Work Experience Diaries: Part 1

My Art Collections Work Experience Diary, July 2025 

Written by Xionne Cooper, Year 10 at The Holt School 

My name is Xionne and I am a Year 10 student at the Holt School in Wokingham. I had the opportunity to do a two day work experience with Dr Hannah Lyons (the Curator of Art Collections) and Clare Plascow (Art and Collections Manager) at the University of Reading Art Collection. I want to start off by saying this experience was great. As a GCSE textiles student, art is something that is very useful to me for things like designing and research, and within these two days I have been given lots of insight into both. 

On my first day I was introduced to my supervisor (Dr Hannah Lyons) and shown around with another work experience student, Winki. We visited people in different offices allowing us to hear about their jobs, for example, Dr Ollie Douglas (Curator of the MERL) whose job is to care for and interpret the MERL collection. We then moved onto the Staircase Hall in St Andrews Hall, where we learned about the history of the museum and its collections. The building was initially owned by Alfred Palmer who earned his profits from biscuit manufacturing in Reading. He knew the importance of education and often donated to the University of Reading. Eventually he donated the house to the University in 1911, which became an all-women’s housing and became mixed accommodation in 1969. However, in 2004 it turned into the housing for all the collections including a Reading Room (where people can study archives and information) and eventually an Art Study Room containing lots of art, like drawings, paintings, and statues.  

When we visited the Art Study Room we were given the task to choose a piece of recently donated art to study. I chose the drawing of Miracle of Cross Beirut by Jacopo Coppi, donated by the late Eric Robinson. While the final design was an altarpiece painting, the University had acquired the original sketch of it before it was painted. On this sketch, I used a magnifying glass to see the detail and to really understand it. I could even see the square for transfer lines which was used to show the proportions.   

We then went up to the offices where we were given our desks and then taken for a health and safety check. It was really useful as it gave us a general overview of what goes on around us and how to stay safe. We were also discussed a youth volunteer program called ‘The Youth Panel’ that is offered to 14-18 year olds on the third Thursday of the month, that allows them to come in and help out with different projects from 4:30-6pm. This particularly piqued my interest as something good to help me learn transferrable skills for future things like university and UCAS and job applications.  

After a short break in the staff room, we went up to start working on our research projects where we researched our chosen artist and artwork for the museum. Our last stop was the museum store, it contained loads of books from different genres and centuries. We even saw different versions of the Bible translated in the 19th century. It was also interesting to learn about the older books and how they decay. For example, red rot is a form of decay where it makes anything it touches turn red!  

On the second day we came in at the same time ready to continue. We quickly finished up our research and then was able to write a social media post about our object, highlighting the key points for people to see. We then went on our break and was later visited by our Head of Year 10 and Careers Coordinator from The Holt School, where we got to detail what we were doing and talk about the jobs and the passion that goes with it. We even took them to the Art Study Room to show them the artwork we had picked out, giving us a chance to take some pictures for social media, zooming in on what stood out to us. After they left we went to the Conservation Studio to see how the collections are able to keep and preserve the items they are given. It was really important to them to make sure everything is cleaned and preserved, including important details like handprints and splotches. After lunch we came back to the office and had some quiet time where we were able to look through our work so far and give the final touches before starting to write this blog.  

Overall, even though it was only two days, I learned so much not only about the job as an art curator but also other jobs in the art world and how different influences can dictate that. It was really nice to get a feel for the work world but to also be included in office discussions and learn more about the people around me. A big thank you to Hannah and Clare for sticking around with us and helping us navigate our two days there as well as showing us the new opportunities. I will definitely be applying to their youth program to learn more about this in the future.