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National Museums Liverpool Blog - At the World Museum: on this day in 1956

 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

At the World Museum: on this day in 1956


Tuesday 26 January 10

Black and white photo of interior of museumInterior of the museum in 1956

This week's blog for the World Museum's 150th anniversary year, is focussing a very important event in the museum's history; the day it reopened to the public for the first time after World War Two. Our Executive Director of Collections Management, John Millard, has been digging around in the archives and he's found an interesting anecdote about this day:

On the 26 January 1956, the museum reopened for the first time since war damage in 1941.  Writer, heiress and political activist, Nancy Cunard was visiting the museum and left a note for the director;

"Today, Saturday, 2 days after ceremonial opening and one day after public opening of "Lower Horseshoe" your attendant was counting the people as they came in: by 4pm – (when I arrived) the number was 2,419 – By 5, when the Museum shut, 2,892.  So well over 400 came in the last hour! A very good sale of booklets too."


We'd still like to hear from you if you have happy memories of visiting the museum. Can you remember the first time you ever went? Was it the first time you'd ever seen an Egyptian mummy? Did any artefacts from the museum inspire you in later life?

Leave your memories as a comment below...


Posted by Lisa | 26/01/2010 14:45   | Comments [0]

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