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Curator of the Geffrye Museum with a mission to enlighten and inspire
IN THE close-knit world of museum professionals Molly Harrison is recognised as a pioneer in museum education. She ran the Geffrye Museum, in east London, for almost 30 years, where her achievements attracted the attention of a stream of observers from all over the world. In her day she was way ahead of the field; when we look back her ideas still seem remarkably fresh.
She was born Molly Hodgett in 1909 in Hertfordshire and educated successively at the Friends School, Saffron Walden, a convent in Belgium, and the Sorbonne. She worked as a secretary for a period before training as a teacher at Avery Hill College in south London. In 1939 she was appointed as a teacher to the Geffrye Museum, having previously taught French and History in north London secondary schools. She was 29. As it turned out, she joined the museum at an extraordinary moment in its history.
The Geffrye had been established in 1914 by the London County Council as a museum to inspire the East End furniture industry. In 1935, responsibility for it had passed to the council's Education Committee, who decided it should be developed as a teaching resource for schools. Marjorie Quennell, who with her husband, C.H.B. Quennell, had written A History of Everyday Things in England (1918), was appointed Curator and she installed the series of period rooms on which the museum is still based to this day.
The LCC's intention was to "link the schools more closely with the museums [this policy included the Horniman Museum, in Forest Hill in south London] so that, in effect, the latter should become extra classrooms". The policy worked, for, in the space of four years, the number of school visits tripled and by 1939 two teachers were appointed, one of whom was...