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From 2D to 3D: the story of graphene in objects
This paper examines presentation of the material culture of graphene in the Wonder Materials exhibition by looking at ten of the objects on display, exploring the role they play in making the challenging nanoscience topic of the exhibition engaging for visitors.
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The museum micro-fellowship
In this piece Anna Geurts and Oli Betts explore the concept of micro-fellowships, thinking about what short-term, high-yield collaborations between universities and museums can do to enhance the research capabilities of both.
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The valuable role of risky histories: exhibiting disability, race and reproduction in medical museums
The changing representation of disability, race and mental health in European medical museums and the under-representation of reproduction; ‘risks’ involved in exhibiting related collections, and strategies to help rehabilitate these topics and their material culture in the future medical museum.
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Mobilising the Energy in Store: stored collections, enthusiast experts and the ecology of heritage
This article considers the role of enthusiast experts as key actors within the ecology of public heritage, helping to keep stored museum collections ‘alive’ through their unique research practices, which we argue are ultimately beneficial across the wider museum sector.
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‘Organising Sound’: how a research network might help structure an exhibition
In 2015, the Science Museum, with the University of Nottingham and Royal College of Music, arranged three workshops to explore potential themes and contents for future exhibitions about science, technology and music. This article reports and reflects on the proceedings.
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A symposium on histories of use and tacit skills
The histories of use of the objects in museum collections, and the unrecorded skills of their operation, have posed pressing research questions for museum people and university scholars alike. This symposium drew together different perspectives on this emerging area of study.
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AIDS memorials from obituaries to artworks – a photo essay
Based on the online repository AIDSmemorial.info, this essay highlights the diversity of AIDS memorials worldwide by defining twenty categories, reflecting on their origins and evolution as well as attempts to preserve this cultural heritage.
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Zygalski sheets: Polish codebreaking and the role of reconstruction in the Top Secret exhibition at the Science Museum
A reflection on reconstructing Zygalski sheets, a manual grid-based system used by the Polish Cipher Bureau and Bletchley Park to decrypt German Enigma cipher messages, for the Top Secret exhibition at the Science Museum Group from 2019 to 2022.
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Ventriloquised voices: the Science Museum and the Hartree Differential Analyser
This paper proposes the analogy of ventriloquism as a way of extending the discussion about how objects speak and are used to tell different stories to audiences in museums as ‘material polyglots’. It explores how the Science Museum has changed the voices, stories, and physical and instrumental functions of a particular object – the ‘Trainbox’ version of the Douglas Hartree’s Differential Analyser – since it was collected in 1949.
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Obituary: Frank Greenaway
Frank Greenaway, who died at the age of 95 in June 2013, was a Keeper and manager at the Science Museum from the early post-war years to the era of Margaret Thatcher. He stamped his own character on the Museum and was a significant historian of chemistry and of science more broadly.