National Museums Liverpool Blog - video

Further to my previous post about International Slavery Museum getting to the final of the National Lottery awards, the Lottery have commissioned this promotional video about the museum and why it should win. You can also see it on our main site.

Remember that you can vote online on the National Lottery Good Causes website, or by calling 0844 686 6957.

Update 04/08/09: This video now has a transcript which can be viewed on our main site.

Across the National Museums Liverpool website, we have loads of great games, e-cards, online-only exhibitions, videos, interactives and podcasts for you to enjoy. And we've just launched our new VIP Zone as a hub for all these cool features that really bring our collections and exhibitions to life.

You can watch a video of a Pharaoh talking about life in ancient Egypt or download a talk by curator Pauline Rushton and photographer Francesco Mellina about our Sound and Vision exhibition - photographs of Liverpool music and fashion from 1978-82.

This multi-media stuff gives people from around the world the chance to get a better experience of what we have in our venues, even if they can't come along in real life.

You can also find all our social networking sites in the VIP Zone. So if you want to follow the new Museum of Liverpool on Twitter or join the Walker Facebook group then you can find links to our social sites there too.

Here's one of the latest videos we've put online featuring George Holt, the former owner of Sudley House, in the dining room. He talks about dinner parties, his plans for improving the city of Liverpool and describes some of the paintings in the room.

Ah what can you say to describe the amazing PJ Harvey? Rock star. Legend. Fan of Nick Cave. Player of Gibson Firebird guitars. The most glamorous person to come from Dorset...and now a lover of bouncy castles! Let me explain. 

PJ Harvey has been recording with her long-time collaborator John Parish and the first single from their forthcoming album will be out on 13 April. The video for this single, 'Black Hearted Love', has been made by British artists Jake and Dinos Chapman who we were pleased to have on the jury for the recent John Moores 25 Contemporary Painting Prize at the Walker Art Gallery.

The video is pretty cool I think, spooky yet graceful is what I'd say. Here's what the Chapman brothers said about it: "We decided 'Black Hearted Love' deserved something haunting and enigmatic - yet brazen and colourful. Hence, a collision between an ominous forest and a garish bouncy castle seemed entirely appropriate..." (Quote from NME.com)

Have a look and see what you think...

Nope, not a band featuring in The Beat Goes On exhibition but a couple of World Museum Liverpool-related pieces on the Guardian site today.

There's a short video shot in Saqqara, south of Cairo, where archaeologists are excavating ancient Egyptian tombs and unearthing mummies. You can see the video here. 

Also, today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. The Guardian has created a multimedia guide that looks at the social and historical context of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection (I didn't know that Darwin was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln).

We've our own Darwin-related events organised to coincide with Darwin200 - a national programme of events celebrating Charles Darwin’s scientific ideas and their impact on our lives. More on them on our main site.

If you want to hear an Egyptian Pharaoh telling you about his new fiancé or get the gossip about a runaway Egyptian servant, then check out these videos taken from the new Ancient Egypt gallery. They really bring to life some of the  types of people who would have lived and worked in Egypt at the time. Apparently, the runaway servant in question didn't want to clean his master's smelly clothes anymore, but I won't spoil the story for you!

For more videos including those of an Egyptian priest and a chantress, visit the main Egypt  videos page, where there are also links to transcripts of all the videos.

To view the video subtitles, please select the full-screen option, shown by the four arrows icon. A transcript of this video can be found here.

Wow. What a great feeling it is to give rather than to receive, yes?! Well you have the power to help decide who will get the grand sum of £2008! All you have to do is get voting in our Visitors' Choice award for the painting you like best in the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery.

Take a good look through the exhibition and think about which painting deserves your vote. Which one jumps out at you? Which one leaves a lasting impression? Is there one that really gets under your skin?

Once you've made your decision, just cast your vote while you're in the gallery by filling in a Visitors' Choice card by Sunday 2 November 2008.

To get you thinking, here is a video with some of our judges;  Sacha Craddock, Paul Morrison and Graham Crowley, talking about some of their favourites:

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This week saw the unveiling of the mysterious 'Arbores Laetae' or 'Joyful Trees' which started spinning near the Cains Brewery in Liverpool, to herald the run up to this year's Liverpool Biennial.  It all kicks off on 20 September, with the announcement of the winner of the John Moores 25 Contemporary Painting Prize at the Walker Art Gallery.

The creation of artists Diller Scofidio + Renfro, these spinning trees are certainly a bit spooky, but also not great if a dog decides to spend a penny nearby I think. Here is a video so you can check it out for yourself:

I was lucky enough to be able to see the mandala destruction ceremony at the World Museum Liverpool on Saturday morning and I thought I would share my experience with you in this blog! There were so many people there that I had to stand on tip-toes to be able to see, but it was great to see that so many people from Liverpool (and visitors from outside of the UK) wanted to be part of this unique and moving event.  After several minutes of hypnotic chanting the monks approached the mandala, ready to being its destruction. 

You could sense the anticipation in the room as all eyes where fixed on the brightly coloured coloured artwork and the monks in their striking robes and head-dress. After scoring the sand into four sections, the monks then took some of the sand into a container and began to sweep the sand into the centre of the board, creating rainbow patterns. The ceremony came to an end as the monks began a parade out into the street, with the surrounding crowd following, all the way to the Steble Fountain outside the Walker Art Gallery.

Monks outside the Walker Art Gallery

There were many stunned faces in the street as this unusual procession passed by! Some of the monks had already reached the fountain as our procession approached and they called out to us using large, thundering wind instruments. The monks circled the fountain before stopping to empty some grains of sand from the mandala, into the water...

You can read about the creation of the mandala in an earlier post, and see more photographs on Flickr. Watch our video of the monks creating the mandala using small tubes, funnels, and scrapers  and then view the chanting and desctruction ceremony from Saturday morning.