Love, War and Loss in the Museum Stores

Part of the Soldiers of Shropshire Friends’ Talks 2025. These popular monthly talks are open to everyone and cover a range of topics.

April's talk will focus on love, war and loss in the museum stores and will be delivered by Dr Robert MacKinnon.

How have the loving ones of killed soldiers of Shropshire grieved? Using objects from the Soldiers of Shropshire Museum’s stored collection, my talk begins by exploring how objects in the life of war-dead loved ones have taken on new significances in death and through grief, becoming ‘mementoes’, objects associated with encountering and remembering the dead. I show how military and military-related objects have formed an important part of grieving military death. We then explore memorial objects that did not have a proximal, embodied connection to the dead in life. We go beyond the familiar public war memorials to explore smaller, home-based memorials enacted by loving ones. I conclude by reflecting on how problems encountered in researching the collection have influenced my curatorial practice.

Dr Robert MacKinnon is an emerging museums collection professional fascinated in the relations between material culture and affect, emotions and non-human agency. Besides his over 3-year link with Soldiers of Shropshire Museum in various paid and volunteer roles, Robert has worked or volunteered in collections teams with several heritage organisations including the National Trust, Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust and Staffordshire County Museum Service.