Time
Project leader: Silke
Ackermann
Department: Prehistory and Europe
Project start: 2005
End date: 2008
Other British Museum staff:
Claire Edwards, Sarah Longair
Other departments: Learning
and Audiences
Description:
How do individuals and societies, from ancient
times to the present and across cultures, perceive, mark and
measure time?
These are the questions that the TIME gallery
will raise, offering visitors a unique opportunity to explore a
theme that cuts across the Museum’s collections. The gallery’s
themes and messages will be carried through a wide variety of
objects drawn from all parts of the Museum, through stimulating and
questioning introductory texts, quotations, objects stories,
personal voices, audio-visuals and related events. The accompanying
publication will explore these themes further and act as a guide to
the BM and to the cultures of the world through one common
theme.
Objectives:
The space will be designed in such a way that
visitors will be encouraged to feel and behave differently. Objects
will be at the heart of the experience, and their stories will
encourage visitors to challenge their own notions of time – and the
understanding of cultures other than their own.
More information:
Image: Astrolabic quadrant, made by
Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Mizzi, the time-keeper of the Great Mosque of
Damascus. From Damascus, Syria, AD 1333-34