Although there are undoubtedly some museums and visitor attractions that are continuing to suffer from lower-than-usual visitor numbers since the pandemic struck, there is still plenty of investment in the museum sector today. This can be seen most clearly in the number of high-profile museums and galleries that are scheduled […]

MuseumNext caught up with Manchester Museum Director, Esme Ward, to find out more about what museumgoers can expect from the hello future transformation project in 2023 and why health, wellbeing, inclusivity and accessibility lie at the heart of the museum’s future plans.

Some of the best-known natural history museums and similar institutions in Australia have called on the government to take more action in the country in light of the climate change emergency. Among those calling for a greater level of national response to the issue are the directors of the Australian Museum […]

In the town of Enterprise, Alabama stands an unusual monument, a statue of a woman holding a pedestal high above her head and in it a Boll Weevil. The story of this monument goes back over 100 years to a time when Cotton was the sole crop grown in the […]

What type of travelling exhibition models shall be sustainable in a post-COVID 19 scenario? We have come to think of the industry as being prevalently blockbuster oriented, concerned almost exclusively with moving valuable material culture across the globe for audiences to experience. Is there, and can there be more to […]

Homelessness in the UK is on the rise year-on-year but in March 2020 as the World Health Organisation announced COVID-19 as a pandemic it seemed that finally the problem was going to be addressed in a meaningful way – but what really happened? To find out the Museum of Homelessness […]

At the end of last month Manchester Museum closed its doors until October 2022 to put the finishing touches to its £13.5m Hello Future project, which will make it more inclusive, imaginative and relevant to the communities it serves. Here MuseumNext talks to Director, Esme Ward, on a project she […]

We’re living in an increasingly political and polarised age. Thanks, in part, to the proliferation of social media, it’s impossible to escape the importance of issues like diversity and climate change. This raises the question of what role our museums should be playing in all this. Is it the duty […]

On 6 November, Big Bird, a beloved character on Sesame Street received the COVID-19 vaccine, as announced on the Muppet’s Twitter account. This may seem like a strange way to start a discussion of museum politics, especially the discussion of museum and object neutrality, but the response to a recognisable […]

One day a couple of years ago I was asked by my publishers to write a book about the history of museums.  It’s a huge, sprawling subject, both light and dark and wonderful and shameful, and for a while I had no idea where to begin.  I wondered whether to […]