Very exciting to see consultation on the Ancient Worlds gallery Leeds City Museum - exciting times ahead!

Kylix with ‘ritual tray’ motif at Leeds City Museum, similar to decoration on a strainer from Warrington Museum & Art Gallery - see my recent blog post for more details.

Single best description of AI I’ve ever read, from the great Ted Chiang.

A good day making #provenance connections and joining up sections of object itineraries.

Just booked a late September trip to see Cypriot antiquities in a truly fascinating context at the Freud Museum, London.

Feels amazing to be in Plymouth - land of my forefathers - for the first time ever.

Plymouth’s The Box The Box, Plymouth is stunning - a treasure-house in the sky. I can’t wait to see what’s inside!

The Box, Plymouth is as gorgeous inside as out. The figureheads are a highlight, of course, but the galleries are great too.

I particularly enjoyed the displays of pottery, reflecting Plymouth’s international connections through time, and the fantastic ‘identify a sherd’ interactive.

Some lovely Classical pottery as part of a Grand Tour narrative, friendly little starfish among towers of jars, and an illuminated globe for telling stories.

I don’t have images to share, but let’s just say that the ancient Cypriot collections The Box, Plymouth and the stories behind them exceeded my expectations, and I can’t wait to get writing. Huge thanks to museum staff for being so generous with time and expertise.

I'm super stoked to be hosting session 17: Excavating the Collection: New Evolutions in the Archaeology of Museum Collections. Send me your paper proposals by 1st October!

So far I have located images of two of the amazing Cypriot antiquities I saw at The Box, Plymouth in this 1881 publication of the Lawrence-Cesnola collection. Genuine tingle down the spine moment. More to follow! #provenanceresearch

6 × 8” linocut relief print, CC BY 4.0

This is an exciting development. But it is a very long road, and I don’t think the end is in sight yet.

Contemplating breaking my rule of ‘no conference papers, only book writing’ and submitting an abstract for the 2025 Association for Art History conference. The cfp is so tempting…

This marketing video for the Royal Armouries in Leeds has made my day. 😂

If you're studying History at the OU, you probably already know how the value of an A&H degree. But in case you need convincing, here's a report from OU History colleagues Anna Plassart and Richard Marsden rb.gy/eyq002 OU Arts & Social Sciences