National Museums Liverpool Blog - Karen

We're pleased to report that we've been shortlisted for yet another award, and again we need your help to win. The nomination is for our Engaging Refugees and Asylum Seekers programme and recognises our efforts to help people for the benefit of the whole community and generally change society for the better.

There's more on the awards themselves, the DSC Social Change Awards, and details of how to enter on the award website. Voting closes on 6 November with the winners announced on 26 November. Vote for us now!!!

This Saturday (24 October) World Museum is running several events designed for our visually impaired visitors. Each is based around our highly successful 'The Beat Goes On' exhibition and covers the people, objects and stories behind Liverpool music history.

Events kick off at 12 noon (there's a full list of sessions on the exhibition events page), and you'll need to collect tickets from our information desk as places are limited. For more information contact the information desk on 0151 478 4353.

Remind me not to pick such a risque image next time. Some of the suggestions weren't exactly suitable for a family audience, even if rather amusing.

Anyway, a randomly gathered group of NML staff has decided that Clair Sharp has won the October caption competition with her caption: 'The conversation waned somewhat while they waited for the butler to appear with the superglue remover'. Well done to Clair. You can see all of the other suggestions on the original post.

Another image and another prize next month.

Françoise Chircop Rutland of the University of Liverpool, who is doing her PhD on NML Hittite collections, asked Annemarie Le Pensèe in Conservation Technologies to scan a mysterious mould from an excavation by Professor Garstang in 1907 to 1911 at Sakje Gözü, southern Turkey.  Making a computer positive from the scanned negative it turns out to be a mould for a type of axe known in Middle to Late Bronze Age Egypt - between 1300BC and 1180BC.

The axe - called a 'fenestrated "duck-bill" axe' on account of its window shaped apertures and its duck-bill shape - is known from other examples (not in our collections) though both moulds and axes of this type are rarely found outside of Egyptian collections. There's not many moulds about... and moulds, presumably, facilitate the production of more axes for use in the ‘smiting’ of which the Hittites were so fond according to the Old Testament of the Bible.  Some archaeologists now believe that these axes were used for ritual battles between prize fighters and symbolised high social status both in life and death – since these axes were buried with them. 

Alas, unlike the beat itself, this exhibition doesn't go on and on. We're into the final weeks of World Museum's The Beat Goes On exhibition and what a tune-tastic time we've had.

Paul McCartney's trousers made a visit as did half a million members of the public. Local bands had their tunes profiled in our on-gallery and online jukeboxes (check out the MySpace page and have a listen). Willing volunteers cut their museum teeth on the gallery, and we launched an online resource charting Liverpool's musical heritage.

But fret not! (fret...music...geddit?) You've still until 1 November to get down to the museum and to get down!  Take your kids during half term and show them what real music sounds like. And if you still need persuading the Guardian's video on Liverpool's music scene should do the trick.

And if you still don't manage to catch the exhibition you're going to have to wait until the Museum of Liverpool opens in 2011. The Creative City gallery will become home to items like the Woolton church stage where John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met in 1957, the vibrant 'All You Need is Love' bedcover from John and Yoko’s Bed-in-for-Peace in Montreal in 1969, and four Beatles stage suits.

And as it's the final month The Beat Goes On exhibition guide has been reduced to half price so now costs just £1.50. Get your copy in our groundfloor shop.

Post a comment to tell us what you think the caption should be for this image. It's 'The Black Brunswicker' by Millais (more on it and a larger image on our main site). The caption we think is funniest/quirkiest/most inventive wins this month's prize which is a rather nice hardback book, 'Women Artists In The 20th and 21st Century'. The book features Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, Georgia O'Keeffe, Barbara Hepworth, Frieda Kahlo, Bridget Riley, Kara Walker and many, many more, and ties in nicely with the forthcoming exhibition, 'The Rise of Women Artists' which starts at the Walker on 23 October.

You've a couple of weeks to enter. If you're looking for inspiration September's entries are here.

The not-very-small-print: This is competition isn't open to NML staff or their families. The judge's decision is final. There's no alternative prize. Please keep your suggestions tasteful.

Update 27/10/09: October's caption competition has now closed although you can obviously still add your suggestions. The winner was 'The conversation waned somewhat while they waited for the butler to appear with the superglue remover'.

As a fervent Blue Nose (that's an Everton supporter in case you're football illiterate) I'm very excited that Thursday sees the launch of The Everton Collection website; the most complete treasury of football memorabilia in the world.  And if you're a supporter of another club or social history buff you should be excited as well as the collection isn't just about Everton Football Club. This is the history of football told through the story of Everton.

The collection is made up of over 18,000 items of football memorabilia, dating back to the founding of the club in 1878, itself a founder member of The Football League. Programmes, medals, tickets, transcribed ledgers, trophies, boots, shirts, contracts, cash books and photographs all feature and are now available to browse online. It features the earliest programmes of many clubs including Manchester United (then Newton Heath), Celtic, Aston Villa, Derby County, Bolton and Blackburn, and many of football's rarest artefacts.

I've had a sneak preview and think the transcribed ledgers are my favourites. The minutiae of life in the days before TV deals and big money transfers is fascinating. Players late for training because they missed their bus is a far cry from today's industry.

The collection will be launched with the major new exhibition at Liverpool's Central Library, ‘Everlution: The Everton Collection’. There's also a series of talks by Peter Lupson on topics such as joint Everton and Liverpool programmes, the birth of the football league and the man who many claim was responsible for that famous split that created Everton and Liverpool football clubs.

I should point out that my interest isn't totally partisan. The new Museum of Liverpool will be featuring many objects from the collection in the Creative City gallery, using the pieces to tell the story of Liverpool and its people.

Yesterday at the Liverpool Food and Drink Festival we ran a prize draw to win a three course lunch for four people and afternoon tea for two to celebrate the recent launch of the Maritime Dining Rooms. The winners were Mr C Ragan (first prize) and Ms B Lemp (second prize). Well done - we'll be contacting you in writing.

A rare skeleton of the Dodo went on display in the Atrium at World Museum Liverpool today. The specimen is made up of bones found on Mauritius and has been in the collection since 1866, however it's not been on display for at least 40 years. The skeleton is on display for about a month as part of the museum’s popular Hidden Treasures series of displays featuring items rarely seen by the public.

Dr Clem Fisher, curator of vertebrate zoology, says: “The skeleton is quite complete although we have recently discovered that the foot bones have been skilfully carved from wood.” The Dodo is also missing the top of its head (cranium).

The Dodo was a member of the pigeon family that lived on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. Unfortunately it was also a rather tasty and flightless member so fell foul of the human and animal population. It's been extinct for more than 300 years with the last reliable sighting in about 1693. When alive they were rather large birds standing about three feet (one metre) tall and weighing around 50 pounds (about 23kg). They had grey plumage, a nine-inch beak with a hooked point, tiny wings and a tuft of curly rear feathers.

The current Lady Lever Art Gallery exhibition, Whistler: The Gentle Art of Making Etchings, ends on 20 September, so you only have a couple more weekends to pay a visit.

To tie in with the exhibition's closure we're giving away a lovely hardback catalogue from another of the Hunterian's Whistler exhibitions. 'James NcNeill Whistler - Selected Works from the Hunterian Art Gallery' features 74 Whistler works (including three other versions of 'The Doorway' shown here), plus Japanese prints, manuscripts, silver and porcelain from the great man's collection.

To be in with a chance of winning the catalogue you need to tell us the name of the exhibition which follows Whistler at the Lady Lever Art Gallery (you'll find the answer on our main website). Send us your name, email address and answer using this contact form. Closing date is noon on Monday 21 September.   

A random group of people who happened to be in our office at the time chose Linda Reeds' entry as the best caption. Well done to Linda. You can see all the entries here. Another image and another prize in a short while.

While I'm here and talking about artwork I'll tell you about the Flickr group we've just started that celebrates the weird and wonderful world of credit crunch art. There's no prize for this one - just the knowledge that you've far too much time on your hands. Pick an artwork from our collection and recreate it using whatever comes to hand - cats, toys, food, your children, your co-workers - the possibilities are as limited as your camera's battery life. Upload them to your Flickr page and add them to our group. Again, please bear in mind that this is a family site!

If the answer is 'yes' and you enjoyed your visit then you might want to vote for the restaurant in the Liverpool Food and Drink Awards. The awards are part of the official Food and Drink Festival 2009 which runs 13 – 21 September at venues across Liverpool. The festival launches on Sunday 13 September at Sefton Park with a free event where you can sample food and produce from dozens of bars, restaurants and stall holders, listen to live music and watch live cooking demos.

If you like a peek behind the scenes - and who doesn't - tune in to BBC2 tomorrow (Thurs 3 September) at 3.45pm for Flog It! There's a visit to the new Museum of Liverpool with a preview of some of the objects that will be featuring on the galleries. It's also available on BBC HD at 6.30pm later that day. And if you miss it you can always catch it on BBC iplayer.

This Thursday (3 September), the Lady Lever Art Gallery is hosting a special event to raise funds for the Hillsborough Memorial Appeal. During the early hours of Sunday 7 June 2009, the Hillsborough Memorial Garden in Port Sunlight Village was seriously damaged. Over 35 metres of stonework were destroyed in an act of mindless vandalism. The Port Sunlight Village Trust needs help to restore the garden.

You can support the appeal by visiting the Lady Lever Art Gallery this Thursday. Doors will be open 6-8pm. The cafe and shop will be open, plus there's entertainment from the Wirral based Capriccio Singers Chamber Choir. Bring your friends and family.

There's more on the appeal on the Port Sunlight Museum and Garden Village website.

We're competition crazy round here at the moment, and here's our latest offering - the caption competition! You probably already know the sketch. We show you an image (in this case a painting from our collections) and you come up with an amusing caption. This is the first pic (it's actually called 'What is it?' by Henry Stacy Marks).

Post your entry as a comment (please keep them clean!) We'll pick a winner next week who will receive a book of Cecil Beaton snaps (you can see it on Amazon - it's nicer than the price suggests!) which ties in nicely with the Beaton exhibition currently at the Walker Art Gallery.

As you may know, this weekend sees the Slavery Remembrance Day festival - there's more on the background to the event on our main website. A good number of the weekend's events are supported with British Sign Language, including Diane Nash's lecture. There's a good mix of activities, dramatisations, discussions, lectures and performances. A full list of the supported events can be found on our BSL interpretation events page.

You could win tickets to see either the Soweto Gospel Choir on Saturday 5 September or Odemba OK Jazz All Stars on Tuesday 29 September.

To enter just visit the International Slavery Museum and answer this simple question:

What section of the International Slavery Museum is the Black Achievers Wall in?

Please send us your answer using this contact form to arrive before midnight on Tuesday 25 August 2009, stating which concert you would prefer to see. There will be two winners, one for each concert. There's more on the competition and the featured artists on our main site.

Apologies if you've tried to enter already and failed - a slight technical problem. It should be working fine now.

You have until Monday to enter our competition and win a luxury weekend away in London.

This fabulous prize is being offered to tie in with the Royal Academy's exhibition, J.W. Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite, which includes one of the Walker's paintings, Echo and Narcissus.

The prize includes two nights accommodation at a five-star hotel, tickets to the exhibition and first class return tickets from Liverpool.

Competition details and how to enter can be found on our main site.

If you caught this week's episode of 'Desperate Romantics' you'll already know that some of our Pre-Raphaelite paintings featured pretty heavily. There was the Lady Lever's The Scapegoat looking resplendent; an imagined, in progress 'Dante's Dream' from the Walker's collection, and Millais' 'Bubbles' which was the cause of much amusement to the TV Brotherhood.

If you didn't catch the episode there's always the BBC iplayer.

Voting in the National Lottery awards closes at midday today so we REALLY need you to vote if you've not done so already. You can vote online on the National Lottery Good Causes website, or by calling 0844 686 6957.

And 'thank you' if you have already!

I'm not holding out too much hope of seeing anything that looks like a Perseid tonight. The Beeb is suggesting a fair amount of cloud cover in the vicinity of my house 

In case you don't know the Perseids are an annual meteor shower that occurs when the Earth passes through dust debris from the comet, Swift-Tuttle. It reaches its peak tonight and should be a good show for people lucky enough to live in an area without too much light pollution or cloud cover. Plus you shouldn't need any fancy equipment to either see or photograph them, just look to the north east after dark.

And if you do get to see and photograph any of the shower you might want to tweet on the Astronomy2009 Twitter page - a 48-hour Twitter marathon being run as part of the International Year of Astronomy.

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

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

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

Excellent news. Thanks to your votes the International Slavery Museum has made it through to the finals of the National Lottery awards. We're up against two other venues in the Best Heritage Project category.

Votes aren't carried over into the final so we need you to vote again. You can vote online on the National Lottery Good Causes website. Alternatively you can call 0844 686 6957 to register your phone vote.

As we've said before this isn't just about winning an award (although obviously that's a nice thing) or a thumbs up for a good museum. As Richard said in his 'It could be us' post a few weeks ago, this is a major opportunity to raise awareness about the issues that the museum champions - it's about tackling human rights abuses. So, please vote, and ask people you know to vote as well.

Then tune into the National Lottery programme (we'll let you know when) to see Richard in his fabled Homer Simpson tie!

Quick reminder that Sunday 2 August is your last chance to see the Shoot Nations exhibition at the International Slavery Museum. The display features photographs by young people, highlighting the global impact of our changing environment, particularly the effects of global warming and intensive farming on the earth's natural resources.

While there you could also catch our latest display which opens today. Trafficked looks at a form of modern slavery - human trafficking - and follows the stories of those affected by the trade. 

This week sees our final monthly draw to win pairs of tickets to your local ODEON cinema. All you have to do to enter is sign up for our e-newsletter. Everyone who signs up during the entry period is also entered into a draw to win Night at the Museum goodies including a telescope.

July is the last month to enter so be sure to sign up by this Friday. You can sign up on the registration page or learn more about the draw on our main site.

Thanks to ODEON Cinemas who have provided the tickets and goodies for this draw.

The National Museums Liverpool strategic plan, covering 2009 to 2011, is now available to download, either from here or from the corporate information section of our main site. In it there is a summary of our key achievements for 2008-09, information on our mission and values, and details of what we've got planned for the period up to 2011/12 and beyond.

• download National Museums Liverpool strategic plan 2009 - 2011 [pdf format 689kb]
• download National Museums Liverpool strategic plan 2009 - 2011 [rich text format 324kb]

Update 27.07.09

The 2008 annual review - The Big Book of Big Highlights 2008 - is also now available to download.

• download Annual review 2008 [ pdf format 3.69mb ]

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 latest batch of Museum of Liverpool construction snaps has been added to the museum's set on Flickr. They include this one of scaffolding against the interior of the north window (that's the Liver Building etc outside).

At this very second in time the museum's Twitter page has attracted a satisfactory yet surmountable 361 followers - not in the Stephen Fry league yet but give us time! If you've not checked it out yet have a look.

Better late than never I've put up last week's Museum of Liverpool progress snaps on Flickr. Everything is still progressing swimmingly. Last week's progress included cladding to the reveals of the end gables with corner pieces being fitted this week; pressure testing of pipework; installation of external drainage and services ducts; the suspended ceiling started to go in; concerte work on the north and south ramps, and concrete fire sealing works to structure/building cavities.

Update: Was so late with that last set that this week's have turned up as well - have just uploaded them. They include some nice shots of the interior so are well worth a look.

This week's snaps from the Museum of Liverpool building site have a definite smell of spring about them; sunshine, blue sky and crocuses. Pity this weekend's weather forecast is so lousy. I especially like this picture; the texture of the cladding highlighted by the morning sun. The lines are the rigging of the ship, De Wadden, in the adjacent graving dock. As ever higher-res versions this snap and more are in the Museum of Liverpool flickr set.

The build itself marches on. Our Twitter page charts the progress - become a follower.

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.

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).

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.

You may have seen that Google has recently released version 5 of Google Earth. It does lots of good stuff including allowing you to 'see' the ocean floor, wrecks and all. Both the Titanic and the Bismarck can be seen in 3D (the Bismarck is at 48°10′N 16°12′W). You will need to turn on the '3D buildings' layer.  

Lots more snaps in our Flickr set including this one of the sun on the south window.

The build continues to progress really well. The vertical limestone cladding is nearing completion, the main roof is finished, and the windows are almost all in. Internally, the staircase structure is complete, internal walls are making good progress, and innards like the electrics, plumbing and air handling units are well on their way.

It's all really exciting, and judging by the number of people taking photos of the building (there's just a few of them here in the public Flickr group) lots of people feel the same. If you'd like to add your snaps to the group please do.

The 1911 census records for England and Wales have been made public, two years earlier than the 100 year embargo. The returns contain more information than previous years including length of marriage, the number of children in the household, any guests on the night in question and more occupational information. For the first time you can see the actual form your ancestor filled in, complete with crossings out, mistakes and any additional notes not transfered to the official enumerator's summary. You can search them on the 1911 census website.

It's thought that several thousand women boycotted the census in protest at women being denied the vote. Some of these refused to fill in the form but submitted a protest statement, so their presence will be registered although without details. The women who stayed away from home for the night and so evaded the count will not feature at all.

While many of us were embroiled in the orgy of excess that is the modern Christmas, certain hardy souls were installing the final glazing units at the Museum of Liverpool. It's cold enough at the moment without spending your days up a cherry picker, fitting windows on an exposed riverbank. Glazers, we salute you! On the up side they'll have seen a fair few beautiful sunsets lately, what with the clear skies and low winter sun.

Anyhoo, the fruits of their labours can be seen in the Museum of Liverpool flickr group. And, as we've come to expect, the general public have been producing a few gems of their own. They can be seen in the public group.

If you've yet to see the building yourself the evening of 10 January would be a good time to visit. The area around the building is the stage for 'Transition: The People's Celebration', a public event to mark the end of Liverpool's reign as European Capital of Culture. The north window is being used as a projection screen, part of the 'sound, light and visual review of Liverpool's history from 7,000,000,000BC to the present day'.  That all kicks off at 6.15pm with fireworks at 7pm. The Merseyside Maritime Museum and International Slavery Museum will both be open until 10pm, with activities for the kids, a new menu in the cafe and music from The Fourmost - more than enough to make an evening of it. More on our main site. 

November's name that artwork competition begins on Monday morning. If you're a regular you probably know that you'll need to be quick - they often go in the first few hours. If you're new to the game the gist is that you are shown a detail from a painting in our collection and you've got to name the artwork and the artist. There's a new clue every day for the week, with the winner receiving a copy of the John Moores exhibition catalogue.

The Liverpool Echo website is featuring the latest in a series of video updates on the progress of the build. You can watch the video here. 

Our Building the Museum of Liverpool Flickr group is still getting a fair few submissions. Special thanks should go to Cassini2008 who has taken some great shots right the way through the build.

The latest photos are now available on Flickr. The main development has been the cladding which is going up at a rate of knots. I like this side-on snap of the surface - you don't realise how 3D it is until you get right up close.

Some nice new additions to the Building the Museum of Liverpool group as well. Interesting to see the building in different weather conditions, at different times of the day and from various angles. You put my own feeble photographic skills to shame.

There's an interesting story on the Guardian site today (and in the paper too I guess) about HMHS Britannic, sister ship of RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic. Apparently it lies in the Mediterranean after sinking off the Greek island of Kea in 1916. It's been purchased from the British government and there are plans to turn it into a tourist attraction, with submersibles taking visitors down to the seabed to visit the wreck - Britannic is far better preserved than Titanic and in shallower water. Not sure how I would feel about visiting it - claustrophobic more than anything and presumably a lot lighter in the pocket.

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.

Just seen a new activity pack we've put together and the illustrations alone are inspiring me to grab a pencil and get drawing, which is quite impressive when you consider I've two left hands.  Liverpool's Biggest Big Draw Activity Pack (you can download a copy) is full of good ideas to get your creative juices flowing, and the artist, Sally Pankhurst, has done a fab job. Some of the ideas, like 'draw your dreams as soon as you wake up' are pretty cool, while 'draw yourself thirty years from now' are definitely the stuff of nightmares.

The pack links in with Big Draw month (the last few activities are this weekend) but I guess is also Find Your Talent - I'd be really envious of anyone who discovered that their hidden talent was drawing. If the pack inspires you let me know and we might feature your masterpiece.

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.

Just seen a Black history interactive on the Guardian site that's worth a look. It's a timeline that runs from AD43 and the arrival at Hadrian's Wall of an African auxiliary unit from the Roman Army, to Barack Obama securing the Democrat's nomination. There are also links to Guardian articles of relevance and a guide to key Black figures - not unlike our own Black Achievers Wall at the International Slavery Museum. Have a look. It's been produced to coincide with October being Black History Month - we've a full schedule of events to link in as well.

It now seems but a dream, but I'm told that the other day it was sunny. These latest snaps of the Museum of Liverpool construction seem to bear that out. Check out the Flickr set - you can almost feel the heat! 

We're still looking for Flickr snaps from the public - there are some beautiful efforts in this group.

The build is progressing well. The cladding is still going on, the window frames are going in and internal walls are going up.

October's 'Name That Object' competition starts today. Here's the first clue with a slightly larger version on the competition page. As ever there'll be another clue every day this week with the answer on Saturday. The first person to mail me the correct answer, using the contact form on the competition page, wins the prize which this month is a copy of the John Moores 25 exhibition catalogue. Lotsa luck.

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).

The latest batch of Museum of Liverpool construction progress snaps is on our Flickr page. The cladding is going on and the end is in sight!

On a vaguely related subject (I say vaguely because I hurriedly took this slightly blurry snap at the dock at lunchtime - it was very cold!) the QE2 is in Liverpool at the moment. The Liverpool Echo have a video of it sailing into the Mersey, past Crosby Beach and the Antony Gormley ironmen (or 'Another Place' as they're officially known). Wonder how close the two ships in the video really were? Anyhoo, it's a good vid and worth a peek. 

The following poem was written in September 2008 by Matthew, aged 20, following a visit to see ‘The Liverpool Cityscape’ by art teachers and inmates from the Learning and Skills section at Thorn Cross Young Offenders Institute in Warrington.

In the video on the gallery Ben Johnson (who painted the cityscape) says he hopes that visitors will put themselves in the picture - populate it with their minds - and Matthew seems to have been inspired by this. We think his poem is really good and Matthew has been kind enough to allow us to share it with other visitors.

What if the painting was in our imagination?

What if boats docked at the train station?

What if the picture was just vegetation?

I wouldn’t be here with a look of fascination.

As far as the eye can see I stare

I am a massive work of art

I was made with pencils, paints and stencils

I am a piece of Ben Johnson’s heart

More from Rebecca Kench on the ongoing conservation of Gustave Doré's 'The Flower Sellers'. Early work is covered in this post and you can see the original painting in this post.

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'The Flower Sellers' presents us with several unusual problems, the most obvious one can be seen from looking at the back of the painting.  The back of the canvas has been coated in a thick layer of wax by a previous conservator in the 1950's.  This is not a treatment which we would carry out in this way today, but at the time it was believed that it was the best thing to do for the painting.  The wax was melted and applied to the reverse with an iron in the hope that it would go through the canvas to the paint layer and would help the flaking paint adhere to the canvas.  However the next problem that we face is what should we do with the wax? 
 
When wax is added to a painting in this way it does several things; firstly, it can be reduced but it can never be totally removed from the canvas fibres.  Secondly, it prevents the canvas from responding in the usual way to changes in the environment, and thirdly it means that nothing water based can be used on the painting in the future.  The second of these problems is the most significant as we think that the thickness of the wax will cause problems at some point. The wax-free canvas fibres will expand and contract dependant on how much moisture is in the air whereas the wax-coated areas will be far less responsive to moisture. This will cause a great deal of stress at the borders of the two areas and eventually you will start to see an outline of where the wax is restricting the canvas from moving when you look at the front of the painting.
 
In most of the deep red paint passage in the centre, in the shawl and around the heads of the two right children, there is wrinkling.  Before the wax was ironed into the canvas this must have been sharp and raised and the reason for the wax consolidation campaign.

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.

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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.

Just added a few more Museum of Liverpool construction snaps to our Flickr page  - the slideshow of the set is embedded here (roll over the image and click the bottom right icon to see a full screen view).

Update 18.09.08: Been meaning to point out that the Flcikr slideshow doesn't seem to be working too well with IE7 - fine with Firefox I think. You might want to skip straight to our Flickr page 

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.

More on the progress of this reconstruction project from Kathy Wedge (here's the background to the project in case you've missed previous instalments), plus progress snaps on Flickr.

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The finished clay sculpting has now been approved by Liverpool City Council, but that is only part of the story. We now have to produce the actual foundry cast bronze reliefs from these clay sculptures.

The clay panels which as previously mentioned are very heavy were loaded onto a van using a hoist and fork lift truck and taken to a fine art foundry.  The panels are being cast using the ‘lost wax’ method of casting. This involves a thin layer of silicone rubber being painted over the clay models which defines the detail of the sculpting, further thicker layers of silicone are then applied until an accurate mould is produced. But of course  silicone rubber is not rigid, so a plaster jacket to hold the rubber stable and reduce the risk of distortion also has to be made.

Once this mould and jacket have been produced, wax is painted into the mould to form a wax model. The mould is taken off leaving a hollow wax sculpture which is cleaned and the detail checked for imperfections. The hollow wax sculpture is cut into sections for ease of casting, particularly where there are extending features, and wax sprues are added to the sections of the wax model, that will act as air vents when the wax melts at the casting stage.

The pieces of the hollow wax model are the dipped several times into a ceramic mixture which form ceramic shell around the sections which are strong enough to withstand the high pressures and thermal shock of the molten metal used in the casting.

The molten bronze is poured into the shell via a cupped sprue or air vent and as it is poured the wax melts running out of the air vents leaving the bronze casting encased in the ceramic shell.

The ceramic shells are broken off the bronze castings and the sections are welded together very carefully, and polished so that the joins cannot be seen. That is the end of the actual casting process but not the end of the story. More about the rest of the process in our next post.

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

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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.

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.

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.

You might remember a while ago I mentioned a rather large painting that was about to undergo conservation, 'Flower Sellers of London'. A few people commented on it, thought it was an interesting piece. Conservation work has now begun and painting conservator, Rebecca Kench, has the latest.

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The painting came into the Conservation Centre for treatment at the end of last year. It's been in need of treatment for a while and we have finally been able to fit it into our schedule.  The painting was bought from the artist shortly after it was painted in 1875 by Henry Thompson. He gave it to the Walker in 1880.  "The Flower Sellers" is painted on canvas attached to a stretcher and the figures are a little larger than life size.  Treating this painting presents me with several problems. Firstly I need to deal with anything which could lead to paint loss. When the painting arrived in the studio, the paint was flaking and needed to be consolidated, or reattached, to the canvas.  This mainly affected the area of the flowers where there is damaged and broken impasto (thick brush strokes of paint), and old paint losses down to the canvas.   Although this area has been consolidated (stuck back down to the canvas) in the past, there are still some areas which are loose and fragile.  In order to fix this, I laid the painting flat on a table, with a support behind the canvas, and any flaking areas of the painting were laid flat and consolidated using a water based fish glue.

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.

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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

You may well have seen that the Tall Ships visited Liverpool over the weekend. I paid a visit to Wellington Dock on Friday evening while there was still room to swing a cat, but missed the Parade of Sail on Monday as I was here in work (boo!) Luckily (and lucky) other staff saw it though and took plenty of fab snaps. There's a selection on our flickr page (the slide show is here), taken from the old pilot's platform at the Pilotage on Liverpool's waterfront, including this one of a helicopter over the Brazilian entry with Cammell Laird's in the background.

Sorry to those of you who won't have seen the answer to July's Name That Object competition - slight technical hitch. The answer was 'Waiting for Legal Advice' by James Campbell, and the winner of the exhibition catalogue was A Porter of Liverpool. Another competition and another prize next month.

Basically, we need you to help us to help you. We're developing a new feature for our main site and need to understand how teachers - one of our biggest user groups - would use the system.

We've got well over a million objects in our care, ranging from microscoping plants to ships. Of these collections we currently have about 1,500 objects on our website but want to increase this number substantially. We also want to make our collections more easily searched and to provide much more in depth information, so are creating a single, comprehensive online collections system. We already know that teachers use our website in their work and want the new system to meet their needs as closely as possible.

The questionnaire, which you will find here http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/57097/online-collections, basically asks teachers how they are currently using the site and what features they would like to see. We've given you a bit of a shopping list to chose from plus the option to mention anything we've missed. There are eight questions which should take about 5 minutes. Any feedback teachers, or other learning professionals, could give will help us enormously and will in turn allow us to support you as best we can. I realise we're right at the end of term so any feedback would be doubly welcome.

Any questions just email me using the link below this post.

Plenty to look at here.

On our Flickr page there's a series of snaps from the build including some interesting angles that were recently taken. There's also a new group we've set up of public pictures of the build. Lots of nice sunrises there. Will be adding more to both of these shortly.

And on the Liverpool Echo website Samantha Parker presents the fourth of her video progress reports from the site.

We're getting to the business end of the John Moores competition process - judging the paintings that made it through the first round and picking a winner from them. Chair of the judges and director of art galleries, Reyahn King, has the latest.

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Paintings have been arriving from depots all over the UK to our judging venue in Liverpool over the last few weeks. Jurors arrive in the city tomorrow and I am rushing to get back to Liverpool in time myself after a trip to London. Two of our jurors, Jake and Dinos Chapman, have an exhibition on at White Cube which I went to see today - painful and painstaking revisitings of Hell - and appropriately enough new paintings. Their paintings are literal comments upon old bad paintings so I fully expect them to be tough critics in front of all the competition entries tomorrow.

If you're in Liverpool you won't have failed to have noticed that there's been a veritable fall of Superlambananas around town the past few days (apparently 'fall' is the collective noun for lambs). That includes our own colourful trio. Just been sent this snap of the Cloudorama at the Lady Lever being lifted into place outside the gallery. Thankfully the 'fall' noun wasn't appropriate to the operation and it made it to the ground in one piece.

Next Tuesday Radio 4's Making History programme features an interview with Sharon Brown, NML’s curator of land, transport and industry. Sharon will be talking about our overhead railway carriage, which is currently undergoing conservation work. Listen out on Tuesday 17 June at 3pm, or 'listen again' over the following week.

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.

Claire Olson summarises National Volunteers Week, and thanks all the willing souls who help out here.

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Last week the Volunteers Team were out and about at different venues and events in the North West promoting volunteering opportunities at NML.

During the week we met with lots of people who are keen ‘volunteers in the making’ and eager to find out more. We also received lots of positive feedback about our museums, with many families telling us how much they enjoyed visiting! We also welcomed the launch of Mersey v’s; our new Young Persons' Steering Group, who will be championing volunteering across NML.

National Volunteers Week may only come once a year, but we would like to take this opportunity to thank our volunteers for all their support and hard work throughout the whole year – their positive involvement is much appreciated – as acknowledged by our director, Dr David Fleming:

“I have nothing but praise for volunteers, who devote their own time to helping make museums more popular and accessible. Volunteer effort is often overlooked, but without volunteers most museums would provide an immeasurably poorer public service.”

If you wish to find out more about becoming a volunteer at NML please email the Volunteer Team or ring them on 0151 478 4775 and keep an eye on the blog for more volunteer updates coming soon!

The answer to last week's Name That Object competition was Salem by Sidney Curnow Vosper which hangs in the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Coincidentally, this year sees the centenary of the painting, and this weekend S4C is showing a programme on the painting. It will be broadcast at 8.30pm on Sunday 15 June (in Welsh with English subtitles).

If you don't know the painting it's really quite a strange piece but one which, I'm told, has hung in many a Welsh home after Lord Leverhulme bought the original and then gave away prints with his soap. It's said to show the Devil's face in the folds of the shawl of the central character, Siân Owen. There's more on the programme on the icWales website.

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!

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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

In today's volunteer's tale, Margaret describes the various volunteer opportunities she has enjoyed during her 3 years with NML.

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Day 4: Margaret

I became a volunteer with NML nearly three years ago, when I started my degree course in History of Art and Museum Studies at Liverpool John Moores University, and I love it! To begin with I worked in the staff library, tidying and sorting books and journals, cataloguing and generally looking after the library. After a while I also started helping the Manager of the National Conservation Centre in the office – admin duties such as answering emails and phone queries, using a database to log work, ordering stationery, filing and so on. Every week there is something new and interesting to deal with, from assisting with the delivery of exotic items to be quarantined in the Conservation Centre freezers, to helping design a poster to advertise a series of Sunday dances in the Conservation Centre café.

I found that the volunteering experience was very relevant and beneficial to my degree course and it enhanced an internship module which was part of my second year.  I’m now also helping the art handling team with the John Moores 25 Exhibition which is really exciting. Apart from the pleasure of seeing the competition entries close up I am learning how to handle and transport paintings, which again will give me invaluable practical experience.

Volunteering at NML is a great way to find out more about how galleries and museums really work and what goes on behind the scenes. 

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.

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.

Each day this week to celebrate National Volunteers Week we will be handing the blog over to our fabulous volunteers, as they tell us about their different volunteer roles at NML. Today, Gerard tells us about his volunteer role within our Office Services department.

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Day 2: Gerard

My name is Gerard and I have been working at NML for four weeks on a volunteer work placement. I am working in the Typing and Office Services department and also in the post room. I have learned many new skills and tasks and have met a lot of new colleagues. Everyone has made me feel very welcome and I hope to set a good example for future volunteers.

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.

Each day this week we will be handing the blog over to our fabulous volunteers as they tell us about their different volunteer roles at NML.

Today, Harriet talks us through her time volunteering on the Ben Johnson residency earlier this year at the Walker Art Gallery. Harriet is also a member of Mersey v’s.

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Day 1: Harriet

Volunteering on the Ben Johnson Cityscape project was a real privilege. I was lucky enough to get to engage with the visitors and also work with Ben and the team on the practical side. As I talked to the public about the piece I met some brilliant characters with lots of interesting tales to tell about their city. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to do the hands on part too; I will always be able to point out which little bit I helped make the stencils for or try to guess where the paint I mixed was used!

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

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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.

More from Reyahn King and the judging of the 25th John Moores prize.

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After what can only be described as an excitable breakfast, the jurors got going this morning in great good humour. They have reached a remarkable degree of agreement about what they are looking for. Their approach is to look not just for good paintings but for paintings that have a sense of “time and place” – in other words, that have taken on board the history of art and painting, that are intellectually up to date.  And they have  great enthusiasm for originality and unpredictability in works. At least twice today their comments made me look again, harder, at works the subtlety or cleverness of which I had initially missed. I think by the time they’d gone through all the entries, there was only one of the around 150 they have selected to go to the next stage that I would disagree with – I’ll never reveal which!

Watch this space for stage 2 when we get together with the actual works in Liverpool! I for one am really looking forward to June!

Director of art galleries, Reyahn King, is in London at the moment, presiding over the judging of the 25th John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize. Here's her report from the end of day one (yesterday).

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Today, 1 May 2008, the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize jurors started stage 1 of judging the exhibition and prize. The jurors are artists Jake and Dinos Chapman (shown), Paul Morrison, Graham Crowley and critic Sacha Craddock. Jake and Dinos are in the midst of preparing for a big show, Paul Morrison's work is on currently in lots of places including Liverpool, London and Japan, Graham Crowley has been on the news commenting on the state of art teaching in London and Sacha Craddock is a legend for her longstanding reputation as a critic and Chair of another competition, New Contemporaries. Given all this it is wonderful to me that these five will come together to spend two days in a darkened room selecting work for our exhibition in Liverpool.

At the beginning of the day over breakfast I stressed the sheer volume of art to see. With 3,448 entries I was worried that the process might run beyond the two long days everyone had set aside. Judging started at 9:30am and went on to 7pm with food breaks. Incredibly we finished ahead of schedule - the jurors were really keen, taking only short breaks before itching to get back to it.

My role is to keep the jury on schedule and coordinate with the technical team. In the main this means checking that all five jurors have agreed whether a work is to be selected or are they still pondering? Yesterday they were focused on a first sift, and if any one person liked a work it got put to one side without much debate. Already though you can see preferences for kinds of work emerging and I expect debate to really get going when we revisit the first sift.

Today we'll finish looking at all the entries and then go back to all those put on one side and reconsider them.

By the end of tomorrow, 2 May, we need to have decided which 250 or so artists will be invited to send their work to Liverpool to be judged at stage 2 in June. Watch this space!  

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.

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.

On Monday night at 9pm Channel Four are featuring a Time Team special - The Lost Dock of Liverpool. It focuses on arachaeological excavations of what's known as Old Dock - the first commercial wet dock in Liverpool and the world - plus other sites at the waterfront as they've been cleared for the canal extension, Museum of Liverpool etc. The programme will be looking at the growth of Liverpool as the world's first global city, and will feature several members of the museum archaeological staff. Quite looking forward to it.

As you may know the Pier Head is undergoing a bit of a transformation at the moment, and that extends to the statues there. King Edward VII atop his horse has undergone a face lift, spending the last few months in a studio at the National Conservation Centre - he almost didn't fit in. Work to remove the grime is now finished (this photo was taken pre-conservation) and you are invited to come along and meet 'King Eddie' before all 16ft of him is hoisted back on top of a granite plinth at the Pier Head. There's a special open day this Thursday - 17 April - from 1-4pm when you can chat to conservators and see long-obscured features up close. Just come to the information desk at the main entrance on Whitechapel and you'll be shown through to the studio.

The second of Samantha Parker's Museum of Liverpool progress videos is now available on the Liverpool Echo website. Fills you in on the progress with the steel structure, the next stage of the build and the view from those big windows at the end of the building.

Thank you to all the people who have posted comments about their experience of the International Slavery Museum on the Art Fund Prize webpage. It's really good to know that the museum is appreciated by our visitors as well as the judges.

If you've not posted your comment yet, and would like the judges to hear your views before they make their final decision next month, you still have time. Just visit the Art Fund website and tell the judges why you think the International Slavery Museum should win the prize. There you'll also find details of the evening reception we're holding on 2 April.

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.

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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.

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.

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.
 

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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

Chris from the learning team at the National Conservation Centre has been to the top of Liverpool Cathedral (featured in the previous post oddly enough) and taken this snap of the view east-ish, out over the river to the Wirral and the Irish Sea beyond in the haze. You can see a larger version on our Flickr page (I've linked to the large version so you can see the detail but there are other sizes to view as well).

The taller red cranes mark the site of the Grosvenor/Liverpool One development, then to the left and towards the river you can see more red cranes around the emerging Museum of Liverpool. The Liverpool Echo are planning to do a month-by-month video update on the museum's building progress, with the first on the Echo website now.

If you've not been to the top of the cathedral it's well worth going on a nice day, if a bit windy. The view is fabulous. There's a lift part of the way up.

Well, the proportion who have visited the Walker in the past few weeks have. We've been asking visitors to the Ben Johnson residency to tell us their favourite building in the Ben Johnson cityscape of Liverpool. The winner, if you hadn't guess by the image, is Liverpool Cathedral (that's the Anglican Cathedral) with the other buildings we love on this Valentines Day being:

1. Liverpool Cathedral
2. The Liver Building
3. St George's Hall
4. The Metropolitan Cathedral of Liverpool
5. Port of Liverpool Building
6. St. John's Beacon
7. St. Nicholas Church
8. Albert Dock
9. White Star Building
10. Walker Art Gallery

Despite asking visitors for their favourite in the painting we got several strange suggestions including the Pilgrim Pub, which if you know Liverpool you'll know is difficult to see from the end of Pilgrim Street never mind on the artwork. It amused me though.

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.

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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.

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!

Last year (!) the Antiques Roadshow visited St George's Hall and unearthed the usual hoard of gems. While there Michael Aspel popped over the road to see some more treasures at the Walker Art Gallery. If you're a fan of the AR, the Walker or both tune into BBC 1 this Sunday (13th) at 6.40pm to see the show. 

Just when I was feeling hard-done-by for being back at work after Christmas when someone people have until Monday, I was sent this image which had the dual effect of being both depressing and uplifting. It's a rather huge piece by Gustave Doré called ‘Flower Sellers of London' which entered our collections in 1880.  The reason I'm flagging it is because it's about to undergo pretty extensive conservation before going on display at the Walker, where I'm sure it'll be very popular with the public - a nice painting with a sad story, pretty protagonists and a bit of social realism thrown in.

Doré was a French illustrator and painter who, like other Romantic artists, often visited London specifically to paint such scenes of poverty. At the time London was the largest and richest city in the world with extremes of opulence and misery. Apparently Doré "was touched by the sad beauty" of such flower sellers, many of whom are thought to have been prostitutes.  

Will keep you posted on the progress of the conservation work.

Not long now until Ben visits the Walker to finish The Liverpool Cityscape. In the meantime there are a few more progress pics on Flickr - all are named 'Jan 08' and are towards the end of the set. As you can see from this image lots of progress has been made on the Albert Dock area, including the building that holds the Merseyside Maritime Museum and the International Slavery Museum.

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.

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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.

Yet again the Walker has won an award, this time it was the Visitor Award at the Juice FM Style Awards on Friday night. For the last 6 weeks Liverpool has been voting through street surveys, web votes and focus groups for who they want to see crowned the people's style favourites. The Walker fought off the Tate Liverpool and Albert Dock to claim that accolade. Tracey McGeagh (Director of Marketing and Communications) and Reyahn King (Director of Art Galleries) collected the award which is now on display in the gallery foyer. The image shows Tracey and Reyahn in the centre with Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace from Big Brother on the left and Naomi Mills from Shipwrecked on the right.

Update 06.12.07: Forgot to credit Juice FM for the use of the photo - thanks very much chaps! 

While perusing this week's TV listings I noticed that our very own Lion locomotive will be starring this week. Channel 4 is showing The Titfield Thunderbolt at 1.30pm on Thursday 15 November.  I've never seen the movie but apparently it's an Ealing Comedy about villagers taking on the powers that be, who threaten to close down their railway, and the Lion is the star of the show. Plenty of charm and gently humour! I'm told that there's a scene where the villagers get the train down some steps but that a replica was used instead of the real Lion. Sounds like good viewing for a cold afternoon.

There are seven more Ben Johnson progress photos up on our Flickr page, all taken on 31st October. They include the work just beginning on the Museum of Liverpool, Neptune Developments and the Paradise Street Development. Admittedly none of these developments are actually finished yet but they will be, and so are being included. Ben has been in close contact with city planners and architects throughout the process and is including buildings which will definitely appear on the city skyline, ie have planning permission, detailed architects' plans etc. 

If you missed the Face of the City drop-in session the other day fear not. Because the session went so well the organisers are repeating the session every Monday in November starting today, 5th and then 12th, 19th and 26th. Again sessions will be held at the BBC Radio Merseyside studios on Hanover Street and will run 10am-5pm.  As ever more information is available on the project website.

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.

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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.  

Sorry this is a bit short notice - worth making the effort though. A few weeks ago I told you about a project several museums staff are involved in. Face of the City is encouraging the city's workforce to get involved in the 08 celebrations by producing their own artworks and displaying them in their own workplaces.

Paul Miller, who came up with the idea, will be in the BBC Radio Merseyside studio on Hanover Street from 10-5pm today (that's Wednesday 31st October) chatting to the public about the project and how they can get involved. More info on the Face of the City website.

Thought this snap of the Museum of Liverpool building site was a nice contrast with Sam's sunrise photo from the other morning. So much going on and really vibrant, contrasting colours. You get a better idea of the progress made.

If you're not familiar with the site you are looking from the Maritime Museum area north west (ish) towards the Pier Head. You can see the graving docks in the foreground, and Wallasey across the river on the Wirral. There's a ferry boat at the landing stage.

Noticed that tomorrow night (Tues 23 Oct) at 11.20pm BBC2 are showing a documentary looking at the making of the Beatles' second film, 'Help!' If you've not already seen our exhibition, 'Now These Days Are Gone' which is also based on 'Help!', the programme might whet your appetite for all things Fab Four.

Uber-shop assistant Lynn Taylor has scooped yet another award. She won in the Customer Service category at the North West Tourism Awards held last night in Manchester. You might remember that she's already the holder of the 'Outstanding Customer Services' The Mersey Partnership Tourism award, and now goes on to the national tourism finals.

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.

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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

Last Friday the Duke of Kent paid a visit to the Lady Lever Art Gallery. He was in Liverpool to officially open the new cruise liner terminal on the waterfront, and while here popped over the water to the Lady Lever. Here he is chatting to gallery head, Sandra Penketh.

Update 26.09.07: caught up with Sandra who told me that HRH was amazed by the size of the collection and thought it would take several days to tour properly. He was particularly interested in the Chinese displays, and the Masonic collection as he is Grand Warden of the United Grand Lodge of England (Freemasons).

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

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

Getting quite exciting now! These snaps were taken on 14 September and you can really see progress even from earlier in the month. As ever the images are on our Flickr page.

When I've labelled them I've tried to pick out the main, visible landmarks. If there's a building you're not sure about or think we should mention (no advertising please!) let me know and I'll try to identify it or add the mention - or add a comment to that image on Flickr yourself.

Work on the Ben Johnson commission is continuing and I've put a few more progress snaps on our Flickr page.  These new images include the area around Dale Street featuring the Liver Building (shown) and our venues on William Brown Street (World Museum Liverpool and the Walker Art Gallery).

We've been posting images for just about a year now and you can really see the progress made as you browse them (dates are in the title of each).

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

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

Rachel Swift has spent the last 12 month on an internship at the National Conservation Centre (NCC) in the Ceramics and Glass section. This is a review of her final major activity - a conference in Slovenia.

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The 4 September was my last day at NCC as part of a 12 month training partnership between National Museums Liverpool (NML) and Icon (Institute of Conservation) funded through the Heritage Lottery Fund Training Bursary Scheme.  Having just spent all of last week, 27–31 August at a fantastic conference I am now all inspired and eager to share my experiences. The conference was an ICOM-CC (International Council of Museums – Conservation Committee) Ceramics and Glass Working Group Interim Meeting, held in Nova Gorica, Slovenia which is on the border with Italy. The last working group meeting was six years ago in Finland so it was a great opportunity for a range of professionals involved with ceramics and glass conservation to get together once again and take part in this information sharing forum made up of sixty five delegates from twenty one countries.  In particular it was an opportunity to meet conservators and museum professionals from Eastern Europe who may normally find it difficult to attend such events. 

Twenty three speakers provided a broad range of interesting presentations on technical, practical, scientific and education related topics.  Complementing these presentations were a display of five posters about specific ceramic and glass conservation projects or related work, which provided a colourful and interesting backdrop to the proceedings.   One of these posters (shown) was about the work I have been carrying out in the Ceramics and Glass Conservation section with Lynne Edge over the last 12 months.  My overall aim was to highlight the benefits of work based training by displaying the range of opportunities availed whilst at NCC in terms of bench-based experience, scientific research and internal and external collaborative projects.  The poster was well received with an hour set aside on the Wednesday afternoon to enable authors to answer questions and discuss the projects displayed. 

The hospitality and the welcome we received from the Slovenian people was astonishing with organised receptions virtually every evening at museums across Slovenia with traditional food and locally produced wine.  The museum hosting the event in Nova Gorica, Goriski Musej, had even re-displayed an entire gallery especially for the event.  From a professional point of view attending conferences such as this one is a highly valuable opportunity to learn, to network and to get to know peers in more sociable surroundings.  I would also highly recommend visiting Slovenia.  As a country the size of Wales with a population of 2million everywhere within Slovenia is easily accessible and from what I saw mainly remains truly beautiful and unspoilt. 

Grateful acknowledgements to: Lynne Edge, Dave Flower, NML design department for assistance with production of the poster and The Zibby Garnett Travelling Fellowship, Icon, and the North West Federation of Museums and Art Galleries for funding the visit.

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

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

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.

As promised here are some of the radio highlights for the International Slavery Museum launch. Obviously there has been a lot more coverage than this list but a lot isn't available to listen again, or is difficult to isolate within a programme. There's plenty to listen to here anyway.

• Front Row tonight (Friday 24th) will feature Mark Lawson's visit to the new museum. That's Radio 4 at 7.15pm, and hopefully for the week to come on 'listen again'
  
• As I mentioned yesterday Simon Mayo on Radio Five Live interviewed Richard Benjamin for about 20 mins on Wednesday, starting at about 1hr 47 mins into the programme. That programme should be available to listen again until Wednesday next week.
  
• Colourful Radio's Amina Taylor interviewed Richard on 20th August 2007. Just select the date from this page - the interview starts at 1hr 46mins and runs for about 20 mins. 
  
• Colourful Radio obviously like Richard as he was back on the station next day on the Elayne Smith programme. Again, select the date (21st August) and start listening at 1hr 38 mins. The interview runs for about 18 mins. In the interview Richard asked people to send him their comments and thoughts on the museum. You can do that by following this link and completing the 'contact us' form.
  

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

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

Our very own Stephen Guy (he of Maritime Tales fame) gives a little bit of a guided tour around the International Slavery Museum which opens on Thursday (just two more sleeps) in this video on the BBC website.

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.

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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

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

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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]

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.

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

The installation of the new access ramp at the Lady Lever Art Gallery is continuing this week with the fitting of the new glass balustrade. Did a previous post on the ramp itself if you are interested.

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

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

Just 36 more sleeps until the opening of the International Slavery Museum (cue hysteria from the project team). Joking aside, the fit-out, ie installing the actual exhibits, is well underway and I've put a few progress snaps on our Flickr page. This pic shows the Igbo compound in the west gallery.  I'll put more up as the museum develops over the next few weeks.

If you missed it when it was at the Museum of Liverpool Life (RIP), you'll be pleased to hear that our hugely successful exhibition,  Living With The Romans, is on at the Museum of Lancashire, on Stanley Street, Preston from this Saturday until December 21.  The museum is open Monday - Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, 10.30am until 5pm. Admission prices are adults £3, concessions £2 and children free.

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).

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

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

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.

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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

You've got just over a week (until Monday 16 July) to send us your feedback on our draft disability equality scheme. We want to know what you think about it and about what National Museums Liverpool are doing to meet the needs of our visitors.

The document is on our main website, as are our access standards and our equality and diversity policy which are on the same page. You can sent us your comments either through our 'contact us' system or by calling Human Resources on 0151 478 4677.

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.

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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.

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

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

National Museums Liverpool have developed a draft disability equality scheme and would like to know what you think of it. The document outlines what we are doing to meet the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act. What do you think of our plans? Is it enough or appropriate? What could we be doing better?

You can find the document on our main website. You may also want to read our access standards and our equality and diversity policy which are on the same page. You can get in touch either through our 'contact us' system or by calling Human Resources on 0151 478 4677, with comments to reach us by Monday 16 July 2007.

It's just over 14 hours until a receation of the famous slave ship, Amistad, sets sail from its home port of New Haven, Connecticut, USA on a 14,000 mile round trip to Europe and Africa. The ship will retrace the slave triangle travelled by thousands of European slaving ships during the 18th and 19th centuries, with a crew augmented by English and American students including 19 year old Michael Simon from Toxteth.

The Amistad became famous in 1839 when the slaves on board - who were being taken to the Americas - revolted, captured the ship and eventually won their freedom.  

The ship will be in Liverpool in a few weeks time for the opening of the International Slavery Museum on 23 August, which is also Slavery Remembrance Day.

You can learn more the background to the trip, Amistad America Inc, and the orginal Amistad on the official website.

Martin Greenland, the artist who won the John Moores 24 prize last year with 'Before Vermeer's Clouds' is holding his first solo exhibition since his win. It's at Farfield Mill, just outside Sedbergh, Cumbria, and is on until 11th July 2007. It's a mix of new and older work, including drawings and paintings on paper, none of which have been seen before. More info on Martin's website.

A few weeks ago I told you we had been nominated in two categories at the The Mersey Partnership 2007 Tourism Awards. Well, we're pleased to report that we won, and in both categories.  'Big Art for Little Artists' won in the 'Large Visitor Attraction' category, and Lynn Taylor from the Lady Lever Art Gallery won the 'Outstanding Customer Service' category. Obviously we're pretty chuffed with both awards and proud of Lynn's individual achievement.

More on the awards can be found on the icLiverpool website.

Here's a few progress images from work on the International Slavery Museum which will open in August. The other images are on our Flickr page and include the Igbo compound in the west gallery.

This image shows the Middle Passage immersive in the middle gallery. You can see its curved outer wall - there are two walls which form almost a peanut-shape which you go inside. The text on the wall,  in case you can't read it, says:

My hopes of returning home again were all over.
Cuguana, 1787

dis poem
shall speak of the wretched sea
that washed ships to these shores
of mothers cryin for their
young swallowed up by the sea.
Mutabaruka, 1985

Clare Hamilton's Sunday programme came from the newly-reopened Sudley House. You can catch it on BBC Radio Merseyside's 'listen again' facility. Featured are decorative arts curator Robin Emmerson, talking about the history of the house and the Merchant Palaces exhibition, and George Holt (aka Paul O'Keefe) taking about his life and collection.

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. 

 

Recently saw this Guardian article on Millais and a new Tate exhibition. Reading it I felt quite sorry for Millais and I'm a bit puzzled about his work needing rescuing. A lot of people like 'Bubbles', which is on long loan at the Lady Lever Art Gallery and will be returning there once the Tate exhibition is over. Ok, it might seem a bit sugary and sentimental to our modern eyes but that's a lot of people's cup of tea and fair play to them.

In case you don't know Millais didn't paint 'Bubbles' to advertise soap; instead he intended the bubbles and the innocence of the child to represent the fragility of life, and the painting as a whole is meant to encourage us to ponder the brevity of our existence. Some people think that Millais wasn't best pleased when it was used to advertise Pear's soap, but he'd sold the copyright so there wasn't a whole lot he could do about it. Others suggest that he was happy with the sale as long as the reproduction was of a suitable quality

'Bubbles' actually fits in quite well at the Lady Lever, partly because we've a good few Millais's in the collection (you can explore them in this Millais online feature), but also because of the gallery's history and links to the soap industry. Lord Leverhulme began buying art, not just Millais's work, in the late 1880s to use in advertising for his 'Sunlight Soap' brand. Pieces like The Wedding Morning, Girl With Dogs, Besieged, His Turn Next, A Dress Rehearsal and The Centre of Attraction were purchased to promote soap, and many a home still has a print, postcard, jigsaw or tea tray depicting one of them.

So, if 'Bubbles' is your cup of tea you can read more about it here or listen to a gallery talk on our main site.

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

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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.

A couple of programmes to catch over the next couple of weeks. On Wednesday 16 May at 7pm on BBC2, Jonathan Meades: Abroad Again will be looking at urban regeneration, and visits Liverpool when he'll be checking out the Art and the Sea gallery at the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

Then, 26 May sees the reopening of Sudley House. BBC Radio Merseyside are marking the occassion on the Sunday (27 May) at 1-3pm with a mix of pre-recorded and live interviews from the gallery. 

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

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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

Marketing Assistant Enes updates us from "On the Road"

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The latest addition to Museum of Liverpool - On the Road  was launched this morning at the Radisson SAS hotel. The child-sized post box was specially made for the children at Fazakerley Children’s Home to post their letters and cards.

National Museums Liverpool curator Kay Docherty, hotel general manager Geir Tonnessen, and local lad Ben appeared for regional press who attended the presentation.

Update 14.05.07: Sorry, we originally spelt Mr Tonnessen's name wrong.

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.

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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:

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"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.

A few more progress snaps from the Ben Johnson project are now on our Flickr page (the last five are the most recent), including both Goodison Park and Anfield stadia (those who know me will admire my restraint there).

Should point out that these images are optimised for web use, and that the originals show really, really fine detail. You definitely need to see the original or hi-res pics to appreciate it fully.

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.

Just been talking to Kyle who works in our new media unit and is currently working on an interactive for the forthcoming International Slavery Museum - it looks pretty good even at this stage. There are going to be a number of interactives on the gallery, and this one is based on documents in our collection (the Davenport collection actually). It will tell the tale of the Essex, a typical Liverpool slave ship, and follows the vessel as it sets sail from the port (that's a Liverpool dock in the image) to Africa and then on the the Americas.

Must admit, I wouldn't have the patience or eye for detail to do Kyle's job. Just about five minutes worth of interactive is literally taking him weeks to create, as every aspect of the interactive needs to be built from scratch.  Just the ship in this image took about a week to complete - the surfaces of all the ropes, wood, sails etc needed to be individually built in 3D Studio Max (that's an industry-standard application used to create 3D models of the type you'd see in any video game). The harbour walls themselves were a lot easier as they are basic 'boxes' with relatively little detail.

Also, Kyle's job isn't just about the technical side of things. He needs to think about everything from the story boarding, scripting and voice overs, to building, editing and combining his creation. Then there's issues like creating the right atmosphere for the piece (cartoony wouldn't work for such a serious issue), making sure the interactive itself is engrossing, and all the while sticking to the facts by creating historically accurate ships, buildings, clothes etc.  Who knew it took so much?  I'll pop in again in a few weeks and see where he's up to with it.

More progress images are on our Flickr page.

It's generally assumed that you need to be pretty smart to work in a museum. To find out just how smart watch Eggheads on BBC 2 at 6pm this coming Friday (20th) when a team from the museums will be pitting their collective wits against the resident team.

Last week Woman's Hour featured an interview with Pamela Robertson, curator at Glasgow's Hunterian Art Gallery, about the Doves and Dreams exhibition which is currently drawing the crowds at the Walker Art Gallery (and which finishes this Sunday). If you missed it you can still 'listen again' via the website for a day or two more (sorry for the lack of notice).

Finally, refering back to the Lilies post a few months ago, we've had an enquiry about the churches that featured in the series. Sorry, we don't know which they are and suggest that the person who contacted us gets in touch with Liverpool Film Office (we did try to email you but it kept bouncing back).

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

Changes are afoot at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Last week saw the installation of a new ramp for visitors who can't manage the steps. This photo shows work in progress at what will be the new entrance - it's to the right of the front entrance as you currently look at the building. The new entrance and foyer will be a big improvement on the current cramped, inaccessible one, and will lead people right into the heart of the building. Fans of the building should rest assured that all of these changes are totally in keeping with the building and its listed status. More on the improvements we're making to the gallery are on the main site.

Update 10.04.07: sorry, that should read 'to the left of the front entrance as you curently look at the building', so that's the west side of the building.

You might have seen in local press a rather big splash about our Bunny Run event over the Easter weekend. Sorry to disappoint folks but that's a bit of an error (not ours you understand) and there's no chasing of rabbits or any other animal for that matter at our venues this weekend.  There are lots of other events though (check out the 'what's on' section of the main site), and there are actually a good few rabbits in the Wallace & Gromit section of the Animated Adventures exhibition so it's not a totally bunny-free weekend after all.

Mark Adams from the archaeology team with an update on activity at the Manchester Dock site. Photos from the dig are still on our Flickr page. If you've missed any of the excavation posts follow the 'museum of liverpool' link at the foot of this post.

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After a lull of about three weeks whilst we recorded the dock structures exposed in the first phase of the dig, excavation has begun for the new museum foundations. This is being undertaken as a 'Watching Brief' which entails the Museum's archaeologists monitoring the excavation of the site by machine. The site is being excavated in this way because test-pits and boreholes taken earlier in the project showed that the quaysides were constructed over dumps of sands, gravels and rubble dumped into the Mersey to form this part of the docks. The vast majority of this material is of little or no archaeological interest, most is probably dredgings taken from the river, and hand digging of this material is not realistically feasible or productive. However, it does contain pockets of very interesting deposits. So far we have found more sugar moulds (below) similar to those found earlier in the excavation, including one which although broken may be complete, and another with a complete makers stamp for W. Ashcroft of Prescott.

Several dumps of broken pottery have been found, some containing thousands of pieces. Most of this appears to be from the Herculaneum Pottery which was an important Liverpool pottery working for 44 years from 1796. There also appears to be pottery from Staffordshire, possibly because of Manchester Dock's connection with the Shropshire Union Canal. Others may be imports from China, but we need to send these to a specialist to be sure of this. In addition to the pottery dumps of clay tobacco pipe have also been found. This will require examination by a specialist in tobacco pipes, but appears to contain material relating to manufacture of the pipes.

Material like this is of great value to archaeologists and historians, because we know this section of the dock was constructed between 1803-1813 we can give a very accurate date to the things which are found. The results of this work can then be fed into other excavations, hence providing valuable dating evidence.

In the past couple of days we have exposed a section of the waterfront pre-dating the addition of lock gates to Manchester Dock in 1803-1813. We know from maps and other documents that the wall was built in about 1785. Unfortunately very little of it seems to have survived, most having being destroyed by the early 19th century builders.

If you live in the Granada television region tonight's viewing might include the current affairs programme, Granada Editions at 7.30pm. Tonight's show is a special edition looking at the role of the North West in the transatlantic slave trade.  Poet Lemn Sissay looks at how the profits of the trade are still evident around the region. Tony Tibbles, keeper of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, and assistant curator, Stephen Welsh, both feature.

This weekend marked the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in the UK. Given Liverpool's role in the trade there was strong media focus on the city, with the Merseyside Maritime Museum featuring heavily. The following radio programmes are available to 'listen again' by following the links.

The Sunday Programme on BBC Radio 4 was broadcast live from the Merseyside Maritime Museum. The programme looked at why some Christians supported slavery and others didn't, slavery in Islam, Liverpool and the slave trade, and the legacy of slavery. 

Next Sunday Worship - Set All Free, also from the Merseyside Maritime Museum, featured Bishop of Liverpool, Rt Revd James Jones and Senior Pastor of the Temple of Praise Church, Dr Tani Omideyi. The Love and Joy Gospel Choir provided the vocals for a programme looking at the legacy of slavery in a city whose fortunes and success rested on the slave trade.

Also on Sunday, Radio Five Live's Worricker Programme was broadcast from the Elmina fort in Ghana. Playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah visited the transatlantic slavery gallery at the Merseyside Maritime Museum and interviewed the keeper of the museum, Tony Tibbles, talking about the trade and the new slavery museum. Deputy PM John Prescott, Miss Dynamite and former Leeds and Ghanaian footballer, Tony Yeboah also featured.

BBC Radio Merseyside's Claire Hamilton also focused on the trade and interviewed Richard Benjamin, keeper of the forthcoming International Slavery Museum.  Wayne Clark looked at the role of abolitionist, William Wilberforce, in his Daybreak programme. Keeper of the Maritime, Tony Tibbles, was also interviewed.

 

A rare treat for footie fans this weekend, when parts of the Everton Collection go on display at Goodison Park. Before non-Blues (you poor people) stop reading I should point out that this collection isn't just important from an Everton persective but is actually the most comprehensive footie memorabilia collection in the world. Currently the possession of life long Evertonian, David France, the collection not only chronicles the club's and the city's football and social heritage, but also that of football itself.

Parts date from the club's founding in 1878, predating the football league, and cover everything from the split that led to the formation of Liverpool FC, to the '66 World Cup and umpteen trips to Wembley, with unique photos, programmes, contracts, season tickets, medals, cash books and tonnes of other ephemera.

The exhibition is on for one day only - Sunday 25 March - from 10am to 4pm in the Captain's Table Lounge in the Park End at Goodison Park. Admission is free.

There's more on the collection on the official website, including David France's favourite pieces which include the tender to build Anfield and Dixie Dean's first medals.

Our major exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in 2008 looks at the artist’s response to the railway, and will feature such luminaries as Monet, Manet, Hopper, Van Gogh, Pissaro and De Chirico.  We've come up with a few possible titles and would like to know  what you think of them. The options are:

    Painted Stations Whistle By

    Art, Steam and Speed

    Travelling Companions

    Iron, Steam & Speed

Send us an email using this contact form, and include your choice in the 'comments' section. If you want to explain your choice please do, and if you've got something even better in mind feel free to tell us. We may use the subtitle 'The Artist and the Railway' for the exhibition as well so let us know what you think of that.

Extra housepoints if you got the Simpsons reference in the title of this post.

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 added another batch of photos to our Manchester Dock photoset on Flickr. Some pretty nice snaps there including this one taken low down in Manchester Dock.

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.

If you are aged between 12 and 17 and fancy yourself as a budding journo then this could be the competition for you. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Parliament’s decision to outlaw Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, National Museums Liverpool has teamed up with international children’s charity Plan UK and EducationGuardian.co.uk to launch a young reporters' competition. First prize is a weekend in Liverpool followed by a trip to a Plan project tackling child labour in Senegal. The deadline for entries is 27 April 2007.

Find out more on the EducationGuardian website.

This wonderful image was taken by Hamish Mackenzie at Plan UK.

BBC School Radio's 'Together' series has created two programmes on the transatlantic slave trade, based on the Slaves' Stories feature on our website. Both programmes feature dramatisations of the experiences of fictional Africans and interviews with museum staff and are aimed at Keystage 2 pupils. 'A Shocking Trade' goes out on Thursday 15th March, and 'Free at last!' a week later. Programmes are broadcast at 3am with each available as audio on demand for the following week.

This Sunday (4th March) staff from our field archaeology team, who are currently digging up Manchester Dock, will be on Channel Four's Time Team, digging at a site in Warburton in Cheshire. That's at 5.45pm, with information on the dig site, finds etc on the programme website later.

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

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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.

This Thursday the Independent will be giving away a colour poster of Poussin's 'Landscape with the ashes of Phocion' as part of their British Art Treasures series. One free in each copy of the paper.

Just heard that former John Moores prize winner, Michael Tyzack, died at the weekend. Michael won the prize in 1965 with his abstract piece, Alesso B (shown). The win put him into the limelight and led to him being invited to Charleston in 1976 to set up a studio art department at the city's college.  More details on Tyzack and his work can be found on the Charleston Post & Courier site.

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.

Museum archaeologists excavating Manchester Dock have been pleased to find the inner walls of the lock gate are in very good condition. Many of the stones not only feature the original chisel marks but also the identifying marks of the individual masons. Stonemasons would mark the stones they had dressed so their daily output could be accurately tallied and they would be paid accordingly.

Some are simple shapes (like the triangle one featured on our Flickr page). Others are a mix of letters and numbers like this example.

In yesterday's dig post we showed you the outline of Manchester Dock with its two sets of docks gates. Well yesterday archaeologists set to work uncovering those original gates which are still in situ. Most of the timbers survive, some of which are up to 0.3metres thick and hardwood, probably Greenheart (a very hardwood often used in dock construction).

More images from yesterday, including the depth marker from the dock, can be found on our Flickr page.

Actually, if you're not a teacher who has recently brought a class on a visit to one of our venues you can stop reading now.

Our Learning department is running a monthly draw to win free coach travel next time one of your classes visits one of our venues. To be entered all you have to do is get your class to complete a really simple and pretty fun online survey all about their visit. What's more, the feedback can be supplied to you so even if you don't win you still get to find out just how much attention they were really paying. More details here.

It's been a bit windy lately so the going has been a tad rough down at the dock. For the past two weeks archaeologists have been working hard to remove the tarmac which once covered the car park at Mann Island on the waterfront (that's the River Mersey at the top right of the image). A 62 metre high mobile access platform was then brought in to give a unique bird's eye view of the dock and its associated yards and structures. The photographs (which include this one) will be used to produce a detailed plan/drawing of the area using computer software.

From left to right this image shows:
* Manchester Dock is the large brown structure on the left. 'A' indicates the position of the two sets of lock gates.
* On either side of the dock you can see a pair of holes in the ground (marked 'B'). These are the sites of the operating mechanisms for the inner set of lock gates.
* Moving right across the site 'C' indicates the foundations of Shed 1
* 'D' shows a cobbled yard surface
* 'E' indicates the foundation of Shed 2
* On the far right, currently beneath a pile of earth, is 'F', Chester Basin.

More photographs are available on our Flickr page, and if you STILL don't know what this project is all about check out our main site.

A couple of month ago I told you about a monster of a 50 year old palm frond we had just acquired. Plans are to put the frond on display at World Museum Liverpool but first it needed some TLC in the form of treatment at the National Conservation Centre. This primarily involved removing the enhancing layer of acrylic paint to expose the original fossil (it's much paler).

This image shows the frond under UV light before work began. The purple areas are the acrylic overpainting and retouches. Images of the conservation work in progress and the finished article can be found on our Flickr page.

Update 23.01.07: apologies, that should have read 50 MILLION year old palm frond.

Today award winning author Andrea Levy was at the Merseyside Maritime Museum to launch this year's Liverpool Reads project. There she met children from Windsor Street School who were taking part in a Brouhaha International drumming session.

The annual Liverpool Reads event has joined forces with several other reading initiatives across the country to form Small Island Read 2007. It's hoped that tens of thousands of people all over the country will be reading Andrea's Orange prize winning novel, Small Island. The novel was chosen because not only is it a fab read (yes, I have read it) but also because it looks at the experiences of Jamaican migrants living in post-war Britain and explores highly relevant themes for 2007; the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade.

Not only can residents of the participating cities get their hands on a copy of Small Island, but there is also a guide to the novel (which you can download from the project site), and a book for younger readers; Benjamin Zephaniah's Refugee Boy. Check out the website for details.

Realise I told you last week that the dig was starting on 4th January but there was a bit of a delay, so today is officially day 4 and already we can see something. Archaeologist, Mark Adams, fills us in (as opposed to excavating the dock...never mind)

"Removal of the tarmac to expose archaeological deposits has continued this week despite frequent bouts of heavy rain and strong winds. Much of the upper surface of the entrance lock has now been exposed and some of the iron fittings for the lock gates are also visible. Work on revealing the surrounding quaysides is now in progress and has already found structures such as bases for cranes and basements belonging to dock buildings."

You can see another photo from today, plus other dig photos, on our Flickr page.
Information on the Museum of Liverpool project is on our main site.

A few weeks ago I told you about the new BBC period drama, Lilies, some of which was filmed at our venues. Well the first episode of this 8 part series is broadcast at 9pm on BBC1 on Friday, so curl up with the last of your Christmas chocolate and get location spotting.

If you missed the fireworks at the Walker on Friday night you can check out some photos on the Daily Pete website (this isn't one of them - this was taken by Karen Young from the press office).

Note from Karen: introducing Rob Philpott, head of archaeology at National Museums Liverpool. He'll be providing regular updates on progress at the dig which is about to begin at the waterfront. If all this is totally new to you and you've no idea what is happening at the dock you can read-up on the main site.

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Tomorrow archaeologists from NML's Field Archaeology Unit are starting work on the site of the new Museum of Liverpool. The new museum will be built on the Liverpool waterfront on an area of land which was reclaimed from the estuary in the late 18th century to construct some of Liverpool's vast sequence of docks. We will be working in advance of construction to ensure that the remains of the two docks affected by the scheme, Manchester Dock and Chester Basin, are fully recorded. As the top of the docks lie close to the surface, we will first be removing the tarmac surface to expose the dock walls and quaysides. These will be mapped and photographed and a detailed plan made.

There will be an update next week, plus details of finds as we uncover them.

Rob Philpott.

Subtitle: diversionary tactics part 2.

Today's foray into the world of 'kind of work' has been provided by the Guardian art & architecture blog which has posed the question 'what is your favourite Christmas painting?' In the spirit of 'diversionary tactics' I'd better go for images from our own collections. You'll know a lot of these as they are regularly used on Christmas cards. My choices are:

• Peter Doig's 'Blotter'
• The Shortening Winter's Day Is Near A Close by Farquharson (proper chocolate box stuff)
• The image shown is a detail from The Daphnephoria by Lord Leighton which, despite being used on lots of Christmas cards, isn't even about winter. The Daphnephoria was an ancient festival held every nine years in honour of the god, Apollo. So now you know.
• Snowdrift by Edward Onslow Ford is often used as well, despite being about the end of winter and the coming of spring. 
• Just realised that one our most popular Christmas pics isn't on our main site (job for the new year me thinks), Angel Playing A Flageolet by Burne-Jones.

Email me with your suggestions and I'll consider posting them here.

Guess this is the National Museums Liverpool blog signing off for a few days. Have a restful and peaceful holiday, whatever you end up doing.

 

I was looking for references to Aardman Animations (they of Wallace & Gromit fame) in anticipation of the Animated Adventures exhibition we are hosting next year, and was really gutted to come across this BBC article on the death of Joseph Barbera. Peter Lord from Aardman talks about Barbera's influence in the piece.

Hanna-Barbera were the creators of my childhood (and adult if I'm honest) favourites including The Flintstones, Scooby Doo (before Scrappy, obviously), Top Cat and, my absolute fave, Tom & Jerry.

Wikipedia pretty well covers their work, with some good links to other HB sites.