With 30 minutes to go it was the classic case of everyone running around tidying, brushing, polishing and hiding the power drills. Even the glass was still being put in some of the cases.

(you are free to reproduce these images)

But I think it went amazingly well. Janet, our CEO, and Andrew who has led the project made the introductions standing on the beautiful new floor map of the Roman Empire.

The ladies and gentlemen of the press were then set free to wander around and enjoy the smashing new museum. Some of their stories are here:

BBC

Yorkshire Post

York Press

The Guardian

Michael Binyon of The Times also gave the museum 4 stars – you can read his review if you subscribe to their site.

This short video gives an exclusive peek at what on earth is going on inside York’s oldest museum. The Yorkshire Museum is having its first total refurbishment since it opened in 1830. As you’ll see, there’s still a bit to do but we are totally committed to reopening on 1 August, Yorkshire Day – this year!

More info is at woo2009

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…

What’s our greatest problem at The Yorkshire Museum? The answer is obvious, isn’t it: we’re just too great.

That may sound like a boast – in fact, let’s face it, it is a boast – but it is the simple truth. There’s just too much important stuff and just too many fantastic stories for a provincial museum of medium size to tell.

Our greatest strength is, of course, the same thing.

Allow me to take a minute to explain just what we’ve (that ‘we’ includes you, naturally) got in the Yorkshire Museum.

We’re a science and natural history museum with one of the most historically important collection of fossils in Europe, the custodians of evidence which helped lead to Darwin’s breakthrough on natural selection.

We’re a Roman history museum with key artefacts crucial to the understanding of the Romans in Britain. The great emperor Constantine was proclaimed right here in York. We have the proof. We have the last evidence of the legendary, supposedly vanishing Ninth legion, rare statues of the Gods and a whole lot more.

We’re a museum of medieval history beyond compare in the country outside of London. The remains of the abbey, destroyed by King Henry VIII’s men, actually make up part of our building and we have the most complete and important Saxon helmet in the Kingdom.

Add to that the fact that the building is Grade I and of vast historic importance (we’re one of the oldest purpose-built museums in the world). Oh and don’t forget we’re a seat of learning with visiting academics from around the world beating a path to our doors.

So a legacy and a collection that is the pride of Yorkshire. How can you fail to present all of that? Very easily.

It can’t be confused, it can’t be boring and we have to entertain and inform both 80-year-old granddad and that five-year-old on his or her first ever trip to a museum. We want this museum to confirm its rightful place as one of York’s premier attractions, right up there with the Minster. We want the wow factor and we want to brand the museum as the one venue with the whole story of York and Yorkshire.

All of which sounds a bit grand when you find yourself knocking out plasterboard, breathing dust and wondering about the cup-of-tea factor while negotiating with the skip company and lending your mind to where that moth-eaten but much loved old stuffed bear is going to go.

We’d love you to join us and follow our progress via these blogs.

NB: Our thanks to Peter Williamson who bought ‘Swampy’ (see previous blog) for £69 for his dinosaur daft and animal crazy nephew, Jack, aged 11.

I’ve known my mate Swampy for a long time now and I love him.

Of course loving him wasn’t going to stop me from smashing him up with a sledgehammer and chucking him in the skip.

In fact it was only the gentle persuasion of the York Museums Trust Media and Public Relations Department (ie Lee) that led to my sticking him on eBay (current bidding £56).

‘Swampy’ is a plaster and fibreglass model of a 5ft amphibian which roamed the tropical – yes tropical – swamps of Yorkshire 312million years ago.

He was a key feature in Yorkshire Museum for well over a decade and so was viewed by well over a million people. Nearly every child and a fair proportion of grown-ups felt the need to pat his head.
 
 The reason for Swampy’s existence was to help explain what ‘Yorkshire’ would have been like in the Upper Carboniferous period, a time when many of the coal seams in Britain were formed.

Emerging from a swamp, devouring a fish, this eye-catching amphibian performed his job in our old museum well – though I lost count years ago how many people wrongly thought he was a crocodile.
 
He just won’t fit into our planned new family friendly and fun Extinct gallery which will boast a real dinosaur trackway, tell the story of supposedly extinct creatures that returned ‘from the dead’ and modern interactive activities.

Swampy is just one of our characters and I’ll be telling you of others in the course of these blogs. Not that we’re going to be too sentimental. They have to do a job and fit into our new museum – or it’s the sledgehammer and the skip.

Can you save Swampy from this fate? He makes a good educational tool and he’s quirky and fun. Just don’t call him a crocodile.

Lady Cockburn and Her Three Eldest Sons

Yorkshire’s Tourism Event of the Year!

That was the accolade given to the Trust’s ‘Grand Tour in York‘ at Welcome to Yorkshire’s awards ceremony at the Royal Armouries last night.

It was a good night for York all round as the Theatre Royal and National Railway Museum also won awards. And to top it all, prizes were handed out by our very own Archbishop, Dr John Sentamu, who only seemed to lose concentration a little when Pub of the Year was announced (Ye Old Sun Inn at Colton, in case you’re interested).

Every recession brings new opportunities, though usually for scrap merchants, insolvency practitioners and other scavenger occupations. York, England, has opened up some of those opportunities to the wider creative community.

Like most places York’s retail economy has been hit hard lately. The sight of dingy, empty shops is a real problem for a city that relies on its picturesque streets to attract more than 4m visitors a year.

A call went out for ideas and York Museums Trust responded with ‘Windows of Opportunity’. The thinking was: we want to change how these shops look but it’s very tricky to get permission to work inside them, so let’s just work with the surface. Vinyl was our solution. We would cover them up with giant, printed vinyls, like the ones advertising the new exhibition at the Castle Museum.