Discover stories behind the latest exhibitions, fascinating explorations into maritime science and archaeology, and the surprising details of what happens inside (and outside) a modern working museum.
18 Mar 2016
During the first week of March a team from the National Maritime Museum went to Fremantle to install the War at Sea – The Navy in WWI exhibition at the Western Australian Maritime Museum.
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11 Feb 2016
Being sea sick was a dire matter in the golden age of sail. Rough Medicine: Life and Death in the Age of Sail explores the world of the ship’s surgeon and his grizzly tools of the trade. From a queasy stomach to amputated limbs and spoiled food, life aboard a 17th century sailing ship was far from pleasant.
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02 Sep 2015
Exhibition openings in Indonesia are really something. At the Black Armada (Armada Hitam) opening at the Museum Benteng Vredeburg, Yogyakarta on 31 August there were decorations, traditional dancers, prayers, speeches, a sumptuous feast, and to top it all off, an explosion-packed historical re-enactment of a battle by Indonesian freedom fighters.
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17 Aug 2015
The Dutch had controlled Indonesia for over 300 years before World War II and when the war ended, they wanted to return to their colony they called the Netherlands East Indies.
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24 Apr 2015
On 24 April 1916, 99 years ago, Antarctic expedition leader Sir Ernest Shackleton, his Endurance skipper Frank Worsley and four of his crew loaded into the seven-metre lifeboat James Caird and set sail from the rocky spit of the sub-Antarctic Sea Island to reach help across the treacherous southern oceans, leaving 22 men behind on the barren outcrop.
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24 Feb 2015
Superman has it, and so does the Smithsonian Institution: x-ray vision. We’ve just finished hanging 40 intriguing x-ray images of fish specimens from the USA’s National Fish Collection, a library of more than 4 million preserved specimens of some 20,000 fish species from around the world held by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC (that’s a lot of preserving jars).
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16 Dec 2014
Constructing exhibitions such as Voyage to the Deep is the work of preparators, or ‘preps’. They are an integral cog in the machine of traditional museums and, as the name implies, are employed to prepare objects, specimens or exhibits.
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08 Dec 2014
The other day, a friend said to me, ‘You have an awesome job’, and I guess I do. As a creative producer for the museum, I get to dream up new exhibitions and bring them to life.
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