by Naomi Adams | Apr 2, 2020 | Museums
So this is how it is. Days of heart-breaking beauty – lipstick-red camellias and washes of green-white blossom; hours of panic when I roam the house; and moments of lucidity when I pull down books from my bookshelves, thinking, Well, if I can’t read poetry at the end...
by Naomi Adams | Mar 23, 2020 | Family History, Museums
So here I am, so hungry for fresh air that I am outside in the garden, wrapped up in my winter coat under our leafless tree and reading about fictional museums (since the real ones are out of bounds). I have done a fair amount of research on this subject (also...
by Naomi Adams | Sep 23, 2017 | Magic, Museums
Have been reading Marina Warner’s book on the history of the Arabian Nights – and so have become briefly possessed by the concept of ‘thing-worlds’ and what they mean for museums. The phrase ‘thing-worlds’ is Marina Warner’s, and captures that distinctive...
by Naomi Adams | Jun 4, 2017 | Folklore, Magic, Museums, Story Telling
Sometimes it’s the small museums that have the biggest ideas, the best back stories – and the biggest wonders. I am standing in the offices of the Museum of Cambridge with the curator Charlotte Woodley, looking at a blue, eighteen-century watch ball that she’s...
by Naomi Adams | Jan 2, 2017 | Folklore, Magic, Museums, Story Telling
It’s midwinter and London is deep in darkness and freezing fog. The streets are muffled up with silence, there’s frost on the pavements til eleven every morning, and the sun, when it does come out, looks like a silver penny in the mist. These are the best...
