Search the blog

21 Dec 2012

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Everyone!...Hope you have a lovely time...heritage prezzies, heritage crackers...heritage Turkey...(a well-known brand I'm told!)...
More Museum, Gallery and Heritage News in 2013! best wishes Mark

19 Dec 2012

Research Associate Job

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, PICTURING FINANCE PROJECT Closing date: 15 January 2013 Reference: HUM- Faculty / organisational unit: Humanities School / Directorate: Arts, Languages and Cultures Division: English and American Studies Salary: £29,249 Employment type: Fixed term Hours per week: 0.5FTE Location: University of Manchester (in collaboration with Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland) Applications are invited for a 0.5 AHRC Postdoctoral Research Associate post. This post is part of the ‘Picturing Finance’ project led by the Principal Investigator, Dr Peter Knight, that will stage an exhibition on the visual imagination of Anglo-American financial capitalism over the last three centuries. Working closely with Alistair Robinson (Director, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art) and the project Investigators, you will assist in curating the exhibition. You will be responsible for conducting research in archives, libraries and museums to identify and source suitable objects for the exhibition. You will write captions for the objects, and develop content for the section of NGCA’s website accompanying the exhibition. You will organise an outreach seminar involving leading figures from the realms of journalism, politics and the banking industry, as well as liaising with the NGCA’s education outreach team. You will also contribute a chapter to the catalogue that will be co-authored by the project Investigators. This appointment will begin on 1 April 2013 and last 15 months, and will require working in both Manchester and Sunderland, as well as travel to archives in the UK and US. The likely interview date is 1 February 2013. Informal enquiries Informal inquiries may be made to Dr Peter Knight, Principal Investigator, Division of English and American Studies Email: peter.knight@manchester.ac.uk Project information: www.imageoffinance.com The University of Manchester values a diverse workforce and welcomes applications from all sections of the community. Further particulars www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk

17 Dec 2012

MA Museum Studies Graduation

CONGRATULATIONS to all our MA Art Gallery & Museum Studies students....the 2011-2012 cohort had their official conferment of degrees ceremony last Monday, in the Great Hall at the University.  Well done all!....The 2011-12 cohort are moving on to great things...including jobs at Beamish Open Air Museum, and further Doctoral research at University of Lucca!...well done all!...richly deserved.... It's now up to the latest cohort to do even better! Mark

28 Nov 2012

Reading Armley- The Industrial Museum.

The Level 2 HAMS group visited the Industrial Museum at Armley on Wednesday. Nick Cass set us three themes to consider; encouraging visitor interest, 'good' historical interpretation, and work processes, worker's lives and the social structure of the workplace; all this leading to a future discussion.




24 Nov 2012

BA students Art Market field trip

Hello All,

the undergraduate students (from all of our 4 UG programmes, not just BA Art History and Museum Studies) went on an Art Market field trip to London last week. There were so many of them I had to divide them into 3 groups! Anyway, I think we had a great time, wandering (purposefully of course), the area around St James's and Bond Street...where many businesses in the art world congregate - for interesting historical reasons (you'll need to do the Art Market course to find out!)......

Here is one of the student groups outside Christie's Auctioneers, King Street rooms....
Students at Christie's Auctioneers
We also took in a number of art dealerships, including Hauser & Wirth, White Cube, Fine Art Society and Marlborough Fine Art (who were very generous with their time...).....
  It'll be same again next year, for a new bunch of Art Market student enthusiasts!
Mark

19 Nov 2012

Contemporary art meets historic collections...what do you think?

The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery is working with researcher Nick Cass to explore how bringing contemporary art together with historic collections can enhance the visitor experience and engagement.

Cass's research looks at how the Brontë Parsonage Museum has used contemporary art in this historic home within its displays. He is organising an exhibition of contemporary art inspired by the Brontës at Leeds College of Art, a show opening on 14 December 2012, entitled 'Wildness Between the Lines'. In connection with this, the Gallery is hosting a display in its Education Room called 'Visions of Angria: Creativity of the Brontës', which opens on 7 January 2013.  This display will include original materials from Special Collections by the Brontë family, in particular texts relating to their children's fantasy world, Angria. These texts will be interpreted by students of illustration from Leeds College of Art, displayed alongside the historic materials.

What do you think of these sorts of pairings?  Come let us know!  Do the tour from Leeds College of Art and over to the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery (over to the Parsonage if you are REALLY keen!) and then tell us how well you think it works.  Does it inspire you, or leave you cold?

If you want to get thinking even deeper about the Brontës, and how they have inspired creativity in later centuries in many ways, there will also be a free conference on 29 January 2013, entitled 'Re-Visioning the Brontës' - book your place online today!

13 Nov 2012

MA Museum Studies Students London Trip

Hello All,

our current MA Museum Studies students took advantage of our Reading Week field trip to London last week.
MA museum studies students with Dr Kim Sloan at the Enlightenment gallery at the British Museum.
We had our usual exhausting time...starting at the Natural History Museum, then the V&A, the Wallace Collection, and the National Gallery (in day 1)...then off to the British Museum and Museum of London (in day 2). Pictured are the students talking to Dr Kim Sloan, Curator of Prints and Drawings (up to 1880) at the British Museum, and also curator of the Enlightenment Gallery at the museum.  We all had a fascinating time!
Mark

9 Nov 2012

Museology Seminar Series

‘MUSEOLOGY SEMINAR SERIES’
Number XIII
Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage
School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies
                                                University of Leeds
Art (and Architecture) in a City: Ambition, Illusion and Revolution
Dr Suzanne Macleod
Senior Lecturer in Museum Studies,
University of Leicester
Monday 26th November 2012
Clothworkers South, Lecture Theatre 3 (3.12)
2.00pm-3.30pm
ALL WELCOME
For further information on this Seminar Series please email
Dr Mark Westgarth m.w.westgarth@leeds.ac.uk
School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds
 

28 Oct 2012

Heritage Experiences - down t'pit

Hello All,

I attended a meeting yesterday, as part of a new research project called 'Performing the Past: Exploring the Heritage of Working-Class Communities in Yorkshire' at the National Coal Mining Museum for England

Performing the Past is part of a White Rose University Consortium funded project...and more on that in future blog entries I'm sure!
National Coal Mining Museum for England, Wakefield.
  Anyway, I had a really (no, really) fantastic heritage experience; a group of us went on the 'underground tour' of the redundant mine (redundant in the sense of producing coal, I mean...it's actually far from 'redundant' in many other ways!).....it has a kind of after-life...
The Underground Tour at NCMM 

The guide for our 'heritage' experience was an ex-miner, as all the guides for the underground tours are, and what a fabulous heritage experience guide he was!..The picture (left) is not us btw...we are much, much older...plus, we were not allowed to take any cameras (or anything with batteries etc) down the mine (so I don't know how this particular photo was taken?), but it's interesting that the health and safety working practices of the mine still continue.....

But, to the Tour - our guide took us underground (c.500 feet...to the height of the Blackpool Tower apparently) and through mining history, from late 18th century to the 1980s (when the mine was closed...See Orgreave if you're interested...which I see is back in the news again...significantly.)
It was a sublime experience, full of detail, pathos, humour and just the right amount of violence (call it anger) (if there can be 'just the right amount' of violence...maybe I'm thinking Zizek here?). The labyrinthine spaces of the mine were literally and brilliantly brought to life by our Ex-Miner...he was, in the immortal words of Bowie, 'Chameleon, Comedian, Corinthian and Caricature'!
(D.Bowie; The Bewlay Brothers, 1971)
Mark.

26 Oct 2012

Preparing for London trip!




Twin Peaks
20th Anniversary

Tuesday 30 October - Saturday 3 November
Lower Gallery

This exhibition is a homage to David Lynch and Twin Peaks (1990-1991). Twin Peaks remains one of the most important television series ever made.  Its distinctive combination of humour, sadness and tension still reverberates throughout our culture, influencing fashion, music and photography, as well as film and television.  Europe's first ever official art exhibition inspired by Twin Peaks; thirteen artists from nine countries; new works.
Also available, commemorative official limited edition Twin Peaks merchandise, all approved by David Lynch.

Friday Lates until 8pm



Exhibitions
http://www.meniergallery.co.uk/Menier_Gallery/Exhibitions.html

here is a link from the Guardian 

The 'double jobbers' making a living while working in the arts | Culture | The Observer

We will have an exiting trip in London for the British Museum ,V&A,National Gallery and so on, I do believe it wil be an amazing art trip!

 All results in London - Art Fund
http://www.artfund.org/search//in/13

National Art Pass - Art Fund

I have used the National Art Pass  to many museums,I think 18.75 pounds  for 12 months is fine.

 2nd Nov is Friday,there are also a lot of museums open until 9.00 even 9.30 as the British Museum.


Courtauld Gallery - 

OPENING HOURS
Daily 10am – 6pm (last admission 5.30pm)
Late Night Openings

Thursdays: 25 October and 29 November 2012, until 9pm

Adults
 £6
Concessions
(over 60s, part-time and international students)
 £4.50
Children under 18, full-time UK students, Friends of The Courtauld, registered unwaged
 FREE
Visitors with disabilities can bring an escort free of charge
Free Mondays until 2pm
Admission is free on Mondays from 10am until 2pm  

 London is full of art and exhibitions,here is another link for Art tours in South London.



South London Art Map
http://www.southlondonartmap.com/

23 Oct 2012

Perspectives on the Art Market

-->
PERSPECTIVES ON THE ART MARKET
Open Lecture Series No. VIII

-->
School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies
University of Leeds
 ‘Picture-Hunting for the Nation: Sir Charles Eastlake and his concept of ‘eligibility’ and the mid-19th-century European Art-Market’
Dr Susanna Avery-Quash
Research Curator in the History of Collecting
The National Gallery, London
Clothworkers South, Lecture Theatre 3 (3.12)
On THURSDAY 22nd November 2012
2.00pm -3.30pm
ALL WELCOME
For further information on this Lecture Series please email
Dr Mark Westgarth m.w.westgarth@leeds.ac.uk