PHM is the national museum of democracy, telling the story of its development in Britain: past, present, and future.
On this blog we share posts from the PHM team and other experts, with behind the scenes stories, coverage of PHM's exhibitions and events, and highlights from the museum's unique collection.
This week marks the 30th anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall. And three decades after the its fall, we are displaying pieces of the wall that we have in our collection. People’s History Museum’s Collections Officer, Sam Jenkins tells us about the history of the barbed wire topped wall that took away basic human rights.
People’s History Museum houses the world’s largest collection of trade union and political banners. In this blog, our Conservator, Jenny van Enckevort explains the painstaking work it took to prepare one of our largest for the 2019 Banner Exhibition.
#OnThisDay in 1936 the Spanish Civil War began. To highlight the Printers Demand Arms for Spain banner on show in PHM’s 2019 Banner Display, our fantastic volunteer and Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) post graduate student Beth Lane shares insight from previously unseen Spanish Civil War photographs in PHM’s internationally significant collection.
Many of the treasures on display for the very first time in PHM’s Disrupt? Peterloo and Protest exhibition were acquired thanks to a joint National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) grant with Salford’s Working Class Movement Library (WCML). To celebrate the opening of the Library’s Peterloo: news, fake news and paranoia exhibition, we asked Lynette Cawthra, Working Class Movement Library Manager to talk about the project which gave both institutions funds to go shopping for new acquisitions.
To complement the display of a portrait of Hugh Hornby Birley, who as captain of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry played a central role in the events that unfolded at the Peterloo Massacre, we asked author Jeff Kaye to share his research on Birley from his forthcoming novel All the People and treat us to an excerpt about the painting, now in People’s History Museum’s (PHM) collection.