Monthly Gallery Tours – July

Curator of MERL Collections, Dr Ollie Douglas, will be joined by a different specialist for each of these monthly tours. Together they will take visitors on a short conversational guided trip through the galleries approaching our collection from a different perspective that reflects the guest speaker’s expertise, ensuring you’ll learn something new every time.

Each tour will last about 45 minutes and will culminate in a pop-up display or an opportunity to peek behind the scenes. At the end of the session there’ll be a chance to ask questions and to chat with Ollie and his guest.

8 July – Becky Lyon, Artist and PhD Researcher

This month, Ollie will be joined by English-Jamaican artist Becky Lyon from Goldsmiths University, London, to ask are we ‘out of touch’ with nature? Taking Becky’s ideas as inspiration, they’ll use a walk in the galleries to consider the role of touch in ecological stewardship. Who is permitted to get ‘hands on’ in rural environments? What can handling artefacts or touching nature tell us? How might intangible heritage help us to make tangible connections in a precarious world? The tour will conclude with a pop-up selection of artefacts to handle, and to think about.