51 Voices: A very special collaboration
Learn about the creative collaborations produced with a range of different communities as part of 51 Voices, our 70th anniversary celebrations.
51 Voices: Work, work, work
This January, The MERL embarked on 51 Voices, a new year-long project celebrating the museum’s seventieth anniversary in 2021. Throughout the year, we will be working with a range of writers, artists and different communities to give contemporary voice to fifty-one objects and archives in The MERL collection connected in myriad ways to our founding […]
Uncovering LGBTQ+ rural histories in archives
Join The MERL’s Collections Researcher Tim Jerrome as he shares the challenges he faced in finding the lives and stories of LGBTQ+ people in our archive for our July 2021 exhibition: Queer Constellations. Please be aware that this post contains terminology used to describe LGBTQ+ people in the past, and may be offensive or upsetting […]
Temporary reading room move – September 2021
Between 31 August and 24 September 2021, the reading room will be moving to the Conference Room to make way for essential maintenance work. The Conference Room is located above the current reading room and can be accessed via the staircase or lift from the locker room. Closure days During this period, however, we will […]
Introducing Space to Think: Rural Wellbeing, our latest student exhibition
Written by Dr Rhi Smith, Director of Museum Studies, University of Reading. How do you create a museum exhibition when you cannot get into the museum? Planning your first museum exhibition is tough experience at the best of times. Doing it online during a global pandemic takes that to another level. Even so, within the […]
Wild Being: supporting social prescribing in Reading
On the 15th July, Reading Voluntary Action (RVA) is launching Wild Being, a new social prescribing project in Reading. Both The MERL and Reading Museum (as Museums Partnership Reading) are proud and delighted to be involved. In this blog, join our Learning and Engagement Manager, Phillippa Heath, as she introduces Wild Being, explains what we […]
Our agricultural museum goes intergalatic (or global, at least)
Written by Dr Ollie, Douglas, Curator of The MERL Collections. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… Forty-five years ago, as George Lucas started to film the stellar tale of an intergalactic farm-boy’s struggle against an evil empire, here in Reading things were also hotting up. In some ways, quite literally. Perhaps […]
51 Voices: A growing understanding
This January, The MERL embarked on 51 Voices, a new year-long project celebrating the museum’s seventieth anniversary in 2021. Throughout the year, we will be working with a range of writers, artists and different communities to give contemporary voice to fifty-one objects and archives in The MERL collection connected in myriad ways to our founding year. […]
Queer Constellations: an interview with Daniel Baker
From the 6th July, two artworks by Daniel Baker, Copse and Canopy, will go on display at The MERL as part of our latest display, Queer Constellations. Daniel is a Romani Gypsy born in Kent: an artist, curator and theorist, he holds a PhD on the subject of Gypsy aesthetics from the Royal College of […]
Why travelling matters: engaging schools with our migration stories
Written by Phillippa Heath, Learning and Engagement Manager at The MERL. As part of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month 2021, we have been sharing collections at The MERL that connect to the histories of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people, including objects, archives, photography, art and library collections. These collections tell us so much about […]