Blog

Posted on June 21, 2021 by Lauren MacCarthy.

Bristol – The forgotten birthplace of photography

by Justin Quinnell The Real Photography Company Mention the history of photography and the names that crop up include Nicephore Niepce and Louis Daguerre in France, William Henry Talbot and John Herschel in England. Often overlooked is the claim Bri…

Posted on June 18, 2021 by Lauren MacCarthy.

For Queen and Country: the voices of women in the Devon Federation of the Women’s Institutes

by Amber Lindley, UOSH volunteer and UWE BA History student. Amber Lindley catalogued recordings of the Devon Dialect Project of the Devon Federation of Women’s Institutes. The Dialect Project is one of many collections begin digitised by UOSH for the S…

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…

Bristol's Free Museums and Historic Houses