National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, December 04, 2006

The display includes work by André Courrèges, Jean Muir, Bill Gibb, Yves St Laurent, Vivienne Westwood (Buffalo Girls and Anglomania), Tommy Hilfiger, Stella McCartney, Juicy Couture, Hardy Blechman.

Sam's already blogged about the arrival of the mannequins, a visit from Ian Silverberg and a hole in  the Vivienne Westwood dress; there's also a flickr set showing the mannequins in the textile conservation studio.

Today there's only 3 weeks left until Christmas day. If you are still trying to think of present ideas then why not go along to the Christmas shopping evening this Wednesday at the Lady Lever Art Gallery from 5.30-8.30pm. With original artworks for sale in the 'Objects of Desire' exhibition plus the gallery's usual enticing range of goodies in the shop, there's something to suit all tastes and price ranges.

If you can't make it there, you can always send the shopaholic in your life the Christmas e-card pictured above, which is one from a range of vintage Christmas and New Year e-card designs now available on our website.

You might have to wait another 25 days for Father Christmas to deliver your presents, but we just couldn't wait a minute longer to spoil you rotten with some festive treats. Now that it's December we have officially launched this year's selection of Christmas e-cards, featuring designs from vintage cards in our Decorative Art collection.

If you prefer to send cards through the traditional postal system, there's still time to order some from National Museums Liverpool. This year's selection includes a sneak preview of a design from the exhibition Doves and Dreams that opens at the Walker next year. Who knows, your card might even be delivered by a robin.

Airside, whose installation Insyde continues at the Walker Art Gallery, have opened a Christmas shop in Covent Garden.

Lots of progress being made on the Ben Johnson commission

More photos of the progress being made on our Ben Johnson commission (details here if you've forgotten what it is exactly). This pic shows part of the south east facing view (I think). If you know Liverpool you will probably recognise the edge of the Catholic cathedral on the right hand edge, the red brick clock tower at the University of Liverpool and other uni buildings, the Littlewoods building on Edge Lane and Brownlow Hill running up the centre of the picture.

There are more photos on our Flickr site including an updated version of the section Ben was working on in the last post on this project.

See this painting at the Stubbs exhibition at Tate Britain

They say that wherever you go in the world you'll meet a scouser. I'm not sure if paintings and other items from scouse collections count, but I certainly encountered a lot when I was down in London at the weekend. It was starting to feel like a home away from home.

I saw a familiar pair of cheeks at the Hockney exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, which features Peter getting out of Nick's pool from the Walker. If you go then have a look at the painting from the gallery opposite, as it's beautifully framed by the arched doorways - a really nice touch I thought. Next door the National Gallery are featuring another Walker painting, The Murder, in their Cézanne in Britain exhibition.

There are no less than 9 (count them!) works from the Walker and Lady Lever Art Gallery in George Stubbs: A celebration at Tate Britain, an exhibition that you may have seen at the Walker earlier this year. Another popular painting, the Walker's Henry VIII, is also there in the Holbein in England exhibition.

In the Imperial War Museum you can read the story of canine hero Jet and see a painting of him from our collections in the exhibition The Animals' War. The beautiful sculpture Danaid that visitors to Sudley House will remember is currently on show in the Royal Academy's Rodin exhibition. 

It's not just works of art that have made it down to London either. The exhibition The Great White Bear at the Horniman Museum includes photographs of every taxidermied polar bear in UK collections, which were taken by artists Bryndís Snaebjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson as part of the project nanoq: flat out and bluesome. Our polar bear is featured, although its circumstances have changed since the artists photographed it in storage a couple of years ago. Since then it has been conserved at the National Conservation Centre and is now back out on display again at World Museum Liverpool.

The good news is that there's still lots to see in our galleries in Liverpool - well we are the capital of culture for 2008 after all! With such an embarrassment of riches up here it's only fair that we share them with the Londoners when we can.

Liverpool Biennial finishes this Sunday, 26 November 2006, which might explain why the Walker Art Gallery was so busy when I was in this lunchtime.

This weekend is your last chance to see John Moores 24 and the Walker's Cape Farewell exhibits (not forgetting an offline opportunity to see Digital Show).

'Red Reflection', Graham Crowley, John Moores 24

A couple of our Biennial exhibitions have been extended though, Insyde is at the Walker until 25 February 2007 and Cape Farewell is at the Conservation Centre until 28 January 2007.

After looking at Sam's photos of the Lutyens model on our flickr account I came across this photograph recently posted by Andrew Cullen. It shows Antony Gormley's 'Another Place' sculpture on a beach in Belgium shortly before it was moved to its current home in Crosby.

Andrew had made the trip specifically to see the sculpture but arrived too late (the website had the wrong information, would never happen here of course...). Fortunately Andrew was able to see and photograph the sculpture recently in Crosby.

There are thousands of photographs of 'Another Place' on Flickr and you can see a great slideshow of the most 'interesting' photos of Gormley's sculpture.

It will be all go on Liverpool's waterfront over the next few years with lots of exciting new developments planned, including a new canal and of course the fantastic new Museum of Liverpool.

All these changes can be a bit hard to get your head round, so Liverpool Vision have put some very useful information, images and audio visual presentations together in a small display that is now open at the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

Highlights include a flythrough video display of the Museum of Liverpool and a model of the new proposals around the Mann Island area of the waterfront. While you are there you can get a panoramic view of the site of the new developments from the window of the museum.

You can see the display on the 2nd floor of the Maritime Museum until 21 December 2006.

Chris Moseley, the head of ship and historic models conservation, is shown relaxing after what must have been quite a nerve racking day. Chris and his colleagues have been conserving the model of Lutyen's unbuilt design for Liverpool's Catholic Cathedral for more than a decade. Today the finished pieces of the model were assembled for the first time, to make sure that everything fitted together. Luckily they did!

There isn't enough room to fully assemble the huge model in the sculpture conservation studio, so it had to be put it together in the nearby paintings conservation studio. The model is being photographed there this week, then it will be taken apart again and transported to the Walker Art Gallery, ready to go on display in the exhibition The cathedral that never was in January 2007.

Update 22 November 2006: you can now see a slideshow of photos of the model being assembled on flickr.

You can find out more about the exhibition in our advance news release or read how you might be able to help out with an exhibit.