National Museums Liverpool Blog - Thursday, April 06, 2006

This week has seen the completion of the first stage of the judging process for this year's John Moores exhibition of contemporary painting. The judges are Ann Bukantas, Curator of Fine Art at the Walker Art Gallery and the artists Tracey Emin, Sir Peter Blake and former John Moores prizewinner Jason Brooks.

This week's judging process involved going through the 2300 entries received, each entry viewed on a slide projector. From these the judges have been selecting up to 500 works which will be called in for judging in June 2006.

Modernism: Designing a New World 1914 - 1939, the new blockbuster exhibition at the V & A in London, opens today. The exhibition microsite gives a great taste of what visitors can expect.

Best of all, you can design your own poster to promote the exhibition, here's my effort on the left.

We were saddened to hear yesterday of the death of Mr Peter McGovern, who wrote the world-famous folk song, 'In My Liverpool Home'. Mr McGovern was a regular visitor the Walker Art Gallery and has helped the learning section with workshops in the past. He was immensely proud of his city and wrote the song as a tribute. He was also an old friend of my grandad's - and from what I hear he was a jolly nice man.

Derek shows exhibition officer Justina his Celebrity Silk

Everyone's getting sporty at National Museums Liverpool. While one half the office is entering the forthcoming 'Race for Life', and the other half is getting ready for Ladies' Day at Aintree! 

If you are in Liverpool for this weekend’s Grand National you might want to bob along to the Walker Art Gallery to see 'George Stubbs: A Celebration'. Stubbs is the city’s greatest artist and specialises in exquisite paintings of horses.

Armchair spectators will be pleased to hear that the web team have put together an online exhibition of sporting ephemera from across the collections - so you can join in without even leaving the house. This is the only place you can see the items all together - some of which are in storage.

For those who prefer to get out and about, 'Celebrity Silks' opens at World Museum Liverpool on Friday 7 April. Celebrities have designed their own jockey silks including household names like chef Gordon Ramsay, cricketer Andrew Flintoff and Top Gear presenter, Jeremy Clarkson. Infact, clairvoyant and psychic Derek Acorah, who has contributed his own spooky design, has been along today for press launch. I wonder if he can give me any tips on the Grand National?

Loyd Grossman was at the Walker Art Gallery last Friday to welcome the first visitors into 'Big Art for Little Artists', our new children's gallery.

The gallery has been specifically designed for children up to the age of eight, introducing them to art and the Walker's collections through a series of fun informal learning activities and games.

We've created a series of online features to support these aims:

• A Parent's Guide answers Frequently Asked Questions
• a jigsaw interactive, introducing famous paintings from the collection
• a colouring in interactive, using the iconic Little Artist characters
• a virtual tour, follow the Little Artists on a trip around the Walker
• a fridge gallery, showing children's drawings
• a hide and seek game, in which the Little Artists are hiding in paintings from the collection
• desktop wallpapers

The Jodi Awards 'recognise museum, gallery, library,archive or heritage websites that demonstrate commitment to meeting web accessibility standards'. Nominated sites are assessed by an experienced panel of judges, supported by formal testing by disability experts and disabled users.

The 2006 shortlist has been announced:

• Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
• Portable Antiquities Scheme
  
• i-Map: The Everyday Transformed
  
• Their Reading Futures
  
• The History of Wolverhampton
  
• Speaking Volumes

National Museums Liverpool's web accessibility guidelines.

Sping has sprung, or so we're told. All the signs of a typical British springtime are here. This week we've already had wind, rain and a dash of hail. I even had a spring roll for my tea last night, so it must be true. (I'm not joking. I really did have a spring roll).

One of my friends has just mentioned she is going to dust off the BBQ, but I'm afraid I can't share her optimism. To try and shake off that bleak winter outlook, I've been browsing our collections and came across Millais' 'Spring (Apple Blossoms)' and Laura Knight's 'Spring in St John's Wood'.  Maybe I will to wait for this week's solar eclipse to pass before I can restore my naturally sunny outlook.

If you are as confused as me about the seasons, try 'Sundials and Sunbeams' . It will explain what's happening a lot better than I can!

Tomorrow sees the 203rd Merseyside derby. To get you in the mood (as if anyone needs the help) you might want to check out the photos from two exhibitions we ran a couple of years ago - Everton's 80s Heroes and The Kop's Last Stand. Both are full of fab photos and memories of yesteryear.

Never has Mother's Day been so complicated. I am a mummy myself, but instead of looking forward to a weekend of relaxation, I am busy trying to work out how we are going to mark the occasion for no less than 4 generations of women in the family. There's me, my mum, mother-in-law, step-mother (in-law), and three grandmothers. So potentially my daughter could send cards to her mummy, nanna, grandma, step-nanny, great-grandma, great-nanna and great-grandmother. That's 13 cards in all - or about £25. So we'll be getting the glue, glitter and paints out this weekend I expect!

Of course, if I could get my 94 year old nan online we could send her one of our fabulous FREE Mother's Day e-cards.  Better still, I could even bring her along to one of our museums and galleries for the day. Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight is likely to be a favourite this weekend with Pre-Raphaelite Drawings still on show and the ever-popular cafe. But if you're looking for something really different, why not visit the Treasure House Theatre at World Museum Liverpool? The Death on the Nile performance  features the magical techniques of mummification!

(Performance starts 3pm, limited tickets from the info desk).

The Last Muster

Last night Chelsea made it through to the semis of the FA Cup, so here's a painting of Chelsea pensioners to mark the occassion - 'The Last Muster: Sunday at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea' by Sir Hubert von Herkomer which hangs in the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

Sorry barcodes fans - couldn't find anything Newcastle-related.

It's always frustrating when work never sees the light of day. We're creating a children's interactive for Big Art which involves placing the Little Artist characters into paintings from the Walker collection. We've had a lot of fun with it, but had to cut some of the images out to keep the numbers down.

Henry didn't make the cut.

We are continually adding new and improved scans of our paintings to the website. This morning I added 9 larger images of paintings to the collections pages. The enlarged images can be seen at:

'Dutch Merchant Ships in a Storm', Ludolf Bakhuizen (previously black and white)
'The Magdelan', Paulus Bor
'Mirage', Michael Raedecker
'The Nymph of the Fountain', Lucas Cranach the Elder
'Vespers', John Singer Sargent
'Ulysses shooting through the rings', Francesco Primaticcio
'Well's Cathedral', JMW Turner
'Virgin and Child in Glory', Bartolome Esteban Murillo
'Pieta', Ercole de' Roberti

Congratulations to Andrew Flintoff and the England cricket team for their 212 run victory over India this morning, the cricket match pictured is a detail from Turner's 'Well's Cathedral', circa 1795, in the Walker Art Gallery.