National Museums Liverpool Blog - Wednesday, November 05, 2008

The cladding going up

The latest photos are now available on Flickr. The main development has been the cladding which is going up at a rate of knots. I like this side-on snap of the surface - you don't realise how 3D it is until you get right up close.

Some nice new additions to the Building the Museum of Liverpool group as well. Interesting to see the building in different weather conditions, at different times of the day and from various angles. You put my own feeble photographic skills to shame.

The figurehead. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Lord Hastings is one of those larger-than-life characters I would have liked to have met – he had a very colourful career and seems, for his time, to have been rather a good egg.

I was amazed when I discovered how he literally had a hand in his wife’s funeral.

The massive wooden figurehead depicting Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings, looks straight ahead with features nobly bland as befitting a governor-general of India. Lord Hastings (1754 – 1826), is depicted wearing a magnificent uniform with gold epaulettes, gleaming medal and foaming cravat. The figurehead, now at Merseyside Maritime Museum, once graced the bows of HMS Hastings named after this soldier who was born into the Irish aristocracy.

The 74-gun warship was built in Calcutta for the East India Company in 1818  and acquired by the  British Navy the following year. At this time Lord Hastings was enjoying a brilliant career helping to carve out the burgeoning British Empire by extending territories in India and the Far East.

HMS Hastings’ figurehead is typical of the type found on British naval ships in the early 19th century. It was probably English-made and fitted on her arrival here in 1819.

The warship travelled many thousands of miles as she plied the seas between Europe, the Mediterranean and East Indies. Eventually she came to Liverpool as a coastal defence vessel in 1857 before becoming a Royal Naval Reserve training ship in the port. After ending her days as a coal hulk in the south of England, she was broken up in 1886.

And what of the Lord Hastings who gave his name to the dependable warship? He was governor general of India from 1813 to 1823, a period marked with many military victories against peoples opposing British rule. However, things later turned sour with mud-slinging against Lord Hastings over financial issues. He resigned and left India exhausted by his labours.

Far from having enriched himself as governor-general, when he arrived back in England he had to seek employment. He became the popular governor of Malta and died at sea off Naples in 1826.

Lord Hastings married when he was 50 and fathered five children. On his death, he left a bizarre request - his right hand was cut off and preserved until the death of his wife, when it was placed in her coffin.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

A conservator checks an Egyptian sarcophagus as it is packed into a crate ready for transport

We are only weeks away from the opening of the newly refurbished Egypt gallery at World Museum Liverpool, on 5 December 2008. Conservators at the National Conservation Centre have been working hard for months to prepare the objects for display, such as this funerary shroud and - of course - some Egyptian mummies. Now that the artefacts are ready for installation the handling team have been carefully transporting them over to the museum.

Handling technician and senior driver Paul Kelly has sent this update and photo - and you can see more of his photos of the move, as well as others of the objects being prepared for display, on our Egyptian gallery Flickr page.

"This week the handling team drivers Andrew Mountfield and myself have been involved in moving some seriously ancient and delicate Egyptian artefacts from the National Conservation Centre to World Museum Liverpool.

Naturally before such artefacts are moved consultation with the curators is absolutely essential. The advice and recommendations of our curators is a must to enable the safe transportation of these rare and nationally important objects. Some artefacts are quite large, heavy and delicate so need the utmost care when handling.

Our thanks for their knowledge and assistance ultimately go to our curators, conservators and project team members Tracey Seddon, Graham Usher, Richard Roberts, Barbara Rowan, Ashley Cook, Helen Thomson, Pete Spinks. Without their help and their team's assistance we as drivers could not possibly do our job to the standards required to move these artefacts safely.

I am happy to report that the artefacts shown are now safely transported and awaiting installation in show cases at World Museum Liverpool."

Sunday 2 November will be your last chance to vote on who you think deserves the Visitors' Choice award, from the John Moores 25 Contemporary Painting Prize exhibition. You can get a voting card at the Walker Art Gallery and have your say about who should win the prize of £2008.

Take a look at my earlier post about the Visitors' Choice award, and watch a video with some of this year's judges talking about a selection of paintings from the exhibition.

Get inspired and get voting!

There's an interesting story on the Guardian site today (and in the paper too I guess) about HMHS Britannic, sister ship of RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic. Apparently it lies in the Mediterranean after sinking off the Greek island of Kea in 1916. It's been purchased from the British government and there are plans to turn it into a tourist attraction, with submersibles taking visitors down to the seabed to visit the wreck - Britannic is far better preserved than Titanic and in shallower water. Not sure how I would feel about visiting it - claustrophobic more than anything and presumably a lot lighter in the pocket.

'The barque Rockshire off a rocky coast' by Jospeh Heard. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

I have always wondered about my reactions if I was shipwrecked but thankfully this is one particular challenge that hasn’t come along yet. I don’t think any of us could say with any accuracy how we would behave in that sort of situation.

Full fathom five they lie, shipwrecks of all types scattered over the floors of the world’s oceans and seas along with the bones of countless seafarers and passengers. Each is testimony to disasters, accidents and mishaps caused by age-old dangers such as foul weather, fire, war, collision, bad navigation, stupidity or simply bad luck.

The safety of everyone on board a ship depends on good navigation - knowing where you are and where you are going. This is a simple truth that has been disregarded on innumerable occasions.

Before 1850 bad navigation alone caused the loss or damage of many British ships. Captains and other senior officers often had inadequate navigational skills and equipment. There were no clear rules to prevent collisions. After 1850, however, masters and mates had to be trained and examined in navigation. Methods and equipment were improved. By the 20th century ships became much safer due to radio, radar and other electronic equipment. Today most ships depend on satellite navigation systems.

In the past seafarers also faced hazards from pirates and privateers. Pirates such as the legendary Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, Anne Bonny and Captain Kidd stole or took control of ships from their lawful crews. Privateers operated in times of war up to the 1850s. They were armed merchant ships which attacked enemy merchant vessels. There's more on privateering on our main site.

Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Life at Sea gallery has a display which focuses on navigation and safety at sea. A lifelike portrait of a sea captain, painted in oils about 1900 by WH Walton, captures the character of the veteran ship’s master.

There is a telescope which belonged to Captain A W “Hellfire” Sinclair who came to Liverpool in the 1850s at the start of his seafaring career. Sinclair was the hard-driving captain of packet ships operated by the famous Black Ball Line.

A jug, possibly made in Liverpool around 1780, tells the sad tale of man overboard. The black-and-white image shows men in a rowing boat throwing a rope to a man in the sea.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

George Ferguson School of Irish Dance put their best foot forward

Visitors to World Museum Liverpool over the last couple of days will have noticed a distinctly Irish flavour to the events. Our very own leprechaun from the learning department, Ann-marie McGaughey, explains what was going on:

This year, we had a number of events including drama workshops, singing workshops and traditional storytelling, using the tale of The Children of Lir. George Ferguson School of Irish Dance returned for a second year running and treated us to a fabulous display of Irish dancing, before getting us all up to join in with the Ceili!

This weekend we also learned about a very special lady called Kitty Wilkinson, who was brought vividly to life by a roleplayer. Kitty was born in Derry, Ireland and came over to Liverpool in the late 1700s when she was still a child. Kitty settled in Liverpool in later life and lived here around the time of the cholera epidemic of 1832. At this time a lot of people in Liverpool were living in poor squalid conditions, with a lot of overcrowding in houses. Kitty was fortunate enough to live in a house with a hot water boiler (the only one in her street at the time) and she worked out that if people boil-washed their clothes and bed linen, they would be less likely to catch cholera, as the disease could not spread so easily. She invited families in the street to use her boiler to wash their clothes and as word spread, she eventually ended up with 80 families using her boiler! She began to charge families a penny to use the boiler and was able to set up the first public wash house in Liverpool. Kitty’s work played a massive role in stemming the cholera epidemic in Liverpool at the time and she is commemorated with a stained glass window in the lady chapel of the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool."

'Virgin and Child in Glory' by Murillo

Here's a recommendation for anyone who like me (I'm ashamed to say) doesn't often make it further into the Walker than the exhibition galleries. If you venture as far as the far end of room 3 upstairs you can see a study for the Murillo painting 'Virgin and Child in Glory', which is really rather sweet.

The study is on long term loan to the Walker and is on display in a cabinet in front of the finished painting. Apparently the small oil sketch was probably painted as a 'modello' to show Murillo's patron Ambrosio Ignacio Spinola, Archbishop of Seville, before starting on the large altarpiece that is now in the Walker's collection. It's rather cool to be able to see them together and compare the two

Jurassic cloakroom

They might look like wild creatures but these dinosaurs seemed happy to oblige and form an orderly queue for the cloakroom!

This is a scene from World Museum Liverpool earlier today, when a delivery had arrived for the shop.

I'm a bit of a fan of Titian - an artist who I must admit I knew very little about before the fantastic Titian exhibition at the National Gallery in 2003. Since then I've enjoyed any opportunity to see his work, so was very excited when the painting 'Supper at Emmaus' came to the Walker on long term loan the following year (it's still there - have a look next time you're in and see if you can spot the cat under the table!)

So as you can imagine, I'm looking forward to a trip down to London next month when I'm hoping to catch the exhibition Campaign for the Titians at the National Gallery, which reunites two of his paintings for the first time in two centuries - 'Death of Actaeon' from the National Gallery's collection and the prequel painting 'Diana and Actaeon', which is visiting London for one month only. This is a rare opportunity to see both paintings together but hopefully wont be the last chance we get, as the National Gallery and National Galleries of Scotland are hoping to jointly purchase 'Diana and Actaeon'. Fingers crossed...

This photograph may look like a scene from a horror movie but it’s actually just part of a fairly normal day’s work for driver and handling technician Andrew Mountfield. He captured the scene when the former Inspiration display at the Walker’s Craft and Design gallery was taken down and the new display of 1950s evening dresses was installed. I’ll let him explain:

"After the decorative art curators had taken down the old display, we turned up to transport the bodies (sorry mannequins!) from the Walker Art Gallery to their final resting place at the Decorative Arts department.

Dave Moffat, assistant curator of decorative art, was the technical adviser for the day, with myself and Richard Roberts on the Transport and Handling team’s van. As you might imagine the restraint techniques involved in securing the multi positioned mannequins proved problematic to say the least, but luckily I was able to draw upon my years of experience in shifting bodies... (just kidding!).

The mannequins were actually from France, apart from the heads, which were sourced from the UK, and they were dressed in clothes by designers from around the world, which made the whole thing even more cosmopolitan and surreal than it was macabre!!

After everyone (sorry, the mannequins) were secure in the back of the van, and a final check of straps and protective coverings were in place we bid a momentary yet fond farewell to Dec Arts and left the Walker, happy and smiling.

As Richard and I drove along Dale Street, we both heard some scraping noises from the back and then some banging, followed by voices screaming 'Let Me Out, Let Me Out!' from the back of the van. We glanced at each other but we were both too scared to stop, after all, it is Halloween next week..."

Just got hold of the video that greets visitors to the Only A Game? exhibition. There's a slightly larger version on the main site as well.

Only A Game? from National Museums Liverpool on Vimeo.

Watch the birdie!

I've always been fond of looking at old photographs. Whether it's a building which has long since been demolished, or a person from the dim and distant past, I've always found it interesting to wonder what they were like. 

In the Decorative Art Department, we have a large collection of photographs which we use for, amongst other things, dating our extensive costume collection. Some clothes in history were only fashionable for a short time and we can usually pin things down to a few years using the photographs. 

During a recent search through them, we came across this picture of one William Gihon. Taken on the 1st January 1864, it's fairly old for a photograph, but of more interest is the fact that in the photo (though he doesn't look it) he's 94. 

To think that we are looking at a image of someone who was born in the same year as James Cook's discovery of Australia, Mary Antoinette marrying Louis Auguste and William Wordsworth's birth is astonishing.