Kingston Museum secures prestigious funding for Muybridge project
Kingston Museum has successfully applied for funding to develop a major new project about pioneering photographer and inventor Eadweard Muybridge.
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art has confirmed the Museum will receive a £40,000 Curatorial Research Grant for its online catalogue project, entitled ‘Making Muybridge Visible: An Online Catalogue’. Earlier this year it was announced that Kingston Heritage Service, working with Kingston University, managed to secure $16,500 from TERRA to host a joint Muybridge conference ‘Moving Muybridge’ in Autumn 2021.
The development of ‘Making Muybridge Visible’ is expected to run from April 2021 to April 2023, with the new project, the Museum’s first digital catalogue, aimed to be up and running by summer 2023.
Muybridge was born in Kingston in 1830, and is widely considered the father of motion pictures for his pioneering work in photography. After spending much of his life in the United States, he returned home to Kingston in later years and died in the borough in 1904.
The funding will allow Kingston Museum to share the Muybridge collection online and enable further research on this material. The collection contains unique personal items bequeathed to the Museum by Muybridge after his death. Individual items will be studied and recorded to create digital catalogue entries and summary texts, while in-depth research will be undertaken on key artefacts to create ‘In Focus’ articles.
Over recent months the service has also secured small grants from The Heritage Alliance (supported by National Lottery Heritage Fund) and the London Museum Development team (supported by Art Fund) to assist with the forward planning of the Heritage Service. We look forward to sharing further developments of these projects in the New Year.
Cllr Rebekah Moll, portfolio holder for Culture at Kingston Council, said:
“Eadward Muybridge is a fascinating figure and one of Kingston’s most famous exports. It’s wonderful to see this project get backing from the Paul Mellon Centre as this illustrates the national and international significance of Kingston Museum’s Muybridge Collection. The Heritage team has done incredibly well at securing this grant funding.
“The Paul Mellon and TERRA funding will allow a Museum expert to focus on researching and cataloguing that better shares the collection in a way that could lead to further local, national and international projects.
“Our culture plays a vital role in knowledge as well as our social and economic health, especially during these difficult times, and this should act as another chapter in Kingston’s already rich and vibrant history. These smaller grant projects are so important in helping to strengthen and develop the service.
“It will be so exciting to see this start to develop, especially in the same year as the physical collection being moved to the purpose-built storage space in the University’s Town House Building.”
Kingston Museum is currently celebrating a Year of Muybridge with a series of events marking 190 years since the inventor’s birth. Find out more information here.
See here for information about The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art’s Curatorial Research Grant.