“This is an amazing investigation – have you seen it @jackshoulder” a friend tweeted to me. Curious, and with a bit of time to spare, I delve headlong into the story of #EmilyXaver. An intriguing shared tombstone, a gay love story for the First World War, the thrill of the investigator, @guillemclua, uncovering the tale…
Roman Dead at Museum of London Docklands
Death is one of the few inevitable things we can all count on. Whether we’re a prince, a pauper, or anything in between, one day the Grim Reaper comes for all of us. People have been dying for as long as there has been people, yet, despite this, it’s a subject that is still held…
Why I quit a dream job
In my very first post about my adventures in museum land I wrote about getting a job at a museum. Not just any museum, but one of the best museums in the world, with over 8 million artefacts under its care and the one that has been consistently the most visited museum in the UK….
Let’s look at the numbers
It’s that time of year again when everyone in the museum sector gets more than a little bit obsessed with numbers. It’s year end report time, a chance for us to maybe shout and celebrate or maybe think “What on Earth happened?”. Each museum, gallery or cultural site has its own number-story to tell at…
Burning Out
Once upon a time, when we talked about burnouts, we meant a very specific group. You might recognise them from various films set in high schools that suffered from particularly aggressive clique problems. Usually this group could be observed lounging around, talking it easy, laughing to themselves. The very epitome of ‘chilled.’ Like this young…
Stand up for Towner
Towner Art Gallery is under threat. As the largest gallery in the South East outside of London, and with an annual visitor figure in around the 150,000 region, with an exciting exhibition programme and a Learning Programme that reaches thousands of children, young people, and adults – often working with the most vulnerable members of…
Heads of Hadrian
I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about the various identities objects carry with them. Specifically, LGBTQ identities have been on my mind. There’s one in particular that I’ve been pondering; Hadrian’s. His face is on the cover on the big gay book of big gay museum objects. Ok, so maybe it’s not so big….
Achilles and Penthesliea: An LGBTQ Vase?
Ever since learning about what makes an object LGBTQ I’ve been thinking about the identities of some of my favourite objects at the British Museum. Being a Classicist by training, my thoughts naturally drifted towards the Greece and Roman collections. It’s a part of the collection that should have a multitude of LGBTQ objects (they don’t…
A closer look at the Rosetta Stone
Discovered on 15th July 1799 -or should that be re-discovered?- the Rosetta Stone has become the most visited artefact in the most visited museum in the UK. Of the nearly 6.5 million visitors the British Museum welcomed in 2016, you can bet that the vast majority of them came to see the Rosetta Stone. If…
What would the Museum Community put into a Museum of Wizarding History?
It still bothers me that there are no museums in the magical world of Harry Potter. What do wizards do with their material culture? They have banks, broadsheets and branches of government, but no Museums? HOW?! Ironically, a Museum of Wizarding History kind of exists in our world – hands up who has been to…
Jack's Adventures in Museum Land 