National Museums Liverpool Blog - Thursday, July 19, 2007

The installation of the new access ramp at the Lady Lever Art Gallery is continuing this week with the fitting of the new glass balustrade. Did a previous post on the ramp itself if you are interested.

The first piece of glass is lowered into position

Preparation work for Magical History Tour Exhibition, which opens 28 July at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, is well underway.

Illustrator and artist Olivia Du Monceau can be seen here hard at work on a recreated Medieval market scene. The weekly market was held in Castle Street, Liverpool.

She has even managed to feature a few familiar faces in the scenes - see if you can spot them when the exhibition opens!

Paul O'Keefe in full flow

If you've not yet been to the rather splendid exhibition, Out of this World: the Art of Josh Kirby, you might want to download a gallery tour by Paul O'Keefe to take on your visit. The tour starts in the smaller entrance gallery and then moves into the main hall.

If downloading isn't your thing, or you're not going to get to the exhibition, you might just want to read the transcript or listen to the talk from the comfort of your own PC.

Just 36 more sleeps until the opening of the International Slavery Museum (cue hysteria from the project team). Joking aside, the fit-out, ie installing the actual exhibits, is well underway and I've put a few progress snaps on our Flickr page. This pic shows the Igbo compound in the west gallery.  I'll put more up as the museum develops over the next few weeks.

Igbo compound

I saw him standing there

Having recently bumped into Philip Olivier and Bombhead from Hollyoaks I’ve known for a while that William Brown Street’s cobbled knoll is a haven for Liverpool celebrities, but even I was surprised to see the Walker Art Gallery playing host to some true A-listers.

To mark Liverpool’s birthday celebrations, St Margarets C of E High School have been working with local primary schools to create Scarecelebs, a display of sculptures representing Liverpool legends. King John is currently keeping a watchful eye on John Lennon, Robbie Fowler and Levi Tavari, while Cilla Black’s contending with Ken Dodd and his tickle stick. 

James Baines statue

The idea of millions of people setting off to new lives is slightly unnerving to me, Stephen Guy, perhaps because my family has stayed put in Liverpool for 300 years.

An astonishing nine million people emigrated through Liverpool between 1830 and 1930, usually to start new lives in the USA, Canada and Australia. For most of this time Liverpool was the greatest mass emigration port in the world. Huge numbers came from Britain and Ireland but they also travelled from as far away as Scandinavia and Russia.

Until the early 1860s, most crossed the Atlantic on sailing ships. On the Australia run, sail continued to be more important than steam until the late 1870s.

Initially, emigrants were of secondary importance to cargo on sailing ships but by 1850 the majority were carried in American-owned sailing packets. The passage to the USA or Canada took about 55 days and the voyage to Australia usually lasted between 10 and 16 weeks. Most emigrants arrived safely but sometimes there were outbreaks of typhus and cholera in the overcrowded conditions.

At the Merseyside Maritime Museum visitors experience what it was like to be emigrants heading for new lives in the 1850s. They walk along a re-created Liverpool quayside with a noisy lodging house and warehouses. They board the emigrant ship and see how the vast majority of passengers travelled in steerage class. Trunks were piled up and a table was available for simple meals, with the constant roaring of the sea day and night.

Exhibits in the museum's Emigrants gallery include a model of the Black Ball Line clipper Marco Polo, one of the most famous of the Liverpool-based ships carrying emigrants to Australia. In 1852 she made a record-breaking passage from Liverpool to Melbourne in 68 days, an amazing 50 days less than the average. However, the achievement was marred by a measles epidemic which claimed the lives of 55 of her emigrants. Legend has it that upon her return to Liverpool she passed through the Canning Half Tide Dock, now part of the Maritime Museum, flying a banner proclaiming The Fastest Ship in the World.

James Baines was the founder of the Black Ball Line and a statuette (shown here) depicting him in a green frock coat and carrying a grey top hat is among exhibits. On his death in 1889 Baines was buried in Smithdown Road Cemetery, Liverpool.

More information on Liverpool emigration and emigration to Australia on our main website.

A new Maritime Tale appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

This afternoon's roving report comes from our press officer Laura Johnson, who attended the screening of three short films by local film maker Doaa Al Soraimi at World Museum Liverpool as part of the Arabic Arts Festival. If you missed this, you can still catch dance and music workshops and performances at the museum on Sunday, at the close of the festival.

Doaa Al Soraimi discussing her films

"Doaa introduced her films, which included 'A Bite Of Life' exploring themes in the lives of children from an ethnic background and 'Veneer', a video installation that speaks metaphorically about how individuals make judgments based on appearance. 'Veneer' was driven by Doaa's own experience of wearing the Hijab.

There was an informal chat after we had seen all three films. Doaa was interested in hearing what members of the audience had made of 'Veneer' in particular. People had quite different interpretations of the messages she was conveying but all understood the general theme of looking beneath the surface. It was really interesting. Some people had specific questions about Arabic customs and Islamic traditions, which came up in the documentaries so it was quite informative too.
 
Her brother was her camera man so they are obviously a talented family!"

'Observance', our video installation by Bill Viola, is back on display in the Walker Art Gallery. It was last seen in April 2005 shortly after it was purchased with assistance from the National Art Collections Fund in 2004.

'Observance' in Room One of the Walker Art Gallery

Rather than taking its place amongst contemporary items from the collection, curators have placed the work in Room One alongside works such as Ercole de' Roberti's 'Pietà' and 'The Lamentation over the Dead Christ'. These are the sort of works that inspired by Viola to make his series 'The Passions'.

I've just been shown this really cool feature about The Rediscovery of John Hayls' A Portrait of a Lady and a Boy with Pan 1655-9 on the Tate Conservation website. It's written by Helen Brett, one of our former paintings conservators who was based at the Walker Art Gallery at the same time I was. It's great to see that her talents are being put to good use down in the capital!

I have to confess, when I saw the title I was expecting to see a painting of two people with a kitchen utensil, not a Greek god. That's what comes of watching too much Gordon Ramsay I guess.

The painting itself has a fascinating history, which Helen gradually uncovered during the conservation. During the 1930s - long before the Tate acquired the painting in 1995, I should point out - a previous owner overpainted large areas, hiding two Cupids, or putti, holding a wreath in the background, as well as several other details. You can see below how the putti were revealed as the overpaint was removed.

That was just one part of the story though, as another layer of earlier overpainting was revealed underneath. It still amazes me how people treat paintings sometimes - as well as the skilfull ways that conservators combat that mistreatment. Do have a read of the full article, it's quite a tale.

Detail of the partly conserved painting. Copyright Tate, London 2007

Curator Charlotte Stead has sent me this photo of some of the important behind-the-scenes work being carried out by our volunteers. These ladies, Pat, Judy and Ann from NADFAS, have been helping out with some of the ongoing improvements in our stores.

The Maritime Museum has about 253 flags in the collection, most of which have previously been stored flat in boxes. However, it's better to store them rolled up in acid free tubes with tissue to keep the flags in as good condition as possible. As you can imagine, Charlotte wasn't looking forward to re-packing all 253 flags herself, so was extremely grateful when these ladies offered to come in once a week to help out.

Last week the volunteers were shown how to handle and pack the flags correctly by one of our conservators. As you can see, they have put this training into practice already. In the photo they are packing one of the penants from the museum's own pilot ship, the Edmund Gardner.

I think Charlotte will be putting the flags out to celebrate getting this done - but not literally, becuse then she'd just have to put them all away again.