link it with the production of the finest imperial ceramics – China’s absolute best china from the days of the emperors. This object …
A timeline of objects can tell a narrative story a simple and engaging way. Before we even read any text in this display, we understand that the museum wants us to think about the story of cycling in London …
The red kangaroo and the emu have something in common. Neither animal can move backwards easily, only forwards. That’s why they were both chosen to be a part of the official emblem of Australia …
At first glance Room 9 looks like any other in the gallery. But way the paintings are displayed (we call it the ‘hang’) isn’t how they’re normally arranged. While one of the sitters looks away from us …
I like it when museums invite visitors to use their imagination, especially when it relates to the message they’re trying to get across. Inspired by the tombs found in the Irish landscape …
