The London Science Museum…..a great help for modelers!

This is a fine example of how, to my notion, a museum ought to work.  Unfortunately, the service offered by such institutions varies tremendously.

In the days (quite a while back) when I worked at the Mariners' Museum, the institutional policy was that mail queries from the public got an extremely high priority.  (There was no e-mail in those days.)  I spent several hours each week typing letters in response to such queries.  And if a visitor asked a question about an artifact, our normal policy (subject to certain modifications if we were busy on something especially urgent) was to drop whatever we were doing and answer it.  That was one of my favorite parts of the job, and I met lots of interesting people that way.  (I'm afraid I also was responsible for some bitter disappointment, when I had to tell nice people that their precious pieces of "genuine scrimshaw" were made of plastic.) 

Sometimes such behavior pays off for the museum.  My superiors reminded me more than once of an incident that happened at the MM some years before I got there.  A visitor asked a question about some artifact at the front desk, the front desk called a curator, and the curator came out, invited the visitor to his office, and spent a few minutes digging through the files to answer the question.  A few weeks later a package arrived in the mail, with a note from the visitor, saying he was sending it as an expression of gratitude for the cordial treatment he'd received.  The package contained a half-model of the yacht America, bearing a silver plate that identified it as having been built by the ship's designer, George Steers, for presentation to Queen Victoria.

I have the impression that the Mariners' Museum doesn't operate that way any more. 

When I was fifteen years old, my parents took me on a vacation trip to Washington, D.C.  I naturally insisted that we make a beeline for the Smithsonian, where the ship models were.  Not knowing any better, I asked one of the guards if it would be possible to talk with Howard I. Chapelle, who at that time was the Curator of Transportation.  The guard, after a brief conversation on the phone with somebody, told me that normally Mr. Chapelle would be happy to see me, but that he'd left for the day.  The next time I got to Washington, several years later, he'd retired.  I'll always regret that, due to simple bad timing, I thereby missed meeting, for a few minutes at least, one of the great names in the history of American maritims technology.  I was told several times later that Chapelle was famous for his willingness to roll out the red carpet for anybody who was interested in the history of ships.

We should remember that many museums are understaffed, and the staff members they do employ usually are overworked.  It isn't fair to be too harsh with those who don't give the sort of service Bryan encountered.  But what a pleasure it is to encounter places that work like that!

jtilley wrote:

I have the impression that the Mariners' Museum doesn't operate that way any more.

It doesn't John.

I recently phoned in to inquire about a set of plans they advertised on their website. I got a recording so I left a message. I didn't get a return phone call for almost a week. I was then informed that the plans, consisting of two sheets, would cost over $40.00 as the standard copying charge was $5.00 per square foot.

I passed...

The Science Museum also has a very impressive gallery of ship models, which includes a large display of RN ships and British liners/merchant vessels from the early 19th to mid 20th century (mostly 1/48 and 1/96 scale) and a display of various fishing boats and small wooden craft.
Unfortunately I've heard that this gallery is going to be closed in the fairly near future, so I'd advise visiting it soon if possible!

I hope part of the renovation will include some big improvements in the climate control system.  I should emphasize that the last time I went to the Science Museum was in, I think, 1978, but I have the impression that the situation hasn't improved much, if any, since then.  The ship model collection at that time was magnificent, of course, but I was disturbed at the effects that heat, humidity, and light were having on some of the models.  Some of the planking on Longridge's wonderful H.M.S. Victory was coming loose, and the flags on P. Heriz-Smith's Reale galley, which originally had been bright red, had been reduced to a pale pink.

Too many museums give low priority to their ship model collections, regarding them as instructional devices rather than artifacts.  I'm sure the Science Museum, like virtually all other such institutions, has to make some hard decisions when it comes to allocating the limited funds it has at its disposal.  But I certainly hope a good climate control system for the ship model galleries is on the way - if it hasn't been installed already.  (Again, I'm talking about problems I saw quite a few years ago; maybe they've already been corrected.)

I am sorry to say that matters do not seem to have improved since your visit in 1978. Mr Tilley.

Even though I live in the UK I  have not actually seen C.N. Longridge's model in the Science Museum, I was therefore shocked to see recent pictures of her with severe cracks in her hull planking and her cannon askew in the gun ports, he was most particular on setting these square to the ports.

I am very familiar with his book and given the care and attention he devoted to this model  I am sure he would be most distressed were he alive to see it today.

I appreciate that there are things outside of the control of Museum staff, you would know better than me, but I would have thought that an Institution such as the Science Museum could have taken better care of such a definitive model, even if it meant delivering it up to a place with greater expertise.

 

I visited the Science Museum this past March.   While I had been to London before I had not been to the Science Museum and I was looking forward to it with great anticipation, not the least because I wanted to see the Victory model.  

I was both delighted and dissapointed.   In my opinion, the Science museum would be one of the Great Museums of the World if it only displayed its marvelous ship models- it does, of course display much more than that.  I may be wrong (I don't have numbers and certainly haven't seen all the museums of the world), but I cannot imagine that too many of them can surpass the quantity and quality of the ship models that the SM contains.  The down side is that I did notice many instances of disrepair, such as peeling paint, delamination or just plain damage, on the models.  

When I finally saw the Victory I at first thought I might have found a different Victory model.   It was tucked away in a sort of corner and one had to look quite hard to find some printed information that confirmed that it was, in fact, the Longeridge model.   Considering its status in the ship modelling world I guess I was expecting some sort of "enshrinement", but that is not the case at all.  I was very surprisedand dismayed to see the damage spoken of in previous posts.

All in all, the SM is a bit like many of its exhibits, a relic of bygone days.   The museum has a decidely "Victorian" feel to it, rather dark and a bit worn.   On the other hand, that is part of its charm and hopefully any future renovations will not completely repress that.   My time there was much too brief - I had a (wonderfully forbearing) wife and 13 year old in tow- but I would love to go back any time.

Steves - it sounds like your reaction to the Science Museum was depressingly similar to the one I had almost thirty years ago. 

It's a great institution, and its ship model collection is indeed among the finest - matching in some respects even the one at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.  But the physical plant and exhibition techniques at the SM just aren't up to modern standards.  I'm sure the explanation is the usual, inevitable one:  money.

Let's hope the upcoming renovation remedies the situation, at least to some extent.