National Museums Liverpool Blog - Friday, October 13, 2006

Delegates deep in discussion at the Stealing History debate

Yesterday the Merseyside Maritime Museum hosted one of the key events of this year's Black History Month, a free public debate on the repatriation of African objects entitled Stealing History. The international panel of guest speakers included Dr Claude Ardioun, head of the African section at the British Museum and former director of National Museums Mali; Professor Barbara Bush, senior lecturer in history at Hallam University, Sheffield; Dr Boris Wastiau, curator of ethnography at the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium; Dr Zachary Kingdon, curator of African collections at National Museums Liverpool and Dr Ray Costello, historian of the Black British community.

Afterwards delegates commented that the packed day of discussion and workshops raised issues about the complex subject of repatriation that they had never even considered before, and that it had helped them to feel involved in the museums' decision making process.

If you missed the debate you could still make it to the talks, workshops, performances and study days planned at the Maritime Museum and World Museum Liverpool until the end of the month. Have a look at the National Museums Liverpool Black History Month page for details of events at our venues, or see the official Black History Month website for events across the country.

Lots of you have been looking at the Steven Gerrard video and some of you have been linking to it as well. We've noticed that a lot of people are just linking to the blog, rather than to that particular post which will drop off the main page shortly making it harder to find. So, here is the video again, in all its formats, or you can read the original post in full here.

• Windows Media (11.3mb)
• MPEG1 (12.4mb)
• Xvid (12.3mb)

Downloadable version

•  MPEG1 (3 mins 59 secs, 19.8mb) 
  
•  You can also read the transcript here.

If you want to link to the original post you are best using this URL:
http://blog.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/gerrard

Health and safety officer Colin Parr and Chris Moseley, head of ship models conservation, are pictured overseeing the move of the Titanic model this morning.

The model is shown carefully packaged, padded and protected from the elements (and icebergs) in the large crate that is being lifted by the crane behind them.

Moving it was quite a major operation, which involved wheeling the crated model from its old home in the former Floating Palaces gallery, out of a third floor window onto the specially constructed scaffolding. The crane then lifted it safely down.

The model will go back on display in the Merseyside Maritime Museum early next year, in a new gallery on the first floor about the Titanic, Lusitania and Empress of Ireland disasters.

Pauline shows visitors some 1930s French knickers

Corsets and crinolines from the costume collection

This afternoon Pauline Rushton, curator of costume and textiles, gave visitors a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes with a talk on 'Grandma's underwear'.

During the talk, which looked at how women's underwear has changed over the years, Pauline showed examples of corsets, crinolines, drawers and knickers from the costume collection dating from 1770 up to the late 20th century.

It was quite an eye opener to see just how many complicated items of clothing a well dressed lady would have had to put on in the 18th and 19th centuries. However when we went out into the cold afterwards a few of us did envy how warm they would have been underneath all those layers.

Pauline is hoping to give another in-focus talk about the costume collection early next year, so keep an eye on the What's on pages for further details.

Artist Nicholas Middleton came into the Walker last week to give a talk on his painting 'Scene from a Contemporary Novel'. The painting is one of the entries in the John Moores 24 exhibition of contemporary painting, running at the Walker until 26 November 2006.

The photorealistic painting is a biennial highlight on feeling listless, whilst code and effect has a report on the talk itself.

In his talk Nicholas discussed inspirations such as Patrick Keiller's 'The City of the Future' exhibition at FACT and Jeff Wall, the photography and digital techniques used in creating the painting and the location near Brick Lane.

[mp3/transcript/links]

Lion head casts in the sculpture conservation studio

While sculpture conservation are best known for their work repairing large monuments, they also do a lot of smaller scale, more delicate work. On a recent visit I saw this batch of cast lion heads in the studio. The casts have been made as part of a scheme to restore some of Liverpool's historic drinking fountains, funded by United Utilities and the Liverpool Culture Company.

Children hold an original lion head spout from a fountain, with a new jaw made by conservation technologies

Conservation technologies have replicated the lion head spouts from the fountains, which was quite a challenge as only the only remaining original head had a broken jaw. A new jaw was modelled, based on old photos of the fountains, then the casts were taken from this.

The original head is shown on the right, held by children from local primary schools at the launch of the project in July. An education programme has involved Liverpool children in a range of projects about the fountains, with some even composing their own 'water music'.

The new casts should be appearing on fountains near you (if you live in the Liverpool area) soon. The Woolton Road Melly fountain is the first of four that are being considered for renovation.  The others are located at East Prescot Road, West Derby Road, and Chapel Street.

Terry Chapman of United Utilities said: "When these fountains were first introduced in the 1850s it was a tremendous breakthrough in public health - and these are beautiful civic monuments in their own right which deserve to be restored."

The project has been supported by the Libraries and Regeneration Departments of Liverpool City Council, National Museums Liverpool, The National Trust and Friends of Liverpool Monuments.

Well, OK, it is just the model of the Titanic (and if you really want to split hairs it's actually the model of the Olympic/Titanic, but that's a whole other story that you can read on the Maritime Museum collection pages).

I'll start again. Justin Garside Taylor, head of industrial and land transport conservation, is shown gently easing the Titanic model up on trolleys, ready to be moved out of the former Floating Palaces gallery and into a brand new display, due to open early in 2007.

Moving such a large and important model is quite an operation. The preparations have involved staff from several different departments, including shipkeeping, the handling team, conservation and maritime history. Once everything is ready the model will actually be moved later this week, depending on the weather.

On the lookout for icebergs are models conservator Dave Parsons (dusting the deck) with curator Alan Scarth, Justin Garside Taylor and head of ship models conservation Chris Moseley

Our new exhibition, LoveSport, opens at World Museum Liverpool, tomorrow. The free exhibition runs from 7 October 2006 - 29 April 2007.

Pictured here from this morning's press call is St Bernard, the mascot of the St Helen's rugby league team.

Big Draw is the national drawing campaign that runs throughout October annually. Our first event for is at World Museum Liverpool tomorrow, 7 October, an art workshop with artist Karl Eversley. Further events take place next weekend at World Museum Liverpool, the Walker Art Gallery, Lady Lever Art Gallery, National Conservation Centre and Merseyside Maritime Museum.

• Big Draw events at National Museums Liverpool
• Big Draw events nationally