The Manchester Museum Early Edition
The Alchemical Times
The University of Manchester
September – December 2007
Mysterious Transformations in The Manchester Museum
It is not known whether the artists working with The Manchester Museum on the ongoing project ‘Alchemy’ are employing ancient scientific methodology or the stuff of magic.
Image credit: The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy & Mysticism, Taschen, 2006. Courtesy Alexander Roob.
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t is not known whether the artists working with The Manchester Museum on the ongoing project ‘Alchemy’ are employing ancient scientific methodology or the stuff of magic, say museum curators and art critics. The origin and meaning of the word ‘alchemy’ has been disputed by commentators throughout history, although early practitioners who attempted to turn base metals into gold considered it a divine and sacred art. A more scientific interpretation was proffered by the third-century philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias, who described alchemy as work undertaken in a laboratory, developed from the practice of preparing plants for medicinal purposes. The Suda, a 10th-century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopaedia, on the other hand, describes alchemy as involving the knowledge of Egyptian art – Chemi, Cham or the Black Land being the ancient name for Egypt – while the 17th-century Dutch physician and botanist Hermann Boerhaave believed it developed out of the occult, and was derived etymologically from the Hebrew chamaman, or hamaman, ‘a mystery’ or religious secret. Still other theories suggest origins such as the ancient quest for the elixir of life and a psychological trope. Now, however, in 21st-century Manchester it would seem that none of these explanations are entirely satisfactory. We might consider the art of ancient Egypt as arcane, the methods of alchemists unscientific and the occult as, frankly, improbable. What we can be sure of, though, is that the idea of the transmutation of base matter remains a tantalising idea, even if only as a metaphor. Some might say that art performs an analogous feat, as it
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reconfigures material – perhaps amorphous paint, raw metal or everyday objects – into valuable artworks. Indeed the mere touch of some artists has increased the value of such objects as a urinal beyond measure. Yet there is another equivalence we might consider: that artists also make the hidden visible and enrich the apparently banal, affecting through sensory, emotional or intellectual means the viewer and the institution in which the work is made or shown. At The Manchester Museum just such transformations have been put into effect by artists Mark Dion, Spring Hurlbut, Antony Hall, Pavel Büchler, Louise Brookes, Kevin Malone, Ilana Halperin, Jamie Shovlin, Jordan Baseman and Nick Jordan & Jacob Cartwright during the ongoing ‘Alchemy’ project. In some instances the artist has reconfigured the contents of the museum, bringing to light artefacts that escape conventional categories or making links between departments that have been hitherto overlooked. At other times it is in the museumgoer that the change takes place, as revelation and disclosure provoke new connections in the most open and enlightened minds. Alchemy curator Bryony Bond explains how, unlike many artists’ residencies in museums – where the artist casts about among the museum archives somewhat cursorily, makes a piece of work in keeping with their ordinary practice and then disappears from the institution – here the artists have actually instigated real change. These changes have been apparent not only within the museum displays, but in its day-to-day operations, and the artists too have altered their own ideas about such phenomena as documentation and objectivity. See reports on pages 2 & 10 for more on these stories.
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inside today
grrrrrrr! Anger as Call of the Wild charges rise to 15p a minute mummy held down full-time job Ancient sarcophagus found to contain corpse of ancient quantity surveyor insects blamed for global warming “CO2 emissions of the most abundant creature on the planet must surely count for something,” says bloke in the pub objective of subjectivity found to be objectionable
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news
Five hundred thousandth puzzled person receives limited-edition Epiphany
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KEY TO ALL KNOWLEDGE
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rtist Jordan Baseman prompted an unprecedented openness at The Manchester Museum this year when, working on the Museum’s ongoing project ‘Alchemy’, his repeated and frequent request for access to previously restricted areas led to wider access to a number of keys. ‘It is typical of artists,’ says Professor von Plonk, head of Museological Studies at Middle Wallop University, ‘to patently ignore the rules and boundaries that institutions have upheld for years and expect to be allowed to run amok.’ A spokesperson for the Art Workers Union responded, saying this was the whole point and ‘if artists hadn’t been continually transgressive we’d all still be looking at nothing but paintings of rich people in galleries and museums’.
his year the Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy, at The Manchester Museum, has perplexed the 500,000th museumgoer. The lucky puzzled person was awarded a gilded, limited-edition inventory of the arcane and obsolete objects that comprise the Bureau. The recipient of the prize, Mrs Trellis from North Wales, told the Alchemical Times, ‘well, I suppose it’s quite nice. I’m not sure what’s going on. Who are you?’
The Bureau was founded by artist Mark Dion as part of the Alchemy project at the museum and represents the point at which the artist’s own practice chimes with that of the Surrealists in the 1920s and ’30s. As writer David Lomas explains in the Bureau’s official publication: ‘Don’t look for lobster telephones or other cheap surrealist clichés in Dion’s Bureau. The link operates on another level, one pinpointed by Walter Benjamin who observed that the surrealists were the first to discern a revolutionary potential in the obsolete and the outmoded, in the material by-products and refuse of modernity.’ Indeed, the Bureau looks like an antiquated sitting room of an eccentric collector, bristling with unidentifiable or obsolete tools, bell jars displaying curiosities of the natural world, teaching aids that reveal the workings of monstrous or magical things and labels that have long since been separated from the artefacts that they explain. Surrealism, according to Andre Breton’s Manifesto is ‘psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express […] the actual functioning of thought. […] Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought.’ In short, Breton was advocating the recognition of modes of thinking that were not controlled by common sense, material and utilitarian constrictions or the habits of social and moral conventions. He wished to revel in the marvellous and cut ties with the logical. Of course what constitutes the marvellous is not the same in every epoch or society. What are our equivalent of romantic ruins and the dismembered mannequin? Dion’s Bureau proposes that it is the technologies of the past, the cultural flotsam of the museum and the defunct knowledge that this embodies.
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Mark Dion’s Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy is situated at The Manchester Museum’s Special Projects Space which will reopen on 10th November 2007. Open Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm and Sundays and Mondays 11am to 4pm, free.
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Pavel Büchler, Life after Death, 2005
It is not clear whether humans were able to interpret this information.
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news
t appears that artists have been adopting ideas from the ancient practice of alchemy to create new artworks for several years in The Manchester Museum. For some time now artists have been applying their unique admixture of magic and logic to artefacts, structures and even people, often testing the bounds of museological norms. In 2005 Louise Brooks sought out evidence of ambiguity in the collection, orchestrating a tour that visited all the instances of ‘around, ‘possibly’, ‘maybe’ and ‘probably’ printed on artefact labels, which we would normally expect to be authoritatively definitive. Brookes, it has been alleged, teased out the subjectivity and doubt of an institution associated with objective knowledge. In the same year Pavel Büchler inverted the subject of the museum by literally turning the spotlights on the visitors and creating a mirror out of a glass case, so viewers could only dimly make out the shape of the objects behind their own bright reflection. Antony Hall took methods of observation out into the city, filming the underwater activity in Salford’s canals and civic water features and proving that the exotic is all around us. Kevin Malone composed sound through most peculiar means, translating the physical attributes of specimens into musical elements. Each animal then became a piece of abstract music that in theory communicated whether it had six or four legs, was furry or scaly, had a beak or a long tail. It is not clear whether humans were able to interpret this information.
SUSTAINED SIGNS OF ALCHEMICAL ACTIVITY
Egypitian galleries, The Manchester Museum, 1913
Colour Impurity Shock I
t has been brought to the attention of the Manchester Museum that identifying colour is not a black-and-white issue. In 2004, artist Spring Hurlbut rooted through the more unusual corners of the museum’s collection for items that we might ordinarily describe as ‘white’ and arranged them in display cases. Instead of a uniform whiteness, what became clear was a vast array of hues, shades and tones. Hurlbut refers us to Werner’s Nomenclature, the book that Charles Darwin took with him on the Beagle in 1831, which enabled him to write descriptions of specimens that could be accurately interpreted by other scientists. Hurlbut asks us to think about the possibility of objectively translating a phenomenon such as colour into language, and the implications this has on ideas of truth and relativism. The Alchemical Times has compared the selection of Werner’s swatches below to the objects that they take their name from and revealed a scandalous discrepancy. Cognitive scientists are investigating the cause.
B/W image credit: Abraham Gottlob Werner, Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, with additions, arranged so as to render it ... useful to the Arts and Sciences ... By P. Syme, Edinburgh, 1814 © The British Library Board. All rights reserved.
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The Alchemical Times has compared the selection of Werner’s swatches to the objects that they take their name from and revealed a scandalous discrepancy.
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international news
Everyday objects turn to stone omentary events frozen M in geological time
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he Petrifying Well at Mother Shipton’s Cave is the oldest visitor attraction in Britain. Since 1630 people have been visiting the legendary birthplace of the famous seer and relics from these visits can still be seen, and added to, today. Agatha Christie’s handbag is perhaps the best-known item among the hats, trinkets and teddy bears left to calcify in the waterfall.
In the autumn Ilana Halperin will travel to the caves of the Auvergne, where a similar phenomenon occurs deep in the dormant volcanoes of France. Each day delicate calcified drops of water fill small pans balanced on a wooden ladder, turning to stone within one to three years. Every other week, year after year, someone turns each pan, so they don’t become permanently fixed to the walls, the floor or the rungs of the ladder. The base of the pans are embossed with images and designs so that when the contents are eventually turned out, like an ice cube in the freezer that is no longer watery, they are like fossils of intent, bas-reliefs that tell of bygone activity. See Events on page 12 for details about Ilana Haperin’s fieldtrip.
(right) TV’s John Craven depositing a sock at Mother Shipton’s Cave, (circled) Agatha Christie’s handbag – now completely turned to stone.
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international news
Marie Stopes narrowly escapes death in Antarctica M
arie Stopes, the woman known for her revolutionary work on birth control and social reform, has overturned expectations once more, nearly 50 years after her death. It has come to light that not only was Stopes a key facilitator of the sexual revolution, but she also received a post-doctoral scholarship to the Botanical Institute in Munich in 1902, where she was the only woman studying amongst 500 men. Stopes consequently left Munich and, after much debate among the college council, was appointed at Owens College Manchester (later to become the University of Manchester) as junior lecturer and demonstrator in botany. Stopes specialised in Palaeobotony, the branch of paleontology that deals with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological strata, and uses them to reconstruct past biological environments and evolutionary processes. In 1904, Robert Falcon Scott visited Manchester on a lecture tour to raise money to pay off the debts of his previous voyage on the ship Discovery – his visit is recorded in the museum’s visitor book. Over dinner and dancing, Stopes almost persuaded him to take her on the expedition he was preparing to reach the South Pole. In the cold light of day, however, Scott decided that her suggestion was impractical, but vowed ‘he would do his utmost to find the fossils she wanted’. It is likely that Marie showed him The Manchester Museum’s examples of the fossil Glossopteris, which she had intended to collect in Antarctica. When Scott’s body was eventually found plant fossils (subsequently described as Glossopteris), collected by the party on the return from the pole, were discovered nearby. This was the first recorded occurrence of this plant in Antarctica and formed a vital piece of evidence for a super-continent of Gondwana existing 200 million years ago. It is clear that Stopes was a pioneer in her field and, if she had not been working in the early 1900s, when British society was tentatively emerging from the austerity of the long years of Queen Victoria’s rule, perhaps her fate might have been quite different – in which case generations of women would not have benefited from her work in the field of research for which she is best remembered.
It is likely that Marie showed Scott The Manchester Museum’s examples of the fossil Glossopteris.
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caption competition
iscovered in The Manchester Museum archives, these ink blot doodles have been seperated from any accompanying documentation, but what
story could they tell? Answers to The Manchester Museum Caption Competition, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9LP.
Best entries will all receive a University of Manchester guide book.
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science / nature
Artist appears to defy laws of anthropologcal filmmaking
When is a film an anthropological study and when is it a subjective artwork? This is a question that artist Jordan Baseman and visual anthropologist Rupert Cox have been deliberating during Baseman’s involvement in the Alchemy project. Baseman ordinarily makes films about people on the margins of society, such as street beggars, Michael Jackson fans and criminals. Questions have arisen, however, on the ethics of such a practice during discussions with Cox, who studies the methods and effects of image and sound in the production of meaning.
As a result of their discussions Baseman made the film Documentary Imperative in which we hear Cox describing the dilemmas of the anthropological filmmaker. If assumptions are inevitably made by viewers of these films, assumptions that are beyond the control of the subjects they represent, how can the politics and ethics of this be readdressed? Cox suggests that it is the relative position between the subject and filmmaker that must be reconfigured, perhaps by the filmmaker adopting a more participatory role or becoming a facilitator that enables the subject to make their own films. This creates the further paradox, though, of how an objective documentary can be obtained through subjective means. What is the status of the final document? Baseman boldly works against such trepidation in his film by playing Cox’s polemic over an image of a street beggar in Rome. The camera is static and at a remove from the subject as he accepts money from passersby, picks his nose and nods off now and again. Cox’s ideas at times work with and at times against what we are watching, as Baseman at once invites us to make assumptions about his apparent subject – the street beggar – and yet makes us very aware of doing so. We soon realise that the real subject of the film is not the street beggar, but the way in which we watch and think about him.
POLITICAL CAREER OF OAK TREE PERSISTS The innumerable Royal Oak pubs are named in honour of a particular tree in the grounds of Boscobel Hall, Shropshire, which hid Charles II from Oliver Cromwell and his New Model Army in 1651. Besides this direct association with the preservation of the monarchy, though, the oak tree has long been considered quintessentially English, its age and stature embodying ideas of power and authority. In his essay ‘Cowper, Wordsworth, Clare: The Politics of Trees’, Tim Fulford, Professor of English at Nottingham Trent University, further explores the symbolism of the tree, and the oak in particular, in English romantic poetry. He describes how poets invoke the oak as representative of the nature of British politics: ‘their longevity, rootedness and strength made them suitable emblems for writers who portrayed an ancient constitution capable of gradual change’, or their qualities might be described as ‘organic, time honoured, slow to change and grow, protective of the subjects who sheltered beneath it’ which Wordsworth used as a symbol of ‘an anti-revolutionary naturalization of conservative politics’.
For the Alchemy project artists Nick Jordan and Jacob Cartwright have been looking at ways in which we project human characteristics upon flora and fauna, imbuing them with ideas of our own ideology, identity, history and myth. Their aim is to ‘combine familiar perceptions and assumptions with more arcane and unexpected material, to present a hybrid state of affairs, which refutes academic certainty in favour of a loose framework of research and fabrication’.
If you would like to join Jordan & Cartwright in their research, they have organised a fieldtrip to Bradgate Park, Leicestershire, on Saturday 6th October. The park’s 1000 acres boasts venerable oaks, ancient woodland, rare plants, volcanic granite outcrops, pigmy shrews, saxicolous lichns, 500 species of beetle, an array of breeding birds, Old John folly and the ruins of Bradgate House, birthplace of Lady Jane Grey, the ‘Nine Day Queen’. See Events on page 12 for more details.
Jordan Baseman’s new film Joy on Toast will be screened at The Manchester Museum in November, see Events on page 12 for more details.
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o date, many wonderous geological encounters have occurred through the Alchemy project, from a learning of failed romance centred around a scandalous fossil that changed our understanding of the pre-historical world, to holding lava medallions forged from the molten magma of Mount Vesuvius. Among them, the particular occasion of this field report grew out of a serendipitous meeting with Peter and Julie Mohr at the Alchemy launch event. While talking about volcanoes it became clear that we shared not only a love of geology, but also of its subterranean aspect – the world of caves. Peter and Julie invited me to join them on an underground expedition to the Ease Gill Cave network, north of Manchester. It was my first experience in a truly wild cave, and Peter and Julie were the most patient and reassuring of guides. My last sojourn beneath the earth’s crust had been in an entirely other underworld – that of Mammoth Cave, which is not wild but vast. As reported in Part One: Mammoth Cave: ‘Being inside the cave is like being inside the throat and then the body of a snake. When moving through long avenues inside, with your own light turned off and only the glow from other lights in the distance, you have the sensation that it could be you who is moving through the cave, or that the cave is travelling through the inside of the mountain and you are stationary, being brought along to the mouth of the cave, or other than where you thought – much deeper underground.’
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND Part Two: Ease Gill
By underground correspondent Ilana Halperin Prior to Ease Gill I had only ever entered a cave as if promenading upright along an avenue. The pathways in Mammoth Cave are like Broadway in New York. We took a train straight through Postojna Cave, passing by an old chandelier that dangles from the rock ceiling of a particularly large room where formal balls were once held. In Skocjan Caves the interior is so huge that it is the site of the largest indoor canyon in the world. What was my longest stay underground? Seven hours, ten days in a row, two hours here, one hour there. In Ease Gill we were underground for approximately two and a half hours, but within minutes of descending into the entrance there was an eight-foot drop, approximately the circumference of the manholes found on the streets of New York City. I was to be heard uttering ‘how long exactly are we going to be underground?’ Imagination is not allowed to roam as you slip down a vertical corkscrew, like a narrow spiral staircase found in a nightmare, which closes in on you each time you try to reach the bottom step, slipping with gravity into the lower basement, down along the cave walls, with full knowledge that to exit this place you must work against gravity. An interior vertigo can take over if you freely entertain these thoughts. This is not a useful approach when exploring unimaginable underground architecture. I advise you to listen to the sound of your cave guide’s voice, as if being pulled by an invisible silk cloth around your lower back: ‘in five minutes we will reach a place where we will crawl below the most beautiful formations … here we will cross an underground waterfall … we are almost back to Oxford Circus.’ We were in the United Kingdom after all, and Broadway would not have been appropriate.
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reader ’ s survey
What Makes Manchester Manchester? J
amie Shovlin is asking visitors to The Manchester Museum to help formulate his contribution to the Alchemy project. He feels that the museum is sorely missing a local collection and would like to act on the public’s behalf in amassing one. But what would a local history collection comprise? A museum vitrine currently displays a shopping trolley, a bus ticket, a can of Boddingtons, Manchester United and Manchester City scarves – but does this do
Manchester justice, asks Shovlin. How would you characterise the city? The questionnaire is designed to fast track museumgoers’ ideas straight to the curators, who will assess them formally and decide whether suggested artefacts enter the permanent collection. Using a localised search on internet auction site, eBay, Shovlin will publicly acquire the new collection for The Manchester Museum from 22nd to
28th October 2007. The objects will go on display at the Manchester Museum from 16th February 2008. Simply fill in the questionnaire below and either hand it in at The Manchester Museum’s front desk, or post it to: Jamie Shovlin Alchemy, The Manchester Museum The University of Manchester Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL
THE JAMIE SHOVLIN QUESTIONNAIRE ALL PERSONAL INFORMATION IS OPTIONAL (Please leave a contact if you would like to receive information about the exhibition and associated events) Name: Address: Email: Occupation:
Age: Have you ever been to The Manchester Museum?
Yes
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What is your favourite part of The Manchester Museum?
What, in general, is your favourite part of museums?
What is your least favourite part of The Manchester Museum?
What, in general, is your least favourite part of museums?
What would you like to see in The Manchester Museum that is not there already?
What would you hope to see at The Manchester Museum?
What, if anything, would you like to see less of in The Manchester Museum?
What would you hope not to see at The Manchester Museum?
Can you think of a single object or item that represents Manchester?
Responses to this questionnaire may be published and/or included in the exhibition part of the Alchemy project at The Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester.
All questionnaires must be received by Friday 19th October 2007.
If you don’t want to cut up your copy of The Alchemical Times please visit www.alchemy.manchester.museum
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he instigation of a photographic indexing system has radically improved museum curators’ working conditions. Whereas until recently boxes of artefacts carried no indication of what they contained, they now bear a photograph of their contents on their exterior. The solution was concocted and implemented by Dr Christina Riggs and has been described by Eva Weaver, the spokesperson
After
ANCIENT EGYPT NICE AND TIDY
for the snappily named Journal for Functional Applications of Visual Art Methodologies (JournalFAVAM), as ‘yet more evidence that visual art is not just a pretty face’. JournalFAVAM’s previous headlines have included ‘Durational Performance Artists Cornerstone of Neighbourhood Watch Schemes’ and ‘Sculpture Effective as Doorstop During EU Meeting on Pasteurisation’.
unclaimed identified object notices “Found in river 60 miles from Alderley Edge. What is it? What is it made of?” The Manchester Museum replies: “If this is archaeological, it is a piece of Industrial archaeology, i.e. from that time in the late 18th, 19th or 20th centuries when sophisticated industrial processes like casting iron, were being used to create factories and machinery. This piece appears to be part of a circular object, the centre of which is thicker. I wonder whether this is a fly-wheel, designed to keep a machine w o r k i n g by virtue of its kinetic energy – but I’m not an industrial archaeologist!”
M asks: “Found in the Peak District, near Edale, How old is it? Is it worth much? What was it used for and by who by? What is it made of?” The Manchester Museum says: “It lacks a central ridge (needed to make the arrow spin). A good piece of workmanship. This is made of hand beaten steel. We have not been able to ascribe it to any particular people but it looks like a modern (20th century) arrowhead. N.B. We cannot give valuations.
S of Blackley asks: How old is it, what would it have been used for, valuation if any?”
The Manchester Museum replies: “Probably made in the 19th century and used as a weapon and also possibly for slashing vegetation. We cannot give valuations. European manufacture.”
Jamie Shovlin would like to bring the above objects to general attention in the hope that the owners will return to claim the identified items. Many answers have waitied upwards of 40 years to satisfy the curiosity of their owners. The Alchemical Times hopes to reunite the questioner with the object that sparked the inquiry through this regular feature.
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obiturary
Martha
The Last Passenger Pigeon 1885–1914
Martha, believed to be the last Passenger Pigeon on earth, died in the Zoological Garden, Cincinnati, at two o’clock pm, 1st September, 1914, aged 29 years. This marks the passing of the last survivor of a species whose vast flocks, up to a generation previously, were the ornithological wonder of the world. The National Association, realizing the widespread interest in this deplorable incident, announced that it would give to anyone, on request, its Leaflet No. 6, which featured a colour portrait of the pigeon. The response was immediate, with 2,500 copies distributed, many of them to persons of great influence and social prominence. One recipient of the leaflet, General Tom Foolery, called for a minute’s cooing across US military bases, while many suffragists, as they were known in the US, forsook plumed hats for a week in observance of the tragedy. Martha was born and raised in captivity, which suited her natural inter-species gregariousness. One resident of Cincinnati Zoo’s Tiger Canyon described her as ‘an open door to any mammal, fish or foul willing to strike up a conversation’. Martha was a natural linguist, speaking most game bird, many big cat and a smattering of nocturnal mammal languages. A weakness in the fish tongues led to some misunderstandings, but she was generally able to get by due to her excellent command of physical comedy. Writer and conservationist Aldo Leopold pays tribute in his essay ‘Wisconsin’ published in 1949 in A Sand County Almanac: ‘no living man will see again the onrushing phalanx of victorious birds, sweeping a path for spring across the March skies, chasing the defeated winter from the woods and prairies of Wisconsin. The pigeon was a biological storm. He was the lightening that played between two opposing potentials of intolerable intensity: the fat of the land and the oxygen of the air.’ Martha died of natural causes and leaves behind no family.
Commemorations will continue with Nick Jordan and Jacob Cartwright’s declared Passenger Pigeon Day celebrations on 24th March 2008. Further details will be published in the next issue of The Alchemical Times.
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events
weather
Ilana Halperin: Geology Fieldtrip Join Alchemy Artist Ilana Halperin with Museum and University palaeontologists and geologists on a fieldtrip to Mother Shipton’s Cave; exploring their historical, personal and geological significance. This trip will involve some light walking so suitable clothing and footwear is recommended. Light refreshments will be provided but please bring a packed lunch with you.
Saturday 22nd September Meet at the Manchester Museum, 10am to 5pm, free Booking essential please phone 0161 275 2648 to reserve a place.
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Weather Warning!
Nick Jordan and Jacob Cartwright: Oak Fieldtrip
Volcanic eruption followed by light rain results in formation of accretionary lapilli – volcanic ash gathering around a moist centre – evidence of a brief shower that took place millions of years ago.
Jacob Cartwright and Nick Jordan are seeking experts and enthusiasts to join them on a fieldtrip to Bradgate Park, Leicestershire - 1000 acres of flora, fauna and history. Particular points of interest: venerable oaks, ancient woodland, rare plants, volcanic granite outcrops, pigmy shrews, saxicolous lichens, 500 species of beetle, an array of breeding birds, ‘Old John’ folly and the ruins of Bradgate House – birthplace of Lady Jane Grey, the ‘Nine Day Queen’.
Saturday 6th October Meet at the Manchester Museum, 9am to 5pm, free, however participants are asked to make a contribution to a publication after the event. If you would like to join Nick and Jacob please contact alchemy@manchester.ac.uk for more details.
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Jordan Baseman: Joy On Toast
Jordan Baseman’s new film Joy On Toast, made from interviews with botanical explorer Sheila Collenette, will be screened within the Museum’s botany storerooms.
Thursday 15th November 7pm, free Saturday 17th November 2pm & 4pm, free Thursday 22nd November 7pm, free Saturday 24th November 2pm & 4pm, free Booking is essential as each screening has strictly limited numbers – please phone 0161 275 2648 to reserve a place.
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Using only the answers to the questionnaire as his guide to what makes Manchester Manchester, Jamie Shovlin will be publicly acquiring a new collection from a localised search on eBay. Come and see as Jamie’s collection evolves over the week. Contribute through the questionnaire on page 9 or visit www.alchemy.manchester.museum
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Jamie Shovlin: Acquisition
The Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL Tel: 0161 275 2648 www.alchemy.manchester.museum Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm, Sunday and Monday 11am to 4pm, free
crossword
Across 1. A place where live reptiles are kept (8) 7. The simplest order of Greek column (5) 8. Geographic coordinate measurement from the Prime Meridian (9) 9. Prefix of the new (3) 10. Ovum with a shell or outer layer (3) 11. Museum keepers do this with care (6)
13. A means of making headway (6) 14. Gives a false notion (6) 17. Case for holding arrows (6) 18. Token of exchange (4) 20. LargeAustralian bird (3) 22. People of ancient Italy and Corsica (9) 23. The Wanindiljaugwa, for example (5) 24. She sells it on the seashore (8)
The Alchemical Times: All articles by Editorat-Large Sally O’Reilly, Picture Research and Executive Editor Bryony Bond, Head of Design Alan Ward. All copyrights remain with The Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester and the artists.
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Down 1. Controls the passage of liquid (5) 2. Preservative used to clean windows (7) 3. Precipitation (4) 4. Of the fleshy part of the soft palate (6) 5. Preservative also used to treat icy surfaces (5) 6. See 7. down 7. and 6. down. Ancient documents found in caves on the west bank of the River Jordon (4, 3, 7) 12. Israel’s largest freshwater lake (7) 13. The animals that outnumber all other species by three to one (7) 15. Prehistoric era (7) 16. Fictional bush tucker served to Big Brother contestants (3, 3) 17. Game bird (5) 19. The passages of Rameses II found stuffed with peppercorns (5) 21. The wife and sister of Osiris (4)
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