A pop-up exhibition to showcase the new £7.75 million museum in St Albans is to appear at four locations this summer.

A Curious Conversation is organised by artist Lyndall Phelps from Cambridgeshire, who has worked throughout Hertfordshire, and will feature eye-catching objects from the St Albans Museums’ collection as well as new artwork by her.

She has chosen artefacts that highlight the archaeology, art, environment and social history of the city.

St Albans Museums’ collection is in storage while the Town Hall in St Peter’s Street is converted into the new Museum and Art Gallery.

Lyndall has been inspired by an 1880 exhibition in St Albans that marked the opening of a new School of Science and Art in Victoria Street, now the Maltings Surgery.

It brought together objects from private collections and was such a success that it led to the foundation of the museum of St Albans.

Lyndall has used the list of objects from this original exhibition to inspire her own. Some of the objects she has chosen were donated by people who were also involved in the 1880 exhibition.

Indeed, she has included one object that was in that display 137 years ago, a leather wallet with flint and steel that was used as a lighter. It was donated by a Mrs Cherry.

A Curious Conversation has already visited UH Galleries at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, and St Albans City Hospital. It will pop up four more times this year:

  • Thursday 13 July – St Paul’s Church, Blandford Road, Fleetville
  • Saturday 15 July – Maltings Shopping Centre, outside the library
  • Saturday 26 August – St Albans Cathedral
  • Saturday 7 October – St Julian’s Church, Abbot’s Avenue.