Past events

Lost Museums Study Day, Saturday 21 May 2011

On 21 May a study day about 'Lost Museums' was held at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Speakers included Sam Alberti, Alan Bates Tim Knox, Caroline Cornish, Stuart Eagles, Christopher Plumb and Frances Larson.

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MGHG Conference 2010: Museums and the Market

The 2010 MGHG conference took place in the marvellous surroundings of Leeds City Museum and was a great success, stimulating much debate around the conference theme of museums and the marketplace. The MGHG committee were most grateful to Leeds Museums and Galleries for hosting the conference in such a fine venue and all those attending much appreciated the excellent facilities and atmosphere.

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Museums and Biographies 11–12 September 2009

The 2009 MGHG conference was held at the National Gallery in London on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th September 2009, co-organised the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies at Newcastle University.

The conference brought together those who study the interconnections between museums and galleries, collecting and biography. Drawing together analyses of representation, material culture and personality, papers cast new light on the study of lives, objects and display.

Keynote speakers were Arthur MacGregor and Nicholas Penny.

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Past and present: negotiating museum and gallery history

The MGHG successfully hosted a two day international symposium at Newcastle University in September 2006 on the theme negotiating museum and gallery history. This gave a chance to review the nature, roles and problems of museum and gallery history.

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Inaugural symposium: museums and their histories

The MGHG successfully hosted a one-day inaugural conference at the National Gallery, London in July 2003.

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Nature Behind Glass: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on Natural Science Collections

A two-day symposium held at the Manchester Museum, 6th-8th September 2007.

For more information please visit www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/naturebehindglass/.

MGHG Awards Poster Prize

At the 'Nature behind Glass' symposium, the Museums and Galleries History Group board awarded a prize for the poster that attractively displayed the most historiographically or theoretically innovative content. The 17 posters displayed were of an exceptionally high quality, but after deliberation the programme panel awarded the £50 prize to Merle Patchett, University of Glasgow, and Kate Foster, artist, for their poster, 'Lively geographies of dead animals'. The panel admired their multifaceted understandings of taxidermy and carefully orchestrated multidisciplinary research.

AGM 2008

This year's AGM took place on Friday, 12 September 2008, at the National Gallery (Sainsbury Wing Conference Room 2). The AGM started at 2.30 and was followed by a talk on the Raphael digitisation project, a visit to the National Gallery Archive and a wine reception.