On Wednesday 16th November,Year 12 Classical Civilisation students visited the Ashmolean Museum for a special afternoon workshop and tour put on by the Ashmolean Museum as part of our Museum School program.
When the group arrived, they spent fifteen minutes exploring the sorts of roles and jobs in museums - ranging from archaeologists and curators to events managers and artefact cleaners with outreach officer Clare Corey. They were then able to spend some time in the Aegean World gallery. The students have been studying the fascinating civilisations of the Minoans and Mycenaeans, and were excited to be able to see the many artefacts they had been learning about in lessons.
The centre piece of the visit was a special talk and tour with Liam McNamara, curator of the Museum's beautiful and extensive Egyptian collections. Liam talked about the collection, and the various challenges of developing layouts and displays to best exhibit the very interesting material to the public. He spoke of how he had chosen a chronological layout, which enabled visitors to start at the beginning and walk through time, but also how it was possible to also work backwards (rather like an archaeologist digging down through time).
Cheney School is the first school in the UK - and quite possibly the world - to become a Museum School, where museum collections will appear throughout the school in displays and exhibitions. We are encouraging students to be an active part of this initiative. This trip is one of many special opportunities students will be able to take part in and benefit from, and we are very grateful indeed to the Ashmolean, Clare Corey and Liam McNamara, for their time and energy in offering this session.
It was greatly enjoyed and appreciated by all the students and staff who attended.