National Museums Liverpool Blog - Friday, February 15, 2008

MP Andy Burnham and family in Walker Art Gallery

Even the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport gets time off to enjoy a family day out. I got this photograph while Andy Burnham visited the Walker Art Gallery with his wife and three children. They had already been to Big Art where the girls had been fitted out with fairy costumes. When I found them the family were absorbed by Ben Johnson’s Liverpool Cityscape and trying to spot Everton’s football ground.

View from the top of Liverpool Cathedral

Chris from the learning team at the National Conservation Centre has been to the top of Liverpool Cathedral (featured in the previous post oddly enough) and taken this snap of the view east-ish, out over the river to the Wirral and the Irish Sea beyond in the haze. You can see a larger version on our Flickr page (I've linked to the large version so you can see the detail but there are other sizes to view as well).

The taller red cranes mark the site of the Grosvenor/Liverpool One development, then to the left and towards the river you can see more red cranes around the emerging Museum of Liverpool. The Liverpool Echo are planning to do a month-by-month video update on the museum's building progress, with the first on the Echo website now.

If you've not been to the top of the cathedral it's well worth going on a nice day, if a bit windy. The view is fabulous. There's a lift part of the way up.

The Anglican Cathedral as it was in the cityscape in Sept 07

Well, the proportion who have visited the Walker in the past few weeks have. We've been asking visitors to the Ben Johnson residency to tell us their favourite building in the Ben Johnson cityscape of Liverpool. The winner, if you hadn't guess by the image, is Liverpool Cathedral (that's the Anglican Cathedral) with the other buildings we love on this Valentines Day being:

1. Liverpool Cathedral
2. The Liver Building
3. St George's Hall
4. The Metropolitan Cathedral of Liverpool
5. Port of Liverpool Building
6. St. John's Beacon
7. St. Nicholas Church
8. Albert Dock
9. White Star Building
10. Walker Art Gallery

Despite asking visitors for their favourite in the painting we got several strange suggestions including the Pilgrim Pub, which if you know Liverpool you'll know is difficult to see from the end of Pilgrim Street never mind on the artwork. It amused me though.

Today we've launched what will hopefully become a regular feature on the site - our 'Name that Object' competition. We'll be revealing a new detail of an object (it's an artwork this time - bit of a clue for you there) every day for a week with the answer at the end. This is today's clue. There's a prize of a miniature Superlambanana to the first person to correctly identify the piece and to email us the answer using the form on the competition page.

If you're as forgetful as me you can always subscribe to the rss feed to get updates, or just click backwards to see previous clues. And as a final hint I'll tell you that the object is somewhere on our website. There, I've said too much already...

The first clue in the name that object competition

Graveyards and cemeteries have fascinated me since childhood because of the stories each stone tells – some simple, some complex, all emotionally moving. Jesse Hartley, a colossus in the history of the Port of Liverpool, lies under a simple stone next to his wife at a desolate churchyard in Bootle’s docklands.

Canada Timber Docks, Liverpool. Towards close of day by Robert Dudley (active 1865-1891)

A bustling scene is captured by Robert Dudley in his painting 'Canada Timber Docks, Liverpool, Towards Close of Day' in the collection of Merseyside Maritime Museum. Sailing ships crowd a dock as hordes of workers unload tons of wood which is carted away by horses and stacked neatly on the quaysides. The atmospheric 1872 view of Canada Dock vividly captures the hustle and bustle of the port. The number of horses in the painting underlines the importance of horse-drawn carts in carrying goods from docks to warehouses.

Canada Dock, opened in 1859 when Canada was Britain’s major source of timber, was the last dock designed and built by Hartley (1780 – 1860). He was the Port of Liverpool’s most prolific and famous engineer. Hartley’s greatest single achievement was the Albert Dock (1846) which now houses the Maritime Museum. He was the world’s first full-time professional dock engineer.

Hartley’s appointment was characteristic of the many risks taken in Liverpool during its history. He had no experience in building docks and beat 13 rival applicants, several of whom were well-known engineers. No doubt the port authorities were impressed by Yorkshireman Hartley’s strong personality, grit and determination which later paid great dividends.

Sir James Picton - the renowned Liverpool historian, architect and contemporary of Hartley – described him as: “A man of large build and powerful frame, rough in manner and occasionally rude, using expletives which the angel of mercy would not like to record”.

During his 36 years as Liverpool dock engineer, Hartley added 140 acres of wet docks and 10 miles of quay space. He either altered or constructed every Liverpool dock and during his career worked on other projects including the Liverpool end of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal and the Bolton to Manchester rail and canal system.

Hartley and his wife Ellen lie buried in St Mary’s churchyard, off Irlam Road, near where they lived. St Mary’s was flattened during the 1941 Blitz which devastated Bootle, with hundreds of lives lost and thousands of buildings destroyed or damaged. The graveyard, containing the mortal remains of nearly 19,000 people, was made into a park in 1960 but many of the tombstones were preserved.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. More on Hartley and his construction of the Albert Dock can be found on our main site.

Alan Bowden, curator of Earth Sciences, told us a good few months ago now about a palm frond we'd acquired (more here). Now it's finally on display he tells us about its journey from subtropical Wyoming to the wall of World Museum.
Images from its conservation are on our Flickr page.

The conserved frond in its shiny new case in World Museum

The story of the greening of the Earth - the flora of our planet and how it has evolved to achieve the wonderful diversity of today - is a bigger story than that of the animals as it contains a record of all the changes that have occurred with our atmosphere and climate, and has the potential of demonstrating where our future lies. 

The newcomer to the museum is a frond of the extinct fan palm Sabalites sp belonging to the family Arecaceae.  This fossil leaf is 50 million years old and was found in Folly Quarry on the Lewis Ranch, near Kemmerer Wyoming, Western Lincoln County, Wyoming, USA. At that time Wyoming was a warm subtropical area with lush and exotic vegetation at the edge of a series of large fresh water lakes which were larger than the Great Lakes Region of Canada.  This is very different from the Wyoming of today, which has a high mountain desert with long winter snows and freezing temperatures.

It was found in a limestone rock known as the Fossil Butte Member of the Green River Formation.  During the Eocene (50 million years ago) this formed as sediment that was being deposited in the fresh water lakes.  A lack of oxygen in the water caused many of the lake’s animals and plants to die, and also stopped bacterial action on the bottom of the lake. This meant that the dead animals and plants which would normally have rotted away were preserved in exceptional detail.  Complete fronds like our specimen are extremely rare.

The fossil shows numerous rays with bifurcating tips branching out from a sturdy woody petiole.  The petiole is well preserved showing a fibrous structure.  The basal attachment of the frond is of an unusual shape which indicates that this specimen may belong to a new, previously un-described, tribe.

The palm frond has spent a year being prepared by members of our conservation team and earth sciences staff. When it arrived it had been crudely covered with an acrylic based paint to ‘enhance detail’ with car body filler to hide cracks. The acrylic, body filler and some rock was very carefully removed to reveal extra details such as the natural colour of the specimen, extensions to the leaves, fragmentary remains of fossil fish beneath the leaf, the fibrous nature of the petiole and unusual features of the basal attachment. The fossil is now displayed on the 4th floor of World Museum and serves as a reminder of climate change over geological timescales.

If you haven't seen the Hello Sailor! exhibition yet, here's a great video by our friends at Homotopia TV to show you what you're missing. The short clip features Jo Stanley, whose research formed the basis of the exhibition, talking about the background to the whole project and showing some of her favourite things inthe displays, including some very bling shoes.

I just wanted to wish a Happy Chinese New Year to everybody out there, as today is the start of the best year in Chinese astrology (in my completely unbiased opinion) - the Year of the Rat. Anyone lucky enough to be born in the Year of the Rat like myself will appreciate that we are charming, quick witted and generally fantastic people. So now that it's our year I think that's something to celebrate.

If you're in town at the weekend for the festivities you can see some Martial Arts demonstrations at World Museum Liverpool on Saturday or make colourful Chinese dragons, lanterns or fans in workshops at the Maritime Museum on Sunday - check out the What's on listings for further details.

I haven't got a picture of a Chinese rat from our collections, so instead here's a piece of 19th century netsuke which does at least demonstrate the sociable nature of us rats. Sharp eyed visitors to the Magical History Tour exhibition may also spot some hidden amongst the displays in a trail for children (don't worry, they are soft toys, not real rats...)

Kevin Bacon at the Sundance Film Festival 2007 © SAGIndie

It seems that everybody wants to be in Liverpool this year - and who can blame them with everything that's happening for the Capital of Culture festivities during 2008.

However, I hadn't realised just how well connected the city was until I started looking into it. Our museums and galleries seem to be littered (metaphorically speaking anyway) with little known links to well known people.

So in a homage to the well known trivia game 'Six degrees of Kevin Bacon' and Liverpool's Capital of Culture year in 08, we now bring you '08 degrees of separation'

For example, find out how even the man himself, Kevin Bacon, is connected to our collections.

Success to the James of Liverpool

When I was a boy in the 1960s there were the enormous jaw bones of a whale forming garden gates at a pub in Frodsham overlooking the Mersey marshes. Doubtless the creature had been beached in the river, quite a common occurrence in the distant past.

Whaling ships once operated out of Liverpool but it was never a major industry in the port - at its height around 1788 there were 21 vessels registered as whalers. Today scant remains to remind us of this little-known period which ran parallel with the early growth of Liverpool. One place is Greenland Street, off Jamaica Street in the city centre. The waters off Greenland were among the places the Liverpool whalers hunted lucrative sperm whales and other species valuable for their oil-rich blubber and baleen - whalebone used for making ladies’ corsets (stays). It is likely that Greenland Street got its name because it housed the warehouses, counting houses and offices linked to the whaling industry.

The whalers would spend weeks and months hunting their prey. When they had killed a whale they would strip the carcass and store away the valuable products. Practically all of the whale could be used in one form or another: whale oil was used for lubricants, soap, candles, margarine and curing leather. Ambergris, a wax-like substance from the intestines of sperm whales, was used for perfumes. There were many stay-makers in Liverpool and whalebone was also used in the brush trade.

Seafarers would fill their leisure hours decorating whale teeth with intricate scrimshaw designs featuring ships and seascapes. 

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is the only known painting of a Liverpool whaling ship, Success to the James of Liverpool. The James was originally a French ship that was seized by privateers in 1781. She made her first whaling voyage in 1800, going to Greenland every year until 1821. The anonymous artist shows a number of small boats in the water. In the bows of each stands a marksman armed with a harpoon to kill whales. Several whales are depicted, some spouting water from their blow-holes. To the right, a group of men are killing a seal on an ice floe. The tails of several seals can be seen in the icy sea.

Whaling was dangerous, particularly when icebergs were around, and in 1789 it was recorded that four Liverpool whalers were lost. In 1827 only one whaler, The Baffin, was operating full-time out of Liverpool and by 1830 there was no more trade out of the port.

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

Yupin shows photographer the Lady Lever Art Gallery's collection of Chinese snuff bottles

I met Dr Yupin Chung at the Lady Lever Art Gallery today. Yupin has a busy job as both curator and researcher for the gallery’s Chinese collections. Today Yupin was being interviewed by the Daily Post for an article on her work. Hopefully this will help shed some light not just on the fabulous collection at the gallery but also on the work Yupin is doing to interpret it.

Lord Leverhulme began to collecting Chinese art in the 1890s. He orginally bought blue-and-white and enamelled porcelains of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) as furnishings for his various homes but they are now on display for us all to see in the gallery.

Yupin is working towards an electronic catalogue of the collection to be made available to the public as a web-based resource in 2009.

The recent refurbishment of Sudley House gave our conservators the opportunity to spend some quality time with the paintings and objects on display there. A new online feature about the conservation of one of Sudley's paintings, Gainsborough's portrait of 'Viscountess Folkestone', reveals some interesting discoveries that conservators have made about the materials and techniques used.

Their analysis has shown that Gainsborough completely changed the composition of the portrait, painting over the initial landscape in the background to move the setting indoors. This may seem quite considerate for the elderly Viscountess, bringing her inside into the warmth (especially on a windy day like today). However, he also abandoned her initial seated pose and made her stand up in the finished painting, which is no way to treat an elderly widow if you ask me.

The study of the painting has also revealed information about the pigments and paint medium used. It's a great example of how conservators use modern techniques to study old objects in the collections and try to piece together information about their past.

Hot off the press, here's some fantastic news from our communications manager Joanna Rowlands.

Update: do you think that the International Slavery Museum should win? Leave your comments on the Art Fund Prize website.

"We heard today that the International Slavery Museum has been nominated for the Art Fund Prize (formerly the Gulbenkian) and I’m sure I’m not the only one on the staff at National Museums Liverpool that considers it a real honour. 

The response to the museum has been quite overwhelming. Since it opened in August 2008 more than 150,000 people have been through the doors and the staff there have organised learning sessions for over 12,000 school children and members of the public.

Following the craziness of the opening week (meeting Harry Belafonte and observing the media circus around Jesse Jackson, pictured below, among my personal highlights) it was hard to know how the museum would be received. While we always hoped it would be popular we didn’t realise quite how significant the place would be to people from all over the world.

As we start work on Phase 2 of the work on the museum the feedback we get is essential. Comments from visitors such as ‘I think this was an achievement opening this slavery museum to let people understand what slavery is all about. This should have been done a long time ago’ give us an indication of its importance.

The judges for the Art Fund Prize, which recognises originality and excellence in museums and galleries, are coming up later on this month so we’ll be giving them a taste of just some of the events and activities on offer. Watch this space for more news."

Jesse Jackson arriving at the International Slavery Museum last year. Photograph © Simon Webb

DefNet Media have recently teamed up with Ian Jackson to start the Art in Liverpool podcast, providing a relentlessly enthusiastic look at the Liverpool visual arts scene. The latest show features "Out of Body at the Open Eye Gallery, Ian Meets the new Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham MP, ArtFinder Gallery... Ben Johnson... FACT PV, Tate PV... and the opening of the Arthur Dooley archive at the Liverpool Academy of Arts featuring Bryan Burgess and Carl Hodgeson".  

Ben Johnson press call, October 2005

I’ve just recently got slightly obsessed with Tracey Emin. It started when I picked up her diary-style book, ‘Strangeland’ from my local second-hand bookshop (Amorous Cat Bookshop, really cool). It has crept up on me, to the point where I now buy the Independent every Friday to read her column and look at the accompanying artwork. And then recycle the rest of the paper. Ignoring the celebrity element, she is pretty fascinating and now I want to find out more about her actual work. Luckily my obsession has not gone un-noticed and I was given another book about her for Christmas, so I can start to read more about what she has produced. From what I already know, her work seems to be intensely personal and her sketches are appealingly messy and haphazard looking. I’ve started taking some polaroids which are mostly blurry, messy and definitely haphazard (because I’m not very good), so maybe I’ll carry on trying with that technique!

An early attempt with my polaroid camera

 I also found out that Tracey also has strong links with Liverpool, having co-judged John Moores 24 and created the ‘bird on a pole’ bronze sculpture, which stood outside the Anglican Cathedral in 2005. She was even immortalised in Lego form in ‘Art Craziest Nation’ by The Little Artists (John Cake and Darren Neave) in an exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery! Her latest venture in Liverpool will be a neon installation, which is due to go on display in September 2008 at the Anglican Cathedral. She is now sober and has a growing interest in religion, so I can’t wait to see what that will be like…