{"id":404,"date":"2019-06-24T15:48:11","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T14:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/curiosi\/?p=404"},"modified":"2024-05-09T13:29:34","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T12:29:34","slug":"collcurcat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/curiosi\/collcurcat\/","title":{"rendered":"#CollCurCat"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]By Amara Thornton<\/em> (Research Officer, Ure Museum)
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

The “Collectors, Curators and Cataloguers” workshop held on 12 June at the Museum of English Rural Life and the Ure Museum at the University of Reading was a great opportunity to bring together a group of scholars, curators and archivists revealing and analysing the history of women’s contributions to museums in the UK and beyond.\u00a0 (Speakers and paper titles are listed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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The workshop poster and programme design based on a notebook in the Ure Museum’s archive.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to all the exciting research presented (for tweet-notes on the presentations check out the #collcurcat hashtag<\/a>).\u00a0 The ensuing discussions highlighted both the triumphs and trials these histories (and the telling of them) encapsulate, and how we as historians can begin to contextualise, question and change the narrative.<\/p>\n

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The workshop’s keynote lecture given by Kate Hill (University of Lincoln). (Photo: A. Smith)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As part of the day, the Ure Museum hosted a handling session, featuring highlights from the Museum’s archive, and loan items from the University Library.\u00a0 I brought along my copy of the Englishwoman’s Year Book and Directory<\/em> – in the 1909 edition of which there is a special section on “Women Museum Curators”.<\/p>\n

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A page from the 1909 Englishwomen’s Year Book and Directory, showing the section on “Women Museum Curators and Assistants” (Photo: A. Thornton)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the archive items selected was a rather devastating letter to Percy Ure from collector Julia Katharine Steele, from whom he purchased a number of Greek antiquities for the Museum of Greek Archaeology (now the Ure Museum).\u00a0 In it, she expressed admiration for Annie Ure, the Museum’s curator, and Annie Ure’s ability to continue her own research while looking after a family. Julia Katharine Steele considered herself unlucky in this respect, her own research interests abandoned.\u00a0 She wrote:<\/p>\n

“Your wife must have her work cut out with a young baby to look after + her investigations of vases. I am afraid my studies in Mythology in the end gave way to domestic cares, + my researches into serpent worship + tholoses<\/a> [sic] came to an abrupt ending \u2013 but I never had an orderly mind, with that equipment, I think it would be possible to combine the two!”<\/p>\n

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Detail of Julia Katharine Steele’s letter to Percy Ure, featured as part of the “Collectors, Curators and Cataloguers” workshop handling session. (Photo: Matthew Knight)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another letter featured in the handling session was found by Assistant Curator Jayne Holly in a folder relating to the purchase of Egyptian antiquities from the Institute of Archaeology in Liverpool.\u00a0 We were looking for something to include relating to Margaret Elizabeth “Meta” Williams, the Institute’s Secretary, who had provided Annie Ure with valuable information on the Liverpool antiquities now in the Ure Museum.\u00a0 The letter in the Ure Museum archive includes label text for one of antiquities, showing Meta Williams’s role as an informal cataloguer and curator.<\/p>\n

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Detail of a typed letter from Meta Williams to Percy Ure, containing draft text of a label for a stela originally in the Institute of Archaeology, Liverpool and now part of the Ure Museum collection. (Photo: Matthew Knight)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The workshop handling session was organised to complement a temporary display “Hidden Women in the Archive: Collectors, Curators and Cataloguers” now showing at the Ure Museum until 10 September.<\/p>\n