Event: "The National Gallery Micro Gallery: A roundtable 35 years on" Livestream and in person: 17.00–19.00 Monday 11 May 2026 (Free) Thirty-five years on from its launch, this roundtabl... Event: "The National Gallery Micro Gallery: A roundtable 35 years on" Livestream and in person: 17.00–19.00 Monday 11 May 2026 (Free) Thirty-five years on from its launch, this roundtable will bri...

Some more pictures here www.linkedin.com/posts/johnfs...

If you can remember the National Gallery's Microgallery* (or if you can't), you might be interested in this #MuseumDocumentation #MuseumComputing www.nationalgallery.org.uk/events/the-n... *developed by @cogapp.com in HyperCard 2.0 and THINK C, launched 2 months BEFORE the public launch of the WWW

New Head of Service for Museum Data Service 📣

We are delighted to announce that Dr Mia Ridge @miaout.bsky.social will become Head of Service for Museum Data Service, the transformative initiative which is connecting all the object records across the UK’s museums

👉 artuk.org/discover/sto...

Asking the #GLAM people here: Do you know glam catalogues that use and expose #wikidata IDs? I'm looking for examples where places, people, subjects etc. or the objects themselves etc. are (visibly) linked to the Wikidata item in the web frontend. If you know any such catalouges, let me know!
thanks

Big and *great* news! @artukdotorg.bsky.social, @collectionstrust.bsky.social & @uniofleicester.bsky.social couldn't have made a better choice. Really looking forward to working with @miaout.bsky.social to maximise the use of the National Gallery's & UK'S #MuseumDocumentation data.

the news from the bbc | V&A Explore The Collections Board game, 'The News from the BBC', 1302 pieces, printed card and paper, The Great Games Company, England, 1987

The News from the BBC, Board Game, 1987. Victoria & Albert Museum, B.9:1 to 1302-1995

collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O26051/...

A screenshot from the V&A's online collections website, showing the objects details for a board game, including text that says 'This object consists of 1302 parts' and a long list of parts, all called 'Board Game'

Somebody really went to town on the #MuseumDocumentation for this one ... #WholesParts

Art, sex, nature: why is everything sold to us as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself? How a reductive worldview is stripping meaning from our most valued activities

Something the GLAM sector is very susceptible to: over the years we've been conditioned to justify ourselves in predominantly practical terms, not as things that are good in themselves.
www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ap...

An Apollo space capsule descending to splashdown, under three red-and-white striped parachutes. One parachute has been replaced with a Tunnocks teacake, for comedic purposes.

Largely ignored by the world’s media, Scotland’s astronauts have returned safely too

A watercolour of a single snakes-head fritillary flower on a stem. The purple and pink flower head droops down.

Delicate purple, pink and even white snake's head fritillary plants, with their bell-like flowers, can be seen for a short window in early spring.

This 1861 drawing is by John Ruskin and shows a single snake's-head fritillary stem and flower.

A small ceramic hand warmer in the shape of a closed book. It is white with blue writing

A small ceramic hand warmer in the shape of a closed book. It is coloured white, blue, green and yellow.

Designed to look like books, these ceramic objects are actually flasks or hand warmers.

They are thought to have been filled with hot water or coal to warm the hands of the wearer on a cold winter's day. They functioned as a sort of ceramic hot water bottle. The perfect gift for book lovers!

Roland Huntford obituary Historian and biographer of polar explorers whose book on Scott and Amundsen sparked controversy

www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

A Caravaggio for Palazzo Barberini: MiC buys for 30 million After a year and a half of negotiations, the agreement with a Florentine private collection was concluded

The Italian State buys Caravaggio's portrait of Maffeo Barberini, Pope Urban VIII, for €30 million for the Palazzo Barberini collection
#earlymodern

en.ilsole24ore.com/art/a-carava...

I think people would welcome greater transparency and a well-regulated framework. But you need (to have the resources to produce) better documentation than currently for transparency. Problem with Guardian piece was that due to differences in counting methods, figures were effectively meaningless.

I’ve been thinking about this. My own attitude to encountering human remains in institutions has changed massively over the past 20 years: sector norms are changing. Most institutions would welcome the resource to enact changes. But where are the resources coming from to move with greater empathy?

Vast scale of overseas human remains held in UK museums decried by MPs and experts Exclusive: Guardian study finds UK museums hold more than 260,000 items of remains, often in sacrilegious ways

And here's the Grauniad piece that started it: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

A sensible 🧵 and comments. A lot of this boils down to the need for better #MuseumDocumentation (the Cinderella of the sector).

#MuseumDocumentation hazards procedure: helping you not to kill your staff and visitors!

A notebook with a written account of a breakfast eaten along with a sample of the beef eaten.

Do you like breakfast? Do you like breakfast so much you'd stick samples of it in your notebook? Joseph Thomas Fowler would!

New edition of Ferrara bible shows how persecuted Jews kept faith alive in Spanish Exiled Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had fled to Italy translated Hebrew bible into their common language

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

National Gallery restructure shows sector’s ‘dire financial position’ - Museums Association Institution is cutting staff and reducing programming as it grapples to avoid £8.2m deficit

News | National Gallery restructure shows sector’s ‘dire financial position’

Institution is cutting staff and reducing programming as it grapples to avoid £8.2m deficit

I propose to make universal the old policy of the Blackfriars conference at the American Shakespeare Center:

If you do not end your paper on time, you will be forced to exit, pursued by a bear. Literally, a bear will come take your paper from you.

In March we're looking forward to Morris Month, a month-long celebration of William and May Morris with @williammorrissocuk.bsky.social. We've got three events organised for the celebrations, check them out at williammorrissociety.org/morris-month/

The Cyberattack That Exposed The Fragility Of Digital Heritage Saturday 28 October 2023 is a date that will live long in the memory of staff at the British Library. As they arrived for work that day, they encountered

On ransomware and under-funded GLAMs: 'At no point was the British Library particularly negligent or unprepared. Instead, it was hindered by vulnerabilities shared by the majority of cultural institutions. ...the attack [is] a warning to the whole sector.' informationsecuritybuzz.com/the-cyberatt...

Always nice to see acquisition policies and procedures explained! #MuseumDocumentation

London’s National Gallery to cut staff as it faces £8.2m deficit The institution is offering a “voluntary exit scheme” for all employees and will be reducing its activities

Here we go ...

www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/02/13/l...

Reading and writing can lower dementia risk by almost 40%, study finds Cognitive health in later life is ‘strongly influenced’ by lifelong exposure to intellectually stimulating environments, say researchers

The study points to using libraries and visiting museums as bringing these enormous brain health benefits ... who would have thought? Well, librarians and museum folk for a start ... www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

It's only 20 Pluviôse, 10 more days of this until Ventôse

A vibrant watercolour of a kingfisher with blues, purples, reds and oranges

John Ruskin was born on this day in 1819.

Ruskin was one of the most influential writers on art and architecture in 19th-century Britain.

The use of colour in art was important to Ruskin. He believed that the colours of the natural world could inspire and guide artists.

WA.RS.RUD.201