York Museums Trust Blog

Roman gravestones and sculptures are being brought back into the Yorkshire Museum this week to take pride of place in our new Roman York gallery. Panels of text and colourful photos of Roman mosaics and statues are also appearing around the walls and the whole place is looking like a new museum already!

Earlier this week Mars, God of War, was put into position in the Central Hall, see pic below. Stonework was being put in place around the walls, including a piece of a statue of Neptune, the God of the Sea, riding on his chariot. Andrew Morrison, head curator, is pictured putting it into place, in front of an image of a Roman mosaic showing the same scene.

Pictured centre right is the gravestone to Lucius Duccius Rufinus, a French standard bearer of the Ninth Legion, in the next section of the Roman York gallery,as our exhibition fitters discuss the best position for him.

Another gravestone was being brought in at the same time by Geoff Hutchinson and Dave Evans who are pictured pausing a while to look at the lettering, which tells of the sadness felt by the father of Corellia Optata, who died at the age of 12. The final picture shows some of the next section of the Roman York gallery.

Our inscription to the famous Roman Ninth Legion has now been put into place in the Central Hall of the Yorkshire Museum, which reopens on 1 August, 2010. 

The mysterious Ninth Legion has been the subject of many stories after its soldiers apparently disappeared after travelling to Scotland to fight the Picts. Our inscription is the last dated record of them and dates from AD 107-8. It was found in York and celebrates the building of the south east gateway to the city’s fortress. The skill of the letter cutter suggests he was probably imperially trained.

The inscription has been positioned above a Roman gateway, which will hold a screen giving a sneak preview film of our six citizens of Eboracum – Roman York. These various characters feature later on in a trip around the museum and their stories have been created using evidence from skeletal remains found in York and the surrounding area. Here’s a picture of the inscription and the gateway taken from above:

Downstairs the Medieval Gallery is nearly ready for our array of Anglian, Viking and Medieval treasures to move in. Now that the space is clear, the windows exposed and the floor covered, the sunlight really does light up the arches of the ruined St Mary’s Abbe

Painters, decorators, shopfitters – they’re all hard at work now preparing our Yorkshire Museum galleries to be filled with fascinating things to see once we reopen on 1 August.

Here’s three pictures taken yesterday showing:
1. painting the room which will hold our dinosaur footprint trackway (you can see it at the far end of the room surrounded by spotlights);
2. a frame going up to hold three huge sea reptile fossils - the ichthyosaur, the plesiosaur and the pliosaur;
3. a lone Roman fresco already up on the wall as fitters get to work on part of the Roman York gallery.

After a few weeks of building work (and there’s still a little bit of work left to do!) our new shop and cafe have opened at York Castle Museum

They’re both now next to the entrance area looking out across the Eye of York towards Clifford’s Tower.

The shop has lots of new stock including vintage-style enamelware, retro style souvenirs and nostalgic gifts featuring old-style adverts.

The cafe has some gorgeous-looking cakes on sale as well as sandwiches, soup and hot meals, and healthy snacks for hungry kids.

If you’re passing, why not pop in and have a look – there’s no admission charge to get into the shop and cafe area (and remember admission is free for York residents anyway!).

The sunlight is streaming in through newly-exposed windows all around the Yorkshire Museum on this sunny day in York.

Over the last week, coverings have been removed from the windows in the old Abbey Gallery, which will become our new gallery Medieval York – The Power and the Glory, exposing views across to the ruins outside in the Museum Gardens.

The scaffolding has gone from the Central Hall and new wrought iron  panels have been put in place around the balcony with the glass behind them reflecting back the light coming through the ceiling windows.

Meanwhile, the Four Seasons Mosaic has been taken down from the staircase wall ready to be reassembled on the floor of the Roman York – Meet the People of the Empire.

And outside our new hoarding decorated with artwork of star objects from the museum tells passing pedestrians and picnic-ers how many more weeks it is until opening.

Next week, the installation of the exhibitions begins…

The refurbishment of the Yorkshire Museum has reached its half-way point with the completion of the dismantling part of the job - with only 136 days to go until opening day on 1 August!

Museum manager Helen Young, who is co-ordinating on-site operations, says the next stage will see the start of plastering, decorating, flooring and electrical work.

Then the really exciting bit begins when the exhibition designers start their work installing the new galleries later in the Spring.

One of the most striking moments of the dismantling process was when a wall was exposed which had held our huge ichthyosaur fossil.

When a stretch of panelling was pulled down the shape of the giant sea monster could be clearly seen on the wall. The fossil had been taken down from the wall some years earlier and is due to go back on display when we re-open in August  (see earlier blog).

In the meantime technician Geoff Hutchinson and his assistant Roger Weal have been carefully bricking up the wall so it can be replastered and redecorated to form part of the new Extinct gallery.

The current exhibition of Yorkshire Museum treasures at the British Museum got a mention in Parliament yesterday.

York’s MP Hugh Bayley encouraged others to get down to the exhibition in London - or even better to travel to York to see the collection of star objects when the Yorkshire Museum re-opens in August.

Here’s how the exchange was reported in Hansard - the daily record of everything said in the Houses of Parliament.

Hugh Bayley: My right hon. Friend was in York last month, and perhaps he knows that, at the British Museum at the moment, there is an exhibition of some of the greatest treasures from Yorkshire, including the Middleham Jewel, the Coppergate Helmet and the Ormside Bowl. Will the Minister encourage members of the public, particularly Londoners, to go to the British Museum to see what makes York so special, perhaps as a taster to encourage them to go north in the summer and visit the real thing in Yorkshire?

The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Margaret Hodge): I am delighted that the temporary closure of the Yorkshire Museum has made it possible for those jewels in our crown to be exhibited in a room in the British Museum. I encourage everybody to go and see them. The partnership between national and regional museums is hugely important in ensuring that all the country’s wealth of artefacts are enjoyed by many more people. It is this Government who, through a renaissance in the regions, have made that partnership possible. That is why it is enormously important that we continue to fund that programme.

Click here for more information about Treasures from Medieval York, the exhibition at the British Museum which runs until 27 June.

Our curators Isla Gladstone and Stuart Ogilvy have been hard at work piecing together the 100-or-so sections of a giant ichthyosaur fossil in preparation for the re-opening of the Yorkshire Museum.

The massive sea creature, more than 20 feet or six metres long, was a predator in the seas over North Yorkshire during the time of the dinosaurs.
Our ichthyosaur is one of the biggest in Britain and its remains were found in Jurassic rocks near Whitby on the Yorkshire Coast. It is very rare to find one as well-preserved and complete as this one.
Isla and Stuart had to work out exactly how much space the huge fossil would take up and how it should be mounted to display it to its best effect in our new gallery, Extinct – A Way of Life.
Each piece of the huge jigsaw fossil been numbered by curators before them and each will be put back into place yet again when it goes on show.
Before then, the pieces will be sent away to be cleaned up and restored so the impact of this huge beast on visitors is as dramatic as possible. This would have been a beast you would not wanted to have encountered if you were a little fish swimming through the waters of Jurassic Whitby…

Here’s a glimpse of some of the Yorkshire Museum’s galleries before and after our building work began…

Work is well underway on transforming the  museum in time for our re-opening on 1 August, 2010, when we’ll have five fantastic new galleries.

For those familiar with the building, the difference is already striking. Not only have all the cases and displays gone, but internal walls have been torn down and covers taken off hidden windows, letting in daylight and giving the place a feeling of being much more spacious.

If there was a squirrel Olympics in Beijing next year, I am sure the Museum Gardens could send a winning team. Every day I can sit at my desk and watch at least one of these supreme athletes running up and down the rooftops outside our office in the Yorkshire Museum. Why are they doing it? There are no stores of acorns hidden away beneath the slate roof tiles or even bars of nutty chocolate in the guttering, but they always seem intent on completing some kind of vital, urgent task.

No chance of childhood squirrel obesity with the level of exercise they maintain – although maybe they are pushing the boundaries of fat intake on the footpaths of the gardens. There they boldly approach people walking through the gardens for any scrap of food they can spare. Despite the fact many refer to them as ‘tree rats’, the squirrels get away with this behaviour because they are so cute, rubbing their little hands together pleadingly and waggling their bushy tails, before scampering off for a good scoff.

Some people even get their camera out to capture the moment on film. It’s as if they think they have had a David Attenborough experience and want to keep a memento of the day they saw such a rare species. The irony is, of course, that the grey squirrel is a very common creature in this country, having largely elbowed out its rarer cousin, the native red squirrel. I remember getting as excited as our garden visitors when I saw one in the Lake District, but scared it off with the noise of opening my camera case.

The curators here have just finished a new exhibition called Aliens, about non-native animals that have made their home in the UK, and it gives the low-down on grey squirrels. But to see the real thing, you don’t have to go far outside to enjoy the sight of non-stop squirrel activity in the Museum Gardens.