#AskACurator Questions

Wednesday's #AskACurator event on twitter was really rather fun. I didn't even attempt to follow the tag, there was so much traffic, I just tracked the museums I usually follow. I had to be very restrained so as not to monopolise the National Maritime Museums curators :} I did ask them a couple of questions, one about the proportion of the NMMs collections that is still to be digitised. The curator replied

A great proportion... However in the last year we've digitised around 35,000 archive items!

Which is pretty impressive by any standard! Someone also asked what the curator's favourite object was and he chose the Spanish naval ensign that I posted a picture off earlier in the year.



There was also a lovely question from someone (I suspect a fangirl ;) who asked:

Would you consider doing an exhibition based on Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels?

To which the curator responded enthusiastically:

Absolutely! Would love to do that. A 'Navy in Fiction' exhibition idea has been bandied about...
Hornblower, O'Brian, Austen, Smollett, and even James Bond - I reckon it would be great. Thoughts?

Needless to say that got my vote! :D I was also tempted to ask if the NMM had any plans to reprint Dressed to Kill but as that's not really a curatorial question I resisted :}

In Bloom

When nodbear came up to visit at the end of August we went for a walk to the walled garden in the park near where I live and discovered the most stunning display of dahlias and sweet peas. I took lots of pictures at the time but, as is so often the case, I didn't get round to posting them. There was also a huge bed of chrysanthemums that hadn't yet flowered, so when nodear reminded me this week that they would probably be in bloom by now I went down and took some more pictures, so here you go, lots and lots of pretty flowers!



( In bloom )