Take One Museum on BBC Four is the Russian Ark of documentaries as expert Paul Rose looks around a museum, with the help of some tour guides in one take over a thirty minute period. I caught the tail end of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum episode and he seemed like a man of great enthusiasm. Much like New York's Museum of Modern Art's podcast official and unofficial, an audio podcast version of the show is available so that a visitor to the actual museum can cover the same ground with the aid of their mp3 player. Excellently, it's the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester next week so I'll definitely be going there again soon to see what this is like.
posted by feelinglistless on Feb 19, 2006 - 4 comments

The so-called Elgin Marbles A reminder that many of the objects that you love at your local museum actually came from a place in which they often have an even greater meaning.
posted by feelinglistless on Dec 6, 2002 - 38 comments

How far should the commercialisation of fine art go? The British Museum has licensed an on-line company atelier 350 to sell reproductions of some of the drawings in their collection. This article argues that the sales description is misleading and if replicated on a wider scale could harm the general public's perception of access to the collections in the long run. I agree that museums have to raise funds somehow and I'm not against the selling of some of the more popular images, however, surely their first responsibility must be to educate not to distort or hide the truth in the way which is shown here.
posted by feelinglistless on Jun 6, 2002 - 9 comments