ACCES Meeting at Manchester Museum

ACCES meeting at Manchester Museum last Friday

Last Friday, November 15th 2013, Campbell and Anna kindly invited me to contribute to an ACCES Workshop at Manchester Museum about ‘Egyptology in the North-West: Contextualising your Collection’. There were people there from the Garstang Museum, World Museum Liverpool, Kendal Museum and Macclesfield West Park Museum. I spoke for about 20 minutes about two collectors of Egyptology in the North of England: Aquila Dodgson (1830-1919)  and Thomas Sheppard (1876-1945) of Hull Museums.

Although both are best known for their work east of the Pennines, Aquila Dodgson’s first job was as a Congregational Minister before later switching to a career in textiles in the North West. This financially more lucrative employment provided opportunities to travel to Egypt and to fund the work of researchers such as William Flinders Petrie. As Campbell remarked, “Dodgson’s a mini Jesse Howarth!”.

Dodgson had a collection of Egyptology which was partly dispersed at his death, and so Dodgson Egyptology can now be found in Manchester Museum, Leeds Museums and Queen’s College at the University of Melbourne in Australia. I showed photos of Dodgson objects acquired by Leeds some years ago and Campbell and Anna brought out some of the recently-acquired Feather collection which also includes Dodgson specimens.  It was very useful to confirm that a distinctive type of label with a red border was indeed a Dodgson and not a later collector’s label. If any readers out there happen to have Egyptology labelled in this way, do let us know.

Dodgson Egyptology from the Feather collection at Manchester Museum

Dodgson objects in Leeds Museums (N.B. red border labels)

The other collector, Thomas Sheppard, was a larger than life character who has been described as ‘one of the most successful museum curators of the first half of the 20th century’. Sheppard’s success in creating new museums in Hull was largely down to his collecting activities. He collected practically anything and everything during his 40 year career, including Egyptology. The reason for talking about him at a seminar about  Egyptology in the North West was an unexpected link to the Manchester mummy Ta-sheri-ankh brought to my attention by Campbell. As this is quite a long and involved story I’ll write about this in a separate blog.

Flying Visit to Ancient Worlds

Ancient Worlds – archaeology gallery

A number of colleagues are taking leave following the opening of Ancient Worlds last Thursday but I called in this morning to meet Joyce K. from Victoria in Australia who is visiting the Museum today. Joyce and her colleagues are planning new antiquities displays and she was naturally interested to see how we had approached Ancient Worlds. We’ve been talking to Joyce for a little while now and she timed her visit to take advantage of the opening.  It’s gratifying to know that the new displays are attracting international interest within days of the opening.

Joyce K. looking at the new displays with Campbell, Curator of Egypt and the Sudan earlier today

For me it was fascinating to see how the visitors were reacting to the new galleries. There seemed to be a real sense of engagement with the displays. Whereas before visitors tended to walk through the old displays despite the quality of the exhibits, now they seem to be stopping and looking at things, reading the labels and looking up information using the codes attached to each label.

Joyce talked about displaying material in an art gallery context and Campbell and I couldn’t wait to show her the third gallery with its stunning displays of Egyptian shabtis, lamps, glass and other material.

Shabtis and lamps in the 3rd gallery displays

I also realised belatedly that visitors can read this blog on the gallery. Within seconds of me clicking the button visitors will be reading this and looking at the photos. I can’t think of anything that makes the curatorial input to the museum going experience more immediate. And if you don’t read the blog there’s always some spectacular images on the large screen at the end of the gallery.

Scan of Egyptian mummy in the 3rd gallery of Ancient Worlds