Collection: Hackney Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  When the Service was established in 1986 it inherited a number of existing collections about the local area from internal departments, notably the Arts & Entertainment Service, Library Service, Hackney Archives and the Mayor’s Office, as well as the Chalmers collection. In its desire to build the collection, reflect the Borough’s ethnic and cultural diversity and attract further donations, the Museum team at the time collected extensively and without discrimination to reflect the lives and histories of all the Borough’s residents. Many of the items were a reflection of Hackney at the time such as posters, ephemera and photographs as well as objects. Many of these items were related to the social and cultural history of the borough of Hackney, which formed the basis of the Museum’s permanent displays in Central Hall.

  The second Hackney Museum in 2002 worked closely with community collecting panels and gave them support, funds and means to collect objects to represent the experiences of members of specific ethnic and cultural communities in the Borough. These partnerships informed the team’s development of the content for the current permanent displays, which tell a narrative of migration and settlement to Hackney over the past 2,000 years.

  From 2002 to 2008 Hackney Museum’s collecting was largely passive and the majority of our acquisitions were the result of unsolicited offers from the public. Since 2008 there has been more emphasis on active collecting, in relation to exhibitions and projects such as Mapping the Change (2009 – 2012) and Our Museum (2012 – 2015) as well as documenting changes in Hackney.

  From 2002 onwards a handling collection was developed primarily consisting of a number of ‘suitcase’ resources. Each suitcase tells the story of somebody who moved to Hackney at some point in its history, through replica objects, copies of original photographs, alongside maps and other printed information. The suitcases, where possible, are created in collaboration with the represented person or a descendant, or are based on an oral history account in the Museum’s collection.

  The handling collection also consists of other objects relating to specific eras that feature in our programme for schools, such as the Victorian era, World War II and Windrush, as well as objects from different communities that are represented in Hackney and are used extensively in the Museum’s Learning Programme.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2020

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  There are 8,574 entries recorded on the Museum’s collections database, Collections Index+, consisting of artefacts, artworks, images and oral history recordings. The Museum has permanent displays with a clear, well-defined theme – the history of immigration and settlement to Hackney over the last 1,000 years.

  The Museum’s collections predominantly reflect working and domestic life in the London Borough of Hackney from about the 1850s to the present day.

  • Family life: comprising domestic and household goods and art dating back to the 1860s.
  • Local ephemera: civic objects, health and welfare, education and political activity, entertainment, artistic, cultural and sporting activity.
  • Local trade and industry: items from local shops and markets; eg : garment, shoemaking, paper-flower making, furniture making, toy-making and scent production.
  • Religious material: tracts, pamphlets, objects of worship.
  • Photographs: Topographical, portraits, work related, family as well as images from specific photographers such as Dennis Morris and Gabrielle Motola.
  • Contemporary art: 1920s Chalmers bequest of portraits and landscape paintings and sculptures forms the main part of the collection.
  • Recordings of oral history interviews.
  • Objects relating to African and African-Caribbean, Jewish, Indian, Pakistani, Irish, historic and contemporary communities.
  • ‘Mapping the Change’. A collection of artefacts, ephemera, photographs and video and oral history recordings relating to the changes that took place in Hackney in the run-up to and during the London 2012 Olympic Games.
  • Archaeological material
  • Natural history
  • Costume
  • Handling items acquired specifically for educational purposes, such as handling and school sessions [not accessioned or catalogued].

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2020

  Licence: CC BY-NC