These are the objects museum directors want to have in their homes

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19 May 2020

The directors of London museums choose the items from their collections they’d love to take home for inspiration.

Tristram Hunt, Director, V&A

The Virgin with Laughing Child, 1460, variously attributed

(© Victoria&Albert Museum, London)
©Victoria & Albert Museum, London

When we so desperately need joy and laughter and human connection in our lives, the artwork I would “borrow” (under all the right regulations and environmental controls) is the V&A’s small terracotta figure, The Virgin with Laughing Child. Made around 1460, standing at some 50cm, this red clay sculpture could be by Rossellino, or Verrocchio, or even Leonardo da Vinci, but what is certain is that this beautifully crafted devotional piece is a joyous celebration of Renaissance humanism. The Virgin Mary’s enigmatic, delicate smile (a hint of Mona Lisa?), the laughing, gurgling Christ with his tummy being tickled, the feel of the baby’s weight on his mother’s lap, and the beautiful flow of the draperies — all of it a testament to the value of life and our creative capacity to respond to its wonder. It returned to our Medieval & Renaissance galleries at Christmastime after being on loan in Italy. Come and see it when you can!

Nick Merriman, Director, Horniman Museum

Coral reef tanks

(Horniman Museum)

We’re all looking for inspirational stories that point towards a more positive future when we emerge from this crisis. For me, the coral reef tanks at the Horniman provide this. Thanks to talented aquarium curator Dr Jamie Craggs, our tiny aquarium is the first place in the world to induce coral spawning ex situ. We can spawn coral at other times of year than the single annual episode in nature, opening up the possibility of further research, like selectively breeding corals to be more heat tolerant. We’re sharing our technique worldwide, collaborating with larger aquaria on projects aimed at repopulating endangered reefs. Coral reefs take up less than one per cent of the ocean floor but host over 25 per cent of marine life, so rescuing them is vital to the planet’s future. I’d love to have coral tanks at home but they require specialist husbandry. I don’t think they’d survive my attentions, sadly.

Sharon Ament, Director, Museum of London

Roman “Tear Collector”, AD170-250​​

(© Museum of London)
© Museum of London

No bigger than a five-pence piece, this tiny, perfect, ancient jar could only fit one of the tears that many Londoners have been shedding recently. No one really knows what it was for, perhaps perfume rather than tears. This one was excavated from a Roman burial at Keston in Bromley. When an eminent archaeological colleague of mine told me this story, it described a ritual so poetic that I really wanted to believe it was true. “These are known as tear collectors,” he said. “When the tears inside dry up you can stop mourning.” I imagined an ancient Roman crying in deep loss and saving a tear, knowing that as time went on it would be possible for the joy and full intensity of life to continue once more. A metaphor for this extraordinary time.

Sir Ian Blatchford, Director and Chief Executive, Science Museum Group

Bloom, 2019, Studio Roso

Science Museum Group

As society and life dominate my mind right now I relish the idea of Bloom, an audacious kinetic sculpture commissioned from Studio Roso for our recently opened Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries. It is mesmerising, an entanglement of steel branches, each one supporting a propeller that glows and changes colour as it spins through 18 sequences. But it also carries a direct message for today. Every propeller might be a person, a tower block, a whole town — each one connected to its fellows. It sets our minds racing with imagined stories that animate the piece, showing how quickly diseases can spread across connected communities, and what a difference breaking a branch makes. It is incredibly beautiful and yet unsettling, the hallmarks of great art.

Sonia Solicari, Director, Museum of the Home

Scoop chair, 1974, Terence Conran

Geffrye Museum, London

This easy chair, called Scoop, is a design classic by Terence Conran and was sold in Habitat between 1974 and 1980. Each chair was made from a solid block of upholstery foam that was scooped out to form a seat. The seat and cushion were covered in a corduroy fabric called Groovy which came in four jewel-like colours — our Scoop is in Rust, a beautifully bold burnt orange. Low to the ground and unusually shaped, it is almost impossible to sit up straight in. Scoop’s form reflects the informal and relaxed style of furniture we’ve come to expect in today’s homes, where lounging is an everyday part of getting comfortable. This comfort, combined with its versatility — it can be put together with other furniture to make different seating arrangements and be used by the whole family for reading, sleeping or watching TV — makes the Scoop the perfect choice for lockdown where our spaces are having to work much harder and often have multiple uses.

Caro Howell, Director, Foundling Museum

Foundling Hospital token, 18th century

(© The Foundling Museum )
© The Foundling Museum

This small piece of engraved mother-of -pearl is part of the admission documentation for a baby left at the Foundling Hospital in 1757. These tokens were left by mothers with their babies as a means of identification, should they ever return to claim their child. Everything about this object speaks of uncertainty and unknowns: the mother’s situation, the father’s whereabouts, the baby’s future. Yet this token is also testament to courage, empathy and hope. It reminds us that in the midst of heartbreaking separation and loss, we have the capacity to envisage a better future, to act selflessly, and to build a better society. So although I’d love to sneak a Hogarth home (he was a great supporter of the Foundling Hospital and the museum houses several of his works), being able to turn this scrap of 18th-century admin over and over in my hand would buoy me up and remind me that even in the worst situation, we have a chance to make the new normal good.

Tim Marlow, Chief Executive and Director, Design Museum

Rainbow Flag, 1978, Gilbert Baker

(© Design Museum)
© Design Museum

There are so many objects in our ­collection that would help life under lockdown. I could seriously use the barber’s thinning scissors acquired for the Design Museum by Thomas Heatherwick in 2003 and would relish making phone calls on the classic Ericofon phone from 1941 as a respite from the (brilliantly designed) flat-screen technology we’re living so much of our lives on and through.

But in the end I think I’d take the ­Rainbow Flag, designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978 for the Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade in San Francisco, which has become a specific symbol of LGBTQ Pride and one of universal tolerance, community and love. There are various versions, but Baker refused to trademark the design that he and others had collectively made and this openness and flexibility makes the rainbow flag such a potent and generous symbol. And of course in this spirit, the rainbow has become a ­symbol of support for the NHS and our collective hopes of surviving the pandemic.

Sir Michael Dixon, Director, Natural History Museum

Blue Marlin, 2016

The Trustees of the Natural History Museum

From more than 80 million specimens singling out one is tricky, but I choose our striking blue marlin. The blue marlin is the largest of the Atlantic marlins and one of the fiercest predators of the seas — this was the first complete specimen of its kind to wash up on UK shores and be recovered in full. It has been part of the Museum’s collection since September 2016. Displayed in a 4m-long tank of glycerol, I might need to reinforce my floor to display this giant. The fate of this species is in humanity’s hands: the value of its meat and its spectacular appearance mean it is highly prized by commercial and trophy fishermen. Usually found in open seas, far away from land, this is one of several specimens which have washed up on Pembrokeshire’s coastline. Climate change is warming waters around the UK, drawing it away from its usual territories — which are also being hit by oxygen depletion.

Melanie Keen, Director, Wellcome Collection

Help the Normals, 2018, Dolly Sen

(Wellcome Collection)
intranda GmbH

The handheld collection box is ubiquitous in our culture, to the point of near-invisibility. With coronavirus, we are witnessing unsurpassed levels of ­caring and compassion when it could be easy for people to become entrenched and insular. As a museum and a library that challenges how we think about health, we’ve exhibited Help the Normals by Dolly Sen as part of our new permanent display Being Human. Sen provokes us into asking who is normal, and what is a normal situation. She centres a way of being that might otherwise be considered “ab­normal”. Now more than ever, questions of normality sit in the popular imagination. Is it normal to be isolated? Is it normal to feel anxious? Is it normal to experience a mental health crisis? The work acts as a reminder that mental health conditions can affect any of us and the associated stigma loses legitimacy in the face of communal, even normal, experiences.

Paddy Rodgers, Director, Royal Museums Greenwich

View of Deptford Power Station from Greenwich, 1959, LS Lowry

© National Maritime Museum, London

The Art Collection at Royal Museums Greenwich is extensive, including many noted works, but it is in the breadth and reach of people examining themselves, their environment and others through what they create that the collection can be most touching. I have nevertheless chosen a notable artist and work that resonates with my life experience. My parents were born in Oldham, Lancashire, in the Twenties to families of mill workers. My father won a scholarship to De La Salle College in Salford, where Lowry studied and worked. They talked of Lowry’s work as capturing the social and industrial landscape of their childhood that triggered memories for them of songs sung and games played. In this picture, a general cargo ship is shown, and I have worked for nearly 40 years in the shipping industry, which resulted in my interest in the museums at Greenwich. The view shows Deptford power station on the banks of the Thames at its junction with the Quaggy creek, seen from Greenwich, where I have lived since 1991. The picture has a Zen-like stillness in the midst of activity which never fails to calm the turmoil of a busy day.

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