Hi, I am a Newcastle University student on placement at South Shields Museum. My main task at South Shields has been to curate two exhibitions built around its collection of works on paper, both of these exhibitions are due to be displayed sometime in 2015. I am now more than three quarters of the way through my eight week placement, both of these exhibitions are largely done and I was just starting to think that I could sit back and relax a bit. Then my supervisor, Adam Bell Assistant Keeper of Social History, tells me that he wants me to take over the upcoming Mayor’s Choice exhibition which is due to be up in the next couple of weeks! He then proceeded to tell me the concept behind the exhibition, which is that the newly elected Mayor of South Tyneside Fay Cunningham will select the works for the exhibition and make a brief statement as to why she picked them/liked them. So Adam got me in touch with her ‘people’ and suggested that I try and organise a time to meet her and show her around the South Shields art store. All really cool I thought.
The Mayor is really keen to include works which relate to her ward Bede and, as she is really interested in local social history Jarrow March and St Paul’s Church/Monastery. So I began to ‘potter’ around in the store top see what I can find, in time for meeting her next week all being well.
It’s certainly going to be a stretch to fit this in before the end of my placement, alongside various pieces of documentation I need to do for the two exhibitions, but it’s a challenge that I am really looking forward too!
The Mayor’s Choice exhibition is due to open sometime around the 23rd June.