The good old NHS arrived in the Kitchen Studio in the Castle Museum on Friday and started dispensing a bit of history and some lovely Rock Cakes. I managed a couple and they kept me in good health all the way home.
We also had Nurses in the Costume Studio demonstrating how to make a bed the proper way. They even brought a proper hospital bed in for the day.
Our web presence has grown a little more; we’ve been experimenting our new Flickr account. We’ll try to restrict it to good quality photos and strong images.
It’s been there for a while, but it was really kicked into life with the Grand Tour in York’s own Flickr Set. Since then we’ve begun adding content for each of our sites, plus a special History of York Set that’s looking really good already.
There’s even a taster in the box a the bottom of this page…..
We were lucky enough to be given a tour yesterday by Roger Tomlin, an expert from Oxford University. His specialist subject for the day was Roman inscriptions in the Yorkshire Museum, literally shining a new light on the many words in the Roman Gallery.
Personally, the greatest revelation was this stone, which I’d never paid any attention to before. It turns out to be the best piece of Roman inscription in the country and to be an important part of York’s story, marking a major gate of the Roman fortress.
You can now see it on the History of York website here.
This morning we launched a fantastic new event-cum-exhibition on the streets of York.
There’s been an embargo on news about it, so nothing on the blog either, but for the last few months we have been beavering away, laying plans, choosing sites, getting permissions and generally running around trying to make this happen.
We’ve been working with one big organisation - the National Gallery - and one huge one - Hewlet-Packard - to bring 49 reproduction paintings to the streets. It has been an interesting and exciting process. The support within the city of York has been wonderful.
In the spirit of the blog here are a few behind the scenes shots:
The team fitting the paintings deserve a plug - they also printed them - : EPS
The official site is here: www.thegrandtourinyork.org.uk
Today is the first time our refurbished historic Hospitium building has been used in anger. Well probably not in anger - the first clients are the Museums Association who are holding a conference on collections information management.
One of the main spaces at the gallery has been under wraps for the last few months.
Following a problem with falling plaster the South Gallery has been completely refurbished. A suspended ceiling has been removed to reveal an attractive Victorian roof space.
This is a sneak preview: click here
Our new website seems to have been in development for years and years, which is perhaps appropriate for a history site.
But at last its public! have a look: www.historyofyork.org.uk
The idea is that the site will continue to develop for many more years - so if you have any bright ideas for it, let us know.
One of the big bonuses of working in a museum is that you accidentally come across all sorts of interesting stuff and get to see it really close up.
This morning I was over at the Castle Museum in the new Sixties gallery and found Josie unwrapping an original Mary Quant mini-dress from the ‘Ginger’ range. Note the upside-down ‘i’ - very Sixties.
The culture of Museums using their assets to make extra cash is now well established in Britain. Some of the most successful ventures have been in venue hire.
These two photos were both taken on Friday afternoon in York - the first shows the work going on in York Museum Trust’s own medieval building - the Hospitium - and the second is at the National Railway Museum.
The Hospitium is to become the new centre of the Trust’s Venues business in April and the NRM have recently extended their conference facilities. This will be the first time in 600 years or so that the Hospitium has proper plumbing - you can see some of it in the middle of the floor in the picture!
This is one of the corner towers of the York Abbey walls this morning. It’s normally the entrance to a riverside walk by Museum Gardens.
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