Join the Centre for Design History for another installment of our IOTA II seminar series. In this session, curator Dr Zoë Hendon will discuss her experience of working in the UK’s museum sector.

20 March 2025, 4-5pm
Design Lab, Mithras House 111

Dr Zoë Hendon

Snakes and Ladders:
The Rise and Fall of the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture 

As the recent research project led by Professor Fiona Candlin at Birkbeck has shown, the closure of museums is not an uncommon occurrence. Many museums close each year, for a variety of reasons, and despite the best efforts of museum workers it is not always the case that museums and their collections will continue ‘in perpetuity’. In this paper, I consider the various factors which contributed to the development of the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture at Middlesex University, the background to its collections, and the reasons for its eventual closure in 2024.  I’ll suggest that the museum’s fortunes can be seen as a case-study of many of the external forces shaping the UK’s museum sector from the end of the twentieth century until the present. Like a game of snakes and ladders, the museum frequently seemed to be on an upward trajectory, but ultimately the dice did not fall in its favour. 
 
Dr Zoë Hendon was Curator and then Head of Collections at the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (MoDA) Middlesex University, from 1999 to 2024.  Her PhD research, undertaken while working at Middlesex University, looked at the background to the museum’s collections and the ways in which they had been understood, as both heritage asset and educational resource, since the 1960s.  
Following the closure of MoDA in 2024, Zoë is currently covering maternity leave for the Curator post at the Crafts Study Centre, Farnham, as well as developing her other research interests.
www.zoehendon.com
IOTA II – IOTA stands for Image, Object, Text, Analysis, and was the title of a seminar series established by dear former colleagues Louise Purbrick and Jill Seddon. IOTA II aims to resurrect the inclusive nature of the original IOTA, bringing together students, colleagues and all interested parties from beyond the university to consider the visual and material world from a wide range of perspectives. It is a space for work-in-progress to be shared and nurtured, and for our research to be celebrated.