National Museums Liverpool Blog - world museum liverpool

I went to see a small but fascinating display of prints by Kenyan artist Peterson Kamwathi at World Museum Liverpool today.

The prints contain symbols and imagery that explore Kenya’s political situation. Each image contains a bull which represents the Kenyan nation in the midst of unrest.

Kamwathi says about his work: "I view myself as a part of my society and as such I’m accountable to the society. Being an artist, this society extends beyond my immediate environment to include the world. In my work I strive to address and document issues that affect and impact my country, my continent and now the planet."

The display officially opens tomorrow (26 June) when there will also be a presentation in the Treasure House Theatre on Peterson’s work and Kenya’s contemporary art scene by artist and collector Ed Cross at 3pm.

Congratulations to Qianer Sha, our latest volunteer to receive her v50 award for completing 50 hours. Qianer has volunteered regularly since November 2008, starting in Big Art for Little Artists at the Walker before helping out in The Beat Goes On exhibition. Qianer told us:
 
"It is a great experience for me to be able to volunteer in The Beats Goes On exhibition. It is a good opportunity for me to learn a lot of things about the city and its music and discover a lot which I took for granted before. Also, it is not only a chance to learn communication skills but also have so much fun."

Have a look at our website for further information about youth volunteering with v-involved at National Museums Liverpool.
 

Yesterday I saw the installation of a new display of Islamic ceramics in the Weston Discovery Centre at World Museum Liverpool. The display is a very personal project for technical services technician Helen Halliwell, as she has been closely involved from the outset.

Helen used to work as a demonstrator in the Weston Discovery Centre before joining the technical services team over at the National Conservation Centre recently. When the display of Islamic ceramics was proposed to tie in with the Arabic Arts Festival next month, Helen’s expertise was called on as she has a background in ceramics - she worked as a ceramics technician while studying for her Masters degree in the subject. So Helen worked with curator Emma Martin to select pieces of 13th and 14th century Islamic pottery from Iran, Iraq and Egypt for the display. The pieces, which have never been on display before, were chosen as they are great examples of the geometry and patterns in their designs, which Islamic ceramics are famous for.

After finalising the selection Helen joined technical services, which is the department responsible for creating mounts and installing displays. So she has been involved in that side of the project as well, including specifying the layout of the display case.

I caught up with Helen and senior technician Bill Sillitoe when they finished the display off yesterday. Bill made the supports for the wall mounted sherds in the display, using wire with a silicon tubing covering to protect the artefacts. Although they look quite simple, each one is specially made to support a specific sherd safely at the correct angle.

You can see more photos of the installation in our Islamic ceramics display set on Flickr.

It's National Volunteers Week, so our youth volunteer co-ordinator Claire Olson has asked me to thank all our wonderful volunteers for their continuing hard work and enthusiasm, not just this week but throughout the year.

If you would like more information about volunteering then have a look at our volunteering web pages or pop into one of our special Volunteers Week events. Drop in any time from 11am-3pm at World Museum on Tuesday and the Lady Lever Art Gallery on Thursday.

We asked Dashti, one of our youth volunteers, about his experiences as a volunteer and here's what he said:

---

"Hi my name is Dashti and I’m 17. I have volunteered at National Museums Liverpool for 11 months. I started working in The Beat Goes On exhibition from July to September 2008. I worked in this exhibition talking to visitors, tidying up the play area and replacing comments cards.

After this, I began working with the Community Partnerships team. Every Wednesday I work with students from EMTAS (Ethnic Minority & Traveller Achievement Service). We have done many projects together including a project about the the Museum of Liverpool, learning about the history of Liverpool and making a film called 'Make Your Own Liverpool'. I also helped the students learn about ancient Egypt, space and national history.

I got my v50 award certificate in December, but I have now done 100 hours! I have learnt how to communicate well with lots of different people. I have learnt many things about the history of Liverpool and I also learnt about the exhibitions in the museum.

I have enjoyed talking to interesting people. The staff have been very helpful and because I feel more comfortable in the museum I will continue volunteering!"

One of the real privileges of my job is being able to see some of the behind the scenes work that goes into the creation of museum displays, the sort of things that most people take for granted. For example, not many people know that every single display stand supporting artefacts in our venues has been individually made by the highly skilled people in the technical services department, based in the National Conservation Centre. They don't just buy shelves and supports from the DIY stores, they hand craft every single display stand to suit the specific needs of the object it will be supporting.

The newest member of the team, Helen Halliwell, got to see her first major project go on display today. Helen worked with senior technician Bill Sillitoe to make a display stand for the World Cultures gallery at World Museum Liverpool to show contemporary netsuke figures. The smart circular stand has brushed Perspex shelves on both side to display the tiny figures from the Jonas Goro Gadelius collection, which was kindly donated to the museum by his widow Gabita. The really clever part is that it has a removable coloured disk in the middle, so when the display is refreshed each year to show different netsuke figures, it will be easy to change from its current red to a different colour that will suit the new figures.

You can see more photos of the installation in our netsuke display set on Flickr

Those nice people at ODEON Cinemas have given us some even nicer prizes to help mark the opening of the second Night At The Museum movie - Battle of the Smithsonian. We've got tickets to your local cinema, a telescope, night vision glasses, a torch and lots of other goodies to give away.

To be in with a chance of winning these all you have to do is sign up for our email updates here. For the next few months we'll be having monthly draws for free tickets, and at the end of the promotion one name will be drawn to receive the telescope and other bits. The first draw takes place this coming Monday.

There's more information, including terms and conditions, on our main site.

The Liverpool Daily Post launched a survey yesterday asking people to vote on which Liverpool personalities should be included in the Liverpool Map.

Readers have already been involved by submitting their opinions on which places should be included in the map, and the public have recently provided examples of their handwriting for inclusion in a community layer of the map.

People now have until Sunday 31 May to visit the Daily Post website to take part in the survey to find out which people they feel best represent the city in fields including the arts, music and sport.

These names will then form the final layer of the Liverpool Map, which will stand in the People's City gallery of the new Museum of Liverpool when it opens in 2010.

For inspiration, why not visit The Beat Goes On exhibition at World Museum Liverpool to find out more about the musical acts that have made an impact on Liverpool's history.

Click here to find out more about the Liverpool Map and its unique structure and creation.

Yesterday I was able to witness a ceremony to mark the returning of Australian indigenous human remains that had been in our collections since 1948. The remains are being returned as they have strong cultural, spiritual and religious significance to Australian indigenous communities. You can see more photos of the ceremony on our Returning to Australia Flickr set.

Representatives from The Ngarrindjeri (meaning The People) had come over from Australia to perform the ceremony. Seeing them with their fantastically painted faces was a pretty amazing experience in itself. Their presence definitely caused a stir outside the World Museum, with a large crowd gathering to see what was happening! The ceremony began with Mr Major Sumner burning eucalyptus branches, which he carried around the crowd and fanned with a large feather. He then raised three boomarangs into the air and touched them to the ground while speaking in his native dialect. Using the boomerangs he also performed a dance involving hitting them together while singing.

Mr Sumner also spoke to the crowd, saying that he was thinking of his ancestors and that we should also think about ours, whose "spirits are in this land". He also said how it was fitting that he was taking the remains from this "land by the water" to his land, which was also by the water. The Ngarrindjeri is a group of 18 clans or lakinyeri who speak similar dialects and have family connections around the lower Murray River, western Fleurieu Peninsula and Coorong, South Australia.

This is the first of the remains of three individuals being returned to Australia. The remains will be kept in a keeping place at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra and will be given the culturally-appropriate care needed. Eventually they may be buried if returned to their original communities.

Swishing and searching for cool vintage clothes is very popular right now, but who would have thought that celebrated poet Roger McGough would be into recycling clothes!

Last week Roger, who is himself part of Liverpool’s musical heritage, lent the World Museum a unique item to adorn the walls of our massive music exhibition, The Beat Goes On. This unusual item is in fact a pair of trousers; but not just any trousers! They once belonged to Roger’s fellow Scaffold member Mike McCartney’s brother Paul, a member of another little-known band from Liverpool; The Beatles. (You may have heard of them, they were around a bit in the 60s.)

Roger told us how he came to be the proud owner of the trousers:

“I was friends with Mike McCartney at a time when I began teaching in local schools. It was obvious that I needed to smarten up and make an effort at work in order to set an example to the pupils, and Mike suggested I have some of his brother’s cast offs."

"I’m pleased they are going to be displayed somewhere for all to enjoy and The Beat Goes On is the perfect setting. It’s strange to think that when I used to wear them, the thought never crossed my mind that my mate’s brother’s trousers would one day be hung on the wall of a museum!”

They were also the inspiration behind a poem entitled 'To Macca’s Trousers', which is also on display alongside the trousers. The poem describes how Roger went from wearing the trousers on nights out in the 60s, to finding them packed up in a suitcase of old clothes in his attic years later. Here's the first verse for you:

You were part of a suit that Paul handed down to his brother.
High-buttoned Italian style, circa ‘Please Please Me’
The jacket fitted but you were too short in the leg
so Michael passed you on to me.
On Saturday night we went to the disco
and although we looked cool on the dance-floor
it didn’t seem right. Greater things you were meant for.
So I hung you in the wardrobe and awaited the call
‘Hello mate, can I have me trousers back? It’s Paul’

'To Macca’s Trousers' is also part of a new collection of Roger’s poetry being published this June by Penguin Books, entitled 'That Awkward Age'. The collection is a powerful testament to the miraculous in the everyday, describing one-off chance encounters, embarrassing questions and small wonders, as Roger resolves – and fails – to live every day as if it were his last. 

We hope Paul won't be asking for the trousers back too soon!

Update 15/5/2009: Please note that this object will temporarily be removed from display from 22 May until early June.

This week I got to look around the entomology lab at World Museum Liverpool, at one of the creepy crawly tours that are available to visitors during school holidays. Zoology curator, Guy Knight, took us around the lab so we could see some of the thousands of mounted specimens housed in the back of the museum.

He showed us a case full of crickets that were found in Liverpool after they hitch-hiked here on some bananas. Then there were questions from some of the eager smaller visitors on the tour – my favourite being; ‘What happens if they come back to life after you’ve killed them?’ Maybe they had been to the Ancient Egypt gallery beforehand and had learned about the afterlife! Bees were next on the agenda – we have around 10,000 bees in our collections apparently. We learned that there are 250 different kinds of bees, but wild bumblebees are getting rarer due to the countryside changing and there being less wild areas for bees to live in.

In other bug news, you can now come and see a new ‘living display’ in the bug house gallery featuring the Indian Ground Beetle (Anthia sexguttata). The beetles’ new home has been created using a special sand and cement mix, which will allow them to dig burrows to lay their eggs.  Indian Ground Beetles are a large predatory beetle, which actively hunt down their insect prey and this species has never been bred in captivity. They can also spray an acidic liquid accurately into the eyes of their enemies if they feel threatened. Unbee-lievable!

In these grim economic times and rainy days, we could do worse than remind ourselves that there is usually a light at the end of the tunnel! Forty years ago this week, John Lennon and Yoko Ono set about bringing a message of peace to the world from their bed in the Amsterdam Hilton hotel. They vowed to stay in bed for a whole week (24 - 31 March, 1969) in what they called a "bed-in for peace". It certainly drew alot of media attention to their message of peace and in particular their stance against the war in Vietnam, which can only be a good thing.  While this might not be everyone's idea of a great honeymoon, I can't think of a better place to stage a peace protest than a nice comfy bed. I took part in an anti-war demo in Manchester once and by heck it was freezing!

This wasn't their last bed-in though. A few months later on 26 May 1969, John and Yoko checked into Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel to start their next peace protest, to continue the momentum of the first one. For another week the couple, along with Ono's five-year-old daughter Kyoko, entertained guests including U.S. black civil rights advocate Dick Gregory, Quebec separatist Jacques Larue-Langlois and American cartoonist Al Capp. It was at the end of this bed-in that a historic and spontaneous performance of 'Give Peace a Chance' was recorded.

Here at the museums, we're very proud to hold a piece of this moment in history. In our collections we have an 'All You Need is Love' beadspread that was handmade by the local Montreal Hare Krishna Chapter and given to John and Yoko for the protest. 

Currently you can see the bedspread from the Montreal bed-in for peace in The Beat Goes On exhibition at World Museum Liverpool. Peace out.

 

It's Science Week so, as you'd expect, the folk in World Museum have had lots of free activities for budding scientists. Here's a pic of visitors making and painting plaster casts of fossils in the Clore Natural History Centre last weekend. If you missed that then don't worry, you can have a go this weekend.

There will also be a range of quizzes and colouring sheets and the chance to meet our resident dinosaur expert Dave Roberts who will be bringing out some specimens, including dinosaur poo. Full details are on the World Museum Liverpool events and activities page.

Introducing Ed Casson, a new addition to the press team at NML:

When strolling around Liverpool I have always been told to look up to see the city's stunning architecture and history - now I'll find it hard to resist looking down. Last week I spent the afternoon on a guided 'fossil walk' with Tony Morgan, a geologist in the Clore Natural History Centre at World Museum Liverpool.

Starting at the top of William Brown Street, Tony pointed out a marking on the pavement (to the untrained eye a mere groove) which was in fact a 320-year-old fossilised fallen tree. Across St John's Gardens were distinct clam markings from the Jurassic Era - 150-million-years-old - on the William Rathbone statue.

Possibly Liverpool's oldest rock (although there are older examples in the World Museum's Clore Department) stands at an astonishing 1.5-billion-years-old. The Rapakivi Granite, from Finland, was used to build the former Allied Irish Bank in Dale Street. On to the Abbey National and jewellers Boodles in North John Street, and snail fossils can be found in the limestone.

Even stranger, as passers-by who watched as we studied the building will testify, are the fossils on the Met Quarter shopping centre in Whitechapel. The Bavarian granite contains large fossilised molluscs and cuttlefish-related creatures (again from the Jurassic Era), more examples of which can be seen at the World Museum. Tony, a member of the Liverpool Geological Society, explained that the molluscs could have grown to as large as two metres in diameter.

He said: "There are an amazing amount of fossils in the buildings across Liverpool, you just have to know what you're looking for and keep an eye out for them."

So then fossil-hunters, as they say at the bingo - "Eyes down!"

* An in-depth feature on the fossil walk, by journalist Emma Pinch, appeared in Tuesday’s Daily Post.

The temptation to go overboard with footballing puns is almost overwhelming but I'll give it a go.

Only A Game?, the UEFA football exhibition currently at World Museum Liverpool, features lots of loaned objects including trophies, medals, shirts and football memorabilia. Over the coming weeks there are going to be more substitutions than you get in your average international friendly (well, not quite), with items going in and out of the exhibition. They are:

• Everton Collection objects, including the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup medal but excluding the Barcelona Cup - last chance to see these is 8 March 
• UEFA Cup - last day to see this is 3 March
• The following all arrive on 4 March -
  • UEFA Competition for National Representative Women’s Teams trophy (1982/84 - 1987/89)
  • UEFA European Women’s Championship trophy (1989/91- 1999/2001)
  • UEFA European Women’s Championship trophy (new trophy used from 2003/05 onwards)
  • UEFA European Under-21 Championship trophy and winners' medals

There may be other changes so if you are coming to see a specific object you might want to phone the museum or check the Only A Game? webpages to make sure it is available. Either way there is lots to see during any visit.

Calling all part time art and craft students - how would you like to have your artwork displayed in our venues during Adult Learner's Week in May 2009? You could if you win the 'Inspired by...' competition.

Entrants in this year's competition must submit a piece of artwork inspired by the collections, exhibitions or displays in either Sudley House, World Museum Liverpool or the National Conservation Centre. You may submit any art, craft, multi-media, digital work, video or animation. Participants must be over 18 and studying arts or crafts part time. Full entry criteria and downloadable application forms are on the Inspired by... web page.

We've just published a cute little pocket guide to many of the fab happenings at NML in 2008. It's good to revisit highlights like Ben Johnson's residency, the Superlambananas, the opening of Seized! and exhibitions like Art In The Age of Steam and The Beat Goes On.

You can download your copy of The Little Book of Big Highlights here (pdf 6mb).

We billed The Beat Goes on exhibition ‘from The Beatles to the Zutons’, but has anyone heard of 'from The Hollies to the Happy Mondays'? That’s what you’ll find if you take a trip to the other end of the East Lancs Road, to Salford Museum & Art Gallery. They’re currently showing Quiffs, Riffs and Tiffs – a small but perfectly formed exhibition about the music scene in Salford.

I spent a happy hour there a few weeks ago and thought there were a few gems to be seen. Top of the list for me were notes by Morrissey and Johnny Marr – with Salford Lads Club getting its rightful mention. There’s also handwritten lyrics to Crosby, Stills & Nash’s Teach Your Children, signed by one of my all time idols,  Graham Nash. There are some childhood pictures of Graham at his home in Salford, before his success with The Hollies and later with CS&N stole him from these shores.

Other items featured in the exhibition relate to Joy Division, Happy Mondays, Anthony Wilson including The Hacienda , The Ting Tings, and even The Salford Jets - former band of Rock Radio 106.1 DJ Mike Sweeney (yes, he's still going on radio, and very good he is too). 

On the other hand, if you are reading this from the outskirts of Manchester, hop on the train to World Museum Liverpool where you’ll find The Beat Goes On exhibition covering Liverpool’s finest music. Morrissey fans will be thrilled by the Billy Fury display. Old Hacienda heads will feel at home in the Cream and Quad sections, while first generation punks and indie kids will be bowled over by memories of  Eric's, The Las and other such legends. Oh, and then there’s that other band from Liverpool. You may well need more than one trip to take it all in.

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.

At the end of February, Earth will receive a visitor named Lulin. This is not an alien, but a comet that astronomers say may have never visited this corner of the solar system before and should be visible to the naked eye. Our resident expert in all things celestial, Planetarium Operator John Moran, is here to tell us how to spot it…

---

If you were to scoop up a handful of snow, shape it into a rough spherical shape and add some dirt to it, you would basically be holding in your hand the ingredients that make up a comet. These mountain-sized dirty snowballs are some of the most intriguing objects there are in space. That's why during February and beyond, millions of eyes will be eagerly looking towards the constellation Leo to try and catch a glimpse of Comet Lulin.

From roughly the 16th of the month, not only will we be able to see Comet Lulin with the naked eye but also within two degrees of it you will find the ringed planet Saturn. This should be a beautiful sight through binoculars, all you need to do is find it. Look for the constellation Ursa Major, often called The Plough, which most people are familiar with, then find the two pointers which show us the way to the Pole star. If you follow the pointers in the opposite direction of Polaris and continue until you come to the first big constellation, this will be Leo, identified by the back-to-front question mark. Look down and slightly to the left for the brightest object in this constellation, which at the moment is Saturn, and just below this will be Comet Lulin. As the days pass so the comet will start moving upwards and to the right.
 
Comets originate in a vast region of space which borders our solar system called the Oort Cloud. As they swirl around, some smash into each other and like snooker balls on a table get fired off in a different direction and this starts their long cold journey into our solar system. As they near the sun the ice starts to melt and gas and vapour start streaming out through evaporation; this is how the tail forms, which clearly identifies a comet.

Most Comets that enter our solar system get caught by the gravitational pull of the sun and end up making the same journey back into space. Eventually they come back some time in the future, like the most famous of them all; Halley's Comet, which makes this journey every 76 years. But some comets just fly straight through our system and are never seen again. Comet Lulin looks like it may well be one of these comets.

So if we are fortunate to have clear skies at the end of February, try and catch a glimpse of one of mother nature’s most remarkable phenomena.

Did we get a visit from Darwin himself today? Our Treasure House Theatre Coordinator, Jo Connor, gave us all the details to clear up the mystery...

---

You may have been forgiven for thinking you’d travelled back in time if you had been at the World Museum Liverpool atrium this morning, as you would have bumped into Mr Charles Darwin, aka Treasure House Theatre Demonstrator Paul Netterfield.

Paul was in role as the great naturalist complete with costume and beard to highlight the museum’s upcoming events to commemorate Darwin’s centenary year.

Our Mr Darwin greeted the press and visitors as they entered and pointed out his own specimen (now in our collections), an Oven Bird from the Straits of Magellan. The specimen is complete with hand written tags and is now in the Hidden Treasures Case in the museum’s atrium.

To celebrate all things Darwin this year, you will find discovery trails, performances, exhibits, poetry readings and further events at the museum. Visit our Darwin200 page for more information.

Here's the latest picture from Superfiveadaybanana's travels to local schools. Today the handling and transport team shepherded the sculpture from Brae Street School to St Michael's School in Kensington.

This is the latest move in a busy month for the team, which has involved taking plant models from World Museum Liverpool to Wrexham Museum for an exhibition and returning the huge Peter Doig painting 'Blotter' to the Walker after it had been out on loan. Closer to home, the team have also transported some delicate pieces of sculpture from our stores to the National Conservation Centre for assessment and treatment, as well as helping to install the next big exhibition at the Walker, Fashion V Sport. You can see some of what they've been up to in the Moving Stories photographs on Flickr.

I know you will be truly excited about finding out the result of our poll to find out your favourite exhibition from our venues in 2008, so I will put you out of your misery. With an admirable 52.75% of all the votes, our monster music exhibition The Beat Goes On came out on top. But don't fret if you haven't been to this exhibition yet as it is staying at the World Museum until 1 November 2009. You can also check out our listings page to find out about any events going on that are related to this exhibition.

There was an interesting profile piece in the Sunday Mail this week about England manager Fabio Capello. Reading between the lines, you get the distinct impression that football and cultural pursuits are deemed mutually exclusive - that it is somehow surprising that a man into his football should also enjoy a bit of modern art. But then Fabio Capello is Italian, and an appreciation of the arts is central to his national identity, we surmise. 

This really got me thinking. It’s difficult to accept that football and art don’t mix when you are in a city where football is art.  In Liverpool we have put football at the centre of Capital of Culture year through UEFA’s Only A Game? exhibition at World Museum Liverpool. Football is one of the city’s key assets - part of the currency, the vocabulary, the mythology, the identity - full stop. To omit it would be a nonsense. Football can create as much passion and drama, and elicit the same heightened emotions as a great piece of theatre, an imposing painting or a rousing music recital.  It brings an aesthetic quality to the sports field that requires elegance, balance and poise – infact, as a rugby league fan, I have often joked that football has more in common with ballet than rugby. Isn’t that why it’s called ‘the beautiful game’? (The introduction video for Only A Game? is worth a look - it's fun and light-hearted look at football in a European cultural context).

Capello is reported to be a big fan of Scottish painter Peter Doig, who won the Walker Art Gallery’s John Moores Painting Prize in 1993 with Blotter. Blotter is currently featured in a major solo show in Frankfurt,  but you can still see Pelican (Stag) which was loaned by the artist in exchange. The current John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize ends this Sunday 4 January, so if you share Fabio’s passion for modern art, seize the moment. If on the other hand you prefer his penchant for football, then you've got until 1 March to see Only A Game? at World Museum Liverpool.

The relationship between sport and culture will be further scrutinised in a new exhibition, Fashion Vs Sport that opens 13 February at the Walker Art Gallery. It ends its run at the V&A this Sunday.

It's new year's eve tomorrow and we've got a host of new stars to look forward to in January 2009. No, I don't mean the start of Celebrity Big Brother, I'm talking about the night sky and its numerous stars to spot over the next few weeks. Although, reading the mythological stories behind the constellations, you could be forgiven for thinking that they had come out of a celebrity gossip mag - plenty of betrayals and lost love. The Brad/Angelina/Jennifer debacle is nothing compared to this lot!

Our Planetarium Co-ordinator and resident night sky expert, John Moran, has brought us January's Nightwatch report about Orion the Hunter and Perseus the great Greek hero...

---

The true winter constellations are on show in January with the Hunter Orion dominating the mythological cast of characters. Orion was a boastful hunter who claimed he could hunt and kill any animal, but met his match with a lowly scorpion as he couldn’t penetrate its armour. Orion fled into the sea and as he was swimming away, Apollo tricked his sister Artemis, who was in love with Orion, into firing an arrow at the far away object swimming in the sea. The arrow hit its mark and when Artemis found out what she had done, she begged Zeus to place Orion among the stars for all eternity and placed the scorpion on the opposite side of the sky.

Another constellation on show this month is Perseus named after the handsome Greek hero who saved the life of Andromeda by defeating the evil sea monster Cetus. Perseus had just slain the Gorgon Medusa and was carrying her head back as a trophy, because even in death Medusa’s head was still capable of turning any creature that looked upon her into stone and this is how he defeated Cetus.

On the 4th of the month look out for the first meteor shower of 2009, the Quantadrids, which have a high rate of 60 meteors per hour. Look out also for the ringed planet Saturn, which you will find in the constellation Leo around 9pm onwards. Don’t forget that 2009 is the international year of astronomy, so there should be plenty of interesting things to do and see to keep your imagination fired over the coming year.   

Yes everyone, it's that time again! The end of the year and time to vote on which exhibition you think was the best from our venues in 2008. Cast your minds back to the dramatic shots of the city from 'Metropolis - capturing modern Liverpool', or maybe your favourite was the 'John Moores 25 Contemporary Painting Prize' exhibition with it's cutting edge contemporary paintings? Here is a selection of some of our exhibitions from 2008 for you to vote on....

If you'd like to find out about our main exhibitions for 2009, then check out the listings page for more details.

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.

Now the Egyptian gallery is open I'll be spending more time in the stores working with the reserve collection. Students and academics from universities use the collection for teaching and research.

One group of students from the University of Liverpool came in this week to study objects from the extensive Roman sculpture collection. The students are reading for masters degrees in the School of Archaeology Classics and Egyptology, which the museum has had links with for over a century.

Apart from examining Roman sculptures they also came to see the replicas we have of Aegean objects. The actual objects are in museums in Greece. Replicas are a good way of becoming familiar with key historical objects that are in foreign museums and is much more instructive than viewing them as photographs in books or behind the glass of showcases. The collection was put together by Professor Bosanquet (1871 - 1935) who taught Greek archaeology at the University of Liverpool from 1906 to 1920 and was the first holder of the Rathbone Chair of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology.

You can see more photos of the Bosanquet teaching collection on our Flickr pages.

Monday will be an exciting day on the National Museums Liverpool website with the launch of two competitions.

Five lucky sports fans and their friends could win the opportunity to do what many footballers can only dream of - that is lift the UEFA Champions League trophy, which is currently on display in the Only a Game? exhibition at World Museum Liverpool. Keep an eye on the exhibition website from 9am on Monday to find out how - but be quick as you'll only have until 12 noon on Wednesday 10 December to enter.

Monday also sees the return of the Name that Object competition, with a new clue unveiled every day next week. This month's prize is a mounted print of the popular 'Liverpool Cityscape' by Ben Johnson and a 2009 desktop calendar featuring a different detail from the painting each month.

As you will have seen from the many posts on this blog, the new Ancient Egypt gallery at the World Museum opened to the public today. Last night some visitors were invited along to the preview opening and were greeted by the Ya Raqs Dance Troupe, who performed traditional Egyptian dances in truly glamorous costumes. The red velvet number was a particular favourite of mine. 

I spoke to 'Aziza' who said she had been dancing for about three years. The dancers were from Chester and the Wirral - I had no idea that these were such exotic places!

The gallery itself has a good spooky atmosphere now that the lighting is low, in particular the 'Realm of Osiris', which has several mummies in it. I also had a go at one of the interactives and found out what my adopted Egyptian name ('Fire Spirit Goddess' in case you were wondering!) would be in hieroglypics. You can check out more photos from the opening event on our Egyptian gallery Flickr set.

Have I mentioned recently that the new Ancient Egypt gallery opens tomorrow at World Museum Liverpool? Only a few dozen times! There's a sneaky look at part of the new gallery, along with lots of other photos of the preparations over the last two years, on our Ancient Egypt gallery Flickr page.

If you come to see the new gallery over the next few days you may notice that Mandy the Superlambanana, who usually stands in the atrium at World Museum, isn't there. This is because we need lots of extra space over the opening weekend so we sent our best shepherds (also known as Richard Roberts and Andrew Mountfield from the handling and transport team) to herd her away to the safety of a side room. You can see them settling her into her temporary abode on our Moving stories Flickr page. Mandy will be back out on display from Monday.

Here's the latest photo from the installation of the new Ancient Egypt gallery at World Museum Liverpool. It shows one of the 14 coffins on display in the gallery being installed by the handling team.

This is the coffin of Padiamunnebnesuttawy, who worked in a temple as a ‘Wab-priest of Amun’. His coffin (dated from about 664-525 BC) is decorated with images of different gods and events from the Book of the Dead. At the centre of the coffin you can see an image of Anubis preparing the mummy for the Afterlife.

The new gallery was reviewed on the Night Waves programme on BBC Radio 3 yesterday by Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology Magazine. If you missed the programme it's available on the BBC website for one week in their How to make a good Egyptian gallery feature.

Many people will be going to the new Ancient Egypt gallery when it opens on Friday to see the incredible Egyptian artefacts from our collections, many of which haven't been on display for decades. But have you ever looked underneath and behind these priceless objects at the display stands and mounts that are supporting them? It may surprise you to know that these have all been specially custom made by the highly skilled technicians in our technical services studio at the National Conservation Centre.

I popped into the studio earlier this week to see Bill Sillitoe and David Whitty busy preparing the last few display stands for the Ancient Egypt gallery. They produce everything pretty much from scratch, cutting and bending sheets of Perspex to create stands and soldering together the wires to make supports for some of the objects. You can see more photos of them at work in our Making display mounts for the Ancient Egypt gallery Flickr page and I hope that you go to the gallery to admire their handiwork from Friday.

Sunday is a special day. Yes, I know it is the last day of November, and that many of us will be counting down to Christmas from Monday – but it is also the very last day of voting for the very last The Beat Goes On Top Ten.   

The digital jukebox is now full – packed to its limit with fantastic, home-grown tunes for your listening pleasure – and so we won’t be having any more Top Tens for the moment. But at least you can escape the Slade, Roy Wood and the like – not to mention the controversial X-Factor cover of Hallelujah that’s about to be inflicted on us - and come down to the museum for some proper music. Infact, I suggest you suspend all X-Factor related activities and vote for The Beat Goes On instead!

There’s just one more tune to be added. Who will it be? You decide:

 

Aeris Presley 

Emma Jane’s Monkey Mind 

Puzzle 

Little Miss Strange

Rude Ruby

15 Storeys

The Sums

BeakerFolk of The Bronze Age

Polaris

Great North Western Hoboes 

Hello there.

Well for those of you who are regular followers of my blog (surely double figures?) then you will know I have a penchant for the beautiful game. We were fortunate enough to be visited last week by the great French defender and World Cup winner Lilian Thuram who was in Liverpool as a patron of the Only a Game? exhibition at World Museum Liverpool.

Lilian is now retried from football but he is looking to start an origanisation which tackles issues such as racism and discrimination in Europe. As a result he wanted to come to the International Slavery Museum to look at some of exhibits which focus on this subject as well as talk about the possibility of some sort of collaboration. Lilian was particularly impressed with our Black Achievers Wall. A message he thinks is important to get across to children of African descent across Europe. 

Some of my colleagues had a good laugh at the attached picture. I have to admit myself it is not difficult to spot the famous footballer and the museum professional. Maybe if I had not smiled quite as much and looked all excited it would have been harder to choose! Sad as it might seem, after the tour and our official discussions, I could not resist asking him to come out of retirement to play a few games for my own team (Leeds United for those who don’t already know). He smiled and asked what league we were now in? He genuinely looked surprised when I told him it was the third tier of the English league. Well, if you don’t ask you don’t get as they say.

I also recently gave a talk to the Merseyside Archaeological Society one evening. I knew the organiser from my days as a PhD student at the University of Liverpool so it was good to catch up. It was held in the Friends Meeting House in Liverpool. This is particularly interesting because of the relationship between Quakers and the abolition movement. Now by no means were all Quakers always against slavery, many owned slaves themselves in the 17th and 18th centuries in particular. That said, when the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed in 1787 with William Wilberforce as its parliamentary spokesperson, several of the founding members were in fact Quakers.

I am also very excited at the prospect of flying to Atlanta, Georgia, later this week, to attend the launch of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database at Emory University. I have been invited to be a panel member which will discuss some of the ways the database can be used. The database has information about almost 35,000 slave voyages and will be an essential tool for research in my opinion. Whilst there I hope to be able to visit a number of institutions and historic sites connected to Martin Luther King Jr, who was born in Atlanta. In particular the King Center and his birthplace.

I will update you on my return.
 
Bye for now.

It's Friday so the handling and transport team decided to go fishing. Not in the Mersey though, they fished through the museum stores to find this giant turtle which needed to be taken to the taxidermy department at the National Conservation Centre for restoration.

They finished the week, which has included transporting everything from a Superlambanana to some ancient Egyptian artefacts, by helping taxidermmist James Jackson to install some scenic material on the Chirotherium display at World Museum Liverpool. You can see some of the highlights of their week on our Moving stories Flickr photo page.

Anyone who has ever carefully wrapped their best china in newspaper before moving house will appreciate what a tricky challenge the handling and transport team faced this week. They had to collect this incredibly delicate 5000 year old Egyptian pot from North Devon and transport it to World Museum Liverpool - a distance of 267 miles.

The good news is that drivers Paul Kelly and Andrew Mountfield delivered it safely, so visitors will be able to see it on display when the new Ancient Egypt gallery opens on 5 December.  You can see their photos of the trip - including a shot of the stunning scenery they saw along the way - in our Egyptian gallery Flickr photo page.

Curators can find themselves doing all sorts of unusual things in the name of duty. However Tony Parker, assistant curator of zoology, never expected to be signing the transfer papers for Peter Beardsley.

The Peter Beardsley in question was not the famous footballer though but a mounted specimen of a duck. Peter the duck is thought to be a cross between a Pekin and an Aylesbury duck. He was once the beloved pet of local lady, and was named after Peter the footballer's spell at Everton. Unfortunately it was never discovered whether he would live up to his namesake's skills on the football pitch, as he was tackled and killed by a dog (presumably not an Everton supporter) when he was 8 months old.

Peter's owner had him mounted in a display case after his death 16 years ago. She recently donated him to World Museum Liverpool, as she wont be able to take him with her when she moves house. Although she'll miss him, she decided that he would be in good company with the other mounted bird specimens in the museum's collections. Peter is currently on the reserve bench in the museum's stores but is available for researchers and study groups.

I found myself, for a few fleeting seconds, feeling quite intellectual during my last trip to the cinema. This was quite an achievement considering I had gone to see a romantic comedy about a dentist called Bertram who gains the ability to communicate with ghosts after a near death experience during a colonoscopy. I know - but it was good!

I was watching Ricky Gervais' new film, 'Ghost Town', while munching on some Revels (by the way, I'm not loving the new 'mystery sweet', I won't spoil it for you by saying what it is, but I say bring back the coffee one). In the film, Gervais' love interest is an Egyptologist and they bond over a fascination with the dental hygiene of a mummy (of course!)

They were discussing the mummy's internal organs and it was at this point in the film that I threw down my Revels and sat up excitedly, prodding my friend, as I realised I knew an Egyptian fact! I had been reading about some of the collection items from our new Egypt gallery and so I was able to say; “Look, look, those are canopic jars!”

My bewildered companion nodded and was not as impressed as I'd hoped, but I was quite pleased with myself anyway. There on the screen were indeed some canopic jars, very similar to the ones that will be on display here. These jars were used to store a mummy's organs, before being placed inside a canopic chest and buried in the tomb with the mummy. So if you go to see the film, you too can try to impress your friends with this cool Egyptian factoid. Enjoy!

You can read more about the new Egypt gallery, opening on Friday 5 December 2008 at World Museum Liverpool, on our museum developments page.

Here's some great news from the v-involved youth volunteering project at National Museums Liverpool. Our first participant has been awarded the v50 Award certificate, after contributing 50 hours of her time as a volunteer. I'll let her tell you all about it:

---

"Hello. My name is Christine, I’m 24 and I’ve been volunteering here at World Museum Liverpool since 5th June. I have recently achieved my 50 hour target for which I received a v50 Award certificate for my contribution to the museum.

I’ve been helping out on the information desk and making sure leaflets are available for everyone. I occasionally work in the learning office doing bits of admin.

I really enjoy working at the museum, particularly on the information desk as I like giving tickets out to the public.

I am proud that I am the first vinvolved youth volunteer to reach over 50 hours and I feel that it has been time well spent as I have gained more confidence and feel it’s a worthwhile experience to be a volunteer."

We are only weeks away from the opening of the newly refurbished Egypt gallery at World Museum Liverpool, on 5 December 2008. Conservators at the National Conservation Centre have been working hard for months to prepare the objects for display, such as this funerary shroud and - of course - some Egyptian mummies. Now that the artefacts are ready for installation the handling team have been carefully transporting them over to the museum.

Handling technician and senior driver Paul Kelly has sent this update and photo - and you can see more of his photos of the move, as well as others of the objects being prepared for display, on our Egyptian gallery Flickr page.

---

"This week the handling team drivers Andrew Mountfield and myself have been involved in moving some seriously ancient and delicate Egyptian artefacts from the National Conservation Centre to World Museum Liverpool.

Naturally before such artefacts are moved consultation with the curators is absolutely essential. The advice and recommendations of our curators is a must to enable the safe transportation of these rare and nationally important objects. Some artefacts are quite large, heavy and delicate so need the utmost care when handling.

Our thanks for their knowledge and assistance ultimately go to our curators, conservators and project team members Tracey Seddon, Graham Usher, Richard Roberts, Barbara Rowan, Ashley Cook, Helen Thomson, Pete Spinks. Without their help and their team's assistance we as drivers could not possibly do our job to the standards required to move these artefacts safely.

I am happy to report that the artefacts shown are now safely transported and awaiting installation in show cases at World Museum Liverpool."

Visitors to World Museum Liverpool over the last couple of days will have noticed a distinctly Irish flavour to the events. Our very own leprechaun from the learning department, Ann-marie McGaughey, explains what was going on:

---

 "This weekend World Museum Liverpool played host to the Liverpool Irish Festival. The festival takes place every year and celebrates the special connection between Liverpool and Ireland. This year the festival runs from 17 October – 2 November.

This year, we had a number of events including drama workshops, singing workshops and traditional storytelling, using the tale of The Children of Lir. George Ferguson School of Irish Dance returned for a second year running and treated us to a fabulous display of Irish dancing, before getting us all up to join in with the Ceili!

This weekend we also learned about a very special lady called Kitty Wilkinson, who was brought vividly to life by a roleplayer. Kitty was born in Derry, Ireland and came over to Liverpool in the late 1700s when she was still a child. Kitty settled in Liverpool in later life and lived here around the time of the cholera epidemic of 1832. At this time a lot of people in Liverpool were living in poor squalid conditions, with a lot of overcrowding in houses. Kitty was fortunate enough to live in a house with a hot water boiler (the only one in her street at the time) and she worked out that if people boil-washed their clothes and bed linen, they would be less likely to catch cholera, as the disease could not spread so easily. She invited families in the street to use her boiler to wash their clothes and as word spread, she eventually ended up with 80 families using her boiler! She began to charge families a penny to use the boiler and was able to set up the first public wash house in Liverpool. Kitty’s work played a massive role in stemming the cholera epidemic in Liverpool at the time and she is commemorated with a stained glass window in the lady chapel of the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool."

They might look like wild creatures but these dinosaurs seemed happy to oblige and form an orderly queue for the cloakroom!

This is a scene from World Museum Liverpool earlier today, when a delivery had arrived for the shop.

Just got hold of the video that greets visitors to the Only A Game? exhibition. There's a slightly larger version on the main site as well.

Only A Game? from National Museums Liverpool on Vimeo.

Think this is the lamest title we've ever used for a blog post, but in true alliterative tradition I've gone with it anyway. Saw two unrelated but interesting bits today:

1. The Incoming Passenger Lists for 1878 - 1960 are now available on www.ancestry.co.uk. The records of around 16 million immigrants, business travellers, tourists and returning ex-pats and their descendants are available for you to peruse. This is good news for those of you researching your family tree as you can search by port of arrival, name of vessel, shipping line, port of embarkation and date of arrival. And as well as passenger names, you can discover historical information such as the date of birth, occupation and, from 1922 onwards, intended UK address of each passenger. 

2. The boston.com website has some fabulous photos of Sun activity including close-ups of magnetic structures, a sunspot, an erupting solar filament and a solar eclipse. Fascinating and beautiful and well worth a look.

Despite being an Evertonian through and through, last week was quite a week for me in terms football encounters of the red variety.

First we had ex-captain and coach of Liverpool FC Phil Thompson attending the press launch of our new UEFA exhibition Only a Game? at World Museum Liverpool, and then I was lucky enough to meet some other famous LFC faces for a completely unrelated project.

This month’s national Big Draw campaign is aimed at getting people across the country to uncover their artistic abilities through a variety of creative projects, and in its 2008 Capital of Culture year Liverpool is having its Biggest EVER Draw.

Teaming up with a number of cultural centres around the city, NML has put on a programme of events which included a return visit to the Walker Art Gallery from Liverpool Cityscape artist Ben Johnson at the weekend.

Ben has worked with NML to encourage people to take part in an exciting project to recreate his Liverpool Cityscape as The People’s Panorama; dividing it into 400 squares and inviting Liverpool’s people - including Liverpool Manager Rafa Benitez! - to each draw a square…

So, in the name of art I swallowed my blue-pride and accompanied Ben Johnson on a trip to Liverpool FC’s Melwood training ground last week to get Mr Benitez to draw his square. Stepping into his office I couldn’t have gone any further into the heart of the ‘enemy’ if I’d tried, and the disloyalty to my team felt almost too much to bear. This feeling quickly vanished however on ‘bumping into’ Sammy Lee and the legend that is Kenny Dalglish as they left Rafa’s office. So, feeling quite overwhelmed, I resolved to enjoy the encounter…and help complete the mission to get Rafa to draw his little piece of Liverpool!

Rafa’s artwork can now be seen in the Liverpool Cityscape gallery at the Walker, alongside that of the Lord Mayor’s and 398 other people of Liverpool!

If you have you ever wondered what the North West was like millions of years ago then get yourself down to 'From coal to carnations', the new exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, which runs until 30 November 2008.

The exhibition tells the story of plant evolution starting more than 500 million years ago, when the local area was positioned on the equator on a dense forest-covered plain. The displays include fossilised evidence of the ancient plants that thrived in this environment, including material from a recently discovered fossil forest near Wrexham.

A number of items from National Museums Liverpool's Science collection are on loan to the exhibition, including seven Brendel plant models from the Botany department which are shown in this photo. The Geology department have also loaned nine fossil plant specimens, the oldest of which is around 370 million years old, and a replica of an ancient Argentine arthropod called Megarachne, that lived in forests during the Carboniferous age.

A photo from yesterday's Only A Game? launch. From left to right we have ex-Liverpool player, Phil Thompson, the UEFA Champions' League Trophy, Chairman of National Museums Liverpool, Phil Redmond, and Vice President of UEFA, Senes Erzik.

Yesterday saw the official launch of our UEFA exhibition - Only A Game? at World Museum Liverpool. Focusing on the pride, passion, cups and culture of European football it's bound to be a hit in such a footie mad city. Ex-Liverpool player, Phil Thompson, was there to do the honours.

Only A Game isn't all Everton and Liverpool, although there's plenty from both clubs. There's lots for every fan of the game including all four European trophies (shown here) which are rarely displayed together. They're not all on show for the duration of the exhibition (dates are here) so if you want to see all four you'd best get down to the exhibition pretty soon. It opens to the public this Saturday (11th).

Here's an update from curator of Egyptology Ashley Cooke about the work on the new Ancient Egypt gallery which opens at World Museum later this year:

---

"Last week a team of forensic Egyptologists from the KNH Centre for Biomedical and

Forensic Egyptology at the University of Manchester came to visit two mummies in our collection. The one you can see in the photograph will soon be displayed in the new Ancient Egypt gallery that opens on 5th December. It is the mummy of a young adult woman of the Roman Period (probably about AD 100 - 400) but actually quite little is known about this type of mummy and this is why the team from Manchester came to visit us. Painted bandages carefully reproduce the shape of her body and her feet have been wrapped to appear as if she is wearing sandals. Across the chest of the mummy a plant fibre framework supports gilded amulets to protect the dead person in the Afterlife. Unlike other Egyptian mummies the top of the skull is left uncovered and her hair is still preserved in places. The other mummy the team looked at shares similar characteristics.
 
The mummies were donated to the museum in 1867 by the goldsmith and antiquarian Joseph Mayer. He purchased the mummy from the collection of Joseph Sams (1784-1860) who visited Egypt in 1832-3 and brought back an important collection of antiquities, much of which is now in World Museum, Liverpool and the British Museum. The mummies belong to a group of eight that all share distinctive characteristics and may indeed all be related. The mummies are divided between 5 museums: 2 in Liverpool, 3 in Leiden, 1 in London (British Museum), 1 in Rio de Janerio and 1 in Avignon. Over the next few years we are looking forward to learning more about these remarkable mummies that are quite unlike others in our collection."

A few weeks I introduced the Philadelphia ornithologists Nate Rice and Robert Driver, who came to World Museum Liverpool to skin and preserve bird specimens both for our collection and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

During a busy few weeks in Liverpool they completed an incredible 150 specimens, all of which were salvage birds kept in frozen storage. Salvage birds are local birds that members of the public have donated to the museum after finding them dead. We had an excess of common local breeds in storage, which were not represented in the Academy of Natural Science's collection. So in return for being given the surplus salvage birds that we didn't need for our collections, Nate and Robert prepared 19 specimens for the World Museum collections.

There are too many bird skins to put into one small blog post, but you can see more in our Flickr slideshow of the Philadelphia ornithologists, including early photos of some of the first bird skins that they worked on pinned out to dry. There are also photos of Nate and Robert on their last day in Liverpool with all of the specimens that they prepared.

Nate would like to collect more European bird specimens, particularly species that were not available this time, and is hoping to return to Liverpool in a year or two. So if you find a bird then World Museum Liverpool would like to hear from you. Please don't bring any in without contacting the museum first. You can email Clem Fisher or Tony Parker in the zoology department to find out if the bird you have found would be of interest and to make arrangements.

Further to my earlier Mandy Mandala Superlambanana post, I've now been told that Mandy is such a superstar that she even has her own website! You can check out pics showing how she was made and read more about the artist that created her...

A strange beast has found its way into the the World Museum - luckily she seems to be quite docile and friendly! Mandy Mandala Superlambanana has now settled into her new home in the atrium of the museum and has been greeting visitors since last week.

Decorated in a colourful mosaic style, she was designed by artist Patricia Lee for Arts In Regeneration, in association with the communities of Granby, Dingle and Toxteth in Liverpool 8. You may have seen her on show at the bottom of Princes Road, Toxteth, earlier this year before she was bought at the Superlambanana auction and donated to National Museums Liverpool this month.

I'm off to Mandy Moos Milkshake Bar in Grand Central to have an Oreo flavoured milkshake to celebrate.

Here's an update on the refurbishment of one of Wold Museum's most popular galleries from antiquities curator Carolyn Routledge:

---

"In putting together the new ancient Egypt gallery at World Museum Liverpool we are introducing many new objects, but also bringing back some old friends. One favourite from the old Egypt gallery was a statue base that once held a statue of the famous pharaoh, Ramses II. 

The base was on open display and, for over 30 years, thousands of hands have traced the king's names and the pictures of prisoners carved on its sides. All this touching left the statue base very dirty. In order to show it to its best in the new gallery, our conservators have cleaned it and now the beautiful travertine stone can be seen by all.

The Ramses II statue base will be back on display when the Egypy gallery opens on 5 December this year."

Another month, another competition and another prize in our 'name that object' competition. Actually, it's the same prize as last month - a set of Beatles figures - but as so many people entered last time we figured they were popular and are offering another set this month. First clue appears on Monday morning (22nd). If you're keen to get your mitts on the figures you might want to visit the John Moores exhibition that starts this weekend and have a wander around the rest of the gallery while you are there...

About 18 months ago John Edmondson used this blog to appeal for living descendents of William Roscoe to get in touch. Plenty of people did contact him and some met up (see John's follow up below). If you'd like to contact John about this project use this contact form.

---

To mark the publication of Jyll Bradley's book "Mr Roscoe's Garden" on the history of Liverpool's botanic gardens, and the launch of her photographic exhibition "The Botanic Garden" at the Walker Art Gallery, a reunion of William Roscoe's relatives took place on 17 September 2008. Eight descendents of the Roscoe family (the youngest only twelve days old) met at World Museum Liverpool for a chance to inspect Roscoe's cultivated plant collections from the original Liverpool Botanic Garden, after which they visited the City Library where Janet Graham, special collections librarian, showed them some of his botanical drawings in the Oak Room. The visit concluded with lunch at the Athenaeum, founded by William Roscoe in 1797.
 
Plans were discussed for a more extensive reunion of Roscoe family members in 2010, by which time we hope that the contacts established today will have led to a 'joining up' of the various family trees. One family has traced its ancestors back to William Roscoe's grandparents and beyond, to the delight of others who had been unable to progress beyond his father. We look forward to hearing from other Roscoe relatives so that we can update them with these plans.

The Zoology department at World Museum Liverpool is currently taking part in an important international collaboration with the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia that will enhance the collections of both institutions.

The Academy of Natural Sciences has a huge ornithology collection of more than 200,000 specimens, which they add to every year. This usually involves a field trip to a pristine location such as remote parts of Australia or Africa, where they collect specimens as an important record to benchmark environmental conditions before the impact of human disturbance.

This year however Nate Rice, the Collections Manager of Ornithology at the Academy in Philadelphia and Robert Driver, a student and acting curatorial assistant, have travelled to the exotic location of Liverpool. They are here to improve their collection of European birds, which are currently under-represented in the Philadelphia collections. World Museum Liverpool on the other hand has a lot of salvage birds in frozen storage. These are local birds that were killed by pets or found dead after flying into windows or other accidents, which members of the public have donated to the museum. The birds have been stored in freezers until they were needed. However, over time a surplus of birds has built up and staff in Liverpool have not had time to treat and preserve the specimens.

Nate and Robert are spending 3 weeks at World Museum skinning and preserving our bird specimens. This involves taking tissue samples, then removing the internal organs and bones and replacing them with cotton, then drying the skins. They will take most back to Philadelphia but in return for these specimens 10% of the skins they prepare will stay here for World Museum Liverpool's collections, including any significant local items.

Researchers around the world use specimens such as these for the study of evolutionary biology and local ecologies. Important information about environmental conditions can be gained from the feathers and tissue samples of the birds. Nate was keen to point out that the Philadelphia collections, like those at World Museum Liverpool, are seen as belonging to the world of science and are readily available for research purposes internationally.

Nate and Robert have been joined at World Museum for a couple of days by Henry McGhie, the Head of Natural History at Manchester Museum, who is taking the opportunity to hone his skinning skills by working alongside them. Curators in American museums routinely take part in field skinning so have a lot of expertise in this area, whereas UK curators usually rely on taxidermists to preserve specimens. Nate has been happy to work with UK curators in this way, as he has often used our expertise in other areas. For example, Clem Fisher, Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at World Museum Liverpool, is a Research Associate at the Academy in Philadelphia and has visited several times since 1993 to work on their historical collections, which complement our own.

I had an email from fellow Wiganer and author of ‘Pies and Prejudice’ Stuart Maconie today. (You won’t hear me utter the ‘W’ word very often being a Saints fan, and incase you were wondering Saints and Wigan drew last week. But I digress).

Actually, it was really from England’s Northwest announcing a new set of short stories penned by the Radio 2 presenter. Each tale highlights some of the fantastic things you can do in the North West. Now I am a bit of a fan of Mr Maconie on account of his excellent musical knowledge and the fact that he always turns up at local events and supports grass roots events. I like that. So I have signed up online for a free copy (yes – FREE copy) of his short stories which will go to print early next year.

One of the stories is entitled ‘Liverpool Museums’ and we don’t feature as much as you'd expect – but he does give the Lady Lever Art Gallery and the Walker Art Gallery a mention, so I’ll let him off. Infact, what he actually says is, “Liverpool has galleries the way some cities have roadworks and the Walker is the Bill Shankly and daddy of them all”. High praise (but I hope it doesn’t put the Evertonians off).

Slightly less satisfying is the fact that The Beat Goes On exhibition is overlooked in the 'Liverpool Music' story. He does talk about Eric’s and The Beatles  though – and given Liverpool’s musical pedigree I expect it is quite difficult to squeeze it all in.

Stuart, if you are out there then come and see the exhibition because you would absolutely love it, from Billy Fury’s guitar to The Zutons’ video props, but especially all the Eric’s stuff. I’ll stand you a pie and a pint if you make it.

While I’m here I’d also like to extend that offer to Mr Charley Boorman who metaphorically sprinted through Liverpool on his latest adventure, 'By Any Means'. I have been following Charley for many a year, in the motorbike series 'Long Way Round' and 'Long Way Down' with Ewan McGregor, as well as the brilliant 'Race to Dakar'. So I was absolutely gutted when he jumped off the ferry in Liverpool, hailed a black cab and legged it onto the train at Lime Street without seeing anything at all. To add insult to injury he went on to sleep overnight at the Transport Museum in Coventry where one of his Long Way bikes resides. And he didn't even say hello!

Note to Charley - all is forgiven - but you definately should’ve used the Wacker Quacker if you were looking for different types of transport.

I’m determined to get to Manchester Art Gallery to see Green Drops and Moonsquirters: The Utterly Imaginative World of Lauren Child before it ends. Lauren Child is the author of the wonderful Charlie and Lola series. The trouble is, everytime I try and get there, there’s just too much happening in Liverpool and I end up spending the weekend at visiting one of our venues.

Take this weekend for example. It’s the BA Festival of Science. Now science isn't really my bag – but the festival isn't what you think. At World Museum Liverpool on Saturday, for instance, we’ve got some opening events with Adam Hart-Davis. (I know him best from TV’s 'What The Tudors Did For Us' series). These include firing rockets, digging for fossils, creating your own big bang and lots of other stuff happening. 

Something else that took my eye was 'The Search For Extraterrestrial Life' lecture at the University of Liverpool which is being hosted by leading experts in astrobiology Professors Monica Grady, Barrie Jones and John Zarnecki. Any budding Mulder and Scullys out there? And I also stumbled across the Magical Memory Tour  which is supported by The Beatles Story (amongst others). This scientific study about memory is based on people’s reflections and experiences of the Beatles and Beatle-linked events. You can add your own thoughts on the website and the findings are to be revealed during the festival.

If you are of a nervous disposition you may not want to venture into town at all this weekend with La Princesse on the move courtesy of Sultan’s Elephants’ spectacular Company La Machine . (Listening to The Cure on iTunes is really not helping at this time). And if a giant mechanical spider isn’t enough to scare you silly can always bob into the Bug House to see if the short fat hairy ones do the trick.

Hmmm – perhaps I’ll get off my tuffet and go to Manchester. As Lola would say, "I'm just not keen on spiders". I’d rather meet Soren Lorenson.

If you didn't have access to a computer over the weekend you mightn't have seen the answer to August's 'name that object' competition. The answer was 'The Annunciation' by Edward Coley Burne-Jones, and the winner was C Sharp of Liverpool. Another competition and another prize next month.

Ashley Cooke on the mummies in the new Ancient Egypt gallery.

---

The museum has about 60 animal mummies of various kinds, from crocodiles to dogs. In the new Ancient Egypt gallery there will be eight animal mummies on display in a showcase dedicated to animals. One of the mummies appears to be that of a very young lamb (museum accession number M13648). It was given as a gift to the museum in 1867 by the jeweller and antiquarian, Joseph Mayer. The intricate pattern of the bandages suggests it is of the Roman period (about 30 BC - AD 200). The National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden has 3 similar mummies that have been X-rayed and proven to contain the bones of very young lambs. We decided to X-ray our mummy to confirm the identification and the mummy's association with the god Khnumn, who is often depicted with a ram's head. We used the digital X-ray machine within the Reveal exhibition gallery at National Conservation Centre. We are now examining the results with the assistance of other colleagues.
 
But why was this little lamb killed and mummified? From the 26th Dynasty and on into the Roman Period (about 664 BC - AD 395) animals would be mummified en masse at cult centres for gods that were associated with animals. One such site was the temple at Bubastis which was sacred to the goddess Bastet. Bastet was often depicted in the form of a cat and pilgrims would purchase mummified cats so that they could make a votive offering (a gift) to the goddess.
 
Hundreds of thousands of cat mummies have been found in catacombs in Egypt. In 1890 about 9 tons of cat mummies from a catacomb at the cemetery of Beni Hasan were shipped into the port of Liverpool. They were sold off by the ton to be used as fertilizer. Bidding started at £3 per ton and gradually advanced to £5 17s 6. Thankfully this no longer happens!  If you'd like to learn more about animal mummies and how you could help care for the largest collection of animals mummies in the world visit the Egyptian Museum's 'Animal Mummies' website.

Here's a photo of a slightly surreal scene on William Brown Street today. In what looked like the world's largest game of marbles, these enormous inflatable balls were rolled down the World Museum Liverpool steps. Apparently this wasn't a re-enactment of the cult TV series The Prisoner or a new Olympic sport - it was all in aid of a bingo advert.

We're cutting it a bit fine with the August 'name that object' competition, but are launching it on Tuesday 26th August (so the final clue will be on Saturday 30th). The prize this month is this fab but vaguely surreal set of Beatles figures. I say surreal because, as you may have noticed, there's a crocodile on stage with them.  The figures are 'straight from the classic Beatles cartoon series' that launched in the US in 1965, and apparently the croc featured in the series. The mind boggles.

Anyhoo, should you wish to give the Fab Four and their crocodilian friend a home you first need to name the object from our collection. It's an artwork, with a new detail being revealed each day for five days. Enter using the link on the competition page.

Should you fail to win I'm reliably informed that you can buy these sets in the World Museum Liverpool giftshop where they are on sale as part of the The Beat Goes On exhibition.

For anyone spending time with the Tibetan community here in Boudhanath it is impossible to ignore the ‘Tibet Question’. Around the stupa storeowners sell t-shirts emblazoned with the Tibetan flag (which is banned in China) and the slogans ‘Save Tibet’ or ‘Free Tibet’. Although Tibetans regularly protest against the Olympic Games and Chinese rule in Tibet, freedom of speech here is not unconditional. The Nepal government has banned performances of Tibetan dance and opera and institutes, monasteries and schools have been warned against participating in protests or speaking out against the Chinese government, as this could result in the closing or removal of the organisations.

So with this in mind, I will just make a few observations regarding the Tibetan community’s efforts in the run up to, and during, the Olympics. The first thing to note is that the majority of protests, here in Kathmandu, go unreported, even in the Nepalese press. For the past week, protest, vigils or silent gatherings have been happening every day. The routine is the same, protestors arrive at the Chinese Embassy, in Kathmandu, protests are made, the police control the protestors, sometimes with beatings and nearly always with arrests, protestors (on average between 100 and 300 a day) are arrested, put in jail for the night, released, and then wait for the next day’s rendezvous point to be arranged.

The second thing to note is that the protestors come from every part of the Tibetan community. The protestors aren’t just nuns, monks and students, but young mothers, housewives and shopkeepers. Everyone wants to play a part in keeping Tibet in the World’s thoughts.

On August 8^th major protests took place across Kathmandu with over 1,400 arrests being made. Tibetan shopkeepers closed their stores in protest against the Olympics, some for several days. This is not an empty gesture, with food and fuel shortages in Nepal affecting everyone; this is a major sacrifice and will have a big effect on the incomes of many Tibetan families, especially in Boudhanath.

On my last full day in Nepal - the 14th August - there was another major protest and again young and old gathered in their thousands to remind everyone of the Tibetan cause. Tibetan shops here is Boudhanath closed as people made their way to the Chinese Embassy.

They’re not small, or fluffy, but they have certainly proved to be cute and cuddly.

The Superlambananas, which have taken the city by storm in Culture Capital year, are now approaching their final week on display and I will be sad to see them go.

Here at National Museums Liverpool, we have been watching visitors engage with our own Superlambananas – located at World Museum Liverpool, The Walker Art Gallery, The National Conservation Centre, and the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight. These colourful creatures have been receiving a lot of hugs and will no doubt feature in hundreds of photograph albums and holiday snaps.

If you haven’t been to see our flock, remember they will be going away on August 25 – so we’ll see you soon!

This week has been a particular special one for the Tibetans living here in Boudhanath.The weekend saw two very good days for gaining extra merit. It had been calculated that on Friday and Sunday just one good deed on these days would be worth 10 thousand, or on Sunday, 10 million good deeds! To take just one round of the stupa, give money to the needy or to just be nice to the people you know would be a very auspicious or fortunate thing to do.

Then on Monday, Chökyi Nyima, the head Rinpoche or teacher of the Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling Monastery, known locally as the White Gompa, (this is the monastery I go to school in) came home. The monks lined the path to the monastery and offered Rinpoche 'khata', the white silk scarf that is such an important part of Tibetan culture. Rinpoche blessed each scarf then placed them over the monks' shoulders. It took him some time to bless each khata offered, but finally he made it to his room - we knew this because his pet dogs barked happily a few moments after he climbed the stairs.

The following day the Rinpoche's first puja since his return took place. This puja also coincided with the date that the Buddha of this era descended from Tushita Heaven to live as the human Siddhartha Gautama. Pujas were held all across Boudhanath, and trumpets, conch shells and chanting could be heard throughout the night.

Of course, the Tibetan community here in Boudhanath is being kept busy with other non Buddhist matters this week. Today the Olympic Games opens in China and this week has seen an increase in the protests and vigils happening across the city.

This morning I saw an article on the BBC site on the megalodon - a giant prehistoric shark - and the strength of its bite. It seems its jaws exerted something between 10.8 and 18.2 tonnes of pressure as it bit down which is pretty impressive for an animal that had a cartilege jaw.

It reminded me of a quiz we did a good few years ago now where a fossilised megalodon tooth was one of our exhibits (the quiz is here if you want a go, or just skip to the megalodon bit and see the tooth). It was pretty awesome handling that tooth.

Something that did strike a chord in the article was the bit about your average house cat. Apparently pound for pound the cat has the stronger bite, which if you've ever tried to push a pill down your cat's throat you'll know full well.

I’m afraid it’s that time of the month when we prepare to say goodbye to another The Beat Goes On top ten. So if you haven’t already voted for your favourite track now would be a good time. It’s been another fantastic competition and I’ll be really sad to see the tracks come down.

We’ve been weeping into our pillows with Ellewood and Letters In Red … rocking out with Major Major, The Crew and The Extroverts … chilling with Minion TV, Sensorites and FoE … and singing our hearts out to The Lapis and The Affection. Ah, such sweet memories.

We’ve had almost 4900 votes so far this month with Ellewood and The Crew seriously going for it - but the race is by no means over, so vote now! The poll will close at 11.59pm on 31st July.

Don’t forget you can already listen to June’s winner, Jessica’s Ghost, on the digital jukebox in The Beat Goes On exhibition at World Museum Liverpool.

Last weekend marked the half way point of my time here in Kathmandu, Nepal. Not only was it my birthday, but it was also the school's mid-term break.

A group of us took a trip to a resort 12km from the Tibetan border, to blow away a few cobwebs and try to forget about Tibetan verbs for a few days. The drive was arduous, taking over 5 hours along roads that only just clung to the mountainsides. As we got closer to the border there were more and more landslides, many of which would have been completely blocking the road only a few hours before we arrived. We gave our driver several rounds of applause as he got us over yet another slide.

But once there we realised it was well worth it. The resort was made up of several tents covered with thatched roofs to protect us from the monsoon rains, and a fantastic view of a swollen river, perfect for white water rafting. While I'd just come to while away a few days reading and sighing at the incredible green mountains that surrounded us, others in the group walked the 12kms to catch a glimpse of the Tibet border. Alas security was pretty tight and the 'Friendship Bridge' between Nepal and Tibet was off limits.

Monday was our last day at the resort and a number of brave souls from my class decided to throw themselves off a bridge 160m above a monsoon-flooded river to try out Asia's highest bungee jump. Not for me I was content just to take the pictures!

So, after a few very relaxing days, I'm now back to school. I seem to have forgotten everything I learnt before the holiday, so working hard to memorize what seems to be an endless list of verbs and nouns.

When Liverpool’s music heritage is mentioned, you immediately think of The Beatles, or maybe Gerry Marsden; but there is so much to discover about the history of Merseyside’s melody makers at The Beat Goes On.

I popped in for an hour and found visitors spanning three (and sometimes four) generations remembering their past and enjoying the present, with some even aspiring to be part of Liverpool’s musical future, trying their hand and their voices in the singing booth.

There is something for all tastes, from tableaux on Fifties chart-topper Lita Roza and high-kicking Frankie Vaughan, to The Real Thing and The Zutons, while the kids seem to get a real kick out of dressing up in rock star costumes with toy guitars.

Posters, press cuttings and archive photos add authenticity, as do the good old 45 ‘singles’. I marvelled at the Parlophone and Apple labels which I recall from playing my mother’s records when I was a child. But the show also takes you bang up-to-date with interactive digital track mixers.

There are sections devoted to Billy Fury, skiffle, jazz and folk, before reaching Merseybeat. It’s wonderful to see master of mirth, Ken Dodd, in the early years. His ballad, Tears, topped the charts for five weeks in 1965, after all.

For me, listening to visitors’ reactions enhanced the experience. "Ay, look at her!" exclaimed one woman, nudging her husband towards a photo of a very young Cilla Black. They went on to gaze wistfully at Cilla’s frock, one she wore for a 1960s Top of the Pops appearance, on display in a glass case.

A little girl was so excited by the music she was listening to, through headphones, she yelled to her mother: "Come and hear this, Mum, it’s boss!"

Despite being a Beatles fan, I like the fact that theirs is not the first and most obvious display when entering the exhibition and instead they take their place in the exhibition’s timeline. The stage from St Peter’s Church hall in Woolton, the meeting point for Lennon and McCartney, and the blanket from John and Yoko’s Bed-in For Peace protest are iconic, but funnily enough I found John Lennon’s jacket very moving. I could picture him wearing it.

The timeline includes key historical moments, including England’s World Cup victory in 1966, Lennon’s assassination in 1980 and the city’s industrial decline in the same decade. ‘Back In The DHSS’ by Half Man Half Biscuit is a perfect example of how the political scene influenced music and how Liverpool humour always shines though in the face of adversity.

I learnt about Eric’s club and why it closed (licensing problems). Of course, Frankie Goes To Hollywood is celebrated, and there is also an atmospheric Cream club scene installation. And so much more.

Like a favourite piece of music, The Beat Goes On is something I’ll happily revisit. And I am certain to find even more gems the next time … and the next. Meanwhile, I’ll be voting for Merseyside’s best new band on our The Beat Goes On myspace page – don’t forget to do the same!

You might have seen that we're currently preparing for the opening of the new Egypt gallery in December, however the antiquities team are also working with some of the Near Eastern collections. Ashley Cooke has more.

---

For the past few years the museum has been receiving visits from Semitic scholar Dr Eric Cripps. Eric is producing a new edition of some forty-five cuneiform tablets from the Old Akkadian period (2210 BC), held in the Near Eastern  antiquities collection at World Museum. These tablets are over 4000 years old and were excavated in Iraq and purchased by the Honourable Arnold Keppel, 8th Earl of Albemarle, who was a Member of Parliament for Birkenhead. The museum purchased the collection in 1956.

The cuneiform script was invented in the fourth millennium BC. Cuneiform is a wedge-shaped script that was developed by Mesopotamian cultures. Mesopotamia is the area  located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, that now incorporates Iraq and parts of Iran, Syria and Turkey.

The museum has about 335 cuneiform tablets which is a sizeable amount for a museum outside of London. One tablet dates to the Early Dynastic Period (about 2900 - 2350 BC), 47 to the Akkadian Dynasty (about 2350 - 2150 BC) and over 200 to the Third Dynasty of Ur (2100 - 2000 BC). The Near East collection also includes other objects such as bricks and cones with cuneiform inscriptions. Eric's new edition of the Akkadian Dynasty tablets will provide hand drawn copies of each accompanied by transliterations, appropriate translations and full cataloguing. Eric's new edition should be published next year and will make a valuable contribution to Mesopotamian archaeology.

Ashley Cooke

Well, Toxteth TV in fact. Here's the lowdown from Jo Connor, the Treasure House Theatre co-ordinator at World Museum Liverpool, who was there to see all the action (and you can see some of her pictures in our Ancient Egyptians at Toxteth TV Flickr slideshow):

---

"Curator Carolyn Routledge, Paul Browne, Mark Saunders and Paul McMullan from the AV team and myself have been involved in filming excerpts to be shown in the new Ancient Egypt gallery when it opens in December 2008. We had four fantastic actors - Colin, Eddie, Nalini and Maria - as Pharaoh Rameses, his architect  Bakenkhonsu, a Chantress and a House Maid. These characters from the world of ancient Egypt were all brought vividly to life.

It was fascinating watching the costume and and make up ladies weave their magic spells. And I was incredibly jealous that I didn't get chance to wear the wig Nalini had on for filming which Bill Watson from Design nicknamed 'the sofa' because of its size and shape.

Unfortunately we didn't get to film on location,(didn't want to spend a week in Egypt anyway... honest) but with 3 days in Toxteth (apart from the rain and the wind) I could almost believe I was there!"

On Sunday I went with my host Mother, Kalsang, to Swayambhunath, an important Buddhist site to the south of Kathmandu. Unlike Boudhanath, Swayambhunath sits on a hill overlooking the city, so for the first time in a few weeks I got to look up from my text books and have a really good look at the cityscape. Swayambhunath is affectionately known as the Monkey Temple, due to the many monkeys who live in and around the stupa. I’d been warned that these monkeys could be pretty mean and vicious, but the monsoon rains seemed to have dampened their spirits as they just watched as we climbed the steps to the smaller hill that sits to the west of the main stupa. This site holds a smaller shrine to Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning, and while Kalsang had her reasons for visiting the shrine I also had high hopes that Saraswati would give me a little helping hand with my Tibetan studies.

We were there for a very particular reason: Kalsang had read the Tibetan calendar and consulted her Lama, and Sunday the 13th was a very good day for dedicating a series of prayer flags that she had bought. As the rain started to pour, Kalsang wrote her family's names (including mine) on a series of white silk scarves called Khatas. The khata is an important part of Tibetan culture, given as offerings in the gompas and stupas and also as gifts between people. Once all the names were written, each scarf had a small prayer said when it was placed on the forehead and then each was tied to a series of prayer flags.

Once the prayer flags were ready, the boys and men working at the stupa nimbley climbed the many trees to find a good place to attach the flags, so that their prayers could be sent out into the world. Kalsang gave offerings of juniper twigs to the stupa fire and recited a small mantra, to ensure the prayer flags' success. Finally, handfuls of tsampa (roasted and ground barley flour) were offered and thrown into the air.

Athough, the rain poured down, and it was unusually cold, Kalsang was happy with the day and was sure the prayer flags had been successful. I think she was right as my reading has really improved this week.

So, tomorrow I'll start my third week at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute, where I'm studying the Tibetan language. Classes are really hard work, but although progress is slow, I was actually able to understand a little bit of a conversation I heard on the street today so something is sticking!

Here's a little insight into my day.

I get up at 4.30am every day (weekends included) and go with my host Mother, Kalsang, to do Kora, which means to circumambulate (go clock-wise) around the large stupa at Boudhanath, which I showed you last week. I go for the exercise rather than to build up merit, but there is a good mix of people jogging, walking and prostrating at this time in the morning. After a hour taking the circuit, we meet up with Kalsang's friends and go to a local tea shop for sweet tea or jhar and to catch up on the local gossip. The women talk quickly but I'm slowly picking up the odd words.

We're back home for 7am, I have breakfast, do a little bit of study and then off I go to school for 8am. Classes are very intense. In the first week I had to learn the alphabet and the many changes that happen to the sounds of words once another letter is put in front or behind it. I'm still getting to grips with this and I hope that the extra classes I'll be fitting in from next week will help me get this straight in my mind! The unique thing about the school is that for two hours a day we get to practice our Tibetan language skills, one-on-one with Tibetans. This is an amazing experience which allows you to pick up pronunciations and changes in tones much easier.

This image shows part of my route to school. You can see the stupa in the background.

Classes finish at 1.30pm, but that's not the end of the school day. We have homework everyday and there is plenty to go over from the day's lessons.

On several days during the week, there are 'load-sheddings' across Kathmandu, which basically means that the electric power goes out across Boudhanath for a couple of hours. This is done for all sorts of reasons, to stop the system over-loading, but it means that study is pretty impossible after 7pm, so it's often an early night ready for my 4.30am start the next morning.

I am loving every minute of it, but without a doubt this is the hardest thing I have ever done!

More later in the week, homework permitting!

Michelle O’Callaghan, our youth arts officer, has this great news:

---

"Young people from National Museums Liverpool Youth Theatre, Lady Lever Art Gallery Junior Guides and Culture Vultures course participants achieved a rip-roaring success when they joined forces last Saturday to have their Young People's Arts Awards moderated.

The Young People's Arts Award, run by Arts Council England and Trinity Guildhall, enables young people to achieve a nationally recognised qualification at three levels (Bronze, Silver and Gold) through their participation and enjoyment of the arts.

It encourages the young people taking part to think about their own development as artists and encourages development of leadership, communication skills and confidence, as well of development of their own artistic skills.

At Bronze level the award involves taking part in arts activity, enjoying the arts as an audience member, researching an arts hero or heroine and leading an arts activity for peers.

This is the first assessment and moderation since NML became an Arts Award Centre in 2007 and there are currently two trained Arts Award advisors within NML; myself and Lauren Gould, learning officer at the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

16 young people's work was moderated last Saturday and we are very pleased and proud to confirm that all 16 were successful in achieving their Bronze Arts Award.

Certificates will be winging their way to the young people very soon and they will be treated to a presentation evening to mark and celebrate their success.

A big thanks goes to all of the young people involved for all their hard work on the award and a massive well done on their success! It is well deserved!

Congratulations to the following young people who successfully passed their Bronze Arts Awards:
 
Sarah Kenny, James Garland, Deniece Courtney, Natasha Sweeney, Marcella May Rick, Kezia-Jaye Atherton-Davis, Charlotte Clynch, Dominic Hughes, Laura Baker, Craig Parry, Kaz Worrall, James Woodfinden, Beckie Clarke, Keily Hogarth, Abigail Hill and Marc Taylor."

In the latest of our 'hidden treasures' displays, two exceedingly rare gold medals crafted by Tiffany and Co of New York have gone on display at World Museum Liverpool for the very first time. The medals commemorate the role of forgotten hero Captain Joseph Dayman RN  in one of the most important naval expeditions of the Victorian age.

In the summer of 1858 Dayman commanded HMS Gorgon, a support vessel involved in the joint British-American attempt to lay the first transatlantic telegraph cable. The Navy assigned the Gorgon to assist the Niagara, the American ship laying half of the cable. Early in the attempt the officers recognised that the Niagara was off course.  Commander Dayman successfully guided the Niagara to its destination in Newfoundland. A reporter on the Niagara noted that Dayman did not sleep for five days during this time. Without his attention the project would have failed. 

In recognition of Joseph Dayman's contribution the Common Council of New York and the City of New York commissioned medals for him from Tiffany's. The medal awarded by the City of New York (shown here) is one of only nine large gold medals they commissioned. The other medal on display is one of only three medals ever awarded by the Common Council. It is decorated with a gilded piece of the telegraph cable around the edge.

You can see the medals in the atrium at World Museum Liverpool for the next 2 weeks. There isn't a confirmed closing date for the display yet so please check with the information desk - 0151 478 4393 - nearer the time if you don't want to miss them.

Antiquities curator Carolyn Routledge has been busy as her excavation project at Abydos, Egypt draws to a close. Here's her latest report:

---

"Today we are packing up at Abydos. It is something of a bitter-sweet time here. Up until now we have been working frantically to finish all our work on time. Now the pace has slowed while we wait for the Egyptian inspectors to seal the magazines in which we store the archaeological finds. This means we can relax a bit after all the hard work, which is really enjoyable. What is a bit sad is that for most of us we don't know when, or maybe even if, we will return to Abydos.

Over the past week I have been working with the pottery from the tomb of Senwosret III. By studying the pottery we can separate any ceramics that date to the burial of the pharaoh from the material that dates to when the tomb was robbed. This task is quite difficult. The best way I can explain it is to say that it is similar to having put all your jigsaw puzzle pieces into one box because each of your many puzzles was missing some pieces. Many years later you decide to sort them out and put them together again to see what is missing. For the pottery we sort the pieces just as you would sort the puzzle pieces - by size, colour, type - and then try to fit the similar pieces together. I am happy to say we had some success. It is a good day when you get two pieces to join together!

After today our work will be done because everything is locked away. This will give us some free time to explore the area and then to pack our personal belongings for the 8-10 hour train trip to Cairo. I think I might go visit the Seti Temple again. It is only a 15 minute walk away from our house. This temple has its roof and the coloured scenes painted on the walls are still bright. This is extremely rare for an ancient Egyptian temple that is about 3,300 years old. It is well worth a final visit!"

Hello or Tashi Delek!

As some of you may know from the World Museum displays and the website pages, National Museums Liverpool has one of the great collections of Tibetan objects.

I'm here in Boudhanath, an area just outside Kathmandu, Nepal, which is home to a large Tibetan community. I'll be living here in Boudhanath for the next two months with a Tibetan family, as I begin to learn the Tibetan language.

Over the next couple of months I be blogging about my classes at Rangjung Yeshe Institute, my (slow) progress with the language classes and about life here in Boudhanath.

So as a quick introduction. The first thing you see as you come into Boudhanath is the stupa. This massive stupa is the centre of Buddhist life here in Boudhanath, with Tibetans, both laypeople and monks, Nepalis and Western Tourists all walking around the base of the stupa throughout the day, turning the prayer wheels found within the walls, visiting the gombas (monastery/place of learning) or giving offerings, particularly for the health of the 14th Dalai Lama. I've added an image of the stupa here.

I'm hoping to do a couple of blogs a week on things that I've learnt, or about events happening within the Tibetan community.

Before I sign of here's your first word of the day: 'Key'. Key means Dog.

Here's an update on prgress with the excavation at Abydos from antiquities curator Carolyn Routledge.

---

"We are now half-way through our excavation project at the tomb of the Pharaoh Senwosret III here at Abydos in Middle Egypt. Jen Wegner and I have been working very hard on our drawing and recording of the small objects. The work at the tomb is winding down as Josef Wegner turns to drawing and planning the portions of the tomb that have been cleared. It has been quite a task with around 60 Egyptian workmen breaking up and moving large quantities of stone in extreme temperatures.  During this time we have been experiencing a heatwave with daytime highs consistently in the mid 40 degrees Celsius. At night it has not been getting below 30 degrees Celsius.  

Under these conditions we need to take some breaks. Our first day off we were invited to have a meal with one of the workmen and his family. Josef, Jen, their son Alexander (who turns 5 this month!) and I went to eat lunch made by Umm-Ibrahim. Because of the heat, we sat in the courtyard of their home cooled by fans. Alexander ran around chasing the chickens and searching for lizards. Umm-Ibrahim served us a typical Egyptian meal of chicken, molokhia, and a mix of rice and pasta. Molokhia is a particular favourite here. It is a gelatinous soup made of the leaves of the molokhia plant flavoured with garlic and spices.

The next weekend we took an extra day off and travelled to Luxor. It is about 2½ hour train ride from here. While there are many ancient Egyptian monuments to see in and near Luxor, the main attraction to us was staying in a nice hotel in order to get a rest from the heat through air-conditioning and swimming in the pool. We arrived back at Abydos refreshed and ready to take on the next few weeks of work."

It gives me great pleasure to introduce Lucy Cattell, press officer for The Beat Goes On to announce some very special news:

" It’s taken six weeks of campaigning and thousands of votes, but finally the announcement came today that Liverpool has scored the number one spot as the UK’s Most Musical City!

Taking the title in Arts Council England’s Take it Away search, Liverpool took 49 per cent of the public’s vote, pipping other Northern cities Sheffield and Manchester to the post, who claimed second and third places respectfully.

It’s such exciting news for the city, adding yet another musical title to our bow (we’ve also been hailed as the World Capital City of Pop by The Guinness Book of Records) in a Capital of Culture Year which has already drawn so much attention from audiences at home and abroad.

It’s also great news for National Museums Liverpool, confirming our suspicions that it was high time an attraction was put in place to mark the city’s musical history and influence on popular music around the globe.

The Beat Goes On exhibition is due to open at World Museum Liverpool on 12 July, and with only weeks to go this latest announcement is perfect timing to centre all eyes on Liverpool, showing that it still tops the charts in the hearts of the nation.

After seeing Sir Paul McCartney, The Zutons and The Rascals all live recently, it’s a privilege to live in a city where artists are proud to return to their roots, and I’m in no doubt that the title of Most Musical City is completely deserved. Old or new, our city’s sound is second to none! "

Work has started on the installation of the summer's big exhibition at World Museum, The Beat Goes On, which opens on 12 July 2008. The exhibition will explore Liverpool's musical identity over the last 60 years. As you'd expect, there will be a number of items on display relating to a certain fab four.

Head of furniture conservation Graham Usher is currently putting together one of those items - the very stage that Paul McCartney and John Lennon met on when John's band The Quarrymen played at a garden festival in Woolton in 1957. The Museum of Liverpool acquired the stage a couple of years ago and it was featured on the blog last year but this will be the first time that it has been on display in our venues. I'm sure it'll be a must-see for Beatles fans when the exhibition opens.

Here's one for all you philatelists (that's stamp collectors to you and me) out there.

Bhutan, a beautiful Himalayan kingdom, is this year celebrating 100 years of monarchy. To celebrate Bhutan has just launched the first CD-Rom postage stamp.

You might be wondering how NML fits in to all this? Well, it just so happens that we have a really important collection of objects and photographs from Bhutan acquired by early 20th century Brtitish explorers and Political Officers based in the area. In this collection we have a rare photograph of the 2nd King of Bhutan, Jigme Wangchuk and his wife that you can see here.

The Bhutanese Government asked if they could use the image in their new stamp collection and we were more than happy to see an item from the NML collections virtually returning to Bhutan.

There's just a few days left to submit your application for one of the 10 Creative Apprenticeships on offer. A number of Merseyside-based cultural organisations, including National Museums Liverpool, are involved in a project to foster emerging talent and give young hopefuls a solid grounding in the arts and culture industry.

By the end of the year-long apprenticeship you'll have earned a Level 2 Certificate in Creative and Cultural Practice, and a Level 2 National Award in Community Arts Management, but perhaps more importantly you'll have developed the skills and contacts you'll need for a career in the industry.

More details are available on the Creative Partnerships Liverpool website.

Here's some news from antiquities curator Carolyn Routledge, who has temporarily left her desk at World Museum Liverpool to work at an excavation in Egypt.

---

"My time so far in Egypt has been fantastic! We flew into Cairo on 26 May very early in the morning and then set out by car on 28 May for the excavation. It was a 10 hour trip through the desert. It felt like a very long journey as taking the desert road meant the scenery didn't change much. Luckily we had air conditioning in the car. We don't have such luxuries where we are living at Abydos. We are staying in the American dig house set back in the desert along the ancient road that led to the tombs of the First Dynasty kings. The weather is very hot, reaching the low 40s Celsius.  Thank goodness we have fans!

We finally arrived at the dig house very late at night and very tired. The next day it was right to work setting up our desks and getting the objects organised to draw. I am working on the South Abydos project directed by Josef Wegner of the University of Pennsylvania. He is excavating the earliest known hidden subterranean royal tomb, which belonged to the pharaoh Senwosret III of the Middle Kingdom (approx 1850 BC).  Jen Wegner and I are drawing the objects that come from the tomb and the surrounding area.

It is early days yet, so not much has come from the tomb itself. This week we are drawing the mud sealings that were found near the entrance.  These are very small and can be very hard to read. The ancient Egyptians liked to 'lock' their things by tying them up and putting mud on cords marked with a seal, often a scarab seal. This is a lot like sealing a letter with sealing wax. On Thursday we went out to the tomb. I overcame slight feelings of claustrophobia to go down in the tomb and was able to go all the way to the burial chamber.  It was exhilarating to be sitting beside the sarcophagus of the king. 

The other reason it is great being here is that a number of the objects we are preparing for the new Egypt gallery opening in September come from Abydos. I can look out my window and see the area where John Garstang had his house and played golf among the dunes that hide the many ancient Egyptian tombs where he found some of our objects."

Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport, Andy Burnham, dropped into World Museum Liverpool recently to announce funding for Find Your Talent, a new Government initiative encouraging children to experience five hours of culture each week.

While he was here Andy caught a rehearsal by members of our youth theatre who are preparing a performance for our next big exhibition The Beat Goes On. The group have created a physical theatre piece that follows the story of Liezah, a character from a song by Wirral band The Coral.

Admitting he was a Coral fan himself, Andy seemed very impressed by the performance and spent a while talking to the young people to find out what they thought of taking part in more cultural activities.

Liverpool city region, led by National Museums Liverpool and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, is one of ten areas around the country to pilot the Government scheme. The programme has been developed in partnership with The Bluecoat, FACT, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, Tate Liverpool and the Unity Theatre. Principal partners include Liverpool Culture Company, Creative Partnerships Merseyside, Liverpool City Council, Knowsley MBC and St Helens MBC.

The Beat Goes On runs at World Museum Liverpool from 12 July 2008 and the youth theatre will be performing Liezah and other short pieces throughout the run of the exhibition.

Working on The Beat Goes On MySpace page has been an absolute joy for me, being someone who lives and breaths music – music of any kind, so long as it’s good. What a talented lot you are! Take a bow, Liverpool.

The good news is that inaugural Top Ten for The Beat Goes On is now online so you can share some of the fantastic music Liverpool has to offer, and vote for your favourite.  Yippee!

The winner each month will be added to the digital jukebox in the exhibition at World Museum Liverpool. Over the next week or so I'll give each artist or band a shout-out. Of course, these are purely my ramblings and TBGO will remain completely impartial.

First up is the refreshingly-talented Little Name whose gentle and breezy lounge-pop has a heart-warming summer melancholy about it. Think sunshiny Morrissey (possibly on a sun-lounger with a cocktail), sprinkled with a smidgen of Magic Numbers and Super Furry Animals. (Thanks for the blog, Leebo).

Still in the lounge vein, we welcome Walter Cheapskate, whose retro psychedelia is off-set by super-smiley Scouse rhymes – he’ll have you grooving all day long. I love this rather cheeky vid on XFM.

Finally, there’s the chirpy Joel Morton. His MySpace profile classifies his music as zouk – grime – shoegaze. Personally I’m getting The La’s or Lenny Kravitz’s Mr Cab Driver with a rockabilly lilt. With influences ranging from Elvis Costello to Napalm Death, it is probably best to make your own mind up – whatever it is, he makes it sound effortless.

Anyway – happy listening you lucky people – and don’t forget to vote!

(NB. Please remember these are just my humble opinons, not those of TBGO or National Museums Liverpool, and that we are not responsible for content on other people’s web pages / MySpace pages and / or their songs).

In this week's final post Amina tells us why she enjoys her volunteer role in assisting our Trading staff on the information desk at World Museum Liverpool. Amina is one of our vinvolved youth volunteers - she may even have welcomed you to the museum on your visit!

---

Day 5: Amina

Hi, my name is Amina. I am a volunteer at World Museum Liverpool. I have been taking part for over a month now. I love working here because I learn new skills and enjoy working together with the staff. They are friendly, helpful and kind. They always have a smile that lifts up my day.

I would recommend everyone to get involved, you will love it! I know I have and it has changed my life.

If you want to find out more about volunteering at National Museums Liverpool, please email the Volunteers Team or ring them on 0151 478 4775.

Or for more news on youth volunteering opportunities (aged 16-25), please contact email us about youth volunteering or ring 0151 478 4017.

For more information about ‘v, the youth volunteering charity’ and for local volunteering opportunities to match your interests and passions, visit www.vinspired.com

Today, as part of National Volunteers week, Adam explains his volunteer role within the Weston Discovery Centre at World Museum Liverpool. Adam originally contacted the Volunteer Team to arrange a work placement for his university course, however he has enjoyed his time here so much he has stayed on as a volunteer.

Day 3: Adam
I started volunteering at National Museums Liverpool in January 2008. As a student at John Moores University, I completed a work placement in the Weston Discovery Centre in World Museum Liverpool. After finishing my placement I really wanted to continue to volunteer my time in the Discovery Centre. Since working in the museum I have discovered a love for Palaeoanthroplogy and in particular human evolution. I have been able to develop my own ideas and at the moment I am developing a Key Stage 4 school session in human evolution. In order to do this I have spent time researching the topic and working with museum curators. My background is in Art History and Museums Studies but since volunteering in the museum and finding a new passion I have now decided to work towards a Masters degree in Archaeology.

If you want to find out more about volunteering at National Museums Liverpool, please email the Volunteers Team or ring them on 0151 478 4775.

Youth volunteer officer, Claire Olson, reports on the first meeting of the young volunteers group

---

To really get National Volunteers Week off to an exciting start, our new Young Persons Steering Group met for the first time yesterday at World Museum Liverpool.

The founding five members are all aged 16-25 and whilst some have volunteered before, for others volunteering is a brand new experience!

The group talked about their interests and why they want to be involved with the v-involved Youth Volunteering programme at NML. They also toured World Museum Liverpool to think about existing and future volunteering opportunities that could be developed. We will be keeping the blog posted on any new developments.

Breaking News: 'Mersey v’s', it is!

Most importantly, the group now have a less formal name than Young Persons Steering Group, having unanimously chosen as their new name: Mersey v’s. The v standing for ‘volunteer’ and also a nod to ‘v, the youth volunteering charity’ who have funded the 3 year youth volunteering programme at NML.

Mersey v’s will meet once a month to champion the v-involved Youth Volunteering programme across NML; meeting with staff to develop new ideas and projects and also visiting other museums to meet with their volunteers.

If you are aged 16-25 and would like to find out more about youth volunteering and v-involved at National Museums Liverpool, or how you can become a member of Mersey v’s, please email about youth volunteering  or ring 0151 478 4775.

The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that there wasn't a May Name That Object competition. We were rather busy with the redesign for the main site (check it out if you've not already) and it kind of took a back seat.

Anyway, June's is now up with the first clue available here. As ever you need to figure out which object from our collections (and our website) the detail is from and email us the answer using the contact link on the competition page. There's a new clue every day this week.

We've had lots of enquiries from people wanting to buy the Art In The Age of Steam exhibition catalogue so that's this month's prize. Good luck.

We’ve just received an interesting memoir for the Botany library with the intriguing title “Naughty Man’s Plaything”. It is by Roy Vickery, who works in the Botany Department at the Natural History Museum, London and is illustrated by Len Ellis. It’s all about the folklore and uses of stinging nettles in Britain, and covers their uses for food (for humans), beer, food (for turkeys), medicine, plus a long section containing sayings about nettles and their local names. Each story is referenced to its source, making this a valuable addition to our economic botany literature.

One of my childhood memories is going out with my mother picking nettle tips in springtime, from which she made nettle pudding – essentially porridge mixed with nettles. Once cooked, they don’t sting and in fact they are very nourishing, particularly at a time of year when there aren’t many fresh vegetables to be had from your garden. Nettle pudding is a Northern speciality; a similar concoction known as Spring pudding was mentioned in the memoirs of Bernard Ingham, who was born in Hebden Bridge, not far from my own birthplace in Burnley. This was made from Bistort.

Our trading arm, NML Trading, is holding a Recruitment Open Day on Saturday 10th May. They're looking to recruit Team Leaders, Catering Assistants, Venue Supervisors, Chefs and Banqueting staff. They're looking for people who are passionate about catering for their daytime operation plus occasional evening work. You'll be working in Liverpool’s world class museums, providing high quality food and refreshments to over two million visitors each year.

To find out more about the roles on offer, bring your CV to World Museum Liverpool, William Brown Street, Liverpool between 10.30am and 4.30pm.

Over the past six months staff and volunteers in the Ethnology department have been unpacking, re-storing, documenting and photographing NML's little known Islamic collection.

This fascinating collection ranges from 12th century painted dishes from Iran, to 15th centruy pottery sherds from Fostat, an important trading centre in Egypt, to modern day tourist souvenirs. To whet your appetite here's an image of a wonderful dish from 12th - 13th century Iran showing a huntsman riding his sturdy horse.

Having unpacked the collection it was clear that it needed more attention and research. With the help of the Museum Partnerships department we have secured a grant from the Museums Association's Effective Collections scheme. This grant will pay for an Islamic specialist to come and review the collection and make recomendations as to how we can best use the collection, which might include new displays at NML, loans to other organisations or possibly more research into the collection's history.

I'll keep you posted on how the review goes and what we plan to do next.

Some objects in our collection are so large that conserving them is a two-person job. A good example is the 'All you need is love' bedspread, which is currently being prepared for display is the upcoming exhibition The beat goes on - opening on 12 July 2008 at World Museum Liverpool.

To prepare it for display the bedspread has been stitched to a backing sheet on wooden stretchers, which support it and keep it in place. Today textiles and organics conservators Vivien Chapman and Anne-Marie Hughes have been strengthening the bedspread with supporting stitches to key areas - a delicate process which involves passing the needle through the fabric from one person to the other, without being ever able to see each other. These stitches are so small that you wouldn't know they were there when you look at the bedspread but they play an important role in supporting it when it's on display.

The bedspread was originally used in John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Montreal 'Bed-In For Peace' in room 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal in 1969. It is just one of the fascinating pieces of memorabilia that will be on display in the exhibition.

There are more pictures in a Flickr slideshow of the bedspread being conserved.

Rachel Porter from the Aquarium at World Museum Liverpool has exciting news about nine youngsters who have made their first public appearance this week. As she's the expert I'll let her tell you all about them:

---

"These adorable little babies were born in July 2007 and are now big enough to go on display on our Aquarium gallery.  They are only about 4cm long but will grow to be 20cm long and are being fed little shrimp called Brineshrimp or Sea Monkeys. 

The Seahorses were bred here at the museum from the parents who we keep in our quarantine area.  The male actually gives birth to the babies after brooding them in a pouch for only 2 weeks."

Today is day one in April's Name That Object competition and here is today's clue. To win a copy of the rather nice catalogue that accompanies the Art In The Age of Steam exhibition all you have to do is identify the object in question (it's an artwork this month) from the clues given every day this week, and email us your answer using the link on the competition page. Best of British.

Here's the latest update from Tom McConnell, who seems to be keeping busy on his work placement at National Museums Liverpool:

---

Hello,

I’m now on my third day here at NML. I had a good day yesterday at World Museum Liverpool. Highlights for me were seeing the new Egypt galleries taking shape and a visit to the zoology department. I also fitted in a visit to the National Museums Liverpool stores where I spied a fab looking Paul McCartney poster.

Today I was back at the stores helping with the Museum of Liverpool project. There I had to locate and find objects for the up and coming The Beat Goes On exhibition. These objects included Stuart Sutcliffe’s Guitar, a Beatles 7 inch vinyl singles folder, a piece of fabric from the original Magical Mystery Tour bus in the film and Beatles bobbing-head dolls.

Can't believe no one's got this yet - thought it would have gone yesterday. The prize in this month's Name That Object game is still not won and today is the last day. This is today's clue - bit of a give away. All of this week's clues, plus the link to enter the competition, are on the Name That Object page. The prize is the catalogue from the recent Joseph Wright of Derby in Liverpool exhibition.

Here's what I think is a really rather sad post from John Millard, Director of World Museum.

---

Sometimes at World Museum we get asked about the seal that lived in the museum before World War II.  At first we thought that maybe memories had been playing tricks, but as more people spoke of remembering a seal at the museum, we began to wonder if it wasn’t true.

A press cutting book in the Central Library has revealed the facts.  A seal named Paddy was kept in the aquarium at the museum from 1919 until 1936, and he was probably an Atlantic Grey Seal. 

A cutting from the Liverpool Post and Mercury for 20 September 1933 said…

‘Paddy, Liverpool’s pet seal, lives in the Museum.  He is sleek, intelligent silver-grey creature, spending his time gazing at visitors and swimming round his tank – preferably on his back.

‘He was caught with seven other seals in the North Sea seventeen years ago, but his companions did not survive. When he was presented to the city in 1919 by the New Brighton Tower Company, Mr. Evans, who was to be his keeper, inquired what his name might be.  “Well!” said his late master, “my name is Paddy so you had better name him after me.”

‘Paddy lives almost entirely on herrings.  When herrings are difficult to obtain whitings are substituted, but he does not like them nearly so much.  At 3.30 every afternoon people gather to see him make very short work of 4lbs of herrings...

Underwater Sleep
His coat, which he changes every August, is brown for the first week or so then changes to silver-grey.  Although he does not have his coat pressed, he has it sponged down every morning while his tank is being emptied.  The toilet over he has an underwater beauty sleep of about fifteen minutes.  Some authorities contend that seals do not sleep under water - they should see Paddy.  The extraordinary thing is that he can glide around his tank when it is empty, with a perfect swimming motion.

‘Although Paddy is the very soul of good nature he is not without a little jealousy.  Should Mr. Evans look into another tank too long Paddy makes a great fuss and lashes his water into a foam.  Thousands of children would not consider their holidays complete without paying Paddy at least one visit.’

The Liverpool Post reported the death of Paddy the seal on 17 August 1936 saying…

‘Many thousands of Liverpool people, old as well as young, will be sorry to hear of the death, which took place on Saturday morning, of Paddy the seal at the Liverpool Museum Aquarium.’

Some people have said the seal was called Sammy and back in 1928 a press cutting mentioned Edgar the seal at the museum, but the story of Paddy and his keeper Mr Evans seems to be the most authentic.

Today it would seem cruel to keep a seal in a tank in the museum, but for seventeen years Paddy the seal was a star attraction at the museum.

Here's a report from Ann-marie Cassidy, our project worker for engaging refugees and asylum seekers, about some of this weekend's activities.

---

"Saturday was International Women's Day. This special day is celebrated every year on 8th March. Throughout the world thousands of events are held to inspire women and honour their achievements.

Here at World Museum Liverpool we celebrated International Women's Day with a number of special activities.

We began in the atrium, with an activity called 'Home Sweet Home?' We erected a temporary shelter, which we hoped would represent the shelters often used by displaced people fleeing their homes in times of crisis. We wanted visitors to think about the things that were really important to them, by asking the question:

'If you had three minutes to leave your home, what would you take with you?'

We asked visitors to write or draw their answers on the shelter. Answers ranged from the emotional: mum, dad, dog, rabbit; to the practical: tent, Swiss army knife, torch, matches; to the sentimental: photographs, jewellery. A number of people also said that they would bring their computer games - until their friends pointed out that there would be nowhere to plug in their computer! All in all, it was a very thought-provoking activity.

This was followed by a textile workshop with Maryam Patala, based on the textile piece Freedom - who’s set the borders? (currently on display on the World Cultures gallery). Visitors had the opportunity to improve their sewing skills and learn about the appliqué technique used by Maryam to create the piece." 

You can see more photos of the 'Home Sweet Home?' shelter on our Flickr page.

The second of what will hopefully be a monthly feature (prizes allowing) begins on Monday. Name that Object shows a new detail from an object in our collection every day for five days. Could be from any venue and any collection.  To win the prize all you have to do is identify the object and be the first to mail us the correct answer (use the 'contact us' form link on the competition page). As there's only one prize - the rather excellent catalogue that accompanied the recent Joseph Wright of Derby in Liverpool exhibition - most of you will be 'playing for fun', and it is fun as you'll discover if you check out last month's game - bit of a warm up for you.

Here's a snap of last month's prize - a Superlambanana now christened Hogarth (I'll leave you to figure out why) - happily ensconced in his new home. His new owner got the answer right on clue one so you'll probably have to be there from kick off on Monday to be in with a chance. To make it a bit easier I'll tell you it is a painting and it is featured on our website.

You can also play via the rss feed so there's no chance of you missing a clue.

Make sure you check out 'The Pool' show with Dave Monks on BBC Radio Merseyside, from 8pm this Sunday 2 March! I'm going to be on choosing my top three favourite Liverpool tracks of the moment and talking about 'The Beat Goes On'.

So tune in to hear my choices...a bit of eighties, a bit of punk and some wooly-hat-wearing-Velvet-Underground- meets-psychedelic sounds. I once did a similar thing choosing some tracks on the fantastic Halton FM a few years ago (yes, the dizzy heights of stardom) but at the BBC you get free coffee and the microphones are bigger.

If you miss the show you can also listen online for a week after it has aired by going to the BBC Liverpool website.

BBC Radio Merseyside – 'The Pool'

Every Sunday evening from 8-10pm

BBC Radio Merseyside 95.8 FM, 1485 AM and on digital

Any Welsh mothers out there should be spoilt rotten this weekend, for not only is it Mother's Day on Sunday but it's also St David's Day on Saturday.

E-cards for both occasions are available online, including a host of golden daffodils (well, 3 daffodils including a white one, but they're all very beautiful botanical prints from the fantastic collections at World Museum Liverpool) in the brand new St David's Day e-card selection.

Then for Sunday you can choose from a painting or an Egyptian mummy in the Mother's Day e-card selection.

Just to let you know that Merseyside bands will get the chance to be part of the massive music exhibition, 'The Beat Goes On', if they join our new Myspace page at: http://www.myspace.com/thebeatgoesonliverpool !

It doesn't matter what kind of music you're into, just join us as a friend and you will be in with a chance to become part of the exhibition, alongside bands such as The Zutons, The Wombats, Echo and The Bunnymen and OMD.

'The Beat Goes On' exhibition will start this summer at the World Museum and will celebrate the city’s music venues, bands and creativity. 

On the Myspace page each month, we will choose ten tracks from bands on the friends list. These tracks will be featured on the Myspace page as a monthly top ten chart, where the public will be able to vote for their favourite online.

Top ten bands will have their band and track name displayed on a wall in the exhibition to show the top ten for each month. The number one track at the end of each month will be added to a ‘digital jukebox’ in the exhibition and will become part of 'The Beat Goes On', giving bands great exposure for their music and the chance to reach a larger audience.

Voting will begin at the start of June when the first top ten chart will be displayed on the exhibition’s Myspace page.

If you’re not in band, but you love Liverpool music, you can still join The Beat Goes On as a Myspace friend to get the latest updates from regular news bulletins.

So what are you waiting for? There's already some tracks up on the site to keep your ears occupied until the voting starts, so check out some new music today!

Thursday saw the 2008 Academy Ambassador Awards which celebrate excellence in customer care in Liverpool. Three members of staff were nominated: Emma Calver from the Weston Discovery Centre in World Museum, Ros Appleby from the Learning team at the Walker, and Eddie Harvey from Gallery Services at World Museum. Emma fills us in on the night's events.
 

---

We all had a fantastic night. The awards ceremony was at the Crowne Plaza hotel in the city centre, and as it was Valentines night there were lots of hearts decorating the ceremony, and the theme of people leaving their hearts in the city when they come to visit.
 
Several NML staff attended plus the nominees and their partners, and we were treated to a lovely three course meal.
 
Ros won the Family Friendly Award, and I won in the Arts and Culture category. It was a real surprise to win - I was over the moon.
 
Edwin was highly commended in the Visitor/Event award, and judges commented that the quality was so high in his category that any of the nominees could have won.
 
After the awards we all danced along to the Merseybeatles band.

Emma

Today we've launched what will hopefully become a regular feature on the site - our 'Name that Object' competition. We'll be revealing a new detail of an object (it's an artwork this time - bit of a clue for you there) every day for a week with the answer at the end. This is today's clue. There's a prize of a miniature Superlambanana to the first person to correctly identify the piece and to email us the answer using the form on the competition page.

If you're as forgetful as me you can always subscribe to the rss feed to get updates, or just click backwards to see previous clues. And as a final hint I'll tell you that the object is somewhere on our website. There, I've said too much already...

Alan Bowden, curator of Earth Sciences, told us a good few months ago now about a palm frond we'd acquired (more here). Now it's finally on display he tells us about its journey from subtropical Wyoming to the wall of World Museum.
Images from its conservation are on our Flickr page.

---

Dinosaurs and their relatives may be on most children’s minds whenever they visit World Museum but there is another new exhibit which is worthy of mention.  This is a fossil leaf.  Not any ordinary leaf but an example of exquisite preservation which has given us a glimpse into a long vanished world.

The story of the greening of the Earth - the flora of our planet and how it has evolved to achieve the wonderful diversity of today - is a bigger story than that of the animals as it contains a record of all the changes that have occurred with our atmosphere and climate, and has the potential of demonstrating where our future lies. 

The newcomer to the museum is a frond of the extinct fan palm Sabalites sp belonging to the family Arecaceae.  This fossil leaf is 50 million years old and was found in Folly Quarry on the Lewis Ranch, near Kemmerer Wyoming, Western Lincoln County, Wyoming, USA. At that time Wyoming was a warm subtropical area with lush and exotic vegetation at the edge of a series of large fresh water lakes which were larger than the Great Lakes Region of Canada.  This is very different from the Wyoming of today, which has a high mountain desert with long winter snows and freezing temperatures.

It was found in a limestone rock known as the Fossil Butte Member of the Green River Formation.  During the Eocene (50 million years ago) this formed as sediment that was being deposited in the fresh water lakes.  A lack of oxygen in the water caused many of the lake’s animals and plants to die, and also stopped bacterial action on the bottom of the lake. This meant that the dead animals and plants which would normally have rotted away were preserved in exceptional detail.  Complete fronds like our specimen are extremely rare.

The fossil shows numerous rays with bifurcating tips branching out from a sturdy woody petiole.  The petiole is well preserved showing a fibrous structure.  The basal attachment of the frond is of an unusual shape which indicates that this specimen may belong to a new, previously un-described, tribe.

The palm frond has spent a year being prepared by members of our conservation team and earth sciences staff. When it arrived it had been crudely covered with an acrylic based paint to ‘enhance detail’ with car body filler to hide cracks. The acrylic, body filler and some rock was very carefully removed to reveal extra details such as the natural colour of the specimen, extensions to the leaves, fragmentary remains of fossil fish beneath the leaf, the fibrous nature of the petiole and unusual features of the basal attachment. The fossil is now displayed on the 4th floor of World Museum and serves as a reminder of climate change over geological timescales.

I just wanted to wish a Happy Chinese New Year to everybody out there, as today is the start of the best year in Chinese astrology (in my completely unbiased opinion) - the Year of the Rat. Anyone lucky enough to be born in the Year of the Rat like myself will appreciate that we are charming, quick witted and generally fantastic people. So now that it's our year I think that's something to celebrate.

If you're in town at the weekend for the festivities you can see some Martial Arts demonstrations at World Museum Liverpool on Saturday or make colourful Chinese dragons, lanterns or fans in workshops at the Maritime Museum on Sunday - check out the What's on listings for further details.

I haven't got a picture of a Chinese rat from our collections, so instead here's a piece of 19th century netsuke which does at least demonstrate the sociable nature of us rats. Sharp eyed visitors to the Magical History Tour exhibition may also spot some hidden amongst the displays in a trail for children (don't worry, they are soft toys, not real rats...)

You can't have failed to notice that Liverpool is European Capital of Culture this year. The official People's Opening takes place this Friday, 11th January, at St George's Hall plateau on Lime Street. Took a snap this morning to show you the progress made with staging. The blue containers seem to form a stage area at either end of the plateau with another stage in the centre. Also looks like there's going to be staging around Steble Fountain, just outside the Walker.

As well as Ringo Starr on the roof and a community choir there's also what the Liverpool 08 website is describing as, "an epic aerial ballet of dancing cranes, containers and scissor lifts, as Liverpool celebrates the transfromation of the 'Big Dig' into the 'Big Gig'". All kicks off at 8:08pm (20:08?)

To mark the occassion, and because we are literally a minute away from the main event, both the Walker Art Gallery and World Museum Liverpool will be staying open until 10pm, with last entry at 9.30pm which is also when the venue cafes and shops close. If you're planning to take the kids to Big Art at the Walker we suggest you go early rather than later as it will be closing at 7.30pm.

The museum will be hosting a number of environmental organisations, which will complement the launch of an international school environmental project exploring climate change and disaster risk reduction.

And to cap it all there will be fireworks! Huzzah!

I've got some exciting news from my favourite Christmas fairy, namely Claire Noble from World Museum Liverpool.

Tomorrow at 2pm the Treasure House Theatre will be hosting a performance of the classic Grimm’s Brothers story 'Snow White and Rose Red'.

This adaptation by Tiny Giants theatre company promises to bring the strange, magical tale to life before your very eyes. Walk into a forest of dreams and watch out for the twists as this version of the classic tale has more Christmas spirit than a fairy on a tree.

Then don't forget that after Christmas the National Museums Liverpool's Youth Theatre are performing 'A Dickens of a Christmas' - their own retelling of 'A Christmas Carol'. If you didn't catch their antics in the museum over the weekend then try to make it to one of these shows.

Full details of all the free events and exhibitions taking place during the Christmas holidays at our venues are available on the website.

That hardy soul, John Moran, donned his duffle coat and ventured out into the freezing night last week in search of meteors. And in case you missed the shower this Shadow and Substance animation shows what they should look like.

---

The last time I wrote a piece about one of the annual meteor showers was the 13th August Perseids, and back then I had to comment on what other people had seen, as I had no chance because of the cloud cover.

This time I'm happy to report that I had quite a successful Geminid meteor hunt. My viewing conditions were far from perfect as I was surrounded by street lights. Nonetheless within 30 seconds of bending my neck upwards, I had seen two Geminids streak just below their target constellation Gemini. As it was a very cold night, I had wrapped up well but was still only able to stand outside for about an hour before finally succumbing to the cold.  In the first half hour alone I had seen 7 and the final half hour I saw 3 more. The actual date of the Geminids maximum was to be 14th December but since this window started at 10.30pm on the 13th I thought I'd start looking from my back garden, which is more or less in the city centre of Liverpool, hence all the street lights, and my plan was to take a drive somewhere nice and dark on the 14th. I'm very glad I decided to have a go from the garden as the next day on the 14th there was the usual depressing cloud cover that normally defeats me.
 
The Geminids are one of the most abundant meteor showers of the year, with a Zenith maximum rate of 75 meteors per hour. They are also quite unique in that their parent comet isn't a comet at all but an asteroid called Phaeton, and because of this the stony material that forms the shooting star is denser and so can take longer to burn up in our atmosphere giving us a better chance of making our wish before it burns out. A colleague of mine was driving to work on the morning of the 14th and as she was looking out of her windscreen she saw probably one of the last Geminids of the night before it started to get light.
 
So as you can imagine I'm feeling quite smug about actually getting the chance to see one of the better annual meteor showers of the year. And my smugness isn't due to the fact that I got to see them while others didn't, but because I usually end up cursing the weather for spoiling the opportunity, and always feel that it deliberately clouds over just when I get excited about it. So the score for the year is Weather 9 v John 2.
 
One more thing, don't forget about the last meteor shower of the year, the Ursids, which peak on the 23rd December and has an hourly rate of 5. Although this is quite low they can be quite rich and so are still well worth a look.
 
John.

You wait ages for a great Christmas themed performance on William Brown Street then two arrive at once. Not only is the BBC Three Liverpool Nativity taking place there on Sunday, as I reported yesterday, the characters from 'A Christmas Carol' will be invading World Museum Liverpool over the weekend as well.

The theatrical invasion is in anticipation of the retelling of the famous Dickens story in the museum's Treasure House Theatre later this month. This Saturday and Sunday members of the National Museums Liverpool Youth Theatre will be roaming the museum in costume as Dickens characters, chatting to the public and sharing a good dose of Christmas cheer or ‘humbugs’. So come along and join in the Christmas spirit - or spirits, depending on who you meet!

The Treasure House Theatre’s production 'A Dickens of a Christmas' premieres on Thursday 27 December and is on every day until Monday 31 December with performances at 1pm, 2pm and 3pm. See the World Museum Liverpool What's on page for further details.

And while I'm on the subject, here's some trivia about the author to impress your family with over Christmas dinner. Did you know that Charles Dicken's daughter Kate was the model for the painting 'The Black Brunswicker' shown here? Usually on display in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, the painting is currently on loan to the fantastic Millais exhibition at Tate Briatin in London.

Anyone walking up William Brown Street this week will have noticed a large stage being constructed for BBC Three's Liverpool Nativity which is being broadcast live on Sunday.

It's a long time since I've seen a nativity play but I remember the last guests to arrive at the stable were the three wise men, who had travelled from far away to get there.

BBC Three have taken the 'moving the mountain to Mohammed' approach to choosing a location by building their stage right outside the workplace of at least three wise men and women - namely World Museum Liverpool. I don't know if any of our wise staff will be invited to this nativity but at least they don't have far to go if they do - they might even beat the shepherds.

They wont have to look far for inspiration for gifts either as the three traditional gifts brought by the wise men are all well represented in the collections. There is some frankincense and myrrh in the botany collections and plenty of gold in the antiquities collections, like this Anglo-Saxon gold medalet for example.

Personally I always like to get sweets at Christmas, so I quite like today's page on the National Museums Liverpool online advent calendar, which shows a special Christmas card from the famous local sweet factory Taveners.

Update 14/12/2007: Here's a photo of the nativity stage as it looked yesterday afternoon, on Flickr.

For the next two weeks, Rina, a Japanese student studying English will be working in the Ethnology department at World Museum. We're really pleased to have her here and we thought it would be nice for her to do a blog about what she is doing.

---

Hello!

My name is Rina. I am from Tokyo, Japan. I am working in this Museum as a work placement for a month. I usually do computer work and store objects, but my main purpose is to improve my English skills through my work.

I study British and American literature in my university in Japan, and this work placement is a part of my language course studies. Before I came here, I studied English in university of Manchester for two month, and I moved to Liverpool two weeks ago. This work placement is a good experience for me and helps me to know the English work environment and improve my English skills.

I am interested in the exhibition “The Beat Goes On” because I am interested in U.K. rock music very much. However, it will open after I go back to Japan, so I’d like to come back here to see the exhibition!

Last week a group of us from National Museums Liverpool were taken on a ‘behind the scenes’ tour of the bug-tastic World Museum, so I thought I’d fill you in on what we saw. After visiting the aquarium we explored the learning areas, designed our own colourful fish in the Eye For Colour exhibition and then got up close and personal with a few six & eight-legged friends!

Bughouse Demonstrator, Jenny Dobson, took our group behind the scenes in the Bughouse where we were introduced to a pregnant Flat Rock Scorpian (let’s call her Sally) who is expected to give birth to up to 100 babies in the next few months! We also came face to face with a Mexican Red-Kneed tarantula (let’s call her Tammy) who thankfully stayed very still, unlike her more boisterous male tarantula neighbour who looked like he wanted to escape. Apparently you can tell between the sexes if you compare the size of their rear ends – females have larger bottoms. I decided to give them these names as Jenny told me that she had stopped naming the bughouse residents due to her getting too attached to them! Thanks to Laura Healy for these great photos.

Textile conservator Anne-Marie Hughes has been preparing this 2000 year old Egyptian shroud for display in the new Egyptian gallery at World Museum Liverpool, which opens next year. I was privileged to see it in her studio while she was working on it.

The shroud was framed in the 19th century and had been glued to the back board, so Anne-Marie has had to remove it, which was quite a job, before remounting it on silk. You can see photos of the shroud with the backing board and the silk backing on our Flickr page.

The pink paint on the shroud is going to be analysed to see if it's from Rio Tinto in Spain. Recent research by the Brooklyn Museum has revealed Spanish paint on one of their mummies.

Head of Antiquities Ashley Cooke told me more about the shroud itself:

"This is a small fragment from a large painted linen shroud that once was wrapped around a mummified body. It dates to circa AD 100 - 200, a time when Egypt was a province of the Roman empire. Mummification continued to be practiced during the Roman period but the techniques employed were inferior to those of earlier periods. It was common for greater attention to be devoted to the external appearance of the wrapped mummy. Shrouds were painted with portraits representing the deceased in poses adapted from Hellenistic Greek repertoire. The Liverpool shroud depicts the transfigured dead person who has assumed the identity of Osiris, appearing in mummy form in frontal pose. Osiris is wearing the Atef crown with a plume on either side and a small disc and uraeus at the centre. His hands clasping across his chest hold the flail and sceptre of Egypt.

The shroud was found in Egypt in 1870 but other information about the excavation was not recorded. The museum acquired this piece from the collection of the famous pharmaceutical entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome in 1973.
 
Funerary shrouds such as this offer an interesting conjunction of Greek, Roman and Egyptian forms of representing the individual. Over the next year the museum will be carefully studying the iconography and artistic techniques used to further our understanding of this fascinating and beautiful object."

Today we travelled the 80km from Orissa's state capital Bhubaneshwara to the coastal town of Puri, a major centre for Hindu pilgrimage and the home of one of the most distinctive Hindu Gods, Lord Jaganatha; a manifestation of Krishna.

Along the way we stopped at several rural villages, many known to me through the work of a friend Stephen Huyler, a cultural anthropologist who has worked in Orissa with Babu Mohapatra for over 30 years. It was a privilege to see the work of the potters who effortlessly create beautiful water pots and vessels for the Jaganatha temple in Puri. Having dabbled in potting myself I know just how difficult it is to create the pieces that they shape in a matter of seconds.

We then moved on through several villages to the home of Maashri (pronounced Mousey), a 76 year-old woman who is a renowned alpana (floor painting) and wall painter. We were a little too earlier to see her work, as each home in the village had just been freshly covered in a mud/dung mixture ready for the painting that will take place in 10 days time to celebrate the end of an important month of fasting for women. While we didn't get to see Maashri's wall paintings she created a beautiful little Ganesha (the Hindu Elephant God, who is the Lord of New Beginnings), using a rice flour that she trickled into fine lines through her fingers. This practice of wall painting is slowly changing as many homes in the village are now pukka (cement) rather than the traditional chakka (mud/dung), which women are reluctant to decorate as the walls are not able to be renewed with mud/dung plaster once the painting needs renewing. We sat and drank tea and the family asked me many questions about my life, they were particularly interested in my decision to have a career rather than a family. They were also distinctly unimpressed with my style choices as one of Maashri's grand-daughters quickly ran for nail polish and bindis (a small dot that is placed between the eyebrows) to beautify me!

Reluctantly, we moved on to our final stop, which included several stone carving workshops. Here I made my first purchase for the Weston Discovery Centre. I was particularly taken by the work of one workshop, which used the local sandstone used in the creation of the magnificent sun temple at Konarak (more on that later in the week). I picked out a beautiful piece depicting Lord Krishna with the gopis (female cow herders), which is a very popular Hindu story. The work and detail on the piece is exquisite and we discovered that many of the pieces currently in production would be going to temples in the area. I've included a picture of the stone carving workshop, which is a chakka building. 

Tomorrow I will be visiting the bazaars around the great Jaganatha temple, but tonight I will be relaxing by walking along the wide sandy beach, sorry to rub it in as I know it is snowing and bitterly cold in the UK.

As you might have guessed we didn't see any tigers in Similipal National Park. However it was a beautiful place to be for a couple of days. We stayed in what was once the Maharaja's hunting lodge (believe me it was not as glamorous as it sounds), which looked out over a clearing and a salt-lick in the otherwise dense forest. At dusk, a herd of spotted deer appeared where they settled for the night and while we didn't see a tiger the deer obviously did, as with night falling anxious barks from the deer on watch alerted the herd to danger. In the absolute pitch black the barks rang out across the clearing, which sent shivers down my spine, and had me heading for the safety of the villa!

Being in the middle of a nature reserve that has no electric light, apart from one solar-powered bulb in the room, when night closed in it really was pitch-black; you literally couldn't see your hand in front of your face. This made for excellent star-gazing. With a pair of good binoculars we could see thousands and thousands of stars and even a planet, but as none of the group are astronomers we couldn't work out which it was. Still it's one of the best night skies I have ever seen.

Apart from the deer we had another visitor, a rice-eating porcupine! Apparently he was a regular visitor to the lodge and the cook there often gave the porcupine left-over rice. On this particular night the porcupine must have been hungry, as he snuck back into the kitchen, pulled the pot of cold rice off a shelf and ran under our jeep to eat it. It meant that we had a small lunch the next day, but hey I wasn't going to argue with those quills. Here's a picture of our rice-stealing friend on his first visit.

So tomorrow we'll be heading to Puri, a major temple town on the Bay of Bengal. On the way we will be stopping at several villages known for their terracottas, wall paintings and stone carving. I hope to find a piece for the Weston Discovery Centre along the way.

Namaste!
I have finally got round to writing up my first few days in India. Minhazz and I gave our keynote speech to the International Folk Art conference in Chandigarh last Thursday, which went well, despite a few technical hitches. We had a good response from the 50 curators and artists attending the conference, but what made the conference even more worthwhile was that several of the artists Minhazz and I are working with on the Collecting Contemporary India project for NML came to the conference to show their work. In the image you can see Montu Chitrakar, a well-known Bengali scroll painter singing the story relating to his communal violence (this is religious violence often between Hindu and Muslim extremistis) in India scroll.

Diwali the festival of Light took place on Friday and as we travelled from Chandigarh to Delhi the whole landscape looked magical as every home was dotted with electric lights and the little clay lamps called deepas that are placed outside the home to welcome Lakshmi the Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity. As we came into Delhi station the noise was deafening as what sounded like hundreds if not thousands of fireworks and fire crackers were going off all over the city. The drive to the hotel was a hazy, smokey one, only interupted by the bright lights of the temples carrying out the pujas (blessings) for the festival.

I was laid low for a couple of days with a strange virus (nothing to do with the food), but I'm back on my feet again now and enjoying Orissa. For the last couple of days we've been sight-seeing, guided by a friend of ours Babu Mohapatra, who runs a tour guide business in Orissa called Inner India Tours. He's extremely knowledgeable about his home state and in the past few days we have seen many beautiful 7th-9th century Hindu temples that have strong Buddhist influences in their carvings. Tomorrow we travel to the very North of the state to Similipal National Park, a beautiful reserve home to the elusive tiger. Don't hold you're breath for a photo on the next blog though!

All eyes are going to be on our fair city and visitors - along with some superstars thanks to the MTV Europe awards - from all over the world will be descending next year, but does this make Liverpool a global city? A public forum being held at World Museum Liverpool tomorrow night is going to be looking at Liverpool’s status as a global city and what the term really means.

The discussion is the second in a series of public forums giving you the opportunity to comment on the main themes that will be focused on in the new Museum of Liverpool. If you want to have your say or just listen to a lively discussion headed by our expert panel of history lecturers and curators the event runs from 6-8pm – although if I was you I'd get there a bit early as complimentary refreshments are being served from 5.45pm ...

Places are limited so if you want to come along call 0151 478 4543 to book.
 

Many moons ago, when there was still the promise of a summer featuring the sun, Guy Knight in Entomology told us about the fieldwork the team was undertaking in Smardale, Cumbria. Well, the 'field' bit of the work has concluded and now they're spending the winter grubbing through their finds. More from Guy.

---

Fieldwork finished for the year at Smardale Gill NNR in October. Despite the poor summer, the monthly visits we made to the site were productive and the winter will be spent sorting through samples back at the museum, identifying specimens and preparing information on conserving insect diversity at the site for our report to the Cumbria Wildlife Trust. Several more pictures from the survey have been added to our Flickr page.

It was good to see large numbers of Scotch Argus and Northern Brown Argus butterfly during the summer. They are the only insects which have been studied in detail at Smardale in the past, where they occur towards the southern limit of their British distribution. Several other significant species have been recorded during the survey so far and we were especially pleased to find the Wall Mason Bee Osmia parietina, a Biodiversity Action Plan Priority Species which is restricted in Britain to a handful of sites in north-west England and North Wales.

The team will be returning to Smardale next year when I hope to give more updates on how the work is progressing.  

Last Saturday World Museum Liverpool played its part in the Liverpool Irish Festival by hosting a special day dedicated to Irish arts. It was a busy, creative and very fun day according to Ann-marie Cassidy from our learning department, who has written the following account of the many activities.

You can see more pictures in a Flickr slideshow of her Irish Festival photos.

---

"The Liverpool Irish Festival has been running since 2003, when it began as a weekend of traditional Irish folk music. Each year the festival grows in size and now celebrates the special identity of the Liverpool Irish community with an outstanding programme of events and activities throughout the city.

This year, National Museums Liverpool staff worked in partnership with the Liverpool Irish Festival to introduce our visitors to a range of Irish-themed activities and performances. Enthusiastic visitors took part in Celtic art workshops with Holly Langley and explored traditional Irish myths in a singing and drama workshop with Claire Chandler. Our more energetic visitors were treated to a demonstration from the George Ferguson School of Irish Dance, before taking to the floor themselves with the dancers!

The atrium provided the perfect location for a performance from the Knotty Ash Signing Choir, who sang traditional songs with sign language. This was followed by an impressive musical performance involving some traditional Irish instruments. Jarlath Henderson played the Uilleann pipes and I was reliably informed that Uilleann means ‘elbow’. (I imagine this link has something to do with the way the pipes are played!) Jarlath was also joined by John Chandler on guitar and ‘Bones’ Adderley on the Bodráhn, a traditional Irish drum. The group were only asked to play for thirty minutes, but were so well received that they continued playing for nearly an hour!

The final workshop of the day was a poetry workshop with Eddie Bixter. Eddie began by introducing participants to some of the work of Seamus Heany and talked about how lots of the words used were ‘dark’ and ‘earthy’. He then asked the group to think about words that could represent Liverpool, looking at the language we use and talking about well-known buildings, people and places. By combining some of the words, the group created individual lines. These were put together to form one collaborative piece of poetry. The poem is quite abstract, but some of the lines are great! Have a read and see what you think!"

The Liverpool Irish Poem

Crosby rain stone, loving hard ground,
Rhythm cut a house,
Loose stoop rats, radio tower,
Musky, old, echoing path,
Kirkby la la cut out, Everton piled bog,
Irish stubbed clot grit,
Soggy bone, Scouse sods,
Shrill, overhead echoes,
Liverbird flock beneath salt dock fields,
Smug, solid Scousers,
Humming, smudging, minging railway,
Frogs lug splintered,
Sugar hung, thick dark cloud,
Oo-er, dig bush, Playhouse north,
Liverpool sky, cool 2008 hens,
Liverpool Echo, culture club.

As I’m going to India at the end of the week I thought this would be a good time to write my first blog. Technology permitting I’m hoping to send in a few blogs while I’m away. As a quick introduction my name is Emma Martin and I’m Head of Ethnology and Curator of Asia collections based at World Museum. My trip is part-holiday, but also part-work as I’ll be presenting a paper on a contemporary collecting project I’m working on with colleagues in India and I’ll also be collecting new objects for the Weston Discovery Centre at World Museum.

I’m flying out to Delhi on Saturday and although the shopping and restaurants are fantastic I’ll only be there for a few days before I head off to Chandigarh. Chandigarh is a relatively new city designed by Le Corbusier the famous modernist architect. I’m not going for the modernist architecture though, but for the incredible Nek Chand garden. This fantastic garden was started by one man, Nek Chand, using reclaimed land he built, in secret, amazing structures, including waterfalls, bridges and plazas and covered them with mosaic designs populating the place with mosaic-covered people and animals. It’s hard to imagine so I’ve added a picture so you can get a better idea. The place is now so big that I’ve been told it is the second most visited tourist attraction in India after the Taj Mahal! This is where I’m giving my paper. I’m presenting with Minhazz Majumdar, the co-director of The Earth and Grass Workshop. Together we’re working on a commissioning project for NML, asking a number of well-known Indian artists to create new works for NML’s collection, it’s a really exciting project and we’re both really pleased with how it’s going so this seemed like a great opportunity for us to speak about it together. I’ll write more about the collecting project as it develops and as the new works start to arrive in Liverpool.

After the conference I’ll be heading to Orissa a beautiful state on the east coast, which is famous for its temples and crafts. While I’ll be spending time relaxing, catching up with friends and hopefully doing a bit of tiger-spotting (!), I’ll also be visiting a number of villages known for a whole variety of crafts and I hope to pick up a few things while I’m there for the Weston Discovery Centre.

So fingers crossed I’ll be posting from India next week, giving you a sneak preview of some of the new objects you’ll be able to find in the Weston Discovery Centre early next year.

On Friday museum demonstrator Claire Noble told us about the first day of the 'BORED?' games workshop that she ran at Aigburth Family Centre with Alex Shears. Here's her update from the second and final day, with some exciting news about an inventor in the making (remember, you heard it here first!).

Have a look at our Flickr slideshow of photos from the 'BORED?' workshop for more pictures.

---

"We have discovered the youngest board game inventor right here in Aigburth!! Our second day at Aigburth Family Centre began with our youngest member Yorgie proudly showing off his newest board game invention ‘Car Chase’.  With diagrams and written instructions (very nicely printed by his Mum), Alex and I couldn’t help but think that our Thursday’s sessions of games galore helped him on his path to board game stardom! But now back to normality…

We started Friday’s session with a series of fun and energetic games and (much to our delight) some of the young people began to offer to teach some of their favourite games to the rest of the group! The focus of the session soon changed to the instructional DVD, to be made that afternoon. Ideas were flowing and by lunch time the kids had not only chosen their favourite game to teach on the DVD, but had made their own poster for it too! 

After lunch our film maker Mally quickly set up and the young people began to teach and play their games to the camera. A bit of camera shyness soon disappeared and Mally caught some great footage. We wanted to finish the session with a fun group game and what better way to finish a game themed workshop, but with the best party game in the world, Pass the Parcel! 

With their mouths still full with sweets, we explained that invites would be in the post for them to see their DVD on the big Treasure House Theatre screen at World Museum Liverpool on 10 November. The National Museums Liverpool Youth Theatre would also be invited to the festivities, finishing with plenty of party food, drink and perhaps a few party games in between."

I went down to World Museum Liverpool earlier this week to meet the stars of this weekend’s Irish arts day. Eleanor King and Cecilia Ferguson took us through a few of the steps they will be performing with their troupe from the Ferguson School of Irish Dance tomorrow. Taught by a former world champion their twinkle toed performance is not to be missed. Irish singing sensation Helen Roche and Knotty Ash choir will also be entertaining us with the unique sounds of the Emerald Isle with performances of traditional Irish folk songs. The events are part of the Liverpool Irish Festival, check out the rest of the events happening across the city on their website. All this talk of Ireland has made me a bit thirsty, I'm off for a pint of the black stuff ...

National Museum Liverpool's collections are an important source for a whole range of scientists, academics and researchers. One man who is no stranger to the zoological collections is acclaimed wildlife artist David Quinn. For over 25 years he has worked as an illustrator of a broad range of natural history publications. His incredibly detailed illustrations have featured in many books and journals dealing with bird identification issues and in academic studies concerning the biology, behaviour and ecology of birds. Not only are his illustrations and paintings extremely accurate, they are so incredibly lifelike and animated that the creatures depicted look as if they will spring to life at any minute. It's no surprise that he's a former winner of British Bird's 'Bird Illustrator of the Year' award.

David's work is the result of painstaking research, both in the field making studies of live birds and animals, and in museums including World Museum Liverpool, where he takes advantage of the fact that our mounted specimens don't move around to sketch the finer details of their plumage and markings.

You can see an exhibition of his work, 'Nature in the Frame - Portraits from our Living Landscape' in the Joseph Banks Room at Chester Zoo until 2 December 2007. The exhibition is a collaboration with the zoo and Cheshire Mammal Group and includes some pencil and ink illustrations for their forthcoming book, due out next spring. There are also some mounted specimens of some of the animals David has illustrated, including a bat and vole on loan from World Museum Liverpool.

Here's a report on some special half term activities from Claire Noble, one of our Treasure House Theatre demonstrators, who was out yesterday helping Liverpool children to escape half term boredom with games that have been played for thousands of years:

---

"At 10.30am sharp Alex Shears and myself began our first 'BORED?' session, the first  of a set of two full day workshops at Aigburth Family Centre. Based on the very fact these kids (like all kids do) get BORED over the school holidays, myself and Alex Shears decided that, what better way to keep kids from climbing the walls... but to teach them loads of games!! 

The first hour was nicely packed with drama icebreakers and story building games, all of which were devised so that they could play it themselves whenever they are BORED and need something to do. After a quick break (and happily the five attendees didn’t run out the door, but in fact stayed!) we introduced them to two ancient board games from the Weston Discovery Centre, which went down a treat. Menkala and Fox and Geese were played for a solid hour and at times the tension was unbearable! 

The afternoon session was craft based, beginning with the moulding and painting of their own scarab beetle board piece and then the making of a giant snakes and ladders board game that they can keep and play in their centre. There were a few 'eeeeees' when explaining why the Egyptians idolised the dung beetle and to show them an actual dung beetle provided to us by Jen in the Bug House was the icing on the cake. They were impressed too by the image of a 13th century Snakes and Ladders game from World Cultures Gallery too, especially as it was made by a monk for his sick mum!

Alex and I were really pleased overall with the sessions. After telling them that tomorrow's sessions will be inventing their own games and creating an instructional DVD for it, they were already thinking of ideas. Let’s see what tomorrow brings!!"

I was in Paris last weekend and went to a cool exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, an amazing glass fronted building near Montparnasse cemetery (I had just been to visit the graves of Samuel Beckett, Serge Gainsbourg and Charles Baudelaire). The exhibition was 'Rock'n'Roll 39-59', which looked at the birth and evolution of rock'n'roll in the USA from its blues, jazz and gospel roots, right up to the late '50's.

I really liked the huge screen with comfy bean-bags you could lie on while watching footage of stars like Chuck Berry and of course Elvis, in a film that told the whole story of rock'n'roll. It made you realise just how crazy singers like Jerry Lee Lewis were and how shocking he probably was in his time. Of course Little Richard seems pretty odd now, so imagine his impact on audiences in the 1950's! Though where were the female performers? I like Wanda Jackson and she wasn't in the film, though she was in the music pods that we listened to later on. We also saw some priceless objects, such as the actual guitar that Elvis used during his first recordings at Sun Records! 

It actually got me thinking about the forthcoming exhibition at World Museum Liverpool, 'The Beat Goes On', which will show from 2 July 2008 – 1 Nov 2009. It will look at the history of Merseyside's music scene and celebrate the creativity of the city. Keep an eye out for more details on what you can expect to see in this exhibition...

World Museum Liverpool's herbarium is an important resource used by many researchers and experts over the years. It recently hosted the British Bryological Society's annual meeting and conference. As Head of Science John Edmondson reports, this included the opportunity to see rare books from the collection, test museum samples and even become film stars:

---

"The meeting started with a tour of World Museum Liverpool's herbarium and library along with an opportunity to view an exhibition of rare and unusual bryological books.

The main Saturday programme began with an experimental workshop session in the World Museum Liverpool’s Community Base, where draft copies of the new British Bryological Society Field Key were available for testing along with unidentified samples from the museum herbarium. A video-microscope was provided, along with conventional binocular dissecting microscopes and a range of floras; experienced bryologists provided informal guidance to beginners.

Here's a photograph of the Bryologists bryologising on Whixall Moss on the last day of the conference. This was part of an excursion to a large raised bog in Shropshire led by Martin Godfrey (the man on the right) with considerable help from the warden of Whixall and Fenn Mosses National Nature Reserve, Joan Daniels (who is standing next to him). The reason for the microphone and camera is that we were preparing a sound recording, with short film clips, as a record of the meeting. In this photo they are being interviewed by Sara Bellis (Shropshire Wildlife Trust) and filmed by Rachel Davies."

---

Update 9/11/2007: The short video that you can see being recorded above is now available on the British Bryological Society website. So if you want to see Bryologists in action, or find out how why the future of peat bogs potentially affects the whole planet, have a look at the Whixall Moss video.

I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview of a Sattirya dance performance this morning at World Museum Liverpool. Award-winning classical dance star Menaka Bora was checking out the space and practicing a couple of moves in preparation for her performance at the Treasure House Theatre on Saturday 20 October.

Dressed in fabulous traditional costume Menaka gave us a flavour of the Dashavatara which tells the story of the Hindu god Vishnu. If you're a budding dancer and fancy having a go at this ancient Indian dance technique Menaka will be running a workshop at 3.30pm on the 20th. Give it a try - if John Barnes can master ballroom dancing there's hope for us all!    

John Moran from the planetarium at World Museum Liverpool reminisces about Sputnik 1 and reflects on its impact. There's more on the structure of Sputnik on the New York Times' site and the NASA site is carrying a retrospective.

---

The 4th October marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite. The importance of Sputnik cannot be overestimated. Firstly, it ignited the space race between USSR and the United States. And then when you think of how far we have come in the last 50 years - landing a man on the Moon, space probes to every planet in the solar system, space stations where people can stay in space for months at a time, and (probably more important to me and you here on Earth) satellites that enable us to phone friends and relatives on the other side of the world, global positioning satellites (GPS) that stop me getting lost on my way to work, and not forgetting the ability to watch live football and news events as they happen - this was all made possible because of the direction Sputnik fired the world into.

My first memory of Sputnik 1 was when I visited this museum as a youngster, and on seeing the replica that is on display here I remember thinking, "wow, that has actually been into space", not realising that it was only a replica. I also remember being struck by how simplistic it seemed. Now that I am older and have a better understanding on the subject, I realise that I was basically right. The Sputnik 1 satellite consists of a couple of silver zinc batteries, a ventilation fan, four antennae and two transmitters that went 'beep-beep-beep'. These 'beeps' were picked up by ham radio operators all over the world. The term "brilliantly simple, yet simply brilliant" springs to mind.

There ended up being something like 40 Sputniks altogether, but Sputnik 2 was groundbreaking too, as it was the first time a living organism was sent into space in the form of a dog named Laika, which means 'barker', (being blasted into space on nothing more than a giant firework gave poor Laika plenty of reason to bark in my opinion). As a result people named it 'Muttnik'.

So on October 4th, when you are sitting down to the football, or trying to figure out how to work that GPS on the dashboard of your car, remember this was all made possible because of the Sputnik 1 satellite. We will have a birthday card in the atrium of World Museum Liverpool to commemorate the 50th anniversary of this historic event.

John

There have been some exciting new additions to the World Museum aquarium! Thornback and Undulate Rays have started to hatch and Rachel Ball, an Assistant Aquarist at World Museum Liverpool, sent us the good news...

---

The aquarium has been blessed this month with several new arrivals. The flipper-flapper (as opposed to pitter-patter) of tiny fins may be witnessed if one looks carefully into our native marine wedge tanks! Baby Thornback and Undulate Rays (or skates) have begun hatching from their large leathery egg cases after a lengthy incubation period of 6-7 months.

The egg capsules were laid in the native marine ‘rock pool’ exhibit in the Blue Planet Aquarium in Ellesmere Port where a successful breeding programme has been established for some time. It is fantastic that we are able to display the hatchlings here at the museum in order to raise awareness of the plight of these fascinating animals which are arguably the most vulnerable of all marine fishes. The UK is home to at least 11 species of egg-laying skates which use the shallow waters around our coast to breed and lay their eggs. They are very slow growing animals which produce relatively few young after taking over a decade to reach sexual maturity. They are thus struggling to thrive under today’s commercial fishing pressure such that the once Common Skate is now considered to be practically extinct from the Irish Sea.

We’re hoping that by successfully rearing these animals in the museum we are not only promoting captive breeding and collaboration between public aquaria but also encouraging visitors to appreciate the wealth of marine life which our coast supports and to take an active interest in its conservation. 

Earlier this week in the Time and Space Gallery at World Museum Liverpool, fine watchmaker Christopher Ward presented the first example of the 'C1 Russell' watch to John Millard, Director at World Museum Liverpool, to be added to the renowned horological collection.

This exceptional watch is a modern interpretation of the Hunter pocket watch designed by Thomas Russell, watchmaker of Prescot, Liverpool, in the 19th century. It embodies all the design finesse and top quality components of Thomas Russell watches and reflects the historic traditions of Liverpool watch making. Thomas Russell was arguably Liverpool’s finest watchmaker and built a thriving business producing the finest quality watches and clocks, including the celebrated Russell Hunter pocket watch. His fame spread to royal circles and he was rewarded with royal patronage by Queen Victoria. Thomas Russell’s name is synonymous with the Lancashire watch making industry. He remains an icon for watch purists and enthusiasts around the world

First the good news: Animated Adventures at World Museum Liverpool has been extended slightly and will now finish on Tuesday 28th August. Also, the Culture Company is organising a family festival on William Brown Street from 12 noon until 5pm on 26 and 27 August, as part of the Mathew Street Music Festival, so you could visit both over the bank holiday weekend.

The bad news is that because of the family festival William Brown Street will be closed from 6pm on Saturday 25 until 8pm on Monday 27 August. Also, because of the 800th birthday pageant which starts and finishes on William Brown Street, the road will also be closed on Tuesday 28th August, so if you were hoping to park there you will have to find an alternative. Check out the World Museum Liverpool visitor information page for alternatives.  Obviously the same arrangement applies to the Walker Art Gallery.

Sorry - should have put this up last week but it's still current. John Edmondson has been involved in a new exhibition showing at the Picton LIbrary - that's the round, reading room that's part of Liverpool's Central Library. It's between World Musem Liverpool and the Walker so could easily be fitted in with a visit to either.

---

An exhibition opening on 8 August at Liverpool Central Library titled "Spice of Life: Raffles and the Malay World" has been organised by the British Library to celebrate their acquisition of the important Raffles family archive containing the papers, artefacts and natural history drawings of Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore. His relatives lived in Liverpool and after returning to London with specimens of the world's largest flower, Rafflesia (named in his honour) his agent arranged to send a pickled sample to Liverpool. Unfortunately, it seems to have gone missing, possibly in the May Blitz in 1941 which destroyed the natural history galleries at World Museum Liverpool. Research by the exhibition organiser, Annabel Gallop from the British Library, has unearthed correspondence between Robert Brown and William Roscoe concerning the Rafflesia. Some of the natural history drawings, and other objects, will be on display in the Picton Library until October. The exhibition has the enthusiastic support of the local Malaysian community.
 
John Edmondson

Over the summer Strange Cargo arts company have been hard at work in World Museum Liverpool's lower horseshoe gallery. This grand space with its high ceilings is the perfect space for one of the things they do best, which is making giants.

Their have been a number of giant-building workshops over the summer. Now the company are finishing off a 15 foot tall Liverpool giant, which will lead the city's 800th birthday pageant on Tuesday 28 August. You can get a first look at their creation at 1pm on Bank Holiday Monday (27 August) when the giant will be named in a special ceremony in St John's Gardens, opposite World Museum Liverpool.

Have a look at a Flickr slideshow of photos from today's giant building workshop to see how some of Strange Cargo's creations are shaping up.

Planetarium operator, John Moran, was up bright and early the other day for the Perseids meteor shower (rather him than me...)

---

As is always the way when I look forward to annual meteor showers, especially the major ones like the Perseids, I was beaten by the broken cloud, which gives you the added frustration of being able to see parts of the sky in between and consequently gives you false hope. This was how I spent the early hours of 13 August in Newsham Park, Liverpool. Fortunately others I've spoken to had better luck than I did. One of our regular visiters to the Planetarium described how she had set her alarm clock for 3am and had trudged off to the nearby woods with her grandfather, and spotted at least 10 meteors, which is deserved reward for the commitment and patience shown by a 12 year old just discovering the wonders of our night sky. The passion and excitment in her eyes was a joy to see as she described how, "one meteor streak went on for ever" and how another, "broke apart mid-flight". This kind of feedback from someone so young is, in my opinion, one of the biggest rewards of being a Planetarium operator.
 
Another successful night of 'Perseid hunting' was achieved by our own Tony Morgan of the Natural History Centre, who along with Wendy Simkiss from Geology and a few friends, organised a star party. As a way of keeping everyone keen and focused, Wendy not only supplied binoculars and star maps, but also created a clever little test where everyone had to find 16 selected objects in the night sky.  This is such a brilliant way of not only keeping interests peaked, but also an opportunity for friends who may not be as familiar with the celestial sky. Another reason why star parties are a great idea is because unfortunately the sky does not always do as predicted, so if you end up disappointed because of clouds at least you are among friends and can still have good time.
 
I always try to imagine what it would be like to witness a meteor shower from the middle of the sea or even a desert, because being a city dweller makes it much more difficult to view events like meteor showers because of light pollution - the enemy of all star gazers. I often speak to retired seamen who are not necessarily familiar with the constellations but talk about how unbelievable the stars were at sea, and how the sighting of shooting stars became commonplace. I can't help but feel a tinge of envy. Of course you don't always need an annual meteor shower to be able to spot meteors, because on any given night of the year there are millions of tons of space debris entering our atmosphere, most the size of a grain of sand. The great thing about annual showers is that you can get prepared for them. The best way to do this is by getting yourself a meteor shower chart (see below) which lets you know what date meteor showers start and finish.

John

Download: Meteor shower chart [.pdf 55k]
Download: Meteor shower chart [.rtf 72k]

Anyone in the area this afternoon will have noticed that the usually tranquil William Brown Street was a riot of noise and colour. Our roving reporter Laura Johnson couldn't resist going to see what all the fuss was about:

---

"The children of Liverpool took control of William Brown Street today. With the kids in charge the only rules were to have fun!

So a sandy beach arrived outside the Walker Art Gallery, dancers and musicians performed on the steps to the old entrance of World Museum Liverpool and William Brown Street was invaded with stilt walkers, jugglers, face painters and role players."

The British Bryological Society is holding its annual general meeting at World Museum Liverpool on 29-30 September. If you're new to the world of bryology (the study of bryophytes, aka mosses and liverworts) and want to learn more then the Saturday morning session is for you, with a workshop on identifying bryopgytes - feel free to drop in.  More on the BBS website.

This afternoon's roving report comes from our press officer Laura Johnson, who attended the screening of three short films by local film maker Doaa Al Soraimi at World Museum Liverpool as part of the Arabic Arts Festival. If you missed this, you can still catch dance and music workshops and performances at the museum on Sunday, at the close of the festival.

---

"Doaa introduced her films, which included 'A Bite Of Life' exploring themes in the lives of children from an ethnic background and 'Veneer', a video installation that speaks metaphorically about how individuals make judgments based on appearance. 'Veneer' was driven by Doaa's own experience of wearing the Hijab.

There was an informal chat after we had seen all three films. Doaa was interested in hearing what members of the audience had made of 'Veneer' in particular. People had quite different interpretations of the messages she was conveying but all understood the general theme of looking beneath the surface. It was really interesting. Some people had specific questions about Arabic customs and Islamic traditions, which came up in the documentaries so it was quite informative too.
 
Her brother was her camera man so they are obviously a talented family!"

Part of the new Egyptian gallery (which I am ridiculously excited about and it doesn't even open until next year) will explore the ancient Egyptians' relationship with their environment, including animals. Ashley Cooke's sent me snaps of some of the objects that will feature in this section of the gallery (the snake and crocodile are on our flickr page, along with other pics from the gallery development).

The hollow base of this beautiful little bronze statue contained the mummified remains of a mongoose; admired for its ability to kill snakes and crush crocodile eggs. During the Late Period (664-525BC) statues like this one were mass produced and purchased by private individuals. They donated them to the priests of temples when they went on pilgrimages to different cult centres throughout Egypt - almost like a holiday I guess.

The ancient Egyptians respected the violent power of the crocodile, despite it being their close Nile-neighbour. The god, Sobek, was portrayed as a crocodile and had a temple cult centre in the Fayuum region, which is where this bronze Late Period figure was excavated (see it on our Flickr page).

The snake was similarly admired, mainly for its ability to seemingly regenerate after shedding its skin. This Late Period bronze statue of a snake contained the mummified remains of a snake within the hollow rectangular base (again, check out our Flickr page).

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.

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.

 

Progress photos on the mandala at World Museum Liverpool are now in the mandala flickr set. You can see in a couple that the pattern isn't flat - crests of coloured sand.

Check out my post from Wednesday to see what the project is about.

A post from John Edmondson on a new book he's worked on.

---

2007 is the 300th anniversary of the birth of famous Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, who published the first Flora of Sweden. To mark the event a number of publications have appeared, including one with a Liverpool connection. John Edmondson, head of science at World Museum Liverpool, has edited an English translation of Linnaeus’ travel diaries of his tours of the Baltic islands of Öland and Gotland in 1741. There, Linnaeus observed many plants and animals previously unrecorded from Sweden as well as many aspects of the local folklore, geology, agricultural practices and copies of runic inscriptions.

The account, which was translated into English by William T. Stearn and Marie Åsberg, has been brought right up to date, with the plant, animal and fossil names revised by numerous scholars including Guy Knight, Ian Wallace and Alan Bowden of World Museum Liverpool as well as specialists at the Natural History Museum and elsewhere. It has been published (ISBN2: 978 91 633 0361 6) by the Swedish publisher Gyllene Snittet, and includes photographs of Linnaeus’ plant specimens and notes from the Linnaean herbarium in London. A new Runic font has been designed for the book, which reproduces and translates the inscriptions on ancient memorial stones found during the expedition.

John

Hello, I'd like to introduce myself! I'm Lisa Jones and I'm filling in for Dawn Carroll as E-PR Officer for National Museums Liverpool, while she is away on leave. This is my first blog post and I am bringing you an update about the entomology fieldwork at Smardale Gill, from Curator of Entomology, Guy Knight. There are lots of great photos of the team at work on Flickr and you read on to find out more about his team's latest findings...

---

Because of the awful weather during the past month, the visit to Smardale Gill NNR we had scheduled for June threatened to be a fairly miserable affair. Luckily the rain did hold off for most of the time and we even got a few sunny spells! This time we were accompanied by Tom Mawdsley, retired Curator of Diptera (flies) at NML and Dr Jennifer Newton the county spider recorder for Cumbria. Much of the day was spent servicing and repairing traps which had been damaged by the weather and livestock but it was also a good opportunity to see some of the rare plants and butterflies already known from the reserve. Meanwhile, some specimens from the samples are being prepared for our collections, allowing us to make accurate identifications and providing a lasting record of the presence of these insects at the site for future researchers.

This week World Museum Liverpool is really lucky to be hosting a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Tashi Lhumpo monastery. They are creating an intricate sand painting called a mandala in the Treasure House Theatre. Millions of colourful grains of sand are positioned using tubes and scrapers to create the most beautiful painting - this one depicts a celestial mansion of the Buddhist deities. The concentration is amazing and helps the monks in their meditations. You can see the progress so far on flickr (it's good to watch the progress in the slideshow).

The mandala won't be on display at the museum for long though - just as a ceremony marks the beginning of the process so another ceremony marks the destruction of the mandala, symbolising the impermanence of existence and warning against attachment to worldly goods. So if you would like to see the mandala there are talks at 2pm and 3pm today, tomorrow and Friday, and the destruction ceremony at 10.15am on Saturday (7 July). Hopefully have snaps of that ceremony next week. More info on these and other talks in the what's on section on the main site.

And if you want to learn more about mandalas check out wikipedia.

You might have seen this BBC article last week on the discovery of the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut. It is being described as the biggest archaeological find in Egypt since Howard Carter found Tutankamen's tomb in 1922. We have a few pieces related to Hatshepsut so Ashley Cooke, curator of antiquities, agreed to do a blog post on who Hatshepsut was.

---

Egyptologists in Cairo believe they have identified the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut - one of the most famous queens of Ancient Egypt. Alongside her nephew, Tuthmosis III, she ruled Egypt as a crowned king during the prosperous Eighteenth Dynasty (about 1473 – 1458 BC). She was a the daughter of king Tuthmosis I and Queen Ahmose Nefertari. She married her half-brother, Tuthmosis II and gave birth to daughter called Neferura. When her husband died his son by another marriage assumed the throne of Egypt. However, he was only a child so Hatshepsut ruled as regent and later assumed full royal titles and enjoyed a long co-regency, thus effectively blocking him from full power.

Hatshepsut was a very successful ruler and built many monuments that can still be seen today, including a spectacular terraced temple, set within the cliffs at Deir el Bahri (near to the Valley of the Kings) (see a pic on our Flickr page). It is from this temple that a carved relief of Hatshepsut’s father was recovered in the early 1800s, probably from the ruined Anubis chapel within the temple complex, and is now within the Egyptology collection at Liverpool. You can see it on our flickr page.

This is a fragment of limestone fallen from a temple wall, 35 cm high and carved in raised relief, representing the pharaoh Tuthmosis I, the father of Hatshepsut. The king wears the long royal beard and a coiled uraeus over a wig cover. The carving of Hatshepsut’s father is unusual because it reveals that the sculptor has obviously changed his mind about the position of the arms. A previous outline reveals that the king’s right arm was originally raised, but a decision was made to place the arm by his side. The earlier carving would have been covered by a layer of plaster and concealed in the final painting of the temple wall.

Whilst searching the Museum of Liverpool social history collections for images of Liverpool in the 1960s for the forthcoming exhibition – The Beat Goes On, which explores Liverpool’s popular music from 1945 to the present day (opening at World Museum Liverpool summer 2008), I came across these images taken by Harold Morton, who as a keen amateur photographer took many photographs of the city.

The image of the policeman directing traffic on Lime Street near St Georges Hall shows just how much the city has changed, and what could be more 1960s than the mini? – this image of one being loaded onto the Aer Lingus aeroplane at Speke Airport is great!

 

Guy Knight at World Museum Liverpool has sent me more photos from the fieldwork the entomology team are conducting at Smardale Gill National Nature Reserve in Yorkshire. You can see them all on our Flickr page. One of the more exciting finds so far has been the sawfly Macrophya albipuncta (left), known from few localities outside Scotland. There's a bit more on the research in this previous post.

Guy also thought like-minded people might be interested in the Tullie House Museum virtual fauna website.  There is a new area of the site linking the museum's collections with the wildlife records database, so you can examine their insect collections, with details of over 25,000 specimens available so far.

Well, we might as well be honest about it! Apparently there's a football match of some sort tonight - I wouldn't know, I only have eyes for Everton - and curator Ashley Cooke thought it appropriate to wheel out something vaguely Athens-related for the occassion, so here goes. Actually, we do have a pretty substantial Greek collection so this post isn't entirely without its merits.

This helmet is bronze and dates from around 460BC. It was beaten from a single piece of metal into a pretty distinctive style, and would have been worn into battle by a heavily-armed solider, known as a hoplite soldier. This hoplite soldier was from Corinth, a city state nestled between Athens and Sparta. During the fifth century BC the city states of Sparta and Athens were at war with each other and Corinth fought with Sparta against Athens, so there's a good chance this helmet was worn in a battle against Athenians. 

 

Curator of Egyptology, Ashley Cooke, tells us about a student project he's working on.

---

Carolyn (antiquities curator) and myself have been working with three students as part of a museum work experience the department offers to archaeology and Egyptology students. Rebecca Cessford, Nicola Davies, and Michael Fairclough are students in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at Liverpool University. As part of their degree course they need to gain some experience of museum work and have been working on a variety of projects including help piece together hundreds of pottery sherds.

Painting on Egyptian pottery is not very common before the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC), but appears often in the late 18th Dynasty. Painted vessels can be colourfully decorated with floral motifs using cobalt blue and other mineral pigments mined from the deserts of Egypt. These vessels were not your everyday containers and would originally have contained luxury liquids such as wine.  This blue-decorated pottery was first recognised on a bigger scale at the palace of king Amenhotep III (1388-1351/50 BC). The painted pottery in the Liverpool collection comes from the palace site at Tell el-Amarna, built by Amenhotep III’s son, king Akenaten.

The museum has an extensive collection from Tell el-Amarna – ranging from gold rings from royalty to reed sandals worn by residents of the town.  Like many large museums, World Museum Liverpool gave financial support to British archaeologists working in Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The museum sponsored excavations at Tell el-Amarna in the 1930s and in return, the museum received a share of the artefacts that were found.

More photos of the sherds can be found on our Flickr page (the last three images).

Last week our exceptionally successful exhibition, 'Eye for Colour', won in the 'Temporary or Touring Exhibition' category at the annual Museums & Heritage Awards for Excellence. The awards recognise and celebrate best practice in the industry, so to win is a real pat on the back.

Head of exhibitions, Fiona Philpott, was thrilled to receive the award, especially as the exhibition was developed and designed in-house by our own team. In her acceptance speech she thanked the eTEC consortium as this award is very much a tribute to the success of this unique consortium (National Museums Liverpool, At-Bristol, W5, Magna and Science Projects) and thanked the Millennium Commission who gave us a very substantial grant towards the cost of the exhibition.

More on the awards and all the categories and winners on the Museums & Heritage website, and more on 'Eye for Colour' on our main site.

If you missed 'Eye for Colour' at World Museum Liverpool you can catch it now at W5 in Belfast. The good news is that it will return to World Museum Liverpool later this year (Oct 07 - Feb 08), before it travels to Magna in Rotherham. It is also available for hire (contact our exhibitions dept.).

And while I'm on the subject of awards, 'Big Art for Little Artists' is nominated in the 'Large Visitor Attraction' category of The Mersey Partnership 2007 Tourism Awards. Lynn Taylor from the Lady Lever is also short-listed in the 'Outstanding Customer Service' category. Fingers crossed for the ceremony on 1 June.

Planetarium operator John Moran explains all the fuss over the latest planetary discovery.

---

After discovering some 200 or so planets orbiting distant stars, scientists have finally found what looks like an Earth type planet. Gliese 581c is the smallest "Extrasolar planet" ever discovered. Most Exoplanets discovered so far have been many times the size of Earth and more resemble gas giants like Jupiter. But the detection of a world so close in size to the Earth, has got the scientific community very excited.
 
But even more significant is the planets location around its parent star: Gliese 581c orbits around its Sun in a narrow band of space known as the "Habitable zone", defined as the region around a star where liquid water is stable. And as we all know, where there is water, there is a good chance that some kind of life may have formed.
 
Over the last few years, scientists have discovered hundreds of Exoplanets. How they do this is by studying a star's spectrum and looking for periodic shifts. These are tell-tale signs that the star is wobbling - rocking to and fro because of the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet. This wobble was detected in a small and quite dim star called Gliese 581, which is in our galactic  neighbourhood, 20.5 light years away. This wobble was the sign that it had a companion, and this companion turned out to be a Neptune sized planet orbiting very close to the star and completing its course every 5.4 days. But they noticed that the wobble did not fit the usual pattern, something  else seemed to be tugging at the star. As it turned out there where two more low mass planets  orbiting Gliese 581 and it is the middle of the three that has caught the attention. Not only is it the lowest mass planet ever found, but the distance from its Sun means it may  have a surface temperature of around 0 to 40 degrees Celsius and consequently water would be liquefied not frozen.
 
The fact that a Red dwarf is of much lower mass than our Sun makes the detection of small rocky planets that much easier. All in all, both the low luminosity and the low mass of Red dwarfs favour the detection of Earth-like planets around such stars, and with Red dwarfs being the most abundant stars in the Galaxy, the possibility for similar discoveries is very real. 
 
John Moran

We've already brought you news on the archaeological dig at the former Manchester Dock. However, did you know about a much smaller dig at the Piermaster's House, nearby in the Albert Dock?

Museum staff planted a vegetable garden at the front of the Piermaster's House a few years ago, to complement the wartime theme of the displays inside. The garden shows the sorts of vegetables that people would have grown themselves to ensure a healthy diet when food was scarce during the Second World War and during the years afterwards, when strict rationing was still in place.

The garden is still maintained by green fingered museum attendant Brian Jones, with help from some ladybirds on pest control duty. Despite difficult conditions in the exposed location with salty air blown in from the mouth of the river, he has produced a bumper crop each year. Last year there was enough to cook a large pan of scouse for the attendants at the end of the summer.

Brian showed me how this year's plants were doing this morning. I was surprised at just how much was growing in such a small space, including rhubarb, tomatoes, strawberries, parsley, potatoes, carrots, onions, runner beans, lettuce, peas, some rather large leeks, plus a bed of herbs. You can see more photos of the garden in a Flickr slideshow.

If you are a keen local gardener and would be interested in helping out as a volunteer at the Piermaster's House garden, we would like to hear from you. Email the Museum of Liverpool team (who look after the Piermaster's House) for further information.

There are also some handy hints on creating a wildlife friendly garden from the experts at World Museum Liverpool's Bug House.

Curator of entomology (that's 'insects' in case you don't know) Guy Knight updates us on research the team is conducting in Cumbria. More on what they discover will follow over the summer, and more snaps can be found on our Flickr page.

---

Earlier this year, the Entomology Biodiversity Advisory Service at World Museum Liverpool was approached by the Cumbria Wildlife Trust to carry out a survey at Smardale Gill National Nature Reserve.

The Trust aims to provide easy access for visitors to enjoy not only the spectacular wilderness views at the Smardale but also its rich wildlife habitats which include flower-rich grassland, ancient woodland and an unspoilt river. To make sure that these habitats are properly looked after and fully appreciated it is important that the site managers have the most detailed information available on the animals and plants they support.

We worked with the Cumbria Wildlife Trust a few years ago sampling insects at three of their other reserves. This work resulted in records of over 1,500 different species, over 100 of these were rare, threatened or scarce and several hundred had never before been recorded from Cumbria. Over the next year we expect to have similar results at Smardale and are pleased to be working with the Trust again. We will be visiting the site throughout the summer months and posting photographs and updates as the survey work progresses.

Entomology’s Biodiversity Advisory Service supports people’s enjoyment of the natural environment. Work relies on a mix of existing staff, associate and volunteer identification and field survey skills and our research informs species conservation and general site management locally, nationally & internationally. It also reinforces the quality and relevance of our nationally important insect collections. In the last ten years over 40 technical reports & publications have been commissioned, over 100,000 specimens have been identified - including new species to science, Britain and Liverpool.

Last August I told you about a project that staff from the Earth Sciences section at World Museum Liverpool were undertaking. They were trying to find out what sort of plants were growing in the Merseyside area about 240 million years ago. Wendy Simkiss from the team provides an update:

---

"A 240 million year trip back in time to a Triassic site on Wirral revealed plant fossils in some of the rock strata.  These were collected during last summer, transported to the museum, examined, drawn, and numbered.  What we found was that most of the remains were from horsetails and conifers.  They are being identified and photographed in more detail at the present time.

One of the mysteries facing us is why all the fragments are so small.  We are attempting to find this out using examples of modern plants related to the fossil ones and seeing what happens as they dry up and disintegrate.  The photograph shows one of these tiny plant fossils from the Wirral site."

The top image shows modern horsetail growing wild. The lower image shows fossilised horsetail. This piece of rock is just 5mm tall. Images by Alan Bowden.

Our new curator of antiquities, Carolyn Routledge, has been rummaging round her new charges and come up with this rather timely little gem. It's a 1907 medal commemorating the 700th anniversary of the foundation of Liverpool (in case you didn't know we are celebrating the city's 800th birthday this year).

On the left (the obverse view) we can see King John bestowing the charter that made Liverpool a city, along with a liver bird crest. The reverse view on the right shows a sailing ship, the dates 1207 and 1907, and the words 'Deus nobis haec otia fecit'. This is the motto of the City of Liverpool and means 'God has provided us this rest' or ' this tranquility' or 'this leisure for us', depending on your translation. The quote originally comes from Virgil's Eclogue I (37BC) and was suggested for the coat of arms by James, 10th Earl of Derby. The things you learn.

If you could hear ringing in your ears while walking round Liverpool city centre over the last hour then don't worry, you haven't got tinnitus. As Karen explained last week, bellringers across the city have been celebrating the reopening of St George's Hall with a symphony of bells.

Here are our 3 musicians on the balcony above World Museum Liverpool's entrance. Their scrap metal bells may not look like the traditionally shaped ones you'd see on a Christmas card, but trust me, they're very loud!

Happy St George's Day.

Update 24 April: there are now a few more pics from yesterday in a St George's Day bells slideshow on Flickr.

Following on from Sam's post about the reopening of St George's Hall next week, a symphony of bells will ring out across the city to mark the occasion, from 1.40 - 2.40pm on Monday afternoon. World Museum Liverpool is getting involved by playing host to three musicians who will be stationed on the balcony just above the main entrance on William Brown Street. They'll be playing beer-barrel sized 'bells', constructed from scrap metal and hanging from a small scaffold.  If you're in the vicinity keep an eye out for them.

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.

Yep, the puns on this blog just keep coming...

Anyhoo, lots of lucky kiddiewinks (about 300 of them actually) got stuck into the Dino Days sessions at World Museum Liverpool at the weekend. There are more workshops this weekend (check out the what's on section) where the many delights will include examining fossiled dinosaur poo - a perfect Mother's Day if you ask me.

If you can't get down to the museum (or even if you can) you might want to enter our 'design a dinosaur stamp' competition. The three best get a dinosaur goodie bag. You can download the application form pdf(119kb), which also includes details of how to enter.  

If you'd rather have a posted version contact Mike Graham, Learning Resources, World Museum Liverpool, William Brown Street, Liverpool, L3 8EN or call him on 0151 478 4241. The deadline is 30 March.

Just got this snap of an event that took place at World Museum Liverpool recently. Students and staff from EMTAS (Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service) worked with artist, Hilary Manuhwa to create this wonderful piece of contemporary stone sculpture representing the theme of 'freedom'. Hilary uses the shona style of Zimbabwe as his inspiration and showed everyone the traditional skills.  I'm told it was a proper learning experience for everyone involved and that they took a lot of pride in their creation.

The sculpture will be on display in the World Cultures Gallery at the museum during Refugee Week (18-24 June) and for the following three months. Then it's off on tour to Salford, Newcastle and Leicester. This session was run as part of our Engaging Refugees and Asylum seekers programme.

PS This isn't be be confused with the other Freedom! sculpture currently at the Maritime.

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.

You might have seen in the papers over the weekend that 26 February to 11 March is Fair Trade Fortnight. There is a series of events focusing on Liverpool's modern day 'fair trade' status working with faith groups from across the city. World Museum Liverpool is hosting a flag display which I popped in to see before. Pretty spectacular it looks too.  Kids from local schools have create the flags which were inspired by Tibetan prayer flags we had sent over last year when the Dalai Lama visited Liverpool, and they are hung in the same way. If you fancy making your own pop along to the museum this Saturday between 12 and 4.

Then on Friday night local schools will be setting out their displays on what they're up to for Fair Trade fortnight with prizes for the best ones. All good stuff.

An appeal for help from John Edmondson at World Museum Liverpool. Anyone wishing to reply to him should use our 'contact us' system.
Karen

---

2008 is Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture. One of its oldest institutions, founded by William Roscoe, is planning to mark the event by holding a special reunion of descendants of William Roscoe (1753-1831). He was one of Liverpool's most distinguished citizens and arguably the person responsible above all others for setting our city on the road to its present status as a 'cultural capital'.

Would any of our readers be interested in any of the following?

* Helping to locate William Roscoe's living descendants by researching his family tree
* Contacting his relatives to ask them to sign up for a reunion in Liverpool
* Meeting at the Athenaeum Club, Church Alley, Liverpool to help plan the arrangements for this reunion

If the answer to any of these questions is 'yes' then I look forward to hearing from you.  I am particularly keen to hear from people who can prove they are descended from William Roscoe. Rumour has it there are plenty of these around.

I am not (so far as I know) related to William Roscoe myself. In fact I am Head of Science at World Museum Liverpool, and a member of the Athenaeum. But I want to help our club to celebrate the Capital of Culture year in a way that honours its founder, and also provide a lot of fun for those lucky people who can trace their ancestry back to Roscoe.

John

One of the perks of this job - other than the obvious joy of working in a museum - is flexi time.  We always get back the hours we work which is very convenient when you fancy an early dart to the pub on a Friday or a Monday morning in bed. Not everyone is so blessed though - apparently we (sorry, you) give your employers £23 billion in free hours every year. So the TUC is running its annual 'Work your proper hours day' this Friday to encourage the UK's workforce to leave on time, take a proper lunchbreak etc.

One of the suggested activities is to pop to a museum in your lunchtime, so the 24 Hour Museum has put together lunchtime trails for several cities, including Liverpool. The Walker Art Gallery, World Museum Liverpool and National Conservation Centre are all close to the main shopping and business districts, all have cafes and are all more fun than sitting at your desk praying for home time.

Judging by the millions of kids streaming in and out of World Museum Liverpool, the latest exhibition, Animated Adventures, is doing ridiculously well (Ian Jackson at the Art In Liverpool blog seemed to enjoy it as well). I've not been yet - promised my 40-something boyfriend I wouldn't go without him.

Fans of Aardman Animations, who's 'Curse of the Were-Rabbit' features heavily in the exhibition, will be chuffed to hear that Wallace & Gromit star, Shaun the Sheep, is getting his own TV series. Some pretty fab pics of the production can be found on the Guardian's site.

The awards season is upon us, so in honour of the Baftas and the Grammys and in anticipation of the Oscars and the Brits (anyone else think Russell Brand, alcohol and live TV spells a pre-watershed disaster worse than Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood?) I couldn’t resist awarding gongs to my favourite pieces from our collections. 

First up Best Newcomer and it was a photo-finish between Reveal at the National Conservation Centre and the brand new Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress gallery at the Merseyside Maritime Musuem. For me Reveal just edges it in this tightly contested category, where else can you see dirt-busting lasers and look under a mummy’s bandages? 

Best Actor in a leading role goes to David Garrick as Richard III by William Hogarth. David’s in such high demand that he’s currently away from the Walker Art Gallery starring in Tate Britain’s blockbuster Hogarth exhibition running until 29 April, definitely worth checking out if you’re in the big smoke.

Personally I think there could only be one winner of Best Animated Short, Crackers the crab. This vivacious yet vertically challenged inhabitant of the Shipwrecked exhibition, voiced by Ricky Tomlinson, beat off strong competition from Big Arts Little Artists to claw his way to the top of the pile.  

Forget Pirates of the Caribbean and Superman Returns, our Planetarium which scoops the award for special effects, is nothing short of spectacular. My personal favourite show is the Sunshine Show to which I’d also like to award Best Soundtrack.

Sitting resplendant at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, hair with more volume than a gaggle of teenage girls at a Justin Timberlake concert, Anne Duchess of Cumberland painted by Thomas Gainsborough takes the coveted Best Hair and Make up. The fact I’ve got hair as flat as a pancake and thus have extreme volume envy may have slightly influenced this result.

Finally Best Picture goes to the Walker Art Gallery’s Harmony in Green by Dan Hays, for the simple fact that it’s my favourite and I love it.

 

Since opening its doors less than 2 years ago, World Museum Liverpool was poised to welcome its millionth visitor through the door this morning. Then, just to confuse us, twins Elliot and Joseph came in together.

We can't tell them apart, or work out who was first, so the boys are sharing the joint honour. Museum demonstrator Claire Noble was there to greet them with goody bags, dressed as a Samurai warrior in an outfit from one of the Treasure House Theatre shows. She's not as scary as she looks here, honest.

The boys, who come from Chorley, were on a day trip to Liverpool with their grandparents. They hadn't been to the museum before and were looking forward to seeing the planetarium and dinosaurs.

If you haven't been in outer space you've probably noticed that Valentine's Day is fast approaching. Wherever you turn in the shops you see hearts, cupids, chocolates and completely pointless fluffy pink things that men everywhere will buy in a panic minutes before closing time on 13 February.

Being a big soppy romantic myself (well maybe not, but I have my moments) I thought it'd be nice to gather together the most loved-up objects from our collections for a romantic online exhibition. So I asked the curators for ideas and what did they suggest? An obscene novel, a tale of bigamy, a pair of boots a painting of a tiff and nasty disease carrying bugs responsible for killing and maiming people in Central America, amongst other things. Hmmm. This could take years of therapy to sort out.

I guess it's good to cater for the hardened cynics at this time of year, as their needs are so often neglected. Fret not though, we've also got some proper romance, including An Idyll, the painting that visualised the word passion, according to the author DH Lawrence.

An improved range of Valentine e-cards has also been launched on the website today, including John and Yoko's 'All You Need Is Love' bedspread from their Montreal bed-in for peace, as a treat for Beatles fans out there. And don't forget, if you're stuck for an original present there's still time to adopt an ant for your Val-ant-ine.

I was rudely awoken this morning by a nagging pain on the left side of my mouth. A rogue brazil nut (apparently encased in a jacket of steel) caused part of my tooth to break off last night. I always knew this healthy eating lark was bad news - chocolate's much safer and ice cream has certainly never led to me losing a body part. Needless to say I was feeling pretty sorry for myself on the way to work, that is until I heard about poor Nissim the elephant. Nissim, a resident at Knowsley Safari Park, suffered damage to his tusks that was so severe a top London dentist had to be drafted in to operate on him. Nissim lost a large part of his tusk trying his luck with some older female elephants (Dumbo springs to mind). As I was reading the story I couldn't help picturing the scene as some kind of elephantine Samson and Delilah, young Nissims strength ripped away from him by his ruthless mistress and as I walked past Solomon J Soloman's depiction of Samson at the top of the stairs at the Walker Art Gallery this morning I almost had to wipe the tear from my eye … or maybe it was just the effects of that darn brazil nut.

Did you know that Knowsley Safari Park was founded by the 13th Earl of Derby - whose collections formed the origins of what is now World Museum Liverpool - and there was an exhibition dedicated to him at the Walker a few years ago.