Lisa Barthel, an MA student placement working with us, shares a few reflections from her time at the Society.
Students working towards a master’s degree in museum and galleries education at University College London are expected to complete a placement in a cultural organisation as part of their programme. When looking at the options available to me, I wanted to choose an organisation that would allow me to acquire new skills and give me credibility when applying for future jobs.
The concept of ‘antiquaries’ was something unknown to me. I had little idea of what went on at a ‘Society of Antiquaries’. In my head, I pictured sorting through old teapots, coins, and silverware, trying to figure out their history. You can imagine my astonishment on my first day at Burlington House when I found out the Society was established in 1707 to meticulously catalogue and contextualise our collective past. While my preconceptions weren’t entirely off base (yes, there were indeed vessels and coins aplenty in the Society’s collections) the true value of these artefacts lay not in their material or financial worth but in their capacity to stitch together the fabric of history.
As a museum and galleries student at UCL, I believe materiality is important as objects are the flesh and blood of cultural institutions. Paintings, sculptures, and archaeological findings used to be what gave such institutions their meaning – you visited a gallery to see such and such a painting, and you visited a museum to see this or that specific artefact.

Through item collections, our predecessors tried to make sense of the past.
Yet, as the tides of politics and culture shift, our relationship with these institutions also evolves. We no longer visit cultural spaces solely for their material possessions. Rather, it is the intangible experiences and emotional resonance of the space that captivate and engage our interest. For this reason, the cultural sector has increasingly moved away from objects – and towards the people visiting to view them.
The Society of Antiquaries is no exception to this broad shift in emphasis. For more than 300 years, the Society was the guardian of our material past and advocated for material research and scholarship. I would even speculate that, being established shortly after the shift in educational paradigms with the development of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, objects and collections acquired a new significance both in terms of their cultural status and their power to educate or inform.
Prevailing eighteenth-century ideas of progress, liberty, and reason inspired early Society members to seek and share ‘truth’ and ‘expertise’ through their collecting and research activities. In the twenty-first century, the paradigm has shifted. Today’s cultural and heritage institutions prioritise open access, involvement of communities and interpretative learning. Even learned societies like the Society of Antiquaries need to walk in tandem with time, embracing wider changes and embarking on a new educational mission.
My placement at Burlington House has opened the doors to a relatively closed-off or private organisation and given me privileged insight into a cultural space in transition, from one long-established set of rules and paradigms to the next. It has been fascinating to discover and understand the importance of a 300-hundred-year-old Society and its collection (with no equal) and how it continuously impacts and influences knowledge across times, embracing external and internal shifts. Observing, at close quarters, the direct interplay between the past and the present has been one of my most memorable experiences.
By speaking to the staff and the visitors, exploring the collection, sitting in on meetings, collating visitor feedback and brainstorming various engagement initiatives, I underwent a profound immersion into an institutional world that had been a mere cypher, a complete mystery, to me a few weeks prior. But at the same time, my classroom studies at UCL found tangible, practical expression in the familiar tasks I undertook, like engaging with school students, helping to organize an art auction, and coordinating front of house volunteers.
After three months, I leave the Society of Antiquaries with a number of new skills and plenty of fresh ideas for engagement and learning in galleries and museums. I also have a better understanding of the positive impact and legacy that a handful of determined and enthusiastic individuals can leave behind. When Humphrey Wanley, John Talman, and John Bagford first met in a London tavern to talk about antiquarian topics in 1707, did they imagine that their informal night of peer-to-peer learning would give rise to a highly respected society that continues to carry out important historical research to this day?
In my last words, I hope that more students have the chance to embark on such enriching work placements and that more individuals have the opportunity to visit this beautiful place and explore the treasures of our past.