This week I took part in a Collection Conversations session, which is run during the school holidays at the Herbert. These take place in What’s In Store, which is an area where visitors can see objects from the collections as though they were in a museum store. For the session, the curators chose a few objects and visitors could touch them and talk with the curators about them.I really enjoyed the session. It was great to see children and adults enthused by the objects. Seeing small children being curious about objects and enjoying being in a museum is wonderful – the next generation of museum visitors! Several young boys were very excited to hold the 200 million year old mollusc fossil, and we had fun guessing what the woolly mammoth tooth was.
Inspired by this, I thought I would share some photos of a few of the objects in the real stores:
Late 19th Century harmonium wih false organ pipes
Lace wedding dress, late 1890s. White wedding dresses became popular following Queen Victoria's wedding.
1960s polar bear toy
Grey silk bodice with lace, 1907
Sleeve using early synthetic dyes, around 1900
The Life Curatorial 
sounds ace, lady, really proud of you and all your hard work to get to this stage. really hope we get to see you soon – or maybe I’ll actually make it to Cov where I failed to get to Newc 😦 Take care and look forward to reading all about your adventures x x