Sheffield Museums Live Archive - Sheffield Museums Trust

Get closer to your museums from home.

Join our curators and other experts to discover more about the exhibitions and collections in our archive of Sheffield Museums Live online events.

You can also take a glimpse behind the scenes of our collections stores to see objects not currently on display.

Spotlight on Asian Metalwork from the V&A Museum

Members of the V&A Museum’s curatorial team join us to talk about objects from the V&A’s Asian collection that are currently on display at the Millennium Gallery.

Discover the 19th Century Iranian water-pipe that is beautifully decorated with inlaid gold, an ox-shaped vessel from China with intricate enamelling, and a finely engraved water vessel from the Mughal Empire. Hear about each object’s use, decoration and place in wider social context.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 25 August 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: Earthbound Tour

Join Ned McConnell, exhibition curator from The Roberts Institute of Art, for a virtual introduction to the latest exhibition to open at the Millennium Gallery, Earthbound: Contemporary Landscape from the Roberts Institute of Art.

Earthbound brings together works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, alongside examples from Sheffield’s own visual art collection, to investigate our relationship with our environment. The works on display span land art, landscape paintings, video installation, sculpture and photography, by contemporary artists including Helen Chadwick, Richard Long, Dan Holdsworth, Miroslaw Balka, Theaster Gates and Berlinde De Bruyckere.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 11 August 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: 'Black Art' and the BLK Art Group

During the 1980s work by black artists was virtually invisible in Britain; it wasn’t taught at art school and was rarely shown in galleries. It was in this challenging context that the Blk Art Group emerged, part of a wider cultural scene that included many significant black artists, writers and musicians. In this talk, Dr Elizabeth Robles from the University of Bristol, explores key artworks by members of the Blk Art Group to examine the ways in which its members variously approached the possibilities and implications of 'Black Art'.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 28 July 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: John Hoyland - The Last Paintings

A guided virtual tour of John Hoyland: The Last Paintings with exhibition curators from The John Hoyland Estate, Sam Cornish and Wiz Patterson Kelly. Discover some of the final works Hoyland created – many of which will be on display for the first time – and find out more about the making of the exhibition.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 14 July 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu – Beyond the Portrait

Take a closer look at our portrait of the 18th century literary figure and medical pioneer, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, with Corinna Henderson, Curatorial Trainee with Sheffield Museums.

Radical, outspoken, and yet somewhat overshadowed by her male counterparts in the history books, it was Lady Mary who first campaigned to bring the method of vaccination against disease to England. In this talk, we will take a detailed look at Lady Mary’s portrait from the collection at the Graves Gallery and explore her written accounts of living in Turkey in the early 1700s, where she originally observed the method of engrafting – an early form of inoculation – first-hand.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Thursday 1 July 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: Sheffield's Living Craft Heritage

From clogs to handmade scissors, take a look at some iconic Sheffield-made objects from the city’s collection with Mary Lewis, Endangered Crafts Manager at the Heritage Crafts Association.

Learn about the special skills used to make these objects - some of which are now sadly becoming endangered, with only a handful of skilled makers remaining.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 23 June 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: Sheffield-Simplex Cars

Find out all about the Sheffield-Simplex car with our Head of Historic Engineering, Eddy Foster.

The car was the idea of Earl Fitzwilliam, who thought Sheffield could produce the finest car in the world. In 1913, The Times named the Simplex, ‘one of the best and most remarkable vehicles available, representing the highest point to which motor design has yet attained’.

The prototype held at Kelham Island Museum is one of only three Simplex cars remaining and is thought to be the last type of the car ever produced.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 16 June 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: “Wonderful Plans! Marvellous Things!” Discovering Cecil Beaton

Find out more about Cecil Beaton’s life, from discovering the magic of the camera to his first tentative steps into a magical world of writers, bohemians, socialites, and aristocrats in this talk from Robin Muir, curator of Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 12 May 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: Introducing the Last Ice Age

Get ready to go back in time over 10,000 years, to the last Ice Age – a time when megafauna like mammoths and woolly rhinoceros roamed the land and humans weren’t always top of the food chain! From fossils to stone tools and some of the oldest known art from Britain, learn how the discoveries from the caves at Creswell Crags have helped shaped our understanding of this fascinating and often misunderstood time period.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 9 June 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: Ocean Quest

Inspired by the newest addition to Sheffield’s collections – the skeleton of a pilot whale – join us for a virtual journey underwater. We’ll be exploring weird and wonderful animals from the shallows to the deepest parts of the ocean in this talk from Dr Penelope Watt, senior lecturer in the Department of Animal & Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 19 May 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet

Celebrate the 51st anniversary of Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet opening as a museum in this very special virtual tour of the site delivered by the last works owner Joshua Tyzack.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Tuesday 4 May 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: The Barrow Knight and the Search for the Anglo-Saxons: Thomas Bateman’s Early Medieval Archaeology

Find out more about Thomas Bateman, a pioneer archaeologist who contributed to Victorian ideas of Anglo-Saxonism by uncovering early medieval graves in the Peak District. Howard Williams, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Chester, will shed light on some of Bateman’s grave-finds, many of which are held at Weston Park Museum, including the famous Benty Grange helmet.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 21 April 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: Proud!

Take a virtual look at the Proud! display at Weston Park Museum and hear about Sheffield’s LGBT+ history with co-curators Sandra Baker Donnelly and Dr Chris Mowat.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 14 April 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: The Art of Paper Conservation

Yorkshire-based paper conservator, Richard Hawkes ACR, talks from his conservation studio about the techniques he and his team use to conserve, restore and protect art on paper.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 24 March 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live Talk: Sheffield Stories

The Sheffield Stories gallery at Weston Park Museum celebrates the very best thing about our fantastic city – its people. Join our Exhibitions and Display Curator, Lucy Cooper, for an online tour of the gallery and hear what life was like in Sheffield in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Lucy takes you through some of the fashion, toys, gadgets and photographs on display and provides an insight into how the gallery was created.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 17 March 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: Women Silversmiths

Join Emma Paragreen, Curator at the Sheffield Assay Office (where precious metals have been tested and hallmarked since 1773), to discover the work of historical and contemporary women silversmiths.

Emma shares some fascinating stories from the archives of women silversmiths from 1773 to present day, and you’ll also see some of the work that is normally on display in our Metalwork Collection at the Millennium Gallery.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Thursday 11 March 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: Archaeology of a Changing City

Hear archaeologist, Ashley Tuck, from Wessex Archaeology, share his experience of working on a range of live archaeological sites.

Ashley specialises in Industrial Archaeology and has worked on many sites across Sheffield including steel furnaces, worker’s housing and Sheffield Castle. In this talk, he looks at some of the locations that feature in The Sheffield Project: Photographs of a Changing City.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Thursday 25 February 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live: Portraits in the Graves Gallery

Our Curator of Visual Art, Liz Waring, gives a brief introduction to portraiture from the 16th to the 18th century, and shares stories about the women featured in the Graves Gallery. You’ll hear about the intrigue behind the death of Lady Denham and the intelligent and witty Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 3 February 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live Tour: Ancient Egypt

Our Curator of Archaeology, Martha Jasko-Lawrence, gives a virtual tour of our Ancient Egypt gallery, sharing the fascinating stories behind some of the objects - from a personal ‘listening ear’ stele, used to pray directly to the gods, to a 3,500-year-old piece of bread and a mummified fish.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 13 January 2021.

Sheffield Museums Live Talk: Objects Through Time

Take a virtual trip into our collection store to learn about Sheffield’s social history, with our Curator of Social History, Clara Morgan. Clara has picked out some special objects to show up close and shares the fascinating stories behind them. Hear about an intact recipe book from 1721, a pair of shoes that probably weren’t Mary Queen of Scots’, and a Second World War incendiary bomb (diffused of course).

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Thursday 10 December 2020.

Sheffield Museums Live Talk: Whatever the Weather

Did you know that Weston Park Weather Station is one of the longest, continuously recording weather stations in the UK? Find out more about this intriguing apparatus in this talk from our Curator of Natural Sciences, Alistair McLean. Discover the weather station’s origins and some of the fascinating people involved with running it, some of the meteorological events and extremes it’s recorded, and what this might tell us about climate change.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 2 December 2020.

Sheffield Museums Live: Modernity and Myth in the Siege of Paris, 1870

2020 marked the 150th anniversary of the terrible siege of Paris in the winter of 1870. Hear from the University of Sheffield’s Dr. David McCallam as he examines Narcisse Chaillou’s curious artwork Le Dépeceur de rats (A Rat Seller during the Siege of Paris) from 1871. The painting, which forms part of Sheffield’s visual art collection, depicts a young cook skinning and selling rats for meat during the Prussian siege of Paris, a time when starvation was rife.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 25 November 2020.

Sheffield Museums Live: An A to Z of Ancient Egyptian Art

Ancient Egypt art is immediately recognisable to many modern viewers. But just what is it that makes Egyptian work so distinctive? Dr. Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, explores some of the rules that governed Egyptian art and reviews the status and purpose of Ancient Egyptian artistic production.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Thursday 19 November 2020.

Sheffield Museums Live:
Behind the Scenes of Sheffield's Visual Art Collection

Enjoy this special opportunity to see what's behind the scenes at the Sheffield Museums collection store our Curator of Visual Art, Liz Waring. Discover some key pieces from Sheffield’s collection that are not currently on display, including Liz’s favourite work and the fascinating story behind it.

This tour was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Tuesday 17 November 2020.

Sheffield Museums Live: Lines of Beauty - Chastening Desire

Professor Angie Hobbs and Professor Cathy Shrank examine how many of the works in the Lines of Beauty: Master Drawings from Chatsworth exhibition — particularly those depicting classical narratives — show the restraint, or punishment, of desire.

This talk was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Wednesday 21 October 2020.

Sheffield Museums Live: Going, Going, Gone - Extinction and Endangerment in the Natural History Collection

Alistair McLean, Curator of Natural Sciences, gives a tour of the What on Earth gallery at Weston Park Museum, looking in detail at some of the special specimens we have on display. From the Egyptian vulture to the girdled lizard, find out more about some of the world’s endangered animals and learn about species that have now gone extinct, including some you wouldn't expect!

This tour was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Thursday 15 October 2020.

Sheffield Museums Live:
Lines of Beauty: Master Drawings from Chatsworth

Ashley Gallant, Project Curator, gives an introduction to Lines of Beauty: Master drawings from Chatsworth. Ashley shares his insight into the stories behind some of his favourite artworks, what they tell us about society at that moment, and how they can be interpreted. Find out more about how the drawings were collected by the Dukes of Devonshire, as well as some of the methods and tools the artists would have used at the time.

This tour was first streamed live on our Facebook page on Thursday 24 September 2020.