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
Continue reading...Category Archives: Museums
Should museums return their colonial artefacts? | Tristram Hunt
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.
Continue reading...Holocaust historians divided over Warsaw ghetto museum
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.
Continue reading...British Museum ‘has head in sand’ over return of artefacts
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.
Continue reading...‘They didn’t look old enough’: who filled a French art gallery with fakes?
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.
Continue reading...Museum visitor cracks code to unlock secrets of mystery safe
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.
Continue reading...Lewis chessmen piece bought for £5 in 1964 could sell for £1m
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.
Continue reading...Now kids, help us to kill Bin Laden! The dark side of Washington’s spy museum
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.”
Continue reading...A view to a kill: Washington’s Spy Museum – in pictures
Largest collection of international espionage artefacts ever placed on public display illuminate the work of famous spies and their pivotal actions, as well as help bring to life the tradecraft of the women and men behind some of the most secretive missions in world history
Continue reading...Britain’s equivalent to Tutankhamun found in Southend-on-Sea
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.
Continue reading...‘Tardis’ phone boxes connect children to games of the past
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.
Continue reading...Diary of explorer David Livingstone’s African attendant published
Jacob Wainwright’s diary is only handwritten witness account of missionary’s death
The diary of an African attendant on the Scottish explorer David Livingstone’s final journey into the continent has been published online, containing the only handwritten witness account of the the Victorian missionary’s death in 1873.
The manuscript was written by Jacob Wainwright, a member of the Yao ethnic group from east Africa and the only African pallbearer at the explorer’s funeral in Westminster Abbey in 1874.
Continue reading...The $500m Shed: inside New York’s quilted handbag on wheels
This puffed-up cultural citadel was meant to be an endlessly evolving, telescopic arts complex. But the glistening billionaires’ playground rising up beside it had other plans
It seems fitting that the cultural centre of New York’s latest luxury private development should look like a quilted Chanel handbag. Rearing up at the northern end of the High Line on Manhattan’s reborn West Side, the Shed presents a 10-storey wrapping of puffed-up diamond cushions to passersby, standing as the gaudy gateway to Hudson Yards – the most expensive real estate project in US history.
While it might fit in with the gilt-edged world of Swiss watch boutiques and Michelin-starred chefs that awaits in this $25bn private enclave, it is an unlikely costume for what the project’s architect and originator, Liz Diller, insists is “simply a piece of infrastructure” to support whatever artists want to do. “It’s not precious,” she says of the $500m building. “It’s muscular and industrial, just meat and bones.”
Continue reading...Brussels EU museum accused of banning staff from drinking and speaking
MEP claims some House of European History staff subjected to ‘slave labour’
The EU-funded House of European History, a £47m museum celebrating the continent’s integration, has been accused of forcing contract staff to work seven days a week and ask for permission to drink water.
MEP Dennis De Jong has claimed that staff have endured bans on sitting, speaking or drinking during their 10-hour shifts looking after visitors.
Continue reading...Anish Kapoor: ‘If I was a young Muslim, would I feel angry enough to join Isis? I would at least think about it’
Britain has gone through the looking glass and the artist’s new show follows it into the abyss. He talks about the upsurge in racism, fighting for Shamima Begum – and his clash with France’s president
At 7.30 on the morning after Britain voted to leave the European Union, Anish Kapoor left his London flat for an appointment with his analyst. On the street, he heard two men talking. “Bet he doesn’t even speak English,” said one. “I turned around and they were talking about me. I was so furious.”
Sir Anish Mikhail Kapoor, CBE, RA, the 65-year-old, Turner prize-winning, Mumbai-born British-Indian artist, who has lived in London since the early 1970s and (though this is hardly the point) speaks better English than most of his countrymen, had woken up in a new land. “Since then permission has been given for difference, rather than being celebrated, to be undermined.”
Continue reading...Queen shares digital milestone with royal Instagram followers
Monarch posted image of 1843 Charles Babbage letter to Prince Albert during Science Museum visit on Thursday
The Queen has proved she is in touch with the touch screen by sharing her first Instagram post in the latest personal technological milestone of her lengthy reign.
The 92-year-old monarch shared an archive image to the 4.6 million followers of @theRoyalFamily’s Instagram account during a visit to the Science Museum to formally open the new Smith Centre and summer exhibition, Top Secret.
Continue reading...UK museum agrees to return Ethiopian emperor’s hair
National Army Museum says it has agreed to a formal request for two locks of hair of Tewodros II
A British museum has agreed to repatriate to Ethiopia two locks of hair taken from the head of the 19th-century emperor Tewodros II.
The National Army Museum on Monday said it had agreed to a formal request for the return of objects “considered to be of cultural sensitivity to Ethiopian citizens”.
Continue reading...Leonardo da Vinci dragged into Salvini’s spat with Macron
Louvre blockbuster marking 500 years since artist’s death may end up a casualty
He was a Renaissance master – painter, scientist, engineer and inventor – who was hailed as one of the greatest artists who ever lived.
But as Europe stages a year-long frenzy of events to mark 500 years since Leonardo da Vinci’s death, Italy and France are engaged in a diplomatic tussle over him that threatens a blockbuster exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.
Continue reading...Parachutists to fill skies over Normandy on 75th anniversary of D-day
Wartime aircraft will fly in 6 June event commemorating day that turned tide of war
The skies over the UK and Normandy will be filled with wartime Dakota aircraft as hundreds of parachutists take part in a mass airdrop to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings in June.
The plans, unveiled by Imperial War Museums (IWM), are part of a programme on an “unprecedented scale” for the commemoration of the greatest seaborne invasion in history, to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation, on 6 June 1944.
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