GCG Overseas Study Tours 1997-2004

From 1997 to 2004 the Geological Curators’ Group ran an annual Overseas Study Tour, during which we visited many of Europe’s major museums, and even had one visit across the Atlantic to the USA. The visits began in 1997 with an experimental day trip to Brussels on the newly commissioned Eurostar Express and were followed by longer visits to the Netherlands (1998), Paris (1999), Bavaria (2000), New York (2001), Berlin (2002) and Prague (2004). The number of delegates ranged from 7 to 19. On these tours we met all sorts of like-minded curators in the various countries visited, who shared their experience of how they tackled things like databasing, conservation, storage, gallery display and specimen acquisition, to name just a few; the Geological Curators’ Group has always had a very diverse range of interests and membership. We all learnt from their experience and took home new ideas to our own museums and collections. So, were these trips merely ‘jollies’? We certainly had a lot of fun, we drank lots of Weissbier, we acted like tourists on our free days, and cemented some great friendships, but we also saw some wonderful museums, collections and specimens, learnt new ways to tackle curatorial problems, and became much better curators because of the experiences. I would urge the current membership to follow that example - there are many more museums in the ‘new Europe’ waiting for you to discover.