Image: Lewis Pollard - Curator of Television and Broadcast at National Science and Media Museum
In ‘5 Questions With…’ professionals from the museums and heritage sector select their five favourite questions from a list of 30 on the topics of advice, anecdotes, tips and opinions.
Lewis Pollard | Curator of Television and Broadcast at National Science and Media Museum
What’s your favourite “behind the scenes” museum moment that visitors never get to see?
I once spent a day doing cataloguing work behind a display featuring a Dalek. From where I was I couldn’t be seen by visitors, but I could hear them when they approached the display. While they would ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at the Dalek I used my phone to play the classic ‘Exterminate!’ Visitors would scream and laugh at the suddenly ‘alive’ alien, and loved it as a surprise in their visit. I do worry that people came back expecting the Dalek to speak again!
What’s the most unexpected way your job has affected your personal life?
Whenever I’m in a museum I probably spend most of my time looking at other visitors to see what is interesting them and what they are just breezing past! It means I can end up not seeing much of the displays for myself!
I wrote my MA dissertation on why seats make museums better and more accessible. I still harp on about it whenever I go to a museum or gallery.
What’s the best piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you started your museum career?
When I was starting out in museums the advice I was given was to pick a subject specialism or job role and stick to it forever, maybe even get a relevant PhD. I really disagree with that idea, and I think that transferrable skills across roles, museums, and even sectors, are hugely valuable in building a career. So I try to tell people starting their career to not worry too much about having a perfect set of logical career steps and to place value in what they can uniquely bring to a career.
If you had a magic wand to fix one common mistake in the museum field, what would you fix?
More seats! I’ve been an advocate for more seats in museums since a trip to the British Museum as a student where our class ended up sitting on the floor by the end of the day. I wrote my MA dissertation on why seats make museums better and more accessible. I still harp on about it whenever I go to a museum or gallery.
What’s the most unexpected skill you’ve developed in your museum career?
A couple of years ago I did a training course in what to do in the event of a flood affecting a museum. I never expected I’d learn how to create a makeshift wind-tunnel to dry out fragile objects. Hopefully I’ll never need to put that skill to the test!
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