Visiting the Collection at Salford Museum and Art Gallery with Peter Ogilvie- 6th October

Today I had a meeting at Salford Museum and art Gallery to see Peter Ogilvie the Collections Manager and the gatekeeper to the vaults. I’ll be honest with you I didn’t quite now what to expect when I arrived and was a little anxious about the visit. 

 It took the receptionist around 10 minutes to locate Peter and I thought at first that he had forgotten about the meeting it was only later on that I realised why it had taken so long to track him down. After a warm handshake I was taken down some stairs and the steel safe door was opened with a large bunch of keys . Peter tells me that the museum opened in 1850 and was the first unconditionally free public library,  and didn’t have a collection as such and the collection has just grown over time.

 The first Room as you may expect was racked out with floor to ceiling paintings, from 20^th Century British Moderns to Victorian Portraits in Gilt frames, to a collection of  local Miners paintings given therapeutic art once the pits had closed. Many of the paintings appear in the "Your Paintings “ website (now Artuk)which lists all the paintings in the UK in public collections. Peter tells me that it took them the best part of a year to photograph all of Salfords paintings.

 The next room contained at least as many water colours and works on paper, many from Northern Artists and whole rack of local history paintings containing local scenes and areas of local importance. I didn’t realise but Salford Museum has a remit to take in such works , or objects that have local importance or significance and I suppose this is why it was important for them to secure the Pilkingtons tile Archive.

After this second room I was impressed by the sheer number of paintings, it was only on entering the next section of the collection that I began to feel overwhelmed. A room full of social history objects, industrial objects and machinery, a pair of what looked like ancient“inuit” ski’s, a dolly tub, even a soda stream. This section was populated with objects that have been donated to the museum by the public, objects that are significant to a time in history, this theme carried on to the next huge room floor to ceiling racking contain intriguing archive boxes of costumes, dress uniforms, tri-corn hats, doctors bags, childrens toys.

  This room then spilled out to house another museums collection that closed down in Salford some time ago, lots of childrens toys and games, from the Victorian era right up to the eighties. This room then led on to a furniture room, and then an occupation room where objects are field by the profession, doctor, chemist, carpenter etc. By this point I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things, and the final room was cupboards wall to wall with ceramics, glass and pewter ware.

The collection has over 120,000 items at the last count and this is spread throughout the basement of the whole of the Museum and Art gallery. It was on leaving the collection that realised why it had taken 10 minutes to track Peter down in the labyrinth of History underneath the museum. 

What struck me was the sheer weight of objects and the need to store them as part of our shared history, many of these items will never see the light of day again, catalogued and boxed until somebody takes an interest and asks for a viewing. I wondered if this is just another aspect to our society for hoarding, consumerism and placing value on material objects, but then each object has a story and its truths are just waiting to be unlocked or re-told. I will be visiting again soon to pull out some WW1 era objects that might spark some ideas or take my project down a different path.