From decolonisation to digital authentication, discover the collections and conservation sessions at the Museums + Heritage Show, 13–14 May, Olympia London.
From archaeological archives to Viking Age artefacts, decolonisation to digital authentication, collections care and conservation sit at the heart of a programme strand at this year’s Museums + Heritage Show, taking place next week, 13–14 May at Olympia London.
Attendees will hear from the team behind the forthcoming Museum of the Viking Age in Oslo. In Making the Museum of the Viking Age, Bruno Goppion, Business Development and Design Assist Director at Goppion, Tim Ventimiglia, Director at Ralph Appelbaum Associates, and Göran Joryd, Project Manager for the Museum of the Viking Age at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, offer a behind the scenes look at how conservation, storytelling, exhibition design and engineering have been woven together to protect and present artefacts while creating a powerful visitor experience.
The longer term challenge of sustaining reinterpretation work is the focus of Decolonisation in practice: Protecting the long term legacy of reinterpretation work, in which Madylene Beardmore, Head of Collections at Powell-Cotton Museum, explores what happens after funded reinterpretation programmes end. The session draws on the museum’s own experience of moving from a project-based approach to embedding decolonisation as business as usual across its collections.
Elsewhere, the programme reflects the breadth of challenges facing collections professionals today. Martynas Kasiulis, Growth Officer at Relik, presents Object DNA: How Physical Authentication Is Ending the Era of the Unverifiable Artefact, introducing Relik’s Surface ID technology, which creates a permanent physical fingerprint from an object itself without the need for chips, tags or QR codes.
Environmental monitoring is the subject of Monitoring is caring, in which Geert Bauwens, Managing Director of CHARP, examines how collection care teams can turn fragmented monitoring data into clearer decisions and measurable impact at a time of growing sustainability pressures.
Collections management software gets a practical airing in House hunting for collections management software, with Maria Scherrers, Solutions Consultant at Gallery Systems, using the home-buying process as a framework for helping professionals define requirements, evaluate workflows and make confident, future-ready decisions about the systems they choose.
Networking opportunities run alongside the conference programme. ICON, the Institute of Conservation, hosts The conservator’s perspective: Caring for collections today, an informal session for conservation professionals to discuss current challenges in collections care, from preventative conservation to balancing treatment needs with limited resources.
And the Association for Heritage Interpretation and The Exhibitions Group host Creating engaging exhibitions, a dedicated session for those involved in bringing collections to life through interpretation, storytelling and design.
For professionals attending the show, the programme offers both practical guidance and the space to explore some of the bigger questions facing collections and conservation work today.
The Museums + Heritage Show takes place on 13–14 May at Olympia London. It is free to attend. There’s still time to register for your pass at show.museumsandheritage.com.
The Museums + Heritage Show takes place on 13–14 May at Olympia London.
It’s free to attend.
