Tag: Museum

ROM set to announce new CEO… but what should his or her goal be?

In a matter of weeks, or even days, the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto Canada,will be announcing who their next CEO is going to be.

I dont have any knowledge as to who it is, but, can certainly say that the new leader has an almost impossible act to follow.

William Thorsell, the museums current leader, will be retiring in August. His ten year termat the museum was one of unprecedented growth. Under his leadership the ROM built an expansion that saw its Bloor Street frontage turned quite literally into a giant crystal.

Collections that had been in storage from the Middle East, South Asia, South America, the American Southwest and Oceania are now on display inside the crystal. The museum is also in the process of building new galleries dedicated to Ancient Rome and Byzantium.

Over the past decade the museum has managed to land some major special exhibits. Last summer it played host to a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. This summer it will open the largest Terracotta Warriors show ever to come to North America.

It even got the opportunity to display the (second) oldest copy of the Ten Commandments – albeit for one week only. The line to see the scroll tailed off for nearly a kilometre.

Of course Thorsells rule was no pax ROMana there was plenty of controversy to go around. The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit attracted street protests, and a request from Jordan that the scrolls themselves be seized. The museum also made an error in showing the James Ossuary in 2002. It blew up on them when an Israel Antiquities Authority investigation determined the inscription on it to be fake. There is also an active, indeed never-ending, architectural debate going on about the merits of designing the expansion in the shape of a crystal.

But whats a museum without some controversy? Its common now for major museums and galleries to take some tough headlines. Take a look at the Elgin Marbles and the British Museum, the Louvre andallegedlystolen artefactsor the Met and naked art stunts … Ok maybe that last one doesnt count.

So what challenges will the ROMs new CEO face? And more importantly – what great project should Canada’s largest museum now embark on?

CHALLENGE ONE – Nubia and Eastern Rome

One of the ROMs strengths is that it has a comprehensive collection of Nubian antiquities. Archaeologist Pamela Rose, who recently discovered a 1st millennium BC dark age settlement at Qasr Ibrim, stopped by Toronto specifically to examine pottery samples at the museum.

Last January museum officials told Heritage Key that theyare hopeful that funding would emerge to build a new Nubian gallery, along with one dedicated to the Eastern Roman Empire. However since that time no announcement about these galleries has been made. It seems that one of the top priorities for the new CEO is to turnhopes into financial reality.

CHALLENGE TWO – Government funding

Thorsell enjoyed strong support from all levels of government during his term. The federal government and the province both helped fund the museums projects.

When the Dead Sea Scrolls came to the museum the premier himself was there to announce support. When the museum needed money to kick-start its Rome and Byzantine galleries, the federal minister for infrastructure, John Baird, showed up in January 2010 to cut a check.

The new CEO will probably find financial support for major projects harder to come by. Restraint is the operative word used by politicians in Canada when describing the future.

The Ontario government is running a budget deficit of nearly $20 billion CDN and has already announced delays in building new light rail transit in Toronto. The federal government is facing a deficit in the neighbourhood of $50 billion and their stimulus program, which is funding construction of the new Rome and Byzantine galleries, will be ending in the spring of 2011.

The ROM, of course, is not captive to the government when it comes to funding. It charges fees for admission and museum membership.It also has an active fundraising program. In fact the ROMs crystal expansion is named after Michael Lee-Chin, one of its biggest contributors.

If government goes to ground with fundingthenmoney fromadmission/membership and private donations will be all the more important for the ROM and a top priority for the new CEO.

CHALLENGE THREE – The next big project

What do you do after galleries for Nubia and Eastern Rome have been built? Do you plan another large expansion?

That seems unlikely.

In order to do that, you need two things space and money. The museum is bordered by the University of Toronto on the west Bloor on the north and Queens Park crescentto the east. To the south lies the defunct McLaughlin Planetarium which has recently been sold tothe University of Toronto(which has its own need for space).

So even if the cash were readily available it would be pretty hard to do a major spurt of growth without knocking down a building somewhere.

No, the next big project needs to be one that doesnt involve construction cranes. One avenue the museum should look at is building up its research capabilities by hiring more archaeologists, geologists and life scientists, and fully funding their research.

The next big project needs to be one that doesnt involve construction cranes.

Its a worthy goal and one that is already being pursued to some extent.

Just a year ago the museum hired Dr. Clemens Reichel, the director of the Hamoukar project in Syria. The work his team is doing is amazing, to say the least. We now know that Hamoukar is one of the oldest cities in the world and also experienced the first known war in human history. It pitted the sites local residents against Uruk, no less! As Im writing this his team is in the field continuing their investigation of the site.

Dr. Robert Masons work is another example of headline grabbing research at the museum. Last summer his team found a Neolithic era landscape that has stone circles, alignments and, what appears to be, burial cairns. They will be back in the field this summer trying to learn more about it.

So what other reasons are there to hire more archaeologists and do more research?

For one thing archaeological research is not anywhere near as expensive as building an expansion. To doresearch you need good lab facilities (already available at ROM/U of T), a large research library (again readily available at ROM/U of T), an annual salary (60/70 K a year for an entry levelcurator). After that you need funds for travel, conservation, equipment, some field assistants… and thats about it. In comparison the costsfor the ROM’s expansion were estimatedto be$270 million dollars.

Another point to consider -right now is an excellent time to hire archaeologists.

The financial crisis has hit academia hard, leaving many recent grads looking for institutions willing to fund their research. If the ROM were put five ads up, right now, advertising $60,000 a year jobs for recent grads withresearch programs ready to go they would have some excellent proposals.

Finally, think of the positive benefits this would have for students and Toronto residents. Researchers not only research but lecture at local universities and public events. Dr. Reichel, for instance, teaches Near Eastern archaeology at U of T. He also talked about his research at a free public colloquium, at the museum, in February.

New archaeologists would not just be bringing their research projects to the museum but to the city at large.

Torah without the Bora: The Living Torah Museum, New York

The likes of the British Museum, Louvre and Metropolitan may get the lion’s share of publicity, artefacts and controversy, but small museums are the staple of any dedicated culture lover. And while meandering through the interweb I came across Brooklyn’s Living Torah Museum, one of New York’s quaintest collections.

While its illustrious downtown neighbours are afforded giant beaux arts buildings, the Living Torah Museum is in a private home in Borough Park, 1601 41st Street. Its surroundings may not be as epic as most museums, but its collection is not to be sniffed at: since its inception curator Rabbi Shimon Deutsch has amassed over 900 artefacts worth a combined $14m (9.1m).

Its surroundings might not be epic, but it boasts a fearsome collection

Among the items, astonishingly, is the oldest copy of the Ten Commandments in the world, dating back around 2,500 years. Ancient pottery from the times of King Hezekiah and a 3,500-year-old toy chariot are other highlights. In total the collection is divided into four sections: ‘Torah Times’; ‘Talmud Times’; ’39 Melahos’ and ‘Great Torah Personalities’. Rabbi Deutsch also frequently gives lectures on the history of the Jewish faith.

The vast majority of visitors to the museum are Jewish, but its collection alone is impressive enough for anyone interested in biblical history – and according to the Biblical Archaeology Review it’s the only museum in the US solely dedicated to the archaeological history of the sacred text. It’s certainly a hidden gem, something we’re constantly finding during our Ancient World in London video series – places like the Maunsell Sea Forts and the Petrie Museum. If anyone has visited the Living Torah Museum, let me know !

The Museum of Islamic Art, Doha: The Jewel in Qatar’s Crown

The Arabian peninsula has been suffering recently. Yemen has been accused of harbouring terrorists by the West, and the gargantuan Burj Tower in Dubai was unveiled last week amid a haze of economic uncertainty. Yettiny Qatar, an outcropwith a population barely toppingone million,continues to buck its diminutive stature with world-beating business and heady ambitions. And the Museum of Islamic Art in capital city Doha may just be Qatar’s most impressive structure. In this Heritage Key video, Museum Director Dr Oliver Watson shows us some of the treasures of the museum, and explains the far-reaching importance of Islamic art.

The striking museum, based on the Ahmed Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo, rises magnificently from Doha’s shimmering harbour. It has an Islamic art collection to rival any in the world, a fact not lost onits British director: “To have the chance to serve in a brand new museum, a brand new building of this importance and this splendour with a collection of this quality is something that very few people have the opportunity (to do) in a lifetime.”

“Qatar is able to present a piece of world-class architecture containing a world-class collection.”

Chinese-American architectural legend I.M. Pei has created an environment both fiercely modern, and yet true to its Arab ancestry. Dr Wilson shows us around the starkly-lit displays and exhibition rooms which have already made the museum a fixture on the world culture circuit. “The mission of the museum here is to show the achievements of Islamic civilisation, Islamic culture, through great works of art,” he says.

The museum, which only opened in December 2008, began when the Qatari royal family acquired a small yet impressive collection that continues to grow today. It’s a collection of”extraordinary quality,”claims Dr Watson, who shows us two of the museum’s highlights. First up is a pair of ‘Albarelli’ decorated containers. Though the design is thought to be Italian, Dr Wilson stresses theireastern origins. “These pieces are very interesting because they illustrate the global reach of Islamic culture” he says.

The second artefact is a bottle made from dark blue glass with gold and enamel decoration. Originally from Syria, it also represents the spreading west of Islamic culture in its Romanesque construction. “This represents one of the very high points in Islamic glass-making,” says Dr Watson.

As with most modern Arab institutions, the Museum of Islamic Art’s importance and collection is growing at a staggering pace. “This whole project is driven by the Emir and Sheikha Mozahwho had the original vision for this,” says Dr Watson. “(They) started the original collection, and then the choice of the architect (Pei, aged 91 at the time, was coaxed out of retirement for the project) and the setting up of the Qatar Museums Authorityhas all come from the very top.

“And it’s thanks to their vision and support for this that Qatar is able to present a piece of world-class architecture containing a world-class collection.” Saudi may suffer from its insularity and the UAE may be sinking under the weight of empty islands and mile-high towers,but Qatar’s prosperitycontinues to grow,withthe Museum of Islamic Artset to reap many more benefits in the future.

HD Video: Dr Oliver Watson on Islamic Culture and Heritage at Doha’s Art Museum, Qatar

(Read the transcript by clicking here)

Have you been to the museum? Let us know what you think, either , our contact page or by emailing me direct. You can also watch dozens of other great videos right here at Heritage Key -from the Treasures of King Tutto the Greatest Cities in History. Heritage Key – Unlock the Wonders.

Workers and/or Archaeologists: an Exhibition of the Hidden Hands Behind Petrie’s Egypt

Unseen photographs by Flinders Petrie are now on temporary display in the Petrie Museum in London in an exhibition called Framing the Archaeologist: Portraits and Excavation. The photos were taken by Petrie on site in Egypt, featuring himself, his wife and the excavation workers, and offer a remarkable view of the early years of archaeology.

To mark the exhibition, the museum hosted an informal talk between Stephen Quirke and documentary maker Ayman El-Kharrat, entitled Workers and/or Archaeologists: In Conversation, questioning the status of Bedouin workers involved in early excavations in Egypt.

You can watch Dr Quirke in this video interview with Heritage Key talking about one of the greatest women in Egyptology – Amelia Edwards.

I went along to see what they had to say about this excellent archive of images, and the mysterious archaeologists portrayed in them.

VIDEO: Stephen Quirke on Amelia Edwards and The Petrie Museum

The discussion centred on the subject of Quirke’s upcoming book Hidden Hands which will be published in May 2010. The book is the result of research he has done into the Egyptians who worked with Flinders Petrie on archaeological excavations from the 1880s to the 1920s. He questions how and why these people have been lost from the landscape of archaeological archives, and how their memoirs and records can be found.

Having returned himself from Egypt two weeks ago, Professor Quirke starts by saying he went there trying to re-connect to the past; what would it have been like in those days to work in an excavation site, to remove the artefacts first-hand from the soil?

Petrie was interested in people, in their social history; his writings on Lahun even portrayed him as an ethnographer. He recruited Bedouins from the Giza Plateau in 1882. At the time, Bedouins, or ‘Kuftis’ had only been in Egypt for around 100 years; they were originally from Tunis, and were different to Egyptian fellahin. In his notes, Petrie brands the kuftis as rascals and spies, before explaining why he chose them as part of his excavation team:

Hilda Petrie on horseback, taken in 1898. Image courtesy of University College London, Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. Among this rather untoward people we found however, as in every place, a small percentage of excellent men; some half-dozen were of the very best type of native, faithful, friendly, and laborious, and from among these workmen we have drawn about forty to sixty of two following years at Negadeh and at Thebes. They have formed the backbone of my upper Egyptian staff, and I hope that I may keep these good friends so long as I work anywhere within reach of them.

He also recruited Sudanese people to work in his Sinai excavation sites as they were more close to their own desert climate. Researching for any references to these people, Professor Quirke says there are none; the archives do not mention who went to the market or who cooked, and we cannot see the name of these people in printed publications.

Petrie was a mathematician, not an educated Egyptologist. There was no Egyptology chair before him, and we have to put his work in the context of other archaeological work done at that time by other European archaeologists to understand how he functioned. Petrie was much closer to the workers than most modern archaeologists.Professor Quirke finds in Petries personal letters bits of information not mentioned in his publications, such as when he writes to his wife (he was in Sinai, she was in Memphis), and complains about the mail not being delivered, either his own or the workers.

Muhammad Darwish in 1899 - one of Petrie's workmen. Image courtesy of University College London, Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.

El-Kharrat comments that Petries understanding of social history being filled with passion as his finds are different from the ones at next doors museum’ (the BM). Professor Quirke elaborates on the European construction of knowledge and how it should be interesting to have Egyptian views too.

You have to go beyond pyramids, mummification and hieroglyphs to see daily life and its meaning. Did these Egyptians have academic training? What do we know about the life choices, opportunities, and skills of these people who worked in Egypt in excavation sites? There is also the issue of integrating Egyptian linguistics and literature with African and Arabic counterparts.

Things might be changing. El-Kharrat commented on the way the media, both Egyptian and Western, portray the work of these people. Professor Quirke stresses the need for European archives to link with the National Library in Cairo, and he also points out that the rigid construction of institutions of knowledge prevent many people to access knowledge as not everyone knows how to use a library.

Who showed Petrie where to dig for the Greek Papyri of el-Bahnasa? Some boy whose name we don’t even know. Petries manuscripts are a valuable source of information as they contain many side notes and records not included in the printed publications. There must be records done by the people who worked in these excavations; do they keep them at home?

Petrie's sister in law - Amy - purchasing antiquities. Image courtesy of University College London, Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

As libraries cannot accommodate all the family records presented to them, many end up in peoples houses and pass on from generation to generation. Petrie relied on previous seasons excavation workers to train the next season’s workers.

Petrie was happy in the wilderness; he only came to big cities to deal with logistics; most of his time he was in the desert.

El-Kharrat comments that Petrie’s viewpoint was a colonizing one, and that his description of the way Egyptians lived is filtered by that view.

Is the self image of Egyptians a stable one? “Image is a changing field”, Professor Quirke replied, “as Egypt is still a key country between Arabic and African worlds.”

These touching images, however, seem to portray Egypt in its era of discovery in a series of fixed moments that can’t help but arrest the imagination of those who pay the exhibition a visit.

Britain Loves Wikipedia: Wikimedia seeks underexposed UK Museum

Britain Loves Wikipedia is a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest that will be held in museums and cultural institutions across the UK, with the aim of increasing the number of pictures available to illustrate Wikipedia articles and inspire new articles. The event will kick off with a launch event at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Sunday 31 January 2010, followed by a series of events each weekend at locations around the UK. Museums looking for more visitors and exposure are still welcome to sign up.

The event runs throughout February 2010, with members of the (Wikipedia) public visiting participating museum across the UK to photograph out-of-copyright parts of their collections. Rather than just photographing all objects – or specific ones – the contest will be themed with pre-specified targets, to be decided jointly by the museums and Wikimedia UK. Prizes will be awarded in variety of categories including most photographs taken; best photographs, … . The photographs entered into the competition will then be made available on Wikimedia Commons, which is an image library used by a number of websites, including Wikipedia.

Collections Trust sums up a few good reasons for museums to participate in the ‘Britain Loves Wikipedia’ (originally ‘London Loves Wikipedia’) campaign:

Uploaded under a Creative Commons license, the photos can be (re)used by the museums.
The museum can then boast about working with Wikipedia.
The museum will get more articles about its collection on Wikipedia, leading to more exposure and – hopefully – more visitors.

Add to that reasons #5 why museums should have an open photography policy, and this is a must-do campaign to promote your museum! Still not convinced?Wikimedia offer the ‘Wikipedia Loves Art‘ project as an example of succesful cooperation – over 300 photographs just at the Victoria and Albert Museum – between cultural institutions and Wikipedia. Also, just look at how much great photographs – stunning images by Heritage Key’s Graecyn included – and promotion the ‘Terra Cotta Warriors’ exhibition got out of opening the museum to bloggers and photographers alike for just one hour.

For more information on ‘Britain Loves Wikipedia’, see the wiki-entry on Wikimedia.org. I’m curious to see which (ancient) British museums will sign up, and if the British Museum will decide to join. Regardless, we’ll be charging our DSLR’s batteries in time.

The Virtual Museum of the European Roots

European Virtual Museum Museums from Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece have joined hands – and virtual artefacts – to create the first ‘Virtual Museum of European Roots’. They have put their most treasured objects online in 3D for visitors to explore in several thematic routes, as they are guided through European prehistoric culture and heritage. For museum professionals, there are e-courses, training them in the skills needed for establishing and managing a virtual museum.

The ‘Berliner Goldhut‘ (Berlin Golden Hat, in the Neues Museum), thought to be a lunar and solar calendar, is part of a larger group of Golden hats and cane-shaped Bronze Age head-dresses made of a sheet of gold. Yet you are not likely to ever see them together in one exhibition. And how is Marmotta’s Venus (in Rome) related to the famous Venus from Willendorf in Vienna? The Virtual Museum of the European Roots – part of the larger F-MU.S.EU.M. (Form Multimedia System for a European Musem) project – aims to document how Europe is founded upon a common ancient matrix, consequential to the abasence of rigid boundaries and continuous migrations.

To convey this to their virtual visitors they’ve organised their collection of 3D objects – a sequence of photographs assembled in QuickTime VR – by chronology and broad themes rather than one area. If you wanted to ‘be guided’ in your discovery of our shared European cultural heritage, you may always follow their thematic routes – Civilisation; A Gift from the River; The Beginning of Metallurgy or Sport and Role Games in Prehistoric Times – which are text-based but thoroughly illustrated with photographs, 3D versions of the artefacts and video.

For museum professionals there are e-courses in Content Expert, Manager for virtual museums, Webdesigner for virtual museums (definitely read through the 3D photography part, there’s also the video to go with it, if you scroll down at europeanvirtualmuseum.net to FMUSEUM video production and choose ‘3D photo making process’) and Virtual museum communicator (which puzzles me a bit, uniform dress code for virtual museum staff but not Twitter use?)

Personally, I expected a bit more from the ‘virtual artefacts’ – only ‘horizontal spinning’ and loss of quality on zooming in seems a bit mediocre compared to our XXL King Tut Artefacts (which you can actually sit on) – but the idea behind the museum makes up for a lot of that initial disappointment. Because centralising objects in one location, so they can be linked – or tagged? – together in different storylines, regardless which collection or nation they belong to is a great aim. Maybe if Google ‘crawls’ every single museum in the world, this will eventually happen?

Ashmolean’s New Block is Bright and Welcoming

I got a jump on the Queen of England the other day, and visited the newly-opened wing of the Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology in Oxford a full week before she officially opens it Dec. 2. My parents live in Oxford, and I was visiting them unexpectedly (death in my husband’s family). They had tried to visit the Museum at the weekend, but queues that snaked round the block drove them back, so my father and I took a secondwalk over there on a quieter Wed. afternoonto see what all the fuss was about.

First off, I should confess that I haven’t set foot in the hallowed halls of the Ashmolean since my days as a dipsomaniac undergraduate at St. Edmund Hall, when the prospect of wandering around looking at a lot of dead old things was usually trumped heartily by the prospect of going to the pub. Walking in all anew 25 years later, I have to confess that the old parts of the museum seemed little more attractive to my more sober journalistic eye than they did then. My father and I agreed it all seemed a bit sombre.

The new wing, however, is a delight – brightly, beautifully lit, with elegantly beige walls and lots of raw wood on the floors, doors, benches, cabinets and so on. It has the aesthetic of a really upscale Japanese restaurant, which makes it welcoming and – most importantly for me – less draining on the energy reserves. I don’t know about you, but I find walking at museum-pace around vast echoing halls of marble, peering with polite interest into one glass cabinet after another to be tolerable only for an hour or so. Then a heaviness seems to gather in my lumbar region and I begin scanning for exit signs. I can’t be the only person who suffers from Museum Fatigue, because most modern or newly-renovated museums, such as this one, have a perfectly splendid cafe, restaurant, or bar tucked away somewhere. The Ashmolean is no exception and has a surprisingly swish combination of all three on the top floor, with a spectacular roof terrace attached that will be really useful in, err, oh, Oxford’s notional Spring and Summer or the odd day in February when it’s actually quite warm and sunny.

In any case, the energy drain is also ameliorated by the interactive stuff in the lovely basement area, which houses the conservation section. This is a new trend in museums – to let you look behind the curtain, as it were, and show you what the experts do all day. They haven’t gotten it quite right, but it’s a good try. A “touching” station invites you to touch various materials to show how even an innocent fingerprint can wear away stone and metal over time. But an impressively large digital display above the materials presented for touching merely measures how many times that piece has been touched since the wing opened. It would be much more interesting if you were shown an image of the oils your touch had left, or the change in acidity or conductivity, say. Other areas invite you to rearrange hieroglyphic-type symbols but don’t show you realEgyptian ones, which seems a shame. However, I don’t want to be too negative here. The new wing is a huge, huge improvement, and there’s a real sense of breaking the museum equivalent of the fourth wall referred to in theatre, when the actors interact with the audience. This is all to be applauded.

In particular, I admired the way that many of the displays are about people rather than things. Archaeology is full of flamboyantly odd characters, and it’s great to meet some of them here, including Arthur Evans, who gave us the Minoans in all their bull-jumping glory; and Sir John Myres, who was big on Cyprus. We even get a glancing reference to Agatha Christie, who cleaned ivories from Nimrud with her face cream and declared the delicate and wrong-headed task “thrilling”!

The textiles are many, and colourful; the huge collection of ceramics on the second floor simply breathtaking. But my absolute favourite thing was in the basement. It was a reproduction of a statue of Augustus, painted as it might have been in Roman times, with gaudy blues and oranges. He looked like the gaudy symbol of power the citizen of Rome would have really looked up to.It’s one of my personal bugbears that statues and templesfrom Ancient Greece and Rome are presented in their denuded state of white marble and plaster. As a child, I believed our forefathers were terribly austere, and drifted around in an environment of towering, cold, whiteness. This, of course, is nonsense, but I bet most children (let alone adults) still labour under this misapprehension. If the new wing at the Ashmolean has done one worthwhile thing, it has gone some way to exploding this ridiculous myth that those who came before us weren’t just as tacky as we are.

Lost in the Museum — Slideshow from the Louvre Ancient World Collections

Sometimes getting lost in the museum is the most interesting way to find something. Notwithstanding the Louvre in Paris being an expansive, vast area, wandering the rooms in search of a specific place you may not find (read more about the long walk here) is a good way to discover something–even if that something wasn’t what you had planned to find.

Below is short slideshow of some of the objects we ran across in our short visit to the Louvre. It is a fairly random collection of artefacts from Assyria, Greece, Crete and Egypt. Mainly these photos are the images that were better lit. I hope I got all the titles right, even haven taken photos of the tags didn’t make it that easy to figure out what is what now that I am back in front of the computer. It is a bit of a wonder why they place these incredible things around the museum with such care, but don’t bother much helping you understand what you are looking. Is the purpose of a museum just to show stuff or to make sense of things? Anyway, these objects are certainly beautiful and proof that the ancient world continues to reach across time and mesmerize us.

I think the images are a lot sharper when shooting close with a wider angle on the zoom. I tried to adjust the distortion in photoshop as well as correct the lighting to get a more realistic white balance. Even with the auto white balance all the different lighting types scrambled up my light meter.

Lost in the Museum — Oolala Louvre

I had a great break last weekend and made a one-day shot London/Paris/London via the Eurostar (which is best way to travel this itinerary) to join some family for a special celebration. After lunch we also had (not enough) time to make a quick visit to the Louvre Museum. Given the recent incident where the Louvre was busted by Zahi Hawass for taking “hot” artefacts from Egypt, we decided to go have a look at the Egyptian Collection. The Louvre is even bigger than I had remembered it. Getting to the Egyptian area was not very easy.

So the first major tip on visiting the Louvre is to try to avoid the big lines to buy tickets (9 for permanent collection 14 for specials exhibitions combo ticket) you can find ticket machines or shops in the shopping center area near the Metro side entrance level. You can also buy tickets online or at FNAC. The lines can be very long, so getting a ticket is an important part of your gameplan.

As it turns out we made a big mistake in selecting our entrance to the Museum. We went into the gate marked “Richelieu” (probably because we saw too many 3 Musketeer movies). In fact, to strike toward the Egyptian collection you would be better off entering via “Sully.” Ithink the scale on the map doesn’t really give an accurate idea on just how far you need to walk across the Louvre if you choose the wrong starting point. In general, the walk is across many amazing things, but we were pressed for time. The rooms of the museum are almost as interesting as the objects on display. You really need to look around, check the spectacularly painted ceilings and (and out the windows where I was able to take the photo of the Pyramid above). It is truly a stunning place. It must be the most gorgeous museum in the world (like Paris is the most beautiful city anyway).

We eventually made it to the start of the Egyptian Antiquities area (Room 30 on the 1st Floor). My mission was to get to see the Akhenaton pillar fragment highlighted in the map in Room 25. It seemed a lot like the monumental sculpture of Akhenaton in the Cairo Museum that Ihad the chance to see last year. The representation of Akhenaton are usually so distorted and trippy.

The first piece that I noticed was a very nice Bastet the Cat (watch video: Animal Cults in Egypt). This particular cat has lovely blue lines around the eyes. It seems amazingly serene and wise.

A bit further along was this very interesting wooden piece marked “a King, possibly Ramses II”. Iliked the sequin-looking beads that must have been a shimmering crown when it was originally made. The mummy of Ramses II is in the Cairo Museum in their very creepy mummy room. Bob Brier, aka Mr Mummy, writes that Ramses II hair has been studied and shows that the famed ruler was red headed. (Interested to know about how mummies are made? Check this step-by-step mummy recipe and also a video here.)

By this time we were within 20 minutes of the the 6pm museum closing. We had no chance really of making it more than 50 more meters down the galleries. There are some many amazing small object to catch your eye. I could have spent hours there. We could see though that the museum staff were in fact eager to get out and back home even sooner than the closing time. They are starting to push us and the rest of the weary visitors out as fast as they could herd us (5:50pm on my watch).

Fortunately we were close to the beautiful Stele of Taperete. At first glance it is hard to believe that this wooden panel is around 3,000 years old. The colors are vibrant and the lines sharp. It is interesting to see her in some appreciation of two different forms of the sun god Ra. I really like what seems to be flowers shining/flowing down to her from the sun disk. The opposite side panel has this unexpected, amazing giant, nude female figure arched over the scene with her fingers gently touching the ground. Really it is quite stunning, almost like something from a Klimt painting. It is always impressive how much Egyptian artefacts seem so modern and famillar considering how ancient they are.

The good news is that getting out of the Louvre is a lot easier than trying to find a specific area. We came out onto the street level from inside the glass pyramid. The lights of the Louvre reflected on the pools around the exit. We enjoyed a walk down the dark autumn evening at Tulleries garden. A little more than three hours later I was back in the center of London.

Pictures of the Staffordshire Hoard at the British Museum

As blogged earlier today, the Staffordshire Hoard made its way to London’s British Museum this week, to feverish public interest. And not wanting to miss out on the party, Heritage Key took a trip to Bloomsbury today, to give you a first-hand look at how it has been laid out for the capital’s history lovers. As you can see, there weren’t queues tailed back hundreds of yards outside the building – as was the case at earlier displays in Birmingham – but interest was high, with HK struggling to burst through the crowd for some decent shots.

Only a handful of treasures makes the display, but the headline pieces are all there

There may only be a handful of the magnificent gold on show at the makeshift exhibition, but what’s there ranks among the find’s most astonishing pieces. The twisted gold cross that has become the hoard’s emblem is there, as is the Latin-inscribed band, and helmet fragments. Info is laid out on three handy wall displays – and that’s about it! No fancy hall or lavish branding, just a trio of glass cases with scant decoration. Perhaps the recently-found Stirling Iron Age gold will find more copious surroundings when its fate is decided a year from now.

A Success?

Maybe the display will prompt more to venture north when the hoard is purchased by a syndicate of midlands museums, as is widely expected. Or perhaps the spartan layout will disappoint those used to the BM’s traditionally OTT exhibitions. Either way, it’s good for Britain’s biggest Saxon haul to see the capital, before it heads back to its Mercian homeland.

You can see more pictures of the treasures in their new makeshift home at Heritage Key’s Flickr group!

Do you have any news or comments about the Staffordshire Hoard’s new home? Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us, either via the comments box below, our contact page or by emailing me direct!