Research at the Petrie Museum

Timekeeper in Residence

• Press release: Timekeeper in Residence
• Cathy Haye's website
• Previous event: Take a tour with our Timekeeper (12 February 2013)
• Previous event: Making Progress? (28 February 2013)

What does the museum timeline have to do with the novel Tristram Shandy? Why does Botox make time go faster? Is evolution really a march of progress? Why did the Ancients think the future is behind them? And why doesn’t the universe all tick to the same clock?

These are just some of the questions to be explored in a new creative research project at The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology based at University College London. Supported with a new award from the Arts Humanities Research Council, artist-curator Cathy Haynes as Timekeeper in Residence will explore how time is mapped, measured, modeled and lived. Museums have traditionally used linear time concepts, such as chronological timelines, as a way of organizing their collections. This will be challenged in a series of public conversations between the Timekeeper as researcher and a variety of experts from astronomy to psychology, evolutionary genetics, theology, art history and philosophy.

Each conversation focuses on objects that give different experiences of time, from an ancient shadow clock in the Petrie’s collection to Facebook’s timeline format to a newspaper horoscope, encouraging debate on how competing time concepts can be used in museum presentation to present different philosophies, beliefs, realities and ideas. This in turn will challenge the way museums display their collections and offer new paths to explore. 

Please click on astormisblowing.org for more details and podcasts from the Timekeeper events.

Events for the Petrie Timekeeper residency.

Book for future events, go to the 'What's On' at the Petrie page.
020 7679 4138 |  events.petrie@ucl.ac.uk

Hear an interview with Cathy Haynes , our Timekeeper, on Monocle Weekly.