Talks and Trips 2020!
Starting with the complete flyer and then a breakdown of all talks and trips, above the outer part of the flyer, and below the inside. Tickets for talks can be obtained at the museum during opening hours, and also from…
Restoration of Roman Wine Strainer
Last week a small group of Friends visited the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre in Chippenham, ideally placed about 5 minutes from the railway station. The last time we visited the history centre was back in February 2012 for a guided tour…
Friends’ January Social
To mark the opening of the exhibition, Pop and Prosperity:1960s British Art from the Swindon Collection, we held an opening night, and also took the opportunity to introduce two new part time outreach workers at the museum and unveil a new painting we had…
Collecting Desmond Morris’ Picture from Oxford
Desmond Morris famous zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology, is known for his 1967 book The Naked Ape, and for his television programmes such as Zoo Time. His Wikipedia entry mentions that he was born in Purton,…
Angels, Buckets and Bells…
The exhibition Angels, Buckets and Bells in the downstairs rooms at Swindon MAG is a creative response to St. Mary’s Lydiard Tregoze, one of Swindon’s most historic and beautiful buildings. The Grade 1 listed church was awarded funding from the National Lottery Heritage…
Friends Farewell to Sophie Cummings (January 2020)
After six and a half years at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, Curator Sophie Cummings has made a huge impact on the place, with regular changeovers of exhibitions both in the downstairs and upstairs galleries, there have been reasons for…
Top 5 Posts of All Time
Having listed the top 10 posts of 2019, I thought I'd list the top 5 posts in the history of the blog. Coming in at number 1 is the post about Jon Ratcliffe's talk 'Unseen Swindon' at 538 page views,…
Top Ten Blog Posts of 2019
One of the delights of writing a blog is looking at the number of page views attained per post. It's hard to judge which posts will attract the most page views. It isn't necessarily a post which takes a long…
Friday Lunchtime Talk: Hit Repeat Exhibition (December 2019)
Before Christmas Sophie Cummings, former Curator at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery gave her last FREE Friday lunchtime talk on the exhibition in the small part of the gallery. As regulars to Sophie's talks will know, they are carefully thought out, very…
Craft Matters: Collect International Art Fair (Thursday 12 December 2019)
For our December talk, we were fortunate enough to have Isobel Dennis, Fair director of Collect coming to explain more about the International Art Fair for Modern Craft and Design which is now in its 16th year. I have taken…