One of the most crucial issues for collection preservation is how to create the political will to take greater account of the log-term functions of museums to balance that for the more obvious short term benefits of display and exhibition. Providing hard, quantified facts is almost the only effective way to do this. We need to construct a means of moving the political consensus in favour of the long term objectives of presenting collections as an information and inspiration database. [source]

In my experience as an Exhibitions Officer - Display, at The Natural History Museum for over 10 years I have seen the exhibition staff do their best to exhibit natural history objects without the support of a conservation department. Natural history display specimens represent some of the most problematic material that can be exhibited. They are often composed of several materials including preserved skin, fur, modelled to mimic the appearance of a live animal, or animals stored in flammable liquid, fossils embedded in a rock matrix etc.

There is conservation laboratory in the department of Palaeontology, this is extremely useful in the display of fossil material, but does not support four of the other departments, Botany, Entomology, Mineralogy, Zoology. The recent appointment of a conservation officer in the department of Library services is a very positive sign. She has already carried out conservation work for exhibition display.

The exhibitions staff need to be able to work closely with the science departments to identify problems and initiate conservation action. A conservation resource needs to be established across the museum, to create a conservation and display parity across all departments. This work need a higher priority to fulfil the statuary aim of The Natural History Museum: to preserve its collections.

The purpose of this document is to present an introduction to the technicalities in displaying museum objects