Blog posts

Aberdeen Maritime Museum Phase III - Time for a Revamp

Posted by Meredith Greiling on Monday 14 June 2010

At Aberdeen Maritime Museum, we pride ourselves on bringing the history of the city right up to the present day with our high tech displays on the oil and gas industry in the North Sea.
The trouble with trying to be cutting edge though, is that technology moves so fast and pretty soon you are left with displays that, frankly, belong in a museum.
We have to keep up with the progress being made in a fast moving industry, but our permanent oil and gas displays haven't changed in twelve years and are starting to look a little creaky.
That is why we have asked museum designers, Studio MB, to come up with a proposed redesign for these areas of the museum.
Watch this space as we begin the process of bringing our museum into the 21^st century.

 

 

Aberdeen Ship Still Chasing Illegal Whaling in the Southern Ocean

Posted by Meredith Greiling on Thursday 25 March 2010

From today's Guardian newspaper. That's not just any old ship, that's our old ship (Fisheries Protection Vessel, to be precise). The Sea Shepherd started life as the Westra in Aberdeen in 1974.

Good to see she's still working hard after all these years.

Links to relevant bits:

Guardian Article

Aberdeen Built Ships

 

Goodbye to Hall Russell - the jewel in British Shipbuilding

Posted by Meredith Greiling on Wednesday 24 March 2010

So that's that then. The last items have been wrapped in bubble wrap and returned to their rightful owners or their shelves in the store and all the months of hard work last summer are now forgotten.
Well, not quite. It's true that the exhibition has been dismantled and the next show is going up as we speak, but that's not quite the end of the story. There have been a lot of unexpected legacies from this exhibition which will have a positive lasting effect for the museum and its collections.
An important part of the work I did last year in preparation for the Hall Russell exhibition was collecting dozens of oral history interviews with people who worked at the shipyard about their lives and experiences. I used extracts from just ten of these recordings in the show on our fabulous 'Talking Telephone'. Rather than just see this put on a shelf until the next exhibition to use oral history recordings, we have installed the telephone in the shipbuilding gallery, where it looks like it always belonged. The entire collection of recordings, which has increased since the exhibition opened as so many former Hall Russell employees got in touch, are now being kept for posterity and will be an invaluable resource for future historians.
Some the items on loan for the exhibition may well be coming into the collection permanently (watch this space for future updates) and many more items were collected during the run of the exhibition as people went home and thought, 'hmm, maybe the maritime museum would like this'.
Whilst the temporary exhibition may have ended, the story of Hall Russell & Co Ltd, the jewel in British shipbuilding, goes on at Aberdeen Maritime Museum.