Hundreds of people have attended a rally today to save the National Media Museum in Bradford, the Bradford Telegraph and Argus reports. Speeches were made by Gerry Sutcliffe MP, George Galloway MP and Councillor David Green, Leader of Bradford Council. See: http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/10472838.Hundreds_gather_at_rally_to_pledge_their_support_for_National_Media_Museum/
Image: Bradford Telegraph & Argus
Royal Collection Trust is a department of the Royal Household and the only one that undertakes its activities without recourse to public funds. It incorporates a charity regulated by the Charity Commission and the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, The Royal Collection Trust, and its subsidiary trading company, Royal Collection Enterprises Limited.
Royal Collection Trust is charged with the care and preservation of the Royal Collection and its presentation to the public. The Royal Collection is one of the largest and most important art collections in the world. It comprises almost all aspects of the fine and decorative arts and is spread among some thirteen royal residences and former residences across the UK. At The Queen’s Galleries in London and Edinburgh and in the Drawings Gallery at Windsor Castle aspects of the Collection are displayed in a programme of temporary exhibitions. Many works from the Collection are on long-term loan to institutions throughout the UK, and short-term loans are regularly made to exhibitions around the world as part of a commitment to broaden public access and to show parts of the Collection in new contexts. The works of art in the Royal Collection are held by The Queen in trust for her successors and the nation.
Royal Collection Trust is responsible for the management and financial administration of the public opening of Buckingham Palace (including The Queen’s Gallery, the Royal Mews and Clarence House), Windsor Castle (including Frogmore House) and the Palace of Holyroodhouse (including The Queen’s Gallery). The monies generated from admissions, and from associated commercial activities, are invested in the care and conservation of the Royal Collection and the promotion of access and enjoyment through exhibitions, publications, loans and educational activities.
The photograph collection is responsible for all photographic items in the Royal Collection, including photographic prints, negatives, films and photographic equipment – over 450,000 items in all. It consists of material from the 1840s to the present day, including both official and personal photographs acquired by the royal family, including living members of the Royal Family. The collection also contains photographic material acquired by departments of the Royal Household. The collection is of international significance. The responsibilities of the collection include all matters relating to care, conservation, access and control of sensitive material, exhibitions, cataloguing, maintenance of records and research. The majority of the items are located at Windsor Castle, although there are photographs in all royal residences. It does not cover photographic material located in the Picture Library (although this material may at a later date be transferred to the photograph collection).
Reporting and Working Relationships
Reporting to the Senior Curator of Photographs, the post holder works closely with the Curatorial Teams from the Library and the Print Room as well as the Collections Information Assistants, the cataloguer, and all volunteer and work experience staff.
Externally, the post holder will have contact with museum and gallery curators, media (press & broadcast), researchers, and members of the public.
Job Purpose
To support the Senior Curator of Photographs in the smooth running of the section, working closely with all Collections Information Assistants, the cataloguer, and all volunteer and work experience staff, being required to assist them on a day-to-day basis and to supervise them in the Senior Curator’s absence.
The post holder is responsible supporting the Senior Curator of Photographs in all matters relating to the care, custodial control, conservation, cataloguing, research and access in relation to photographs located in the occupied and unoccupied royal residences.
Job Dimensions
The Curator of Photographs has no managerial or budgetary responsibilities.
Principal Accountabilities
Decision Making Responsibilities
The post holder is expected to resolve most issues within the photograph section and will have day-to-day independence for decision making but will refer complex issues to the Senior Curator of Photographs.
Practical Requirements
Principally based at Windsor Castle, the post holder will be contracted to work 37.5 hours a week, Monday to Friday, 0900-1730. However, due to the nature of the role they will frequently be required to travel and work at other locations and to be flexible regarding working hours.
Person Specification (Skills, Experience & Competencies)
Essential:
Desirable:
We invite you to participate in this practical seminar and workshop during which you will create your own ambrotypes using the wet-collodium process on glass. The seminars are held on ongoing basis as members of the group enrol to participate. Each group consists of up to 3 persons. Individual training is available too. Conventional duration of the seminar – 3 days & 4 nights
ALL INCLUDING – MEAL AND ACCOMMODATIONS
First day:
– Pick up in Simferopol or Sebastopol, transfer to Bakhchisaray, housing and dinner
Second day:
Breakfast at 9:00
10:00-14:00 theory and practice of wet-collodium processing
- History
- Chemistry, compounds, solutions preparations
- Devices and equipment: Large format cameras
- All steps of ambrotype creation for 13х18 cm and 18х24 cm images.
Lunch at 14:00 - 15:00
15:00 - 17:00 - travel to Khan Palace, tour and photo-session
17:00 - 19:00 – travel to Bakhchisaray’s sphinxes, tour and photo-session
Dinner at 19:00 - 21:30 + coffee, tea, Oriental sweets-testing
Third day:
Breakfast at 9:00
10:00-13:00 theory and practice of wet-collodium processing,
- Composition of developer, fixer, and collodium
- Taking portraits and still life images in abrotype technicque.
Lunch at 13:00 - 14:00
14:00 - 19:00 travel to ancient cave city Chufut-Kale, tour and photo-session
Dinner at 19:00 - 21:30 + wet Russian sauna, coffee, tea with mountain herbs
Fourth day
Breakfast at 8:00
9:00 - 16:00 tour – photo-session - hiking (15 km) to and around cave city Kachi-Kalyon
Lunch - packed meal.
17:30 – 21:00 Summary of the seminar, Oriental cuisine at Crimean Tatar café
Fifth day
Breakfast 8:00
Departure…Simferopol or Sebastopol.
__________________________________________________________________________
Total cost 470$ / 380 EUR
The total includes: transfer 'Simferopol/Sebastopol – Bakhchisaray’, accommodations, meal, wi-fi Internet, tour tickets to local sights, chemicals and other stuff for wet-collodiun processing. Participants get all wet-collodium images they make during sessions.
The total doesn’t include: insurance, transport cost from participant’s home to Simferopol or Sebastopol, alcohol drinks..
Actual travel routes and tours of the sessions can be changed in accordance with participant’s preferences, health, and weather conditions.
Place of the seminar: Bakhchsaray city, Crimea region of Ukraine.
You can register for participation by any convenient way:
- e-mail: rony@i.ua
- Skype: ambrotype57
- Phone: +380662043429 (mobile)
Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded PhD working on Media and the First World War. This studentship is one of eight fully-funded awards made by the newly-established Collaborative Doctoral Partnership managed by the Science Museum Group. The project will be supervised by Professors Jo Fox and Jonathan Long (Durham University) and Colin Harding and Michael Terwey (National Media Museum). The studentship, which is funded for three years full-time equivalent, will begin in September 2013. It will cover tuition fees at home/EU rate and provide a maintenance award at RCUK rates (currently £13726 per annum).
The Studentship
This project will explore the ways in which the contemporary British experience of the First World War was shaped by the visual media and material culture. Britons on the home front learned about events of the War through newspaper reporting and photography, through newsreels and film, through art and through gossip, and through material manifestations of the conflict that circulated in British society. Yet despite its highly mediated nature, contemporary Britons’ understanding of the war was radically different from how the conflict would be represented by later historians. This project seeks to re-cast the history of public engagement with the conflict by addressing the following questions:
The project will draw extensively on the world class collections National Media Museum, home to the National Photography collection. In particular the Royal Photographic Society Collection, the Horace Nicholls collection, the Charles Urban archive and the Daily Herald Archive are relevant to this project.
How to Apply
Applicants should have a good undergraduate degree and a master’s qualification in history, visual culture, or other relevant discipline, and will need to satisfy AHRC academic and residency eligibility criteria (see Annex A of the Student Funding Guide: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/Student-Funding-Guide.pdf).
Applicants should submit a short curriculum vitae and a brief letter outlining qualifications for the studentship in the form of a single Word file no more than three pages in total. The names and contact details of two academic referees should also be supplied. Applications should be sent to June Hedley (june.hedley@dur.ac.uk) no later than 12 June 2013.
Interviews will be held in the National Media Museum, Bradford, on 19th June
For further information, please contact Colin Harding at the National Media Museum (Colin.Harding@NationalMediaMuseum.org.uk).
Join the petition and include your name on this link here.
As of 0930 on 7 June 12,450 had signed the petition.
17,695 have signed as of 0811 on 8 June 2013
20,702 at 1707 on 9 June 2013
30,233 at 0648 on 12 June 2013
Richly illustrated with over 140 images, The Photograph and The Collection: Creation, Preservation, Presentation provides a comprehensive overview of the innovative - sometimes challenging and controversial - ways in which photographic collections are being created, preserved, analysed and presented today.
In 21 chapters and over 550 pages, a distinguished range of international contributors - which includes curators, archivists, librarians, academics, researchers and photographers - present a rich variety of perspectives which help illuminate the wide and complex range of issues involved.
The book's scope is extensive, ranging from the creation and preservation of new digital collections, through the conservation of historic collections, to the analysis and understanding of individual collections large and small - from the thousands of images in major public collections, to the individual photographic album containing a dozen images.
The Photograph and The Collection will be of value to both curators and conservators of art and historical collections of images; and to archivists, librarians and others with a responsibility for, or interest in, photographic collections, both historic and contemporary.
Save over 15% with our Early-Bird, Pre-Publication Rate!
Order The Photograph and The Collection today and you'll automatically save over 15% on either the paperback or hardback editions! Plus you'll be among the first to receive your copy of the book on publication on 17 June.
This special offer is only available from the MuseumsEtc website, where you'll also find full details of the book's content: www.museumsetc.com/products/photo_collection
The announcement of the outcome of the government's spending review on 26 June is likely to bring further cuts to the Science Museum Group which includes Bradford's National Media Museum. A petition has been launched against closure at: http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/save-the-national-media-museum-bradford
The media has flagged all options being on the table from the return of admission charges - despite this being contrary to government policy - to the merger or closure of one of the Group's northern-based museums with the National Media Museum being the most likely candidate. Ian Blatchford, Director of SMG has also flagged closure of one of the Group's museums as an option. The SMG faces a significant deficit from 2014 which is likely to be exacerbated by a further reduction in its grant-in-aid from central government.
The NMeM is seen as a key player in the regeneration of Bradford's city centre and the city council has been vocal in its support for it. It has proposed that financial responsibility for the museum is moved from the DCMS to the Department for Business.
The museum has undertaken a significant restructuring including major staff losses over the past year and any further reduction in funding would inevitably further impact on the museum's activities.
This morning, Ian Blatchford, Director and Chief Executive, Science Museum Group spoke at a press conference organised by the Science Media Centre and Campaign for Science and Engineering at the Wellcome Trust, London, on why the science budget be protected in the forthcoming Spending Review. He said:
"In the past four years, we have dealt with a 25 per cent real terms cut in funding when the science base, funded by a different Government Department, has had to cope with a 10 per cent cut. We are investigating a range of options but if an additional 10 per cent cut is made when the spending review is announced at the end of this month, there would be little choice other than to close one of our museums, since our structural (year on year) deficit would rise from £2 million to £6 million. Cuts at this level will mean that we will again need to make savings across the whole Group, this includes the Science Museum in London and each of our sister museums in the north. I would rather have three world class museums than four mediocre museums. I should add that charging is not on the agenda because Government policy precludes it.’
More information:
MPs unite in battle to save Media Museum |
Axe threat hangs over Bradford media museum |
UK's northern national science museums under threat |
A 19th-century equatorial observatory and laboratory once used by John Dillwyn Llewelyn and his daughter, Thereza, to capture some of the earliest images of the moon will be brought back to life. A £2.9 million restoration project is currently under way at Penllergare Valley Woods with funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Parks for People programme.
Swansea Council has signed a 25-year lease with the Penllergare Trust for this historic building built in 1846, and which houses the telescope. The observatory will be repaired and restored over the next 18 months. It will also be made accessible along with other attractions in the woods like the terrace gardens, the upper lake, the waterfall and an old stone bridge known as the Llewelyn bridge.
You can read the rest of the article here.
Photo: The 19th-century equatorial observatory and laboratory at the Penllergare Valley Woods.
A public appeal was launched last year by the RCB Library in Dublin to help identify the work of a skilled and widely-travelled photographer, whose set of 296 lantern slide was recovered from the deanery in Killaloe, County Clare. The collection captured images of Palestine and north India at least 100 years ago.
Twelve months on, and the search for the elusive photographer is nearing completion, thanks to a lead from a BBC journalist about a possible link to a Presbyterian minister from Coleraine, County Londonderry, the Reverend Willie Wilson, and subsequent assistance from that man's descendants and an avid local historian in the village of Donaghmore, County Tyrone.
You can read the full updated story online and view images from three additional groups of these lantern slides from the 'Killaloe' collection on this link here.
Not much is known about how the coming of photography changed visual discourse or affected people's lives. Divided into two sections, this selection of 32 essays, each illustrated with archival photographs, looks at the camera in the colonial era and in post-independent India.
In the nineteenth century, the camera and the studio became necessary prostheses in the new engagement between the colonized and the rulers. Europeans in India-of whom the British were the largest in number-were the initial users of the photographic studio. Early studio images of the sahib-civil servant, lawyer, tea planter, missionary, and so on-are among the first available visuals; soon the memsahib appeared at his side with or without self-conscious offspring. The events of 1857 marked a watershed in photography in India. By this time, as the urban middle classes started patronizing photographic studios, these became instrumental in fracturing notions of space and visibility: where the use of public space was governed by the discriminatory practices of race and gender, the photographic studio became a shared locale. Interestingly, Indian entrepreneurs started investing in studios and some like Lala Deen Dayal became noted photographers. The second section looks at some such moments, and studio photographs initially focused on the new Indian professional-the doctor, lawyer, engineer, and civil servant-and then with wife and children. It moves on to the emergence of the emancipated Indian woman, the horror of Partition, and finally to independent India and the work of Sunil Janah and Homai Vyarawalla.
Together the 32 essays included in the volume document both: history through photographs and the history of photographs in India.
If this is of interest, you can pick up a copy at Amazon using the link on the right.
