National Museums Liverpool Blog - internet

Can you believe it's December already? I'm sure last time I checked it was August, I just don't know where the time goes, I really don't.

If Christmas is creeping up a bit too quickly on you as well then National Museums Liverpool's latest festive offering may come in handy. This weekend we launched an online advent calendar, to count down to the big day and hopefully get you in the Christmas spirit.

Behind each window is an artefact or an event from our collections and venues with a Christmas link, revealing insights into popular festive traditions as well as historic reminders of past Christmases. So far I've found out how the Norse god Odin may have inspired a Christmas tradition and why decorating your house with holly and ivy could lead to a harmonious Christmas - and it's only day 3.

National Museums Liverpool staff are heading a unique independent project for 2008. Face of the City is encouraging workers in Liverpool city centre to get creative and to display their own artwork in their workplaces as part of the Capital of Culture celebrations.  The idea is that we should all be showing off our talents during the Capital of Culture year, whether we've ever done anything remotely artistic or not.

The Face of the City team are looking for volunteers to become Project Coordinators - basically the person who organises the exhibition/display in your workplace, as well as people to display their work. The display doesn't have to be anything huge and amazing - a section of wall in a corridor or your office would do just fine. Check out the website for more information.

We're running an online questionnaire where we are asking members of the public to tell us what they think of our website, what they like or dislike, what they'd like to see more of etc. I'll be taking it down in a short while so if you want to comment on the site (either this blog, our main site or any of our other sites) you'd best do it soon.

Either follow this link to go straight to the survey, or go to this page to learn a bit more about it all.

We've lots of plans for our sites - this blog, our main site, diduknow etc - but want to know what our visitors want from us as well. Do you want more indepth information? Are we missing something vital? What do you think about our collections information?

We've put together an online survey so you can tell us. It should only take a few minutes. If you've any problems please let us know, and thanks in advance.

The International Slavery Museum opened today. Pleased to say that there has been lots of positive coverage in the press, on the web, tv etc. I'll post a proper 'listen again' selection of the radio coverage but in the mean time here is an interview from yesterday. Simon Mayo on Radio Five Live interviewed Richard Benjamin, head of the museum. The interview starts at about 1hr 47mins and runs for about 20 mins on either side of the news break. (NB, apparently there are a few problems with the BBC listen again feature so you might have to be patient.)

Also saw today that Anti-Slavery International has digitsed its collection of 18th and 19th century slavery literature and called it Recovered Histories. There are over 40,000 pages so it should be worth a good look. 

The Guardian has an interview with illustrator, Shirley Hughes, on the homepage of its books channel - you can listen here.  There's also an article about her latest collection (in case you're wondering why I'm telling you this, we had a Shirley Hughes exhibition a few years ago and still get a fair few enquiries about it).

Paul O'Keefe in full flow

If you've not yet been to the rather splendid exhibition, Out of this World: the Art of Josh Kirby, you might want to download a gallery tour by Paul O'Keefe to take on your visit. The tour starts in the smaller entrance gallery and then moves into the main hall.

If downloading isn't your thing, or you're not going to get to the exhibition, you might just want to read the transcript or listen to the talk from the comfort of your own PC.

We get a lot of enquiries from people asking if we hold passenger list records for people leaving and entering the UK. Just seen that findmypast.com in association with the National Archives have made available the passenger lists for people who left the UK between 1890 and 1960 (actually, they just got up to 1929 for now - the rest follows in the next few months and you can register to be kept informed). 

While I'm here, Karen in archives recommends the 'Watching the Boats Go By' website. It shows live vessel movements in the Mersey and other areas around the coast, so you can check out what's afloat at any time of the day. You can click on the map to see the individual ships, their stats, what sort of vessels they are, where they're from/going etc and photos.  Its great if you have seen a ship in the river and wondered what it was.

Last Friday the web team attended the Museums on the Web Conference at Leicester Uni. We were all pretty impressed by Sebastian Chan from Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and the work the team there has done on folksonomies. Encouraged us to just do it with our own collections. You can check out their blog, Fresh + New(er), which is also pretty good. Not sure if the conference papers are going to be available on the site but you might want to check back at some point.

Then yesterday I saw that a fab bracelet currently featured in the Peter Chang exhibition comes from Powerhouse and has a zoomification on their site (the same feature we use), so you can see the piece in all its shiny detail.

Just seen this interesting article on the Stanford University School of Medicine site. An ophthalmologist there is interested in the relationship between art and eye disease - he's even written a couple of books on the subject. He's now gone one step further and recreated artworks as the artist would have seen them, suggesting that the work we see now isn't what the artist intended. He's concentrated on Degas and Monet because, as he explains, they had well documented conditions, and has put together a slide show of what he thinks they would have seen - it's pretty interesting.

It was with a heavy heart - and an even heavier gut - I had to order myself to step away from the Easter egg last night, listen to the feelings of nausea and save the rest of its shell of creamy loveliness for another day. If like me you devoured the weight of a small motor-home in chocolate over the weekend your thoughts may be turning to the world of points counting, soup eating and general misery that is diets. Don’t do it.  I’m glad to report that American researchers have discovered that diets actually make you put on weight. A balanced diet (including a small amount of antioxidant rich chocolate naturally) and exercise are the way forward - which is why I’m prescribing a course of LoveSport at World Museum Liverpool to all you Easter egg gluttons. It's only open for a couple more weeks so catch it while you can and trust me, sinking a couple of points on the Hectic Hoops and a quick burst on the Tour de France simulator has done me the world of good. I definitely deserve the rest of that Easter egg tonight.

I’m delighted to reveal Port Sunlight has made it into the BBC News website’s top 20 hidden tourist gems. After asking a gaggle of celebrities to pick their favourite places off the typical tourist track readers were invited to nominate secluded spots of their own. It’s heartening to hear that the Lady Lever Art Gallery is gaining a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic and I couldn’t agree more with Daniel from Charleston, USA, that the gallery does have a ‘surprisingly good art collection’. I’ll let him off for calling us a museum.

As for Tony ‘Time Team’ Robinson’s rather random choice of Newbury Park Bus Station, think I'll give that one a miss.

I can't believe I've missed it!

'Shaun the Sheep' has made his new series debut today on Children's BBC.

The BBC have put together this behind-the-scenes set of photos, which should appeal to anyone who enjoyed Animated Adventures. Apparently a children's series like this is made at lightening speed compared to feature films like The Curse of The Were-Rabbit ... but it still takes days with the makers averaging seven seconds of footage per day.

Wallace and Gromit's woolly friend looks set for super-stardom - at least amongst pre-schoolers.

It would be wrong to highlight eighties photos of Liverpool on Flickr without pointing everyone to Nancy023's superb collection. Now based in Seattle, most of these photographs were taken during a year spent in Liverpool over twenty years ago.

Milk Bar, New Brighton

Commutation Row, Philip G Mayer

Philip G Mayer's flickr photostream contains some great early 1980s photographs of Liverpool, including this one of Wellington column outside the Walker with the row of buildings that were demolished to make way for Commutation Plaza.

Philip has also set up the Old Liverpool pool, inviting anyone with a Flickr account to post their photos to it. The pool includes this great set of postcards that he dates to around 1906 -  I love the Prince's Avenue and Bold Street ones. The postcards are all based on original photographs. There's also a very stylish artist's impression of the interior of the Mersey Tunnel and a set of photos of the last night of Woolton Cinema.

Liverpool's best art blog Art in Liverpool just got better with the creation of the Liverpool Arts and Culture forum. Register to join the discussions, post event announcements, classifieds, job vacancies and courses.

Only a month ago, Sylvester Stallone was present as items from
the Rocky movie series were donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington. I nearly blogged the event, dreaming about how wonderful it would be if ‘Rocky’ came to World Museum Liverpool. In my reverie, we were to invite him to preview the LoveSport exhibition, gets lots of lovely pictures of him training and shadow boxing and of course, insist that he re-enact his famous victorious run to the top of the steps. In the end I dismissed the blog post thinking I was probably straying just a bit too far into the realms of fantasy.

Today I wake up to the news that Sly has apparently been hanging around at Everton FC this weekend! If only he had known about the wonderful day out I had planned for him. Mr Stallone, if you’re still out there ...?

While I was browsing the Treasures of American History exhibition where the Rocky items can be seen, I also came across some amazing iconic items such as Dorothy’s ruby slippers and the Scarecrow costume from the Wizard of Oz, R2-D2 and C-3PO from Return of the Jedi, Kermit the Frog and Muhammad Ali’s  gloves to name but a few. Oh, and the hat that Abraham Lincoln was wearing when he was assassinated. I can't help being impressed.

Stuck in an office that bears an increasing resemblance to the Marie Celeste on a wet bank holiday doesn't put you in much of a festive mood. My reserves of diversionary tactics, ie 'it kind of is but kind of isn't work', are running low already and I've still got to survive tomorrow and most of next week. Who'da thought the world wide web could offer so little of interest?

Luckily I wandered across this new site from the Arts Council - the catalogue of its collection. Nice design and lots of pretty pictures. That's my sanity preserved for a few more hours. Tune in tomorrow to see how far I've descended into the abyss...

A couple of online features from other museum groups have caught our attention this week. The Science Museum in London is hosting the touring exhibition Game On, featuring a history of computer games from the 1960s to the present day. The web team at the museum have documented the creation of their online feature on their blog, including commissioning a contemporary version of the classic game Pong set in a car park. Frankie Roberto has also blogged about online media coverage of the exhibition.

We've already seen how Brooklyn Museum are pioneering the use of Flickr online through their Brooklyn graffiti project, the latest set of photos on their Flickr account shows the installation of a new exhibition of works by Ron Mueck.

Finally, the Tate Modern website suggests visitors should arrive before midday if they want to go on Carsten Höller's Test Site, currently drawing huge crowds in the Turbine Hall. The Tate website has videos online showing a ride on each of the five slides (Realplayer only).

Google Custom Search Engine allows any user to create their own customised google search engine. It's very easy to use and in minutes you can produce your own version of Google that returns results according to your own preferences.

To test the service I've quickly created an unoffical UK National Museums and Galleries version of Google. As its name suggests this search engine only returns results from the websites of national museums and galleries in the UK.

Try searching for 'current exhibitions' or 'job vacancies' and you'll see how useful these customised search engines can be.

There is loads of potential with these. Art in Liverpool could have their own search engine that only indexed results from art organisations, artists, museums, funding bodies and galleries in Merseyside. The Chamber of Commerce could customise to only index results from their members' websites.

Google custom search engines can be added to your own site, modified to fit your site's design and you can make money from them by carrying adsense adverts with the results.

If you missed the Top of the Pops broadcast of Oasis' new video, 'The Masterplan' on Saturday night you can still see this remarkable animated feature online at MSN (scroll down for the link). The video, released to promote their new greatest hits album, is a bit of a tribute to fellow Mancunian LS Lowry.

The band are depicted in Lowry-esque 'matchstick' style going about their business, including playing a gig and walking to a Man City vs Newcastle football match.

There's also a subtle 'hats off' to the Beatles with the lads swaggering across a zebra crossing Abbey Road style. They later return to their matching terrace-houses, just like in the movie 'Help!'.

I can't say that I'm the biggest Oasis fan in the world - but this video is just compelling -and the tune's not bad either.

Not us unfortunately but we're getting there.

The 'One Day In History' project aims to record a blog diary for today - 17 October -  involving as many people as possible. The posts will be stored by the British Library as a historical record of our national life.They are looking for not just the minutiae of your everyday life but also how history is affecting you, how you are interacting with the past etc. You might want to describe how you went to a museum, listened to a piece of old music, had a chat with someone about your family tree or looked at this blog (you knew there was going to be a plug in there somewhere). Mine would be too dull to contemplate so, despite quite liking the idea, I might have to spare the nation.

This is being run by the National Trust and is part of the the History Matters campaign.

At The River's Mouth, a Merseyside blog looking at local history and contemporary culture, last week wrote about  Stewart Bale Ltd and our Stewart Bale 2.0 project.

The Artfinder's Gallery opens tonight from 3.30pm until 9pm. The first show is going to be original prints from 'Godfather of Pop Art' and John Moores 24 jury member, Sir Peter Blake. And apparently, you get a lollipop if you mention the Artfinder's blog - which has to be a good thing.

With less than two weeks to go until Liverpool Biennial begins, a reminder that Ian Jackson of the Art in Liverpool blog has a separate Liverpool Biennial 2006 Blog.

The Art in Liverpool blog grew out of Ian's popular Liverpool Biennial 2004 blog which remains an excellent online archive of the events.

Those trekking to Hinkley for this weekend's Discworld Convention will be interested in plans for a major retrospective of Josh Kirby's artwork at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, next year.

Josh Kirby studied at Liverpool Art School in the 1940s and is best known for designing the book covers for Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. The exhibition, planned for Summer 2007, will include around 150 works spanning his career. It will include original works, studies, sketches, magazines, film posters and book covers. I'm told it will encompass all sorts of weird worlds, marvellous maidens and fantastical, magical creatures - but it won't be restricted to just Discworld material, so watch this space. 

Kirby also designed the film poster for Return of the Jedi and one for Monty Python's Life of Brian (possibly inspired by Bruegel's Tower of Babel). Coincidentally, while looking for Kirby links on the Python's Daily Llama I stumbled upon the Silly Walks Generator. Not strictly connected of course - but far too silly to keep to myself. 

Time is ticking by if you want to take part in 'Digital Show' - an online exhibition of international digital art, which is part of the Independants strand of this year's Liverpool Biennial.

www.digitalshow.co.uk is a new website created by our friends at Art in Liverpool. They are looking for "exciting, interesting painting and drawing" created using computer software. The theme of fun because, in their words, "we like fun, its our favourite thing".

Full details can be found on the website. The deadline for entries is 31August 2006 - so you've got three weeks.

Ever fallen in love in an art gallery? As part of Museums & Galleries Month, the 24 hour museum are undertaking a survey to find the country's most romantic gallery or museum.

I can certainly vouch for the Walker Art Gallery.

At the impressionable age of sixteen, my former beau - suited and booted - met me on the 360 bus from Wigan and brought me to Liverpool for one of the most memorable days of my life. In the wonderful, elegant surroundings of the Walker, I realised I was hooked.

Sadly, the relationship never lasted. But I loved the gallery so much that I got a job in the cloakroom!