VISITORS IN THE ARCHAEOLOGY GALLERY AT MANCHESTER MUSEUM.
Manchester Museum, part of the University of Manchester, is set to embark on a three-year programme to reimagine interpretation around the archaeology collections it cares for.
This bold new project, made possible thanks with support from Getty through its New Interpretations initiative, aims to create a new model for co-creation that looks at what happens when interpretation is used not simply to explain the past but to help people imagine better futures.
Three Imagination Fellowships will catalyse collaboration between communities, practitioners, researchers and Museum staff to co-design new interpretive interventions for the Archaeology gallery. This work will help to create displays that are shaped by diverse perspectives and founded on the Museum’s core values of inclusion, imagination and care.
Esme Ward, Director of Manchester Museum, said: “This is an incredible opportunity to embed values-based practice throughout our archaeological interpretation, working with communities to develop new knowledge and build a future founded on inclusion, imagination and care. Making the most of our position at the heart of The University of Manchester, new Imagination Fellowships will enable us to move forward faster together and create new models for collaborative display focused on building belonging, hope and agency in a rapidly-changing world."
Through this project, Manchester Museum intends to create sector-leading models for interpretation and display that help to shape wider museum practice, nationally and internationally, rethinking how collections of deep history can support civic participation and social connection in more impactful ways.
Manchester Museum cares for around 60,000 objects across archaeology, spanning over 50,000 years of human history and material culture and these collections are Designated by Arts Council England for their international significance.
They include everything from the largest collection of excavated Roman-era assemblages from in and around Manchester to extensive strengths in prehistoric material from Europe, West Asia, South Asia and Africa, and exceptionally rare Classical Greek ceramics that challenge long-held understandings of famous mythological narratives.
Manchester Museum is one of 11 museums and arts organisatons to be awarded in this pilot round of New Interpretations grants and the only one in Europe. Other grantees include Walker Art Center, Queens Museum, Leeum Museum of Art, in partnership with M+, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Fowler Museum at UCLA, First Americans Museum, Denver Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and the Association for Art Museum Interpretation.