National Museums Liverpool Blog - Thursday, April 19, 2012

Did you know that almost eighty Africans are known to have donated more than 500 objects to World Museum. Their donations helped to create one of the most important historical collections of African cultural artefacts in Britain.

A new display at World Museum shows photographic portraits of some of the West Africans who made donations to the museum between 1897 and 1916.

Most of them were taken by West African photographers. All the donors were friends or contacts of Arnold Ridyard, the steamship engineer who transported their gifts to Liverpool.

Ridyard was a prolific collector himself. He brought an astonishing total of 6,450 artefacts and natural history ‘specimens’ to the museum in Liverpool while serving as Chief Engineer with Elder Dempster & Company’s West African shipping service.

Little is known about some of Ridyard’s West African friends and collaborators so Zachary Kingdon, Curator of African Collections at World Museum, is helping to uncover their forgotten stories through his current research.

The picture below is of Nii Kojo Ababio IV, (formerly Amoako Atta) (1873 - 1938). Kojo Ababio IV was Mantse, or ‘king’, of the Alata Quarter of Accra’s James Town in the Gold Coast (now Ghana). He was an important figure in Accra’s politics during the colonial period. He donated ten Ga artefacts to the museum, four of which are on display in the World Cultures gallery in the museum on the third floor.

Photographer: J.K. Bruce-Vanderpuije, Accra c.1935. Permission: Isaac Bruce-Vanderpuije.

Children at the Maritime Museum looking at the giant ship model of Titanic

There can’t be many people who don’t know about Liverpool’s special guests this weekend. Three fantastical giants will be striding through the city telling a magical tale of love, loss and reunion. 

Sea Odyssey was inspired by the poignant letter written by May McMurray to her father who perished on the Titanic, on display in the Maritime Museum's exhibition, Titanic and Liverpool: the untold story.

The routes of both giants pass most of our venues so we have arranged the following free events to give you even more to do this weekend:

Maritime Museum

'Titanic and Liverpool: the untold story' marks the centenery of the sinking of the Titanic. Using the perspectives of real people, the exhibition gives a unique insight into events surrounding the launch, voyage, the sinking and its aftermath from a Liverpool angle.

Free family events explore the story further this weekend and beyond.

The Maritime Museum is open from 9am on Sunday 22 April.

Museum of Liverpool

In a poignant tribute to the brave Titanic Orchestra whose services were engaged by the agent Black Brothers of Liverpool, the museum is hosting a Titanic Playathon on Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 April.

There will also be other Titanic themed events across the weekend.

The Museum of Liverpool is open from 9am on Sunday 22 April.

Walker Art Gallery

Get creative at the Walker with the following family events:

Create a character
Saturday 21 April
2-4.30pm
Get ready for the arrival of Sea Odyssey’s Giant Uncle and make your own movable puppet.

Giants galore
Friday 20, Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 April
10am-4pm
Join us in Big Art to create your own artwork inspired by Sea Odyssey Giant Spectacular.

Sea Odyssey doodle station
Friday 20, Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 April 
12.30-4.30pm
Join our volunteers for an afternoon of themed drawing activities and experiment with a variety of drawing equipment and materials.

Sudley House

'Titanic: Community costume display'
27 April- 27 May 2012
Selection of poignant works by Liverpool Community College to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

Create a character
28 April
1-4pm
Explore the Sea Odyssey costumes and make your own moving character.

This Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 April at World Museum you can build a Labyrinth.

For those born in the 80s you may get excited and think that David Bowie will show up with a host of Jim Henson puppets. Unfortunately this isn’t the case but what you can do is far more exciting.

From 11am – 4pm you can join in the Labyrinth event and, alongside staff and students from John Moores University, build a labyrinth in the museum. In Greek Mythology a labyrinth was to hold the Minotaur, a mythical creature that was half man and half bull. Luckily there won’t be a real mythical monster at the centre of the labyrinth you build.

Later that day between 1-4pm there is a 'Minotaur mazes and masks' workshop. Here you can find out the difference between a maze and a labyrinth (who knew there was one!) and make a Minotaur mask to take home.

Tiger? Pah! Your Minotaur mask will be much scarier!

Today marks 100 days until the Olympics, and as the Games creep ever closer, we’re looking back at some of the medal winners who have come out of Merseyside since the first international Olympic Games held in the modern era.

The 1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad, yielded a bronze medal winner from Liverpool in the form of Konstantinos Paspatis, who actually won his medal for Greece.

Held in the Panathinaiko Stadium, Athens was unanimously chosen as the host city, as Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games and therefore seemed most appropriate for the inaugural modern Games.

Konstantinos Paspatis, whose merchant grandparents settled in Liverpool in the mid-1800s, was born in Liverpool to this prosperous Greek family, and went onto win bronze for his forefathers’ country in 1896.

Paspatis, a tennis player, competed in both the men’s singles and doubles tournaments, and won his bronze medal in the singles when he defeated George Robertson of Great Britain and Ireland in the first round and fellow Greek Aristidis Akratopoulos in the second round.

He met eventual cold medalist John Pius in the semi finals, and since there was no playoff for third place, Paspatis and Momcsilló Tapavicza of Hungary are considered to share third.

Visit the Museum of Liverpool's Wondrous Place gallery to learn more about sport in the city.

Below, James tells us all about his work experience with our Decorative Arts department. Over to James…

“I’m James and I’m a Year 10 student at King David High School in Liverpool. I spent a week on work experience at NML, in the Decorative Art department, and it has been brilliant. I came here not knowing what to expect and ended up having a great time. I found that my enjoyment for history, which I’m studying for my GCSE, helped greatly. I most enjoyed handling the objects and being able to connect with them. I documented information I had collected on the toys and costume and where I had re stored them. I also enjoyed going to the Walker Art Gallery and Sudley House as I had never been to these places before. I realised that I was interested in silver and ceramics even though I’d never had a chance to look at them closely before. I particularly enjoyed sorting the toys and moving them about. I found all the collections really interesting and stimulating.

I would like to thank everyone in the Dec. Arts department for giving their time to show me what they do and give me a great experience. I also felt that everyone else was really nice and friendly. I am sad to leave and hope to come back again for some volunteering in the future. Thanks to my experience I hope to work in museums when I an older.

Hope to come back soon.
James”

James enjoying his work experience.

We are appealing for string quartets of all ages to play this Saturday and Sunday

Do you play an instrument? No matter how old or young, or how long you’ve been playing, we’d love you to get involved in our Titanic Playathon this weekend at the Museum of Liverpool.

This Saturday and Sunday, we’re hosting a poignant tribute to the brave Titanic Orchestra, who courageously played as the Titanic sank on 15 April 1912.

Local string quartets are invited to take part in the Titanic Playathon which is aimed at sustaining constant live music throughout opening hours at the Museum.

Whether you’ve been playing for just a few months, but you’re a dab hand at 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star', or you’re an accomplished group of musicians who can play 'Nearer my God to thee', we’d love you to be involved.

From 10am – 5pm on Saturday, and during longer opening hours on Sunday from 9am – 5pm to tie in with the city’s Sea Odyssey Giant Spectacular, performers will be able to take the baton and play in the Museum of Liverpool’s spectacular Atrium.

Our senior Education Manager at the Museum of Liverpool, Julia Bryan says: “The musicians who played on the Titanic were engaged by the agents Black Brothers of Liverpool, and we want to do something to mark the anniversary of the sinking that will serve as a reminder of the unselfish deeds of these men on that night.

“We’d love local people to get involved with the event and particularly welcome young performers and string quartets to come along and help us keep the music of the Titanic orchestra alive, in memory of the eight members of the orchestra, all of whom died that night.”

If you would like to come along and play, contact julia.bryan@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk for more information and to book a slot.

Over the weekend I met with Theatre in the Rough at the Merseyside Maritime Museum who are a charity which promote new writing for the stage by young people aged 13-25 from across Greater Merseyside.
This year the group are developing a series of plays about Titanic and Liverpool, the maritime history department were approached by acclaimed Liverpool playwright Chris Fittock who is artistic director for Theatre in the Rough. We provided a Titanic presentation for these budding new writers, drawing upon the themes from the new exhibition Titanic & Liverpool: the untold story at the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

Their writing will result in ten new monologues and ten short audio-plays about Titanic and Liverpool, drawing upon real life stories and experiences. A locally-curated exhibition and live music will also feature within a festival which takes place 3rd -7th July, Old Christ Church, Waterloo, Liverpool which is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England. For further information please see their website.

Titanic & Liverpool: the untold story exhibition opens from 30th March 2012- 21 April 2013.

As World Museum’s Age of the Dinosaur exhibition draws to a close on 15 April music fan Dickie Felton looks at one rock group’s prehistoric obsession.

Dickie Felton pictured with REM’s Michael Stipe in Dublin September 2001

REM, one of the world’s first big alternative rock bands, had a craze for plastic dinosaurs. The figures began to appear mysteriously in the 1980s; invading amplifiers and stages around the globe.

When REM first formed honorary band members included a tiny T-Rex and a Triceratops. They even sat in on recording sessions for three decades until 2011 when the band decided to call it a day.
Plastic dinos would go on world tours and pop up on speakers and instruments. In the 1996 song “Wake-Up Bomb” singer Michael Stipe sang about practising his “T-Rex moves and make the scene.”  It wasn’t that Stipe was a secret palaeontologist. It was more to do with creature comforts than a deep rooted fascination.

In 2008 the band revealed they’d always kept plastic figures of the extinct giant reptiles for moral support. Guitarist Peter Buck said: “We travel all the time and it’s nice to have some friends with us. You have very few friends in this business and having little dinosaurs on stage makes me feel better and I’m not going to be ashamed of it.”

Of course REM were not the only US alternative band to have Jurassic jangles. A Massachusetts group called themselves Dinosaur Jr. While REM’s Athens compatriots The B-52’s briefly became The Bc-52’s to sing the theme tune to the Flintstones movie.

In fact American rock seems to have had the monopoly on dinosaur band names and songs. Detroit’s Was (Not Was) sang “Walk the Dinosaur” while the legendary Johnny Cash penned a track called “Dinosaur Song” in 1975. 

Over here? Well in the late 1960s Marc Bolan’s glam rockers named themselves after the most famous dinosaur around and later shortened their name to T-Rex.

Are there any other bands out there with desires on dinosaurs?

James Johnston was born in Dumfriesshire, Scotland in 1871 and he lived in Liverpool with his wife and five children. He worked for White Star Line and boarded Titanic for her delivery voyage from Belfast as a first class steward.

Millvina Dean was born in London in 1912 and boarded Titanic in Southampton. She was only six weeks old and she was travelling as a third class passenger with her family who are moving to America to start a new life.

Joseph Philippe Lermercier Laroche was born in Haiti on 26th May 1886. He left home aged 15 and travelled to France to study engineering. He met his wife Juliette and they had two daughters. They were travelling to Haiti as Joseph was trying to find work and Juliette was pregnant. They were second class passengers on board Titanic.

Although the largest vessel of her time, Titanic was an ordinary working ship. For the crew, it was just another voyage - many had worked on other White Star Line ships and were expecting to reach their destination safely. Passengers were travelling for a variety of reasons, returning home, going to see loved ones, starting a new life. Whilst researching for the Titanic & Liverpool: the untold story exhibition it became very clear that these were ordinary people who were going about their lives.

The lives of James, Millvina and Joseph are only a selection of the people who boarded Titanic in 1912 and who are featured in the Titanic and Liverpool: the untold story exhibition at MMM. Before you enter the exhibition you can select a card featuring a person who boarded Titanic and find out their fate at the end of the exhibition: did these people survive the most famous maritime disaster in history? Amongst all the myths and world wide interest surrounding Titanic, the simple and most important aspect is the loss of life and the many lives affected.

Titanic & Liverpool- The Untold story exhibition is open from 30 March 2012- 21 April 2013

White star liner Olympic - sister of Titanic - looking aft (1920). Reproduced by permission of English Heritage: BL24990/021

To commemorate the Titanic centenary, we're offering you the chance to win an A3 mounted print of either Titanic's sister ship RMS Olympic or the White Star Line's Liverpool offices! 

One runner up will receive a copy of 'Titanic and Liverpool' by Alan Scarth and a photography book which accompanies our current exhibition at the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

To enter, you need to answer this question:

Which photographer(s) were commissioned by the White Star Line to photograph RMS Olympic in 1920? 

a) Edward Chambre Hardman

b) Bedford Lemere & Co

c) Henri Cartier-Bresson

Hint: Check the Lady Lever Art Gallery website!

Send your answer to us at prizedraw@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk  

or by post to: Titanic print competition, National Museums Liverpool, Marketing & Communications, 127 Dale Street, Liverpool. L2 2JH

The competition closes on Thursday 3 May at 12 noon.

Good luck!