Royal Mile After Mile, After Mile.....

5:30am came way too early. We dragged down to the lobby and checked out, leaving 4 bags of various papers, booklets, and other stuff we had collected along the way for our friend Jill (from the Cathedral) to mail home for us. THANK YOU JILL!!!! The only pounds we want to carry are the British ones! The taxi arrived to take us to the airport for our flight to Edinburgh. Actually, it was more of a mini-taxi and the driver swore he could never get all of us and our luggage in. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and we did not have time to get another taxi. So we all wedged in with bags and one suitcase on our laps.

Norwich airport is very nice, very efficient, well-run – when we come back, we are definitely flying through there (stops in Amsterdam) rather than Heathrow! We walked out onto the tarmac and boarded the propeller plane for a short but tempestuous ride to Edinburgh. It was cold, blustery and rainy when we landed and stayed that way all day. Tracy and I were tempted to kneel down and kiss the tarmac when we landed – we had been planning this trip for a year and are both big fans of Scotland and all things Scottish.

We are staying in the Clarendon Hotel, a modest place but just a 10 minute walk to the Royal Mile and Edinburgh Castle. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain and very blustery. In fac, the Castle was closed due to the high winds - they did not want people blown off the ramparts. So we took a picture in front of the castle and moved on.

We spent the whole day, from 9:30am until 6pm, walking the Mile, dodging into shops (where we contributed to the local economy) and pubs to get out of the torrential rain and wind from time to time. We stopped in St. Giles cathedral, on Mercat Square halfway down the Mile. It was dark and rather grim (I thought, but Anna says gorgeous). Lots of WWI memorials - Royal Scots Fusilliers and all that - and this nice little old lady who came up and informed us we needed "photo badges" - a sticker with a camera you need to take photos. We got square with the Ladies Auxillary.

While Audrey, Tracy and I toured Holyrood Palace (home of Mary, Queen of Scots) and the Museum of Edinburgh, Anna was reunited with her friends Cathy and Gustav and their wee one Oskar. After that, she visited The Fruitmarket Gallery and the wonderful photographic show Close Up featuring Bunuel, Dali and more despite the 55 mph winds! The amazing architecture –towering ancient buildings along narrow, winding streets – is truly magical. It’s no wonder J.K.Rowling wrote the first installment of Harry Potter here. We spent a quiet evening in the hotel’s lounge, which had the feeling of someone’s living room. Our wonderful barkeeper Marcin was kind enough to change the TV channel to CNN so that we could catch up with US news and politics. We even caught the last half of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show!

The clocks turn back tonight, and we are all looking forward to an extra hour of sleep. It’s nice to be warm and dry and we are all thoroughly exhausted but very happy to be here. Our taxi driver said it best – “we’ve experienced four seasons in one day!”

Adam and Evensong

Second day of the conference, and today focused more on carbon reductiion, climate change and how museums can be more in tune with environmental concerns. As we settled into our seats , Tracy gasped and ponted at the moderator. Vanessa Trevelyan, Head of the Norwich Museums and Archaeology service and also Pres of the British Museums Association (like our AAM) - and Bill's boss - was wearing an Obama/Biden button on her lapel! I will not name names, but at least one of the members of our intrepid crew has been actively distributing buttons, bumper stickers and other items of similar ilk.

The conference is set up differently than VAM in that we have a series of keynote or plenary speakers and then break into discussion groups to wrangle over what has been said. It was actually very interesting. But, the real treat was when Bill whisked us away during tea break to show us the ramparts of the castle and the dungeons. Seriously - REAL dungeons with chains, gibbets, the works! From the ramparts we could see the entire city of Norwich and beyond to the green fields and forests of the countryside.


At the close of the conference, we bid farewell to our new friends (who were spreading a rumor that we had closed a pub the night before - when in fact we were not the last to leave :) - ) and rushed off to meet Jill Napier (one of the Brits who visited Virginia) for Evensong at the Norwich Cathedral. As the boy's choir voices filled the nave, we felt transported back in time. It was dark outside, and inside the cathedra was lit by low lamps and candles. After service Jill gave us a quick tour of the cathedral before the Verger ushered us out.

How better to follow a religious experience than a visit to the nearby pub Adam and Eve, which is most likely the oldest pub in Norwich. Legend has it that the workmen who built the cathedral in 1097 and the next fifty years popped into the A & E for a pint now and then. Just to show that we value both the sacred and the profane, we followed suit.

Switchng gears and palates, Jill suggested we go for a nice curry and off we went, walking along th river to a small but very Indian restaurant, where we had prawn vindaloo, chicken marsala, and vegetable thali. Hoochi mama! That stuff is hot.

Anna and I made the huge sacrifice to volunteer to do the blog from the hotel pub, which also claims to be the oldest pub in Norwich. We can't claim to be able to settle the argument, however they were both cute as a button and had great beer.

We will leave you now, as we must get up tomorrow morning at 5am to catch our fligh to Edinburgh. As the moon rises over Norwich, we bid a fond farewell to all of our friends - old and new - in Norwich!!!

Museums, Sustainability and Growth

Today, Thursday October 23, 2008 (it’s good to remind myself from time to time what the date is) was the first day of the Museums, Sustainability and Growth conference. It was also the first morning we got to sleep in a little – until 8am, because we didn’t need to be at the Castle until 10am. How incredibly civilized. Everyone is nagging me why can’t VAM start at 10am?

We had tea and milled around a bit until they called us into the main auditorium. It was a bit surreal, having a conference in a Norman castle, but what the hey. Bill Seaman, our dear colleague from the Rediscovering Virginia program of March 2007, is the head honcho of this conference and by sheer force of will caused it to come into being. We were acknowledged and then the conference got underway.

The title of the conference is a bit different from what we might be used to, but certainly is a timely topic for all of our museums in Virginia. Our museum counterparts in the UK are facing unprecedented growth in the coming decade or so, and with this conference are discussing the unique contributions that museums and heritage organizations can make to the sustainability and “planned growth agendas.” Many of the presentations throughout the day focused on the opportunity museums have to engage their communities in various ways, and used case studies to illustrate how some of the community organizations have incorporated heritage in their planning. One of our favorite quotes came from the first keynote speaker, David White, Chief Executive Norfolk County Council, who said “People need to live somewhere, rather than anywhere.”

After every few speakers, there was a tea break. Lunch was a wonderfully eclectic assortment of finger food. Tracy snuck off to see their teapot collection, and I found time to check out their Egyptian collection – a very small, but exquisite, group of objects donated sometime in the past by a wealthy donor. What connection to an 11th century castle you might ask? I did. Ah well, museums – you gotta love ‘em. I the looked in on the Boudicca exhibit and took a turn on the chariot he Romans interactive display. Routed them.

The conference proceedings were very thoughtful, insightful, and I don’t want to repeat them now. I will post the full speaker notes when we get back. Suffice it to say we will be returning with many ideas!

Following the sessions there was a reception in the Castle Keep. Oh…My…God. What an impressive place. Here are some pictures. ‘Nuff said.

After the reception, we did not go to a hog roast at Gressenhall Farm as originally planned. Turns out, more people signed up than they could handle, so we ended up at the Forum, a great new community gathering place in the center of town, home to the local BBC as well as library, shops, restaurants, etc. I got into a delightful, animated conversation with Bill, Anita from Australia, and I can’t remember the other gent’s name but he used to be the director of the Waterways Museum and now works in government. The topic was theatrical experiences in museums, and the ethics of locking people in jail cells as a hoax so they could feel the experience; or museum experiences like the bus at the Lorraine Motel Civil Rights Museum where they shock the seats to make you move o the rear of the bus. We decamped to a pub for locals vs. tourists called Frank’s, and kept the conversations going into the wee hours.

Free the Norwich 12!

After a rainy night (great sleeping) we met for breakfast. I went down early to post yesterday’s blog – wifi only in the parlor – then a full English breakfast in a charmingly restored area of the Maids Head. We met our guide for the day at the old city Guildhall of Norwich – the “city hall” of the medieval city. Michael Loveday, Chief Executive of HEART (Heritage Economic and Regeneration Trust) and a mad Trotskyite, gave us a powerpoint presentation on the creation of HEART and the way it has revitalized Norwich using a unique branding and support of heritage sites.

What followed was truly an amazing exploration of the city of Norwich. Our walking tour encompassed 9 of the 12 Norwich heritage “showcase” sites (we will see two more, the Great Hospital and Norwich Castle over the next couple of days). Norwich was spared much of the modernization that overtook other parts of England, and thus has a great deal of its early medieval fabric intact. It is the largest walled center with the most complete medieval street pattern in England, and has over 1500 listed sites. Largely through Michael’s efforts – with the support of the community – this heritage is being capitalized upon to support regeneration of the economic life of the city.

In addition to the Norwich 12, they have also created Norwich Lanes, a way to identify the twisting, meandering shopping lanes in the oldest part of town. Each lane has a stanchion at the beginning and end with a bronze topper – a goat’s head for Goat Lane, etc. They also have sturdy but attractive signage describing the history of the lane and the merchants who had been there or the city activity. (When we get back, I will post full information about each of the 12 and photos. In the meantime check out their website at http://www.heritagecity.org/.

England is celebrating Black History Month, and as in London the streets are festooned with banners. We were fortunate to catch the end of the well-received Sugar and Slavery exhibit at the Docklands Museum in London, and in Norwich we visited the street where the famous black circus impresario Pablo Fanque was born and lived (and lives on in the Beatles song “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” – go dig out your old Sgt. Pepper album and play it (not backwards!). Audrey sat next to Vanessa Trevelyan, President of the British Museums Association and had an earnest conversation about the lack of involvement of minorities in the museum community in England and how they are trying to encourage museums as a career. Evidently parents consider museum careers as low status, and urge their children to be doctors or lawyers. Go figure.

Purely to be hospitable, we dragged Michael into a pub – The Belgian Monk – for a couple of pints to say thank you for walking our feet off. The Ter Dolen was a bit flowery for my taste, Tracy love her Maes, but the de Konnick was spot on!

Back to the hotel to change for dinner. We were given a tour of the original buildings of the Great Hospital, which was founded in 1249 and rebuilt in the 14th century as a home for “decrepit old priests”. It has served as a home for the needy aged ever since. We were treated to a formal dinner in the Birbeck Hall of smoked haddock and Roast Norfolk partridge with treacle tart for dessert. Our dinner companions were representatives of the Norwich 12, and so we were able to learn more about their sites and share information about our sites in Virginia. We were reunited as well with Jill Napier and Saul Penfold who had been part of the original group of 11 British museum colleagues visiting us in Williamsburg in March of 2007 – it was so wonderful to see both of them again (and of course Bill Seaman was there also – seemed like old times!)

At the end of the evening, Mike led us through the winding narrow streets to deliver us safely back to the Maid’s Head Hotel, where we hit the sack – thoroughly exhausted (and thoroughly gratified!)

From Mummies to Mayhem

Checked out of the hotel and off to the British Museum. We had time for a cup of coffee/tea in the Great Hall before we met up with Richard Woff, of the Education Dept. of the BM at 10am. For the next 2 ½ hours we speed raced through the highlights of the Museum – Sutton Hoo hoard, Rosetta Stone, Elgin Marbles, turquoise double-headed serpent (Aztec), a gold cape from ancient Wales – I cannot begin to recall and describe the treasures within.

But the real treat for all of us was when we were taken into the bowels of the BM (Tracy made me put that in – but it’s actually accurate!). There are 100,000 estimated objects in storage in the Egyptian collection, and we went through all of the stacks. I was in heaven!!!

John Taylor allowed us to rummage about and we saw mummies on racks to the ceiling, stelae, canopic jars, chests, ushabti, statues, wall paintings…..be still my beating heart! We saw so many wonderful things so quickly it is hard to remember individual items. But we were allowed to take pictures, and once we are back we will upload all of them to the VAM website.

From there we went on to meet Marilyn Hockey in the Conservation and Scientific Research department. She runs the conservation shop for ceramics, glass and metals. To get to the conservation labs, we went through a labyrinth of hallways, stairways, alleys (yes we went outside at one point and through a loading dock area into the joined basements of a row of Georgian townhomes). We visited with six conservators working on different projects. We saw a sampling of all of the kinds of projects they work on – general conservation of objects in the collection in storage, conservation of items that are on regular display, conservation of artifacts that are going out on loan, and conservation of pet projects discovered in the collection by eager assistant curators (under the skin tattoo discs “harvested” from a deceased Indian rebel from the late 19th century – oh yuck!).

A quick lunch in the Museum Tavern pub across the street from the BM, then back to our hotel to grab our suitcases and get to the Liverpool Station for our train to Norwich. A comedy of errors ensued - the wheel on Tracy's bag broke and we had to quick buy another; we just mssed the Tube train bcause we had to drag our luggage down a milion flights of stairs, the Tube stopped for a backup for 10 minutes, and the Evil Gatekeeper wouldn't let us through the turnstile with our luggage. We missed our train, but managed to get on the next one and arrived just about an hour late.

Bill Seaman, Assistant Head of Museums for the Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service, met us at the hotel (Maids Head Hotel, reputedly the oldest continuing hotel in England) and took us on a brief walking tour of the area so that we could get our bearings. We stopped at The Lawyers pub for a pint and dinner (Thai actually – really good Basil Chicken!). It was cold and we got lost walking home, but made it eventually to a warm room, hot shower, woven blankets and down comforters – and I am going to bed y’all!

The London Blitz

The Red Lion is listed in my new London Pub Walks book as having “the gravitas one would expect from a pub midway between Parliament and No 10 Downing Street.” We arrived here at the end (5:30pm) of what can only be described as a tremendous, incredible, interesting, very good day.

We have been amazed at how wonderful people have been to us - taking time out of very busy days to show us around, give us personal tours, share their knowledge and expertise, and give us a fascinating look behind-the-scenes at their collection and operations. Our day started at the Victoria & Albert Museum. We went in the staff entrance, and were awarded laminated temporary staff badges by Security with our photos on them - surely the coolest souvenir ever!!!!

We met with Suzanne Smith, Display & Collections Management Curator for Furniture, Textiles and Fashion. They have 85,000 items in her collection and 90% are in storage (estimated 25 tons stored in 2,500 drawers and state of the art “running racking” storage systems. We almost lost Audrey when she started talking about their 5-year assistant curatorial development program.- an apprenticeship program which trains museum curators who go forth and spread curatorial goodness around the United Kingdom and beyond. We traipsed through the museum to different storage areas, and as Howard Carter said upon opening the tomb of King Tut, we saw “marvelous things” in storage.

We also had the opportunity to see their special exhibit “Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970”. We were not exactly excited about the topic at first but politely went in to see it. My heavens - what a great exhibit! I encourage you to check it out on their website www.vam.ac.uk. Modern life after 1945 seemed to promise both utopia and catastrophe; modernist artists and designers responded to this dual vision, searching for ways to build a new and hopeful future while dealing the anxieties of the present. The exhibit covered architecture, art, fashion, entertainment, political movements, news event of the day, and basically everything from Pierre Cardin’s designs for “Cosmos suits” to portable living room helmets that contained video units.

Next stop was Westminster Abbey. Coming out of the underground at the Westminster stop you immediately are confronted with the London Eye (giant ferris wheel on the south side of the Thames), Big Ben and the buildings of Parliament.. We met Tony Trowles, the tall, blonde and handsome Librarian for Westminster Abbey Library, outside of St. Margaret’s Church. The church was beautiful, and we learned much about this smaller cousin to the Abbey that none of us had previously known. A Virginia connection: Morven Park’s Westmoreland Davis (Governor of Virginia 1918-1922) was married in this church, and Tony was generous enough to provide Tracy with a copy of the register.

Score!

In the Abbey itself, we were treated to a personalized overview of the conservation project to conserve the Medieval Cosmati pavement which fronts the altar used in coronations and famous funerals. One of the chief conservators, Paula Rawsar, provided an in-depth description of the trials and tribulations of the effort, and the history of previous efforts. It is a massive, and expensive, undertaking but with Paula we know it is in good hands.

Tony took us on a tour of the entire Abbey. Emotional connections abounded from the tomb of Mary Queen of Scots for Tracy and me, and the tomb of David Garrick (subject of Audrey’s master’s thesis), as well as the monument to Michael Drayton, British poet whose poem featured significantly in the courtship of Anna Holloway (we heard the whole story and it’s a good one!).
At the Abbey Museum, Peter turned us over to Diane Gibbs (Coordinator of the Museum) and James Who Was Reluctant to Have His Picture Taken But We Snuck It In Anyway. We were delighted to discover that they had Googled us and stumbled upon our blog - and “were prepared for us”. Diane was the quintessential museum person - bubbling with enthusiasm about her subject and full of fascinating stories about her collection. Then she took us for much-needed tea and chocolate in the cloisters - it doesn’t get any better!

Or so we thought, until we went through the imposing black door to the Abbey Library, up the winding staircase to a high-ceilinged chamber that had been the dormitory for the monks before serving as the Library. After exploring the Library (shelves were built in 1623!), we climbed a spiral staircase to Tony‘s inner sanctum an office tucked under the eaves of the cathedral with bodacious circular skylights that revealed the Abbey‘s highest reaches. We reluctantly allowed Tony to throw us out past closing time, and made our way to the pub chattering excitedly about all that we had seen.
After the Red Lion, where we had dinner, we ducked into the St. Stephens Pub on the way to the underground (well, it was raining…..).

We ran into someone who knew a good friend of Anna’s, we spied a former rock star (I will take their word for it - personally, I have never heard of Feargal Sharkey of the Undertones), and I got into a spirited debate about the Presidential race in the US with two half-American, conservative lobbyists at Parliament (yes they have them too). Another gentleman joined us who was even more “spirited” and the bartender (or “publican”) attempted to rescue us. A good time was had by all.