National Museums Liverpool Blog - Friday, March 02, 2012

Michael Parkinson's Billy Fury show is at the Floral Pavilion in New Brighton for one night only on Sunday 1 April 2012.

We have five pairs of tickets up for grabs so all you need to do is answer this question: Whose favourite hat is next to Billy Fury's first guitar in the Liverpool Sound music exhibition in the Wondrous Place gallery of the Museum of Liverpool?

The Billy Fury statue close to the Museum of Liverpool on the city's waterfront

Email your answer, using this contact form.

Competition closes Sunday 25 March 2012.

Tickets are £12-50 and on sale at the Floral Pavilion's Box office or telephone 0151 666 0000 or via the Floral Pavillion website.

Good luck!

The BBC visited the Titanic, Lusitania and Forgotten Empress gallery at the Merseyside Maritime Museum this week and interviewed Ian Murphy, curator of Maritime History and Deputy Director of the Merseyside Maritime Museum. They were filming the Harland & Wolff builders’ model of Titanic which is a permanent feature of the gallery.

This year is an important one for Titanic which sank 100 years ago in April 1912. This unique six metre long model was built between 1910-11and has a very interesting history. The model was altered many times over the years by Harland & Wolff and it has represented all White Star Olympic Class liners: - Olympic, Titanic and Britannic.

It was first constructed to represent Olympic and Titanic. After Titanic sank in 1912 the model was altered and extra life boats were added when it represented Britannic. Sadly Britannic hit a mine in 1916 and sank during the First World War. The model was then changed again to represent Olympic.

Look out for the Titanic model on the BBC news in April. The new exhibition Titanic and Liverpool: The untold story opens 30th March 2012.

Bye for now.

A picture of Grace Brown taken in September 2011 © Lee Karen Stow

It is with great sadness that I tell you that Grace Brown, the head of the Sierra Leone women’s boxing team has passed away. She was 43.

Grace is featured in the exhibition ‘42’ Women of Sierra Leone at the International Slavery Museum, a display of work by photojournalist Lee Karen Stow. The exhibition documents the lives of women living in West Africa where women’s life expectancy is in the mid 40s.

Despite the obstacles, Grace and her female boxers had a dream of reaching London 2012 when, for the first time in the history of the Olympic Games, the ban on women's amateur boxing will be lifted.

Sadly, and frustratingly, a lack of in-country sponsorship and support meant the women were not able to try for the early qualifying rounds in order to have a decent chance of reaching the Olympics.

At the same time, Grace fell seriously ill. She underwent a mastectomy and suffered a stroke. She became housebound, unable to train and box, and relied on the power of prayer to ease the pain.

In September 2011, Grace allowed Lee to photograph her, at her home, surrounded by her team mates (picture above). She raised a defiant fist and said quietly 'Gold', determined for her team one day to reach the Olympics and bring home the Gold medal.

Richard Benjamin, head of the International Slavery Museum says:

“I was deeply saddened to hear that Grace Brown, head of the Sierra Leone women's boxing team, who is featured in our current 42 exhibition, has passed away at the age of 43. 
 
“This poignant exhibition shows that even though life expectancy for women in Sierra Leone is in the mid-40s - the spirit, achievements and indeed hope of many women shine through on a daily basis.   Grace was one such woman and our thoughts go out to her friends and family."

Lee’s aim for the exhibition is to show that these women, and women in similar circumstances, should be given the right to live, not die and follow their dreams and ambitions without being held back.

In response to Grace’s death Lee raises the question:

“How many talented and committed athletes are being ignored and not given the chance to pursue their dreams, purely because of their circumstances and geographical locations?”.

To see more pictures of Grace click here and to find out more about the exhibition click here.  

Here's one of our Education Demonstrators, Angelica Vanasse, to tell us about some of the fun family events that have been happening at Sudley House...

A Noah's Ark wall mural made during the event.

Sudley House came alive with children and families and toys galore on last month with our 'Toy Stories' event.  Members of the education, communities and visitors teams from the Walker Art Gallery and Sudley House were on hand to deliver a fantastic range of toy-tastic activities inspired by the Victorian toys in the Sudley House collection.  

We made a Noah’s Ark wall mural (the only toy that Victorian children could play with on a Sunday) with creatures great and small, along with peg dolls and colourful spinning tops.  We also had some larger-than-life games to play with (Connect Four, anyone?) and plenty of toy-rific tales being told by our storyteller in residence, Ros. Later, everyone went on the lookout for runaway toys during a delightfully interactive toy hunt.  

The huge dining room table downstairs was laid out for colouring and was quite a grand setting for getting creative! We saw lots of families come in on the day and get involved and everyone left with a crafty little collection of handmade toys.  Thanks to all who attended and helped to make this day such a great success! 

For info on other upcoming events be sure to check our what's on listings.

Roger McGough in the workshop with some of the doors for the exhibition

The exhibition opens at 10am today and there is a special gallery talk by Mark Cockram at 2pm.

There will also be a special Private View at the Museum of Liverpool to celebrate the opening on the evening of Thursday 1 March and we have five pairs of tickets to give away. To be in with a chance of winning, just fill in your details on this contact form and send it to us by the closing date – Wednesday 29 February at 12noon.

Ben Sheeran, our head chef, shares this scrumptious recipe for moist low-fat chocolate cloud cake. Hmm! 

Chocolate cloud cake

Ingredients

Equipment

Method

Here's John Moran, Education Demonstrator at the Planetarium, to tell us what to look out for in the night sky this month.

Orion - image courtesy of NASA.

If that’s not enough, then later on we have the appearance of the ringed beauty Saturn which follows behind Mars in the west a few hours later. Me and a few colleagues went up on the fifth floor balcony of the of the museum on Friday 3 February and everything looked perfect. I set up two telescopes to view all of these planets and as soon as I started getting lined up on Venus, the clouds came along and just blanketed everything out! 

But we hung around for an hour and a half and got small breaks in the clouds every now and then. We got to see the Galilean moons of Jupiter and Venus at two thirds crescent. But I’ve got to say the star of the show was the often overlooked moon; the craters looked spectacular through the six-inch Newtonian telescope we had, with interchangeable eye pieces. 

As always I’ve been making the most of the constellation Orion. There is a night times worth of celestial gems in this one region and you are never disappointed. The Orion nebula always makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck when I think of the countless Proto-planetary nebulae that are forming here. These are solar systems like our own that are in the process of forming. 

Imagine it, there could be some bloke just like me somewhere in the Orion nebula right now writing a blog, looking into the night sky in our direction and wondering what we look like. If that doesn’t fire your imagination then nothing will. 

Ship model before and after treatment

You may remember in my last post that I had taken a model in great need of conservation to the Lady Lever Art Gallery for demonstration purposes. The model had several snapped yards and masts, and missing blocks. Many people remarked on the blackness of the thick dirt, and how complicated the broken and twisted rigging was, and were interested to know how I would go about treating the model. As the treatment of the model has now been completed, I would like to share some of the treatment processes.

The first challenge was to carefully clean the model. This was more difficult than usual as the model had many small crevices and great care had to be taken to avoid the already damaged rigging. This was undertaken using small cotton wool swabs. Once the model was cleaned to an appropriate level I could then begin the very difficult process of untangling the threads of the rigging, and working out where each broken or missing rope needed to go. Fortunately I have learnt the arrangements and purposes of rigging and so it was not as complicated as it first appeared. Once the spars and yard arms had been re-joined (using wood pins and adhesive), the rigging could be repaired.  Where possible, I saved the original thread, attaching it to new cotton thread at the breakages. In some areas the threads were too friable and needed to be replaced.

The silk flag also required conservation and so was removed. It was very stiff and bent, so I decided to re-humidify it using a sandwich of damp bloating paper, gortex, the flag, and then the same arrangement on the other side. This flattened the flag well. It was still very dirty and so after testing; I cleaned it by soaking in a solution of 5% tri-ammonium citrate (a chelating agent) in water. The silk itself was fragile, and to ensure that it was strong enough to place back onto the model I mounted it onto dyed silk crepeline.

The last problem to address on the model was the lead disease of the fittings on the baseboard. This was crumbling white corrosion product that I removed mechanically under a microscope, before coating with a protective coating. After making replica blocks for the anchor and reattaching the flag to the flag staff, the model was complete and now looks like an impressive ship of war. 

See a larger version of the image above on Flickr to see more detail.

Gemma Thorns

Update: 20/02/2012: See more photos of the model on our Flickr set of before and after conservation. 

Can you help us put a face to a Liverpool related Titanic passenger? Victor Giglio was a first class passenger on the ill-fated liner and we’d like to find more information and a photo of this victim of the disaster.

 Victor was valet to American multi-millionaire Ben Guggenheim and the two men deliberately dressed in evening clothes as the huge liner slowly sank. Ben, closely attended by Victor, was heard to say: “We’ve dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.”

Ian Murphy, curator of maritime history, says: “There are about a dozen individuals and families called Giglio in the Merseyside area. Very little is known of Victor’s early life and we would like to find out more.

“So far our researches have drawn a blank but we are hoping there are descendents of Victor Giglio still in the area although he left as a small child. We know that he had several brothers who may have settled here and have relatives.”

Anyone who can help is asked to contact titanic@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk or ring 0151 478 4417.

The exhibition Titanic and Liverpool: the untold story opens at Merseyside Maritime Museum on 30 March 2012.