National Museums Liverpool Blog - Thursday, August 31, 2006

World Museum Liverpool's Treasure House Theatre has hosted a variety of shows for young visitors since it opened last year. Now our youth arts officer Michelle O'Callaghan is turning the tables and giving the audience the chance to create their own productions as part of National Museums Liverpool's new Youth Arts Programme.

The programme will include two Youth Theatre groups, for 11-15 and 16-21 year olds, starting in October. Taster sessions are being held over the next week for people who might be interested, have a look at the What's On page for details.

I called into the first taster session yesterday morning, in time to see the participants create some very interesting characters for a short play, with help from some wigs from the prop box.

Watch this space for news of future productions.

You might have seen on our main site that we have recently been awarded £300,000 towards the refurbishment of the Egyptian gallery at World Museum Liverpool. This is fab news as the gallery is a real favourite despite being 30 years old - it was the one I always looked forward to when I was a kid (the mummies were the best, obviously).

Anyhoo, as the old gallery is dismantled and the new one installed we'll fill you in on our progress and all the new (old) stuff that will be on show. This installment looks at the incredibly rare and fragile papyri, (paper made from the papyrus plant) that are going on display. 

A small part of the Mayer A papyrus

The papyri in the collection are some of the most significant late New Kingdom documents in existence (c.1100 BC). They belong to a series of manuscripts that record the capture and inquisition of ordinary Egyptians accused of stealing from royal tombs and sacred places in Thebes. They bring to life the lives and conditions of the poorer members of the population during this dramatic period.

The court proceedings tell how gold, silver, copper and clothing had been stolen from tombs and other buildings. Witnesses confessed after severe beatings to their hands and feet, after which many were imprisoned or put to death.

This part of the Mayer papyrus (above) records the interrogation and beating of a weaver called Wennakht. Like many witnesses Wennakht was brought to court on account of the actions of his dead father, Taty, who was killed when he was a child. Likewise, many women who were married to thieves gave evidence. One of these women, Inneri, was beaten upon her feet and hands and confessed that her husband, Tasheris, had taken some copper. “We traded it and we spent it” she says.

The view from the Valley of the Kings, down across the Nile valley. This is where the robberies and subsequent trials took place.

For more information on the gallery contact the curator of the collection, Ashley Cooke.

Liverpool's waterfront is due to be transformed over the next few years with the construction of the new Museum of Liverpool.

In preparation a few small but significant changes have already taken place. Yesterday the Lusitania propeller and two buoys were carefully moved along the quayside to a new position, at a safe distance from the planned construction works.

The move, overseen by the Maritime Museum's Shipkeeping, Industrial and Land Transport team, went very smoothly. Ian Murphy, curator of port history, was there to capture the move in these photos. 

'Slump/Fear (orange/black)', Alexis Harding, winner of the previous John Moores prize

We can now release the list of exhibitors in the John Moores 24 exhibition of contemporary painting. The exhibition runs at the Walker Art Gallery from 16 September to 26 November 2006 and the prizewinners, including the £25000 outright prize, will be announced on 14 September.

The exhibitors are Henny Acloque, Guy Allott, Carolina Ambida, Lucy Annat, Emma Bennett, Elaine Brown, Alan Brooks, Matthew Burrows, Gordon Cheung, Leigh Clarke, Graham Crowley, Matt Davies, Geraint Evans, Cynthia Girard, Martin Greenland, Andrew Griffiths, Andy Harper, David Harrison, Vincent Hawkins, Claude Heath, Günther Herbst, Gerard Hemsworth, Dale Holmes, Philip Jones, Neil Kelly, David Leapman, David Mabb, Jeff McMillan, David G. Martin, Eliza Meath Baker, Andrea Medjesi–Jones, Nicholas Middleton, Richard Moon, Jost Münster, Penny Neville-Lee, Alicia Paz, Sachiko Odashima, Hugo Platt, Daphne Plessner, Alex Ramsay, Andreas Rüthi, Gary ‘Dollman’ Sollars, Ben Spiers, Arabella Stewart, Michael Stubbs, Paul Thomas, Covadonga Valdés, Julian Wakelin, Caroline Walker, James White, Emily Wolfe and Clare Woods.

This weekend is your last chance to visit the 'eye for Colour' exhibition at World Museum Liverpool, ending Sunday 3 September 2006.

It's the last day of August and the holiday season is officially over. But don't get all gloomy - there's lots you can do the brighten the looming autumnal months.

The Guardian have put together a handy Top 50 of the best things to do during the season, hightlighting the John Moores 24 exhibition under  Liverpool Biennial. It reads:

"Tate Liverpool and other venues in the city combine to offer a variety of contemporary art from around the world. The Albert Dock is not the Arsenale but the heat won't be as killing as at the Venice Biennale. The John Moores painting prize at the Walker Art Gallery and new contemporaries add to the fun."

John Moores 24 exhibition of contemporary painting opens on 16 September. You can also see Insyde and Cape Farewell as part of Liverpool Biennial.

• The Guardian's 50 must-sees for this Autumn

Next week World Museum Liverpool hosts the European Union Individual Chess Championships. The event starts Wednesday 6 September and runs until Friday 15, during which 70 players will take part in a ten round Swiss competition. British all-time number two, Nigel Short will be taking part and is a tournament favourite, competing for a total prize fund of £15,000.

Play is from 12.30 - 7pm in the Lower Horseshoe Gallery, with spectators welcome. Visitors are asked to maintain silence throughout.

More details can be found on the tournament website, where you can also view live matches. Further details about the background and future of the event can be found on the icLiverpool site.

This is the clearest view yet of the distant planet Pluto and its moon, Charon, as revealed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The image was taken by the European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera on February 21, 1994 when the planet was 4.4 billion km from Earth.

John Moran, Planetarium operator at World Museum Liverpool, sent this summary of the recent controversy surrounding Pluto:

'In August 2006, the International Astronomical Union held a meeting in Prague. The purpose of this meeting was to decide the fate of the ninth planet in our solar system, Pluto.
 
In light of recent discoveries in the Kuiper belt; a huge expanse of space bodies beyond Pluto, it has been decided to de-classify Pluto to the status of "Dwarf planet", therefore eliminating it from our nine planet system.
 
The definition of a planet is that it must move around the Sun in a continuous non interrupted orbit. It must have enough mass for its gravity to squash it into a spherical shape. And the plain of its orbit must lay in an almost straight line, similar to the other planets. The problem with Pluto, is that its orbit crosses that of Neptune and its plain is much steeper, so therefore very different to the other planets.
 
It has long been known that Pluto was probably a Kuiper belt object. But with the recent discoveries of Sedna and Zena, scientists were left with a dilemma. Do we keep adding more and more KBO's to the overall number of planets in our solar system? Or do we take the unprecedented step of demoting Pluto? They decided on the latter.
 
This may be a controversial step, and one that will upset many people. But as one scientist put it, "we must look at the solar system as it is, not as we would like it to be".'

September's monthly updates are available on the National Museums Liverpool site now. Lady Lever Art Gallery artwork of the month will be 'The Piggery' by George Morland, free gallery talks by Frank Milner on 6 and 26 September 2006, 1pm.

'The Piggery', by George Morland

The Walker Art Gallery's object of the month will be Rembrandt van Rijn's 'Self-Portrait as a Young Man', with free gallery talks by Curator of Continental European Art Xanthe Brooke on 7 and 26 September 2006, 1pm.

September's Nightwatch feature is also available, with tips on viewing our neighbouring galaxy Andromeda, M31, both through the naked eye and with binoculars.

Margaretr spotted this image on Flickr, a recent photograph by Eifion of the view of Snowdon from Llyn Nantlle. Richard Wilson's 18th century painting 'Snowdon from Llyn Nantlle' from the Walker Art Gallery's collection is shown below.

The popular exhibition George Stubbs: A Celebration, which was first seen at the Walker earlier this year, has now opened at the next stop in its tour, Tate Britain in London. Well worth a look if you're down in the capital over the weekend.

A few hundred miles north, the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow is currently hosting Doves and Dreams, featuring the work of Frances MacDonald McNair and J Herbert McNair, half of the 'Glasgow Four' which also included Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh. This exhibition will follow in the McNairs' footsteps and travel from Glasgow to Liverpool next year, opening at the Walker in January.

Beatles Russian nesting dolls in Sgt Pepper outfits

This weekend thousands of Beatles fans will make a pilgrimage to Liverpool for the International Beatles Week and Mathew Street Festival. Some may find their way to the Walker Art Gallery to see Stuart Sutcliffe's Hamburg Painting No 2.  

You might not know this but there are lots of other Beatles related objects in National Museums Liverpool's collections, which are not currently on display at any of our venues. So for the first time the highlights, including items from the collections of the Customs and Excise Museum and the Museum of Liverpool, have been brought together for an online Beatles exhibition.

To get yourself in the mood for the 'Fab Four' festivities this weekend you can also try our Beatles Games and find out which Beatle you are. In case you were wondering, I'm George.

Today I called into World Museum Liverpool to say goodbye to Dr Clem Fisher, curator of birds and mammals, before she travels to Australia as a key speaker in an international seminar to study the life and success of German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. 

The Ludwig Leichhardt Rally commemorates and recreates Leichhardt’s pioneering expedition of 1844-45 from south-east Queensland to the north Australian coast – one of the most ambitious and dangerous exploratory trips ever undertaken in early Australia. For authenticity the delegates will sleep rough as they follow a trail of campsite locations recorded by Leichhardt as he led his eight men, 17 horses, 16 bullocks and a pack of dogs across the uncharted outback territory.

Clem is attending as the leading expert on John Gilbert, Leichhardt’s second-in-command, who was tragically speared to death by Aborigines in 1845 near the end of the journey. Gilbert, a noted naturalist from London, was on the expedition to study and collect Australian birds for his employer, the ornithologist and entrepreneur John Gould. Between them Gould and Gilbert were responsible for discovering a huge proportion of Australia’s birds and mammals. Gilbert is estimated to have collected the ‘type’ specimens (those which act as standards for the species) of at least 8% of all recent Australian birds and mammals.

Many of Gilbert’s specimens from the Leichhardt Expedition were acquired by the 13th Earl of Derby, who was a great naturalist and a close friend of John Gould. His collections formed the foundation of World Museum Liverpool when they were bequeathed in 1851.  

Clem has been researching the life of John Gilbert for almost 30 years and has travelled all over the world in pursuit of Gilbert and Gould’s type specimens in other museum collections. I hope that this expedition has a happier ending than Gilbert's and she returns safely to Liverpool afterwards.

If you are down at the Pier Head for the Mathew Street Festival this weekend, why not pop over to the dockside and visit the largest object in National Museums Liverpool's collections - the Edmund Gardner pilot cutter.

The ship is normally open to the public every summer. However, after it closes on 31 August 2006 some major construction works are due to start in the dockside area. The area will not be open again to the public until the work has finished, which is expected to take a few years. So this is your last chance to step onboard this piece of Liverpool history for quite some time. Don't miss the boat!

It was such a lovely evening that I couldn't resist snapping the sun setting over the Mersey as I left the Hello Sailor opening event at the Maritime Museum yesterday...

Sun setting over the Mersey, looking from the Albert Dock towards the Wirral

Then on my way to the ferry this morning I caught the sun rising over the city and as I had the camera with me still...

Sun rising over the Liverpool waterfront, as seen from the Wirral

And just to make everyone who was stuck in traffic this morning thoroughly jealous, here's a photo of my hectic morning commute into work (you can just see a little Mersey Ferry on its way across the river on the right!)

The Hello Sailor! exhibition was officially opened in style yesterday evening. Guests enjoyed the first performance of 'Nothing's queer once you have left that pier'. This solo show stars Dennis, a dining room steward by day, and flamboyant star of the crew's musical shows by night, who gives an entertaining account of life on a cruise liner in the 1960s.

Roleplayer Jay, who plays Dennis, was moved when a former seafarer told him that his performance perfectly captured the shows he remembered from the ships he worked on during the 1960s. He is pictured with Jo Stanley, co-curator of the exhibition and joint author of the book that inspired it. 

Visitors can see Jay's shows repeated on Saturday and Sunday, plus a Shirley Bassey tribute act on Monday afternoon, as part of a weekend of fabulous opening events. See the What's On pages for further details.

Today I encountered two very different sniffer dogs at the Customs and Excise Museum.

Two of our roleplayers, dressed as the larger-than-life characters Smugglebuster the customs officer and Sniffer the dog, were greeting visitors to the museum.

Outside I met the real deal - customs officer Claire Dewhirst with her sniffer dog, who were at the museum today doing demonstrations for the public.

If you missed today's demonstrations then you have another chance to see a real sniffer dog at the museum next Thursday.

Smugglebuster and Sniffer will also be back at the museum soon. For full details of all the events and activities taking place over the next few weeks have a look at the What's On listings.

This morning the press got to preview the exhibition Hello Sailor! Gay life on the ocean wave, which opens to the public tomorrow. Dr Jo Stanley, co-author of the book Hello Sailor! that inspired the exhibition, and some of the seafarers that she interviewed during her research, also got to see the finished exhibition for the first time, and were thrilled with how it looked.

Jo is pictured above inspecting some rather bling glittery shoes in the recreated steward's cabin with Robert (on the left), whose reminiscences feature in the exhibition and Jay (in the middle), one of the museum's roleplayers. Jay is wearing a ship's steward uniform, but will be transformed into a glamorous performer for the exhibition opening this evening.

Learning officer Karen Charnock gave me a sneak preview of the silver dress that he will be wearing to perform a cabaret show, like the crew shows that gay seafarers used to perform during their time off on ships.

This morning I got to see the catchily named Canning River Entrance Swing Bridge in action, swinging aside to let a boat pass from the Mersey into the Canning Half Tide Dock (which is the one outside the front door of the Maritime Museum). Here it is:

The footbridge rotates to the left to let boats into the dock

Crowds and a pigeon watch the boat sail into the dock

Yesterday was Slavery Remembrance Day. A series of events culminated in a ritual libation on the banks of the river Mersey. These images give you an idea of what happened on the day.

You can listen to an interview with Tony Tibbles, keeper of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, on the Vatican Radio website. He talks about the background to the day and the museum's involvement in the celebrations.

There's more on the Slavery Remembrance pages on our main site.

Update (11.10.06) Bev Mitchell, community coordinator at the Mersey Basin Campaign, attended the event and blogged it here.

Chief Angus Chukuemeka leads the libation ceremony with other community leaders. He called on ancestors to bless the event and then paid homage to the ancestors.

The libation was held on the banks of the Mersey in front of a large crowd.

The River Niger Orchestra enter the marquee for an afternoon of celebration.

The orchestra was one of several performances in a day of acting, poetry, music and crafts.

Keeper of Art Galleries at National Museums Liverpool, Julian Treuherz, gave a lecture at the Lady Lever Art Gallery this afternoon on 'Bubbles', by Sir John Everett Millais.

The lecture is now available as an audio download from our site (mp3/transcript/links).

The 30 minute talk covers the long term loan of 'Bubbles' to the Lady Lever from Unilever, memento mori, fancy portraits, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Maurits house at The Hague, competition between Pears Soap and Sunlight Soap, the Graphic magazine and the theme of death in Millais's paintings. 

Fossil horsetail fragments found in the siltstones. These are the most abundant plant fossils.

If you think that garden restoration projects are daunting, spare a thought for the geologists who are attempting to reinterpret a lost world. Imagine trying to recreate your garden from the contents of your compost bin after it hasn't been emptied for years. That's the nature of the task geologists face when trying to picture a long vanished world.

Staff from the Earth Sciences section at World Museum Liverpool are currently involved in long term field work investigating the Triassic flora of Merseyside. The aim is to find out what type of plants grew locally 242 million years ago so that we can get a better picture of that past environment.

Exposure of Triassic siltstones containing plant remains

The region is famous for the fossilised footprints of the dinosaurs' ancestors (you can see some at the museum). However, we can also learn about the environment from the fragmentary remains of plants - we currently known very little about their distribution or diversity.  We aim to learn as much as we can about the Triassic plant communities and the role they played in supporting the population of plant eating reptiles (Rhynchosaurs) and meat eaters (Chirotherium).

Over the coming months staff from the team will be reporting back on what they find and we'll post the results here. In the meantime if you want to find out more contact either Alan Bowden or Wendy Simkiss.

At the Maritime Museum a new exhibition, Hello Sailor! Gay life on the ocean wave, is currently being installed, ready to open on Friday. The exhibition includes a recreation of a sailor's cabin from the 1960s-70s, complete with evocative props from the era such as the pineapple ice bucket that curator Charlotte Stead is holding in this photo. My grandparents had one of them - but then I suppose everybody's grandparents did at the time! Who would have thought that one would end up in a museum display?

The exhibition is looking 'fantabulosa' so far (as gay sailors would say in polari) so I can't wait to see the finished thing on Friday.

'Minerva', Auguste Rodin

Our temporary display of six Rodin sculptures from the Walker Art Gallery's permanent collection ends on Bank Holiday Monday, 28 August 2006.

The six bronze sculptures - 'Danaid', 'Death of Athens', 'Eve', 'Fleeting Love', 'Minerva', 'Sister and Brother' - were all bequeathed to the Walker in the 1920s by Liverpool wine merchant James Smith.

A recording of Curator of Continental Art Xanthe Brooke's May artwork of the month talk on 'Danaid' is also available online (mp3 file/transcript/links).

This week's ingredients list for the livestock in the Bug House in World Museum Liverpool:

Dung beetles feeding on dung

• 1 huge bucket full of Bramble
• 7 pots of fresh food plant
• 7 bags full of fresh grass
• 5 bags full of petals
• 5 dishes full of donkey dung
• 10 handfuls of fish flake
• 1/2 handful of honey nut loops
• 1/2 handful of rabbit pellets
• 1 handful of bran
• 2 handfuls of special Bug House recipe insect mix
• 3 handfuls of special Bug House recipe hermit crab food
• 1/2 cup of ambrosia bee food
• 6 oranges
• 6 apples
• 6 bananas
• 1 lettuce
• 2 boxes of crickets
• 1 box of flies
• 1/2 box of mealworms