In 1912 artist Spencer Gore borrowed his friend Harold Gilman’s house in Letchworth, where he made a series of wonderful modern paintings. He would have known Hitchin Town Hall, and would surely have been amazed to be told that in just over one hundred years a detail of one of his works would be blown up huge to cover the front windows of the adjoining North Hertfordshire Museum. This is a temporary measure, allowing us to display the logos of North Herts. District Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund, as well as the main contractors. It will come down when the museum opens.

Using a scissor lift to attach the vinyl image

Spencer Gore image, designed and fitted by Light Brigade

The lettering with our name is now up at the entrance

The museum now has its name looking very smart on the stone slab at the front of the new glass entrance. The Gill Sans lettering is nice and large, so no-one should miss us. Inside, things are moving on. Alan and Ian from Armour Systems have been working really hard installing our amazing new showcases, each one purpose-made for the objects we’ll  display. Thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund for grant-aiding the museum fit-out. The showcases in the first floor gallery are almost complete, and the Terrace Gallery is getting there.

Cases on the Terrace Gallery under construction

The first floor gallery, with centre cases in place

Yesterday a team from Conservation by Design moved in and set up a processing area in the temporary exhibition gallery, where they are photographing and measuring every object. This is to ensure that the mounts on which items will be displayed will fit each object exactly. Mounts to hold the lighter objects will be perspex, those for heavier items will be made of steel.

Iwan, Gwen and Caroline from Conservation by Design ensuring that the mounts for displaying our objects are all a perfect fit

Part of the new secure art store

Paintings wrapped and labelled ready for the move

We also now have a new art store, ready for paintings from both museums. Kate, Gill and Brenda have almost finished carefully wrapping and labelling the pictures, which will be moved shortly

On the ground floor, our new technician Mark Hazelgrove has sorted out the workshop, and is now putting up racking for the stores.

Technician Mark in the new workshop

The curators are busy checking and proof-reading the labels, re-checking, re-proofing, re-writing, finding illustrations and graphics at short notice. A huge amount of unseen work has gone into the labels for this museum, and I’ll give it a separate blog post. Finally, we welcome Sarah Burrows back to Hitchin Museum, to work with Sharon. Sarah is covering Lisa Ferridge’s secondment to the NHDC Finance Dept.

Showing Deborah Milligan from HLF our lovely new showcases

Our new Heritage Lottery Fund officer, Deborah Milligan, came over to Hitchin yesterday to see the new museum. She was amazed by the size of the whole site, and really impressed by the Mather & Co. designs for the museum. She also praised the way that the architects Buttress have blended the old and the new buildings together. It is thanks to the generous HLF grant that the museum has been able to afford top-of-the-range showcases, and we’re really grateful. Alan and Ian from Armour Systems have almost finished installing the showcases in the main first floor gallery, and once the external cladding is fitted, we’ll be able to start moving objects over from the old museums. Many of the pieces on display require purpose-made mounts, so these will be produced next; the mount-maker Roy Mandeville is coming over for the first time this Thursday. Meanwhile all our hundreds of carefully-written labels  – each one no more than 30 well-chosen words – have been sent to local societies for fact-checking, then sent to the the graphic designer, back to us for proof-reading or occasional re-writing, back to James the designer, back to us for re-proofing, and at last are ready for production.

The old and the new; the outside wall of the old Workman’s Hall is now inside the new building