Understanding complex structures: Lace and Natural Objects

This is the website for a series of three workshops between March and June 2009 that will bring together academics and other interested parties to identify how they can work together to conserve, interpret and display 'difficult' objects in museums. It is one of the thirteen 'research clusters' in the EPSRC and AHRC joint 'Science and Heritage' research programme.

In this context, 'difficult' objects are understood as those which are unstable and ephemeral and which present particular challenges in their display and interpretation.

Participants in the workshops will include conservators, cultural practitioners, curators, designers, scientists and technologists drawn from universities, museums, archives, SMEs and other institutions.

The cluster brings together Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham City Museums and Galleries, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum.

The purpose of this website is to publicise the schedule and details of the workshops, to allow public access to the papers and reports that come out of them and through the message board to allow the participants to continue the conversations that the workshops may start.