Museum

Just a few handy highlights of my recent visit to Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.

Quite macabre, but I love the way these fingers appear to be creeping out of the frame.

Still trying to work out if this child’s chubby hands below are about to release the bird or squeeze it to death!

Love these gorgeous Gainsborough hands!

But I was mostly intrigued by the timeless quality of this last one. The rings on her fingers and the whole style and countenance of the woman suggested to me that she was painted in the 20th century. Yet this gorgeous informal portrait of Catherine Sardou was painted by Antoine-Jean Gros in 1796!

Those rings are similar to ones I wear today…

Nestled into the cliff face above the pier at Bournemouth is the hidden gem of the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum.

From the roadside it appears as a single-storey, unremarkable Victorian building, but from the beach below it offers intrigue, tempting you with its turrets peeking above the bushes in the cliff top garden.  The road entrance is only apparently used these days for newly-wedded couple; we plebs must make our way to the garden entrance to gain access through the modern extension on the west side of the house. Strangely in keeping with the rest of the house, the new extension adds its own style to the mixed bag of stylistic references. In that perfect way of Victorian eclecticism, the house borrows from oriental, Italianate, Scottish Baronial, classical and French traditions, reflecting the owners’ collections and travel itinerary.

So who would live in a house like this? Merton and Annie Russell-Cotes, that’s who. Pretty much a self-made pair: entrepreneurs, hoteliers and collectors.  A Victorian love story of a boy shipped off to Glasgow following his father’s death, bereft of his inheritance, only to discover his true love in Annie Nelson Clark, the daughter of his art and literature loving friend John King Clark.

After marrying and working in Dublin, Merton was recommended the south coast of England to alleviate his chronic chest ailments, so he bought the Bath Hotel in the centre of Bournemouth. Having renovated and extended the hotel in floor plan and in name – it became known as the Royal Bath Hotel because of its association with Edward VII, at the time scraping a living as the Prince of Wales – the Russell-Cotes then set to work building a family home next door. The building is in fact the vision of Merton, but his intention was to build it as a gift for his wife. Their story appears to be one of deep love and wedded bliss as our guide Pippa has interpreted it – she is leading us through the building on a mammoth 2 hour tour – what she calls a drop-in tour. You can drop in to the tour at any time, likewise you can drop out at any time if you’re getting bored with her commentary. It says much about Pippa’s commentary that the numbers double (if not more!) by the end of the tour. She brings the house to life, describing the decor, the history, some of the painting, the couples love of celebrity and their shoulder-rubbings with actors of the day. In fact, I’m wondering if I should check out Pippa’s credentials as her delivery is so polished and her storytelling so professional, I’m wondering if she is an actor herself.

She portrays Russell-Cotes as a self-publicist, encouraging friendships with royalty and actors. She tells us about the Lillie Langtry loo, the red glass in the conservatory, the Rosetti painting, the Japanese collection, the Napoleonic wine cooler and campaign lamp (both actual possessions of Napoleon in whom Merton had a particular interest). Benevolently, the Russell-Cotes, erstwhile mayor of Bournemouth and having secured the title of Sir and Lady, left the house and it’s substantial collection to the people of Bournemouth, with a separate sum bequeathed to pay for the upkeep of a curator for a number of years.

Perhaps they would have turned in their family mausoleum had they known that a 1960s curator had taken it upon himself to paint the rich red main hall peppermint green, or gloss paint the woodwork in the boudoir brilliant white, rather than retain Mrs R-C’s preferred pink! Happily a lottery grant has helped to restore the house almost to its former glory. Wallpaper and paint samples hidden behind furniture and electric fittings have helped to identify wall hangings and commission replacement furnishings.  The painted ceilings, friezes and cornices are almost there, but the conservatory with its peeling paint and emergency buckets still has a long way to go.

                               

If you aren’t inclined to take the tour, there is a perfectly good introductory film at the entrance to the museum just before you enter the original house through the conservatory. There are also information boards available for descriptions about the paintings and sculptures in the collection. And it is possible to wander through the house appreciating the rooms, the art and the antiques without having to read up about each individual item. Unlike many historical buildings the Russell-Cotes Museum does not force you around a predetermined route with ropes and barriers to keep you in check. You may wander at your leisure and take a break on any of the many chairs not sporting a teasle. A lovely touch, I think, to deter you from sitting on a delicate fabric or potentially hazardous item of furnishing!
   

In fact it’s probably best to take a seat every now and again, as after a while you find the Florence-effect coming on. There is far too much in one place to appreciate everything! It’s handy therefore that Pippa is on hand to draw our attention to some of the stand-out pieces in the collection, where the money was spent on bespoke art and where saving were made on catalogue-bought fittings.  She points out that, ironically, the paintings, sculpures, china cabinets, curios and stuffed animals are only a small portion of the enormous collection which would have cluttered the house in the Russell-Cotes’ time.

Of course mid-Victorians were exposed to the styles of art, architecture and industry from around the world, particularly with the opening of the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1851, but it wasn’t until the 1880s that Japan began to open its doors to the world, and en route back from New Zealand the Russell-Cotes chose to purchase some exceptional tourist souvenirs –  some of which, on reflection, should probably have stayed in the country of origin. And if that makes you think of the Elgin Marbles, then you might be surprised that they (or plaster cast replicas) adorn the frieze about the entrance staircase. Other friezes, also catalogue-bought, are made from compressed paper – I’m immediately interested considering my minor obsession with Victorian papier-mâché, but in this case the cherubic bottoms adorning the upper levels of the main hall haven’t fared so well and one has a thumb-sized dimple in his buttock.

As well as the impressive collection of Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite art, there are amazing Sèvres and Imari pieces of porcelain dotted around, Māori art, and Japanese carved Ivory. In fact there are Japanese pieces all over the place, having overspilled from the Mikado’s Room overlooking the little Japanese bridge in the garden. Apparently on their return to Bournemouth and before the house was built in 1901, the Japanese collection was housed in a suite of its own in the Royal Bath Hotel and only guests worth their salt – royalty, actors, dignitaries, etc – were invited to view the treasures which travelled back from the Far East in 100 packing cases.

              

Beyond the classical and oriental inspired Main Hall, an extension leads on to what was originally the kitchen garden. These four rooms now form an art gallery housing works of art from the collection and in the furthest two rooms is the current exhibition – Refracted: Collection Highlights –  curated with the help of the local LGBT+ community. Sections are inspired by the colours of the rainbow and even if none the individual pieces of art are to your taste, you’ve got to admire the arrangement of the galleries – it’s a joy to walk round the exhibition just to get the juxtaposition of the painted walls! I do like the work on display though – particularly Walter Cranes and the Casque D’or by Kate Olver – but to be honest I’m all Uffizi-ed out now and I’m off to the cafe for a spot of lunch.

My head is still spinning with some of Pippa’s stories, and there is far too much to impart – so I think you should make the trip to Bournemouth and have a look at the museum and collection yourself.

The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum is open 10am-5pm, Tuesday-Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays. It occasionally closes for special events. It costs £6 for adults and OAPs and £4 for children and concessions on means-tested benefits. Worth every penny!

I haven’t been to the Science Museum in South Kensington for some years – 10? 12, perhaps? – so I was looking forward to seeing what new stuff was in store for me and my nephews.

Surprisingly, considering it was the start of the schools holidays, the queue to get in was minimal. A quick bag check and straight through to the entry tills where you can pass through free of charge or offer a donation to the upkeep of the museum (suggested £5 donation per person).

Now I must be honest here – I can’t say I was ever much taken with the Energy Hall in the main gallery. I know they are all big impressive exhibits, all important breakthroughs in their own right, but they never quite got me steamed up! I know my dad would have loved the huge scale models – they were probably there to be seen when he was a boy, and they do suffer slightly from old-world museum exhibit syndrome with a tad of dustiness about them.

Which is a big shame really, because, if like me, you’re not totally enthralled with the grandeur of this massive gallery, then you might be forgiven for thinking it’s going to be a bit of a bland, bygone museum experience. But, oh no, you just need to move on a few metres into the Exploring Space gallery and that, for me, is where this museum starts!

I’m not going to say this is the most perfect gallery of all time, it just resonates deeply with me and my dreams, as a seven-year-old, of becoming an astronaut. (I still have these dreams, but I’m sure now, as then, they’re not too keen to let a chronic asthmatic into space!)

This is a gallery filled with rockets, satellites, a replica of the Eagle Moon lander and dangling planets in a moodily dark atmospheric gallery. I think perhaps the last time I was here, me and my eyes were a tad younger and I didn’t notice how difficult it is to read the information panels beside the exhibits. I can see that they are filled with fascinating facts about the Apollo missions, Sputnik, Valentina Tereshkova, the first and only female to fly solo in space – but I can hardly read a bloody thing. And it gets worse when someone joins you at the exhibit and their shadow falls over the captions!

Never mind, I know most of this stuff anyway, so I can happily chunter on to my nephews, probably boring them rigid in the process.

We have to cut our time in the gallery short because we’ve booked in to the Legend of Apollo experience and need to hightail it through the Making of the Modern World gallery with all manner of transport and technology, stopping briefly for a pee stop and to take a photo of Stephenson’s Rocket.

We file into a small room and start with an explanatory film about the missions to the moon before moving in to the Discovery Motion Theatre, picking up our 3D glasses on the way to experiencing the animated journey in a multi-sensational, chair rocking, 3D, surround-sound spectacle.

It was fun and a little unexpected – I thought it was just a film! – and we filed out and straight on to a second 3D experience in the enormous IMAX theatre on the top floor. From the IMAX films on offer, we chose A Beautiful Planet. Who doesn’t enjoy a 3D film? No-one can criticise the amazing effects and the scale of the experience, but I think I have to criticise the makers for being a tiny bit misleading with the name of this film. I think perhaps ‘Good bits of IMAX film from space tied up in a tenuously linked storyline about Earth, and perhaps Mars, and a lot about the International Space Station’.  Obviously, A Beautiful Planet is catchier!

Footage of Earth from the Space Station is always impressive – night shots of cities, beautiful oceans and awesome weather conditions, but the IMAX experience was disappointingly ‘flat’. The best footage of Earth was taken from ground level over the oceans and across mountain ranges which then morph into Mars – possibly to reinforce the environmental message of the dangers of climate change.

The best footage, however, comes direct from the ISS with astronauts, boxes, oranges and all manner of debris floating before your 3D specs. My verdict – great footage, bad plot, but highly enjoyable nonetheless.

From the IMAX theatre, we hit the Deep Blue Diner for lunch – nice salads on offer here, a selection of burgers, kids’ menu – with waitress service in a moodily-lit, vibrant blue corner of the Wellcome Wing. Tasty!

After a nice relaxing lunch, we hit the trail again. Retracing our steps we head for a closer look at the Rocket and move on to inspect Tim Peake’s capsule with its charred shell and enormous parachute. Casting my mind back a couple of hours to our Legend of Apollo experience, I feel I can appreciate the scars and the scale of the craft a little more (even if I’d still like to experience the real thing for myself!). What I love most about the Soyuz TMA-19M descent module is its lovely art deco shape. Obviously, the design of the capsule follows all the rules of fit-for-purpose. There’s no concern for superficial styling to make it look nice – it has to be designed to fit in the nose of the Soyuz rocket, attach snuggly with the ISS and return to Earth safely though the planet’s atmosphere, withstanding temperatures of 17,000°C. So there’s no option of a pretty rose window or an Art Nouveau-style handle, but strangely, it looks so stylish that the landing capsule could have come straight from a Tintin novel or even from the mind of HG Wells. For me, the highlight of the visit!

We wander aimlessly into places that look exciting to the boys. The Flight gallery is a favourite, with its history of flight from balloons as depicted on commemorative china, which I loved, while the boys were off examining the cockpit of a 1943 Douglas DC-3. Raised walkways make the most of the exhibits from Amy Johnson’s Gypsy Moth to the Hawker P1127.

The boys pass up on the chance to ‘fly’ in one of the simulators – they’ve just had lunch and don’t want to lose it. There’s also a virtual reality space descent following Tim Peake’s return to the planet, which we’ll leave for another day as I seem to be the only one interested. We also leave the Wonderlab, skip the Information Age gallery, pause for a while in the Mathematics gallery to rest on the benches and admire the amazing canopy designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. The undulating 3D forms are inspired by the in-flight air currents of the 1929 Handley Page ‘Gugnunc’ aircraft at the head of the gallery. Illuminated by a constantly moving violet light, the whole gallery has such an hypnotic effect, that I almost had to force myself to look at the other exhibits.

We ended up on the top gallery overlooking the main Energy Hall. The interactive Energy gallery keeps us all entertained, and it’s a shame that some of the consoles are out of action. While the boys try out all the exhibits, including the Do Not Touch installation (which, of course, just cries out to be touched!), I go for a quick whizz around the watches in The Clockmakers’ Museum. A bit of a weakness of mine – clocks, globes, orreries, astrolabes… In reality I know nothing about their workings, I just like looking at them!

It’s interesting that in a museum where often the overall design of the individual galleries outdoes some of the exhibits therein, here we have a relatively old-fashioned display of clocks and watches packed into cases. Some of the delicate pocket watches are exquisite, but there are far too many of them to appreciate each one. Instead I jump from case to case, picking out my two or three favourites and reading about them. There’s also one of John Harrison’s early marine chronometers and a wonky little orrery tucked inside a glass globe that grab my attention before I return to the boys in the Energy gallery.

So we leave with, I reckon, only one third of the museum covered. There’s plenty for a return visit… the Robot exhibition, the Statoil Gallery, I didn’t get to visit my favourite home appliances in The Secret Life of the Home gallery in the basement – and then there’s the new Medicine gallery due to open in 2019.

 So plenty of reasons for a return visit!

Goth Central

You wonder, as you walk in to the curiosity cabinet that is the Whitby Museum, why you have never visited it before! At first glance it appears to be an old fashioned museum stuck in a Victorian time warp. And that’s correct – it has all of the dry display cabinets of the old Geological Museum in London’s South Ken, coupled with the eclectic collection of Forest Hill’s beautiful Horniman Museum. And it’s true, some of the exhibits have been in the Whitby Museum for so long that their typed up description label is fading on yellowing paper, so much so that in some cases I had to photograph the label and enlarge it on my phone to be able to read it! It’s actually quite a charming little foible of the museum.

But did I just mention the electric nature of the Horniman Museum? Well, bless me, it has competition with the Whitby Museum – if you’d like to consider museums which have the most wide ranging and frankly quite bizarre collections I’ve come across. The Hancock Museum of my childhood (circa 1970) had a similar atmosphere, but the amazing thing about Whitby is that the collection is housed mostly in one room. It’s not large by museum standards, but it is absolutely packed to the brim with artefacts and oddities.

The gory Hand of Glory

A handy returnable laminated guide sheet is handed to you when you hand over your £5 entrance fee, but it doesn’t give you the full gist of what’s in store. Wandering around I found many displays pandering to my wide range of interests, from the huge collection of ammonites (a favourite obsession of mine), to the collection of cameras collected over the last century (tying in with my love of photography), to the handicrafts section (my other job alongside picture research), to the cabinets packed with china and glass (both lifelong passions) and the amazing miniature models (harking back to my early days studying precision modelling). There’s also a standing stone with cup markings, for goodness sake (… thinks back to the many holidays spent dragging my kids round fields looking for wild versions… ).

And if you’re looking for weird juxtapositioning, opposite  the stone you’ll find a grandfather clock alongside a ceiling height totem pole!

Then there were the work related exhibits – the orrery in the explorers exhibition tying in nicely with my four years of working on the orrery and tellurion model making magazines, the amazing fossils, including the huge ichthyosaurus embedded into the wall of the museum, harking back to the geological and fossil publication I worked on a few years back.

It may have been synergy that guided me to Whitby and the museum during the October half term holiday and leading up to Halloween – and neither disappointed on the gothic front. Whilst a fine selection of goths roamed the streets of Whitby looking for the Bram Stoker experience, the ghoulish highlights amongst the museums collection left a more subtle skin-crawling impression.

Top of the list were the incredibly haunting faces of the dolls in the toy section, the boat of bones – a model of a gun ship made by French PoWs during the Napoleonic wars from the bones left over from their meat rations, and best of all, the creepy Hand of Glory – a desiccated human hand found in a local criminal’s home kept as good luck trophy (and in fairness, the guy was never caught!).

I felt that perhaps I was on a nostalgic journey, enjoying hunching over the wood and glass cabinets the way I used to with the semi precious gems in the Geological Museum in days or yore. I felt that I was enjoying the museum so much because it transported me back to my childhood. I felt that no child in its right mind would enjoy such a dry display in these days of instant entertainment. And as I look around over the top of the cabinets, I was one of 5 adults all around my age, who seemed to be the only visitors to the museum – hmmm, what would a child make of this museum, I thought.

After a brief trip upstairs for a speedy journey through the history of the wedding dress, I arrived back in the main room to find it full of families – one girl dragging her mum to see the stuffed birds in their display case, and a family pouring over the amazing dolls house back in the children’s toys section, and one boy gobsmacked by the tale his dad told him of Victorian headmasters beating naughty children with the cane displayed in the education display case. An older girl gazed at the carved Whitby jet trying her best to photograph it through the reflective case.

Perhaps I was wrong then, perhaps kids today appreciate the object on display more if it’s not surrounded by all singing, all dancing interactive gadgets.

I wondered again, as I left the museum, why I hadn’t visited it before now. I’d had, after all, a mere 50 years of visiting Whitby on a regular basis! If you find yourself in Whitby – on a seaside holiday or as part of a gothic retreat – I would highly recommend the museum. You can find it in Pannett Park, open daily and costs a fiver for adults (concessions £4 for seniors and £3.50 for students). Children under 17 go free.