Weston Maggie According to the obituary, Weston went on to become an apprentice at the General Electric Company in Witton, Birmingham, where he specialised in high-voltage insulation. She accepted a position as an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Communications at the Science Museum in 1955, which was the year that she quit her position at GEC. It was here that she was tasked with the creation of a new gallery specializing in electrical engineering, which opened its doors in 1957. It was until 1984 that she worked at the Museum, which was a “departmental museum.
This was a title that had been given to both the Science Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum ever since its establishment following the Great Exhibition of 1851. This status meant that all of the staff members were officially employed by the government.
She worked there for the remainder of her 31-year career. Weston was given a promotion to the position of Deputy to Gerald Garrett, the Keeper of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Communications, five years after she had first arrived at the company. It was still five years later when she became the first Keeper of a new department called Museum Services. This department brought together activities that were not related to curation into a single department.
She was able to achieve such a high level of success with this endeavor that Sir David Follett, who was the Director of the Museum at the time, began to rely on her and gave her complete responsibility for the public face of the institution. Following Follett’s retirement in 1973, she assumed the role of his successor.
The proposal to take over the vast historical collections of British Rail, which were held at the time in Swindon, Clapham, and York, was one of the duties that Weston received from her predecessor. The Duke of Edinburgh presided at the opening ceremony for the National Railway Museum in York in September 1975, which was two years after she had been appointed Director. The museum was the first national museum to be located outside of London, and today, many years later, Dame Margaret is honored there by having her name engraved on a miniature steam train that guests are able to travel on.
It was only during Weston’s tenure as Director that the National Railway Museum became the first of the new outstations to open its doors. After that, we moved on to the National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television, which was the original name of the institution.
After going through two different names, it is now known as the National Science and Media Museum.” During the most of the 1970s, I served as the Keeper of Film and Photography at the National Portrait Gallery. During that time, I had been advocating for the establishment of a museum for a number of years. Due to the fact that Weston was so enthusiastic about the concept, she decided to form a committee in order to advance it.
That committee consisted of only one person who was not employed by the Science Museum, and that person was me. In 1979, the Museums Association, of which Weston was serving as President at the time, had its annual conference in Bradford, Yorkshire.
This was the moment that marked the significant advancement that had been made. When Weston was riding a double-decker bus through the central business district of the city, he noticed that the Prince’s Theatre, which had been constructed in 1966, was vacant in front of the Wardley Tower. That evening, as she was attending a civic dinner, she inquired of Gordon Moore, the Chief Executive of the city, whether he believed the structure was adequate for a national gathering.
