Icebergs of art & artifact

This article in The Age is actually a good general introduction to the realities of museum and gallery storage and display issues. Like the famous example of the iceberg, most museums and galleries have only a small proportion on show; the rest often being out of view, and often (literally) underneath.

The picture above was taken from a staircase in the Louvre, Paris, while the statistics below relate to the National Gallery of Victoria:

"At last count, the collection contained about 67,000 works, of which only around 5 per cent can be on public display in the institution's two buildings in St Kilda Road and at Federation Square."

The majority of large, national or significant collection have the majority of their material in store. A global figure is hard to arrive at, but if we had only one fifth of the world's greatest museums artifacts on show we would be doing much better than the current reality. Some figures of major UK collections here show 90% or more in store - that's less than 10% on show.

Cataloguing is a lot harder than it looks. Some of these artifacts are labelled 'object' because we don't know what it is, while other equally obscure things are classified thanks to specialist knowledge. Consider the cost of this kind of core museum storage across thousands - sometimes millions of objects, and some of the remarkable costings become understandable.

What's immediately obvious from the figures above is the difference between the art galleries (good percentages on show) and museums - ranking in the ninety-percents in store. That has a lot to do with the nature of artworks vs artifacts. And then there are exceptions like the Wallace Collection, mandated to have it 'all out at all times'. (But the Wallace is an all-around exception, being also prevented from loaning anything out, either.)

Another set of figures here come from checking some of the hyperbolistic writings of a currently fashionable writer on the Smithsonian, in the USA. Though most of what the writer puts in his book is tall tales, here the reality exceeds even his grandiose claims.

Some thing are easier to conserve and store than others. Even so, something as solid as stone can suffer from continuing decay from nasties in the air and rainwater, lichens et al. And how many of these church carvings should be preserved? It's a harder call than it may seem.

It is not that there is 90% more 'cool stuff' socked away, but that most collections have huge volumes of middling interest items that are important in the mass, but generally not individually. There's a huge number of other reasons this stuff's in store - including the plain fact that it's embarrassing. Some items can't be on show much (light sensitive works) or for political reasons (a birds egg collection, once an acceptable country museum cornerstone is a hot topic on show in the 21st century).

A collection of Kestrel eggs in the Oxfordshire Museums store. Once not an uncommon collection, from a scientifically minded person, creating such collections nowadays is essentially illegal. Many museums have such collections, inherited or from confiscated by the police. For obvious reasons putting such collections on show needs to be carefully considered, while they also remain an important biological source.

National level collections like this don't store stuff in leaky sheds (or they're not supposed to, anyway) and while the higher levers of security, protection, climate control etcetera are laudable, the usually cost top dollar - for things that ultimately aren't even seen. A (small) percentage will eventually get shown, other items will find a role for research, and a few will be 'deacessioned' a clumsy term for a tricky, and risky, museum task.

What are museums and galleries for?

Andrew Sayers, director of the National Museum of Australia, wrote last year: ''We need to redefine museums as educational resources rather than as buildings where collections are held. In fact, it is probably true to say that collections are seen by governments as more of a problem - the source of demands for ever-increasing storage facilities - rather than the assets they are.''

Some artifacts are of unarguable permanent display status, a few others should be got rid of. It's the huge number in the area between the two poles that provide the museum and gallery challenge.

James

All images by & copyright the author.

Gated

Olli has an access problem at the White Horse, Uffington, 1st July 2008. Photo by Bev.

Not with a whimper, but a flour blast

Loaf by Bev.

Thanks to my friend Brett's Airminded blog, I was introduced to Beachcombing's Bizzare History Blog, the first winning entry for interest, which starts with "Food is dangerous at the best of times" has the following quote lifted from it:

Of course, fires are always difficult to interpret in archaeology: there are so many possible culprits including saboteurs, warriors, lightning storms, a drunk servant, a lava stream…

If there is no other evidence the best archaeologists can do is talk about ashes and look for signs of rebuilding.

You want to read on, don't you? Well here you go; Great Balls of Floury Fire. Don't say I didn't warn you!

James

How to ... build a brand-new castle

One of the areas of history I find particularly interesting is known as 'experimental archaeology', or, in more comprehensible terms, trying out historical methods and equipment to see how they really work and what is different to how we thing they work. Aristotelian bending the brain alone has its place, but as anyone who works with their hands will tell you, book learning and theory won't cover all you need to do the job for real.

Large examples of experimental archaeology include the modern replica of an ancient Greek Trireme, Olympias (details here) and the modern recreation of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (an earlier post on that here). In both cases they are not exact recreations of what they are exploring, but the compromises are (mostly) known and the lessons that have appeared as a result of building a recreation of 'the real thing' have changed our understanding of both Shakespearian theatre and Classical naval warfare - interestingly explaining some aspects of contemporary accounts that puzzled modern scholars and also opening avenues of questions and study previously unconsidered. I'd love to see Olympias in action, but maybe not be a rower (I'm too big to be an ancient Greek, since you ask) but I'm proud to have been a modern 'groundling' on the South Bank.

From the Chateau's website.

One might assume we know all there is to know about building a castle, and a new castle would be the ultimate in follies.

And they are building a castle, in France as the BBC reports:

Deep in the forests of central France, an unusual architectural experiment is half-way to completion, as a team of masons replicates in painstaking detail the construction of an entire medieval castle.

The ­Chateau de Guedelon was started in 1998, after local landowner Michel Guyot wondered whether it would be possible to build a castle from scratch, using only contemporary tools and materials.

What's interesting is what is coming out of the experiment already:

Experts are fascinated by what the experiment can teach about medieval building methods.

One example concerns lime kilns, used for making the mortar. Archaeologists had often wondered why they found traces of two separate kilns at construction sites.

Experience at Guedelon showed that, in a day's work, builders often needed to top up the mortar brought in from the main kiln with small amounts made close at hand. Hence the small second kiln actually inside the castle.

The discolouring of lime-based mortar is another revelation. Within one or two years of being laid, Guedelon's walls are already showing streaks of unsightly white where the lime is leaching.

Archaeologists think this is a clue to why medieval castles were very quickly plastered and painted: it was to hide the mess.

BBC

While currently it is being treated as an academically rigorous exercise, it started out as an 'eccentric pipe dream'. Also revealing is the need for a theoretical mediaeval 'owner' to centre the project around, rather than being able to run it as an abstract model. As one of the guides said:

"Funnily enough, we found that even though we knew we were being accurate, somehow the castle lacked soul. So we invented a character - the owner - who would have likes and dislikes, wanting this and not wanting that," says Ms Preston.

So how cool is that? Certainly it would add a je ne sais... mais exactement to studying a castle in school.

The BBC report here, and the official website is here and a Wiki entry here.

James

Time with Hispanofila

The minaret/bell tower of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, by night - Credit: Hispanofila's Blog

We thought that some of our readers might like to pop across to our old friend Max's blog at Hispanofila. This post was a particularly interesting jaunt around the stuff that's going on for her, and the fun of integrating an academic life into 'real' life and airline schedules - themes we know and know are of close interest to several of our regulars!

So feel free to pop over and leave a comment too.

James

PS to recent items...

Sometimes you are the zeitgeist. I think. Or something. Glittery stuff calls your attention even when you might want to move on.

Steampunking in the Museum
'Signage going up' - Credit: Museum of the History of Science Steampunk Blog.

Coincidentally to my post on the British Steam record car, I mentioned Steampunk, and a few days later my attention was drawn to an exhibition of Steampunk items at the Oxford Museum of the History of Science. (What place could be better for such a mix of conservative retro and cutting edge brass widgets?) The museum has its blog on the exhibition here, and the exhibition web page here. Make chuffing noises while manipulating your mouse, please.

I tried to ignore it, but via an article on bees (don't ask) I was redirected to a photo review in New Scientist (here) so I give up and mention the thing. It's (apparently) the first exhibition of its kind. How retro-futuristically-timely am I?

New Scientist also carry a review. Anyone who gets to see it - it's a bit far for us, please let us know what you think. Seems to me to be a mix of interesting ideas and someone awaiting the invention of the steam-battery.

Hey - look again at the lumps of gold!
Not the Staffordshire Hoard, just a boring old gold bar.

Meanwhile there was a very interesting article on the 'mis-reporting' of the Staffordshire Hoard in History Today. The author, Justin Pollard, takes one of the issues Bev and I lightly touched on (here) and went to town on it:

...this extraordinary collection was referred to as little more than a lump of bullion – ‘Hoard contains 5kg of gold and 2.5kg of silver’– both of which figures are, for the record, rather exaggerated.

Having studied and written about Anglo-Saxon England for many years, it is sad to see a subject I love reduced to a weight in metal. Certainly there were expert sound bites telling us that this was ‘like finding another Book of Kells’, although no attempt was made to explain what this might actually mean.

The full article is here, and well worth a read (you may have to register - for free - but nothing more than that). A couple of points for those in a hurry:

It is not 5kg of gold; it is a remarkable collection of very high status decorative pieces, nearly all of which seem to have been stripped from military equipment, mainly swords. This is, in itself, very odd.
...
These might be the war trophies of a successful warrior, stripped from the weapons of vanquished foes; they might be the gleanings from one bloody battlefield or perhaps a lifetime’s acquisitions. As yet we cannot say and, no doubt, arguments will rage for many years, but then that is how our knowledge of the past progresses.
...
When it was recovered it was no longer bullion, not gold or silver. It was history. A little piece of a long-gone world washed up on a very alien shore. That is what we should be celebrating as the story it may one day tell us will be so much rarer than gold.

Looking to historiography in journalism. It's a thought.

James

A Golden Hoard

Images from the Staffordshire Hoard Flickr pages.

Very occasionally something tremendous comes along. Something that makes us re-evaluate our collective past by providing a huge new selection of jigsaw pieces for the great puzzle that is history.

On September 24th an announcement was made: a huge hoard of previously-unknown artifacts from the Anglo-Saxon era had been discovered in Staffordshire. The discovery, in June, of gold and precious objects was in the process of being catalogued and conserved and would soon go on display. (Even a museum can act quickly when enough gold and publicity are running around.)

What is it about a hoard? The word itself - hoard - conjures up its friends 'loot', cousin 'booty' and great-aunty 'treasure'. Pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: crock of coins buried for safer days, lost to history. Discovery by the worthy, as in the fairytale younger son (or daughter).

We learned about this era at school (when we weren't reading fairytales about pots of gold). It was called 'the dark ages', not (as we thought) because they all wore tights and lived with their livestock in dark low houses, but because there are so few artifacts. So little evidence. More critically, later eras were documented in a way that made it 'history' to us: names and dates, battles and treaties, inventories and so forth.

Finds like this enable both archaeologists and historians to answer some existing questions -- but also to propose some new ones. Long-held perceptions of the time and its people will, no doubt, be overturned and restructured. It's almost as exciting as, well - a pot of gold.

The size of the find is enough alone to out 'gee-whizz' most sceptics. It contains, '... in excess of 1,500 objects made from various metals' including '5kg of gold and 1.3kg of silver'. By contrast, the Sutton Hoo find, generally accepted as the largest or most significant find of the type contained a mere 1.66kg of precious metals in total.

The bracelet in the centre of this photo echoes motifs familiar from the Sutton Hoo treasures, but of course adds to our understanding of the making and spread of such items in Anglo-Saxon England. But, just like Sutton Hoo, we don't know whose treasure it was.

The Sutton Hoo discovery had enormous value in other ways. A hoard within a ship burial, it contained a significant and (essentially) complete array of objects belonging to one individual at the time of their death. Or at least, so we think.

The Staffordshire Hoard, on the other hand, offers apparently no contextual information, at least not yet. It is just the precious items - probably from one exalted person, or court, but even this may be impossible to define with any degree of certainty. It is the difference between trying to find out about someone's history and story by having either the remains of their sitting room and car -- or just the things in their safety-deposit box (without any paperwork).

A damaged gold plaque showing two birds of prey gripping a fish was part Britain's largest haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure, which was discovered buried in a Staffordshire field. (Eddie Keogh/Reuters, via CBC report)

When she sent us the link, we were talking about the find on email and Tamsin said: "I love the gold plaque of the birds of prey grasping a fish, fabulous scrollwork..."

Given that all of this material was hand worked by individuals without any of the mass production or power (or even magnification) tools that we take for granted in our industrial age, the hoard is even more impressive. And consider that the value of the items in the hoard -- as compared to the material available to the average person of the era -- it's in a relative sense as outstanding as any King's ransom, crown jewels or even the whole British Museum itself.

The hoard has sparked enormous interest from archaeologists, historians, press and public. Dr Kevin Leahy, from the Portable Antiquities Scheme, said of the Anglo-Saxon treasure:

"The quantity of gold is amazing but, more importantly, the craftsmanship is consummate. This was the very best the Anglo-Saxon metalworkers could do, and they were very good. Tiny garnets were cut to shape and set in a mass of cells to give a rich, glowing effect; it is stunning. Its origins are clearly the very highest-levels of Saxon aristocracy or royalty. It belonged to the elite."

Leslie Webster, Former Keeper of the Department of Prehistory and Europe, British Museum, has already made it clear that:

"This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England… as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries. Absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells."

More information can be found at the Staffordshire Hoard website, and photos on the hoard's Flickr pages.

James & Bev