1. Hertford Museum
World of Wallace Project
Information for hiring museums
The Project:
We have been awarded £59,000 by Arts Council England Renaissance Strategic Support Fund for this project.
The project will take the form of a touring exhibition about the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who arrived at
the Theory of Natural Selection at the same time as but independently of Charles Darwin. Wallace, who grew up
in Hertford, lived and worked in a variety of places in the UK and abroad. Wallace travelled extensively,
exploring and mapping previously uncharted parts of the Amazon and becoming the world authority on the flora
and fauna of Malaysia and Indonesia. The exhibition, entitled 'The World of Wallace', will examine how the
places where Wallace lived and worked informed his groundbreaking discoveries in the field of natural history,
from Hertford where he 'first obtained a rudimentary acquaintance with my fellow creatures and with nature' to
the Malay Archipelago.
The exhibition will be on display at Hertford Museum for 4 months and then will be available for free hire to
other museums. The project will include conservation of Victorian natural history specimens from our collection
and packing crates to ensure they can be safely transported as part of the exhibition. We hope to offer other
objects from other institutions as part of the touring exhibition. In addition to objects the exhibition will include
family friendly interactives and text and image panels. We intend to produce school resource boxes for Key
stages 3 and 4 with lesson plans to be used by teachers and workshops for key stages 1 and 2 with
accompanying resources to be delivered at exhibiting museums or as outreach by staff of those museums.
The project funding will also provide a funding pot for insurance, mileage and van hire for borrowing museums
as these aspects of exhibition hire are often a financial barrier to many museums. We have also factored in costs
for our professional curatorial staff to install and deinstall the exhibition at other locations such as volunteer run
museums where there is little or no curatorial presence. The exhibition will also include a marketing template
to further reduce time and cost to borrowing museums.
Logistics:
Transit:
We will be able to cover or help with the cost of van hire and mileage if your museum meets the bursary
criteria.
Installation:
All borrowing museums will need to provide assurance of secure storage facilities and professional curatorial
staff to install. Where this is not available, borrowing museums can apply for delivery and installation by
Hertford Museum's curatorial team.
Gallery conditions:
Borrowing museums will need to provide details of RH and temp readings in the proposed exhibition space.
Insurance:
The hiring museum will be responsible for insurance of the exhibition. Museums unable to meet insurance costs
can apply for funding from the project to cover this.
Security:
All borrowing museums will need to provide details of security measures in place. An alarm system is
mandatory. Where CCTV is not present we would request an invigilator. Cases used by borrowing museums
