York Museums Trust Blog

So the countdown has begun to an exciting week of film, fashion, drama, and performance poetry at the Yorkshire Museum, all celebrating the life of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, writes Aisha Ali-Sutcliffe, Precious Cargo project officer.
 
It’s an exciting but frantic time at the moment. The contemporary fashion mannequin exhibits inspired by the story, skeleton and grave goods of Sycamore Terrace Lady are all ready to go into our Roman Gallery!  Final and last-minute touches are being put to the Severus and the City film.

The Severus-inspired drama and the slam poets’ performance of African story telling closing with a Severus-inspired tale are all in final rehearsals before they go live here next week (see full details of our Severus events on our website).

Here’s my highlights of the final week of preparations…..

Fashion – The exciting news is that we are also hosting this amazing collection for Fashion City York. The BA Fashion students have created unique and interesting designs and I’m looking forward to them arriving at the museum later this week! One of the outfits is called Woman becomes Bird!!  Student Katrina Maughan has even created her own website about the process.

Film -  Late the other night, myself, film maker Paul Banks, and Jack and Florence, two young people who’ve worked on Severus and the City with us, were all upstairs in the Yorkshire Museum. We were recording voice-over links for the film with Jack and Florence in the reading area outside the library.

All was well until we packed up to leave! All of a sudden a cold, icy chill filled the area where we were standing, we all felt it at exactly the same time and quickly commented to each other how freezing it had become all of a sudden! As we moved out of the area and onto the steps the temperature returned to normal!

The last section of the film is about ghost stories in York becoming famous legends, and Harry Martindale tells us his story. So did we experience our very own haunting here at the museum?

Drama - Who would’ve thought Julia Domna would be reading her horoscope one day saying she was to meet a man and that man would turn out to be no other than Septimius Severus? And did you know Bruce Forsyth almost makes his way into this performance?

The Theatre Royal Young Actors Company will be performing this contemporary play titled Celebrating Severus on our Roman map in the main hall. From what I’ve seen already I’m certain the museum will be filled with laughter and applause at this funny and very entertaining energetic portrayal of various aspects of Severus’s life.

Slam Poets  – Watching the Leeds Young Authors rehearse The Birth of African story telling I can tell you it’s an impressive mix of poetry and theatre accompanied by drummers! This is sure to cause a stir in our Roman gallery. Catch the performances on the Mosaic.  Also a tip off – young poets will be wondering around the museum throughout the day sharing stories of Severus.

The galleries are filling up at the Yorkshire Museum as we approach opening day on Sunday.

Here’s our moa skeleton, still partially wrapped up, in place in the Extinct gallery.

Along the wall of the same room a puffin, a red squirrel and a grey squirrel share a wall with a collection of brown and black rats!

Meanwhile, in the Medieval York gallery, our four statues from St Mary’s Abbey stand waiting patiently for opening day…

The Yorkshire Museum’s new Extinct gallery is now being populated with fossilised, skeletal and stuffed birds and animals – ready for our reopening on 1 August!

Pip Strang, assistant curator of biology, is pictured, top left, with one of our Great Auks, and, right, with our selection of Dodo bones which have been mounted with a manmade skull. These feature in a section on relatively modern extinction stories.

Below is an image of a huge whale skull which is suspended from the ceiling and at the other end of the room a lion skeleton sits high up on a ledge, as if leaping out over visitors’ heads. Both these animals are featured to highlight conservation efforts to save them from decline.

Over in the Roman York gallery, staff and volunteers have been busy installing objects into an area devoted to activity before the Romans arrived in York, in the Neolithic period, Bronze Age and Iron Age. Jackie Logan is pictured, bottom left, filling a case with Neolithic flints.

One of the display cases will be open so that visitors can pick up pieces of sharpened flint tools and Natalie McCaul, assistant curator of archaeology, is pictured with one of these larger flints, bottom right.

Natalie, incidentally, is also the photographer behind the atmospheric images of the northern English landscape used as the backdrop for this section – which you’ll be able to see in full when we reopen on 1 August!

The new Roman York gallery at the Yorkshire Museum is coming to life as more and more artefacts and displays are installed in time for our reopening on 1 August.

Here are some pictures of what visitors will be able to do while they walk round. First is the chance to mint coins inspired by a coin featuring Severus, the African emperor who lived in Eboracum (York) for three years. The second picture shows our map of York – visitors will be able to lift flaps around the city to find out what archaeologists have found where.

And finally here’s just a portion of what is sure to be one of the most popular parts of the Roman gallery – the chance to walk on a real Roman mosaic.

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

Find out more about these fascinating, legendary fossils.
Whitby Snakestone
The folklore of snakestones in the Whitby area dates back to at least the 16th Century. In “Britannia”, 1586, William Camden records stones from Whitby which “if you break them you find within stony serpents, wreathed up in circles, but generally without heads”.
Legend has it that when the abbey at Whitby was built it was infested with snakes. The Abbess of the time, St Hilda turned them into stone at which point they lost their heads. In later years local fossil dealers sometimes restored their heads by carving them onto ammonites found on the shore. This is one such example. In this case the ammonite is Hildoceras bifrons, the scientific name in memory of St Hilda.

In store, Geology Collection, Yorkshire Museum

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.

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!