AuGusT 13, 1914] 
625 
THE MUSEUMS ASSOCIATION. 
SWANSEA CONFERENCE, JULY, I914. 
HE Museums Association fittingly celebrated the 
completion of a quarter of a century’s existence 
by an incursion into a hitherto unvisited country— 
the Principality of Wales—Swansea being chosen as 
the meeting place. 
The attendance was very large, and the papers and 
discussions reached a high standard of excellence. 
Particularly noteworthy were those dealing in a prac- 
tical way with the preservation and restoration of 
works of art—a subject which has never previously 
received so much attention at an annual conference. 
Representatives were sent by forty provincial 
museums and art galleries, five national museums 
(the British Museum, the British Museum of Natural 
History, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National 
Museum of Wales, and the Museum of the Royal 
Botanic Gardens at Kew), and the London County 
Council. i 
The presidential chair was occupied by Mr. Charles 
Madeley, Director of the Warrington Municipal 
. Museum. 
In his presidential address Mr. Madeley invited the 
conference to consider ‘‘What is the true theory of 
a municipal museum?’ To the community which 
desires to establish or to re-organise a museum, this 
is a vital question, and the president dealt with it in 
a manner at once comprehensive and illuminating. 
Municipal’ museums are mercifully free from any kind 
of departmental regulations restricting their scope and 
activities, but this blessing has in the past been a 
somewhat mixed one, and one of the great functions 
of The Museums Association is to see that it is 
henceforth properly appreciated. 
The president suggested that a museum might be 
defined as ‘‘a collection of specimens arranged with 
a purpose,’ and objected to that purpose being de- 
fined as ‘‘educational,’’ by reason of the unattractive 
nature of the word and the unnecessary limitations 
imposed by it. This objection was the source of some 
misunderstanding on the part of those hearers who 
did not grasp the true significance of Mr. Madeley’s 
remarks, although he made it abundantly clear that a 
museum must, in his view, be educational. The con- 
tents of the ideal museum should, according to the 
president, constitute a miniature or synopsis of the 
universe—the true microcosm, in fact—but with the 
great and essential difference that, in the museum, 
things are classified, and therefore intelligible, whilst 
in the world outside they are not. He quoted with 
approval the statement of Dr. Brown Goode that a 
museum should be ‘‘an institution for the preservation 
of those objects which best illustrate the phenomena 
of nature and the works of man, and the utilisation 
of these for the increase of knowledge and for the 
culture and enlightenment of the people.” 
The text being thus provided, there arises the neces- 
sitv for a full and sound classification of the whole 
of the possible contents of such a museum. 
Classifications, which might be thought suitable 
by some, have been prepared for the use of librarians, 
but the president pointed out that these are too 
arbitrary. In a library, where classification exists 
merely to promote ease of reference, this does not 
matter, but an orderly and logical conspectus is abso- 
lutely necessary when one of the great properties of 
the institution is ‘‘visualisation,’? as in the case of 
museums. 
A filling-out of the broad scheme, drawn up by 
Brown Goode, is the kind of thing required. In 
it different points of view would be provided for, and 
the president called attention to one which has long 
NOwm237,..VOU. (92) 
NATURE 
suffered under an unjust stigma—namely, — the 
economic point of view. ‘‘We may hope,” said he, 
“that technology, and eventually even commerce, may 
meet with adequate recognition in the museum.” 
Mr. W. Grant Murray, Director of Art in Swansea, 
then gave an interesting account of the rise of the 
school of art and crafts and of the two local art 
galleries. 
Dr. H. Langton related some of his experiet:ces in 
the preparation of the skulls of birds by means of the 
sand-process. His remarks brought forth a champion 
of the old water-maceration method, in the person 
of Mr. A. W. Gunn, of Newport, and it seemed 
fairly obvious from the discussion that, as in most 
matters, there is no one universally applicable method. 
Mr. B. H. Mullen gave an account of the ‘‘ Chil- 
dren’s room”’ at the Salford Museum, which has been 
established with the intention of providing a series 
of introductions to the various major collections, and 
to bring young people into intelligent and sympathetic 
touch with them. 
The Bankfield Museum publications were the sub- 
ject of a note by the curator, Mr. H. Ling Roth. 
On the evening of Tuesday, July 7, Mr. E. Rim- 
bault Dibdin, curator of the Walker Art Gallery, 
Liverpool, delivered a public lecture on ‘* Wales and 
the Fine Arts, Past, Present, and Future.”’ 
Mr. E. Howarth opened a discussion on the sub- 
ject of ‘The Museum and the Schools,’’ in which he 
emphasised the great desirability of these rapidly 
developing institutions keeping in close touch. There 
should be greater collaboration between the curator 
and the teacher in order that the curator’s work may 
be of a nature to deserve and receive a full measure 
of use and appreciation by members of the scholastic 
profession and their charges. Mr. Howarth alluded 
to the importance of the kinematograph as a_ force 
in school teaching, and, as it is scarcely possible to 
have a kinematograph in every school, he suggested 
that every municipal museum might usefully instal 
an instrument to exhibit films germane to the work 
| of the institution. 
A demonstration of the characteristics—colour, 
translucency, etc.—of the various types of porcelain 
formerly *made in Swansea and neighbourhood was 
given by Mr. Herbert Eccles. 
~ Mr. Quick, under the title ‘‘The Protection and 
Restoration of Pictures,’ gave a number of hints on 
the care and treatment of paintings, drawings, and 
engravings. 
Mr. Williams’s paper on ‘‘The Renovation and Re- 
storation of Oil-paintings, with Practical Experi- 
ments,’’ was illustrated by some examples of ‘before 
and after’? treatment. 
Dr. H. S. Harrison, of the Horniman Museum, in 
a paper entitled ‘‘ Ethnographical Collections and their 
Arrangement,’’ advised the adoption of what has been 
described as the ‘‘topical’’ mode of arrangement, and 
showed by means of well-chosen lantern slides how 
the evolution of processes, utensils, instruments, etc., 
might be advantageously illustrated. 
Some points in the construction and fittings of the 
new King Edward VII. galleries at the British 
Museum were described by Mr. R. A. Smith. 
The final paper was one in which there was every 
evidence of a serious premeditated intention to fit a 
museum building for the purpose of adequately and 
comfortably displaying the objects to be housed in it. 
We refer to the design for the new museum and art 
gallery at Belfast, which was lucidly described by 
Mr. Arthur Deane. Here the curator and architect 
have evidently been in close collaboration, and have 
produced a design original in several features and 
full of promise. 
