Yearly Archives: 2021

Posted on June 15, 2021 by Lauren MacCarthy.

Our Bristol

by Finn White, Community Engagement Officer What makes your neighbourhood unique? What makes Bedminster bounce, Hartcliffe hum, and St Pauls sing? Have you seen your neighbourhood afresh during the pandemic? We’re teaming up with Bristol Photogr…

Posted on June 14, 2021 by Lauren MacCarthy.

Japanese porcelain at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

by Amy Raphael, Project Curator, Japanese Ceramics. Did you know that Bristol Museum & Art Gallery has a large collection of Japanese porcelain? In 2012, the museum took in a large collection from a generous donor, Irene Finch (1918-2019), who was a s…

Posted on June 10, 2021 by Lauren MacCarthy.

Bristol meets Bordeaux in ‘bizarre’ new exhibition

by Jenny Gaschke, fine art curator Two metal doors open and reveal an impressive number of picture crates. They have been stacked carefully inside a climate controlled truck. While we watch on Zoom, over in France exhibition registrar Sylvaine Lest…

Posted on May 24, 2021 by Lauren MacCarthy.

We’re painting the M Shed cranes!

by Caroline Booth-Morris, Development Manager If you have taken a stroll around the harbour lately you may have noticed that we have temporarily closed the walkway outside M Shed and moved all four cranes closer together. This is because we have begun t…

Posted on May 13, 2021 by Lauren MacCarthy.

Decolonisation diary: Making progress during lockdown

by Ray Barnett, Head of Collections and Archives Last October, we summarised our approach to ‘decolonisation’ and our commitment to facing up to our colonial heritage. We then looked at the current situation regarding repatriation of museum artefacts to …

Posted on April 16, 2021 by Lauren MacCarthy.

The Bristol Institution and Mary Anning, a pioneering palaeontologist

By Deborah Hutchinson, Curator, Geology ‘The tide warns me I must leave of scribilling’ In May 1821 Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme Regis found the first fossil donated to the Museum of the Bristol Institution. It was a well-preserved specimen of a m…

Posted on March 31, 2021 by Lauren MacCarthy.

Fluttering Through History – How can a large historical butterfly collection feed into Bristol’s current ecological butterfly crisis?

by Rhian Rowson, Natural History Curator Where have all the butterflies gone? How can we and you help? Butterflies are sensitive indicators that enrich the lives of us all but act as very visible gauges as to the health of our own environment. If butterf…

Posted on March 19, 2021 by Lauren MacCarthy.

Covid collecting

by Amber Druce, Curator of History In March 2020, we did a call out for objects, stories and photos of Bristol’s response to Coronavirus. We had plenty of feedback, especially at the start, and the insights were really useful. Since then, I’ve also app…

Posted on March 17, 2021 by Lauren MacCarthy.

British Empire & Commonwealth Collection: Introducing the new online catalogue

by Frances Davies, Documentation Assistant Making our collections accessible and available globally is a key focus for us right now. With most of our objects and archives in storage and far fewer people visiting the museum due to lockdown, using the int…

Posted on January 25, 2021 by Lauren MacCarthy.

A potted history of soap making in Bristol – until 1954

By Lee Hutchinson, curator of history Bristol has laid claim to several firsts in English history. One of those is soap manufacturing. In the 1815 edition of the Bristol Guide, the author echoed the belief that “the first manufacture of Soap in Eng…

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