FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

In the coming year we’ll be using our sites and collections to look at new perspectives of the history of our city. With funding from DCMS Wolfson we are upgrading the interpretation and access to the museum at Pickford’s House. Whilst the house was a family home there is very little to tell visitors about the experiences of women and servants. This is especially remiss as Mary Pickford the widow of the architect Joseph (after whom the house is named) became a successful businesswoman, political campaigner and charity philanthropist. Following the Hogarth exhibition there will be another iteration of History Makers in the Museum and Art Gallery where we’ll celebrate more stories of women and gender diversity, which have otherwise been missing from the Derby Story.

A nation divided, a royal family at war, difficult relations with continental neighbours and patriotism invoked for political ends. Sound familiar? Museums are at their most relevant when linking past events to today’s concerns and when they contextualise global or big ideas with local events. Informed by the past, they help us understand our present.

As I write, our latest exhibition Hogarth’s Britons is proving a real crowd pleaser. The Museum and Art Gallery is teeming and the top floor gallery is busy with visitors deliberating over the details of the great artist’s satire and symbolism. These works are dense with scorn and mockery but can also be tender and admiring of their subjects. Hogarth was expressing his views on a nascent Britishness in the face of invasion from both Jacobite and French forces.

The Jacobite Rebellion was the last serious attempt to overthrow the government. The year 1745 was a turning point in British history and history turned in Derby. Here Bonnie Prince Charlie, having marched his army into England, made the fateful decision to return North and to ultimate defeat at Culloden. For a week in December 1745 anxiety and fear gripped Derby as several thousand Jacobites, mostly Highlanders, occupied the town. The letters, paintings and personal effects on show in the exhibition highlight the turmoil felt by towns people at the time.

Following a well-received exhibition in the Museum and Art Gallery in 2019, we are planning a more permanent display of the work of Marion Adnams, Derby’s greatest modern painter. Adnams stands alongside early 20th century British surrealists such as Eileen Agar, who was subject of recent retrospective at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Adnams often ‘borrowed’ natural history specimens such as animal skeletons from the Derby Museums collections to be subjects in her paintings.

In this edition, we have a fascinating selection of news and articles from Derby Museums and Friends. This includes a fascinating article on another of Derby’s famous artists, Francis Bassano, by Friend Maxwell Craven; a word from Friend James Curzon on the invaluable contributions of Derby Museums’ Friends to the Hogarth appeal; and an intrguiging glimpse into the history of Pickford’s House Kitchen Hearth by Visitor Experience Assistant, Emily Cowlishaw. Don’t forget to keep up to date with news and offers in our museum report and upcoming events sections. We hope you enjoy the following newsletter.

- Tony Butler, Executive Director