Page 7 - Barnsley Museums Annual Review 2018-2019

Sharing Collections
This year Barnsley Museums have been visited by Stormtroopers, bears, lobsters, astronauts, Rembrandt and more...!
Our changing exhibitions have been incredibly popular over the last year.
The people of Barnsley continue to come forward to share their objects, documents and memories to become part of our collections too.
A Dutch Golden Age exhibition was visited by over 20,000 people at Cannon Hall Museum. Loans of paintings by Rembrandt and Jan Steen from the National Gallery, London, were displayed alongside 17th century paintings in Barnsley’s public collection.
Artists and Adventurers: Women Who Dared to Create at the Cooper Gallery, took as a starting point an exploration of the artworks made by women in our collection. A revealing insight in itself into the volume and nature of artworks by women, it was also an opportunity to explore the stories of individual women and encourage audiences to compare with opportunities today. In Vote 100: A Century of Change we invited local women artists to apply to be part of an exhibition to accompany Artists and
Barnsley Museums have been fantastic to work with and I’ve been particularly impressed with how proactive they’ve been to reach out to and engage with local schools. I would love to show Barnsley as an example of best practice for other potential tour venues.”
Alysia Calderwood,
Project Manager for the Royal Observatory’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition and exhibition.
Adventurers. This was partially to explore artists’ responses to the centenary, but also to bring more diversity to artworks displayed at the Gallery.
2019 began with a fantastic new adventure in a touring exhibition from the Royal Greenwich Observatory ‘Astronomy Photographer
of the Year 2018’. A sublime collection of photographs, this exhibition has sparked the imagination of many and perhaps inspired a few future astronauts!
We’ve also been getting out and about collecting objects and stories to better reflect the diversity of our borough. New objects added to the collection include an Edwardian clock by Krakauer of Barnsley, a CEAG company torch and much more.
The Archives and Local Studies Service has continued to grow and has become one
of the busiest and most popular archives services in the North of England. We have put over 2000 new items onto our online catalogue and nearly 10,000 items can now be accessed, with ambitious plans to increase this in the coming years.
Nearly 100 new collections were received and made available during the year. Particular highlights include photographs of Barnsley Town Centre 1970s-80s; documents relating to the history of Barnsley Market; the papers of Private William Exley who was killed
in action in 1916 and a fragile illustrated handbill from the opening night of the Barnsley Theatre Royal, dating back to 1898, which we were able to completely restore.