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The National Media Museum appears on a leaked list of public bodies under review for closure by the government. Incorrectly named as the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television the museum is directly funded by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport as part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. Other bodies which are under review include the National Archives and eighteen other museums and galleries in the UK. The British Library is to be retained.

The report is published here and the full leaked list published by the Daily Telegraph is here.

The Optical Magic Lantern Journal and Photographic Enlarger (OMLJ) was a British trade monthly that appeared from 1889 to 1903 and had a remit covering the magic lantern and illumination through to photography and the world of early cinema. The OMLJ featured news and opinions from each of the worlds and through its correspondence and advertising pages provides a unique insight into each of these areas at an important point in their history.

The publication only survives in a few national libraries and this limited edition DVD offers a rare opportunity for collectors, researchers, educational institutions and libraries to acquire a digitised run which is searchable electronically. The OMLJ covers a key period in the history of photography and the cinema. It appeared when the hand camera was rapidly being taken up by amateur photographers and at a point shortly before the motion picture camera was introduced. By the time of the OMLJ's demise in 1903 photography was widely practiced by amateurs and snapshooters and the cinema had evolved from its origins into a form of mass entertainment. The OMLJ through its editorial pages and advertisements charts these changes in detail.

This DVD provides a high-quality facsimile of all 5000 pages together with a searching tool supported by additional information around the personalities, companies and products that made up the industry at the time and which appears in the OMLJ pages.

The DVD From Magic Lantern to Movies (ISBN 978-0-9523011-1-0) is published on 15 October by PhotoResearch and costs £60 including UK and international airmail postage. It is designed to run on both Windows-based PCs and Apple Macs with Adobe Acrobat.

For more information and an order form click here.

From now until the 27th September at the Bristol Central Library, there is an exhibition of 19^th

century photographic prints of Bristol and the surrounding area, some of which are on loan from the Bristol Records Office and City Archive. The prints were produced using some of the very techniques and processes now being taught on workshops at the St. Paul’s Learning and Family Centre Darkrooms.

A recent grant of £14,525 from the Heritage Lottery Fund helped to revive and preserve some Photographic processes, dating back to the very origins of photography. The award to St Paul’s Learning and Family Centre Darkrooms in Bristol was to enable teachers, tutors and arts facilitators to learn the processes first created by Sir William Henry Fox-Talbot and Sir John Herschel, the Astronomer Royal, in the 1830s and 1840s. In addition, Justin Quinnell, the world-renowned practitioner of pinhole photography, presented workshops in the making and use of pinhole cameras. With this grant St Paul’s Darkrooms, the biggest and most extensively equipped public-access darkrooms in the South West, presented a series of workshops in albumen, gum-bichromate, cyanotype and salt-printing.

Alongside these photographs will be examples of work produced by attendees of these Heritage Lottery funded workshops.

Further details can be found in the BPH Events section.

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, has selected artist Michal Heiman to receive the first Shpilman International Prize for Excellence in Photography. Created in partnership with the Israel Museum, the new biannual prize aims to catalyze and support international research projects exploring theoretical and practical issues in photography. Ms. Heiman was selected from a pool of thirty-five finalist candidates from nine countries by a jury of leaders in the field—including Peter Galassi, Chief Curator of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Marta Gili, Director of the Jeu de Paume, Paris. Ms. Heiman will receive $40,000 to support her newly conceived project investigating the contribution of art to psychoanalysis, and vice versa.

Michal Heiman (b. 1954) is one of the most prolific artists in Israel today, presenting exhibitions of photography, painting, installation, and video, drawing on her extensive research in the fields of psychology and philosophy. The Shpilman Prize will support new research exploring the interaction between art and psychoanalysis, concentrating on the role of photography and visual imagery as frequently used diagnostic tools. Ms. Heiman will follow steps of the creators of visual psychological tests and investigate aspects of photography—among them portraiture, stereoscope, and World War I documentary imagery—that influenced and were influenced by such tests and consequently her own work too. Ms. Heiman plans to build two test boxes, ‘The Unthinkable I’ – For the People of the 21^st Century and ‘The Unthinkable II’ – The Archive of Simultaneous Movement, to be presented and “performed” in an exhibition that will conclude the project. The Israel Museum will also produce a publication documenting this work.

“Ms. Heiman’s project is at once innovative and cross disciplinary. It is grounded in photography, but also touches upon psychology, sociology, and perception, with a solid theoretical basis and background,”
said Nissan N. Perez, Horace and Grace Goldsmith Senior Curator of the Israel Museum’s Noel and Harriette Levine Department of Photography. “We are proud to recognize Ms. Heiman with this first Shpilman Prize, particularly because of the groundbreaking nature of her project.”

Shpilman Prize submissions were reviewed by a pre-selection committee from the srael Museum to ensure that applications complied with the prize regulations and to assess the validity of the projects proposed. Seventeen applications were brought to the consideration of a jury of international experts in the field of photography, including, in addition to Mr. Perez:

• Dr. Shlomo Lee Abrahmov (Yakum, Israel) – Artist, Researcher, and Lecturer, Holon Institute of Technology andShenkar College of Engineering and Design, representing the Shpilman family;
• Mr. Peter Galassi (New York) – Chief Curator of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art; New York;
• Ms. Marta Gili (Paris) – Director, Jeu de Paume;
• Prof. Hanan Laskin (Tel Aviv) – Founder, Photography Department, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, and academic advisor to art schools and other cultural institutions in Israel.

Heiman’s interdisciplinary practice includes installation, painting, photography, and video. Her work is often based on extensive research in the fields of psychology and philosophy and centers on the themes of psychoanalysis, clinical research, the history of art, politics, and the gender debate. Among her major works are the series Photo Rape (2003) and I was There (2005), as well as the video series Daughtertype (2006-2008) and Attacks on Linking (2003-2006). In 1997, Ms. Heiman represented Israel at Documenta X in Germany, where she first operated Michal Heiman Test (MHT) No. 1, arranged along the lines of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)—a personality test used by psychologists in which viewers react to images presented in a box. Ms. Heiman continued her testing series with Michal Heiman Test (MHT) No. 2 – My Mother-in-Law – Test for Women, presented in France, Israel, and Japan. She is also recognized for her lectures on the British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion (1897-1979) and on the French artists Claude Cahun, Christian Boltanski, and Sophie Calle.

Michal Heiman was nominated for the Shpilman Prize by Professor Hannah Naveh, Dean of The Faculty of Arts, Tel Aviv University.

Recognizing photography as a leading contemporary cultural medium, the Shpilman Prize was initiated by the Shpilman family and the Shpilman Art and Culture Foundation together with the Israel Museum with the joint objectives of stimulating, encouraging, and cultivating international research projects in photography and of broadening the range of photographic investigations which integrate theoretical issues with practical ones. The $40,000 prize is awarded by an international jury once every two years, resulting in a publication by the Israel Museum, and if suitable, an exhibition. Nominations for the 2012 prize will be accepted beginning October 1, 2011.

Prospective candidates include artists and scholars in photography with a proven record of past achievement who intend to undertake a research project of consequence in the field of photography. Candidates for the prize must be nominated by experienced professionals in art and/or photography affiliated with non-commercial artistic, cultural, or academic institutions. The projects submitted are reviewed and judged by an independent jury of internationally recognized experts. Prize regulations are available online at www.imj.org.il/shpilmanprize.

The Shpilman International Prize for Excellence in Photography is supported by an endowment gift of $1 million from the Shpilman Art and Culture Foundation, with the goal of expanding the core activities of the Museum’s Noel and Harriette Levine Department of Photography. Mr. Shalom Shpilman, a philanthropist and businessman based in Tel Aviv, with a long-standing interest in the promotion of photographic scholarship and discovery has also recently founded the Shpilman Institute for Photography (SIP), dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of photographic knowledge.

Award winning, visionary and truly unique, the National Media Museum embraces photography, film, television, radio and the web. Part of the NMSI family of museums, we aim to engage, inspire and educate through comprehensive collections, innovative education programmes and a powerful yet sensitive approach to contemporary issues.

Audience Researcher – Internet Gallery Project
Bradford
£17,500 - £18,500

It’s vital to the continued success of the organisation that our exhibitions, websites, programmes and products are appealing to as wide an audience as possible; and that our continued development is always done in an audience centred and customer focused way. This is why this role is vital, ensuring that through thorough research techniques, audience feedback and comprehensive reporting, we understand the direction we need to go, what we do right and possibly wrong. Reporting to the Senior Audience Researcher based at the Science Museum, we need a team player with proven research skills in data collection, analysis, interpretation, report creation and presentation. An appreciation of new media would be an advantage as would experience gained within an audience-focused and/or learning environment. The pace is fast. You need to be able to work independently, display excellent communication skills and have a passion for your subject. Overall, this is an exciting role for a talented research professional who wants to make a deep and lasting contribution to a very popular national ‘iconic’ visitor experience.

The Yorkshire Post reports that there is increasing speculation that the the National Media Museum may have to start charging admission. It reports that: The organisation which runs York's National Railway Museum and Bradford's National Media Museum is also "planning for a range of scenarios" and has refused to rule out changes to opening times as it waits to find out how badly the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) budget is cut in the Comprehensive Spending Review.

Institutions categorised as national museums – which includes the National Coal Mining Museum, National Railway Museum, National Media Museum and the Royal Armouries in Yorkshire – offer free admission, and Ministers have been keen to insist that will continue.

They receive grants directly from Government but DCMS officials have written to them enquiring about the possible impact of funding cuts of 25 to 30 per cent.

The department itself is threatened with cuts of up to 40 per cent.

Read the full story here.