The working life of Museum of London

Welcome to the February Dickens Book Club.

My name is Sally, the Librarian at the Museum of London, and I have volunteered to read Bleak House with the book club as it is a novel I studied at school (rather a long time ago now) and enjoyed. 

Whereas studying ‘Silas Marner’ put me right off George Eliot, ‘Bleak House’ was so good it  encouraged me to go on and read other books by Dickens, although none of them ever seemed to match up to original impact of ‘Bleak House’.

I am looking forward to revisiting the novel as an older person, and I am also going to be reversing my Luddite tendencies and will be reading the novel on an e-reader, a well-known version of which was given to me as a Christmas present and on which my second download was the complete works of Dickens.

‘Bleak House’ followed the familiar publishing route for a Dickens novel, in that it was published as a partwork, over 19 monthly instalments (the last one being a double issue), from March 1852 to September 1853.

While readers at the time would have had a month to consume a few chapters, we will be reading the novel over just one short month, which means aiming to read at the rate of 2.5 chapters a day (well, that’s the plan).

As I remember, we will be encountering the whole gamut of Victorian society, from the homeless poor to the landed aristocracy, and will encounter issues of the day, such as slum clearance, sanitary reform, philanthropy, the development of a detective branch of the Met., and the iniquities of never-ending court cases. 

Encompassing it all is London – dirty, decaying and foggy – so let’s get started with the most magnificent opening of any Dickens novel, and immerse ourselves in fog…..

If you would like to join Sally in reading Bleak House our friends at Foyles are offering Dickens Book Club followers an additional 10% discount for online purchases of  the novel here. Simply enter ‘MOLBC’ at Checkout to activate this discount.

Have the recent TV and radio adaptations alongside celebrations for the upcoming 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens seen you revisit or read for the first time a work by this creative genius?

If so there is still time to join our Dickens Book Club and share your thoughts on the work of this great author via Facebook and Twitter.

We will be focusing on Bleak House in February, sharing favourite passages and our thoughts as we progress through this work.

We will also be completing our reading of Barnaby Rudge from January, so do look out for updates here as the novel approaches the Gordon Riots of 1780.

When the book club was launched in September 2011  we decided to ask our social media followers which work of Dickens to read to close our book club in May 2012.

Having reviewed the suggestions and comments received. The title that we have chosen to feature in May is David Copperfield. With its “memorable characters written in the first person” this was agreed to be a worthy title to close our book club celebrations of Charles Dickens work.

Alongside this online book club we have also been running a series of book club events at Foyles Bookshop flagship store at Charing Cross, London. The next meeting is being held at 6.30pm on Monday 6 February 2012 focusing on Bleak House with our Dickens and London exhibition curator Alex Werner.

 There is no need to book just turn up on the night and meet in person other fans and aficionados of Dickens.

Our books clubs are ran in support of our Dickens and London exhibition at the Museum of London which is open until 10 June 2012.

To mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II the Museum of London will be staging an exhibition in June 2012.

Celebrating the capital’s enthusiasm and affection, ‘At Home with the Queen‘, will feature Londoners photographed in their own homes with their cherished souvenirs of Queen Elizabeth II.

Here, exhibition curator, Julia Hoffbrand, updates us on the search for people and souvenirs to feature:

“Right. Just back from a very extended Christmas and New Year break. Mince pies and lie-ins behind me, I sit down, coffee in hand, to look at my inbox. Lots of enquiries, some general briefings for the Museum’s collections online resource, and some stray spam asking if I want strange things I’ve never heard of. And then on to the ‘At Home with the Queen’ inbox and post pigeon-hole.

Hurrah! Several new submissions have arrived whilst I’ve been away. They’re great! I print them out and put them with all the others received so far to review after the closing date for submissions on 31 January.

The exhibition’s beginning to look good.

I’m really pleased and excited by the range of Londoners who’ve sent in photos of themselves so far – a real mix of ages and backgrounds, some quite unexpected. Older people who remember the Coronation, people in their 20s and 30s who’ve inherited their grandparents’ commemoratives, and kids with books about the Queen which their parents read aloud to them before bed.

It’s fun working on an exhibition where Londoners themselves provide the content – you have no idea what’s going to arrive next and, barring the obscene and offensive, anything goes in this exhibition. It’s what Londoners make it – my role is to bring everything together and with the exhibition team create a display people want to visit and enjoy.

I’ve been really encouraged by the positive reactions I’ve had from people whenever I mention ‘At Home with the Queen’.  A brief chat at my local fish and chip shop where I put up a poster reveals that the owner once met the Queen when he was a kid and will hunt out his photo for the exhibition. A conversation at the library (and another poster later) uncovers a woman who has two Golden Jubilee shot glasses bought she says, at a petrol station on the way to Devon in 2002 (she says it’s a long story ….).

The next step for me is to start writing the design brief for ‘At Home with the Queen’. This outlines the exhibition’s content, structure and ‘feel’ for the designer to work from. After this, I’ll revisit our stores to choose a small selection of the Museum’s commemorative objects to display alongside Londoners’ photographs (I have had a quick look already and had these by my desk):

We’re hoping to also display some of the objects that appear in people’s photographs so I’ll need to speak to our design department to find out what display cases we can use …

A blog post from Jon in our conservation team on the work looking after and preparing our objects for display.

As this years’ intern within the applied arts section of the conservation department at the Museum of London I am very grateful to have been given the exciting opportunity of experiencing the build-up and installation of the Museum’s major new exhibition – Dickens and London.

In the months before installation began, conservators were busy ensuring all the objects and artefacts were suited to being placed on display. Within the new exhibition objects of a range of materials are installed including shop signs from Dickensian London, documents written in Dickens’ own hand and furniture from Dickens’ house.

This required the knowledge and expertise of our whole conservation team, particularly specialists in paper, textiles and the applied arts.

Within the Applied Arts section we work to conserve many artefacts of Victorian social history; however, as an admirer of Dickens it has been incredibly rewarding being able to work on objects with a particularly close connection to the man himself – such as this chair he was often photographed in.

Dickens’ chair is on open display within the new exhibition, so work was required to stabilise and secure the aged leather upholstery, predominantly around the back rest, where the degraded material had begun to laminate and fall away.

In addition to this, surface cleaning was conducted to remove dust.

Modern ethics within the field of conservation maintain that minimal intervention should be practiced when conserving artefacts – this means altering the original material and structure as little as possible, whilst ensuring the object is sturdy enough to be displayed or stored. We also aim to make every process and alteration reversible, so our changes could be ‘undone’ if needed in the future. For Dickens’ chair this meant adhering loose leather with a removable adhesive to consolidate the fragile material.

Historic leather can suffer acidic degradation due to reactions with sulphurous pollutants in the air. Testing the pH of the leather of Dickens’ chair revealed the leather had become particularly acidic – it was therefore thought appropriate to treat the leather with an aluminium compound – a process that effectively re-tans the leather – neutralising acidity and reversing some degradation processes.

Preventive conservation is also a key role of the museum’s conservators and collection care staff. With regards to this we have been carefully monitoring light levels (particularly important where objects such as Dickens’ handwritten manuscripts are displayed!), ensuring the environment within the gallery is suitable for the collections and that the cases are dust free – the latter involving several days spent cleaning the inside and outside of display cases!

It has been brilliant to see the culmination of many people’s knowledge, ideas and skills work together to create such an exciting and enchanting exhibition.

You can hear more about the conservation work at the Museum’s next free ‘meet the expert’ event at 2pm on Wednesday 25 January.

Having in previous months featured such titles as The Mystery of Edwin Drood and A Tale of Two Cities on our virtual book club in support of our new exhibition, Dickens and London. We are focusing this month on one of Dickens less renowned works – Barnaby Rudge.

It is early days in terms of my reading (and the sharing of my thoughts which can be found on our twitter and Facebook pages) but I have already been struck by how this work may have influenced a later addition to the Dickens canon, Great Expectations.

I have also had a look for Barnaby Rudge related content from our exhibition, and have found this from 1840 that details the execution of one Francois Benjamin Courvoisier:

(c) Museum of London

From its supporting caption I noted mention that Dickens witnessed three public executions in his lifetime including that of the Swiss valet Francois Benjamin Courvoisier convicted of murdering his master Lord Russell.

Dickens was horrified by the effect of the public spectacle on the crowd. Amongst the crowd gathered outside Newgate for the execution he noted there was ‘nothing but ribaldry, debauchery,levity, drunkenness and flaunting vice in fifty other shapes’. Such scenes were recreated in the novel Barnaby Rudge that he began the following year.

I plan to blog again once I have completed sharing my thoughts on the novel but until then it would be great to hear if you plan to read along with me!

Dickens and London is open until 10 June 2012.

Having finished reading ‘A Christams Carol’ our Programme Manager (Family Learning), Sue Neaves, is quite surprised at how festive she feels…

“There’s something about revisiting works you know well – or assume you do. I was surprised at whole episodes I’d forgotten. Also when I agreed to do this we were nowhere near Christmas, even if the shops were trying to persuade us otherwise. Suddenly I find myself eager to drum up appropriately festive feelings and CC has certainly helped with that.

What an amazing book it is. You can really let your imagination run riot with the ghosts and I loved the dark passages just as much as I expected to.  I laughed out loud at some of the dialogue, however familiar. Of course, there is a reason that certain stories are ubiquitous, and that reason is because people love them.

And yes, cringe, it does make you examine your own behaviour and make some stiff resloutions. Maybe I’ll keep one or two, who knows?

So banish cynicism, deck the halls, you’d better watch out, Santa Baby. God bless us, every one.”

You can read Sue’s first two blogs on her experience of reading A Christmas Carol for our Dickens Book Club here and here.

Dickens and London, a major exhibition from the Museum of London, is open until 10 June  2012.

As our Programme Manager (Family Learning), Sue Neaves, continues to share her thoughts on A Christmas Carol for our Dickens Book Club via social media, our blog pages allows for a more indepth discussion of a key character from the novel:

“I had to write this as I couldn’t possibly fit my thoughts about this Dickens character into the tiny allowance of Twitter.  Although Dickens is such a master that you can create intense drama out of a short tweet (see my ‘it’s the finger again’ tweet recently) and everyone knows what you’re talking about.

 This character is reinterpreted as a device in so many movies, plays and novels that many more people are familiar with him/her/it than have read Dickens. Previewing the offerings of television over this festive period I spotted at least half a dozen offerings making use of the same idea. How many can you name where people are given a glimpse of their future and a chance to change it?

With my other hat on, I write for the theatre and have done more than my fair share of Dickens adaptations. (Like actors can always fall back on panto at Christmas, writers can always rely on Dickens.) The casting and interpretation of Ghost CYTC has caused more arguments between directors, writer and actors than any other in my experience.

The pointing finger is crucial to the reader and even more important when you consider the need to view it from afar. To use a prosthetic or rely on the finger skills? Traditional costume of cloak and hood or something more contemporary or experimental? My favourite casting is when the director agrees to use a child. There is something even more chilling when all these horrors are being delivered by a very small, young person. I was thrilled to discover the novelist John Irving exploring this concept and if, like me, you are intrigued by the darkly comic aspects of Dickens it’s worth a look at his rendition of a performance of ‘A Christmas Carol’ in ‘A Prayer for Owen Meaney’. For my money, nothing comes closer to the true spirit of Dickens ar Christmas Time (except the original, of course).

How would you cast the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?”

Dickens and London, a major exhibition from the Museum of London, is open until 10 June  2012.

I know you have all been waiting for him so I won’t make you wait any longer. After a great deal of effort we have managed to secure an interview with perhaps the most busy man around Xmas (plus his helpers, our Victorian photographer and the mystic Gypsy lady) , of course its our Santa.

Welcome Santa, are you ready for this year?

Of course, I am looking forward to making all the children around the whole world have a special day and seeing the joy on their faces when they open their presents.

That’s great news to hear Santa. It must be tough going what with all of that exercise you are getting. Are you feeling fit enough to lift all those presents?

Don’t worry about me as my elves take good care of me. They have done their elf and safety.

Good to hear, so what can we expect to happen this year?

I am planning to do all my travelling at night so I will have some time to spend in my Grotto here at the Museum of London Docklands. That means I can meet lots of families and offer them some presents when they come to see me and hopefully have a photo with everyone involved so we can all remember this special occasion.

Anything you would like to say to everyone before you leave on your errands?

Yes, I wish everyone a merry, merry Christmas and look forward to seeing you soon.

If you want to meet our Santa then book a meeting with him on 0207 0019844 or on the day when you visit the Museum of London Docklands.

Santa’s Grotto is open daily until 23 December 2011.

If you are unable to visit Santa why not come along and meet Scrooge from 27 December 2011 to 1 January 2012!

You can also enjoy some festive family fun if you time your visit to Santa or Scrooge to coincide with our December events schedule. More details on our website here.

Its that time again. December is upon us and we have another fabulous Grotto about to start at the Museum of London Docklands . No need to take my word for it though, just take a look at this tantalising glimpse of the Grotto entrance.

Here is another picture too of what it looks like right in the heart of our Grotto

If you want to see more and meet our Santa then book a meeting with him on 0207 0019844 or on the day here at the Museum of London Docklands.

Santa’s Grotto is open daily from 10 December until 23 December 2011.

If you are unable to visit Santa why not come along and meet Scrooge from 27 December 2011 to 1 January 2012!

You can also enjoy some festive family fun if you time your visit to Santa or Scrooge to coincide with our December events schedule. More details on our website.

It’s official, we are now starting to feel rather festive as our Christmas trees are in place and decorated at both the Museum of London and the Museum of London Docklands.

Above is the tree for the Museum of London which is displayed in our foyer near to the entrance to the first of our galleries, London Before London.

Here is a look at the tree in place in the foyer of the Museum of London Docklands…

With Victorian Grotto’s created especially for Santa (although we hear that after Christmas a certain Scrooge will be in residence) due to open at both museums on Saturday and lots of festive fun for families planned throughout December we hope that a visit to either (or both) of our museums will add some Christmas cheer!