MacGregorism: A History of the World
Posted in Individualism, Internationalism, Museum Expansionism on 18. Jan, 2010
The first programmes of “A History of the World in 100 Objects” kicked off today. The BBC Radio 4 flagship of the project began with the mummy of Hornedjitef. I agree with The Attic’s take that this is clearly a very personal project for Neil MacGregor as it seems to be the biggest cross-media platform he will get to talk about his vision for the museum in a globalised world. I’ve always like liked to call MacGregorism because I feel the man deserves to have an -ism named after him.
I’m slightly surprised at the format and rather glad. I was expecting fifteen minutes of academic analysis of single objects. Instead, Mr. MacGregor uses the object in question to hang the rest of the ranging topic to. Case in point: it was far more interesting to listen to and there wasn’t much of an actual detailed physical description of the mummy and coffin. If you want to know what it looks like, you can look online. Why waste the precious fifteen minutes? I like how this whole project doesn’t assumes that everyone lives in a technological dead zone.
The World’s History is being focused on one object at a time. It is going to be a very British-Museum-branded history, meaning a globalised history. A bold approach that edges more on the importance of the journalistic/media aspects. I applaud it.
Also on today was the Culture Show special (iPlayer link. Probably doesn’t work outside of UK). MacGregor was good. Kermode and Collings did some very interesting reports in the spirit of the project. Neil Oliver was trying too hard to be poignant and proves his 360 spin shots only work on top of a cliff. Tom Dyckhoff almost made the whole thing an episode of Blue Peter. Interestly, usual presenter Mark Kermode was sent off to the Isle of Man and replaced by BBC World News presenter Mishal Husain.
The website connecting all this together is part brilliant and part frustrating. The flash-heavy main page is probably the best way to search over the actual objects because of a great way they’ve categorised and interlinked the data. My God, it takes a long time though. Ignore the “In Your Area” tab altogether and use the “BBC Area” in the sidebar, trust me. The blog looks to be shaping up into a really good resource.
I will make your life easier to linking to the podcast here, which took me too long to find. I will also give you this page, which I think will eventually turn into the list of all the episodes and iPlayer links. How they’ve organised the lists of the actual programming is a bit of a nightmare. I’m surprised there isn’t a dedicated page on BBC’s iPlayer either.
I’m expecting the “Add Your Object” section will clutter things up pretty soon. You’d need a BBC ID, whatever that is. Would have though signing in with Twitter/Facebook/Google would be an option. For some, this aspect will allow them to add to the project as a whole as well as learn some basics in collection management (Honestly, the BBC offers a better collection database than some museums I’ve known). I see this causing problems already, like why is Swansea Museum adding stuff as an “individual” and not a museum?
No dedicated twitter account? I suppose it’s going to be all over the official British Museum one anyway.
All together, this is clearly the beginnings of something impressive. I’m looking forward to the rest.
I can tell you the answer to the Swansea Museum uploading as an individual.
Each BBC area selected 10 objects from their area and museums in the area were asked to submit suggestions. Obviously this means not every museum got an object selected.
As far as I know you can’t create a museum sign in yourself – you have to be one of those selected museums.
Go Swansea Museum, I say for making themselves involved anyway. I certainly found it was slightly frustrating as a museum not to have your objects selected, it was hard to see what the project was wanting at that point.
I’m the blog editor for A History of the World. Glad you like the programmes and the website. We’re hoping that people will really get engaged with the idea of a objects and either look again at the things in their own home or get out and visit a museum.
I’ll also try and offer answers to a couple of your points above. The programme page should make more sense as the episodes begin to stack up. You can listen again to all the episodes so far available from that page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/programme. As for the podcasts, they are indeed a bit hard to find at the moment. We’ve had a slight glitch with displaying the podcast link but when it’s fixed there will be one on every British Museum object. And the great news is that all the podcasts will be available for at least a year from their broadcast date, rather than the BBC’s usual seven days.
Finally, your comment about Swansea Museum. Yeah, well spotted. We had a mistake on our database when we uploaded their objects at launch. We’re sorting it out and Swansea Museum will be a museum on the site soon. It’s a very complex site and we’re still fixing a few things behind the scenes.
Hope you continue to enjoy the series.
Paul,
Thanks very much for your response. I’m really enjoying the whole mix of museums working with the BBC. Looking forward to more.
Glad you’re still enjoying it, Pete. Just wanted to clear up the point above from Philippa. We are happy for any museum to add objects from their collection to the website and, if they contact us, we will give them museum status on the site. Take a look here for more info:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/get-involved/join-the-project/
We are just checking over the back-end system that will allow us to give museums the appropriate designation.