![The camp gate at Buchenwald. Photo: Guido Radig [CC BY 3.0] from Wikimedia Commons](https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/museumstudies/files/2019/01/KZ_Buchenwald_-_Tor_tone-mapping-150x150.jpg)
Holocaust Memorial Day, Holocaust denial and museums
What were you doing twenty years ago today? You probably don’t remember exactly, and neither do I, not exactly, but it is quite likely that by now on a Sunday in 1999 I would have been out in the cold and snow giving guided tours of the Concentration Camp Memorial Site that I was […]
Museums and social justice – and why I bang on about it quite a lot.
This week marked the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany. Between 1937 and 1945, 280,000 people were imprisoned there. 56,000 of them lost their lives to torture and cruelty. It was a place of deep inhumanity and suffering. A place where people were murdered because of (amongst other things) […]
International Transgender Day of Remembrance
Each year in November, we are reminded of our University’s motto, Ut Vitam Habeant – That They May Have Life. The University is a living memorial to those who died in war, and it is important that we remember and respect that. However, I do also think about how we might interpret our […]
Are museums ‘safe spaces for debate’? Not always…
I keep hearing people talk about museums being ‘safe spaces for debate’, and this always makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Is that true? Are they always ‘safe spaces’? Why do we assume that the museum is a ‘safe space’? And who is it a ‘safe space’ for? And what does it say about the […]
Keep you titbits, let’s have full equality, inclusion and representation
50 years ago today, the Sexual Offences Act became law. It partially decriminalised homosexual acts between men. The ‘partial’ is important here as inequality still existed. There was still inequality in terms of the age of consent (that was rectified only as recently as 2001). Inequality still existed in terms of the circumstances in which […]
Hooray for the National Trust
There are many things in life that one should really rise above and not respond to. One such thing, in my humble opinion, is the Daily Mail. But this morning I took the unusual step of actually reading something in the Mail (don’t worry, I thoroughly washed my hands afterwards) – an article that was […]
Awards winning comedian, Francesca Martinez, reflects on her involvement in a Research Centre for Museums and Galleries project – Exceptional & Extraordinary
Exceptional & Extraordinary was a research project initiated by the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) at the University of Leicester which set out to stimulate public and medical professional debate around the implications of our deeply entrenched negative attitudes towards difference. An intensive and sustained process of collaboration between RCMG, museum professionals, medics […]
Museums as sanctuaries from hate?
This morning I saw the front page of the Daily Mail (I’m not going to link to it. Google it if you must) as I walked past a news stand and it made me angry. Nothing new about that. ‘Foreign Lorry Drivers Break The Law’, it yelled in my face. As if no British person […]
Why do a MOOC in Museum Studies?
Over 11,000 people signed up for the first run of our Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Behind the Scenes at the 21st Century Museum, and they were overwhelmingly positive about their experience. Demand is so high that we are running the course again, starting on January 18th 2016. But why might you want to undertake […]
My visit to the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts
Whilst doing research in September in Hong Kong and Guangdong, I had the good fortune to visit the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (GAFA), an institution of 5000 emerging artists from which a good number of our students come. Whilst there I met the Director of the GAFA Art Museum, Professor Hu Bin, who told […]
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