So I'm very grateful for Emily joining us today, who I phoned, I think, just two weeks ago.
Yeah. You know, and very kindly moved heaven and earth to be here in two weeks.
So thank you very much. Okay.
So I'm not maybe quite as established in my career as the other speakers.
I'm still sort of quite an early stage and I'm still not entirely sure what I want to do next.
That might be a useful perspective, but I am, as you can see, at Watson Manor,
which I'm sure a lot of you have been to, because Oxford has the internship programme with Watson, which I did.
And it's relatively close. And I think now the first years do a trip there.
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.
And just a little bit of what I've learnt along the way with some nice,
pretty pictures of what's done, because it is a really beautiful place to work.
And sometimes you have to sort of step back and realise that it is quite a privilege to go to work here every day.
And so I am assistant registrar at Watson.
I'm also the collection manager of the Rothschild Foundation Art Collection,
which has a complicated relationship with Watson that basically runs what Stern on behalf of the National Trust, who own Watson.
So a little bit about the history of what's the matter.
As Bill 1870 is the 80s, 90s by Baron Ferdinando Rothschild of the famous banking family.
He didn't have any children, so were on his death. It pass to his sister who didn't have any children also.
And on her death, it went to her cousin James and his wife, Dorothy.
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.
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.
So what that means is that although we are a national trust property and we've got strong links with the National Trust,
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.
So it's quite a sort of unique situation because it's a heritage industry, historic property, but with a museum quality collection.
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.
So there's a lot of complicated structures in place.
I'll just show you as well. This is an A.
The red drawing room, which is a good example of the kind of collections that we have a lot of French decorative arts.
You see the carpets from the Louvre Palace. There's Louis the 14th in the middle as Apollo.
So we've got a lot of really amazing things set of porcelain and English, 18th century paintings amongst all sorts of other things.
So what I do as a read, as a assistant registrar and collections manager, basically put the registrar's job,
which also entails my job is basically recording information about all the objects
in the collection and managing the movement and changes to those objects.
So information basically reflects the reality of what is actually happening in the collection.
So the movement of object, it involves new acquisitions.
The National Trust Don't Acquire is a static collection,
but the Rothschild Foundation collection and other long term loans we acquire through the foundation.
So we acquire contemporary works.
We acquire other historic works that are in line with our collections and also objects
that have family and historical associations to the estate and to the family.
So I am involved in the acquisition processes. We are.
I also helped manage exhibition lines in and out out of the manor.
So that involves a lot of organising, insurance, transport, framing, you know, logistics of making an exhibition actually work.
We also. I don't think obviously doesn't happen in a contemporary gallery.
We have to prove provenance of objects that loaned in.
So we have to do due diligence to show that they weren't ever sort of Nazi looted or any sort of suspect history.
So to prove that the person who is lending the object to us has a rightful claim to that object.
So there's you really have to prove your provenance. You have to have strong evidence.
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.
I also help arrange and courier trips for objects that we loan out and we loan all over the world.
In the last year, we've loaned to the Kremlin Museum in Moscow.
We've loaned to Japan in the past states and around the UK.
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.
So I'm condition reporting. And so that's a fun part of my job.
I've done some career trips,
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.
And then so basically, when any object comes in and out of the collection for exhibitions or conservation or study,
it all has to be reflected in our paper files and in our collection database.
And also movements within the collection. So I have to keep track of everything.
I also work to maintain the collections database, which is nearly 22000 objects.
So. Yes, a big project that we're doing, what Stern is trying to make collection database available online,
which involves lots of interesting stuff, which I have done some curatorial work for that, including this catalogue.
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.
I also manage their inventory processes at.
So we do an annual inventory of the entire house and theoretically it should be the entire collection.
But in practise, it's all of our display areas. And we're gradually working to inventory this sort of difficult store areas,
which are sort of a nightmare because you're dealing within as sort of the limitations of the historic spaces.
So some of our storage conditions aren't ideal. We've just had a new archive centre built two years ago.
So all of our archive material is now housed beautifully.
But you are dealing with the limitations of historic spaces, say the inventory or the queries from the inventory come to me.
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.
Because when it comes down to architectural elements and books and outside sculptures and things like that, it's sometimes a bit confusing.
And also to try and make sure that the collection data actually matches what is on the ground,
because a lot of our database was built up from historic documents at the original bequest and subsequent gifts.
And so it's marrying up that data with the reality of the object.
I also work with security and how stewards to work on our disaster planning.
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.
So fire or flood or anything else really, that you know how to approach the collection.
So you have the most important objects that have to be rescued first and handling
directions for all of these things and the logistics of how that work on the estate.
And I also do some curatorial work.
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.
So that's my sort of background. An interest is in Russian art.
So I'm working on that project. At the same time, I'm planning for future exhibitions.
So how I got here, I completed my B.A. here in 2010 and then I did a six week internship at Ashmolean
over that summer in the print room and I was cataloguing the Kisoro drawings.
And it was really interesting. I mean, those sort of over 500 works.
And it was good because I built a built up skills as sort of object handling.
And it was really good to look at things in detail.
And I was trained on the database, which is a useful skill, but it was quite repetitive, but it was useful.
And that was that was an unpaid internship. But my expenses were paid.
And so because it was a short, short term thing, it was sort of doable.
And then I got the internship. What's done through the relationship with Oxford?
Which was paid and had accommodation. So that was sort of a doable option for me.
And that basically led to a position as a curatorial assistant.
So I did all sorts of things that was done from cleaning the fountains with a toothbrush.
You have to get rolling up historic carpets and then inviting exhibition text and helping with the organisation of exhibitions.
And that was fun because I got to work with some sort of more modern and contemporary things.
So I wrote the text for a poor sculpture and I helped deal with the loan of some Andy Warhol prints.
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.
So that's good. You know, giving tours also.
It's basically whatever I could.
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
through being here and those internships being part of the relationship with the university department and other institutions.
But then I sort of went for it as much as I could. And so out of that came something that was paid.
And that was interesting. And I got some experience, basically.
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.
And that was at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL.
And that finished in 2012.
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.
And it's a bit depressing. And then I got some part time cataloguing work back at Waldstein, which was maternity cover.
And so, you know, having built a good relationship with them was really my in to that.
And then in February of last year, the opportunity came for another maternity cover, which was this assistant registrar position.
So which I am incredibly lucky to get because a registrar position, as in development, is a highly sort of professionalised area of museums.
So most people coming into a position as an assistant registrar or as a registrar have
some sort of postgraduate qualification in museum studies or heritage management.
I mean, you can learn on the job, but it's difficult to get the opportunity to learn on the job.
So I'm incredibly grateful for the experience that I've got in the last year.
And my job, this particular role is sort of coming to an end.
But I'm moving into a more curatorial position, which is what I would like to do longer term.
But some benefits of working in a sort of collections management role is that you work with virtually everyone else in the organisation,
which curators don't necessarily have the opportunity to do.
I also work with the entire collection.
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.
What our strengths are, you know, that the whole range of our collection.
And it's also a good job for making other contacts with other institutions,
because you sort of an inherent part of the job is that your negotiating relationships between
institutions that you're lending to and who are lending to you with external conservatives,