National Museums Liverpool Blog - Friday, December 05, 2008

Monday will be an exciting day on the National Museums Liverpool website with the launch of two competitions.

Five lucky sports fans and their friends could win the opportunity to do what many footballers can only dream of - that is lift the UEFA Champions League trophy, which is currently on display in the Only a Game? exhibition at World Museum Liverpool. Keep an eye on the exhibition website from 9am on Monday to find out how - but be quick as you'll only have until 12 noon on Wednesday 10 December to enter.

Monday also sees the return of the Name that Object competition, with a new clue unveiled every day next week. This month's prize is a mounted print of the popular 'Liverpool Cityscape' by Ben Johnson and a 2009 desktop calendar featuring a different detail from the painting each month.

"Look what you could have won" - these Ben Johnson goodies could be yours if you're the first person to 'Name that object'...

You've probably heard the expression that 'worse things happen at sea'. Sailor Robert Bruce wanted to make certain that these unspecified terrible things didn't happen to him when he was an engineer the Merchant Navy in the 1940s, so he carried this leather cosh and swichblade knife with him. Apparently he never needed to use them, but - to trot out another cliche - better to be safe than sorry, I suppose. The cosh and knife were donated to the Maritime Museum by his son Gary and are now on display in the Life at Sea gallery.

According to curator of port history, Ian Murphy, sailors were paid at the end of their voyage, sometimes getting several months back pay at once. This made them targets for all sorts of unsavoury types once they were ashore, so sailors felt most at risk in port. However, the tensions created by crews being shut up together for long periods and the presence of weapons on board, meant that many incidents actually happened aboard ship.

As you will have seen from the many posts on this blog, the new Ancient Egypt gallery at the World Museum opened to the public today. Last night some visitors were invited along to the preview opening and were greeted by the Ya Raqs Dance Troupe, who performed traditional Egyptian dances in truly glamorous costumes. The red velvet number was a particular favourite of mine. 

Lady in red:  'Meroe', the lead dancer from the Ya Raqs Dance Troupe.

I spoke to 'Aziza' who said she had been dancing for about three years. The dancers were from Chester and the Wirral - I had no idea that these were such exotic places!

The gallery itself has a good spooky atmosphere now that the lighting is low, in particular the 'Realm of Osiris', which has several mummies in it. I also had a go at one of the interactives and found out what my adopted Egyptian name ('Fire Spirit Goddess' in case you were wondering!) would be in hieroglypics. You can check out more photos from the opening event on our Egyptian gallery Flickr set.

Some of the last Egyptian artefacts to go on display are unwrapped

Have I mentioned recently that the new Ancient Egypt gallery opens tomorrow at World Museum Liverpool? Only a few dozen times! There's a sneaky look at part of the new gallery, along with lots of other photos of the preparations over the last two years, on our Ancient Egypt gallery Flickr page.

If you come to see the new gallery over the next few days you may notice that Mandy the Superlambanana, who usually stands in the atrium at World Museum, isn't there. This is because we need lots of extra space over the opening weekend so we sent our best shepherds (also known as Richard Roberts and Andrew Mountfield from the handling and transport team) to herd her away to the safety of a side room. You can see them settling her into her temporary abode on our Moving stories Flickr page. Mandy will be back out on display from Monday.

Here's the latest photo from the installation of the new Ancient Egypt gallery at World Museum Liverpool. It shows one of the 14 coffins on display in the gallery being installed by the handling team.

This is the coffin of Padiamunnebnesuttawy, who worked in a temple as a ‘Wab-priest of Amun’. His coffin (dated from about 664-525 BC) is decorated with images of different gods and events from the Book of the Dead. At the centre of the coffin you can see an image of Anubis preparing the mummy for the Afterlife.

The new gallery was reviewed on the Night Waves programme on BBC Radio 3 yesterday by Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology Magazine. If you missed the programme it's available on the BBC website for one week in their How to make a good Egyptian gallery feature.

David Whitty places an Egyptian artefact in its specially made display stand

Many people will be going to the new Ancient Egypt gallery when it opens on Friday to see the incredible Egyptian artefacts from our collections, many of which haven't been on display for decades. But have you ever looked underneath and behind these priceless objects at the display stands and mounts that are supporting them? It may surprise you to know that these have all been specially custom made by the highly skilled technicians in our technical services studio at the National Conservation Centre.

I popped into the studio earlier this week to see Bill Sillitoe and David Whitty busy preparing the last few display stands for the Ancient Egypt gallery. They produce everything pretty much from scratch, cutting and bending sheets of Perspex to create stands and soldering together the wires to make supports for some of the objects. You can see more photos of them at work in our Making display mounts for the Ancient Egypt gallery Flickr page and I hope that you go to the gallery to admire their handiwork from Friday.

The Clara Monks

The idea of a fleet of small ships being mustered to support the Normandy landings in the Second World War is something I find very inspirational.

It was part of an audacious plan to hoodwink Hitler’s forces but it paid off handsomely. I also think this element of surprise is very British and the D-Day landings rank with other victories over the centuries.

They were workhorses of the sea, but 362 coasters played a vital role in Operation Neptune – the landings in northern France which heralded the end of the war.

The Battle of Normandy was launched on 6 June 1944 when the Allies landed on the beaches of German-occupied France.

Once they had a foothold and had forced the Germans back, substantial Allied contingents poured through the beachhead and joined the battle to liberate Europe.

One of the little ships involved was the 577-ton Clara Monks, a sturdy Liverpool-owned steam coaster dating from 1920.

She was part of convoy ETC.16 which left Southend on 23 June 1944, arriving the following day at Seine Bay, east of Cherbourg, with crucial supplies.

There were a total of 24 merchant ships in the convoy, with two escort ships. Small coasters were perfect for maintaining the continuous flow of supplies of ammunition, cased petrol and general stores from more than 20 Allied ports to the Normandy beaches.

There is a model of the single-funnelled Clara Monks in the Life at Sea gallery in Merseyside Maritime Museum which captures the robust construction of the original ship.

She had a long and varied career carrying diverse cargoes around the west coast of England for John S Monks of Liverpool, one of the major coastal companies of the day. After the war the Clara Monks carried goods between Le Havre and the Channel Islands and Liverpool before being scrapped in 1959.

A photograph shows her at sea with members of the crew on the monkey island (the roof of the wheelhouse).

Two similar ships are featured in the display – the Cornish Trader, also of 1920, and the Slievenamon.

A plan of the Cornish Trader shows the layout of crew accommodation as well as cargo holds. There is a page from the cargo book of the Slievenamon dating from 1922, the year of the Irish uprising, when her cargoes included coal, stout – and IRA prisoners.

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).

Our venues were going Viking crazy in November, with several Viking themed events to link in with the Nordic International Cultural Events (NICE) festival. There was the opportunity to meet a Viking warrior and his wife at the World Museum and a free conference at the Maritime Museum discussing Viking finds in the North West, such as the Huxley Hoard. At the Lady Lever Art Gallery, visitors were treated to a concert by Icelandic musicians and Learning Officer Lauren Gould has all the details from this unqiue event:

Acclaimed Icelandic musicians: Bjorg Thorhallsdottir and Elisabet Waage.

As part of the NICE 08 festival, visitors to the Lady Lever Art Gallery were delighted with beautiful music provided by soprano, Bjorg Thorhallsdottir and harpist, Elisabet Waage. Both musicians travelled over from Iceland to perform at the gallery on 26 November, after appearing on BBC Radio Merseyside the night before.

The recital was a wonderful opportunity to enjoy two acclaimed Icelandic musicians performing Icelandic music, English folk songs and variety of church music. Icelandic art songs were premiered as well as new arrangements of traditional folk songs for soprano and harp.

The acoustics and setting of the gallery was a stunning backdrop for the performance, which was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone. They’ve promised to return next year and Bjorg has said she will sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ for us then; there are some Liverpool FC fans in her family!

It takes a lot of guts to get up in front of an audience and talk confidently - anyone who's ever had to do a presentation will know all about this! At the Lady Lever Art Gallery, they've been training up groups of young people from all over the Wirral to be junior guides, enabling them to talk about the paintings in the gallery to visitors. Learning officer Lauren Gould can tell us more about it all:

Taking over the gallery: one of the new recruits talks to a group of visitors.

Over the past six weeks, young people from Bebington High Sports College, The Oldershaw School, and Neston High School have been training as junior guides at the Lady Lever Art Gallery.  They have been learning from staff as well as their five mentors, who trained as junior guides in 2007.  In addition to learning about the gallery and its collection, they’ve also developed their confidence, leadership, and presentation skills,

On Tuesday 25 November they delivered their first tour to Rock Ferry Primary School and received a round of applause for their efforts!  After providing four more tours for primary schools in the run up to Christmas we’ll be looking to keep this group of committed young people involved as volunteers while they complete their Arts Council England Youth Arts Award Bronze and Silver.

Sunday is a special day. Yes, I know it is the last day of November, and that many of us will be counting down to Christmas from Monday – but it is also the very last day of voting for the very last The Beat Goes On Top Ten.   

The digital jukebox is now full – packed to its limit with fantastic, home-grown tunes for your listening pleasure – and so we won’t be having any more Top Tens for the moment. But at least you can escape the Slade, Roy Wood and the like – not to mention the controversial X-Factor cover of Hallelujah that’s about to be inflicted on us - and come down to the museum for some proper music. Infact, I suggest you suspend all X-Factor related activities and vote for The Beat Goes On instead!

There’s just one more tune to be added. Who will it be? You decide:

Aeris Presley 

Emma Jane’s Monkey Mind 

Puzzle 

Little Miss Strange

Rude Ruby

15 Storeys

The Sums

BeakerFolk of The Bronze Age

Polaris

Great North Western Hoboes 

Lilian Thuram (on the left) – the most capped French footballer ever - on a visit to the International Slavery Museum

Hello there.

Well for those of you who are regular followers of my blog (surely double figures?) then you will know I have a penchant for the beautiful game. We were fortunate enough to be visited last week by the great French defender and World Cup winner Lilian Thuram who was in Liverpool as a patron of the Only a Game? exhibition at World Museum Liverpool.

Lilian is now retried from football but he is looking to start an origanisation which tackles issues such as racism and discrimination in Europe. As a result he wanted to come to the International Slavery Museum to look at some of exhibits which focus on this subject as well as talk about the possibility of some sort of collaboration. Lilian was particularly impressed with our Black Achievers Wall. A message he thinks is important to get across to children of African descent across Europe. 

Some of my colleagues had a good laugh at the attached picture. I have to admit myself it is not difficult to spot the famous footballer and the museum professional. Maybe if I had not smiled quite as much and looked all excited it would have been harder to choose! Sad as it might seem, after the tour and our official discussions, I could not resist asking him to come out of retirement to play a few games for my own team (Leeds United for those who don’t already know). He smiled and asked what league we were now in? He genuinely looked surprised when I told him it was the third tier of the English league. Well, if you don’t ask you don’t get as they say.

I also recently gave a talk to the Merseyside Archaeological Society one evening. I knew the organiser from my days as a PhD student at the University of Liverpool so it was good to catch up. It was held in the Friends Meeting House in Liverpool. This is particularly interesting because of the relationship between Quakers and the abolition movement. Now by no means were all Quakers always against slavery, many owned slaves themselves in the 17th and 18th centuries in particular. That said, when the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed in 1787 with William Wilberforce as its parliamentary spokesperson, several of the founding members were in fact Quakers.

I am also very excited at the prospect of flying to Atlanta, Georgia, later this week, to attend the launch of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database at Emory University. I have been invited to be a panel member which will discuss some of the ways the database can be used. The database has information about almost 35,000 slave voyages and will be an essential tool for research in my opinion. Whilst there I hope to be able to visit a number of institutions and historic sites connected to Martin Luther King Jr, who was born in Atlanta. In particular the King Center and his birthplace.

I will update you on my return.
 
Bye for now.

'Clytie' being manoeuvred into place at the gallery

I have always been intrigued by Frederic, Lord Leighton, who is very much an unfathomable figure to me.

A couple of years ago I visited his former London residence, the Leighton House Museum, off London’s Kensington High Street, and was mesmerised.

This amazing villa in Holland Park Road has a room that reminded me of beautiful tiled palaces I had visited in Morocco. In the entrance a photograph shows Leighton gazing at a statue of a naked youth. All around there are hints of what his contemporary Oscar Wilde called “strange sins” – dark corners and sumptuous furniture set in gloomy rooms.

Despite this, bachelor Leighton lived a life that was squeaky clean – it must have been because Queen Victoria ennobled him. Any whiff of scandal and the Royals cast you into outer darkness in those days.

Leighton was the first painter to be given a peerage, in the New Year Honours List of 1896 just days before his death.

When distressed friends and colleagues went over his house they found Clytie – his final great painting – standing unfinished in Leighton’s huge studio.

Now this stunning work is on display at the Lady Lever Art Gallery for a year. This is because Leighton House Museum is closed for a £1.3 million refurbishment until the end of 2009.

Clytie was placed at the head of Leighton’s coffin before being removed to the Royal Academy, where Leighton was president. The painting depicts a heartbroken nymph who, abandoned by her lover Apollo, spends nine days in a wild and isolated place imploring his return and watching him drive his chariot across the sky. 

Clytie joins several other Leighton paintings in the Lady Lever collections including his massive masterwork The Daphnephoria (more of his work can be seen in the Leighton featured artist section). Sharp-eyed visitors will see a tiny study for Clytie nearby in the main hall.

Our picture shows skilled members of the National Museums Liverpool handling team hanging the picture using specialist equipment.

Clytie was acquired by Leighton House this year. Supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and The Art Fund, the UK’s leading independent art charity.