National Museums Liverpool Blog - Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Railway Heritage Committee have kindly donated a fragment of the original Edge Hill Station in a commemorative box to the Museum of Liverpool's collections. Believed to be oldest station in world still in normal service, Edge Hill was built as a stop on the Liverpool to Manchester railway. The fragment will be used in the Port City gallery in the new Museum of Liverpool, to illustrate the impact of that historic railway.

On the subject of transport, those of you who prefer trains small enough to fit in your pocket may be interested to know that the Frank Hornby Experience is back at Maghull Town Hall this weekend, 10am-5pm on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 November. The experience celebrates the achievements of local legend Frank Hornby, with lots of examples of the popular toys that he invented.

Presentation of the Edge Hill box. Front row: Neil Butters, secretary, Railway Heritage Committee; Sharon Brown, curator of land transport, National Museums Liverpool; Sir Howard Newby, chairman, artefacts sub-committee, RHC and vice chancellor, University of Liverpool; Richard Faulkner, Lord Faulkner of Worcester. Back: artefacts sub-committee members Mike Lamport, Peter Ovenstone, Richard Gibbon, David Bladen, and Jerry Swift. Photograph courtesy of the University of Liverpool

November's name that artwork competition begins on Monday morning. If you're a regular you probably know that you'll need to be quick - they often go in the first few hours. If you're new to the game the gist is that you are shown a detail from a painting in our collection and you've got to name the artwork and the artist. There's a new clue every day for the week, with the winner receiving a copy of the John Moores exhibition catalogue.

The Liverpool Echo website is featuring the latest in a series of video updates on the progress of the build. You can watch the video here. 

Our Building the Museum of Liverpool Flickr group is still getting a fair few submissions. Special thanks should go to Cassini2008 who has taken some great shots right the way through the build.

Mr and Mrs Ogden with Captain Rostron. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

If anyone deserved a medal it was Captain Arthur Henry Rostron – a man I have always admired because he kept cool and saved hundreds of lives in the Titanic disaster. Recently I went to have a look at his house in Crosby, Liverpool, not far from where the Titanic captain Edward Smith lived. It’s strange to think that these two major players in one of the greatest sea dramas were near-neighbours.

The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 continues to fascinate people and Captain Rostron of the Cunard liner Carpathia is remembered as the shining hero of the rescue operation. The Titanic hit an iceberg on her maiden voyage to America and sent out frantic distress signals as she began to sink. More than 1,500 people were to die in the icy waters.

Harold Cottam, the wireless operator on the Carpathia, left his headset on while dressing for bed - in those days there wasn’t 24-hour radio cover. He heard the distress signal and alerted the captain who immediately ordered Carpathia to race towards Titanic. Capt Rostron showed great skill and courage in moving his ship so quickly through vast ice fields to rescue all 712 survivors.  It took more than three hours to reach Titanic but Rostron made good use of the time. A list of 23 orders was successfully implemented by the crew to prepare Carpathia for taking on survivors. These included getting accommodation, food, drink and blankets ready and ordering his medical crew to stand by. Rostron, a devout Christian, was seen praying quietly.

Six of Capt Rostron’s awards are on display at Merseyside Maritime Museum, loaned by members of his family. There is a huge inscribed silver loving cup presented personally to him by a heroine of the disaster, ‘The Unsinkable’ Molly Brown, on behalf of Titanic survivors.  A stunning gold medal of the US Congress was presented by President William Howard Taft in the name of the American people. There are also gold medals from the Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society and the Life Saving and Benevolent Society of New York, a US Cross of Honor and a bronze medal presented to the captain, officers and crew of Carpathia by the survivors.

Capt Rostron is pictured here relaxed and smiling after the task of picking up survivors was complete. He is seen standing between Mr and Mrs Ogden who took photos of Titanic’s lifeboats approaching Carpathia.

There's more on the Titanic and related objects in our collection on our main site.  

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).

I'm good at making spaghetti bolognese, I'm not bad on bass guitar, but I am no good at drawing! I'm envious of anyone who's good with a pencil and we've been lucky enough to have some budding artists at the Walker Art Gallery recently, from Kensington Youth Inclusion Group. Here's Learning Officer Lauren Gould to explain what the group have been up to...

Making great art together: budding artists from the Kensington Youth Inclusion Group.

You may remember that some fantastic young artists took part in completing the 'Superfiveadaybanana' that was in the Walker Art Gallery as part of 'Go Superlambananas' over the summer.  Once again, these young people are participating in a project that will bring their work into the gallery for a unique display. 

Eleven young people from Kensington Youth Inclusion Group visited the John Moores 25 exhibition during the October half term.  They explored the exhibition looking at texture, colour, pattern and light as well as discerning the difference between abstract and figurative art.  The group focused on 'Fontana' by Peter McDonald, 'Sometimes We Sense the Doubt Together' by Roland Hicks and 'Special Relativity' by Julian Brain and explored the themes of; artists at work, everyday objects and home. Each young person did a drawing that they are going to develop into their own painting with local artist Keiron Finnetty.

Watch this space for images of their work progressing on the blog and for their paintings, which will be up in the resource area in the John Moores 25 exhibition at the end of November.

All hands on deck - the handling and transport team carefully manoeuvre the enormous painting of Jerusalem down the stairs

As you are probably aware, the popular Ben Johnson exhibition at the Walker closed earlier this month. Most of the paintings in the exhibition were on loan from other collections, so they have been packed up ready to be returned. One of them, the 'Jerusalem' painting, was too big for the lift, so it was carefully carried down the stairs this morning. This was quite an operation - for every person supporting the painting on one side in the photo above, there's another person hidden on the other side.

The good news is that one of the paintings hasn't left the Walker. The Liverpool Cityscape belongs to National Museums Liverpool, so it will go back on display on 21 November once the gallery it is in has been rehung.

Have you ever wondered what exactly goes on behind closed doors after an exhibition has closed though? Here's your chance to find out, as there are some photos of the handling and transport team taking down the Ben Johnson exhibition on our Flickr pages. I'll let handling technician, senior driver and ace photographer Paul Kelly explain what's going on in them:

"When works of art are to be moved from one location to another one of the principles we utilise is the creation of micro climatic conditions for the protection of the artwork. We achieve this by essentially wrapping the painting in large sheets of polythene which is then sealed. It sounds easier said than done simply because some of our works are extremely large and the Ben Johnson works fall into this category. The process is quite involved requiring assessment of the job in hand and almost telepathic communication between each member of the team if the goal is to be achieved safely. This work is seldom if ever seen by the general public because after the works are wrapped in Polythene they are put into large wooden crates then onto the vehicle that will transport them to their new location. Other work involved in dismantling an exhibition is the wrapping of the safety barriers and miscellaneous information boards - all part of just another day's activity for the handling team.

The crates used to transport large paintings need to be handled with extreme caution as they tend to be rather unstable when on the move and can be very heavy. We do have a wide range of skills and equipment to draw on and this enables members of the team to move these big objects effectively and safely."

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.