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Collections

The Museum Collections are always at the core of our work. We continue to add to them for the benefit of current and future generations and this year we have added 237 new items to our collections across the Trust. One of the highlights this year was the acquisition of the Cawood Sword through the acceptance in lieu scheme that is run by the Government. This is the first object we have received for the Yorkshire Museum through this scheme. The contacts we established with the Chinese community through the Chinese Reflections exhibition led to shopping expeditions for new cooking equipment for the collections, so that we can begin to reflect the lives of York's Chinese residents in our collections.

Our collections continue to act as ambassadors for the Trust and this year we have loaned out 140 items from the collection to exhibitions in the city and across the world. We have processed over 600 requests to use images from our collection, often in publications for exhibitions or for research.

In order to keep our collections safe and make them accessible, there is always much behind-the-scenes work going on. This year we have added or edited over 120,000 records on our computer database as part of a major retrospective documentation programme. We acquired a new storage facility to accommodate three large historic carriages that were returning from a long term loan and also the collections that were moved for the installation of the new 60s gallery at York Castle Museum. Improvements at our archaeology store have enabled us to introduce guided tours of this collection for the first time.

Through the community archaeology project that was funded through the Renaissance in the Regions, we worked with hairdressers, builders and butchers. They looked at the collections and worked with them in the way our ancestors might have done, recreating Roman hairstyles, butchering deer with only flint implements and exploring how St Mary's Abbey could have been built with medieval tools. Videos of the projects were produced by York St John University and are on show in the Yorkshire Museum. We are grateful to York College, Shepherd Group and Thomas Danby College, Leeds, for helping us with this project.

Further information on collections work can be found in the further information section of this report.