Can anyone direct me to the Craven Museum?

Skipton, Saturday Afternoon. Market stalls line the street, the butcher auctions his last few joints and the greengrocers shout ‘50p for a bag o’bananas, any bag, 50p!”. We struggle up the street, and it is literally packed with people out for the afternoon, doing a bit of shopping, and it’ll only get busier between now and Christmas. We reach the Town Hall at the top of the high street, and there’s quite a few people milling in and out to investigate the craft fair that’s advertised outside. The tea and cake is flying out of the kitchen. A few people stop to look at the display boards that spill out from the museum and into the main corridors of the town hall, and I leave Mum in the temporary exhibition of local art (which is peaceful and calm compared to the street outside) and head upstairs to the museum proper.

Silence. Where has everybody gone? I am actually the only person here, until a museum assistant struggles past with a Hoover, says hello, laughs at me playing with the interactive activities for kids, and disappears behind a door marked ‘staff only’. I always wonder what’s behind those doors. This is a really nice local museum, traditional without being stuffy, crammed full of interesting little stories about the area, fascinating objects, and things to play with. I particularly liked the hippopotamus skull sitting on the front desk, silently guarding the staff’s selection of novels and magazines. There’s dressing up clothes, and a microscope with slides for the kids, loads of books, colour sheets and a choice of two museum trails, and with a joyous disregard for health and safety, a real stone quern to turn and grind wheat. My mum failed to ‘supervise me closely’ when I was playing with this (I mean, doing important research) and I got covered in flour, but it was good fun and would make kids think, if just for a second, the sheer amount of effort that went into just feeding a family in ‘the olden days’.

The Craven Museum has had quite a bit of publicity recently, including a full page profile in the Museums Journal, regarding its discovery of a First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays. They must have got some specific funding to display the Folio, as this is the most modern part of the museum. The First Folio has it’s own little shrine, almost, with some information boards telling both the stories of the book itself and it’s importance, and how it came to be here in Skipton. There’s a film narrated by Patrick Stewart (renowned Shakespearean actor/ local lad done good) and a facsimile of the introduction to the First Folio and Macbeth, so that people can turn the pages and have a good read.

All in all, the Craven Museum is a lovely little spot to take a break from all the hustle, bustle and rampant consumerism of the Christmas period, have a sit, have a think, discover something about the area you didn’t know before, entertain your children and be fascinated by the past. But no-one knows it’s there! So please, Craven Museum, get a big sign outside telling people that you exist (and that you’re free) and let them come and see what you have to offer!

Obsessed with Foucault?

So there I was the other night, at my Creative Writing class at Shipley College, happily scribbling away. Our task was to write a piece of description inspired by a picture of a fairground.  I find writing description really hard, in fact totally impossible until I create a character who’ s eyes I can describe a scene through, but I was quite enjoying myself when I had a thought. I was describing the fairground as a heterotopia, a space of otherness and seperateness. And then I had another thought. Oh God, I’m becoming obsessed with Foucault!

The lights, flashing and dancing. The pop music blaring, beats competing for attention. Teenage girls link arms and run, shrieking. They’ve no money to spend on rides or candyfloss, but just to be here, out after dark, is exciting.

The fair isn’t real life, normal rules don’t apply. And wearing short skirts that make their dad’s mutter under their breath, and after the bottle of rosè that Abigail ‘borrowed’ from the wine rack, they’re out for a good time. They dance – with each other, not boys – to the chart toppers that the big wheel’s speakers pump out, disco-loud. It’s the fair! Anything could happen, it’s like a huge party, and no-one cares that they’re only (just) fifteen. Grass turns to mud beneath their feet, Faye’s new converse are spoilt, but they don’t even feel the rain. They’re out in the dark, and don’t have a curfew – who, in their (increasingly wet) shoes, would care about rain?

Everyone’s out tonight. Their little town, where nothing even happens and people spend Friday nights with a takeaway curry and ‘Live at the Apollo’, has come alive tonight, this one weekend when people brave the weather and venture out. It’s magic. It doesn’t feel quite real.

They see their geography teacher, Mr Jones, which is embarrassing, and they hide behind a candyfloss stand. Worse still, Molly’s hairdresser Tracey is with him – with her hand in the back pocket of Mr Jones’s jeans! The girls giggle and clutch each other, still too young and self obsessed to even consider that a teacher (especially a geography teacher) might have a right to a love life. Mr Jones waves. They scream and giggle, Abigail waves back. Tracey, glint in her eye, takes Mr Jones by the shoulders and kisses him. The girls stare – then run.

Anyone for the ghost train? They’ve spent their pocket money on nail varnish and magazines on the way home from school, and dads are unreasonably strict about advance payments. They wonder if Abigail’s mum will notice the absence of a second bottle.

Molly’s older brother here – she doesn’t want to talk to him, but the others do. Why else did they get dressed up, if not for the 6^th Form boys? Ross buys them a candy dummy each, which they suck, trying to look provocative. Trying to be grown up. But it’s getting on for eleven, and the families have all gone home, and the people who are left as not so fun, more sinister. Lone men eye young legs, the girls tug at the hems of their skirts. It’s getting cold, and those legs have goosebumps. When Ross offers them a lift home (he’s got his own car!), back to the slumber party they’ve got planned at Molly’s, it’s so inviting to think of their pyjamas and pizza, and the beloved One Tree Hill dvds. Warm sleeping bags – and maybe more wine, if Molly’s dad is happy to turn a blind eye.

They leave the mud and clutter, the rubbish piling up underfoot, the excitement now turning stale, and head for home.

A short history?

Is it possible to write a short history of England? Isn't history, by its very nature, really quite long? Or, is it possible to write a short history of England, and for it to be any good?

Simon Jenkins, in reaction against the disconnected history we learn at school, which seems to imply that Henry VIII was followed by Hitler with very little in between, was challenged by his publisher to write a History of England in 55,000 words. Which might sound a lot, but that’s only five and a half undergraduate dissertations, which really isn’t much at all.

At Ilkley Literature Festival on Friday, Jenkins did a very interesting 45 minute talk on his book, a whistle stop tour of English history from 410 and the departure of the Romans, when Jenkins believes England (as opposed to Britain) was really born, to the current coalition government. Before I start to criticise, I must say that I truly believe that there is a real place for simply telling the story of history, for people to know their country’s background and how we came to be where we are today. There’s also great fun in the traditional tales of heroes and villains, good kings and bad kings, Alfred burning the cakes and James hiding up the Oak Tree.

BUT. All history is interpreted by the historian. English history is made up of infinite, related, vastly different stories. And when one man stands up and says ‘this is how it was’, that is very misleading, and quite frankly, not true. Jenkins did, in the question and answer session at the end, acknowledge that when trying to tell such a huge story (or as I see it, collection of interwoven stories) in such a ridiculously short space of time, it is going to become generalised and uncritical. So why do we try and do it? I would argue that there are two types of history, popular and academic. Popular history often still implies that their version of history is ‘how it really was’, while academic history is constantly justifying its conclusions, comparing differing interpretations, and accepting that even primary sources written at the same time about the same event can tell us very different things. The best history writing (or television, or museum exhibition) integrates the two, taking the most academic scholarship into account whilst giving clear, interesting, fun information about the past. And most importantly, it acknowledges that everything we know now about the past is interpreted through both the sources we use and our own modern eyes.

As some comedian (who’s name escapes me) said on the telly last night, all archaeologists really know about the past is that it was full of skeletons who lived underground. The rest is made up. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but he’s got the right idea!

Once Upon A Time...

In a land far far away, there lived a beautiful princess. She had a huge palace full of glittering chandeliers, and servants to fulfil her every wish. Who wouldn’t want to be just like her?

Well me, for one. The tale of Marie Antoinette, her lavish lifestyle, her playing at being a milkmaid, and her ultimate downfall at the hands of revolutionary mob has always fascinated me, ever since reading her story in a Blue Peter annual from about 1972, with pictures of Valerie Singleton at the Petit Trianon dressed as the princess. So, when the chance came to take a detour on a family holiday to visit the Palace of Versailles, I was pretty excited.

We got lost on the way, couldn’t find a car park, and then queued for an hour and a half to get in, but that didn’t diminish the awe I felt at simply being there, standing in front of the ornate gilt gates of the palace, trying to imagine away the crowds, and replace the cars with carriages and the staff with Swiss Guards. And I must admit, even having studied the French Revolution at University, and read a biography (and seen the film) of Marie Antoinette, I found it hard to ignore the constant camera flashes and tourists (I say this like I wasn’t a tourist myself!) elbowing one another aside for the best view. My dad and sister, with no more than a passing interest in history, saw nothing more than a series of rooms full of fancy furniture and old paintings, and were keen to get outside to the fountains and gardens.  

There was one room, though, where I really felt the enormity of past events, and the importance of this place for French, and indeed world, history. In Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber, the audio guide described how the mob stormed the gates, and entered the palace. Marie’s guards, in the room adjoining her bed chamber, fled in fear of the revolutionary Parisians and left the Queen to their mercy. Her huge four poster bed stood before me, as lavish as anyone could wish for, but none of her fine furnishings or loyal (ish) servants could save her now. She fled, through a small door, wallpapered to look like part of the wall. This was the end of her privileged life as Queen of France, and looking at the little, unassuming door that saved her, at least for a little while, it was suddenly easy to picture the Japanese and American tourists (there seemed to be very few European visitors) as the angry mob, baying for blood – or just a good facebook photo – and to imagine her fear as she and her ladies in waiting escaped, not knowing what would happen next.

Marie Antoinette is often seen as a silly girl, too rich and spoilt for her own good. Her (supposed) comment of ‘let them eat cake’ has been used to prove how out of touch she was with the reality of life for many Frenchmen. But this remark had been attributed to many French figures before Marie, to the same effect, and was simply symbolic propaganda against the young queen. She is also ridiculed for her building of a perfectly picturesque hamlet, complete with duck pond, where she could escape from the hustle and bustle of court life and pretend, for a while, to be a simple woman living in the countryside (albeit without any of the hard work involved in a real country life).  After a day of being surrounded by people, of being funnelled through the King’s and Queen’s Apartments in the Palace and standing in really very long queues, the sense of relief and peace when we reached Marie Antoinette’s estates was immense. The beauty of the village she had built, although clearly designed, was much more to my, and my family’s, taste than the Palace itself, and if I had a bottomless purse and had to live a life where courtiers watched my every move, from mealtimes to bedtimes, I think I would build myself a quiet little haven a lot like this one.

So, I don’t think Marie Antoinette was all bad, although obviously she wasn’t perfect either. I think that the Palace of Versailles could be better managed, maybe with a pre-booking system or, even, with a ban on photography in the Palace (the flashes can’t do the centuries old paintings and furnishings any good anyway), to make the visitor feel less stressed and provide a little more breathing space. But in amongst a very busy day there were real moments of beauty, and of connection with the past.

Poetry Rocks!

Sorry, terrible pun I know, but I couldn’t resist. On Friday night at King’s Hall, Ilkley, Simon Armitage read his Stanza Stones poems for the first time, and very good they are too! These six short poems, all on the theme of water in its many forms and inspired by the local landscape, have been carved into rocks in the countryside for people to stumble upon. The locations were revealed on Friday, and are as follows:

Snow -Pule Hill Quarry, Marsden

Rain – Cows Mouth Quarry, Littleborough

Mist – Nab Hill, Oxenhope

Dew – Rivock Edge, Riddlesden

Puddle – Causey Paving, Ilkley Moor

Beck – Backstone Beck, Ilkley Moor.

I think that this whole project is a great idea, following in the footsteps of the prehistoric cup and ring stones on Ilkley Moor, and more recently the intriguing and romantic eighteenth and nineteenth century graffiti carved into many stones on the moors in the area. For the carvers of the mysterious cup and ring stones, the moor and the landscape was a sacred place, and for many today, ramblers and climbers, painters and poets, it still is, although many wouldn’t express it in that way. But it is a scared place, a place where many people who wouldn’t set foot in a church go to think, to contemplate, to take a little time out of the hectic mundane everyday and to marvel at the beauty and awesomeness of the land, something so much bigger, older, more powerful than ourselves. And I think that coming across one of Armitage’s poems whilst wandering in the great outdoors, would only enhance that experience, and perhaps lift the spirits on a rainy day or describe something that you have always known about the beauty of snow or mist, but have never quite been able to, or even tried to, put into words. I do understand that for some this is a desecration, vandalism, human intervention in a place that is made special by precisely the absence of man, but I think that as the poems age and weather, become encrusted with lichen and moss, they will become part of their environment. And perhaps over time the poet and the mason, the man who wrote the words and the woman who carved the stone, will be forgotten, and the Stanza Stones will, in many many years, be as mysterious and magical as the prehistoric carvings are to us today. They will show that the twenty first century was not all about industry, pollution, population explosion and urban living, but be a monument to those of us that love the land and the country and still believe in the power and magic of nature.

Lots of news!

It’s been a busy busy week, and it’s not over yet! There seems to be lots going on all of a sudden, I’m not sure I can keep up with myself at the moment.

My uni course has started for real this week, and we’ve hit the ground running with an interpretation project: putting on a mini exhibition at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Art Gallery, in a team of 13, in 2 weeks. It’s terrifying, but exciting, and I think we’re doing ok so far. Our exhibition of Drinking Culture in the Late Eighteenth Century will be on display in the Education Room of the gallery from the 14^th October (hopefully), so come and have a look if you’re passing.

As well as uni work, I’m volunteering as a steward at Ilkley Literature Festival which starts tomorrow with Simon Armitage and the world premier of his Stanza Stones poems, which is all very exciting! We had a stewards briefing the other night so now I’m fully up to date on what to do if an author is stuck on a train, a fire breaks out, anyone faints, or someone complains about a squeaky chair! Some of the headline events are sold out, but there are still lots of events with tickets left, so have a look on the website and see if anything takes your fancy. All the fringe events are free and you don’t have to book, so just turn up and see what’s going on.

On top of all that I’ve just started a creative writing evening course at Shipley College, which is really interesting and is giving me the time to sit and write – so if I create anything good I might stick it on here and see what people think.

One last little thing, it’s Light Night in Leeds on Friday 7^th October – I’ve never been before but there looks to be loads of weird and wonderful stuff going on all over the city centre that evening, and I’ve heard good reports from Leeds students who’ve been before, so that’s something else to look forward to!

http://www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk/

http://www.lightnightleeds.co.uk/

Other Trees, Other Hockeys. (and one really big Hockney painting of loads of massive trees!)

I was back at Cartwright Hall today, for the training to be a volunteer tour guide. Hockey’s Bigger Trees Near Warter arrives next week and in conjunction with this, the gallery are running two short tours, Other Hockneys and Other Trees. And a bunch of volunteers, including myself, are going to be your lovely tour guides!

We all met this afternoon to meet each other and be taken on the tours by Claire, the Learning and Outreach Officer for Bradford Museums and Galleries. First we went upstairs to the Connect galleries, which house a really diverse and really interesting collection of artworks, all with some connection to Bradford and its people. There are five ‘stops’ on the Other Hockneys tour, taking in a selection of his work from throughout his career showing his different ways of working and his mastery of many different mediums. Downstairs, past the main gallery where Bigger Trees Near Warter will be in pride of place, is the temporary exhibition Other Trees, where the second tour takes place. This is a selection of works, (painted, carved, weaved and stitched) from the collections of Bradford Museums and Galleries, some of which haven’t been displayed for years. Unsurprisingly, all of the works in this gallery are of, or inspired by, trees. There are some really lovely things in there, and a little mystery in the shape of two carved columns. These columns were donated anonymously, and no-one knows who made them or where they came from. So come along and have a look – we want to know if any Bradfordians  recognise the columns and can tell us their story! We also want to hear from anyone who knows Hockney himself, or has an interesting tale to tell about the artist or his works, and we’ll weave these into our tours as the weeks go on. Hopefully, you can tell us some things, that then we can tell everybody else!

The Other Trees and Other Hockneys tours are running every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, at half past two and three o clock, from next weekend until the end of November. Bigger Trees Near Warter is in residence at Cartwright from 1^st October to 4^th March, and the Other Trees exhibition is on until 26^th February. Come along and see us – and hopefully I’ll have done all my homework and learned all about Hockey and trees by then!

http://www.bradfordmuseums.org/venues/cartwrighthall/index.php

Castle Howard

On Saturday I went on a trip to Castle Howard, with James, who is a good companion for a day out as he both drives and takes photos (two things I am not very good at). I’d been wanting to go to Castle Howard for a while, because it’s mentioned several times in Bill Bryson’s Home, which I read a couple of months ago and really enjoyed. Bryson talked about the landscaped gardens, the follies in the grounds and of course the architecture of the house itself and the famous dome.  And although I had a nice day out, it didn’t quite live up to expectations.

The building is stunning, and the grounds were lovely for a autumnal walk (whilst sneakily eating an apple from the kitchen garden). There was an interesting exhibition about the re-building of a large proportion of the house, including the dome, after a massive fire in 1940. I particularly loved the description of Scarborough schoolgirls, evacuated to Castle Howard during the war, handing books, carpets and paintings out through the windows to save them from the flames. Some of the rooms were never fully restored, at least until first Granada TV and then later BBC films came calling, to film their respective versions of Brideshead Revisited.  The film companies paid to have these interiors fully kitted out in with every period detail – that is every detail that would be visible on camera. The ceilings are exposed, and distinctly modern, while the murals on the walls were painted to suit the tastes of the Catholic (and fictional) Marchmain family, not the Howards.

In contrast to this, the dome, which floats majestically above the main hall of the house, was recreated as to be all but indistinguishable from the original, to the untrained eye. A Canadian artist was commissioned to create an exact copy of Pellegrini’s The Fall of Phaeton which had adorned the underside of the dome – in any other context he would be a forger, but here he is seen as a conservator. The Hall is stunning, but once you become away that it is not ‘real’, not the original eighteenth century building and artworks, it starts to feel a bit strange. Throughout history these huge country houses have been adapted and updated by succeeding generations, but by the 1960s when the dome was rebuilt, this house was not updated in a modern style, but reproduced exactly as it was in its golden age. The stately home was no longer, despite the smattering of framed family snapshots that are around today, a home in the real sense of the world. It was not financially viable, in the post war period, for one family to live here, funding a grand lifestyle off of their land and their name. The home had become a historical monument, and it would have been considered sacrilege to add a 1960s extension instead of restoring the dome.

Today, the house is basically a museum, but one that constantly gives the impression of trying very hard not to be a museum. There is no information on the rooms, their functions, or the people who lived there. The hundreds of artworks are unlabelled, which is frustrating and makes them quite boring, actually, when you don’t know who painted them, who sat for them, which generation Howards collected them and why. Perhaps if I hadn’t been too cheap to buy a guidebook my visit would have been more informative and interesting, but for £13 for an adult ticket I don’t think a few labels on the paintings is too much to ask!

Getting hammered at Cartwright Hall

I was at Cartwright Hall in Bradford today, for a meeting about being a tour guide for the giant Hockney work, Bigger Trees Near Warter, which is soon to be installed in pride of place on the ground floor. But it’s not there yet, and while the gallery staff are busy preparing for the paintings arrival (it’s a bit of a diva apparently and demands its own micro climate!) the main exhibition space downstairs is screened off. But, if you go inside and turn right you’ll find an exhibition that is very different, and I think incredibly beautiful.

Marcus Levine’s ‘Hammered’ is a collection of his nail sculptures. This sounds a bit industrial and dull, but in fact they are lovely. The majority of the pieces are pictures, but instead of using a more traditional medium Levine creates his art by hammering nails into a plain white background, creating images of the human body, a rose, ballet shoes and a cat! Others are more abstract, and I was fascinated with how a pattern made using something as proverbially hard as nails could look so ethereal, as though it could be blown away as easily as a dandelion clock. These sculptures beg you to run your fingers across them, which is welcomed by the gallery and the artist. I almost expected the brow and lashes of ‘The Eye of the Artist’ to be soft to stroke,  but of course when you get up close the nails revert to being individual pieces of hard metal, cold to the touch.

The level of detail that Levine creates is stunning, in ‘Petra, Study 2’ the woman’s hair cascades down in distinct waves, and her spine and ribs are delicately highlighted by the nails themselves and the shadows they cast. My personal favourite in the exhibition was ‘Tamas, Study 3’, a gorgeous, strong, male nude depicted using 15,100 separate nails.  The contrast between the smooth curves of the human body and the rigid spikes of the nails used to create the picture is really striking – Levine seems to revel in this contrast, choosing to show soft, delicate subjects such as a rose, and a pair of ballet shoes.

Levine’s sculptures would be works of art if they were simply sketched in pencil or charcoal, but the added dimension and tactility that the use of nails gives them lifts them off the page, both literally and figuratively!

You can see Levine in action at www.youtube.com/user/levineArt , and keep up to date with what’s going on at Cartwright Hall at www.bradfordmuseums.org .

Hello World!

So, here we are. Welcome to my cabinet of curiosities! I hope we'll get to know one another quite well, over time. I'm a bit of a history geek - may as well get it out there in the open now, you'll work it out soon enough- and since I'd love to spend my life turning other people in history geeks too, I'm starting an MA in Museum Studies next week so I can (hopefully) become a curator and share the history love. It's not just about the history though - the course includes art galleries so I'm on a bit of a mission to learn about art and to appreciate it more than just 'ooh thats pretty, where's the cafe?' So, since I spent a lot of time visiting museums and galleries, as well as volunteering and doing work placements, it seems like a good idea to share some of what I see. The inspiring, the beautiful, the downright confusing... the Tate Modern springs to mind here! And I might throw in a bit of literature, and theatre, and generally what's going on in Yorkshire's cultural scene (which is more than you might think!)