National Museums Liverpool Blog - william brown

We'll have lots of craft activities

Legend has it that St George saved a princess who was to be fed to a dragon that terrorised a village. Now, we can’t promise a real life dragon, but there will be plenty of medieval themed fun at Liverpool’s St George’s Day festival (the first of its kind!) on Sunday 21 April.

Children’s TV star, Mike the Knight will kick off the day at 11am when he’ll meet a special dragon at St George’s plateau. The Plantagenet Medieval Society will also be recreating the pageantry, excitement and action of medieval combat along with courtly dancing and music.

The festival will be hosted in areas around St George’s Hall and St John’s Gardens where there will also be a fun fair and various themed stalls including a hog-roast.

There will be lots of indoor fun too at the World Museum, Walker Art Gallery and St Georges Hall ranging from medieval arts workshops and storytelling to costume dressing and a knight’s trail.

Children can also come in fancy dress inspired by Knights, Dragons and Princesses with prizes for under-10s and under-5s. I also here on the grapevine that those who take part in fancy dress will be able to enjoy discounts at restaurants in Queen Square and discounted car-parking at Queen Square Car Park.

Discover the methods and materials used by Hans Holbein's in his portrait of Henry VIII.

Some of you may remember the John Moores Painting Prize 2010 exhibitor, Sigrid Holmwood. She came to the gallery, during the run of the exhibition to discuss her work, 'Butchering a Pig'.

This weekend Sigrid is back at the Walker Art Gallery for a special weekend of all things Tudor. On Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 March 2012 between 11am and 3pm, she will be giving demonstrations and revealing traditional methods and materials she uses to hand-make her own paints.

Sigrid, who is also a Tudor re-enactor, will discuss the role of natural materials before advances in chemistry made synthetic colours popular. Discussing how clays and vegetables taken directly from earth were ground by hand with linseed oil, she also reveals which colours are the most volatile and even deadly for artists to produce themsleves 

The demonstration explores the techniques used by sixteenth century artists such as Hans Holbein in his famous portrait of Henry Vlll, on display at the gallery.

It is just one part of an action-packed weekend inspired by Horrible Histories at the Liverpool Empire. We have teamed up with the Empire to offer two families the chance to win a family ticket for the show at 11am on Sunday 11 March. To win simply let us know how many wives Henry VIII had. Send your answers to press@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk by noon on Wednesday 7 March.

Check the website for more information on the fun family activities at Walker Art Gallery and World Museum that weekend.

Retro fashion and dinosaurs go together on William Brown Street!

Starting on William Brown Street, channel your inner supermodel in the Big Booth at the Walker Art Gallery on 15, 16 & 17 February 2012.  Grab your flares and strike a pose because the photo booth, big enough for the whole family, will be kitted out in a retro style with costumes and props, to celebrate 'Feathercuts and Flares' the Walker’s display of 70s fashion.

Down the hill at World Museum visitors can have a close encounter with beasts of a prehistoric kind in the exhibition 'Age of the Dinosaur' featuring six life-size dinosaurs set in a Jurassic forest of 65 million years ago. Open daily, the admission charges are £6 adults, £3 children and concessions, under 5s free or £14 families. Avoid the queues and book online (no booking fees).

Also look out for the new daily show, 'Chronicle of a Journey to Earth' in the newly refurbished planetarium.

At the Albert Dock and waterfront holiday fun continues with craft activities inspired by the most famous ship of them all, the Titanic, at the Merseyside Maritime Museum (14 & 15 February). While the International Slavery Museum is celebrating the half term with a free showing of Disney’s The Frog Princess (16 February).

From 14-17 February the wonderful new Museum of Liverpool is the place to be for any budding Indiana Joneses. The History Detectives will be exploring the archaeology of Merseyside from the Ice Age right through to the present day, injecting jokes and the occasional tune to help delve into the museum’s archaeological collections.

Out of town, Sudley House is hosting a craft event for children with an eye for style on 16 February. Inspired by the exhibition Costume Drama families can design their own colourful outfits.

At the Lady Lever Art Gallery Chinese New Year celebrations continue with a free performance of the Pagoda Chinese Youth Orchestra on 15 February.

For more free things to see and do check the website for details.

We are counting down to the World Museum's 150th birthday celebrations which are happening this weekend on 16 and 17 October. Each day we'll be giving you a fascinating fact from the 150 year history of the museum in our countdown to the big day!

World Museum fact for the day:

Did you know...that on 8 March 1853 the museum opened for the first time on Slater Street in Liverpool. It was then called the 'Derby Museum of the Borough of Liverpool' in honour of the Earl of Derby’s bequest of over 20,000 natural history specimens.

The museum later moved and was re-opened for the first time on William Brown Street in 1860 and this is the anniversary we are celebrating this year!

Slater Street, the location where the museum first openend.

Thursday 6 May is the day people have been talking about all across Liverpool: it's the day our public lecture series features the history of World Museum Liverpool.

Liverpool's Museum - The First 150 Years is the first of three great talks lined up for this afternoon's session. Presented by our Executive Director of Collections, John Millard, the event starts at 2pm in the Treasure House Theatre, World Museum, and is part of our celebrations in the museum's 150th anniversary year.

John's talk will be followed by, at 2.25pm, Collecting Tibet: Objects, People and Places in early 20th-century British India - presented by Head of Ethnology Emma Martin; and at 2.50pm A Place Called Home: Liverpool Court Housing by archaeology curator Liz Stewart.

An impressive line-up for your Thursday afternoon!

Do remember our previous post about the William Brown bust getting a good spring clean? This was part of our World Museum 150th anniversary celebrations on the blog, and we're continuing the series this week with an update about the bust by our Executive Director of Collections Management, John Millard.

William Brown in his new home

The bust features in a special display in the atrium of World Museum.  It commemorates the 150th anniversary of William Brown handing over Liverpool’s museum and library building to the Lord Mayor of the city in 1860.  Brown spent £40,000 on the building of the museum and library, and the street was renamed William Brown Street in thanks for his generosity.

A timeline in the display shows key events on the museum’s long history, and a case shows the marble bust and two copies of a rare medal struck in honour of William Brown in 1860.

Sunny Cheung, from our design department, designed and installed the graphics.  Pete Spinks and Bill Sillitoe, from the technical services team, then carefully brought in the bust of William Brown on what looked like a hospital trolley!  Meanwhile the museum’s atrium was thronged with visitors enjoying the spectacle as we struggled to unlock the case (that took three designers) and wrestled an old display out of the case.

It is interesting that in the photos of William Brown he is show wearing wire-rimmed glasses, but the sculpture shows him in the dress of an ancient Roman and not wearing glasses. Perhaps the sculptor thought he looked better without them!

Interior of the museum in 1956

This week's blog for the World Museum's 150th anniversary year, is focussing a very important event in the museum's history; the day it reopened to the public for the first time after World War Two. Our Executive Director of Collections Management, John Millard, has been digging around in the archives and he's found an interesting anecdote about this day:

On the 26 January 1956, the museum reopened for the first time since war damage in 1941.  Writer, heiress and political activist, Nancy Cunard was visiting the museum and left a note for the director;

"Today, Saturday, 2 days after ceremonial opening and one day after public opening of "Lower Horseshoe" your attendant was counting the people as they came in: by 4pm – (when I arrived) the number was 2,419 – By 5, when the Museum shut, 2,892.  So well over 400 came in the last hour! A very good sale of booklets too."

We'd still like to hear from you if you have happy memories of visiting the museum. Can you remember the first time you ever went? Was it the first time you'd ever seen an Egyptian mummy? Did any artefacts from the museum inspire you in later life?

Leave your memories as a comment below...

I don't know about you, but I think it's always good to start the new year by having a bit of a spruce up - whether it's spring cleaning or a bit of a make over! We're used to giving important objects a new lease of life here at National Museums Liverpool and this week we have Sculpture Conservator, Lottie Barnden, to tell us about the work she's been doing to help celebrate the World Museum's 150th anniversary...

William Brown sculpture during cleaning

To commemorate the 150th Anniversary of William Brown’s gift of a library and museum to the city of Liverpool, a marble bust of the man himself has been brought out of storage for conservation treatment, prior to going out on public display. This portrait bust by Isaac Jackson was sculpted in 1851, just nine years before the William Brown Library was completed.

When it arrived at the sculpture conservation studios, it was thought to be one of the filthiest objects we’ve had in for a long time! I suspect that it hasn’t been cleaned since it was first made. The bust section is attached to a socle (a type of small round plinth) using a section of copper dowel. The plaster fill around this dowel has become brittle and loose and the bust now wobbles and turns on its base, making it quite unstable and unsuitable for going on public display as it is.

The first thing for me to is to take the bust off the socle and remove the copper dowel. This is a procedure we often perform on the older marble busts as the copper or iron pieces that were used as fixings in the 18th and 19th centuries corrode over time and the rusting can migrate into the marble causing deep staining. The dowel will be replaced with a new one in stainless steel.

Next I can begin the cleaning. When an object as dirty as this comes in it is very rewarding to see the dramatic difference that a good clean can make to it. It is often the case that the layers of dirt can obscure the fine detail of the carving or the cleaning process can reveal more problems with the sculpture than you originally saw. Happily, with this bust, the marble itself is in good enough condition that I can use a type of precision steam cleaner to gently clean away the years of soiling and museum dust. There are some paint splashes found below the dirt but these can be cleaned off using a solvent treatment and there are no other nasty surprises to be found.

Once the bust has been cleaned and restored back onto its socle, all that remains is for it to be given a protective coating of wax to keep the dust and dirt separate from the marble surface. 

This will help to keep Sir William Brown looking his best for the celebrations! The bust should be ready for display in February, so keep a look out for him at the World Museum.