Recently appointed head curator of Waterford Treasures collection of museums in Waterford City, Cliona Purcell is the youngest head curator of any designated museum in the country. This season a new tour will launch in the Bishop’s Palace—an elegant Georgian house—focusing on scandal and excess, the real-life Bridgerton-style intrigue and romance of Waterford’s past.
The last thing I saw and loved… my dog! I’ve had Frankie, my miniature Yorkie since I was fifteen. She’s an older lady these days, but still thinks she’s a puppy if not a human baby. She’s very demanding in her old age but still the funniest little madam I know.
The book I keep coming back to… The Darkness Echoing by Gillian O’Brien – an amazing look at different museums, attractions and monuments around Ireland connected to the darker side of our past. I love dark and forgotten history and this book is a guide to all the best heritage sites in the country. I’m hopeful Gillian will consider a second volume and visit our Irish Wake Museum!
I find inspiration in… the past. It may seem an obvious answer given that I work in museums, but there’s always something new to discover, something to set a new idea in motion.
My favourite film is… oh gosh, there are a few! I suppose for nostalgic reasons I’d have to name a movie which is maybe not the most artistic but stands out in my own life – The Mummy. That film started a childhood obsession with ancient Egypt which led to a passion for history and culminated in my career today.
My career highlight is… hopefully still to come! It’s a very exciting time to be working in heritage with the idea of what a museum can be changing so much and museums becoming more accessible through social media. It’s also a very exciting time for Waterford City and I hope the next few years will bring about some amazing highlights between the two.
The song I listen to to get in the zone is… I am extremely eclectic when it comes to music. I try to walk to and from work as much as possible so I’m always curating a new playlist depending on what we have going on. At the moment, we’re really busy in the museums so I’ve been listening to more calming music. My current favourite is Paris Paloma’s “Notre Dame” – she makes such dreamy music with surprisingly resonant themes.
The last show I recommended is… The Great starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult! It’s a fun, comedic (but not very accurate) account of the court of Catherine the Great in Russia and just an all-around romp. I’m a little biased as it’s the period of history I’m strongest in but the eighteenth century is such a fun era full of excess, scandal, sumptuous clothes and gossip! We’ve recently adapted the tour in the Bishop’s Palace to reflect these themes and inject a bit of scandal into people’s perception of Waterford’s history.
I never leave the house without… a pair of sunglasses! Running between five museums every day in the Sunny South-East makes them a must-have every day. I’m a bit of a nut about sun protection so between my factor 50 and my sunglasses, I’m nicely protected.
The piece of work I still think about is… the Royal Ballet’s 2016 production of Frankenstein. I studied ballet from a young age until a particularly bad injury took me out of the art form but I still maintain a love for it. Frankenstein was a bit scary, a bit kooky and darkly beautiful and was a stunning reminder that even something classic and familiar can be made new and interesting – a good lesson for bringing the past to life in a museum!
The best advice I’ve ever gotten… actually came off the back of some bad advice – I was told to make the responsible choice to not study history as there were no jobs in the field. I went to university to do science but it made me really miserable. Eventually, my parents told me that I should be doing what I love, and if I loved it and worked at it, it would work out – thankfully it has!
The art that means the most to me is… Pompeo Batoni’s painting of Peg Plunkett as Diana. Peg Plunket, sometimes called Margaret Leeson was an amazing, witty, ahead-of-her-time memoirist (among other things) of eighteenth-century Dublin. Fiercely funny and often regarded as one of Ireland’s first feminists, she wrote about her own life in three volumes as revenge for the people who had wronged her and outed many that lurked in Dublin’s scandalous underbelly giving a real insight into life for ordinary people during that time in the process. Even some of the workers from Waterford’s original glass factory get a mention!
My favourite exhibition/piece of work showcased in Waterford Treasures is… our collection of mourning jewellery at the Irish Wake Museum. I always like objects that feel really human. Mourning jewellery is a little bit morbid – jewellery with human hair encased within it or, in some cases, made entirely of woven hair. Today we take the availability of cameras for granted and when we lose someone we have photos and recordings to remember them by. In the past, people grieved just as we do, but they had fewer mementoes. Hair is an easily preserved, tangible link to a lost loved one and is readily available to all classes. We have some beautiful pieces on display which make for really powerful viewing.
The most challenging thing about my job is… changing perceptions about history and museums. A lot of people tend to think they don’t enjoy history and consider it a stuffy and boring field which I think comes down to people not enjoying the way history was taught in school but there are literally thousands of years of human history out there and there really is something for everyone! Museums are no longer places where objects moulder behind glass, they’re places where history comes to life. We do handling programmes, historically-inspired activities and special seasonal tours year-round to help people discover a history that speaks to them.
If I wasn’t a museum curator, I would be… possibly still miserably working in the sciences out there somewhere! I like to think I’d have managed to blend the two by getting into conservation.
Imagery courtesy of Cliona Purcell
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