On Friday 24 August, as a special treat for completing the first draft of interpretation text for the Mouseion exhibition (much on that to follow), I went to Sheffield’s Site Gallery to see the current exhibition, print it*.

Exhibition layout and design

It’s a combination of several projects, but includes a stunning exhibition of printed books and other print press works on paper, created by Coracle Press between 1989-2012. Coracle Press is based in Ireland right now, but I think originated in Norfolk (not least as the title of the touring exhibition and its stunning accompanying book is ‘Printed in Norfolk’).  Simon Cutts is its founder (or one of them?)- and his simple, beautiful, both profound and warm words reflect the aesthetic of the printed material.  I like his poem, ‘le Marche’ (with an ‘e’ acute, as in ‘market’, not ‘march’, but can’t work out how to do the accent – I should have a printing press, not a computer, then I could sort through the letters and find the things I need manually…)

I looked for                                                                                                                               a lettuce                                                                                                                                  but bought                                                                                                                               a petticoat

(Simon Cutts in RGAP 2012 Printed in Norfolk: Coracle Publications 1989-2012, Research Group for Artist Publications, Sheffield, p.25).  Brings to mind wandering through Breton markets, eating crepes with my grandmother as my mother looked on, horrified that we were eating on the street…

Back to print it*.  The visual quality of the exhibition is stunning: minimal interpretation, simply presented, and also tactile: visitors can actually pick up and read the books, postcards, invitations and so on.  Which means that I spent a lot longer time in there absorbing things than I would have done had I not been able to pick things up.  And it really made me want to do some printing – of words, images, thoughts and ideas.  And of course, since I am curating the Mouseion exhibition in Leicester’s School of Museum Studies at the moment, it gave me a lot of food for thought and ideas to send to my PhD colleague and friend Cy Shih, who is the designer of the exhibition – I’d love to keep it with this printing press feel – with thick textured paper or card, creams and deep browns.  Further exhibition images show more detail of some of the works.

In addition to the Norfolk exhibition, the team at Site had also produced a Pop-Up Artist Bookshop – which incorporated many of the things from the exhibition, by Coracle Press, as well as from other printing studios around the world.  Something that I found incredibly moving was Susan Howe’s ‘Poems from a Pioneer Museum’, copied below from the website:

Poems From A Pioneer Museum   Susan Howe 2009 32 letterpress cards printed on Canaletto Liscio paper in binders box 130 x 100. 300 copies I copied these poems, almost verbatim, from typed identification cards placed beside items in display cases at Salt Lake City’s Pioneer Memorial Museum founded in 1901 by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers. The artifacts and memorabilia in their collection date from 1847 when Mormon settlers first entered the Valley of the Great Salt Lake until the joining of the railroads at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869.

An extravagant purchase I couldn’t resist.  Not only is it a gorgeous series of printed cards, it is in a green baize box – a proper museum object of museum objects and catalogue entries.  I love it.  Useful (for teaching, example giving, idea generation) but also a nice THING.  And this purchase didn’t fulfil my desire to possess things entirely either – so I ended up with a stack of things in addition to the catalogue: some Erica van Horn postcards and a book ‘Rusted: Six Small Iron Articles of Unknown Use – found and drawn Ballybeg 2004′ – I think that this would complement Hazel Jones’ A1 Scrap Metal project.

Rusted  Erica Van Horn 2004 16pp laser and letterpress in two colours, sewn with wrappers 150 x 105.100 numbered copies.2nd edition of 150 copies 2007

And ‘The Die is Cast’ by Caroline Bergvall & Nick Thurston – a book of sayings and proverbs which have been merged and mixed together through the pagination and binding of the book – which Karl & Kimberley Foster would like in their Object Dialogue Box ‘first aid kits’ – how phrases can set and spark the imagination…  ‘You can’t judge a / spade’ or ‘Call a spade a / book by its cover’.  It is strange how everything I am currently doing in my PhD and extra-PhD world seems to have been whizzing through my head while I looked at this exhibition – its design, content, interpretation, objects, reasons, people, ideas.  Everything is interlinked.  Always.

Another artist’s book that I bought was Chloe Brown’s ‘Coming Ready Or Not’, which although written in 2000, before I knew her, is a little reminder (of some of the better days of that rather hellish project we ran together – another story…).

So that was my journey into printing and presses, poetry and purity, words both intangible and tangible.

Friday 20th July – back to conference papers all day.  Started in Section 18 – The Absence of the Object and the Void – for Burcu Dogramaci’s introduction to the topic, followed by Jessamyn Conrad on ‘Absence as Presence’ – the mihrab as a means to and metaphor for the transcendent God in Islam.  Her paper took in several examples of mihrab niches in mosques around the world – a frame that defines emptiness.  I thought this was an interesting topic to explore, but thought there were some aspects skirted over too quickly, and comments such as the Islamic god being omnipresent as a contrast with the Christian and Hindu god – which I disagree with.  I spoke to her afterwards and suggested she looks at Denys Turner’s Darkness of God, and Mark McIntosh’s Mystical Theology, as I think what she was exploring in Islamic architecture was similar to paradoxes of apophatic and cataphatic theology and metaphor – and in such a way, what she is saying about the mihrab, is similar to some of my own thinking about museum objects.

I then whizzed to Section 11: The Artefact and its Representations for the end of a paper about second life, by Lisa Mansfield, followed by an incongruous presentation from Sandra Klopper (South Africa) about Falko, a hip-hop artist who makes split pieces across sites, using Flickr to display his work – so a part may be ‘traditional’ wall graffiti, while some might be sprayed onto a vehicle and then driven into place.  Very inspiring, and interesting that part of his funding came from the British Council for a project called ‘The Darling Made me do it’ which was an attempt to work with a very poor community to transform the neighbourhood.  I’m not sure what the legacy was after the project, and why the local people were initially hostile – it did feel somewhat exploitative.

After coffee, Section 15, Charged Sites.  A voyage from Tianenmen’s gate to heaven (although without mentioning the Tianenmen Square massacre, because ‘the paper is about the gate, not the square’) by Yan Geng in which I learnt more than I have ever known about Chinese history as she focussed on 3 periods of the gate’s existence: 1) Imperial China 1368-1912; 2) Republican Period 1912-1949; 3) People’s Republic 1949-.  It was fascinating particularly to see how images of Mao were used on this monument which had initially been an imperial statement.  Then the voyage took us to Belgrade and a paper by Nenad Makuljevic on the city through its torn past from Ottoman to Habsburg to Serbian state in the C17th-19th.  Fascinating.  It really struck me too that it was the NATO bombs in the 1990s that destroyed Belgrade’s most important monuments that had survived a turbulent history up to this point.  Was this an ‘urbicide’ – destruction and rebuilding of a city? (And now I have been to Berlin too, it feels similar there).  The final paper in this trio was Anna Minta talking about contested spaces in Jerusalem – a city that belongs to nobody and everybody.  Even thought this section wasn’t really relevant to my own work, I learnt so much, and literally felt I had been on a trip to those countries.

After lunch spent talking to people about my poster and the work of others, I went to my one and only Durer session, by postgraduate section organiser Anna Grebe – a brilliant paper on Durer relics, and the kitsch-ness of emblems of Durer, such as the praying hands (later seen in Berlin’s Museum der Dinge which illustrated the point very well).  Following that, I attended Rudolpf Frieling’s ‘The Museum as Producer’.  The next presenter was unwell, so I went back to Section 18 for Christina Vasconcelos de Almeida’s paper on the object archiving its own absence.  We went on a journey to Teshima Island in Japan to see Christian Boltansky’s archives – requiring a pilgrimage to get there, record one’s heartbeat.

The final papers were Mark Cheetham on The Absent Objects of EcoArt – on land art and eco art and the differences between them – but really I enjoyed just seeing the visual images and travelling to far flung places.  He talked about Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass (now at LACMA) and its 340 tonne and $100 million progress from the desert to the museum, the director saying “there won’t be a single adult who won’t want to experience this object” (!)  This was followed by what was deemed more successful as it was obviously artificial, Eliasson’s sun at Tate, Robert Morris’ Earthworks, Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, James Turrell’s Roden Crater, Mark Dion’s Neukom Vivarium, Roni Horn’s VATNASFN.  And last but not least, Nicole Sully on the World Trade Centre, and Unbuilding in the Void which painted an interesting architectural history in which the twin towers (built 1966-76) were hated with only one article written in their favour, and a 1964 campaign against their construction due to unsightliness, getting in the way of migrating birds, TV signals etc.  Taking us on a chronological journey through acclaim, disrepute, symbolism, and finally redemption, the towers myth was painted, but with the ultimate memorial being for the PEOPLE, not for the building.

The farewell evening for postgraduates followed back at the museum – more pretzls and champagne, followed by the final speeches and handing on of the banner to Beijing for the next CIHA 2016 event.  All 400 lectures and 70 posters will be published.  A wonderful experience, incredibly well-organised, superbly funded, and really interesting new contacts made and new places to go as a result.  I am very grateful to the CIHA Postgraduate Programme for this wonderful opportunity.

Thursday of the conference was slightly different for me: the section papers during the day weren’t so directly relevant to my own research, and there were lots of things to see in Nuremberg, but I also wanted to attend the postgraduate papers during the lunch break, and of course the keynote speech by Dr Ulrich Grossmann in the evening.  So, careful planning meant that first thing, I went by bus to the Nazi Party Rally Grounds Documentation Centre.  An eery experience: the building itself looks like the Nazi salute. My first impressions were disappointing, as it was crammed full of noisy students.  I was unable to be given an audio guide as there were too many school groups there who were using them.  This was a shame, not least because the documentation was all in German, and it needed description to understand, but also many of the school children weren’t even using their guides and were messing about, and while I think it’s vital that they visit and learn about histories, the person on the welcome desk could have been a bit more welcoming and explained the situation or offered the option of buying the guidebook – especially since the audio guide is a key part of the exhibition as described on the website.

As it was, the space that I found most moving was the current temporary exhibition by artist Linda Ellia, Notre Combat on ‘Mein Kampf’.  Communities had been given pages from Hitler’s book to deface, add to, reflect on – and the resulting artworks were amazing – very powerful and interestingly curated and themed.  I had the whole red brick, dark space to myself.  The other temporary exhibition on the Art School’s responses to National Socialism was also fascinating (with interesting display techniques too).  The actual ‘Fascination and Terror’ starts with a strange film of two contemporary teenagers skate-boarding through the park, and peering into some of the Nazi Party spaces, with flashbacks to period films of the rallies.  And then the main exhibition takes you chronologically through this bleak period of history.

I then raced back to Messe for the postgraduate lunchtime papers: head full of history, and a bit out of conference mode…  I missed the first paper, but arrived to hear Julia Szekely’s interesting paper about Budapest’s socialist statues all having been moved to the ‘sculpture park’ there as a business venture for tourists, rather than as a historical memory.  She was followed by Julia Ariza from Argentina looking at visual representations of women in C20th Argentinian periodicals.  Corina Meyer was next with her paper on controversies around acceptance or rejection of Lippi’s conserved work in Frankfurt – she was an excellent story-teller.  Sarah Maupeu from Cologne then gave a fascinating and really relevant paper for my own interests – about ‘primitive art’ – or whether anthropology is/should be displayed aesthetically or contextually.  She compared the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris (aesthetic lighting, little context, information separate from aesthetics) with the Rauchenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne (one room displayed aesthetically, others contextual – also questions museum display in a self-reflexive way), and the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt (contemporary artists as ethnographers).  Her research is more broadly about the mystification of museum objects and so I am looking forward to further discussions about this.  Marie Yasunuga from the University of Tokyo gave a similarly fascinating paper on displaying non-western objects in art museums, focussing on the Folkwang Museum, Hagen 1902 by Karl Ernst Osthaus.  I wonder if she has visited the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich as this might be a useful comparison site.  The penultimate paper was by Stephanie Rozman from Minnesota, on Ananda Coomaraswamy as the most prolific historian of South Asian art in the early C20th.  Finally, John Tyson (whose poster was displayed next to mine – but I was never sure how we’d been displayed, and whether there were sub-themes?) – talked about Hans Haacke’s Ready-Mades and his invertion of Duchamp’s ready-mades into ready-mades.  I mentioned that Janet Marstine has done work that might be useful for him.

After this, I went back to the Germanisches National Museum for a proper look around, particularly spending time in the wonderful family gallery for the Durer exhibition – which had a real object and sensory focus, was a highly visual space that was not dumbed down in any way – very impressive, and reinforced the high opinion I formed of the education department the day before.  I got totally lost in this amazing museum, exploring Folk Art, Musical Instruments, Medieval Religious Sculpture and the Toy section – but also, could not find the C20th century collection (or understand it may have been closed).  I also revisited the Durer exhibition, looking closely at the beautiful cow’s nose.

The evening saw the wide-ranging keynote presentation, The Challenge of the Object from the conference convenor and General Director of the museum.  Dr Ulrich Grossmann started by exploring art historical definitions of ‘object’, only to discover that it’s a word not really defined in the discipline at all.  He explored several key ideas: that it could be the material object, or the object/subject of the discipline, and then cleverly wound his way through most of the section themes from the whole conference – looking at reproductions of objects, thinking about the need to constantly reevaluate the object using scientific techniques, thinking about religious objects, the differences between museum and university responses to the object, issues around restitution, authenticity, tourism and objects, nothingness of objects and issues of contemporary/performance art – where is the object?, global art history and internationalisation…

And then in a late night film showing ‘Der Hof’ by Viktoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff, I was absolutely enraptured by the story of Issa Samb: a post to follow eventually about the film.

Today was the postgraduate programme workshop day.  I attended two workshops on a similar theme – objects in museum education – but the two sessions were so different from each other.  The first, led by Dr Jessica Mack-Andrick, Deputy Head of Learning at the Germanishes National Museum was a useful overview of museum learning and theory, visitor studies, open-ended visual literacy, and the approaches used by the museum were demonstrated in really practical tasks and activities around ‘seeing is thinking’ ideas.  Some of these were very similar to work taking place in many art museums in the UK – for example using objects to make links with collections, doing detective work around stories and narratives in paintings, looking at the moods in portraits and pairing them with objects/other portraits in a very imaginative way, and finally a discursive ‘memory’ activity where after 5 minutes of gazing at a painting, hot-spots could be identified as to which areas both you/your partner could recall and why they stood out.  I really enjoyed working with a diverse range of people – many of whom had worked in museum education but others who had not, and sharing this really open-ended way of working with art historians for whom this is probably something ver far removed from formal qualities and historical context of works.  The initial activity, looking and deciphering the large entrance hall work: Rheinsberg’s Hauptstadt – found signs from when East German Berlin street signs were replaced to match the West – or unified ones – was a really interesting exercise too.  What did it mean?  What could we learn or find out?

The second workshop was at the contemporary art Neues Museum and led by freelance artist educator Jan Burmester.  The group was somewhat complex in that a couple of other workshops had amalgamated into one due to staff illness, and this was a bit unfortunate as people’s expectations were too diverse and unmanageable in a two hour slot (some wanted purely art historical tours of the current exhibition).  Nevertheless, it was fascinating to contrast the education programmes at this contemporary white cube space, with those in the traditional space of the morning.  And actually the programme came across as much more ‘traditional’ in the new space.  Perhaps still in its infancy (after 12 years), but there was a sense that the style may be somewhat didactic (despite the very best open-ended and discursive intentions of the educator) – workshop activities sounded like fun ways to explore artists’ processes (e.g. paper collage a la Bridget Riley, and photo-based cartoon portrait a la Julian Opie), but as yet there is no sign of learning staff ever working together with curators to instigate exhibitions, or develop interpretation (there is hardly any), and certainly audience involvement in curating is a distant dream of the freelance team.  It seems a shame that in the most modern architectural gem, there is still such a hierarchy of ways of working.  Family activities are just for the children on a Sunday, while their parents disappear.  A place full of politics.  I really enjoyed chatting to Jan though – and wish him all the very best in what must be a tricky environment to work in.

And because today was our ‘day off’, I of course crammed as many other visits in as I could.  So lunchtime included a visit to the Toy Museum – full of wonderful Noah’s Arks just like Mary Greg’s, also dolls, teddies, toys, railways, meccano and games.  The things that struck me the most were the games from the 1940s – in a section called ‘Out of the Rubble’ – all relating to the context, ‘make do and mend’, and reflecting the reality (such as a rubble shovelling lorry).  And of course some of the toys I remember, such as little Peekachoo monkeys from the early 80s (called something else here).  Lunch on the run (more pretzel) – and then after the second workshop, I had a cup of tea and piece of apple cake (although it seemed to also come with another cake as well which I think was free as part of a Kaffe und Kuchen deal with the tea?) – so I was rather piggy but had a nice sit down.  Then headed up to the Kaiserberg – amazing castle with lots of different parts to it, stunning views over the city and beautiful gardens.  Very brief pop into the museum there too (lots of arms and armour), then I headed to the Durer House Museum which was fantastic.  A stunning house, but also not only a wonderful exhibition of Durer’s studio and artistic techniques, paint pigments, printing press and so on, but also, I was so pleased to see the most wonderful exhibition of work by children mainly from Charkiw in the Ukraine (I think twinned with Nuremberg maybe?), based on Durer’s paintings and prints.  I hope those children were able to see their works hung in pride of place in the home of Durer himself.  What an honour.  Delighted to see that it had been extended since April too.  Dinner  – salad and lots of it – in nice little place by the Museum Bridge and then hotel bound.

Day two, and CIHA 2012 continues to be an amazing congress…  Highlights of today have been: hearing Janice Baker talking about about David Walsh’s controversial aesthetic ‘non-museum’ or temple to the secular at MONA, Hobart, Tasmania.  A bizarre text-less cavern-like performative space in which one man’s anti-curatorial collection has perhaps become highly curated – a mix of anthropological/ethnographic objects juxtaposed with contemporary art. Including Marc Quinn’s No Visible Means of Escape which of course I like (see Manchester Art Gallery and Creative Consultants’ project from 2009). Despite the criticisms, I really want to go there – indulge in my individual experience.  There’s even smelly artwork – Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca.  Say no more.  I stayed to the rest of the session to hear about the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver – again discussions around anthropology and/or art and aesthetics as modes of display or reading objects, and then a paper in French about Quai Branly and the Immigration Museum (no collection initially) in Paris – which luckily I understood the general gist of, having already heard about both places back in 2005 on the Museum Studies MA trip to Paris.

Following this, it was time for the long-awaited postgraduate papers.  8 of us presenting during the lunch break – in a rather vast hall.  Technical hitches initially (what – even in Germany?! I hear you ask!) – remind me to always bring my presentation on a memory stick – but luckily all was well after a lengthy delay, thanks to a very helpful member of the CIHA postgrad team finding my presentation.  I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to speak to this world audience (!) about sensory experience of the Mary Greg collection.  In only 6 minutes, I did an ‘off the cuff’ talk which I think worked well – a slightly different mode in a conference where most papers have been read out loud, and a more light-hearted approach than many.  I had lots of lovely comments afterwards and look forward to more to come.  I was particularly interested in Ivana Nina Unkovic’s paper (from Croatia) on involving audiences in conservation projects, and the problems and solutions that may arise as a result.  In addition, Jennifer Morris spoke about occult objects in Reformation Germany – and their mystical as well as material qualities.  Fascinating stuff, and wonderful to be part of this very generously funded programme.

Then I attended Howard Morphy’s paper in the CIHA special section (I felt I had to since he wrote the Foreword to my supervisor, Sandra Dudley’s book – Museum Materialities).  It was a fascinating look at aboriginal art and its links with contemporary work – particularly focussing on a snake image found in body art.  Art and anthropology as absolutely linked as art is a ‘form of human action in the world’.  The section was about CIHA’s role in the wider object world, so this seemed a bit of a tangent, but a very welcome one.  I then heard (back in the Museum Section 5) about an exhibition being developed, on art that hadn’t been recognised by museums, or by the avant garde artists, but in which the art was more than object (or not an object).  I needed a bit more here I think – I wasn’t quite sure how the works for the exhibition had been selected, except that they were innovative.  I think it was showing that there is a way of sharing such works beyond doCUMENTA.   The final paper of the day (Religious Object Section 3) was brilliantly quirky and I loved it – not because it was really anything to do with art – but because it was about an obsession with objects, making and leaving things behind.  Howard Finster was a minister who quit when he realised that nobody listened to his sermons, instead making a garden of paradise.  Some 44,000 ‘folk art’ works later, he died leaving an amazing and very odd place behind.  Cult leader?  Obsessive hoarder?  Eccentric maker and do-gooder?  I am not sure, but it was clear that his objects have affect on people.  (But do all objects do this?  Does any object have a capacity to do this, no matter where it is?)

So that was my day at CIHA.  But there is life beyond the conference walls, so I went for a nice stroll through the stunning ‘old’ town of Nuremberg, its churches, bridges, halls.  But was so struck by a 1945 postcard I saw in a tourist shop, of the city, totally flattened – and now by the rebuilding and shrapnel damage.  All that culture and historic beauty bombed. By us.  And this was further compounded when I went to the Nuremberg Bratwurst Hausle for dinner (nothing to do with the delicious sausages x 8 with kartoffelnsalat and a beer) but I randomly shared a table with an Austrian family, the son of whom had also been at the conference and amongst other discussions, he had noted how few British conveners and presenters there are here – something he thought was due to international politics between the British Museum and the Germanischse National Museum  – and Nuremberg in particular – which is a direct result of WW2.  Is this true?  I’m not sure.  I certainly hadn’t even thought about Anglo-German relations as anything to do with this conference, and not knowing about the art history world in the UK, I have nothing to go on, but it is interesting that this is an outside opinion and that a lack of British presence here has been noted in what apparently is a traditionally Franco/Germanic institution of CIHA.  And so I go to sleep with my head full of thoughts yet again.

Well, here I am at the CIHA2012 Conference in Nuremberg.  With a title ‘The Challenge of the Object’, it instantly struck me that this might be something for me.  When I registered and applied for the Postgraduate Programme, I don’t think I’d really thought that this was an Art History Congress, more that it was about objects, and that’s what appealed, and that’s what my paper and poster are about. But in the months that ensued, I began worrying that I wasn’t really a real Art Historian – would that matter?  Would I understand the language of the ‘art historian tribe’?  Would they understand me and my perhaps unorthodox views on handling the physical stuff?  Do I belong here?

Well, after one day, I needn’t have worried.  I sat next to an interesting woman from S.Africa on the U-Bahn who I mentioned this to first thing, and she immediately extolled the virtues of interdisciplinarity.  Good.  Anyway, I am exhausted and bewildered, yes, but have heard some fantastic papers already…  So this morning, I attended the session on musealisation of objects – just my thing.  And I was really excited to hear Geraldine Johnson speak about sensory engagement with Renaissance Sculpture – actually handling, while eating, listening to music – that wondrous overload of sense experience.  And to have her still puzzling over why museums struggle with this was really inspiring too.  Following a short break, I then attended a few papers on religious objectifications.  In particular, I found Milada Studnickova’s paper about theological metaphor – looking particularly at exegesis and the symbolism of flies and spectacles.  Wonderful and stunningly illustrated with little medieval flies.  Interesting debates too about the scale of such flies, and the trompe l’oeil effects as actually being representative of the devil/sin – since they fool us into thinking that a fly really is on that page…

Lunch was brief as it was the postgrad poster launch at the same time, and I got embroiled in a really complex discussion about Hans Haacke with my next door neighbour poster exhibitor.  Super intelligent and well read – but made me think I need to read some Benjamin (and a whole load of other scary sounding things).  I then had a bit of a pause before going back to the Museums session, then escaped altogether to a fascinating but totally random (for me) talk on Matisse’s paper cut-outs and the copyright and design implications of his family estate then selling them on to family homes, museums etc as ceramic tiles, instead of the paper decorations they originally were…

Then I just had to escape as I am absolutely exhausted…  So back to nice quiet hotel for a brief sit down before the evening reception which I am now heading off towards…

St David’s Day today and time to reflect on the month that was February, this year with its additional leap day.

Unfortunately, the latter part of the month saw me bed-ridden for a week with a proper dose of ‘flu.  It really knocked the stuffing out of me – I still feel tired even though I’ve been out of bed slowly getting better for a week now.  I seemed to suffer from every ailment in the book: cough, cold, tonsillitis, conjunctivitis, sickness, diarrhoea, bloodshot eyes – very miserable.  University work has suffered as I haven’t read or written anything and had to postpone my supervision.

But perhaps it was because I spent the first part of February rushing around like a lunatic, not only with domestic things (new bathroom fitting), and the commute to Leicester, but of course also with museum and gallery visits and exhibitions.

And spectacular exhibitions they were too…  I arranged two visits for PhD colleagues from Leicester to come to Sheffield and visit Weston Park Museum, the Graves Gallery and the Millennium Gallery.  WPM currently has a wonderful touring exhibition from the British Museum: China, Journey to the East.  I think I’d already seen it in York, but I loved the objects and was reminded of some of the ivories in Sheffield’s collection, as well as seeing many things from the BM, Manchester Museum and other places – in particular a piece of the Great Wall of China complete with paper label and hand-written notes from Ancoats (I think).  I liked the interactive elements – a Chinese Zodiac puppet show, and some great old film footage, and interesting Chinese musical instrument sounds.  At the Graves, whose parque floor was terribly damaged by water, and had risen so much that Marc Quinn’s ‘Kiss’ had had to be moved elsewhere down the gallery, there was the Blk Art Group exhibition – not my cup of tea, but I was pleased to see it so busy with diverse visitors.  I was also struck by how much the gallery had acquired during the 1980s – a shame that there’s no longer the budget for new works to be collected.  The Family in British Art was on at the Millennium Gallery – a great show, part of the Great British Art Debate, and curated by the wonderful team from Norwich (who developed the Art at the Rockface exhibition I worked on a few years ago).  The Under the Sea show in the Gallery of Craft & Design was fun too – full of families.

I suppose I should reflect a little here on Museums Sheffield’s situation: having not been selected to be recipients of the new Renaissance funding from ACE, they are having to make tough cuts – 45 job losses expected, with exhibitions and education being particularly badly hit.  It is devastating for the city and for all those staff who work so passionately to bring the collections to life for visitors.  I can’t say that I am surprised though: the region is incredibly ‘well-museumed’: York and Leeds (who were successful) have wonderful collections and do some really innovative work.  Sheffield does of course too, but according to ACE lacks the financial ‘resilience’, perhaps having been sullied by over-spending and being somewhat reckless/over-ambitious/even arrogant in the recent past.  There are many ironies and paradoxes at play in the (local and national) media coverage, in ACE coverage, in Museums Sheffield’s own coverage, and indeed in my own opinion – while I think ‘I could have told you so’ and know many others who share my views, nevertheless, I am incredibly sad for the city…  It remains to be seen what will happen now the CEO and Finance Director have taken voluntary redundancy.  I have my hopes.

In addition to visits close to home, I also went to London to see Grayson Perry’s Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman at the British Museum.  Grayson did not disappoint.  What a wonderful exhibition – humour and irony, subtle commentary (and not so subtle) on the gallery-going public, on museum collections, on collecting, on objects and their (unknown) makers.  What I hadn’t realised was that GP selected objects from the British Museum which resonated with things he’d made, and not the other way around.  So this was really innovative, and slightly different from the MAG project and the Arts Council/Lincolnshire ones I think: starting with the artist, not with the collection.  I loved it.  I laughed, explored, wondered and wandered.  It was a shame there wasn’t more space, that there were far too many people, and that some objects couldn’t be seen from all angles.  It could have been spread across a larger area.  But on the whole, it was the cleverest showing of objects I have seen for a very long time.  The book (cheaper on Amazon) has a great essay in it too.  Highly recommended, and my strategy of noting at the start of the year which exhibitions I wanted to see, and writing the closure date in my diary, has really helped pinpoint and not miss out.

After this, I had some time when Sam had gone to his lecture, to visit the David Hockney at the Royal Academy.  I hadn’t really known what to expect.  I thought I might be disappointed with repetition and too much primary colour.  But I was wrong.  I loved this exhibition too: a bit like Monet’s insistence in following places by times and season, Hockney had painstakingly painted the same view over a year, or over a day – stunning visual sense of the English countryside.  It really was the ‘Bigger Picture’ of its title – and will really make me look at trees, woods and wood anew.  What I was less impressed by were his iPad paintings blown up – while these worked wonderfully on the iPads themselves – a quick impression – when enlarged and printed to full-scale, some of the immediacy of his paintwork disappeared into oblivion, leaving a 2D image, with none of the juiciness of a real 3D oil painting.  I liked his films though – and the innovation with which he’d rigged up film cameras onto his landrover to get a sense of driving slowly down a country road.  Very clever.  His work has really grown on me.  I also liked one really early painting from Cartwright Hall in Bradford (I have seen it there, I’m sure) – quite a kitchen-sinky type of landscape.  I might indulge in the book, but it’s a bit pricey.

My final trip in February took place in the same week (no wonder I was ill with all this rushing about)…  Temple Newsam in Leeds.  An amazing council-owned and run stately home.  Stunning furniture, incredibly picture gallery and library, beautifully kept, amazing wallpapers, deserted, only £3 to enter or something, bowled over by the sheer volume and number of rooms that were open to the public, by the number of small changing displays, by the clear collecting that is still taking place.  Amazing.  No wonder Leeds will be getting ACE funding.  I was incredibly impressed, and look forward to visiting again.  The farm was also fantastic: goats, sheep, pregnant donkeys.  Wonderful.  A really lovely family day out, and a real hidden gem in Yorkshire.  I must tell more people about it.

This week’s Brown Bag seminar was entitled Representing Re-Formation, and my blog post on The Attic, can be read here.

Alongside my research, I thought I’d write about interesting places I have seen, exhibitions visited and so on…  I would like to visit at least one exhibition per month, preferably more, and the year has started well.  Actually, it started at the end of December with a brief visit to Exeter’s long awaited multi-million pound redevelopment at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum which opened after a four-year closure on 15 December 2011.  I’d gone to Exeter to meet a friend for lunch and do some shopping in the sales but couldn’t resist a quick pop in…  I couldn’t remember the museum that well in its previous incarnation, but was impressed with the new layout and in particular a massive mezzanine display in the covered courtyard showing a vast range of collections.  The displays themselves were lively and beautifully presented, and I look forward to spending some proper time looking…

Another exciting place I had the pleasure of visiting was Spalding Gentlemen’s Society.  I was invited here to deliver a presentation for the Collections Management group of Renaissance East Midlands on Digital Collections and Social Media.  I’d never been to Spalding, and must confess I had to look it up on a map to find out exactly which bit of Lincolnshire it is in.  What an amazing place!  The Gentlemen’s Society is on a road with a number of similar looking other societies and groups in lovely (Georgian?) buildings, but behind its door lies absolute wonderment.  I couldn’t believe it: a mini Pitt-Rivers.  A place crammed full of old cabinets, stuffed full of objects, from archaeology, to fossils, to Victorian toys, pottery and ceramics, paintings, metalwork, books and manuscripts stacked high in the library.  A wonderful spectacle.  Sadly, as it is, there is very little knowledge of the collection: its documentation is barely there, and some (most?) items aren’t even listed.  As far as the society goes, there sounded to be interesting ‘politics’ – women only allowed in since 2007, and most of the Trustees seemed to be non-expert volunteers with little understanding of conservation, and even less of access to collections.  Visiting is by appointment only.  Added to this the building itself is in disrepair, and we have a huge problem…  I am determined to find out more about this amazing collection, and to share it with as many people as I can – I feel a trip by PhD students from Leicester is in the pipeline…

Following my visit here, and after a stunning sunset as I drove through Peterborough, I made the most of being almost in East Anglia, and went to stay with friends in Cambridge.  What an excellent excuse to visit the Vermeer exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, and Kettle’s Yard – and a new find – the Cambridge Folk Museum.  My first attempt at seeing the Vermeer was thwarted by huge lengthy queues (it was the last weekend, after all) so I decided to go to Kettle’s Yard and remind myself of how wonderful it is.  Wow.  Stunning sunny day – the best time to see the house as the light and shadows were wonderful.  I took lots of photographs of shadows, and enjoyed being in the house, reminding myself of its strange idiosyncrasies, doorbell etiquette, and noticing the seasonal fresh flowers – perhaps the only mark of time of year there.  It was exhibition changeover, so I popped next door to the Folk Museum.  I couldn’t believe I’d never been in three years of living in Cambridge.  Ah well – all good things come to those who wait and all that.  What a lovely little rabbit warren of a place – again with extraordinary objects, amazing labels (typed sometimes) and lots of overlap with Mary Greg’s collection.  I wouldn’t be surprised if some of her objects ended up there.  Very friendly staff who I enjoyed chatting to.  And then I tootled back to the Fitzwilliam where the queues had dwindled a bit.  Saw Jon Snow (I bet he didn’t have to queue) and was finally let in after having a lovely chat with a lady in the queue who was queuing for the second time that day as she’s been so impressed.  As with any popular exhibition, the mass of humanity was a bit off-putting, but once I’d decided to obliterate it, grab a large label booklet and plan my route, I was soon immersed in Dutch life, from women ‘at their toilet’, to women posing, to women carrying out daily routines…  Through the windows, themes of interiority/exteriority, fewer Vermeers than I’d assumed, but it didn’t matter as it was such a well-put together (small) exhibition.  Lovely and well worth the wait.

And then I also visited Tate Liverpool’s Alice in Wonderland exhibition with Liz Mitchell…  I’d thought it would be mainly historic illustrations by Tenniel et al – but actually it was a MASSIVE exhibition showing the influence of Lewis Carroll on surrealism, on psychedelia in the 60s, and various other more contemporary pieces (including the interactive artwork to make your own book).  There were also Alice books illustrated by Tove Jansen and numerous foreign translations, some with terrifying images.  It was interesting, but slightly odd, and I found the layout to be unintuitive – the start was sort of in the middle.  A bit like the rabbit hole.  I think I came out having really enjoyed the historic manuscripts and illustrations, and the wonderful early photographs of and by Lewis Carroll (friend of the Pre-Raphaelites which I hadn’t realised) – but there were big question-marks for me about biographical details (the worrying obsession with young girls?), and some of the LSD induced artworks of the 60s seemed a bit incongruous.  I’m glad I went, but glad I’m a member of the Museums Association and didn’t have to pay.  Put it that way.

At the weekend, I went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park: no longer was the Jaume Plensa exhibition there (although the deinstall was taking place and so we could still see some pieces) – a glorious winter’s sunny day involving coffee and lunch outside – a real pleasure to be in the open air.  Enjoyed touching the Henry Moores and feeling the warm metal from the sun and the coldness where it had been in the shade.  Lucky to live so near.

Today I have been to Museums Sheffield to hear about 3D digitisation funded by JISC in partnership with Sheffield Hallam University: a fascinating project, and I have much more to say at a later date – suffice to say it’s a shame that Sheffield’s digitisation output has been so limited in comparison with other museums and galleries of a similar size.  And this will only get worse I fear, due to the current funding situation (about which I have strong and unconventional feelings)…  There were some brilliant speakers though and some interesting questions, mainly around similar technologies that are used for 3D – robotic arms, lasers or SLR cameras.  I’m still interested in the capacity of the CMS to capture user generated response.

So that’s January at an end…  February will see Grayson Perry at the British Museum (yippee!), China: Journey to the West at Weston Park Museum, and probably the other Museums Sheffield exhibitions before they close.

Here’s a link to my first blog post on The Attic (Museum Studies PhD blog)…  It’s based on a Brown Bag seminar session by Kevin Harris and Martin Dudley of Local Level on ‘Young People Looked After’.