Baskets of fruit and chaplets of laurel: the working life of HW Dickinson

Henry Winram Dickinson (1870–1952) enjoyed a long and illustrious career at the Science Museum, London. He joined the museum in 1895 and retired in 1930, and during his tenure the museum developed from something of a backwater into a major national institution. This paper will explore the eco-system of the museum that Dickinson’s curatorial work took place within. It will first consider the broad parameters established by the Bell Report of 1911–12 which set the Science Museum’s strategic direction, the professional networks and administrative machinery by which that direction would be pursued. How Dickinson worked within those frameworks to make new acquisitions for the collections and interpret them will then be considered. The objective is to use examples from Dickinson’s working life wherever possible – the intention being to outline the contribution that his activities made to the museum’s operation and development. Dickinson’s professional voice is often lost among the formal language of a large institution, but he developed and encouraged the diffusion of a very particular model of curatorship which stood him, his colleagues, and the wider museum in good stead for the future.