National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, July 31, 2006

Congratulations to Stuart Ian Burns, ex-employee of the Walker Art Gallery, on five years of feeling listless.

Liverpool Clipper, looking pristine and shiny new before the start of the race last October

This morning the Liverpool Clipper sailed into Holyhead to win the penultimate leg of the Clipper 2005-2006 round the world race. All ten clippers have a quick rest before the final race, arriving in the Albert Dock tomorrow. It'll be a nail-biter, as Liverpool are now only one point behind 3rd placed New York on the leaderboard. Could they regain their podium position?

The return of the clippers to Liverpool will be celebrated with a weekend of activities on the waterfront. The Maritime Museum is hosting traditional craft demonstrations, hands-on art activities for children and survival fun in the new Shipwrecked exhibition. It's also the museum's annual RNLI weekend.

If you're among the crowds in the Albert Dock, don't forget to pop into the Piermaster's House for a chat to Rose, the Piermaster's wife, who will be receiving visitors from 1-4pm on Saturday 29 July. Have a look at the What's on section for the full programme of events. 

The Piermaster's House in the Albert Dock

This year, as you probably already know, is the Chinese Year of the Dog. There are lots of canine related items in our collections, some of which can be seen in an online exhibition of dogs.

This summer however the Customs and Excise Museum have gone one better, with real live sniffer dogs visiting every Thursday afternoon, from today until 31 August.

The dogs and their handlers will be giving special demonstrations of how they sniff out contraband goods in our ports and airports.

Yesterday's live link up from the Treasure House Theatre in World Museum Liverpool was a real treat. We were given a special behind-the-scenes look at some of the interesting objects housed inside the National Archive at Kew. The archive has 100 miles of shelving carrying 10 million documents from the past 1000 years of history. These included documents signed by Henry VIII, and his Royal Seal. 

Another grisley piece of history in Kew's archives is Guy Fawkes' signed gunpowder plot confession. The barely-there scrawl reveals the torture he endured before he finally signed, incuding the use of thumb screws.

If you like this particular breed of horrible history, then Terry Deary's Terrible Tudors at the Liverpool Empire is worth a look, if only for the 3D Boggle Goggles you wear in the second half. Personally I'm a bit of a fan of Henry so it goes against the grain to call him terrible. Having said that, I'm Tudor re-enactor who spends as much time as I can muster at Kentwell Hall in Suffolk so perhaps I'm biased. 

Huzzah for Good King Hal!

Object of the month at the Walker Art Gallery is recent acquisition 'Loophonium', by the late Fritz Spiegl. The loophonium, a euphonium crossed with a toilet, was created by Spiegl for an April Fools' Day concert in 1960. Free gallery talks will be held on Tuesday 1 and Thursday 24 August, 1-1.30pm.

August's Nightwatch feature for World Museum Liverpool higlights sightings of Jupiter, Venus, the constellation of Pegasus, M51 (The Whirlpool Galaxy) and the Perseid meteor shower.

For those wanting to know what the night sky was like in the recent past, our Nightwatch archives date back to the beginning of 2004.

Detail from 'A Horse Frightened by a Lion' by Stubbs

There's only a few days left to catch two major exhibitions at the Walker, A Passion for Fashion and George Stubbs: A Celebration, both of which close on Sunday 30 July. So why not avoid the rain that's forecast for the weekend with a visit to the gallery.

The Stubbs exhibition, which features popular paintings from the Walker's collections including Molly Longlegs and A Horse Frightened by a Lion, will travel to Tate Britain in London then across the Atlantic to the Frick Collection in New York.

While our paintings are away from the gallery, you can still see them on the website in our online featured artist section on Stubbs.

First image from the interactive installation that Airside have created to be shown during the Liverpool Biennial (18 September 2006 - 26 November 2006).

The Walker Art Gallery has commissioned the immersive artwork which will consist of physical objects, wall projections and music composed by Fred Deakin of Lemon Jelly.

Full press release here.

This afternoon I attended the world premiere of 'Food for thought', a new family show at the Treasure House Theatre in World Museum Liverpool.

The action takes place in the Time Travel Café, where the waiter is a man on a mission. He transports the audience back in time to find out how food was caught and prepared many thousands of years ago

The half hour show features ancient treasures from the museum's collections, video footage and, of course, a rather unique time machine. I wont give too much away, but visitors are given plenty of food for thought about where the meals we eat come from.

Have a look at the what's on section to find out what shows and events are coming up in the Treasure House Theatre

The Dock Traffic Office

ITV Granada has announced that it is moving its Liverpool news team out of the Dock Traffic Office and into the Liver Building. This allows National Museums Liverpool to develop phase two of the International Slavery Museum at the site.

Phase one, comprising new galleries focusing on the transatlantic slave trade, will be built in the adjacent Merseyside Maritime Museum building, with a link bridge running through to the Dock Traffic Office. In there will be a resource centre for the understanding of transatlantic slavery. This second phase opens in 2010.

You can learn more about the International Slavery Museum here.

Water coolers across the country have been in great demand this week as we guzzle our way through the heatwave. But our discomfort pales into insignificance when it is compared with those whose survival depends on attaining a supply of fresh water. 

A brilliant partnership between cooler company AquAid and Christian Aid means that 30 pence from every bottle of water sold goes directly to water-related project in Africa. Since it began in 1998 it has raised £1.6 million.

Today AquAid director David Phillips bobbed along to the World Cultures Gallery in World Museum Liverpool to present us with a certificate for our small part. He said, "National Museums Liverpool have saved the lives of hundreds of people and for this we congratulate them."

June McDonough from Office Services received the certificate and was quite rightly thrilled to bits. She said "It's great to think that through this scheme we are helping others to drink fresh water and doing our bit to make a difference".

Well said!

Here's a photo of Paul Finnegan, in full bee keeping gear, containing the bees outside World Museum Liverpool the other day. The full story is here.

Paul contains the bees

"I was completely blown away.

Entering the two small rooms which housed the display, I counted 25 of his photographs. A small display perhaps, but each and every one of them was absolutely beautiful.

The way in which Parkinson used the landscape to bring out the beauty of the subject is astonishing. But Parkinson doesn’t restrict himself to conventionally beautiful landscapes; the Grand Canyon or a Scottish mansion provide as dramatic a backdrop as the New York skyline or a rainswept Parisian street."

Read the SewStylish review in full here.

Norman Parkinson: Portraits in Fashion continues at the Lady Lever Art Gallery until 24 September 2006.

The New York clipper moored by the Maritime Museum before the start of the race in September 2005

The latest news from the Clipper 2005-2006 round the world yacht race is that the New York Clipper crossed the line to win the New York to Jersey leg of the race this morning. This will boost their position on the leaderboard, and could cost the Liverpool Clipper their podium position of 3rd place overall.

After racing 3070 nautical miles across the Atlantic the crews will have a few well-deserved days off in the Channel Islands this weekend. Liverpool then have a chance to catch up in the final stage of the race, which sets off from Jersey on Tuesday 25th July and arrives back in the Albert Dock on Saturday 29th July.

In the ten year history of the race only one clipper has ever won a race into their home port, a phenomenom known as the home port curse. Lets hope that Liverpool beat the curse and return home triumphant.

Win or lose, after an incredible 10 months of racing almost 35,000 nautical miles around the globe, I expect all the crews will be celebrating their achievement in completing the race. There will be lots of events to welcome them back to terra firma, including a packed weekend of activities at the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

Just when I'd said this was a slow news week this story appears. We have a resident colony of honey bees on the roof of World Museum Liverpool which seem to have fancied a change of scenery. I'll leave Paul Finnegan, the Bug House Team leader at World Museum Liverpool, to explain:

"A member of staff reported a large swarm of bees in a cherry tree just outside the Museum entrance. I went down to inspect it and there was a swarm containing around 12,000 bees. Honey bees swarm in July and it’s the bees way of reproducing. The original queen produces a new or several new queens to take over the hive. The original queen then leaves the hive followed by half of the worker bees. When the queen settles all the workers which followed her cluster around her and rest in a nearby tree or other upright object such as a lamp post and then after a couple of days find a suitable nest site to begin a new colony (usually a few miles away).

Because the bees which swarmed are ours, we are responsible for them and have to gather the swarm into a container to protect the public. After putting my bee-keeping suit on and getting a ladder and a cardboard box I climbed up the ladder and attempted to knock the swarm into the cardboard box. This was awkward as there were too many branches in the way and I couldn’t seem to get the queen. By this time a crowd had gathered, fascinated by such a sight. I then fetched a saw and sawed off the branch that the bees had gathered onto. I then climbed down the tree, clutching the bee covered branch and placed it into a box. All of the remaining bees attracted to the queen in the box then followed her, and when most of the bees were in I closed the lid. Job done - swarm collected and the public safe. I then contacted a local bee keeper who then met me and took the bees off our hands (the bees we keep are Hawaiian Honey Bees as all of the English Honey Bees are now extinct due to a nasty disease which is spread by the Asian Varroa mite)."

More information on the bug house, including how to attract bees to your garden (although maybe not 12,000), can be found on the main site.

Walker Art Gallery Education Officer Peter Betts's picture of the month talk on 'Baalbec - Ruins of the Temple of Bacchus' is now available to download from our website (mp3/transcript/links).

The talk highlights the remarkable life story of the artist David Roberts, who began his career as a scene painter for a travelling circus and by the age of 55 was commissioned by Queen Victoria to paint the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Peter's talk also covers a short history of the Walker's picture of the month series, lithographs, the birth of the daguerreotype, an architectural appreciation of the world heritage site of Baalbek and a film enthusiast's appreciation of Julia Roberts's teeth.

The telescope being carefully removed from the gallery.

It's been a bit of a slow week news-wise in the web office, so I'm reduced to posting an interesting photo that was taken some weeks ago now. It's a rather large telescope being permanently removed from what was then the Conservation Centre (now the National Conservation Centre). The telescope is a replica of one used by William Lassell, a Liverpool astronomer. The original was the first telescope mounted equatorially to allow tracking of the stars over long periods. Lassell is famous for having discovered several planetary satellites including Triton, moon of Neptune (1846) and Ariel and Umbriel, satellites of Uranus (1851).

Actually, while the night skies are so clear it might be a good time to get out there and see what you can see. Our Nightwatch section will help you identify what you spot.