(Almost) Famous

V Short update, but I'm too excited not to post...

http://www.artfist.org/2012/02/if-you-go-to-down-to-woods-today.html

My little story! On a real website! And they said they liked it!

The Manor Reborn

Having watched the BBC’s ‘Manor Reborn’ with great interest (and a lot of talking to the telly and saying ‘oooh, I wouldn’t do it like that!’) I was dead excited to actually visit Avebury Manor during half term.  Avebury’s a funny place, there seems to be nothing there except about 6 houses, a pub, a church, and an awful lot of National Trust property. There’s all the land with the standing stones – pretty amazing and well worth a visit in themselves – a museum in a barn and a smaller museum in a stable, the manor itself, and of course a cafe and a shop. We got our tickets, and then loitered in the shop until it was time to go in. They were running a system of timed entry, to prevent congestion within the manor!

A friendly volunteer gave us a little talk at the gates, basically outlining the premise of the BBC project and explaining that rather than using original, old furnishings the house has been filled with copied (or faked?) furniture based on the styles of the period. He told us to sit on the chairs and lie on the beds, but to treat the house as though it belonged to a dear friend, which was a nice sentiment. And appropriate, too, because for many the National Trust does feel like a trusted friend, maybe a little predictable but always there. This property, though, aimed to shed that traditional image of ‘don’t touch’ signs and cream teas.

It worked. My Nan said she’d never been in a museum where people laughed so much, and talked to not only their companions but other visitors and the Trust volunteers.  We pretended to drink from pewter goblets in the Tudor hall, ground coffee in the kitchen and joked about who should do the huge pile of washing up that was stacked on the worktops, flicked through The Times and watched a young volunteer and an elderly visitor play billiards in the Edwardian Billiard Room. Me and Mum took off our boots and lay down on the four poster bed, drew the curtains and imagined sleeping there. It was a bit lumpy, but cosy with the curtains drawn and the mattress smelt pleasantly of straw. Nana laughed at us, but we started a trend and the next visitors to the room followed suit as grandma got onto the four poster and her little grandson made himself comfy on the servant’s truckle bed.

The kitchen sideboard, full of authentic looking clutter!

Reed matting in the Tudor hall, made last summer using centuries old methods.

Having a little sit down in front of the hand painted Chinese wallpaper, imagining myself as an eighteenth century lady of taste!

The Tudor bed, a bit rumpled after me and mum had tested to see how comfy it was!

It was great fun, and the workmanship that had gone into the objects was much admired – particularly the painted Chinese wallpaper, and the rush matting in the Tudor room. But although the downstairs rooms felt real and lived in – or at least like a well-furnished film set – upstairs was less impressive. There was little furniture apart from the beds, and the rooms were hardly dressed with props and historical clutter at all. There was a feeling that at some point time or money (or both) had run out, and these rooms upstairs had suffered. It was also difficult – and would I imagine be even harder for a foreign visitor, a child, or even just someone without a pretty good knowledge of British history – to understand the era of each room, and why those times had been chosen. There was no interpretation except some laminated sheets, which were very informative and useful – Nana said they had just the right amount of information, and pictures which showed you what it was talking about – but looked a bit cheap and were easily ignored or just not even noticed at all. For the Manor to really work, I think they need a high quality interpretation panel in each room describing the people that would have lived in it, and the period in which it was set. And to either light the fires or turn the heating up – it was a cold day and was not much warmer inside.

Taking a break 1930s style, moments before the outbreak of World War Two.

Despite it’s flaws, Avebury Manor was a fun morning out, and more importantly it was different to the usual National Trust experience. I don’t know how much ‘history’ we learned, but the smelling the straw in the four poster bed was something you couldn’t get in books, or read on a wall panel. The most memorable and emotional moment was at the end of our visit when, as we were having a sit down in the 1930s living room, the wireless which had been innocuously playing in the corner went quiet, and then suddenly, deadly serious. Me, my mother and my grandmother sat in silence as we listened to Neville Chamberlain announce that Britain was at war with Germany, and a shiver went down my spine. For me and Mum, it was amazing and horrifying to feel a tiny fraction of how it must have felt on that day in 1939, to try and place ourselves in history and imagine how it would have been. For Nana, she was hearing again what she actually heard on the radio as a young girl, reliving the day when so much changed.

 The BBC's wesbsite for The Manor Reborn televison programmes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017m16v

The National Trust web page for Avebury:

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/Avebury/

Take a tour of Bradford's heritage

Today was the first day of the new program of volunteer led tours of the Bradford Industrial Museum, and I think it went rather well, if I do say so myself!

Marco, my fellow tour guide, and I, led three tours round the museum, two of the mill owner's house and the back to back cottages, and one of the spinning and weaving galleries. Hopefully we taught the visitors a few new things; I shared my newfound knowledge of the spinning process which I've been revising all week! And we learnt a thing or two ourselves - what a siren suit is, for instance (a warm woollen 'onesie' worn over your PJs when the air raid siren went off), and Marco looked rather embarassed when a group of ladies tried to explain to him what a pawn shop was. They thought his misunderstaning of the term 'pawn' was quite hilarious!

There should be volunteers running tours of the different aspects of the museum every Sunday afternoon from now on, so if you're interested in our industrial heritage, steam power, vintage cars, or simply how people used to live in the olden days, come along and see us at the Industrial Museum in Eccleshill.

'Performance' at Abbey House

At ten o clock this morning I found myself in the slightly bizarre situation of being part of a large group of people pouring cups of tea and nibbling on biscuits, in the middle of a Victorian high street. There was a big table laden with coffee cups and milk jugs, just outside the greengrocers and the pub! I was at the Abbey House museum in Kirkstall, just across the road from Kirkstall Abbey, for a private view of their new exhibition for 2012.

An unusual setting for a mid morning brew!

Entitled ‘Performance’, the exhibition covers many diverse aspects of this theme and includes cases on local sporting heroes and some rather scary Punch and Judy puppets, as well as there more obvious theatre and dance. There is a collection of fascinating local theatre posters, the oldest of which dates from 1789 – the year of the French Revolution! These were, I was told by curator Kitty Ross, in a sorry state – stained orange, stuck onto acidic boards and even covered in sticky back plastic – but have been expertly restored for this exhibition thanks to funds from the Friends of Leeds Museums. The posters, showing prices, performance times and detailed descriptions of the plays being advertised, give an insight into the theatre going habits of the people of Leeds over the years. Strangely, in an exhibition on performance in Leeds, there is no mention of Opera North which has its headquarters in the city.

Abbey House benefits from working collaboration with design students from Leeds Met University, who have assisted with elements of this exhibition. Visitors are welcomed with an art deco style banner which proclaims the exhibition title ‘Performance’ in flashing lights, and twinkling lights and mirrors in the cases create a sense of space and theatre in this quite narrow, restricted gallery. A recurring motif is the strip of tickets which appear in many of the cases, and also on the invites to this morning’s private view. This helps tie together all the disparate cases, reminding us that even when going to a rugby match we are paying to watch a performance. The only negative aspect of the exhibition design that I noticed were the translucent text panels on the glass of the cases themselves. These panels gave simple information on each of the items in the case, which is of course necessary in any exhibition, but were difficult for some people to read and in the smaller cases they obscured the view of the objects themselves.

All in all, an interesting exhibition about an aspect of local social and cultural history. Now I can’t wait to start my placement at Abbey House next month, and start working with Kitty to think about next year’s exhibition, ‘Fate and Fortune’. Watch this space!

Salts Mill - Identity Crisis?

Yesterday afternoon I visited Salts Mill, an old industrial space which now houses a collection of cafes, shops and galleries. It’s a popular place for a weekend trip out, especially now the neighbouring park has been done up and includes a lovely new children’s play area.

I want to think about the first main space that the visitor enters in the Mill, the ground floor 1853 gallery. The heavy door opens onto a huge room, broken up with antique tables, vases, huge potted plants and postcard stands. Light falls through the massive windows. There is an overwhelming smell of lilies, and piano music gently drifts through the space. The walls are hung with works by David Hockney, but what struck me yesterday is that almost nobody was looking at the art. Although the space is described as an art gallery, in fact most of the visitors were wandering, chatting, and perusing the various books, art materials, posters and postcards on display.

This is clearly a place where people come to soak in the calm, relaxed atmosphere, maybe have some lunch or buy a book, but also (whether consciously or not) to increase their cultural capital. It is a self-consciously intellectual place, and the items for sale in both the gallery and the bookshop have been carefully chosen to add to the feeling of the visitor being part of a cultural elite. Heavy, richly illustrated art books, address books covered with liberty patterns, paints and brushes all suggest that by buying something from this gallery/shop, you will be buying into and becoming a part of this intellectual, creative society. This Moleskine notepad will be the one you write your bestselling novel in, that set of brushes will inevitably lead to the Turner Prize.

It’s Bourdieu’s Love of Art in action – and yet no-one is looking at the art! They are flicking through books, pointing out birthday cards to one another. So, my question is, is it an art gallery, or is it a shop?

Seven Days in the Art World

I was roaming the Brotherton Library, picking up some books that I needed for my essay and wondering why all the others that I didn’t have to read looked so much more interesting, when I made (yet another) New Year’s Resolution. So as well as doing more interesting and unusual things with my friends, swimming more often, and eating less crisps, I’m going to try and make the most of having access to the university libraries and actually take home and read some of the random books that catch my eye.

I’ve made a good start, with Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. I’d seen this book before in gallery gift shops and thought it looked interesting, so when I spotted it in the library I thought I’d give it a go. Thornton describes it as an ethnological survey into the world of art – which almost put me off having spent the last goodness knows how long working on an essay all about ethnology in museums. Ethnographers traditionally study geopraphically distant, exotic cultures, so I was interested to see how a study of a specific section of western society would work.

Basically, the book is a fascinating insight into the lives of collectors, dealers, curators and artists. Thornton has chosen seven aspects of the Art World and dedicated a chapter to each. It’s like getting the chance to follow these people around, a host of unusual characters from the mega-rich collectors at a Christie’s auction, to the artists nominated for the 2006 Turner Prize, unsure about what the prize will do for their career. Basically, through Thornton’s research, interviews and ‘participant observation’ – getting involved with the art world herself, writing for Artforum and attending auctions, ‘crits’, prizegivings and the Venice Biennale, you as the reader get to enter into the slightly bizarre world of art. Whether you have a strong interest in art or not, it is the people who are really interesting in this book and the insight into the contrasting cultures of those who buy, sell and display art, and that of the artists themselves.

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!