National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, October 29, 2007

As I’m going to India at the end of the week I thought this would be a good time to write my first blog. Technology permitting I’m hoping to send in a few blogs while I’m away. As a quick introduction my name is Emma Martin and I’m Head of Ethnology and Curator of Asia collections based at World Museum. My trip is part-holiday, but also part-work as I’ll be presenting a paper on a contemporary collecting project I’m working on with colleagues in India and I’ll also be collecting new objects for the Weston Discovery Centre at World Museum.

I’m flying out to Delhi on Saturday and although the shopping and restaurants are fantastic I’ll only be there for a few days before I head off to Chandigarh. Chandigarh is a relatively new city designed by Le Corbusier the famous modernist architect. I’m not going for the modernist architecture though, but for the incredible Nek Chand garden. This fantastic garden was started by one man, Nek Chand, using reclaimed land he built, in secret, amazing structures, including waterfalls, bridges and plazas and covered them with mosaic designs populating the place with mosaic-covered people and animals. It’s hard to imagine so I’ve added a picture so you can get a better idea. The place is now so big that I’ve been told it is the second most visited tourist attraction in India after the Taj Mahal! This is where I’m giving my paper. I’m presenting with Minhazz Majumdar, the co-director of The Earth and Grass Workshop. Together we’re working on a commissioning project for NML, asking a number of well-known Indian artists to create new works for NML’s collection, it’s a really exciting project and we’re both really pleased with how it’s going so this seemed like a great opportunity for us to speak about it together. I’ll write more about the collecting project as it develops and as the new works start to arrive in Liverpool.

After the conference I’ll be heading to Orissa a beautiful state on the east coast, which is famous for its temples and crafts. While I’ll be spending time relaxing, catching up with friends and hopefully doing a bit of tiger-spotting (!), I’ll also be visiting a number of villages known for a whole variety of crafts and I hope to pick up a few things while I’m there for the Weston Discovery Centre.

So fingers crossed I’ll be posting from India next week, giving you a sneak preview of some of the new objects you’ll be able to find in the Weston Discovery Centre early next year.

Is the Walker Art Gallery your favourite place in Liverpool? Do you love its beautiful pre-raphaelite paintings for a stylish date on a Sunday afternoon? Then vote today!

We were pleased to find out that this week that our very own Walker Art Gallery has been nominated in TWO categories at the Juice FM Style Awards.

The Walker has been recognised in both the culture award and visitor award sections and we're asking for your votes!

If you think that the Walker is one of the best places to visit in Liverpool and deserves an award, then please show your support and vote for us here:

Culture Award 

and here:

Visitor Award

It is a constant source of fascination to me, Stephen Guy, how some people and things seem to pick the short straws in life. Take White Star’s Titanic and Olympic liners, for example. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong for Titanic on that terrible night but her sister Olympic just went on and on with hardly a hitch. She successfully completed 257 round trips across the Atlantic between 1911 and 1935.

Four of the leading characters in the Titanic drama are pictured here on the deck of Olympic just weeks before they transferred to Titanic. They are (l to r): Officer William Murdoch, Chief Officer Henry Wilde, Third Officer Joseph Boxhall and Captain Edward Smith. Only Boxhall survived the sinking.

Olympic’s maiden voyage was on 14 June 1911 and from then on she gave stalwart service both as a troopship in the First World War, often sailing to and from Liverpool, and as a luxury liner. However, during her long years of service Olympic did have her share of dramas.

On 20 September 1911, commanded by Captain Edward Smith later of Titanic, she collided with the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke. Olympic was carrying a capacity load and the voyage had to be cancelled.

The Titanic disaster revealed weaknesses on board Olympic, not least the shortage of lifeboats. This was rectified and the ship also refitted with a double hull in case the unthinkable happened again.

The next notable incident took place in October 1914 when Olympic neared New York during the First World War. She encountered the sinking British battleship HMS Audacious and rescued her crew. Olympic later served as a troopship carrying thousands of Canadians to the Western Front. It was during this period that she was nicknamed 'Old Reliable' because of her trustworthy service. But her most memorable achievement during the war was ramming and sinking the German submarine U103 on 12 May 1918. Olympic, with her vast bulk of 46,000 tons, has the distinction of being the only merchant ship to sink an enemy warship during the war.

In 1934 Olympic was involved in a tragic accident when she hit and sank the Nantucket lightship on the approaches to New York. Seven of the 11 lightship crew died.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum, as well as the 20ft builder’s model of Titanic, there is a single bed from cabin C-97 of the Olympic. Other items in the museum’s collections include leather-bound timetable lists the sailings of Olympic in 1912 – plus the ones Titanic would have made if disaster had not struck.

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

On Friday museum demonstrator Claire Noble told us about the first day of the 'BORED?' games workshop that she ran at Aigburth Family Centre with Alex Shears. Here's her update from the second and final day, with some exciting news about an inventor in the making (remember, you heard it here first!).

Have a look at our Flickr slideshow of photos from the 'BORED?' workshop for more pictures.

---

"We have discovered the youngest board game inventor right here in Aigburth!! Our second day at Aigburth Family Centre began with our youngest member Yorgie proudly showing off his newest board game invention ‘Car Chase’.  With diagrams and written instructions (very nicely printed by his Mum), Alex and I couldn’t help but think that our Thursday’s sessions of games galore helped him on his path to board game stardom! But now back to normality…

We started Friday’s session with a series of fun and energetic games and (much to our delight) some of the young people began to offer to teach some of their favourite games to the rest of the group! The focus of the session soon changed to the instructional DVD, to be made that afternoon. Ideas were flowing and by lunch time the kids had not only chosen their favourite game to teach on the DVD, but had made their own poster for it too! 

After lunch our film maker Mally quickly set up and the young people began to teach and play their games to the camera. A bit of camera shyness soon disappeared and Mally caught some great footage. We wanted to finish the session with a fun group game and what better way to finish a game themed workshop, but with the best party game in the world, Pass the Parcel! 

With their mouths still full with sweets, we explained that invites would be in the post for them to see their DVD on the big Treasure House Theatre screen at World Museum Liverpool on 10 November. The National Museums Liverpool Youth Theatre would also be invited to the festivities, finishing with plenty of party food, drink and perhaps a few party games in between."

I went down to World Museum Liverpool earlier this week to meet the stars of this weekend’s Irish arts day. Eleanor King and Cecilia Ferguson took us through a few of the steps they will be performing with their troupe from the Ferguson School of Irish Dance tomorrow. Taught by a former world champion their twinkle toed performance is not to be missed. Irish singing sensation Helen Roche and Knotty Ash choir will also be entertaining us with the unique sounds of the Emerald Isle with performances of traditional Irish folk songs. The events are part of the Liverpool Irish Festival, check out the rest of the events happening across the city on their website. All this talk of Ireland has made me a bit thirsty, I'm off for a pint of the black stuff ...

Hello there! The various presentations I mentioned in my last blog post about Black History Month, volunteers and lots of talks went really well (I was not jeered anyway). The audiences were all very different and that is one of the things I like about this job. At the Harris Museum in Preston I had to speak for 30 minutes, without using a PowerPoint to hide behind, to a mixed group with several members of the Preston Black community in the audience.  It is not a large community but incredibly varied with a fascinating history. Currently on show at the museum is an exhibition called Bitter Sweet: Legacies of Sugar and Slavery in the Caribbean until March 2008.

My last engagement was at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. My sister Lorraine lives there (she told me not to say older sister!) so I stayed over for the weekend. On the Saturday I was fortunate enough to see Oxford United v Woking with my brother-in-law Tom and nephew Samuel (both Arsenal fans unfortunately). It was truly a battle between giants of the lower divisions (minus goals or indeed excitement).

The rest of my time was spent discussing and planning the impending havoc of my niece Cara’s 18th birthday party. Over 200 of her friends (yes, I did say 200) will be strutting their stuff until the early hours in a few weeks. A table for the oldies has been arranged at the back of the room to save her from any embarrassment.

This week has been a really interesting one. Yesterday I had the pleasure to interview Nkosinathi Biko, son of the South African activist Steve Biko, and Chief Executive Officer of the Steve Biko Foundation. He is here along with his brother and mother for an event at the Merseyside Maritime Museum this evening.

Yesterday evening I gave a talk at a Manchester Black Health Agency event to commemorate the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade act. It was very well attended and it was a pleasure to have been invited to speak. The only downside of the evening was that my train back to Liverpool broke down just outside Newton-le-Willows. I set off at 11pm. I got back to Liverpool at 2am!

Well I will sign off for now but before I do an apology to my legion of football blog fans. Last week I said Leeds United were playing Millwall. It was in fact Brighton (we won 1-0). Tomorrow is Millwall so hopefully we can keep the unbeaten run going.

National Museum Liverpool's collections are an important source for a whole range of scientists, academics and researchers. One man who is no stranger to the zoological collections is acclaimed wildlife artist David Quinn. For over 25 years he has worked as an illustrator of a broad range of natural history publications. His incredibly detailed illustrations have featured in many books and journals dealing with bird identification issues and in academic studies concerning the biology, behaviour and ecology of birds. Not only are his illustrations and paintings extremely accurate, they are so incredibly lifelike and animated that the creatures depicted look as if they will spring to life at any minute. It's no surprise that he's a former winner of British Bird's 'Bird Illustrator of the Year' award.

David's work is the result of painstaking research, both in the field making studies of live birds and animals, and in museums including World Museum Liverpool, where he takes advantage of the fact that our mounted specimens don't move around to sketch the finer details of their plumage and markings.

You can see an exhibition of his work, 'Nature in the Frame - Portraits from our Living Landscape' in the Joseph Banks Room at Chester Zoo until 2 December 2007. The exhibition is a collaboration with the zoo and Cheshire Mammal Group and includes some pencil and ink illustrations for their forthcoming book, due out next spring. There are also some mounted specimens of some of the animals David has illustrated, including a bat and vole on loan from World Museum Liverpool.

Here's a report on some special half term activities from Claire Noble, one of our Treasure House Theatre demonstrators, who was out yesterday helping Liverpool children to escape half term boredom with games that have been played for thousands of years:

---

"At 10.30am sharp Alex Shears and myself began our first 'BORED?' session, the first  of a set of two full day workshops at Aigburth Family Centre. Based on the very fact these kids (like all kids do) get BORED over the school holidays, myself and Alex Shears decided that, what better way to keep kids from climbing the walls... but to teach them loads of games!! 

The first hour was nicely packed with drama icebreakers and story building games, all of which were devised so that they could play it themselves whenever they are BORED and need something to do. After a quick break (and happily the five attendees didn’t run out the door, but in fact stayed!) we introduced them to two ancient board games from the Weston Discovery Centre, which went down a treat. Menkala and Fox and Geese were played for a solid hour and at times the tension was unbearable! 

The afternoon session was craft based, beginning with the moulding and painting of their own scarab beetle board piece and then the making of a giant snakes and ladders board game that they can keep and play in their centre. There were a few 'eeeeees' when explaining why the Egyptians idolised the dung beetle and to show them an actual dung beetle provided to us by Jen in the Bug House was the icing on the cake. They were impressed too by the image of a 13th century Snakes and Ladders game from World Cultures Gallery too, especially as it was made by a monk for his sick mum!

Alex and I were really pleased overall with the sessions. After telling them that tomorrow's sessions will be inventing their own games and creating an instructional DVD for it, they were already thinking of ideas. Let’s see what tomorrow brings!!"

Thought this snap of the Museum of Liverpool building site was a nice contrast with Sam's sunrise photo from the other morning. So much going on and really vibrant, contrasting colours. You get a better idea of the progress made.

If you're not familiar with the site you are looking from the Maritime Museum area north west (ish) towards the Pier Head. You can see the graving docks in the foreground, and Wallasey across the river on the Wirral. There's a ferry boat at the landing stage.

We're often told that we should open our minds to new experiences in galleries and try to approach art from a new angle. Visitors can now do this literally at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, where the old south entrance has closed and been replaced by a new fully accessible entrance at the west. Director David Fleming and head of the gallery Sandra Penketh are shown welcoming some of the first visitors to use the new entrance.

This is just the first of a series of imporvements at the gallery, find out more on the capital projects page.

Noticed that tomorrow night (Tues 23 Oct) at 11.20pm BBC2 are showing a documentary looking at the making of the Beatles' second film, 'Help!' If you've not already seen our exhibition, 'Now These Days Are Gone' which is also based on 'Help!', the programme might whet your appetite for all things Fab Four.

Sea sickness is for me, Stephen Guy, possibly the worst sensation to be experienced without actually being physically harmed. As a child, I once spent four hours slumped over a washbasin on the Isle of Man boat in mountainous seas. If someone had offered to shoot me to relieve my suffering, I would have been very tempted to accept. But sea sickness is just one of the milder things the sea can unleash upon the seafarer or traveller.

Seafarers throughout the ages have respected the sea with its changing moods. The weather is just one of the dangers faced by mariners – accidents, war and many other hazards make life at sea unpredictable. Crews face risks 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Among the main dangers in the past were bad weather, navigational errors, unsafe or under-manned ships, fire, war and piracy.

Sometimes drunken or incompetent seafarers have added to these perils.  From about 1850, Governments, unions, charities and others made increasing efforts to reduce risks. While much progress has been made, dangers remain today.

Merseyside Maritime Museum has a display called Danger at Sea with exhibits linked to the perils of the deep. A commemorative handkerchief depicts Samuel Plimsoll, whose Plimsoll Line has been on ships’ hulls since 1876 to indicate safe loading levels.

A contemporary illustration (shown) depicts the sinking of the steamship La Plata in 1874.

Jack Selby, chief engineer, saved Charles J Coleman from the gas-filled hold of their Liverpool ship, the Devonian, which was berthed in Boston, USA, in 1916. Jack received awards and gifts for his bravery which are on display.

Robert William Blythyn, of Bootle, Merseyside, was a saloon steward who died on the Lusitania, sunk by a German submarine in 1915. Exhibits include Jack’s commemorative plaque awarded to those who died in the First World War.

Merchant seafarers are often placed in extreme danger during wars. For generations their ships have carried troops and supplies in war zones, thus becoming enemy targets. Nearly 15,000 seafarers lost their lives on British merchant ships in the First World War and 32,000 in the Second World War.

The losses of the huge bulk carrier Derbyshire in 1980 and the cross-Channel ferry Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987 remind us that safety can never be taken for granted. The Derbyshire display is particularly poignant to me because, as a reporter, I filed the names of the 44 crew victims to the world’s media via the Press Association.

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

Here's the view from this morning's ferry of the Museum of Liverpool construction site. Not the most informative photo I'll admit, but I'm just a sucker for a beautiful sunrise. You can't really tell from this but trust me, lots of progress has been made since I last wandered out on deck with a camera in my hand. You can just make out the top of the formwork in between the two central cranes. After all the years of planning, this really brings home the reality that we'll have a whole new museum before too long.

I would say that I'll keep you updated with pictures of the progress but with the mornings getting darker it could be a while before it's light enough to see what's going on!

Update 26/10/07: I did get a slightly clearer photo this week but if you actually want to see what's happening then have a look at Karen's post of the Museum of Liverpool construction by day.

Here's yet another example of one of the creative endeavours that our staff are involved in after a hard day's museuming. Every Thursday a small but dedicated group of past and present staff and volunteers known as the Knitwits meet up after work to knit, stitch and chat over a few drinks.

We've made a variety of scarves, socks, jumpers and (in true Generation Game style) cuddly toys over the last couple of years and have recently focussed our efforts on the Big Knit. This has involved knitting lots of little bobble hats to go on Innocent smoothie bottles. The behatted bottles go on sale next month and for every one sold 50p goes to Age Concern, who will use the money to support older people through the winter. They are hoping to get at least 400,000 hats. We packed ours up yesterday ready to send and it looks like we've got at least 100 towards that total.

Gathered together our little hats were quite a sight - sort of a miniature, colourful woolly version of the Chinese terracotta army. See what you think - have a look at a Flickr slideshow of our bobble hat army.

Football seems to be a bit of a touchy subject today for some reason. So here's a story about a major trophy that isn't in any danger of leaving England, in case that cheers up a few football fans out there.

In 2005 the oldest surviving FA Cup (produced in 1896 after the original trophy was stolen) was up for auction and in danger of going overseas. Luckily businessman David Gold, director of Gold Group International and chairman of Birmingham City Football Club, saved it for the nation and gave it to the National Football Museum in Preston on a long term loan basis, so that it could be seen and enjoyed by all football fans.

At the invitation of the National Football Museum, he then commissioned Conservation Technologies to produce an accurate replica of the trophy for his private use. They worked with silversmiths BDG Manufacturing Ltd and the Jewellery Industry Innovation Centre to produce the replica shown here, using a combination of cutting edge laser scanning technology and traditional skills.

David Gold was delighted with his replica trophy and the National Football Museum is ‘over the moon’ with the original. Find out more in a case study about how the FA Cup was replicated on the Conservation Technologies website.

Well I have been silent for over a week as I have been on leave. I went back to see my family in dear old Tadcaster. I am sure you have now all seen the fantastic website which shows you that Tadcaster is an ideal holiday location. Forget about Spain, France or the USA, save on your carbon footprint and travel to Tadcaster on the Yorkshire coastliner bus from Leeds station!

The week prior to my mini break was a really interesting one. On Monday 1 October I gave the keynote speech to open Trafford Black History Month at the Imperial War Museum North. It was a diverse audience, with local schoolchildren, civic dignitaries (I had a coffee with the mayor!) and museum professionals. I talked about the development of the International Slavery Museum as well as the need for Black History Month and indeed the teaching of Black history in schools.

On the Tuesday it was a pleasure to meet and interview Paul Robeson Jr, an advocate of the Paul Robeson Institute, and on Wednesday we held the museum’s first volunteer day. If you are interested in volunteering at the International Slavery Museum you can email Claire Holden our volunteer co-ordinator.

Yesterday I gave a talk to the St Helens Historical Society on the development of the museum. One of the most interesting aspects of my job is meeting all sorts of audiences, and so later this week I am giving several other presentations. Tomorrow at the Harris Museum in Preston on ‘Issues regarding the historical and contemporary representation of transatlantic slavery and enslavement in museums’, then on Thursday I am speaking at a seminar for the Communities and Local Government Department about the need to highlight Black history in museums and on Friday I am at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford for a lunchtime seminar for students and staff.

So a pretty busy week. But my older sister lives in Oxford so I can stay with her and the family over the weekend which I am looking forward to.

 I’ll sign off for now but just before I go (I know my football blog info is a highlight for some people!) I have to let you know that this weekend Leeds United have the privilege of hosting Millwall at Elland Road. Should be interesting to say the least. Last Saturday we drew with Leyton Orient and missed a penalty to win in the last few minutes. Not good for my blood pressure. The highs and lows of being a football fan!