National Museums Liverpool Blog - Thursday, August 26, 2010

Ask a Curator day is Wednesday 1 September and curators from all over the world are signing up to take part in this giant Q&A session - taking place on Twitter!

We are joining in and want you to ask our curators questions on either art, slavery or Egyptology, as these are their specialist subjects.

We have three great experts ready to answer you; Egyptologist Ashley Cooke, art curator Laura MacCulloch and curator of transatlantic slavery Angela Robinson.

To ask a question and get your reply, this is what you do:

1. Get yourself a Twitter account by going to Twitter.com

2. On 1 September 'tweet' your question with #askacurator at the end to:
@LivMuseums (Art or Egypt questions)
@slaverymuseum (Slavery questions)

3. Check your Twitter account for our response!

So get thinking and tweet us your questions on 1 September!

During the summer our Volunteer Project Supervisors (Fred & Emma) have been looking after a very large team of volunteers over at World Museum.

Here in their second blog post, Emma fills you in on the some of the handling activities that have been taking place on gallery…

Volunteers and visitors chatting about Ancient Egyptian handling objects.

“August saw the launch of our new Discovery Volunteers Go Wild! and Discovery Volunteers Go Ancient! projects in World Museum, as part of a number of volunteer initiatives across the museum this summer. 

Discovery Volunteers began in summer 2009 and was so successful that it was brought back over Easter 2010. The project has returned again this summer, bigger and better than ever! Originally located in the World Cultures gallery, this time around more than 40 youth volunteers, aged 16-25, have been split between both the World Cultures and the Egypt galleries. The Discovery Volunteers project allows visitors the opportunity to handle objects on gallery and to learn more about them from our volunteers, making their museum visit that bit different. If you are planning a visit to World Museum, why not come along and say hello to the volunteers?

Our youth volunteers had several training sessions before the project was rolled out in the museum at the beginning of August, with sessions ranging from learning about the objects they would be handling to developing their customer care and group working skills. The eager volunteers were then unleashed on to the galleries, and have so far done a great job chatting to visitors about their objects.

Our Go Wild! Volunteers have set themselves up on the World Cultures gallery, with a plethora of objects coming from across the globe for visitors to handle. The snow goggles from the Arctic are a particular favourite with children. There is also a replica of our codex which is a great chance to learn about one of the museum’s star items and to see how it would have been used. The codex is a very rare object, with only around two dozen known to have survived the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica in 1521, when whole libraries full of these books were destroyed. Our handling trolley also has some Japanese Netsukes, made from a surprising alternative to their traditional material, ivory. These figures are carved into a variety of animals and other characters and would have been used in a similar way to a toggle on a kimono.

Meanwhile, our Go Ancient! Volunteers are resident in the Egypt gallery, with a replica of a wall fragment from an ancient temple. The original of this wall fragment can be seen on the gallery, along with a second replica, this time painted as it would have originally appeared in the temple. The volunteers also have a number of related handling objects including the minerals which the Ancient Egyptians used to make paint to decorate their walls. This is a great chance to learn how these objects relate to the perhaps more well-known aspects of Ancient Egypt, such as the burial of the dead. Being the first time that our Discovery Volunteers have been positioned in the Egypt gallery, this is a special chance for visitors to handle objects and learn more about this very popular subject.

The Discovery Volunteers can be found in World Museum from 11am-4pm everyday until the 29th August.”

For more information about volunteering at National Museums Liverpool, please contact the Volunteers team.

You can also find out more about youth volunteering for 16-25 year olds through v, the national young volunteers service.

During the summer our Volunteer Project Supervisors (Fred & Emma) have been looking after a very large team of volunteers over at World Museum.

Here in their first blog post, Fred fills you in on the some of the activities that have been taking place on gallery…

Children and volunteers enjoying craft activities in Plantastic.

"As part of The World Museum Liverpool’s programme of events to celebrate 2010 being the year of biodiversity, a number of arts and crafts activities have been running daily during the Easter and summer holidays. It would have not been possible to run these activities without the efforts of volunteers. Nearly 60 volunteers have committed their time to enable us to teach children and young people the importance of biodiversity and how it creates good habitats for wildlife through a range of interesting and inclusive activities.

On our Savannah gallery, an African waterhole scene has been used as inspiration for a worksheet. Volunteers assist children in colouring in and decorating a picture of a lion hunting a zebra at the waterhole. Alternatively, they are given stencils to draw their own wildlife pictures. Through these activities, the volunteers show children how Savannah and grassland areas are threatened by increasing desertification, caused by poor farming methods reducing the biodiversity of the habitat. This enabled volunteers to link this activity to other areas of the museum such as the Ancient Egypt gallery, where a similar process is thought to have once occurred. When the children complete their drawing and colouring, volunteers help them to display their creations on the wall, or they have the option to take them home as a colourful souvenir of their day out!

Downstairs on the Plantastic Exhibition, volunteers work alongside demonstrators to help children learn about the importance of having a diverse range of insects and flowers to form a habitat. Different boards on the wall signify different types of habitat, such as ponds, woodlands and meadows. Children are helped by volunteers to make 3 dimensional flowers and insects to add to the habitat boards. Whilst helping with the craft work volunteers help children learn about the important role played by insects in pollinating plants, and how different types of plants and shrubs exist in different habitats, linking in to some of the messages that can be learnt through the Plantastic exhibits.

A flower shop display has also been set up. For this, volunteers help teach children how bright colours and patterns on flowers are used to attract pollinators such as bees and insects. It also gives kids a chance to get creative and they have created a really spectacular display!

All these activities are great fun for the kids, helping them create personalised souvenirs of their day out, as well as teaching them about important conservation and ecological issues.

Both sets of activities have been a great success, with volunteers seeing over 400 visitors on some days.

The Volunteers can be found in the Plantastic exhibition on Level 2 and the Savannah area on Level 4 every day until Sunday 5th September, from 11am until 4pm."

If you are interested in volunteering, please contact the volunteer team to find out more.

I popped along to the last session with my trusty Rubik's cube, which conservator David Crombie x-rayed from a couple of different angles in order to reveal the clever way that the pieces are held together but can still be moved round into all sorts of colourful combinations.

While I was there lots of other visitors brought toys, watches, games and even a couple of shoes into the lab to be x-rayed. You can see what these objects look like inside and out in our X-rayed toys set on Flickr. The set also includes photos showing the x-ray machine itself, the digital x-ray plate that stores changes in energy from the x-ray process, and the reader that uses a laser to convert these changes in energy into a digital image.

Of course David and the other conservators don't just use this equipment to examine toys, as it all serves a serious purpose in their work at National Museums Liverpool. X-ray images are just one of the methods that conservators use to examine objects in the collection without damaging them. A good example is this painting of 'St Michael and the Dragon' from the Lady Lever Art Gallery. An x-ray of the painting revealed lots of information about the panel it was painted on, including an unexpected former use.

So what secrets lie beneath the surface of your toys? Bring them to the lab tomorrow to find out.

Greek legend says that King Midas tied a cart to a post with an intricate knot. An oracle foretold that whoever untied the knot would become King of Asia.

Years passed and the knot remained untied until 333 BC when Alexander the Great tried to unravel it. His solution was to cut the knot in half with his sword.  

The prophesy was fulfilled when he went on to conquer Persia. I suspect the knots mentioned below would have been easier for Alexander to untie.

Seafarers in the days of sail literally had to know the ropes – but knots were equally important. Ships could have 25 or more sails which harnessed the power of the wind with the aid of ropes and knots forming the rigging.

Large varieties of knots evolved over the centuries as vessels became more and more sophisticated. The knots had to be able to withstand the stresses and strains created by all types of weather and wind strengths.

The names of knots evoke the romantic era of sailing ships. Some, such as slip and reef knots, are still familiar and in common use. Less well-known are cat’s paw, crabber’s eye, Turk’s head, sheepshank, halliard hitch, carrick bend and granny knots.

Reef and bowline knots were probably the most important methods of tying ropes while the others were useful in certain applications.

Today there is great interest in knots, how they are created and their history. Basic knots can be learnt by practice which makes it easier to interpret diagrams and pictures illustrating more complex creations.

Learning how to tie knots, which requires patience and dexterity, reveals patterns in their structures and tying methods.

Complex knots can be changed and rearranged usually by pulling on rope ends in certain ways – this is called spilling or capsizing. For example, the carrick bend is usually tied in one form then capsized to make it stronger.

The invention of wire rope in the 1830s brought a strong competitor to traditional hemp rope. Wire ropes had clips and shackles rather than knots.

A spin-off from the mariner’s knowledge of rigging was decorative rope work. A number of examples are on display in Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Life at Sea gallery.

A hand-worked pochette is a particularly fine example dating from 1930. It was made from cotton twine by retired Captain Eckford  when he was a passenger on a voyage.

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).

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...

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.

David and Charlotte checking out some of the paintings at the Walker.

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:

 Big Plane by Han Feng

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.

The Lewis's murals featured images of cutlery. (c) Stephen King

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.