National Museums Liverpool Blog - Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The crowd applaud as Wally Brown, Richard LeBaron and Simon Woolley (not shown) unveil three new plaques for the Black Achievers Wall

As Richard Benjamin explained in his last blog post, February is Black History Month in America (unlike the UK, where we celebrate it in October). So as befits an International Slavery Museum, we held our own programme of US Black History Month events, culminating in the unveiling of three new American plaques for the Black Achievers Wall.

The smiling face of President Obama on the middle plaque surely needs no introduction. On the left is Fannie Lou Hamer, the civil rights movement pioneer from Mississippi who famously described herself as being "sick and tired of being sick and tired". Completing the trio on the right is Dr Mae Jemison, who has the honour of being the first African American woman to travel in space after completing a mission on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.

In a short ceremony yesterday afternoon the plaques were officially unveiled by Richard LeBaron, Chargé d'Affaires at the United States Embassy in London, Simon Woolley, the national co-ordinator of Operation Black Vote in the UK, and Wally Brown CBE, former Principal of Liverpool Community College. You can see more photos of the ceremony in our US Black History Month Flickr photo set.

The Malancha with her guns at her stern

I love studying photographs, drawings and plans of the mighty Dreadnought battleships that dominated navies about 100 years ago. I admire the high-quality engineering which combined with great design to produce beautiful fighting machines gleaming from end-to-end with polished brass and steel armour plating.

However, submarine technology advanced during the First World War when undersea warfare became a reality and, along with the development of bomber and fighter aircraft, marked the beginning of the end of battleships.

Dreadnoughts and other huge warships bristling with guns that marked the arms race in Edwardian Europe were sitting ducks to much smaller war machines swooping from the skies or lurking beneath the waves.

Upon the declaration of war in 1914 Britain had around 50 submarines while her allies the French had more than 70. The Imperial German Navy, under Kaiser Wilhelm II, had between 30 and 40 diesel and petrol-powered U-boats.

By the end of the war the UK had 137 submarines in service with another 78 being built, having lost 54 subs during hostilities. The German Navy had more than 170 operational U-boats which were surrendered to the Allies.

In the First World War submarines were slow, fragile and only capable of staying under water for about two hours at a stretch. Early submarines had five or six torpedo tubes and deck-mounted guns, making them also dangerous on the surface.

Around 5,000 ships were sunk during the First World War by U-boats. The most famous was the Cunard liner Lusitania, torpedoed off Ireland in 1915 with the loss of 1,200 lives. There are a number of exhibits from the Lusitania in the Merseyside Maritime Museum exhibition Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress.

The most famous victim of a U-boat was probably British general Lord Kitchener, whose face graced the recruiting poster with the slogan “Your Country Needs You”. He died on a mission to Russia in 1916 when the cruiser HMS Hampshire hit a mine laid by the U-75 off the Orkney Islands.

The Maritime Museum’s display Liverpool: World Gateway has two models of ships linked to submarine warfare in the Great War, as it was also known. One is a superbly-detailed model of the cargo liner Malancha, (shown here) built in 1918 for the Brocklebank Line. It has two quick-firing guns mounted near the ship’s stern as protection against submarines.

The other is the Johnson Line’s cargo liner Barnesmore of 1905. After being sold and renamed Whitehall, she was torpedoed and sunk in the North Atlantic in 1917.

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).

To celebrate the opening of our new Fashion V Sport exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery, I've put together a Flickr gallery of some of the cool and stylish outfits worn by some of our private view guests.

Part of the exhibition examines street style and the variety of styles I saw in one evening was certainly varied and creative. Damian Quinn, the man responsible for the gold topped ‘Onthamike’ trainers from the 'Play' section, was wearing a similar pair on the night from his Supremebeing brand. On the other end of the scale, self-confessed trainer obsessive 'Mookie' told me about her Nike Air Force 1 trainers that she had customised using multi-coloured paint spatters. She had worn them on her Duke of Edinburgh hike, before giving them a new lease of life with her own design! Mookie is a creative apprentice at the moment so who knows, she might be a Footwear Director like Damian one day.

Some of my favourite outfits of the evening included; Olivia's bowler hat, shoe-boot and vintage satchel ensemble and Amina's Camden/Indian mash-up including a sports top, shawl and gold belt. Have a look through the slideshow and pick your favourite fashionistas!

Nope, not a band featuring in The Beat Goes On exhibition but a couple of World Museum Liverpool-related pieces on the Guardian site today.

There's a short video shot in Saqqara, south of Cairo, where archaeologists are excavating ancient Egyptian tombs and unearthing mummies. You can see the video here. 

Also, today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. The Guardian has created a multimedia guide that looks at the social and historical context of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection (I didn't know that Darwin was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln).

We've our own Darwin-related events organised to coincide with Darwin200 - a national programme of events celebrating Charles Darwin’s scientific ideas and their impact on our lives. More on them on our main site.

'Dante and Beatrice' by Henry Holiday

I have long been fascinated by artists’ preoccupations with all aspects of love in works at the Walker Art Gallery. Radio Merseyside asked me to talk about some of my favourites so I took a walk around the gallery with presenter Claire Hamilton for a Valentine's Day feature.

Creative artists often smoulder with passions that spill out on to their canvases or through their chisels. They can choose equally passionate subjects, being drawn to affairs of the heart in all its forms.

I have been intrigued by Henry Holiday's 'Dante and Beatrice' (pictured) since I was a child. My father took great pleasure in telling how he walked over the Santa Trinità Bridge in Florence, seen in the painting. Poet Dante loved Beatrice from afar and it remained a platonic love - he married someone else. Here Beatrice cuts him in the street following some misunderstanding, although her two girl companions look knowingly at Dante who dramatically clutches his heart.  

Over on the other side of the room is Rossetti's famous symbol-strewn picture 'Dante's Dream'. Love leads Dante to Beatrice's death bed. Flowers, depicting purity and virginity, are scattered about - a flickering lamp depicts Death.

Next we are on our way to the Tudors and the era of courtly love but pause at 'The Betrothal' from Rembrandt's studio. This well-dressed couple do not really look very happy. It is a gloomy canvas full of sombre hues - not the ideal engagement present. Perhaps this was an arranged, dynastic marriage. He gazes at her with some semblance of affection, she looks out at us as if to cry 'Help!'

Standing by the massive portrait of 'Henry VIII', we muse on the romantic tastes of this most kingly of kings. Standing at about 6 ft 2 inches, he was hugely successful with the ladies and famously made a habit of getting married. Henry certainly took huge risks in breaking with Rome so he could marry Anne Boleyn before moving on to four other wives. Holbein, who did the original version of this painting, captures the king in his awe-inspiring majesty.

Next to it hangs 'Portrait of a Man of the Delves Family' painted by an unknown British Tudor artist 40 years later. This courtly gentleman in orange tights stands in a Garden of Love holding hands with his late wife (her face symbolically covered with leafy fronds). Armour piled at Delves' feet indicates that not only was he proficient in the art of love and had good legs but he could fight as well.

We end with 'TheTinted Venus' by John Gibson, a flesh-tinted marble goddess denounced by the Victorians as "a naked impudent English woman". Pygmalion-like, Gibson loved his statue so much that he refused to part from it for years.

You may have seen that Google has recently released version 5 of Google Earth. It does lots of good stuff including allowing you to 'see' the ocean floor, wrecks and all. Both the Titanic and the Bismarck can be seen in 3D (the Bismarck is at 48°10′N 16°12′W). You will need to turn on the '3D buildings' layer.  

Detail of a photograph of the Valentine display in the window of Woolworths in London Road, Liverpool, 1937, from the Stewart Bale collection

Last summer Anne Gleave, curator of photographic archives, found a lovely picture in the Stewart Bale collection of the Valentine display in the London Road Woolworths from back in 1937, which she suggested would make a great Valentine e-card. Little did we know at the time that by the time the next Valentines Day came around the retail giant would be no more.

A Woolworths Valentine display e-card is now available on the website - what better way to tell the shopaholic in your life that you love them, or remind a forgetful loved one to get you a card? As you'd expect with a Stewart Bale image, it's packed with detail, so you can zoom into the detail of the Valentine display on a zoomify page.

Of course the full range of Valentine e-cards is still available, with a range of amorous items from our collections including a Beatles bedspread and a romantic shrimp pot as well as the more traditional cards and roses. 

You can see more tales of passion linked to the collections in our Romance online exhibition, although be warned, the path of true love doesn't always run smoothly and there's a sting in the tail (or at least a nasty bite from a kissing bug) of many of the items featured.

Environment can help nurture talent and I think this is particularly true of Liverpool with its amazing architecture and maritime setting.

One of the great vanished buildings of the city was the Custom House (pictured below) which stood partly on the site of the new Liverpool One development. Bombed in the Second World War, this great sandstone pile was cleared in the post war rush to modernity.

Liverpool has always had more than its fair share of talented people who were either born here or settled for various reasons. For centuries Liverpool was little more than a village dominated by a castle. The 1660s and 70s saw big changes as the discovery and settlement of the Americas opened up different overseas markets.

At the same time a new breed of business people started arriving in the town. Some came from London to start again after the devastation caused by the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of the following year. Others were from the local area - all were keen to exploit new opportunities. Soon Liverpool was the fastest-growing port in the country after London, overtaking its local rival Chester in 1699.

Imports of luxuries such as sugar, tobacco, cotton and spices transformed the small fishing village into a thriving port with worldwide links.

Three remarkable watches on display in the Magical History Tour exhibition at Merseyside Maritime Museum illustrate how talented people settled and thrived in Liverpool. Two were made by Thomas Aspinwall around 1607 and 1620 and the third by his son Samuel Aspinwall about 1660. The Aspinwalls were the earliest recorded watchmakers in one of the first centres for the craft outside London.

Liverpool Customs House. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

By the late 19th century Liverpool’s port provided direct employment for 60,000 people – about one-in-five of the male working population. Work on the docks was dangerous and men were recruited on a mainly casual basis. The system offered workers the chance to earn high wages but it also brought uncertainty and poverty. Commercial clerks kept business in Liverpool moving. By 1906 they made an amazing 750,000 entries at the Custom House each year – all delivered by hand.

Other exhibits include the huge metal key to Heywood’s Bank from about 1800. The bank building still stands in Brunswick Street.

Bryant & May’s Lifeboat Matches were among specialist products produced in Liverpool to serve the maritime industry. They were specially produced in watertight Bakelite containers to be included in the emergency kit of ships’ lifeboats.

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).

At the end of February, Earth will receive a visitor named Lulin. This is not an alien, but a comet that astronomers say may have never visited this corner of the solar system before and should be visible to the naked eye. Our resident expert in all things celestial, Planetarium Operator John Moran, is here to tell us how to spot it…

Stars in our eyes: Will you spot Comet Lulin?

From roughly the 16th of the month, not only will we be able to see Comet Lulin with the naked eye but also within two degrees of it you will find the ringed planet Saturn. This should be a beautiful sight through binoculars, all you need to do is find it. Look for the constellation Ursa Major, often called The Plough, which most people are familiar with, then find the two pointers which show us the way to the Pole star. If you follow the pointers in the opposite direction of Polaris and continue until you come to the first big constellation, this will be Leo, identified by the back-to-front question mark. Look down and slightly to the left for the brightest object in this constellation, which at the moment is Saturn, and just below this will be Comet Lulin. As the days pass so the comet will start moving upwards and to the right.
 
Comets originate in a vast region of space which borders our solar system called the Oort Cloud. As they swirl around, some smash into each other and like snooker balls on a table get fired off in a different direction and this starts their long cold journey into our solar system. As they near the sun the ice starts to melt and gas and vapour start streaming out through evaporation; this is how the tail forms, which clearly identifies a comet.

Most Comets that enter our solar system get caught by the gravitational pull of the sun and end up making the same journey back into space. Eventually they come back some time in the future, like the most famous of them all; Halley's Comet, which makes this journey every 76 years. But some comets just fly straight through our system and are never seen again. Comet Lulin looks like it may well be one of these comets.

So if we are fortunate to have clear skies at the end of February, try and catch a glimpse of one of mother nature’s most remarkable phenomena.

Lots more snaps in our Flickr set including this one of the sun on the south window.

The build continues to progress really well. The vertical limestone cladding is nearing completion, the main roof is finished, and the windows are almost all in. Internally, the staircase structure is complete, internal walls are making good progress, and innards like the electrics, plumbing and air handling units are well on their way.

It's all really exciting, and judging by the number of people taking photos of the building (there's just a few of them here in the public Flickr group) lots of people feel the same. If you'd like to add your snaps to the group please do.