Day 8 – Archives and Mummies and Marbles, Oh My!

“Some archives and record offices are housed in your local museum or library; others have their own stand-alone building. Wherever they are, they are a treasure trove.” –Kate Williams

British Museum Archives – https://britishmuseum.org/research/libraries_and_archives.aspx

The British Museum was built in 1850.  Within it is the Museum Archive.  Over the years, this has mainly been a business governance archive.  Sadly, none of it is catalogued which can make working with it/researching difficult.  There is also more confusion because each department has its own archive.  The archivists are trying to bring the departments together to not only make sense of the archive but to also gain a better understanding of what is where.  The British Museum Archive receives around 4,000 inquiries each year.  However, due to the lack of a catalogue, it can be quite hard for them to respond to these research inquiries. 

The archive has been in their current location for about a year.  While the current room is well lit and includes a beautiful dome, it is not suitable for archival documents.  It is far better than being in a basement with mold problems, but documents of this age need to be in a better climate-controlled environment.  However, officials see it as a museum first and archive second.  Due to recent weather problems affecting the room, they are receiving more support from the museum.  The archival staff are working towards a new location and would love to have one that is purpose-built.

Here we were shown several wonderful items.  Having recently been to the Natural History Museum, I loved all the images they had of the specimens now housed there that used to be housed at the British Museum.  We also got to see two signatures of Karl Marx.  Like most archives, they also have several objects like spectacles, a building support block, and an incendiary shell case.

After leaving the archive, we were free to explore the rest of the museum.  One of my favorite areas was the exhibit on Egypt.  There was one room full of sarcophagi.  However, their most striking displays, and likely the most famous items, were the Parthenon Marbles and materials from the Sutton Hoo ship burial.  It is always a bit surreal to see such historically significant pieces of artwork and artifacts.  Thankfully, seeing items like these never gets old.