National Museums Liverpool Blog - Friday, August 20, 2010

Readers of Dan Brown, famous for the blockbuster novel and movie, 'The Da Vinci Code', will know that his most recent art linked tale, 'The Lost Symbol' delves into the hidden world of Masonic secrets and legends.

I was intrigued to hear that secret messages and symbols in Albrecht Dürer’s 'Melancholia I' play a key role in the elaborate plot which sees Robert Langdon decipher a number of clues. The intricate engraving is currently on show at the Lady Lever Art Gallery as part of the Dürer & Italy exhibition.

Langdon and his comrade Katherine Solomon examine the composition carefully, making particular note of its ‘magic square’. Using the numbers as the key to a hidden code, they go on to interpret the letters on a Masonic pyramid. I won’t say too much more as I don’t want to spoil the plot. However, a trip to the Lady Lever Art Gallery would be well worth the effort for any Dan Brown fan (not only because of the Dürer & Italy exhibition which runs until Sunday 26 September 2010), but because Lord Leverhulme was himself involved with freemasonry and there are many Masonic items in our collections.

However, if you can’t make it to the gallery and want to have a go at deciphering the clues in the Dürer etching you can take a closer look at it by using our ‘zoomify’ feature.

To celebrate the occasion we have 4 paperback copies of 'The Lost Symbol' to give away and one audio CD in an online draw. To enter just answer the following question:

In Dan Brown’s, The Lost Symbol, Langdon examines the ‘magic square’ in Dürer’s Melancholia I. What number do each of the rows, columns, diagonals, quadrants, the centre-squares and four corners each ‘magically’ add up to?

Update: The answer is, of course, 34! The exhibition finishes this coming Sunday 26 September, so it's the last chance to go and see this amazing artwork at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Congratulations to competition winners Steven Green, Arthur Adam, Alison Eden and Angie Irwin who all win a copy of the Dan Brown paperback. The CD goes to Joe Leather.

Last month the 'Mapping Memory: L1 and Liverpool's central waterfront' project began with its first workshop, kindly attended by the Liverpool Women's History Group. The aim of the project is to explore memories of the L1 area during the 1950s, 60s and 70s and the Women's History Group certainly provided an abundance of lively and interesting memories and stories for our researchers to collect.

The workshop started by asking the ladies to trace a particular route they would take through the L1 and central waterfront area, revealing a clustering around places such as Lord Street, Paradise Street and London Road. As the session progressed an array of collective memories showed how women used urban space during the twentieth century and the areas of the city which have created the most powerful and resilient memories over the years.

With numerous workshops scheduled over the coming months we are eager to get in contact with as many people as possible who may have lived, worked or socialised in the L1 area. So if you fit the bill, please get in contact with me (Laura Balderstone) on 0151 794 2416 or email L.Balderstone@Liverpool.ac.uk and share your memories! For more information on the project itself check out the Mapping Memory web page.

The project is a collaboration between NML, Liverpool University and Re-Dock. We're grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding it as part of their Beyond Text Programme. 

Here's Marketing Officer, Andrew Winder, to tell us about an interesting visitor to the Walker Art Gallery recently...

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I joined artist David Hoyle last week on a walk-around of the Walker in preparation for his event there in November. Curator of Fine Art at the Walker, Charlotte Keenan accompanied us along with Kenn Taylor from Communities, Visitor Host, Emma Devlin and Gary Everett, Director of Liverpool’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender arts festival, Homotopia.

David’s event at the Walker, on Sunday 7 November, will form part of this year’s Homotopia festival, which runs from 1 – 25 November. He was enthralled by the two Lowry paintings currently on display, proclaiming that the artist is as important as Picasso. Sadly, they won’t form part of David’s tour as they’ll temporarily be replaced with other artworks. Look out for more information on the event here or on Homotopia’s website coming soon.

 

We are exactly 31 days off announcing the winner of the John Moores Painting Prize 2010. We are seriously excited about it, so I can only imagine how the shortlisted artists must be feeling right now.

To keep us all going here is the winner for the parallel competition running in Shanghai:

The very first John Moores Painting Prize China 2010 was won by the artist Han Feng with this lovely monochromatic painting, Big Plane (acrylic on canvas, 200 x 150 cm). The four runners up are: Zou Tao, Zhang Wei, Li Weizhou and Zhang Zhenxue.

All five prizewinning artists’ work will be shown alongside the UK paintings in the exhibition which opens at the Walker Art Gallery on 18 September 2010, as part of the Liverpool Biennial.

For those who want to be amongst the first to know who the UK winners are next month you can watch the live announcement in the evening of 16 September here.

The well-loved icon of Liverpool department stores Lewis’s, sadly closed its doors for the last time at the end of May. Prior to that for around the last 30 years the store was mainly recognised for its shopping culture, but until the early 1980s it was much more than a place where you might buy a dress or new handbag.

Before the 80s the store also offered three restaurants and what was at one time the world’s largest hair salon on the fifth floor, until it was closed to the public in the 80s and used as a storage floor ever since.

Many remember the fifth floor, which included some fantastic examples of 1950s interior design, aimed at injecting vibrancy into the post-war years that saw Liverpool’s population along with the rest of the UK, emerging from destruction and deprivation.

The fifth floor flaunted bright colours and light, featuring a Grade II listed unique hand-painted ceramic tiled mural in the cafeteria which once seated 600 people. Created by Carter’s of Poole, the 65 metre-long mural was inspired by a mural at the 1951 Festival of Britain, which celebrated the best of British design. The Lewis’s mural features condiments, utensils, vegetables and cutlery.

On Wednesday 18 August at 1pm, visitors to the National Conservation Centre will be treated to a free talk by Lynn Pearson from the Tiles and Architectural Ceramics Society in conjunction with the Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Story exhibition. Lynn will speak about the forgotten murals of the 1950s and 60s, including those at Lewis’s which are now to be incorporated into the redevelopment of the building. This is a drop-in event and there’s no need to book.
 
The first solo exhibition by Liverpool photographer Stephen King reflects his visits to Lewis’s ‘lost’ fifth floor, closed to the public for the last three decades. Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Story is on display at the National Conservation Centre until 30 August 2010.

It seems to me that things are always getting bigger and bigger – sprawling supermarkets, huge cars, massive motorways and, of course, enormous ships.

Every time I look over the Mersey the cargo vessels seem to grow, dwarfing smaller craft such as the ferries. It came as rather a surprise to learn just how long this trend has been developing.

The first bulk carrier ship was the British coast carrier John Bowes in 1852 – she had a steam engine, metal hull and seawater for ballast.

However, it took about 100 years for bulk carriers to come into their own, following the Second World War. They are now a common feature of the maritime world.

International bulk trade expanded among industrialised nations after the Allied victories of 1945. There was a feeling that old scores should be forgotten and the expansion in bulk trading coincided with the growth of the Common Market (EU).

The focus was on European countries, the United States and its former enemy Japan.

Typical of modern bulk carriers was the Wanderer of 1973, depicted in an outstanding model (pictured) on display in Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Life at Sea gallery.

Wanderer was one of three bulk carriers built for the Harrison Line in Japan. Like her sisters, Wayfarer and Warrior, she had six holds and could load and unload her own cargo using five eight-ton capacity deck cranes.

These vessels enabled Harrisons to expand their business into bulk dry cargoes such as iron ore, grain, sugar, fertilisers, scrap iron, sulphur, coal and wood. The 27,135-ton Wanderer was hired out either by the voyage (spot charter) or for a fixed period (time charter) and traded worldwide.

Harrison’s sold the Wanderer in 1987 to a Panamanian company and she was later renamed Ocean Spirit.

The model has superb details from the intricacy of the cranes to the tiny hull markings including the Plimsoll Line, a legal requirement to stop overloading.

Pictures on display include stevedores (dockers) loading general cargo into the hold of a bulk carrier for export to West Africa in 1977.

Bales of Nigerian cotton are seen on a pallet in Liverpool docks about 1970. Even after the development of containers, many goods were still packed using traditional methods.

Bulk carriers today make up 40 per cent of the world’s merchant fleets. They can range from single hold bulkers to huge ore ships capable of carrying an astonishing 365,000 metric tons deadweight.

Try your hand as a stevedore in Liverpool's historic docks in the new online game Cargo-a-go-go.

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 p&p UK).

Here is the Senior Education Manager for all our art galleries, Nicky Fawcett, to tell us about some of the important community work that goes on at Sudley House...

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Sudley House has been providing a safe and welcoming setting for a range of people dealing with mental health issues for a while now. We have developed an ongoing partnership with Mersey Care NHS Trust and every year they use our Learning Suite to deliver a series of art projects for those who use their services. Two of the facilitators of the group are Sue Williams and Steve Rooney - from TAG (The Artists Group). We also worked with them on an exhibition called 'unfolding' in 2008. This featured amazing paper sculptures inspired by their work with former patients of the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Centre at Mossley Hill Hospital.

Our Visitor Services staff at Sudley House do a great job in supporting the group and we always aim to exhibit the work produced. Last week we held an event to celebrate a mini costume display that you can see in the picture above. Ralph Killey was part of this group and spoke passionately about how much the project had helped him. He wrote a fantastic poem, which I'd like to share with you, below. Ralph also has a slot reading his work on the Linda Mac show on Radio Merseyside every month. 
 
Our Painting Session. Where’s my Depression?

There’s a palace that’s called Sudley House , A monument really supreme.
It was built by, The Holts. Who had hundreds of boats.
And this family created a dream.

The, art-work is really sublime. All of this beauty was theirs.
Then on the first floor, there’s a little white door,
behind which, some magic occurs. 

An Art Course is run for disabled. We are people with mental ills.
We’ve been anxious, depressed and by devils possessed,
and we’ve taken the potions and pills.

Sue and Steve, manage the project, their techniques and skill they impart.
They find out what you, have an aptitude to.
Then they help you, express this as Art.

The patients in there are all loving.. We’ve all suffered similar pain.
And Stephen and Sue, know just what to do.
To help people whose brain’s ‘Down the Drain’.

But joking aside, it’s fantastic, feels so natural when we’re all together.
And when the Course ends. We will all be good friends.
But I wish it could go on forever.

By Ralph (The Writer) Killey.

I can’t believe a whole year has gone by already and Slavery Remembrance Day Festival is here again. This is only my second year of it but if last year was anything to go by I’m sure this year will be equally inspirational and moving.

Last year civil rights campaigner Diane Nash gave a beautiful speech about her role in the civil rights movement. This year on Friday 20 August 2010 cricketer Henry Olonga will be talking about his incredible story, which is one of accomplishment and resistance.

Not only was Henry the first Black cricketer to represent Zimbabwe at international level but he also publicly protested against Robert Mugabe’s government. In 2003 he wore a black armband in a Cricket World Cup in protest against Mugabe’s Zimbabwe government. This act led to a warrant for his arrest on charges of treason (which carries the death penalty in Zimbabwe), forcing him to retire from international cricket and temporarily to go into hiding.

Not only will people get to hear his amazing story but on Monday 23 August 2010 people can take part in some thought-provoking and entertaining activities for Slavery Remembrance Day. As well as celebrating  Black culture and heritage there will be a traditional African Libation ceremony that remembers enslaved Africans and calls on ancestors to bless the event.

To find out more about Slavery Remembrance Day click here

 

Our Name the Meerkat competition is now closed and the team at World Museum have chosen a winner! We had some great names suggested - Florence, Meercartney, Scrunchie - but the name that really stood out as being the team's favourite was Yoko, suggested by Charlotte Kenny, who came to World Museum on Saturday 7 August with her family to collect her prizes. Congratulations Charlotte!

Competition winner Charlotte with Yoko and her family at World Museum

Charlotte won a goody bag of meerkat treats, presented to her by Stephen Rowlands from Tropical Inc, the owners of Yoko and lots of other exotic animals who visit World Museum. Check out the other names suggested on the World Museum Facebook page.

If you love wildlife there are lots of Wild Wild World events on at World Museum as part of the International Year of Biodiversity, and the fab exhibition Plantastic! is on until 5 September - find out about the amazing world of plants whatever the weather outside!

This bracelet may look like a beautiful piece of jewellery but the story behind it is much less attractive. Curator of transatlantic slavery Rebecca Watkin explains:

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"The International Slavery Museum team have recently displayed two ankle bracelets which have been donated by Anti-Slavery International. One of the ankle bracelets was ‘worn’ by a young girl in Niger who was subjected to a form of descent based slavery.

Descent based slavery occurs in some countries where people are either born into or are from a group that society views as suited for being used as slave labour. People from this group are not allowed to own land or inherit property and denied an education, a status which is carried from one generation to the next.

The bracelets represent the importance of the museum’s work in developing its collections in this area and campaigning on the issue. The team felt it was important to display the ankle bracelets with the personal stories, which really challenge the visitor who believes slavery to be an issue of the past and not of the present.

The bracelets are displayed in a new display case in the Legacies gallery which was acquired several months ago to showcase the museum’s new collections.

You can see more recent acquisitions, most of which are not yet on display, on the International Slavery Museum's website."