York Museums Trust Blog

Fiction in museums?  Surely not.  But they can be a source of inspiration – and we have a few recent examples to prove it. 

Last year Tracey Chevalier curated an exhibition at York Art Gallery and used it to stimulate all sorts of literary activity in a wide range of folk, including some of YMT’s own staff. 

In November Kate Atkinson wrote in The Guardian, talking about the Castle Museum:

“The museum was a place of miracles and wonders for me, where the rooms and streets of the past were brought to life in a way that was (and still is) thrilling. My imagination was undoubtedly nurtured by those visits; in fact I am sure that they helped to build the foundations of my becoming a writer.” (full story)

And the wider community of bloggers and online writers are following suit – here, for example, is a story for kids that uses the museum as a backdrop.  So if you want to get over your writer’s block perhaps you should get along to your local museum.

York Castle Prison is a really exciting new project that has been taking up a lot of our time.  We’ve just made our plans public (see this Yorkshire Post Article).

The idea is based on the fact that the Castle Museum building is an incredibly interesting historic monument in its own right.  This has been  a bit obscured in the past by the desire to display as much of the huge and wonderful museum collection as possible.

But, from July 17, the whole of the ground floor of the 18th century  Debtors’ Prison (pictured) will be given over to telling the story of the site.  And it is a truly revealing, and sometimes terribly moving, tale.

The project team has been lucky enough to have first sight of the material that the project researcher, Katherine, has discovered.  All sorts of unexpected facts about the building have come to light, but for me it’s the stories of the individual prisoners and prison staff that really have most impact.

To give just one example, there is the case of William Petyt, a poor weaver who was imprisoned in the Castle at the same time as his mother, Ann.  He went into the prison only for owing money, something most of us can empathise with, but he never came out.  Defending his mothers’ honour, William got into a nasty scrap with the jailer and was held in an underground dungeon for 11 days as a punishment, dying a few days later.  The jailer was accused but acquitted of murder; ironically his own circumstances later changed and he, himself, died as a debtor in the Castle Prison.

The latest addition to the History of York website is very seasonal – a page about Guy Fawkes and his York connections.

I knew that Fawkes was born in the city but I hadn’t realised before that he was one of three Gunpowder Plotters to have grown up here.  Two of his pals from school, the brothers John and Kit Wright, were also deeply involved and ended up losing their lives because of the plot.  It seems that York harboured a resistance community that was willing to kill and die for their religious cause.

If you’re in York any evening until 02 November, make sure you see this truly impressive sound and light show in Museum Gardens.  I went to the opening event last week and, not having been involved in this city project, I had no idea what to expect. 

It was brilliant – in every sense of the word.  Huge moving projections glowed from the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey Church and the front of the Yorkshire Museum, each image appropriate to each building but timed to work together and with an evocative soundtrack.

There’s no charge, it runs from when it goes dark until about 11pm and it’s a great way to start or end an evening.  Not to be missed… 

The new exhibition at the gallery is about words as much as pictures.  I went over for a first look today and took a photo (click on it to see the writing by visitors).

The show is curated by top international superstar author, Tracey Chevalier.  She’s done a brilliant job – and I’m not just saying that because I hope to bump into her.

The exhibition has some of the gallery’s most engaging paintings and the gimmick works really well.  Lots of visitors are taking the chance to add their own ideas, in writing, and are reading each others’ comments. 

Web 2.0 goes low-tech.

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.