Installing Loans at the Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Whitby

Thursday 12 February 2015

Leeds Museum and Galleries are regular lenders to the annual exhibitions on Cook related themes at the Captain Cook Memorial Museum in Whitby. This years theme is 'Fashion and Fibres: Island Dress in Polynesia' and on Thursday morning Emma Bowron, the conservator at Leeds Museum DiscoveryCentre, and I drove to Whitby in the museum van with a European style Samoan barkcloth dress probably dating from the late 1800s. The drive takes around two hours. Arriving in the attic exhibition space we met long-standing friends, MEG members, and ex-colleagues, Barbara Woroncow and Adrian Norris, who were there helping Sophie Forgan and other Whitby staff with the install. Barbara and Adrian are active trustees of the Captain Cook museum. In the large case where the Samoan dress was to be laid gently on a calico covered plastazote 
slope, a 1970s Fijian barkcloth hung at the back, which was one of the last gifts Barbara’s father hunted down for her in a bargain sale, a while ago now. 

The other item in the case is a beautiful modern reconstruction of the tapa waistcoat that Mrs Cook made for her husband, but never finished.  The partial garment, Cook died before it was finished, survives in Australia. This new waistcoat is by Alison Larkin. It has a linen back which laces up the centre, and fine silk floral embroidery enhanced with tiny silver coloured sequins or spangels. There are real pockets under the flaps.

We stayed to help with the install of a stunning tapa poncho cloth from Kew, and to watch the others installing two Maori flax cloaks on loan from the Great North Museum.  The Leeds Samoan girl’s dress is made from tapa coloured with traditional designs, and tailored with a yoke, collar and sleeves and buttons down the front. It may have been made for an indigenous girl, or perhaps for the child of a European missionary or official. It is rare for such dresses to survive. A good photograph of it can be found on the exhibition page of the Cook museum. The dress was transferred to Leeds Museums in 1964 from Leeds Corporation Works Department. The notes say: Formerly in the house of Mrs Bell, cleared by Corporation Housing Department. Items brought to the museum by Mr Fitzgerald of Housing Dept. The material seems to have been brought home by E.R.G. Bell (husband or father in law?) and includes a sketch map of Samoa and its islands.  I’ve tried to trace ERG Bell, but no success so far.

The exhibition opens this Saturday, 14 February and will run until the Captain Cook Memorial Museum closes for the winter at the end of November.

Antonia Lovelace  

Curator of World Cultures

Leeds Museums and Galleries

Call for Papers: The creation, collection and care of textiles and dress in museums and historic houses: amateurs and professionals

11 June 2015, University of Wolverhampton, UK

CHORD invites submissions for a workshop that explores the role of individuals and organisations, both amateurs and professionals, in making, collecting and caring for dress and textiles in museums and historic houses. Papers focusing on any historical period or geographical area are welcome. Museum professionals, conservators, students, academics or anybody with an interest in the topic are warmly invited to submit a proposal. We welcome both experienced and new speakers, including speakers without an institutional affiliation. Potential speakers are welcome to discuss their ideas with the organisers before submission (please see details below). Some of the themes that  might be considered include (but are not limited to)

Collecting and the collector

Class, gender and/or ethnicity and the care of historic dress or textiles

The roles of professionals and amateurs in museums and historic houses

The history of museum curatorship and conservation in dress and textiles

Professional organisations, charities and philanthropy

Amateur production, conservation, repairs and care of historic textiles or dress

The workshop will be held at the University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton city Campus.

To submit a proposal, please send title and abstract of c.300 to 400 words to Laura Ugolini, at l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk by 6 March 2015. Individual papers are usually 20 minutes in length, followed by 10 minutes for questions and discussion. We also welcome shorter, 10 minute presentations, which might focus on a specific collection, new project or work in progress. If you are unsure whether to submit a proposal, please e-mail Laura Ugolini at l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk to discuss your ideas.

Small bursaries will be available for speakers to subsidise the cost of travel (within the UK) and the workshop fee.

For further information, please e-mail: Laura Ugolini at l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk or Margaret Ponsonby at m.ponsonby@wlv.ac.uk

Or see the workshop web-page at: http://home.wlv.ac.uk/~in6086/textiles2015.htm

News about CHORD events can also be found here: http://retailhistory.wordpress.com/about/

If you would like to join the CHORD mailing list, please e-mail Laura Ugolini at l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk

Prof. Laura Ugolini
Professor of History
Joint editor, Textile History
Dept. of History, Politics, War Studies
Faculty of Social Sciences
Room MC334
University of Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton
WV1 1LY

Exhibition: A Disappearing Culture: The Amis Earthenware Tradition in Taiwan

17 January – 31 May 2015

The Amis are the largest indigenous tribe in Taiwan with a population close to 182,000, mainly live along the east coast of the island. The Amis are the only remaining matriarchal aboriginal tribe in Taiwan who create earthenware using traditional methods. 

The exhibition looks into the Amis lifestyle, women’s role in earthenware production, the ceremonial aspect of this ceramic tradition and the production process. 

There will be photos and examples of Amis earthenware along the staircase, and a 10-minute documentary film on the second floor.

The Museum of East Asian Art

12 Bennett Street

Bath

BA1 2QJ

UK

Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grants: 2015 deadlines

The Ruffer programme provides £50,000 annually for travel and other practical costs to help curators undertake collection and exhibition research projects. Since the scheme’s inception the fund has helped over 160 curators and researchers at over 100 institutions undertake such projects across the globe. Full details on the programme and some of the awards we have already made can be found on the ArtFund website. 

Applications under £1,500 can be accepted at anytime, while applications over £1,500 are only considered three times a year. The next deadline is on Wednesday 3 June and the final deadline in 2015 will fall on Wednesday 23 September. 

Historic sites celebrate defining moments in history, memorialize important events and people, and contribute to the character of the locations where they are situated. Heritage designation, both globally and nationally, is an inherently contested issue. As detailed in this volume, concerns of politics and identity, criteria for designation, impacts on communities and sites, and challenges to management planning are central to any understanding of the process by which heritage sites are created, developed, and maintained.

The idea for this volume originated at a symposium hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design. Contributors address such topics as the need to revamp criteria for designation, the effect historic site recognition has on local communities, the challenges encountered in maintaining a site, and issues linked to specific political climates or actions and group identity.

The contributors constitute an international cast of leading scholars, employees, and policy-makers, all of whom have had extensive experience with World Heritage and National Register site stewardship. The work will be an invaluable reference for historians, architects, and those committed to the preservation of national monuments.

Siberia – an exhibition at the Manchester Museum, 4 October 2014 to 1 March 2015

This colourful and informative exhibition is stunning in its breadth, both for the size of the 

Siberian region, and the number of topics it opens up. Visitors are welcomed by a Siberian brown bear, images of the frozen north and then a slideshow of 35 large size Siberian people portraits. This was a deliberate choice to draw the public in by acknowledging the very stereotypes that the exhibition hopes to combat, such as, for instance, that Siberia is a waste, abandoned region completely covered with snow and frozen all year round. A huge wall map provides orientation in terms of natural zones (Tundra, Taiga and Steppe) and the various ethnic groups, contrasting with a Russian samovar, the symbol of Russian hospitality, and a landscape overprinted with Yermak the Conqueror, a 16^th century Cossack folk hero famous for his part in the Russian expansion into the region.

The displays are organised in the same colour coded natural zones and showcase both the natural history and indigenous life styles of Siberia, and also investigate the real-politik of the fur and mammoth-ivory trades, raw material extraction, the topic of forced exile to labour camps, nature conservation issues and the beauty of Lake Baikal. The lead curator, Dmitri Logunov, has worked at the Manchester Museum for more than 13 years, and used to live and work in the Siberia city of Novosibirsk for almost 15 years. The exhibition would not have been possible without his deep regional knowledge and contacts. Contemporary photographs, which he was able to source at no cost, provide a vivid atmosphere and the range of exhibits is very striking. Star pieces include Khanty boots made of burbot fish skin, a malachite plinthed clock gifted by Prince Nikolai to Chatsworth House (before he became Tsar Nikolai I), portraits of camp prisoners by the Russian artist, Nadia Kisseleva, who now lives in Birmingham, and a huge mammoth tusk and mini mammoth model on loan from the Natural History Museum, London.

A note on the website says “Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances Masha the baby mammoth will not now be part of the exhibition”, a big disappointment to the exhibition team. However ‘Siberia’ provides a unique overview of an area of the world which we in the west still have much to learn about. 

Complimentary to the Manchester exhibition is a small temporary exhibition in the Court of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford displaying artefacts and photographs collected by anthropologist Marie Antoinette Czaplicka on her 1914 expedition to Siberia to study the reindeer-herding Evenki people. The small exhibition explores the expedition, the extraordinary hardships its members endured, and the Evenki people that were the focus of their research. Like the Manchester exhibition the Pitt Rivers display emphasises the vastness of the Siberian landscape and harshness of the weather but despite reinforcing this image of Siberia the display also stresses that the Siberian landscape was an inhabited one. Using historic photographs and quotes from Czaplicka's travelogue 'My Siberian Year' the exhibition offers insightful nuggets about the life of the nomadic Evenki.

Images of the Manchester exhibition courtesy of the author. 

Antonia Lovelace 

Curator of World Culture, Leeds Museums and Galleries.