Category Archives: Museums

Exposing one’s selfies: Aucklanders answer call for city snapshots – in pictures

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Curators have added 1,000 selfies to Auckland Museum’s permanent photography collection after calling on the public to submit them. ‘Our collection holds more than 3m photographs, dating back to the early days of photography, and a part of my role is to ensure our collection continues to reflect trends,’ says its curator of pictorial, Shaun Higgins. ‘The selfie is a present-day photographic phenomenon that can’t be overlooked’

• Insider’s guide to Auckland: a multicultural melting pot by the sea

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Restored 19th-century ships’ figureheads to go on display in Plymouth

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The 14 carvings will hang from the ceiling in arts venue The Box, due to open in the spring

A collection of 19th-century wooden figureheads from British naval warships has been lovingly restored from the ravages of years at sea and will form a striking display at a new heritage and arts complex in Plymouth.

The 14 figureheads, some of which were so badly water-damaged that their insides had turned into a soggy mulch, are to be suspended from the ceiling of The Box gallery and museum, which is due to open in the spring.

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End of Golden Age: Dutch museum bans term from exhibits

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Debate over Netherlands’ colonial past resurfaces with switch to ‘17th century’ as alternative

One of the Netherlands’ most prestigious museums has fuelled fresh debate over the the country’s colonial past by deciding it will no longer use the term Golden Age to describe the 17th century when it was at its pinnacle as a military and trading power.

The Amsterdam Museum said that in an attempt to be “polyphonic and inclusive”, the common description of the century in which the Netherlands bestrode the world stage would be banned from its exhibits.

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Nazi design exhibition in Netherlands raises fears of glorification

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Visitors have been asked not to share photographs of exhibits including Arno Breker statue

An exhibition of Nazi design has opened in the Netherlands to protests and a request for visitors to the museum not to take and share photographs for fear of the exhibits being glorified on social media.

The Museum of Design in Den Bosch is showcasing sculpture by Adolf Hitler’s favourite artist, Arno Breker, a 1943 VW Beetle, photos and Leni Riefenstahl films from the era, in what is being billed as the first great exposition of the “Design of the Third Reich”.

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Show me the mummy: the undying allure of ancient Egypt

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Paris’s Tutankhamun exhibition is a record-breaking hit – but scarabs, pharaohs and man-eating monsters have been thrilling us for centuries

Paris’s current mania for Tutankhamun should come as no surprise. The Grande Halle de la Villette exhibition of 150 objects found in the tomb of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh is now France’s most-visited exhibition ever, having attracted over 1.3 million visitors. Many of the objects on show – “wonderful things”, in Howard Carter’s words, including mini-coffins, a gilded bed and a calcite vase – have left Egypt for the first time for the Treasures of the Pharaoh exhibition, which will move to London’s Saatchi Gallery in November.

The exhibition’s popularity echoes the wave of “Tut-mania” that swept the west almost 100 years ago when Carter first discovered the boy-king’s tomb. Suddenly everyone seemed interested in Egyptology, evident in the fashions, arts, culture and advertising of the time, and most enduringly in art-deco architecture such as the Chrysler building in New York – especially its distinctive elevator doors – and the Carreras Cigarette Factory in London, with its line of sleek black cats guarding the entrance. US president Herbert Hoover named his dog King Tut, and there were calls for the extension of the London Underground’s Northern Line that linked Tooting and Camden Town to be named Tutancamden.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson to keep museum job after sexual misconduct inquiry

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Astrophysicist was accused of behaving inappropriately with two women in an article published in November on website Patheos

The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson will keep his job as head of the Hayden Planetarium at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, after the museum concluded its investigation into sexual misconduct accusations against him.

Related: Neil deGrasse Tyson answers allegations of sexual misconduct

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‘Roman Biro’ – complete with joke – found at London building site

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Iron stylus uncovered at Bloomberg building site in City of London is ‘one of the most human finds’, say archaeologists

It sounds just like the kind of joke that is ubiquitous in today’s cheap-and-cheerful souvenir industry: “I went to Rome and all I got you was this lousy pen.” But the tongue-in-cheek inscription recently deciphered on a cheap writing implement during excavations in the City of London is in fact about 2,000 years old.

“I have come from the city. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point that you may remember me. I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able [to give] as generously as the way is long [and] as my purse is empty,” it reads.

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British Museum to return Buddhist heads looted in Afghan war

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Stolen artefacts likely removed by Taliban will go on display before being sent to Kabul

Fourth-century Buddhist terracotta heads probably hacked off by the Taliban and found stuffed in poorly made wooden crates at Heathrow are to be returned to Afghanistan where they will be star museum exhibits.

The British Museum gave details on Monday of one of the most significant repatriation cases it has dealt with relating to the illegal looting of artefacts from Afghanistan and Iraq.

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David Chipperfield’s Berlin temple: ‘Like ascending to the realm of the gods’

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James Simon Gallery, Berlin
Twenty years in the making, this dazzling synthesis of the classical and modern takes Museum Island to new heights

Friedrich Wilhelm IV described his vision for Berlin’s Museum Island as a “cultural acropolis”; a sacred sanctuary for the arts and sciences that would cement the Prussian capital as the Athens of the north. Almost two centuries later, the kaiser’s classical aspirations have been fulfilled by British architect David Chipperfield, in the form of a dazzling white temple. Opening this weekend, after 20 years of planning, the James Simon Gallery stands as a €134m (£120m) Parthenon-on-Spree, forming a handsome new entrance to one of the world’s most important repositories of cultural treasures.

“We were quite nervous,” says Chipperfield, standing in the lofty new ticketing lobby, where stripes of sunlight flood in between the row of slender white columns outside. “The challenge was how to create something that was of its context and also of our time, in this incredibly sensitive location.”

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Lifting the lid on Japan’s poo museum – in pictures

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Japan’s culture of cute has embraced poo, which gets a pop twist at the Unko Museum in Yokohama, near Tokyo. Visitors can play a poo-themed video game and pose on a variety of WCs. All the twisty ice-cream and cupcake shapes on display are artificial, and come in a variety of colours and sizes

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Should museums return their colonial artefacts? | Tristram Hunt

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Europe’s museums serve a nuanced purpose and shouldn’t automatically bow to calls to return artworks plundered by 19th-century colonisers, writes V&A director Tristram Hunt

“I am from a generation of the French people for whom the crimes of European colonialism are undeniable and make up part of our history,” announced Emmanuel Macron to a crowded lecture theatre at Ouagadougou University, in Burkina Faso, in November 2017. “I cannot accept that a large part of cultural heritage from several African countries is in France … In the next five years, I want the conditions to be created for the temporary or permanent restitution of African patrimony to Africa.” In case anyone missed the significance of the French president’s remarks, the Elysée Palace was swift to spell out the new policy: “African heritage can no longer be the prisoner of European museums.”

The following year brought another notable intervention, this time from supervillain Erik Killmonger in the Marvel blockbuster Black Panther. Surveying the African collection at the “Museum of Great Britain”, Killmonger corrects the exhibition’s patronising white curator about the provenance of an axe: “It was taken by British soldiers in Benin, but it’s from Wakanda. Don’t trip – I’m gonna take it off your hands for you.” When the woman replies that the items are not for sale, Killmonger says: “How do you think your ancestors got these? Do you think they paid a fair price? Or did they take it, like they took everything else?” As the poisoned curator collapses, Killmonger deaccessions the artefact. Black Panther took just 26 days to reach $1bn (£784,000) in worldwide box office sales and, in one compelling scene, highlighted all the current controversies over museum collections and colonial injustice.

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Holocaust historians divided over Warsaw ghetto museum

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Director hits back at critics who say the institution, backed by Poland’s populist party, will distort wartime history

The museum of the Warsaw ghetto is not due to open for several years, but is already shaping up to be one of the most contentious museums in Europe.

Backed by Poland’s populist government, which has been accused of rewriting history to fit its political agenda, the museum has caused a bitter spat between historians of the Holocaust about how best to tell the tragic story of Warsaw’s Jews.

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British Museum ‘has head in sand’ over return of artefacts

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Authors of major report accuse institution of hiding from issue of looted colonial-era objects

The authors of an influential report on colonial-era artefacts, which recommended a restitution programme to transfer hundreds of items from European institutions to Africa, have criticised the British Museum for acting like “an ostrich with its head in the sand”.

The Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and the French art historian Bénédicte Savoy, who were asked to write the report by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, after he said the return of artefacts would be a priority during his tenure, said the British Museum was not addressing the issue.

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‘They didn’t look old enough’: who filled a French art gallery with fakes?

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Last year, a museum dedicated to the work of Étienne Terrus revealed most of its paintings were probably not by him. How did it get there?

Odette Traby was dying. It was the summer of 2016 and the sun baked the terracotta roofs of her hometown, Elne, in the south of France, as she lay in bed. Weeks earlier, the 78-year-old had been diagnosed with stage IV cancer. This grande dame of Elne town life had refused all treatment and chosen to tough it out alone. “She was someone who wanted to grapple with, to face up to, death,” says Dani Delay, her niece.

Traby had one consolation. She had spent the previous months trying to secure the future of her life’s work, the town’s art museum. It was dedicated to the work of the local artist Étienne Terrus (1857-1922), a friend of Henri Matisse who had been largely forgotten by the time Traby established the museum in the mid-90s. When nearly 60 Terruses came on to the market in 2015, Traby rallied two local historical associations to raise tens of thousands of euros, securing at least 30 of the works. As her life ebbed, at least Traby could tell herself that her beloved museum was closer to gaining the “Musée de France” status that would give it priority state funding and resources.

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Museum visitor cracks code to unlock secrets of mystery safe

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Tourist hails ‘lucky guess’ after random numbers open 900kg container sealed for decades

When Stephen Mills spotted a dusty old safe in a museum in Canada, he thought he’d try to crack the code, “just like in the movies”. But when he began turning the dial, he wasn’t expecting a Hollywood ending.

For years, anyone who visited the Vermillion Heritage Museum in Alberta would have passed by a large, black metal box. Staff knew it had come from the long-gone Brunswick hotel and was donated to the museum in the 1990s. But its code and contents remained a mystery for decades – until Mills unexpectedly cracked the combination.

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Lewis chessmen piece bought for £5 in 1964 could sell for £1m

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Missing walrus tusk warrior was purchased in Edinburgh and stored in a drawer

A small walrus tusk warrior figure bought for £5 in 1964 – which, for years, was stored in a household drawer – is a missing piece from one of the true wonders of the medieval world, it has been revealed.

The Lewis chessmen were found in 1831 in the Outer Hebrides and became beloved museum collections in London and Edinburgh. They have also become well known in popular culture from Noggin the Nog to Harry Potter.

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Now kids, help us to kill Bin Laden! The dark side of Washington’s spy museum

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The bugged shoes and poison brollies are fun and fascinating. But why are the sections about state-sponsored torture and assassination so uncritical?

Sitting in a glass case, standing out against a backdrop of deep red, there’s an ice axe that still bears a rust mark, the consequence of a bloody fingerprint left on it decades ago. One day in 1940, this axe was hidden inside Ramón Mercader’s suit jacket, suspended by a string, as he walked into the office of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary living in exile in Mexico, having been sentenced to death as an “enemy of the people” in his home country.

Mercader slipped behind Trotsky’s desk and brought the axe down with tremendous force, penetrating two-and-three-quarter inches into his skull. Trotsky died 26 hours later. Mercader served 20 years in prison then returned to a hero’s welcome in Moscow. On his deathbed in 1978, his last words were: “I hear it always. I hear the scream. I know he’s waiting for me on the other side.”

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Britain’s equivalent to Tutankhamun found in Southend-on-Sea

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Burial chamber of a wealthy nobleman in Prittlewell shows Anglo-Saxon Essex in new light

An Anglo-Saxon burial chamber found on a grassy verge next to a busy road and not far from an Aldi is being hailed as Britain’s equivalent of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Archaeologists on Thursday will reveal the results of years of research into the burial site of a rich, powerful Anglo-Saxon man found at Prittlewell in Southend-on-Sea, Essex.

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‘Tardis’ phone boxes connect children to games of the past

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The Time Telephone offers a glimpse into the archive of songs, games and rhymes built up by Peter and Iona Opie

Time machines to rival Doctor Who’s Tardis are landing across the country this spring. Children who enter a series of specially adapted red telephone boxes can dial up the past and learn the playground games that once entertained their grandparents.

From rhymes like Ring a Ring o’ Roses and Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush to active games like hopscotch and French skipping, the renowned research into oral traditions carried out by Peter and Iona Opie from the 1950s to the 1980s is being made available to children more used to video-gaming.

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