Museum Critique - Adam Courtney

The tour around the Maritime Museum was eye opening, as there was much more this time around when I was looking for specific items to research. It made me appreciate a great deal the range and depth of the collection in there, as I was able to look at specific types of harpoon- the explosive types may be worth researching further, I had no idea they existed, and it could be possible to incorporate them into our project.

I initially was surprised at how little there was on whaling in the museum at a first glance - I initially went upstairs on my first visit, and saw no whaling until I went downstairs, but as soon as I wanted to get information on anything, it was right there where I looked. I actually have to say that in terms of research, it was much more valuable than any online search would have been, as we got to see the artifacts and their scale (whales are big, the baby skeleton proved that to me!), and just getting the information presented so directly without any distractions was brilliant for our needs with the project.

I also found it eye-opening how much maritime history Hull has outside of whaling, and that in itself was interesting because it gave a sense of how much of the city's history we could draw from, and how important it would be to give the project a unique sense of place, and to take advantage of it only being relevant to one museum (in that we could really hone into specifics and get a real sense of place into it).

It might be the case that I needed specific research goals to get the most from the museum, but at the same time, the content is actually very rich and detailed. I'll definitely be popping there to gather more details and research for the project as and when we need it.