Filed under: Lindow Man Exhibition
The Lindow Man exhibition press release, which came out last Friday, is already bearing fruit. Yesterday I gave two interviews about the project. One was on the radio, live, with Eamon O’Neal and Diane Oxbury on the Breakfast Show. I commute into the Museum from Leeds so they rang me at home at 8 o’clock and I talked about why Lindow Man survived in the peat bog (the low oxygen, wet and the acidic environment created by Sphagnum moss) and what is so important about him (what other opportunities are there to look into the face of someone who is 2000 years old?). In 5 or 10 minutes there isn’t really time to say a lot but the presenters really caught the sense of excitement in the lead up to the opening, now not so very far off (April 19th).
The second piece was over the phone with Jennifer Hollamby, a reporter for the Oldham Chronicle. We talked for over an hour! She wanted to know how he was found, what was our approach in the exhibition, what other objects were being displayed and what does Lindow Man mean.
She was really interested in the fact that we’d consulted other interested parties last February. Their recommendations, that we treat Lindow Man with sensitivity and respect, and that we recognize the different ways of interpreting Lindow Man (view the Museum Consultation report) have been central to the project. It is a relatively recent development for museums to work in this way and it is an increasingly important part of all the work we do here in the Manchester Museum. I didn’t think she’d want to go into so much detail. I even ended up talking about my own pet theory… but more of that another day.
