Here in Education we are keenly anticipating the opening of the new Landmarks gallery. For the last few months we’ve been stepping around the ‘hole’ left by the closure of the Nation gallery as we plot new routes for students to travel through the museum, and we have endured the noises that are expected with any building works.
Renovations can be a nuisance but in our case that is far outweighed by the wonderful opportunity of seeing a museum ‘at work’ (not to mention the excitement of exploring a whole new gallery when the works are finished. Since November I’ve had students peering eagerly through small window panels in safety doors at objects and work going on in the gallery. There has been a great amount of speculation about what those mysteriously shrouded objects could be: “Is that a coach? What’s a harvester then? Why would they have that? How did they get the big windmill in?”
Mostly when the students come to a museum they see the finished work of the curators. At present there is a chance to see the work happening. Students who are disappointed when they hear that Phar Lap’s heart is not on display at the moment soon change their tune when they are lucky enough to see an enormous mining bucket arriving, or curators putting the final touches to the hang of a beautiful dress:
At the moment there seems to be something new every day. When we had our great gallery tour with Kirsten Wehner in January, the Brisbane Stock exchange boards were shrouded in wrappings. Now they can be seen in all their glory from the newly opened stairs between the Old New Land and Australian Journeys galleries. This morning, my year 3 group were enthralled to see a curator working on a large shiny cutlass.
In the Education unit we are looking at the progress towards opening with more than idle interest because of what it offers to our programs. The themes and objects on display in the gallery, access from other galleries and outside, the layout of the gallery itself all need to be considered as we work on incorporating the new gallery into our suite of programs. There is always something interesting to do in the Education section!
Last week I had the pleasure of showing a group of year 3 students the developing Landmarks gallery. They were learning about the different jobs within a museum, so it was an excellent opportunity to see how exhibitions are put together. The students also got to see the different materials used to protect object before display, which they were really excited about because they had an assignment to protect their own special object – an egg!
[...] enjoyable program to run because students get to look at the inner workings of a museum (given my last blog, right now is a particularly appropriate time to be running such a program) and to see things [...]
I can remember visiting the Brisbane Stock Exchange Boards with my Father as a child. Amazing memories.
This was posted over a year ago. So I guess everything is uncovered now? My wife is originally from Canberra so next time we are in town I think we will be visiting the museum with the kids.