British Museum blog

Sarah Longair, education manager, British Museum

We spend much of our time here at the Museum analysing, researching and contextualising objects and finding ways to communicate effectively with our visitors. So when the chance to bring a fresh perspective on our collection comes along, it’s always a great moment: challenging us and our visitors to think again.

Late in July, the result of an exciting collaboration between the British Museum and a group of Year 12 students from Camden School for Girls went on show in Room 90 in the display: ‘Isolation: from text to image’.

The project originated late last year, when Hugo Chapman, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, and our Schools and Young Audiences team decided to invite students to curate a display of works from the collection. We particularly wanted to encourage an innovative yet relevant approach to looking at the collection so we approached English literature students and asked them to use texts they are studying as inspiration. The literary sources, which included Hamlet, the Great Gatsby, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, John Osborne’s Look back in Anger and Keats’s poetry, would definitely give varied and intriguing possibilities through which to look at the collection.

The Expulsion from Paradise, Giulio Benso, 1610-1670.

From those who applied, an enthusiastic, inquisitive and thoughtful group of 12 students was selected to participate as an extra-curricular activity. We were very impressed by their commitment during two very busy school terms. I went to the school to deliver seminar-style sessions at the end of the school day and the group came to the Museum several times. During the Museum sessions, we discussed different approaches to drawing inspiration from images, the varied ways in which their texts related to images, how to measure and evaluate audience behaviour and practiced writing a succinct but engaging display label.

In one of the early discussion sessions, students selected ‘isolation’ as a theme which bound their texts together. From a long-list created by curators, the students selected prints and drawings to look at in the Museum’s print room.

One of the students explained how access to the original print, after seeing reproductions, was a powerful experience:

“Seeing these images gradually unfurled from their protective cloths, amid the hush of the Prints and Drawings room, is not one I will forget in a very long time.”

Left with the freedom to write creatively, they experimented in a variety of styles: in prose and poetry; as a participant in the image; from the perspective of the artist; as a character from their set text. From these various experiments, they created a final label for their selected print.

Together they decided how to arrange the works – an exercise in diplomacy for all concerned – and joined in with hanging them. One of them described their overall experience:

“The result is an exhibition that is incredibly varied. You will find a drawing by the seventeenth century Italian artist Giulio Benso beside modern artists such as Isidoro Ocampo and George Bellows. Linking such images to set texts has proved fascinating – even with prints and drawings that appeared to have concrete interior storylines, it was possible to illustrate our individual responses to our chosen texts, whether through creative or analytical writing.

If our accompanying texts make you look again at the image we have been describing, we’ve done our job. The result is an exhibition that is not only the culmination of an incredible learning process, but also one of which we are all genuinely proud.”

We were extremely impressed by the students’ thoughtful interpretations which really do make you look again at the image. We’d like to thank them for their commitment to this unique project and we hope that visitors will also be excited by this fresh perspective on the collection from these young writers.

Isolation: from text to image is on display in Room 90 until 3 September 2012

Filed under: At the Museum, Collection

Richard Parkinson, curator, British Museum

Curators are often requested for media appearances, but not always in the way they might expect. The Museum was recently approached about participating in Winning Words, a project by the Forward Arts Foundation about creating short films of a cross section of Britons reading inspiring poems, to enhance people’s lives through poetry as part of the Cultural Olympiad 2012. I happen to work on Ancient Egyptian poetry, and particularly on how such works can be performed, doing for example ‘experimental philology’ sessions at an academic conference with the actress and novelist Barbara Ewing. Poetry lies at the heart of my research and because Sian Toogood, the Museum’s Broadcast assistant knew this, she approached me.

The poem I was asked to read was ‘Leisure’ by the Welsh poet W. H. Davies (1911 AD), with the famous opening couplet ‘What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?’. I must admit that the poem does not appeal to me in terms of style, but every academic would applaud its sentiment about time, as the lack of time for research is always the hardest part of our daily experience.

Sian and I suggested that the filming could be done in Gallery 61, with the famous Ancient Egyptian wall-paintings from the tomb-chapel of Nebamun (1325 BC). The importance of looking and staring at them was central to the concept of the gallery, and we thought that various details of the paintings could relate to the poem’s mentions of trees, cows and female beauty. Both the poem and the paintings express the wonder of experiencing the world around us, despite their different cultures and dates.

The film crew arrived before the galleries open to the public, and were a joy to work with; the whole session took about 20 minutes. ‘Leisure’ was recorded in two takes (I was too fast in the first as I was worrying that I’d sound too bitter and sad when talking about lack of time!), and I also read a few lines from Sean O’Brian’s ‘Dignified’ (a poem that was new to me and which I admire immensely). This became part of a very evocative mash-up film of 12 people across London speaking it in a single day.

This is a very inspirational project, and marvellous to have been part of – and for someone who works with ancient texts it is always useful to be reminded how poems work so differently with the voice than just on the page: performance is the very essence of their life no matter how old they are.

Filed under: At the Museum, Collection

Thomas Hockenhull, curator, British Museum

After seven years of anticipation, the Olympics have finally descended upon London. Apart from holding a private desire to see Jason Kenny triumphantly ride away with another cycling gold medal, I am also hoping that the proximity of the games to the British Museum will enable me to establish a unique collection of Olympic related ephemera. These objects can take the form of used tickets, volunteer passes (providing they are not required to be returned to the games organisers), badges, travel cards, vouchers and other related material that will provide a numismatic record of the Olympics as they happened.

Commemorative medal of the 1908 London Olympics.

To put this aim into context, the Modern Money collection at the British Museum comprises over 160,000 objects from about 1700 to the present. It includes coins, banknotes, cheques, credit cards, tokens, tickets, artworks and a variety of ephemera relating to the modern history of transaction. We also collect medals and badges. The collection is constantly expanding and, at the very modern end we aim to acquire at least one example of every type of object that contributes to the numismatic and financial record of the world as we know it. However, the breadth of available objects dictates that I sometimes have to prioritise what I acquire.

To help me decide what to collect I often try to imagine two hypothetical scenarios. Firstly, I consider what, in all the landfill and detritus which will contribute toward a numismatic history of the 21st Century, is least likely to survive unless it is properly housed and cared for in a museum? Secondly, I think about what themes a curator of the future, perhaps centuries hence, might wish to explore in an exhibition, and what objects will assist them to tell their story.

Applying these criteria to the London Olympics, it occurs to me that there is a huge body of evidence beyond the medals the athletes will take home, that provide a snapshot of London in 2012. Indeed, in a world that is becoming increasingly digitised, the 2012 Olympics potentially provide a last opportunity for us to collect numismatic objects like paper admission tickets and travel cards to the games. Rather like assembling a time capsule for the future, collecting these objects will ensure that there is a body of material available for future research and display.

If you think you might have an object, or groups of objects, which fit into the above categories and which you would be prepared to donate to the Department of Coins and Medals, please email: thockenhull@britishmuseum.org

Filed under: At the Museum, Collection