Ask A Curator!
Yesterday, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard used social media to invite visitors to find out more about the guardians of the Historic Dockyard’s treasures as part of Ask A Curator day on Twitter.
Ask A Curator Day was a world-wide online question-and-answer event in which anyone could put questions to museum and gallery curators on Twitter to discover more about what goes on in their local museums.
Between 10am and 4pm on Wednesday 1st September members of the public asked Portsmouth Historic Dockyard''s friendly and helpful curators about their jobs, their attractions and the many fascinating treasures in their collections.
Questions included:
What is the most difficult challenge for a curator? and How do new technologies influence the curatorship task?
To which Matthew Sheldon, Head of Research Collections at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, replied:
“Deciding what to collect from the present which will represent the past in the future” and…
“They add new dimensions to how we collect, conserve, consult, communicate and create. It''s not always easy keeping track of them and maintaining traditional skills at the same time.”
Melissa Gerbaldi, Press Officer for Portsmouth Historic Dockyard commented: "Our wonderful curators across the Historic Dockyard at each attraction were only too happy to share their enthusiasm and passion with our followers on Twitter. It was a great opportunity to have conversations with our visitors and we saw our follower numbers increase as a result."
“We took part in Follow A Museum day earlier in the year which was also the invention of Jim Richardson and proved so successful that we were thrilled to be taking part in yet another of his creative ideas.”
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard are always happy to answers questions on their twitter channel as well as share their stories, archives and ‘behind scenes’ happenings; visit http://twitter.com/PompeyDockyard to follow them.
To find out more about yesterday’s initiative, visit: www.askacurator.com.
