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Oh my God - The Sun and the Daily Mail are trying to get @RoystonMuseum's curator fired because they're too busy being angry and racist to understand the thing they're angry about...
After the Colston statue got torn down she tweeted a joke thread about how to give statues Bronze Disease. And everything she tweeted was true... except... Bronze Disease takes over 2000 years to take hold. And all the outdoor statues in the UK already have it.
What causes Bronze disease? Salt water (among other things).
What is the UK? AN ISLAND.
What does it do a lot here? Rain.
Where does the rain come from? The sea.
What is the sea? Salt water.
What does the rain fall on? The outdoors.
What is outdoors? Statues of racists.
What is the UK? AN ISLAND.
What does it do a lot here? Rain.
Where does the rain come from? The sea.
What is the sea? Salt water.
What does the rain fall on? The outdoors.
What is outdoors? Statues of racists.
From a cursory look at the comments on the article, and the tweets tagging @RoystonMuseum right now, it seems like people are taking the articles at face value and think Madeline told everyone the dark secret that tomatoes immediately melt bronze or something. (they don't)
I am a fan of the work Madeline has done at @RoystonMuseum. It's not a big glamorous job, but she clearly takes serving and engaging the community seriously - and she doesn't shy away from providing critical context. I think what she's doing is a model for any modern curator.
Angry people love sending emails, so I'm assuming a lot of people are telling her boss that she's out there melting down statues or something. So I'll be sending a nice email in support of her work. If you want to too here's the email address: [email protected]
If you're not familiar with Madeline's work, check out the @RoystonMuseum twitter account. Personally, I'm a big fan of her community engagement, her commitment to tackling racist and sexist narratives in the museum, and her work to include Royston's Black community.
I really hope the calls to fire her from people who have no idea what they're talking about (and who all also seem to be deeply, homophobically, angry about the Drag Queen story times the museum has run) go unheeded. She's a real asset to @RoystonMuseum.
(and tomatoes don't melt bronze)
(also, Madeline has had to lock her account because she's been getting death threats, but if you're a museum person you may already be following her - maybe send her a cute dog photo or two (corgis preferred). I bet she's going through absolute hell right now.)
Also "rain isn't salty" - I'm not talking ocean levels of salt water - you can't taste it - but in island places and areas near the sea, rain contains enough trace amounts of salt for it to be a problem: https://blog.weatherops.com/salt-in-rain
... might want to send some support here too - but there's a swarm of angry people all around it so you may get a lot of hate for doing so... https://twitter.com/Roystontown/status/1270656089193959426?s=19
There's an email template in support of Madeline and her work here, if you need one, thanks to @fair_jobs (seriously, please please email. It carries so much more weight than a tweet): https://fairmuseumjobs.wordpress.com/2020/06/10/anti-racism-in-action-in-support-of-royston-museums-curator/
