curator

The mysterious Miss Wigglesworth

Posted on May 8, 2015

by Jemma

For the past few days I have been digging through the Museum’s annual reports from the 19^th-20^th century. During my search one name kept cropping up: Miss Wigglesworth. She was in every report for a long period of time so I decided to look into her.

A stack of Manchester Museum annual reports

Grace Wigglesworth was a student at Owens College from 1900 (which became The Victoria University of Manchester in 1904 and would later become the University of Manchester). She graduated with a B.Sc (Hons) in Botany in 1903 and later gained a Master’s degree in palaeobotany.

The first mention of Miss Wigglesworth in the 1903-04 report

In 1908 she was admitted as a fellow in the Linnean Society of London, which housed (and still does) the collection and personal library of the father of modern taxonomy Carl Linnaeus. In January 1911, Wigglesworth was appointed Assistant Keeper of botany at the Manchester Museum. Assistant Keepers were in charge of curating the collections. During her time as Keeper, Wigglesworth cared and organised the museum’s collections, worked on gallery displays and lectured at the University.

Wigglesworth used record cards to keep track of the Herbarium's collections. This box contains some of those cards. — Wigglesworth used record cards to keep track of the Herbarium’s collections. This box contains some of those cards.

Wigglesworth was the second female within the Herbarium staff and held the post for 33 years. Even after she retired in 1944, Wigglesworth continued to help around the Herbarium until the 1950’s.

This entry was posted in Botanists, Female Botanists, Herbarium History, Manchester, Manchester Botanists, Museums, Students, University of Manchester and tagged 20th century, botany, curator, Keeper, Linnean Society, Manchester Museum, museum collection, University of Manchester.

Safn – Icelandic for museum (and collection)

Posted on August 15, 2014

With a group of curators away on a trip together one thing is guaranteed – we’ll find some museums to visit!

Museum sign in Reydarfjorur (not been there yet!!) — Museum sign in Reydarfjorur

So one Icelandic word I’ve learnt is ‘safn’ meaning museum or collection. We’ve visited a whole host of wonderful museum large and small since arriving in Iceland.

There was Arbaer open air museum with it’s beautiful architecture and really stylish displays of Icelandic life and commodities.

One of Arbaer's displays of Icelandic life — One of Arbaer’s beautiful displays of Icelandic life

Historic Icelandic women's desses — Historic Icelandic women’s desses

Then there was Eldheimar (Pompeii of the North) telling the story of the eruption on Heimaey with it’s evocative excavated house and clever use of audioguides. David has an interesting interview with the Director of this new museum here.

The Aquarium and Natural History Museum in Heimay celebrating it’s 50th anniversary with decorated stones and the chance to meet it’s VIP resident:

The eclectic shark fishing museum on the north of the Snaefellsness peninsula with artifacts, drying shark and the opportunity to buy the real thing. Visit Dmitri’s blog for a full write-up of this one!

The charming natural history museum in Ólafsfjördur with an extensive collection of birds, a polar bear and something which I particularly enjoyed…..a little browseable herbarium.

At the Museum of Akureyri the current exhibition was an interesting display of images of Iceland today taken using the wet plate technique. We have some plates like this in our collection and even though ours are about 100 years old and these were modern, all the smudges and drips around the edges look identical. ALongside this chenging temporary exhibition they also had two more permanent displays about mapping Iceland and life in Akureyri in ages past.