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So I'm very grateful for Emily joining us today, who I phoned, I think, just two weeks ago.

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Yeah. You know, and very kindly moved heaven and earth to be here in two weeks.

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So thank you very much. Okay.

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So I'm not maybe quite as established in my career as the other speakers.

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I'm still sort of quite an early stage and I'm still not entirely sure what I want to do next.

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That might be a useful perspective, but I am, as you can see, at Watson Manor,

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which I'm sure a lot of you have been to, because Oxford has the internship programme with Watson, which I did.

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And it's relatively close. And I think now the first years do a trip there.

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What they did, because I had to it a couple of weeks. So I think I'll just explain about about what I do and how I got there.

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And just a little bit of what I've learnt along the way with some nice,

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pretty pictures of what's done, because it is a really beautiful place to work.

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And sometimes you have to sort of step back and realise that it is quite a privilege to go to work here every day.

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And so I am assistant registrar at Watson.

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I'm also the collection manager of the Rothschild Foundation Art Collection,

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which has a complicated relationship with Watson that basically runs what Stern on behalf of the National Trust, who own Watson.

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So a little bit about the history of what's the matter.

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As Bill 1870 is the 80s, 90s by Baron Ferdinando Rothschild of the famous banking family.

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He didn't have any children, so were on his death. It pass to his sister who didn't have any children also.

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And on her death, it went to her cousin James and his wife, Dorothy.

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And it was James who left it to the National Trust in 1957. So we've got sort of a long established relationship with National Trust.

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But part of that gift was that a term of it was that the property would always be run by a trust which has some family involvement.

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So what that means is that although we are a national trust property and we've got strong links with the National Trust,

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we are semi autonomous, which means that we do things maybe slightly differently to the National Trust and we're an accredited museum as well.

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So it's quite a sort of unique situation because it's a heritage industry, historic property, but with a museum quality collection.

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And we function in many ways as a museum. But we also have trustees of a charity and an academic committee who approve the strategic move.

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So there's a lot of complicated structures in place.

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I'll just show you as well. This is an A.

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The red drawing room, which is a good example of the kind of collections that we have a lot of French decorative arts.

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You see the carpets from the Louvre Palace. There's Louis the 14th in the middle as Apollo.

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So we've got a lot of really amazing things set of porcelain and English, 18th century paintings amongst all sorts of other things.

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So what I do as a read, as a assistant registrar and collections manager, basically put the registrar's job,

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which also entails my job is basically recording information about all the objects

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in the collection and managing the movement and changes to those objects.

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So information basically reflects the reality of what is actually happening in the collection.

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So the movement of object, it involves new acquisitions.

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The National Trust Don't Acquire is a static collection,

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but the Rothschild Foundation collection and other long term loans we acquire through the foundation.

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So we acquire contemporary works.

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We acquire other historic works that are in line with our collections and also objects

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that have family and historical associations to the estate and to the family.

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So I am involved in the acquisition processes. We are.

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I also helped manage exhibition lines in and out out of the manor.

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So that involves a lot of organising, insurance, transport, framing, you know, logistics of making an exhibition actually work.

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We also. I don't think obviously doesn't happen in a contemporary gallery.

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We have to prove provenance of objects that loaned in.

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So we have to do due diligence to show that they weren't ever sort of Nazi looted or any sort of suspect history.

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So to prove that the person who is lending the object to us has a rightful claim to that object.

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So there's you really have to prove your provenance. You have to have strong evidence.

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So that's quite a lengthy process. And, you know, we're gearing up to our open season now, so or that exhibition planning is underway.

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I also help arrange and courier trips for objects that we loan out and we loan all over the world.

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In the last year, we've loaned to the Kremlin Museum in Moscow.

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We've loaned to Japan in the past states and around the UK.

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And I have a slightly cheesy action shirt shot picture of me in Bath because we lent this Lucian Freud portrait to the Hober Museum.

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So I'm condition reporting. And so that's a fun part of my job.

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I've done some career trips,

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which is interesting because you get to really look at the work place up and get to work with people in other museums and institutions.

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And then so basically, when any object comes in and out of the collection for exhibitions or conservation or study,

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it all has to be reflected in our paper files and in our collection database.

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And also movements within the collection. So I have to keep track of everything.

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I also work to maintain the collections database, which is nearly 22000 objects.

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So. Yes, a big project that we're doing, what Stern is trying to make collection database available online,

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which involves lots of interesting stuff, which I have done some curatorial work for that, including this catalogue.

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But it's also quite a lot of slightly laborious making sure that the data in the database is in the right format to be uploaded to the Web site.

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I also manage their inventory processes at.

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So we do an annual inventory of the entire house and theoretically it should be the entire collection.

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But in practise, it's all of our display areas. And we're gradually working to inventory this sort of difficult store areas,

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which are sort of a nightmare because you're dealing within as sort of the limitations of the historic spaces.

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So some of our storage conditions aren't ideal. We've just had a new archive centre built two years ago.

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So all of our archive material is now housed beautifully.

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But you are dealing with the limitations of historic spaces, say the inventory or the queries from the inventory come to me.

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And I have to do all of the detective work in a historic paper files to try and work out where things have been and often what they are.

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Because when it comes down to architectural elements and books and outside sculptures and things like that, it's sometimes a bit confusing.

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And also to try and make sure that the collection data actually matches what is on the ground,

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because a lot of our database was built up from historic documents at the original bequest and subsequent gifts.

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And so it's marrying up that data with the reality of the object.

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I also work with security and how stewards to work on our disaster planning.

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And so that's basically we have it's part of being an accredited museum is that you have to have a plan for in case of an emergency.

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So fire or flood or anything else really, that you know how to approach the collection.

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So you have the most important objects that have to be rescued first and handling

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directions for all of these things and the logistics of how that work on the estate.

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And I also do some curatorial work.

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So I have done online catalogue and cheese. And I'm at the moment writing a trail around the collection of objects that have Russian connexions.

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So that's my sort of background. An interest is in Russian art.

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So I'm working on that project. At the same time, I'm planning for future exhibitions.

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So how I got here, I completed my B.A. here in 2010 and then I did a six week internship at Ashmolean

86
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over that summer in the print room and I was cataloguing the Kisoro drawings.

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And it was really interesting. I mean, those sort of over 500 works.

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And it was good because I built a built up skills as sort of object handling.

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And it was really good to look at things in detail.

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And I was trained on the database, which is a useful skill, but it was quite repetitive, but it was useful.

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And that was that was an unpaid internship. But my expenses were paid.

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And so because it was a short, short term thing, it was sort of doable.

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And then I got the internship. What's done through the relationship with Oxford?

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Which was paid and had accommodation. So that was sort of a doable option for me.

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And that basically led to a position as a curatorial assistant.

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So I did all sorts of things that was done from cleaning the fountains with a toothbrush.

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You have to get rolling up historic carpets and then inviting exhibition text and helping with the organisation of exhibitions.

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And that was fun because I got to work with some sort of more modern and contemporary things.

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So I wrote the text for a poor sculpture and I helped deal with the loan of some Andy Warhol prints.

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So it was quite fun. It was sort of varied and worked an exhibition of Italian Mollica, which I knew nothing about and do now.

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So that's good. You know, giving tours also.

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It's basically whatever I could.

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And so I think that's sort of the message is that it was I was very lucky to have the opportunity to do those internships

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through being here and those internships being part of the relationship with the university department and other institutions.

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But then I sort of went for it as much as I could. And so out of that came something that was paid.

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And that was interesting. And I got some experience, basically.

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And then I left word stern after about nine months to do my masters, which is actually in Russian studies, but with sort of an art historical focus.

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And that was at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL.

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And that finished in 2012.

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And I came. I had a bit of a crisis then applying for anything I could really and not getting much in the way of responses.

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And it's a bit depressing. And then I got some part time cataloguing work back at Waldstein, which was maternity cover.

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And so, you know, having built a good relationship with them was really my in to that.

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And then in February of last year, the opportunity came for another maternity cover, which was this assistant registrar position.

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So which I am incredibly lucky to get because a registrar position, as in development, is a highly sort of professionalised area of museums.

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So most people coming into a position as an assistant registrar or as a registrar have

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some sort of postgraduate qualification in museum studies or heritage management.

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I mean, you can learn on the job, but it's difficult to get the opportunity to learn on the job.

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So I'm incredibly grateful for the experience that I've got in the last year.

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And my job, this particular role is sort of coming to an end.

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But I'm moving into a more curatorial position, which is what I would like to do longer term.

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But some benefits of working in a sort of collections management role is that you work with virtually everyone else in the organisation,

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which curators don't necessarily have the opportunity to do.

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I also work with the entire collection.

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So instead of having a sort of curatorial specialism, I do have a sort of overarching view of how how Wasdin works as a whole.

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What our strengths are, you know, that the whole range of our collection.

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And it's also a good job for making other contacts with other institutions,

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because you sort of an inherent part of the job is that your negotiating relationships between

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institutions that you're lending to and who are lending to you with external conservatives,