National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, January 24, 2011

Judges from the 2006 John Moores, including Sir Peter Blake, look over the slide entries of that year

Sir Pete Blake has had a long and incredibly successful career,  but at the grand age of 78 he confirmed in today’s news that his proudest moment was not the iconic design of The Beatles' 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' album cover, but is actually still his win of the junior John Moores prize.

Blake won the competition with his entry 'Self-portrait with Badges', now in the Tate collection, while a young tutor at St. Martin's College in 1961.

He returned to the prize as a judge along with Tracey Emin, Jason Brooks, Andrea Rose and Ann Bukantas in 2006. 

The John Moores Painting Prize continues to go from strength to strength and this year attracted a record number of visitors to the Walker Art Gallery: 51,555. Our most popular John Moores exhibition to date!

Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.

Sibling rivalry can cause great competitive energy but I’m more concerned about how relatives work together to do great things.

One prominent family that springs to mind are the Holts – several Liverpool brothers who helped transform shipping. The Booker brothers are another shining example.

These three sons of a Lancashire miller ran a sugar plantation in South America and set up their own shipping company which prospered and became Booker Brothers, McConnell & Co.

Josias Booker had emigrated in 1815 to Demerara (now Guyana) as one of the first British settlers. Booker Brothers was formed after he was joined by brothers George and Richard.

Following a dispute with Liverpool shipowners, they founded what later became the Booker Line in 1835 to carry raw sugar from their plantations. Its first ship was a Scottish brig called Elizabeth.

The company bought and sold many vessels including the early vessels Lord Elgin, John Horrocks and Palmyra.  

The company ran regular cargo services between Britain, the eastern Caribbean and British Guiana (Guyana) until the 1980s.

John McConnell started working as a clerk for the brothers in Demerara in 1846. He was successful and branched out in 1874 by founding his own shipping line John McConnell & Co.

The two companies merged in 1900 and became known as Booker Brothers, McConnell & Co with offices in The Albany, Liverpool city centre. The company became Booker Line.

In Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Liverpool: world gateway gallery there is a small 1:96 scale exhibition model of the Booker Line’s Amakura of 1949. Amakura is an Arawak name for a river in Guyana.

The passenger and cargo steamer was built by Smith’s Dock Company of Middlesborough, sailing on the Booker Line’s services out of Liverpool. The model has finely-detailed rigging and Amakura Liverpool emblazoned across the stern (pictured).

The company’s last vessels were the Booker Crusade, Challenge, Courage, Voyager and Vulcan.

Smith’s Dock Co, founded in 1810 as William Smith & Co, opened its Middlesborough yard in 1907. The company merged with Swan Hunter in 1966 and the yard closed in 1987.  

Josias Booker, who died in 1865, owned land in Allerton, Liverpool, where Booker Avenue is named after him.

The Booker Prize, awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, was named after the Booker-McConnell company which originally sponsored the award in 1968.

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 or bookshops.

**24 January: Unfortunately, this talk has been cancelled.**

Next week on Monday 24 January Dr. Franca Dellarosa will be giving a lecture at the Anthony Walker Education Centre at the International Slavery Museum.

Starting at 5.30pm her talk Rebellious Poetics:  Slavery, Oppression and Agency in Edward Rushton’s Writings (1787-1814) will discuss the Liverpool writer Edward Rushton.

Although not well know today, his reputation as a lifelong committed champion of human rights made him famous at the time. In 1797 he wrote a critical paper about George Washington for his failure to extend freedom to the enslaved in North America.

Dr. Franca Dellarosa will explore the global terms of Rushton’s civil and political commitment. She will also discuss his use of powerful language in his Expostulatory Letter to George Washington in relation to Liverpool as a slaving port and in the light of developing radical discussion.

The lecture is hosted jointly by the Eighteenth Century Worlds Research Centre and the Centre for the Study of International Slavery at the International Slavery Museum.

Hear Dr. Franca Dellarosa speak at the International Slavery Museum

Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Many years ago I splashed out and bought some expensive copper-plated saucepans which are still used regularly. I’m told these are the best because the copper distributes the heat evenly – an important factor even with a meat and two veg man like me.

A lot of people swear by copper for all sorts of things, including warding off the effects of arthritis and other aches and pains. However, it was in the seafaring world that the metal took on almost magical qualities and literally speeded up progress.

Until the middle of the 18th century wooden ships fell foul of barnacles and other sea life infesting the hulls, delaying voyages and making the vessels difficult to manoeuvre. Huge clusters of hard, heavy barnacles would cling to the undersides of ships which had to be regularly put into dry dock or beached so the growths could be removed. Marine worms were another hazard as they burrowed into ship’s timbers, creating leaks and encouraging rot.

Speed was increasingly important as Britain’s empire and trade expanded. Anything attached to a ship’s hull caused excessive drag.

It was discovered that sea creatures could not settle on copper and more ships began to sheath their hulls in the metal. It was first used by the Royal Navy in 1761 and over the next 20 years became regular practice. At first iron nails were used but became corroded by the copper, resulting in loss of sheathing. Copper nails were expensive but solved the problem.  

There are examples of original copper sheathing on display at the Merseyside Maritime Museum including a small section from the Black Ball Line ship Lightning.

Another display also features copper recovered from the hulk of the Jhelum. She was built in Liverpool by Joseph Steel & Son in 1849. By the standards of the day she was rather old-fashioned with bluff bows and a box-like hull. In 1870, overloaded and leaking following a passage around Cape Horn, she put into Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands where her hulk can still be seen.

Other items on display include iron and copper nails and a wooden treenail recovered during an expedition to the hulk by museum staff in 1987. There is a small 1:144 scale exhibition model of the Jhelum (pictured).

The phrase copper bottomed, meaning genuine or trustworthy, developed following the successful use of the metal. It was first used to describe ships but soon entered everyday language.

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 and bookshops.

Our Newsletter Volunteers and mentor; planning their first edition of 'Volunteers In Print'

Since October 2010, a small group of youth volunteers have been meeting weekly to help put together the first National Museums Liverpool volunteer newsletter.

They each took on different roles; carrying out interviews, reviewing exhibitions and putting together stories that would feature in the newsletter.

The group also worked alongside Michelle Fiddler, a journalist from the Liverpool Echo who has helped mentor the volunteers throughout the project; sharing her background and experiences with them.

We hope to have the first edition of our newsletter out very soon and we can exclusively reveal its title will be ‘Volunteers In Print’. There will be lots of stories and opportunities to publicise what our brilliant volunteers get up to both front of house and behind the scenes, so it should hopefully make for a fun and informative read!

The Volunteers Team are always looking for volunteer stories to publish on the blog and also now within forthcoming newsletters, so if you volunteer with us and wish to publicise what you get up to whilst volunteering – please give us a shout.

And finally, big thanks to our newsletter volunteers: Ashley, Charlotte, Emily, Hannah, Hasan, Roz and Stephen for their time and creative journalistic skills.

If you wish to find out more about volunteering at National Museums Liverpool, please contact the Volunteer Team.

You can also find out more about Youth Volunteering on the vinspired website or the volunteering section on our website.

Image of civil rights activist Ella Baker, courtesy of the The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

On Monday Vikky Evans-Hubbard from the International Slavery Museum is giving what promises to be a fascinating free talk about some of the heroines of the civil rights movement. She told me why this is such an important subject:

But what do we know about the women that worked alongside them?

Rosa Parks' act of defiance sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and laid the platform for the then young and inexperienced Dr King to rise to prominence. Parks was actually a civil rights activist of many years standing, when she refused to give up her seat, and had been a guide a mentor to Luther King during that time. Though hailed as the great civil rights heroine she undoubtedly is, Parks was not allowed to speak at the March on Washington in 1964, she was merely told "You have done enough".

In fact there was no female speaker on that momentous day (the entertainer Josephine Baker said a few words) though there were many powerful women working in the movement who could have spoken. It is apparent that female members of the civil rights movement had not just the evil of racism and segregation to contend with, but sexism as well, often from Brothers within the movement. Women were expected to step aside and let a few charismatic male leaders do the talking and be the public face of their hard work and dedication.

This Monday, 17 January, is Martin Luther King Day. At 2pm in the Campaign Zone, the talk 'Not just Rosa Parks' focuses on three heroines of the civil rights movement who you may not have heard of and definitely haven't heard enough about; Septima Clark, Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer.

These women worked tirelessly to make landmark strides in their areas of activism: equality of education, creation of the SNCC (protest group for students/young people) and voter registration rights. Their vital contributions to the movement remain largely unknown, (though Mrs Hamer has a place on the International Slavery Museum's Black Achievers Wall!) but cannot be underestimated. Landmark victories of the movement at this time would not have been won without their selfless work and dedication given, in the case of Fannie Lou Hamer, at immense personal cost.

Come along to the Campaign Zone on Monday and find out more...

Behind every successful man, there is a strong woman!"

While Australia is currently suffering terrible hardships brought about by flooding, for many it was and remains a land of promise and opportunity.  This image is taken from a newspaper article from 1852 explaining the Government funded emigration system that provided assisted passage for those wanting to start a new life in the Colonies. The drawing was highlighting the space available on an emigrant vessel and the physical separation between single men and single women, located safely away from each other at either end of the ship.  Unfortunately the ship in question, the Bourneuf, did not have a successful voyage and by the time it arrived in Australia after leaving Liverpool in May 1852, 88 of the 830 passengers had died, mainly from diseases caused by poor sanitation. The ensuing enquiry banned the vessel from carrying emigrants until improvements were made, but the vessel was wrecked anyway on its next voyage from Melbourne to Bombay on the Great Detached Reef just off the Northern Australian coast. The enquiry report also stated that although the unmarried female passengers had been protected from the unmarried male passengers, they had not be able to prevent contact and fraternisation with the crew.  So, all in all, not the most successful vessel that has sailed on the high seas.

I love the smell of fresh paint, plus we are re-decorating at home and I need some inspiration for colours, so I popped up to the temporary exhibition space in the Walker Art Gallery this morning.

Temporary exhibition space in the Walker Art Gallery gets re-decorated ahead of exciting year of new exhibitions.

As sad as it was to see the popular John Moores Painting Prize exhibition come to an end last week, when one door closes another one opens and the Walker has a fantastic exhibition programme for next year.

Kicking off the year is 'A Collector's Eye: Cranach to Pissarro' which as its name suggests is an exhibition bursting with old masters. An exhibition so rich in artistic superstars requires an appropriate backdrop which is what our designers have gone for with this sumptuous green.

I think it would look just lovely in my dining room!

FELA! is a new musical that is taking the world by storm! Here is our Education Manager, Vikky Evans-Hubbard, from the International Slavery Museum to tell us more about it...

While in London recently I was lucky enough to see the London Production of FELA! at the Royal National Theatre. The musical, produced by Jay-Z and Will and Jada Smith, tells the story of Afrobeat pioneer and political activist Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.
 
Born into a middle class Nigerian family in 1938,  a cousin of writer Wole Soyinka, who was later to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, his mother was a well renowned political activist in the anti-colonial movement, and he was exposed to political ideas at an early age.
 
His belief that art should be political meant that inevitably his music carried strong messages. His influences included the Black Power Movement, discovered while in the United States, this led him to change his middle name to Anikulapo (meaning "he who carries death in his pouch"), stating that his original middle name of Ransome was a slave name.
 
Fela's music, 'Afrobeat' is a fusion of Yoruba rhythms, Highlife, Jazz, Funk, chanted vocals and call and response. It became hugely popular in Nigeria and across the continent in general. He sang in pidgin English, so that his music could be enjoyed and understood by individuals all over Africa where the local languages spoken are many and diverse.The music desk in the Legacy gallery at the International Slavery Museum.

He had a strong belief that Nigerians should hold onto their cultural identify as Africans and not blindly adopt European standards and ways of living and look upon all things African as wrong or inferior. He formed the Kalakuta Republic, a commune and recording studio, which was home to many of his followers and those connected to the band and his nightclub the Afrika Shrine. He later declared it independent from the state of Nigeria.
 
In 1977 Fela and his band, 'Afrika '70', released the album Zombie, to describe the zombie like the methods of the Nigerian Military. The album infuriated the government, Kalakuta Republic was viciously attacked and one thousand soldiers were ordered to attack the commune. Fela was severely beaten, and his elderly mother was thrown from a window, causing fatal injuries. Never defeated, Fela reacted by writing 'Coffin for the Head of State' which tells of how he brought the coffin containing his dead mother, to the door of the Nigerian Head of State in Protest. He later put himself forward as a presidential candidate, but his candidature was refused.
 
Now, Liverpool audiences will have the chance to see scenes from this man's incredible life on stage, as the London production is broadcast via live link, at Fact, on Thursday 13th January at 6.45pm.
 
In the meantime you can hear examples of Fela's amazing music in the Legacy gallery at the International Slavery Museum.

It seems that everyone is going stargazing crazy at the moment and as we're passionate about the night sky, we're joining in! Here's one of our planetarium demonstrators, John Moran, to tell us about a special stargazing evening at the museum this week...

Staff at the museum getting the telescopes ready!

To coincide with the BBC’s Stargazing Live, which runs from the 3-16 January, myself and the rest of the planetarium staff at World Museum will be hosting a stargazing night on Thursday 13 January from 4.30 to 6.30pm . We will be setting up a number of telescopes and binoculars on the fifth floor of the museum so our visitors can get a closer look at the night sky.  See the 'gas giant' Jupiter and its four main planet-sized moons and the craters of our own moon up close and in sharp focus. 

As well as stargazing we will have extra planetarium shows to give you a heads up on what you can see in the winter night sky right now. There will be craft activities and games for our younger visitors and of course our planetarium staff will be on hand to answer any of your questions about all things astronomical. 
  
So if you’ve got a few hours to spare on Thursday, come along for an out of this world experience!