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| Macclesfield Museum |
These three themes –
the development of Egyptology, the vigorous collecting in the northwest and the
belief in the importance of museums for education – came over strongly in the
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology’s Tour of the Northwest in July
2012. Using a comfortable hotel in
Liverpool as a base, our surprisingly small group completed visits to five
museums and culminated in the one-day Gurob Conference. We visited Liverpool’s World Museum, Manchester
Museum at Manchester University, Macclesfield Museum, Bolton Museum and Burnley’s
Towneley Hall, travelling in a very comfortable hire car, with Jan Picton at
the helm and Ivor Pridden navigating. The
curators at each of the museums were welcoming and informative, introducing the
group to both the public exhibits and the back-room stores, where we were able
to handle objects that are not on display and to find out more about the
history and management of the collections.
All of the museums
have very different personalities, reflecting different origins, differing
ideas of display and, of course, varied levels of investment. The tiny single-gallery Macclesfield Museum,
built in 1898, was the purpose-built gift of collector Marianne and her brother
Peter Brocklehurst, the wealthy children of a local silk merchant, while the
Eighteenth Century Towneley Hall Museum and Art Gallery in Burnley, housing an
even smaller collection, was far from purpose-built for the task. At the opposite end of the scale, the Bolton,
Manchester and Liverpool World Museums are located in vast, publicly funded and
socially ambitious edifices, housing collections of national and international
importance.
Most of the collections
are associated with the activities of specific individuals. At Bolton, for example, Annie Barlow, the daughter of a Bolton mill owner was responsible for part of the collection, whilst other objects on
display are on loan from Lord Leverhulme’s Egyptology collections, his reward
for funding John Garstang’s excavations.
The Professor of Archaeology at the University
of Liverpool, Garstang encouraged funding by rewarding his
investors with some of the finds from his excavations, a perfectly acceptable
practice in his day. Another recipient
of finds from his excavations was Lady O’Hagan, who owned Towneley Hall. When Lady O’Hagan sold Towneley Hall to
Burnley in 1901, she donated her own collection of Garstang’s finds to the
museum. The Macclesfield collection was
assembled by or donated to Marianne Brocklehurst and Mary Booth, who travelled
in Egypt in company with Amelia Edwards, collecting antiquities, eventually
donating them to the people of Macclesfield, together with the building in
which they are now housed. Liverpool’s
collections began with the purchases of goldsmith
Joseph Mayer opening who collected in the mid 1800s, whilst Manchester’s main
contributor was textile manufacturer Jesse Hawarth who received his collections
by funding Petrie’s excavations.
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| Bolton Museum |
Most of the museums
have either been through, are currently undergoing or are planning to undergo
radical changes to their original displays.
Towneley Hall in Burnley and Bolton Museum, the latter awaiting a grant
for modernization work, both share displays that date back to the Nineteenth
Century, are quite poorly lit and feel old fashioned but are, at the same time,
welcoming. The Liverpool World Museum
has been completely overhauled, with brightly lit modern display cabinets, and
lovely objects laid out beautifully in well considered groups with helpful
labels. The Macclesfield Museum
collection has also been given a modern and very elegant face-lift, with new
displays and appropriate lighting.
I was interested to
see the different attitudes to labelling.
At Bolton, the current philosophy is to keep information to a minimum in
order to appeal to a younger audience, particularly school children. Taking an entirely different approach is the
Manchester Museum where information is given a central role. Although the new galleries were still under
construction when we visited, curator Campbell Price described how labels are
not only detailed, but are provided with web addresses so that visitors can use
their smartphones to find out more information on the spot. These are supported with interactive displays
which, given personalities like Ramesses III and Flinders Petrie, help the
visitor to get the most out of the exhibits.
A real benefit of the
tour was the chance to see so many of the items that are not on display, to get
up close and personal with objects both beautiful and unusual. At the Liverpool World Museum we filed into
Ashley Cooke’s office to look at pigments and how they have been analyzed, at a
fascinating collection of really gorgeous beads and at old record cards. The Liverpool museum had been damaged by fire
in its past, and much of its collections and records suffered. Behind the scenes, working through the
remaining records has been an important task.
At Burnley, Mike Townend opened up the
display cabinets for us and later we were able to select items from the
catalogue to bring out and admire, including a Middle Kingdom model boat, which
seems to have been assembled from the parts of other boats, and a lovely Naqada
II painted vessel. In the Manchester
Museum Campbell Price introduced us to the store rooms, and we were able to
wander around at will, inspecting stelae, cartonnage masks, ceramics, wood, glass
and faience and the museum’s collection of painted coffins and mummies. Like Ahsley Cooke, Campbell Price had arranged
for us to see some specific items, and it was a pleasure to get so close to
them, handling and appreciating the craftsmanship, getting a sense of how
objects were created. At Bolton Museum
the highlight of the behind-the-scenes tour was the collection of fabrics – Carolyn
Routledge presented box after box of wonderful, fragile fragments full of
colour and light, decorated with wonderful patterns, shapes and scenes.
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| Manchester Museum |
Most of the museums
are looking at digitizing their collections.
Bolton is, like many museums, in the process of converting its paper
records to digital format, in the form of a database. Liverpool is hoping to get its collections
online soon, but in the meantime has a Facebook page where it posts regular
photographs from items in the collections and encourages discussion about
them. Macclesfield has put its entire
collection onto CD-Rom, for sale at a nominal price. Manchester, already mentioned, is linking
their online displays with web pages to enable people to find out more about
artefacts than the labels display. Improving
accessibility to objects, either by putting as many on display as possible (in
the case of the Macclesfield Museum the entire collection) or by making them
available digitally, is a common goal of the museums that we visited. The fact that most of the museums had been
the victims of either flood or fire, or both, makes it explicitly clear that
this type of digital backup is of considerable importance not just for current research
purposes, but for the recording of the data against future disasters.
The tour was timed so
that we could attend the Gurob Conference being held at the University of
Liverpool. Each of the lectures was an
excellent insight into what is happening with the Gurob Harem Project, and
Campbell Price provided the audience with a comprehensive view of the new
galleries at the Manchester Museum, then still under construction but now open
to the public. We were also able to
handle many of the objects from the Garstang Museum, at that time closed for
renovation.
A legacy of Nineteenth
Century curiosity and philanthropy, the museums of the northwest represent a
significant proportion of the UK’s collections of Egyptology, and should not be
missed by anyone who loves the objects of ancient Egypt. I was staggered at the volume and quality of
the collections, and feel somewhat guilty that I failed to make the time to
visit before. As well as ensuring that
visitors have a pleasurable and educational experience amongst the glorious
artefacts of the past, introducing the input of earlier collectors and curators
has also been an important part of telling the museums’ stories. Behind the scenes, the work of curating
fragile objects, collating earlier records and research and digitizing collections
were key priorities for museums for the museums that we visited. It is also clear that curators are no longer
merely exhibit-facing – they must also provide PR for their collections,
working closely with marketing departments to make the public aware of what
they have to offer.
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| Manchester Museum - juxtaposing architectural styles |
In conclusion, this
tour represented a marvellous opportunity to see the collections of the
northwest in comfort over the space of a few days in good company, with some
great assistance from the curators at each of the museums. Particular thanks are owed to Ashley Cooke (Head of the Antiquities Department at
Liverpool’s World Museum), Campbell Price (Curator of
Egypt and the Sudan, Manchester
Museum), Alan Hayward (Honorary Curator of the Egyptology Collection at Macclesfield Museum), Mike
Townend (Keeper of History at Towneley Hall, Burnley)
and Carolyn Routledge (Curator of Egyptology
at Bolton Museum) for taking time to introduce us to their collections and
giving us such a splendid time. This was
my first museum tour, so my thanks too to Jan Picton and Ivor Pridden and the
other tour members for making it such an enjoyable one.
Published in the Friends of the Petrie Museum of Archaeology Magazine
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