UCL Museums & Collections Blog

Guest blogger: Giancarlo Amati (Digital Developer at the Petrie Museum)

On the 3^rd of November 2012, The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology organized “Digital Egypt: Museums of the Future”, a showcase of 3D interactive applications result from Petrie Museum research into the use of 3D technology in the heritage sector. The 3D interactive applications are also part of a new upcoming exhibition, titled “3D Encounters: where Science meets Heritage”, specially designed to celebrate the opening of the new UCL-Q campus in Doha,Qatar.

A Modern Makeover

A Modern Makeover

  (more…)

UCL Museums and Public Engagement have been awarded funding from JISC to make 150,000 digitised objects from UCL Museums publicly available and to develop a range of new e-learning resources. The project team are looking for students to participate in focus groups to discuss this and are offering a light meal and book tokens in return for participants’ time.

Portrait of The Elector John Frederick I, The Magnanimous, Monogrammist M.R., UCL Art Museum 1581

(more…)

From a public perspective, objects are what a museum is all about. Yet behind every object is a story, built up from a range of sources and evidence, that enables us to contextualise that artefact and give it some form of meaning. This meaning may change as scholarship advances or audiences diversify. But without that level of research, we would have little more than a lot of nice ‘stuff’ on display.

A crucial link in this chain of information comes from archival sources. The Institute of Archaeology is fortunate in having a range of original field records to support its collections, allowing us to learn more about the circumstances in which material was originally excavated. These also provide a window into the methods and practices of seminal figures in the development of archaeology as a discipline. The tomb cards written by Flinders Petrie and his staff are a classic example.
(more…)