Mix 92.6 Podcasts

St Albans Museum+Gallery is open again.  And with a brand new exhibition in The Weston Gallery that's perfectly timed for the Christmas and New Year season.  Curator Sarah Keeling tells Local Life all about Cabaret Mechanical Marvels and everything else you can see now and for the next many weeks....

Curator Sarah Keeling starts our virtual tour of the St Albans Museum+Gallery by walking through the entrance area towards the Courtroom.  Next time - upstairs to The Assembly Room.  (Photo Courtesy of St Albans Museums.)

Continuing her audio tour of St Albans Museum+Gallery, Sarah Keeling describes the famous Courtroom (now the cafe).  From the dock in this beautifully restored circular chamber, local thieves were sentenced to transportation to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) for crimes as minor as stealing a cricket bat.   Here too, in 1851, the Bribery Commission found St Albans guilty of 'buying' votes and expelled its two MPs from Parliament.

In the first of three interviews with key members of the team at the new St Albans Museum + Gallery, Rob Pearman finds out from Catherine Newley, Audience Development Manager for both the new venture and the award-winning Verulamium Museum, about the history of the former City Museum on Hatfield Road and of the Town Hall now occupied by the brand new Museum + Gallery which opens on 8th June 2018.

In the second of three conversations with key people in the team that has brought the City & District its brand new Museum + Gallery, Rob Pearman hears from two members of the Trust - Mike Gray and Caroline Eldred - how the project was delivered and how the all important funding was achieved.

From The Courtroom, the prisoners were taken back down to the cells - a journey that Sarah Kealing follows so she can describe how they looked then and how they look now.....

Catherine Newley reminds us about the intriguing project that was launched while the Museum+Gallery was under development and is still available online.  "Talking Buildings" tells us the history of many buildings - past and present - in the buildings' own words!  Rediscover St Albans and look at the city with fresh eyes (and ears).  (Photo Courtesy of St Albans Museums)

Everything was prepared and then the lock-down meant we could not visit Hertfordshire Open 2020 in April - but we can still see the work of 50 artists and 80 artworks of all kinds online.  And also catch up online with the exhibition on local aviation company Handley Page, which opened briefly in March.                (Photo Courtesy of St Albans Museums)

For the concluding part of her audio tour of St Albans Museum+Gallery, Curator Sarah Kealing takes us into the West Glazed Link (with its views over Market Place and back into the Courtroom) and then onwards into the Keeper's Gallery where the most recent exhibition (pre-lockdown) was about Handley Page - an exhibition that can now be viewed online at stalbansmuseums.org.uk, along with other recent shows.  Let's hope we can all explore this wonderful building soon!

The image shown is from Imprinted, an earlier exhibition in the Keeper’s Gallery of works by local artist Suman Gujaral.

Catherine Newley, Audience Development Manager, explains how to access online more than 50,000 objects and specimens in the collection at St Albans  Museum+Gallery. (Photo Courtesy St Albans Museums)