This Report covers the period between August 2007 and July 2008. The Fitzwilliam Museum continues to attract large numbers of visitors from the University, city, region, and the wider world, rivalling the attendance figures of major public galleries. It is therefore a very visible face of the University, hosting a wide range of exhibitions, events, concerts, and lectures which attract growing audiences, a commendable performance when, in line with other museums and attractions locally and nationally, the number of visitors in the year has fallen. Imaginative community projects attracted the support of local businesses wishing to demonstrate to their customers and staff their commitment to the local community, and attracted local press coverage.
The task of running a major museum within a University provides both opportunities and challenges. Staff of the Museum have carried out research which informs the interpretation of the collections, and they have taken part in teaching in the University, reaching over 900 undergraduates in 37 classes during the year. Curators are engaged with their colleagues in academic Departments across the University, bringing a knowledge of visual and material culture to a range of disciplines from Classics, Oriental Studies, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, to English, Theology, History, and Art History.
Exhibitions such as From Reason to Revolution contribute to the understanding of students in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, the Faculty of History, and the Faculty of English. The plans for the major exhibition Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science, and the Visual Arts in 2009 will have an even wider reach across the University. Many members of the University, regardless of their discipline, will have enjoyed exhibitions such as Howard Hodgkin, and the opportunity to display paintings in varied contexts throughout the University which take the collections into the work place.
The challenges of funding a major museum are also considerable, and efforts to supplement the University's core contribution are an increasing priority. The loyal support of the Friends of the Museum is appreciated, especially as they approach their centenary. This has been augmented by The Marlay Group, a growing group of patrons, who through subscriptions and gifts are supporting a variety of essential work from the purchase of furniture to funding for exhibitions and small cataloguing projects.
Once again the Museum has relied on funding from a wide range of external sources. The Museum's participation as a partner in the East of England Museum Hub under Renaissance in the Regions, funded by the Museums, Libraries, and Archives Council (MLA), underpinned collections information, electronic services, and education programmes, and strengthened our capacity to engage wider audiences and assist other museums in the University and the region. Cambridge City Council continued modest support for weekend opening. Core funding from the University Chest (£2,353,000) was enhanced in recognition of historic underfunding and unanticipated costs arising from late assimilation to the single pay spine. As in previous years it was augmented by the Arts and Humanities Research Council's museum grant (£1,206,000) in respect of core costs and service to the public. External funding streams are a source of concern for the future. The decision of the University to devolve finances to the Museum will give a greater degree of flexibility as well as increased responsibility for fundraising for key positions, to enhance the permanent displays, mount stimulating exhibitions, and maintain the programme of outreach.
The most notable event in the year's calendar was the retirement, in December, of Duncan Robinson after twelve years' energetic and committed service as Director and the arrival, in January, of Dr Timothy Potts to succeed him. Duncan Robinson's directorship will be remembered for his charismatic style and notable achievements in fundraising, building development, and acquisitions, and for the enhancement of the Museum's position within the University, the region, nationally, and internationally. He secured arguably the largest endowment since Viscount Fitzwilliam's founding gift to the University, the Paul Mellon Fund and the Paul Mellon bequest, which in turn contributed towards the Courtyard Development, the £12m capital development which won 50% funding from the Heritage Lottery (HLF) and permitted a step change in the quality and range of exhibitions and services the Museum has developed. His directorship is also marked by spectacular acquisitions, again with very substantial grants from the HLF and The Art Fund: the Macclesfield Psalter (2005) and the drawing of A rider on a rearing horse by Leonardo da Vinci (2001). It was fitting that his departure was marked by musical events, a special concert of Lord Fitzwilliam's compositions devised and performed by Gerald Gifford, Honorary Keeper of Music and, to accompany his exhibition From Reason to Revolution, a special performance by Opera East of Inkle and Yarico, an Abolitionist's opera by Samuel Arnold, in Gallery III (26 November) to an audience of 121.
Dr Timothy Potts took up his post as Director on 9 January 2008. Previously, he was director of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas (1998-2007) and director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (1994-98). Concurrently with his directorship in Melbourne, he was Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne and Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University (1996-98). He has also held academic appointments at Christ Church, Oxford as a Research Lecturer (1985-87) and British Academy Postgraduate Research Fellow (1987-89). As director of the Kimbell, Dr Potts led an active acquisition and exhibition programme, and initiated a new building for visiting exhibitions, currently under design by Renzo Piano. Timothy has been an admirer of the Fitzwilliam from afar and brings enthusiasm and ambition to the next phase of the Museum's development. He set in train plans for an exhibition of tomb treasures from ancient Georgia for autumn 2008, From the Land of the Golden Fleece (2 October 2008 to 4 January 2009), and strengthened the funding position for the Museum's major Darwin exhibition with a significant grant from the Wellcome Trust and match funding from the Philecology Foundation.
At the Hamilton Kerr Institute, Ian McClure, Director for twenty-five years, and since 2003 also Assistant Director, Conservation for the Museum, resigned to take up a new position as Susan More Hillis Chief Conservator at Yale University (July 2008). We are pleased to welcome, as his successor, Rupert Featherstone, Senior Painting Conservator at the Royal Collection Trust and a graduate of the University of Cambridge and the Hamilton Kerr Institute.
We are delighted to announce the acceptance of Honorary Keeperships in the Department of Coins and Medals by Professor Buttrey and Lord Stewartby and in the Department of Antiquities by Professor Vassos Karageorghis as Honorary Keeper of Cypriot antiquities.
The Central Services Division delivers services to the public and supports all curatorial functions and exhibitions.
The Museum was open to the public on 316 days (2,014 hours) during the year, and 38 evening events were held involving 4,661 guests. There was a total of 26,107 educational visits, of which 2,270 were made by HE and 1,899 by FE students, and 21,938 were made by young people in school groups. Meanwhile the Museum website recorded 29 million hits, which converted to over one million 'visits' or an average of 2,750 'visitors' a day.
With support from Renaissance in the Regions, 12,500 pupils took part in education sessions led by Museum education staff. These included both primary and secondary students, as well as young people attending Pupil Referral Units. In addition to offering a menu of sessions linking the collections to the curriculum, sessions were tailored to suit the needs of particular classes and schools.
The Education Department fosters relationships with schools who are not regular users. With support from the Princes Foundation for Children and the Arts, lasting relationships were built with six schools in areas of deprivation (460 children) in the Fen region, offering 'Art in Action'. In 'Moving On', the Department worked with staff and students at Netherhall School and with Year 6 pupils from its feeder schools on a pilot project focusing on the transition from primary to secondary school.
In Service training sessions and pre-visit meetings for teachers were held to increase the use of the Museum for learning. Two projects focused on introducing trainee teachers to the rich possibilities of working with real works of art. 270 students from Homerton College visited the Fitzwilliam and other museums of the University. Meanwhile Frances Sword, former Head of Education, and Philip Stephenson, of the Faculty of Education, led a regional initiative, Real Teaching, funded by Renaissance and the Training Development Agency (TDA), aimed at ensuring that all trainee teachers are exposed to learning outside the classroom in museums.
'Source', a drop in support service for GCSE students preparing their portfolios proved a great success. Students had a chance to try out new materials in the studio and tap into expert advice for their examination pieces over February half-term. This attracted over 200 students from 40 schools. 'Headspace', Saturday studio-based sessions and gallery visits for people aged 14 to 21 was also run and a new link made with Cambridge Regional College. Both of these programmes are supported by the Eridge Trust.
Worksheets and notes at five levels were made available to assist language school students visiting the Museum to engage with the collections during a museum visit, ensuring better behaviour. 13,000 attended during the year.
The Education Department organized 42 drop-in sessions and 56 family events including a specially commissioned theatre piece with a Chinese theme, The Dragon's Pearl. With other museums, including the Botanic Gardens, the Museum of Classical Archaeology, and the Museum of Zoology, they arranged events for the national Big Draw and Museum and Galleries Month (May) and Cambridge Science Festival events. They ran monthly sessions for pre-school children, including practical sessions in the studio, and upgraded 'Fitz Kits' activity boxes and trails, which were in constant use by families making independent visits.
Museums and Galleries Month, Cambridgeshire Celebrates Age, and Black History Month were some of the themes under which adults enjoyed 33 talks and 21 courses. The 'Hidden Treasures' Summer School, a new initiative in partnership with Cambridge Mental Health Resource Centre, offered behind the scenes tours of the Museum over several weeks. The course was designed to encourage people recovering from mental health issues to attend events programmed for the general public.
Partnerships between Victoria Road Hostel, Kneesworth House Hospital, Addenbrooke's, Fulbourn Hospital, Storey's House, The Alzheimer's Society, and Cambridge City Council continued with regular sessions for clients, patients, and residents both at the Museum and in their settings. People suffering from cancer, schizophrenia, frail, elderly people, people with a history of mental illness, those in hostel accommodation, and local residents have all been engaged through this programme. Large print, Braille, and handling resources have been made available and multi-sensory sessions have been devised, based on paintings in the collection. The Outreach and Access Officer worked with over 1,000 people during the year.
In September 2007, Sally-Ann Ashton began an AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship from her post as Senior Assistant Keeper in the Department of Antiquities to investigate the role of museums and cultural heritage in prisons with particular reference to Ancient Egypt and Black History. She has worked with a number of prisons in the North-West and East of England, and the Midlands. Museum resources, including the preparation of a virtual tour of the Egyptian galleries, have been developed to enhance teaching and learning within the current prison educational curriculum. This work has included classes in literacy, numeracy, social and life skills, and art. Sally-Ann has also presented special lectures on museums, ancient culture, and modern Nubia and Black History, and produced a magazine, written and illustrated by students in prison on the subject of Ancient Egypt. As part of this work Sally-Ann began an M.Phil. Degree in Criminological Research at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, researching the impact of cultural heritage programmes on the self-concept of black male prisoners in England. Her Fellowship will last eighteen months and is funded for a further six months by the Getty Charitable Trust and the Lankelly Chase Trust.
An excellent programme of Sunday Promenade concerts (24), many given by instrumental award holders, were attended by 9,451 people and run by Penny Robson and her team of volunteers. In addition, Gerald Gifford, Honorary Keeper of Music, gave four more recitals in his series His Lordship's Delight, each attended by approximately 80 people. A Christmas concert devised by Christopher Brown attracted an audience of 170 people.
Renaissance funding allows the Fitzwilliam to support the Museums Development Officer, Liz Hide, who works across the seven other University museums supporting fundraising, marketing, staff development, and the sharing of skills and resources. With a modest budget to support outreach activities, she facilitated collaboration between the smaller museums and the Fitzwilliam Museum in a programme of events including a family summer trail and the Big Draw event in October 2007, while also supporting activities in individual museums, from intensive projects engaging small 'hard to reach' groups to large events like Twilight at the Museums, where up to 4,000 people visited the museums during a single evening. Nearly 10,000 people took part in these activities during 2007-08; more than 50 % visiting one or more of the museums for the first time. Projects included poetry workshops in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, jazz evenings at the Whipple Museum, an oral history project at Kettle's Yard, dinosaur activity boxes at the Sedgwick Museum, work with schools at the Scott Polar Research Institute Museum, and a project with a group of Young Carers which involved four of the museums working together for the first time. The 'Fens through the Lens' photography competition in the University Museum of Zoology has secured additional Renaissance funding and will tour a number of museum and community venues in the Fenland region. The success of these activities demonstrates the benefit of sharing staff and improving communication.
Participation in the East of England Museum Hub (with Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service (lead), Colchester and Ipswich Museums, and Museums Luton) was an important aspect of the Museum's activity throughout the year, as evidenced in this Report. The scheme is designed to increase and sustain participation in museums by an ever-widening range of people. It supports learning programmes for all ages; improvements to access to and use of collections; better collections development, care, and interpretation; workforce development; and the effective use of resources through the development of partnerships. Its objectives, therefore, are aligned with those of the Museum.
In 2007-08, work continued as before and funding supported 22 full- and part-time staff working on eleven programme areas: Real Teaching - Region-wide Initial Teacher Training project; Strengthening Foundations for Learning - schools education programmes devised by the Museum; The Active Museum - for audiences other than schools, e.g. adults and families; Access to Reserve Collections - access to prints, drawings, archives, music, manuscripts; Redisplay of Collections - enabling the Greek and Roman gallery refurbishment; Electronic Access to Knowledge and Collections Information - support for IT including web services, photography, and documentation - staff and non-pay costs (including the Sedgwick Museum); A survey of Natural History in the East of England - with the Zoology Museum; Workforce Development and Diversity; Financial Management; Museum Development Support - University Museum Development Officer; and Marketing - press, publicity, and website promotion.
A national Review of Renaissance (2003-08) was commissioned by MLA and a report is due in early 2009 which will inform the direction of the 2009-11 programme.
The Marketing and Press Office develops and maintains the Museum's public profile, and supports and promotes its public programmes and other areas of its work. During 2007-08, marketing and press work covered fifteen temporary exhibitions, several acquisitions, conservation matters, the redisplay of the Chinese vases, Museums and Galleries Month activities, and the Museum's education and events programmes. This activity resulted in 540 items, spanning the national newspapers, regional press, heritage, culture, and lifestyle periodicals and specialist journals, as well as online coverage, broadcast interviews, and regional television and radio. Development of the Museum's web news feeds ensured that online arts listings were kept up to date. Extensive preparation for promoting the 2009 exhibition Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science, and the Visual Arts, was undertaken.
In addition to 'What's On' events and exhibitions leaflets, the Museum's email newsletter, eNews, was redesigned as a full colour webpage-style 'flyer' with images, and sent out monthly. Content was developed for the Museum's website, with a focus on news stories for the main page and 'News in Brief' on the Education Department's pages to publicize their work and achievement in partnership with local schools. Many of these news stories were also for dissemination via the Renaissance East website and publications.
The Marketing and Press Office played a leading role in promoting and co-ordinating the Museum's work with other local and regional museums: profile-raising at the 'Big Day Out' event on Parker's Piece and the University Freshers' Fair; planning for the University's first 'Festival of Ideas' (October 2008), and hosting events for partners such as the History of Art Department.
In December 2007 the Marketing and Press Office produced its first short podcast - an introduction to the exhibition From Reason to Revolution: Art and Society in Eighteenth Century Britain by Duncan Robinson - and since then has built and published further episodes covering new exhibitions and other aspects of the Museum's work including the Education Department's 'Source' and 'Headspace' programmes, and a region-wide overview of the events planned for Museums and Galleries Month 2008. These podcasts appeared on the University of Cambridge's front-page Mediaplayer, the Museum's website itself, and also on iTunes. The exhibition-based podcasts will be re-worked to generate additional content for the Museum's eGuide.
By the end of the year eGuide, the Fitzwilliam's handheld multimedia guide, offered information on 48 objects in the permanent displays. A contract with Antenna Audio for the hire of purpose-built handsets was signed in June 2008. These provide more stable and visitor-friendly units available at a modest charge. The new system will be developed further to offer themed tours and tours of temporary exhibitions by re-purposing podcast recordings.
A new computer-based visitor survey was installed at the Courtyard entrance in May 2008. This uses a touch screen terminal allowing visitors to complete an electronic questionnaire by selecting options on screen. Uptake has been very good, comparing favourably with returns for paper questionnaires, and the terminal is now being used to gather data on an ongoing basis. The Digivey suite includes analysis software and is a Renaissance initiative.
As part of the MLA/Renaissance Designation Challenge Fund programme (2006-08), the Museum developed a number of resources on the theme of 'Hidden Histories'. Exploring some of the stories behind the names and faces connected with objects, these present a new perspective on the collections presented as a gallery trail, new information for Museum guides, lunchtime talks, and an online exhibition. A 'Hidden Histories' area of the Fitzwilliam website, which can be added to over time, has been developed. Besides research and creation of content by Uta Protz, the programme included a significant amount of core documentation and photography.
There has been a general levelling out of website use at 2,750 visitors a day, suggesting that it may have reached its capacity audience in its current form. However, further development of the site, temporary exhibitions, and marketing initiatives are likely to have an impact on this trend. The following online exhibitions were added in the year: 'Portrait of the Month' (Department of Drawings, Paintings, and Prints); Egyptian Galleries online - Arabic versions of label texts for objects; Passport to the Egyptian Afterlife, 'The Book of the Dead of Ramose' virtual exhibition; seven podcasts produced by Marketing and Press; and Christopher Le Brun virtual exhibition (including images of the 50 works included in the exhibition, an introduction, an artist's biography, and a short introduction to etching techniques). In November 2007, a new website was launched on the Kangxi vases, broken in January 2005, to accompany their return to display (http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/chinesevases/). The site, the first in the new 'Conserving Art' series, illustrates the extent of the disaster and follows the methods used in the conservation of the vases, was designed by Cipher Arts, and includes animations and film clips of the restoration process and a timelapse of the complete reassembly of one vase taken by Chris Titmus, of the Hamilton Kerr Institute (HKI).
An interactive floorplan and gallery guide for the Fitzwilliam website has been developed by Stride Design, funded by Renaissance. Offering a printable floorplan, the resource provides a short introduction to each of the gallery spaces together with a brief history of the architecture and displays.
The services of the Photography Department are increasingly important to the Museum's work. The transition to digital photography and the supply of images, either as digital files or as high definition black and white or colour prints, was completed during the year. A revised pricing structure, leaflet, and web pages followed, offering 'high resolution' images for publication and less expensive images for private, educational, and research use. The Museum's photographic services generated sufficient income during 2007-08 to cover the cost of the senior photographer's post.
Two major imaging projects for collections catalogues were undertaken during the year: the Catalogue of Italian Drawings by David Scrase (CUP) and The Immortal Stone: Chinese jades from the Neolithic period to the twentieth century by James Lin (Scala, 2009). Photography for a catalogue of the Museum's English Delftware was also started. Other major projects included a sixteenth century Flemish Book of Hours (MS 1058-1975), photographed in its entirety for a facsimile to be published by the Folio Society. Digital photography has also enabled us to photograph other items, such as manuscripts and albums, in their entirety. This would have been prohibitively expensive if film had been used. Items included five albums, five illuminated manuscripts,1 and the supply of 450 images to The Art Fund for their photographic survey of the works of art they have helped UK museums and galleries to acquire. Digital images were also provided for the exhibition catalogues: Sir Sydney Cockerell, 'I turned it into a palace…' (2008-09), Darwin (2009), and Robert Hills (2008), and for the University's 800th anniversary publications.
Both members of the Photographic Sales team left the Museum during the year and although it left the Photographic Service short-staffed, the Museum took the opportunity to review and streamline the systems and reassess future staffing to establish a new Photographic Library service. During the course of the year, Renaissance funding for part-time Project Photographers ceased but a full-time appointment to work on images for the collections database and OPAC continued. Andrew Morris, Head of Photographic Service, was awarded a Cambridge University M.A. Degree in January 2008, after 27 years' service.
1 Sketch books: 3933 William Ashworth. A portfolio
containing views of Lord Fitzwilliam’s Mount Merrion Estate
and his house in Richmond; PD. 98–1973
Flower album by Joseph von Plenck; PD. 109–1973 Flower
album by Nicholas Robert; PD.117–1973 Flower album by
Georg Ehret; PD. 134–1973 Album of Chinese flower
drawings.
Manuscripts: MS 159 Primer of Claude of France, 16th C.,
French; MS 176 Chronicle of the World in roll form, 15th C.,
French; MS 298 The Metz Pontifical, 14th C., French; MS 370
Picture book of the life of Christ, 13th C., English; MS
83–1972 Italian model book of initials.
A new network link was established and internal networking hardware was installed in preparation for staff moving to 20 and 22 Trumpington Street. As part of the Museum's closer working with the HKI, the Museum's easel paintings conservation department, responsibility for HKI ICT systems was transferred to the Museum ICT Manager and a part-time computing technician was appointed. From July 2008 the Mill House at Whittlesford will be completely re-wired, including new data cabling designed in-house.
Planning and purchasing (air-conditioning system, racks, etc.) has proceeded for the deployment of the second server room in the Museum basement. This will be completed in 2008-09. Two new servers were purchased to replace out of warranty equipment, part of the planned 'infrastructure split' into two server rooms, to reduce risk, and increase file storage capacity. A rolling programme of infrastructure upgrades was continued.
Approximately 6,000 records and images have been imported to the collections management system this year.
To support the requirements of scheduling an ever increasing number of events and activities, Artifax, an events scheduling and reporting package, was purchased for use by the Education Department administrator. While the new system is built and records are migrated it will run in parallel with current systems until early 2009.
The introduction of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), the University-wide Telecoms project, required an internal network upgrade and a CUDN link upgrade. The first 40 new VoIP handsets were deployed in July 2008. Completion of handset deployment (80 more) and other matters related to the VoIP project are expected by the end of 2008.
Cambridge Images Project (CIP) undertook a 'trial' of a software system - Canto Cumulus - which was considered a possible centralized solution for the project goal: a University-wide Image Management System, linked to the Institutional Repository for preservation and images deliverable for use in teaching, research, publications, marketing, and publicity. Whilst the trial was useful (in clarifying requirements such as work-flows and interfaces) the cost of development and implementation was a concern and the trial of an alternative, federated solution was planned. It is the partners' intention to share the findings with a wider community of museums and collections in the University.
The IT Office continues to work with colleagues in support of all ICT aspects of various on-going projects such as Hidden Histories, Interactive Floorplan, and preparations for the exhibitions From the Land of the Golden Fleece (September 2008), Whistler Prints (September 2008), I Turned It into a Palace: Sir Sydney Cockerell and the Fitzwilliam Museum (November 2008), Utamaro books (2009), and Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science, and the Visual Arts. The Computer Associate, Dave Gunn, single-handedly managed the service for several months mid-year, until the re-appointment of Shaun Osborne as ICT Manager in March 2008. The team was soon increased by the return of the Museum's first Computer Officer, David Shaw, in a Renaissance-funded role as second Computer Associate, and then by Eike Friedrich at the Hamilton Kerr Institute.
90% of staff had an individual review in 2007-08, resulting in a large increase in requests for training and development and growing numbers of staff undertaking the various sessions offered. Weekly 'bite-size' sessions on topics such as Access, Equality and Diversity, Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Others, to which staff of other Cambridge museums were invited, were attended by 1,660 staff. A number of visitor services and security staff undertook NVQs.
Staff retention remains stable with turnover at 5% in 2007 (12% in 2006). For the period 2006-07 to 2007-08, a two-thirds fall in sickness absence was achieved by careful management of staff absence and application of University procedures. The Museum adopted a Diversity and Equality Policy and action plan and appointed six Diversity Champions.
Sixteen one- and two-week placements for work experience students were provided in the year involving all departments of the Museum. 'Young Museum Advocates', a volunteer programme for young people (aged 11 to 15 years) was developed by the Fitzwilliam, the Cambridge County and Folk Museum, and Museum of Technology, with Chesterton Community College, Cambridge, to become advocates for museums among their peers. Weekend training sessions and museum visits resulted in a podcast, produced by the group, and published on the Fitzwilliam website.
National and international links were developed through membership of the European Museums Forum and work on the development of volunteers.
At the beginning of the year the Education Department moved into 22 Trumpington Street and at the end of it the Museum acquired the use of number 20, as office accommodation for Marketing, Development, Fitzwilliam Museum Enterprises, and the Friends, in exchange for number 5 Trumpington Street.
One million pounds was raised (or pledged) for the refurbishment of the Greek and Roman gallery project from sources including: DCMS/Wolfson Foundation; Trinity College, Cambridge; the University's Estate Management and Building Services Division; the A. G. Leventis Foundation; the Stavros Niarchos Foundation; the J. F. Costopoulos Foundation; and an anonymous private donor whose offer included match-funding up to £250,000. Work will commence in early autumn 2008 and should be completed by the end of 2009.
Other projects included the replacement of two goods lifts and roller racking for prints and drawings storage. In Grove Lodge the entrance porch was rebuilt and extensive works to re-wire, refurbish, and redecorate the Director's residence were undertaken. Maintaining a satisfactory environment for the conservation of the works of art in old, Grade I listed buildings continues to be a challenge. Even in the more recently built sections the performance has been uneven and continues to give concern. When the Café waste pipes became blocked, a large section of the library and rare book store had to be closed, causing loss of access to manuscripts for some months, an inconvenience to visiting scholars and staff. Fortunately, there was no damage to the collections.
The Collections Division is responsible for the display of the collections and the arrangement of the galleries, the temporary exhibitions programme, loans-in and loans-out, cataloguing of the collections, conducting and supervising research into them, their overall care, and for making them accessible to the public and to scholars. All five curatorial departments provide teaching for a number of undergraduate courses in the University and offer their support for use of the collections by postgraduate students from within this University and others. Much of this Division's work is supported by Central Services and it depends on the Conservation Division for advice and remedial and preventative care of the collections.
A significant proportion of the keepers' time is spent in researching the collections in preparation for their display, for temporary exhibitions, and for publication. Research on the Macclesfield Psalter, and on the Cambridge collections of illuminated manuscripts for their publication, was continued by Dr Stella Panayotova who also devised an exhibition for 2008-09 to mark the centenary of the arrival of Sir Sydney Cockerell as Director and wrote the catalogue. The success of the Cambridge Illuminations (2005) exhibition extended to Australia where The Medieval Imagination, an exhibition of illuminated manuscripts in the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne (March to June 2008) attracted a record number of visitors - over 100,000. The Fitzwilliam was the largest lender (30 of the 100 manuscripts displayed in Melbourne) and provided expert advice to the exhibition, both curatorial and technical, and contributed to the catalogue.
In the Department of Antiquities the outcome of two years' applied research into the Egyptian material was presented at an international conference, held in the Museum, 'Decorated surfaces on Ancient Egyptian Objects: Technology, Deterioration, and Conservation', from 6 to 9 September 2007. See the Conservation Division section, below, for a full report. Work on editing the papers for publication has continued.
As the year closed (June 2008), the AHRC announced its award of the largest museum grant (£227,000) in the Museums, Archives, and Libraries Scheme to Dr Lucilla Burn's 'Greece and Rome at the Fitzwilliam Museum', a three-year project with the Faculty of Classics.
The Severis lecture (14 May 2008) was given by Professor Vassos Karageorghis: Sidon, Cyprus, and the Aegean: fifteen hundred years of interconnections, and the Glanville lecture (9 September 2007) by Professor Barry Kemp: Ahkenaten's mud-brick city: residents of the past, guardians of the present.
Use of the Reference Library is increasing; both members of the University and the general public enjoy use of its holdings.
Lady Juliet Tadgell again lent, from the Trustees of the Rt Hon. Olive, Countess of Fitzwilliam's Chattels Settlement Trust, two handsome friezes by Stubbs, Mares and foals without a background and Whistlejacket and two other stallions with Simon Cobb, the groom and Reynolds' full-length portrait of Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, which it was fascinating to see alongside the unfinished double-portrait by Reynolds of Lord Rockingham and Edmond Burke.
Gallery 2 was re-hung to accommodate the loan from the Scott-Finnis Trust of a selection of the best of the collection of Victorian paintings formed by Sir David Scott. This provided the opportunity to hold a highly successful symposium on Victorian Narrative Painting organized by Jane Munro and Nicola Gauld. Other loans to the Museum included Constable's Willy Lotts' house from the Stour [the valley-farm] and an Adoration of the Shepherds by Il Garofalo.
Newly acquired pictures were displayed: Sir John Everett Millais' youthful study for Cimon and Iphigenia, after it had been cleaned and restored at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, in Gallery 2 and the portraits of Onofrius and Anna Scheit by Bartel Beham, allocated to the Museum by Government's Art in Lieu scheme, in the Rothschild Gallery (32). These are the only paintings by him in a British collection.
In the Glaisher Gallery, jewellery and tiles were put on permanent display alongside the portrait miniatures in the drawers of the new display cases in the centre of the gallery. Displays of Spanish glass and pewter were part of the rotating material of applied arts in the top of the same cases. The 'Object of the Month' in the Chinese Gallery continues to be popular. A new case for Applied Arts was set up in the Twentieth Century Gallery for the display of late twentieth century and contemporary glass, silver, and woodwork. Three of the display cases in the Adeane Gallery were re-organized to incorporate recent acquisitions and to rotate the collections.
A Sèvres monteith (seau crennelé) bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam by Dr Louis C. G. Clarke in 1960 was the subject of a spoliation claim by the heir of its earlier owner, Heinrich Rothberger of Vienna. The claim was submitted to the Spoliation Advisory Panel, and, on its recommendation, the monteith was deaccessioned and sent to the claimant. Prior to the claim the Museum had not been aware that Rothberger's porcelain collection had been seized by the Gestapo and auctioned in Berlin in 1938, before coming onto the market in London in 1939.
After the closing of Howard Hodgkin (September 2007), a joyous celebration of the last fifteen years of his work, From Reason to Revolution, an exhibition devised by Duncan Robinson with the help of Lydia Hamlett, and drawn almost entirely from the Museum's resources, opened in the Mellon Gallery. This explored the numerous paradoxes of the 'Age of Reason' and highlighted various parts of the Museum's collections, notably parts of the Founder's original bequest. The influence of the antique on the professional artists and architects who accompanied Grand Tourists was made clear by the drawings they made in Italy in particular. The social climate in Britain was also examined through art works relating to prominent individuals, working people, and rising professionals. Scientific and industrial advances were documented alongside representations of the fundamental human conflicts that they brought to the fore. Finally a section witnessed the slave trade and the dramatic campaigns against it that culminated in its abolition in Britain in 1807. This was investigated alongside works that showed responses to the revolutions in America and France. The Mellon Gallery was then closed and used for the temporary storage of drawings from the Graham Robertson Room whilst a new racking system was put in place in the mezzanine.
Whilst From Reason to Revolution concentrated on the travels to 'civilized' Europe undertaken by the spoilt wealthy classes, an exhilarating exhibition in the Shiba Gallery, Ethiopian Encounters, provided a unique opportunity to view rare and interesting watercolours painted by the explorer and draughtsman Sir William Cornwallis Harris (1807-48) during a two-year visit to Ethiopia as leader of an expedition mounted by the British Government to establish relations with Sahela Selassie King of Shoa (Shewa) between 1841 and 1843. It included images of extraordinary historical importance and representations of the highly diverse ethnic peoples whom Harris encountered during his stay. The drawings were on loan from the estate of the late Quentin Keynes, and their display organized by Jane Munro coincided with the celebration of the Ethiopian millennium. It was supported by the Millennium Committee of the Ethiopian Embassy in London. To coincide with this exhibition, a display of beautiful photographs by Marc-Henri Auffève of contemporary Ethiopia and its peoples was shown in the Courtyard and a programme of activities was organized which led to new partnerships including with the Centre for African Studies.
At the start of the year, the Shiba Room played host to the display of a spectacular Egyptian Book of the Dead, dating to the 13th century BC, in the exhibition Passport to the Egyptian Afterlife. Written on papyrus for the supervisor of royal archives, Ramose, it had remained in storage at the museum since its arrival in 1922, with the exception of two sections which had been on display for about 40 years. As a result, the beautiful colours of the vignettes which illustrate the papyrus and the borders have remained in unusually good condition; due to the fugitive nature of some of the pigments, the papyrus will only rarely be on view in the future. The papyrus had been the subject of an intensive conservation project and the exhibition provided an opportunity to view almost the entire papyrus, together with detailed information about the processes of conservation, as well as the results of investigations into the painting techniques employed by the Egyptian artisans.
The Gentle Art in the Charrington Print Room was the first of a two-part survey of the Fitzwilliam's collection of etchings, drypoints, and lithographs by the American artist, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903); the second part is scheduled for autumn 2008. This selection, made by Craig Hartley, concentrated on prints that featured people, ranging from the figures emerging from the shadows in his early 'French set', through intimate domestic scenes of friends and fellow artists in London to the late lithographs of nudes and portraits of his sister-in-law 'Bunnie', made in the 1890s. Whistler's relationships with a number of his friends quickly soured as they became the victims of his sharp wit. On such occasions his butterfly signature acquired a barbed tail to match the sting of his wit, as immortalized in his collection of letters and pamphlets, 'The Gentle Art of Making Enemies', which was featured in the exhibition. The publication of an extensive virtual exhibition will ensure a permanent record.
In the Octagon, Private Pleasures showed illuminated manuscripts from Persia to Paris from the private collection of Denys Spittle (1920-2003), one of the oldest and longest-serving members of the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum. Organized by Stella Panayotova, this celebrated the unique beauty of illuminated manuscripts across chronological, geographic, and cultural boundaries. The objects displayed represented literary and artistic traditions which flourished from the tenth to the twentieth centuries in masterpieces as diverse as Nizami's Persian Khamsa, a Byzantine Gospel Book, a Parisian history of the French kings, a Bruges Book of Hours, the popular English Brut Chronicle, an Ottoman Qu'ran, and a Venetian copy of Cicero. The exhibition will be re-created at the Norfolk Record Office in 2009.
Then followed an exhibition of French Tapestry and Illustration, organized jointly by Carol Humphrey, Honorary Keeper of Textiles, and Nicholas Robinson, Curatorial Assistant at the Department of Manuscripts and Printed Books. Eight French twentieth-century Aubusson tapestries, bequeathed to us in 1997 through the American Friends by Mr and Mrs George Woodbridge of Raleigh North Carolina, were hung on the walls, whilst in tablecases works on paper from the Walter Strachan Archive given by Geoffrey Strachan in 2007 were displayed. Walter Strachan (1903-94) was a teacher, translator, poet, Francophile, and promoter of the arts, known especially as the 'defender in England of the livre d'artiste'. His links with the tapestry makers Lurçat and Prassinos made it particularly appropriate for a combined display of tapestries and his archives, which included illustrations from livres d'artiste, menus, and cartes de voeux. Strachan's wide connections in artistic circles were reflected in the exhibition, which included original art work by Abram Krol and Henry Moore.
The final Octagon exhibition of the year, staged by Mark Blackburn, Anglo-Saxon Art in the Round, went on to Norwich Castle Museum. It showed for the first time early Anglo-Saxon coins from the De Wit collection, recently purchased by the Fitzwilliam with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and The Art Fund. The coins included gold shillings and silver pennies which display an innovative range of designs drawn from Classical and Germanic sources, with bold images of people, animals, plants, and geometric motifs both rich in detail and sophisticated in concept. The coins were juxtaposed with contemporary ornamental metalwork drawn from the Fitzwilliam and other museums in the region, illuminating the previously lost treasures of an artistically vibrant period of history. The display included enlarged photographs of the coins, enabling better the public fully to appreciate the range of design of the coins and the element of fantasy expressed by the moneyers who created them. It was accompanied by materials and events for the public funded by Renaissance.
As one of the Museum's contributions to China Now, the UK's largest ever festival of Chinese culture, a selection made by David Scrase of Chinese nineteenth century flower drawings from the Broughton Collection was shown in Made for Export in the Shiba Gallery. These were drawn by Chinese artists to give an idea of the flora of China to British and other European botanists who at that time had no access to the Chinese hinterland. A few albums of paintings on pith paper were also displayed together with part of a Chinese scroll showing the cultivation of mulberry trees for the silk industry.
The other contribution to China Now was a display by James Lin in Gallery 28 of Qing dynasty Imperial Jades, carved during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-96). Some of the pieces bear poems by the Emperor himself, emphasizing the important status of jade in Chinese art and culture. This gave a foretaste of the exhibition projected for the Octagon of Chinese Jades in spring 2009 to coincide with the publication by Dr Lin of all the Museum's Chinese hard-stones.
In the Charrington Print Room 'True and lively portraicture': Seventeenth-century portrait prints, was a display organized by Elenor Ling which featured a selection of the finest seventeenth-century portrait prints from the Museum's collection, including engravings, etchings, and mezzotints by print-makers such as the de Passe family, Lucas Vorsterman, Wenceslaus Hollar, and John Smith. Most of the prints were donated in 1933 by John Charrington, Honorary Keeper of Prints from 1909 until his death in 1939. Work on digitizing Charrington's portrait collection is ongoing, and a large proportion is available with images on the Museum's Online Public Access Catalogue.
The year ended with a delightful exhibition of watercolours and drawings, The field calls me to labour, organized by Nicola Gauld. This featured the watercolours of nineteenth century rural Britain by Robert Hills (1769-1844) and his contemporaries. Hills was at the vanguard in promoting the appreciation of watercolour painting among British audiences of the early nineteenth century. His watercolours - often intimate and spontaneous 'snapshots' of nature and the countryside around him - are highly original, with a freshness of vision that offers a revealing glimpse into the lives of those who worked on the land. Drawn exclusively from the Museum's collections, other artists included in the exhibition were David Cox, Peter de Wint, James Ward, and Edwin Landseer.
The last exhibition in the Shiba, arranged by Craig Hartley, was of recent work by the artist Christopher Le Brun. His series Fifty Etchings 2005, made over the course of a year and employing an extraordinary variety of subtle etching techniques, was complemented by the display of the artist's only medal and by his large painting The Eye's Castle (1995-2006) given by the Friends to mark the Directorship of Duncan Robinson (1995-2007).
In the summer, On the Shoulders of Giants, an exhibition of photographs in the Mellon Gallery by the Cambridge photographer, Howard Guest, offered an intriguing insight into the working life of one of the world's most celebrated academic institutions, the University of Cambridge. Portraits ranged from the Vice-Chancellor to academics, students, porters, surgeons, and a glass blower in locations as various as the Radio Astronomy Observatory, the Fitzwilliam Museum's own conservation studio, and a tower sealed for years after scientists' atomic experiments.
Once again important acquisitions came through the Acceptance in Lieu of Tax (AIL) process, by which works of art are accepted by HM Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated (often at the wish or specification of the former owner) to accredited museums. The Department of Paintings, Drawings, and Prints benefited from the AIL system in the period under discussion. Two portraits of Onophrius Scheit and his wife, Anna, née Mem[m]inger, painted by Bartel Beham in 1528, were allocated to the Museum. This was a hybrid allocation as the amount of tax offset against the value of the paintings was less than their value. The acquisition was made possible by a substantial donation from the Trustees of the Crescent Trust and the remainder was found from the Cunliffe Fund. Onophrius Scheit is described as a rent-schreiber, a job which can be defined as half way between an accountant and a highly ranked tax collector. Later he became a Klosterrichter (monastic judge) and finally ducal clerk to the Exchequer for Duke Ludwig X at Munich. The acquisition of these two portraits transforms the Museum's holding of German Renaissance painting and marvellously complements its excellent collection of German prints.
Several gifts mark the directorship of Duncan Robinson: from Daniel Katz, a fine drawing, The Lovers, by Bernard Meninsky; from Dr W. M. Keynes, an oval stained glass panel of a ship made in the Netherlands in the late sixteenth century and acquired by his father, the late Sir Geoffrey Keynes, from the sale of Hengrave Hall in 1952; and two prints - from Charles Booth-Clibborn, Die Rute, 2007, a woodcut printed from two blocks in blue and yellow by Georg Baselitz (b. 1938); and from David Scrase, an etching of an Ornamental design by Jacopo Ciucci (active second half of the sixteenth century) from a series of twelve supposed to be after details of frescoes by Giovanni da Udine.
Other gifts with a Fitzwilliam connection include a large group of drawings by George Mackley, given by Margaret Chamberlain. These had been given to her husband Eric Chamberlain, formerly Keeper of Prints at the Museum, by Mackley's executrix, Monica Poole. In memory of Graham Pollard, former Deputy Director and Keeper of Coins and Medals, our first etching by Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869) given by David Scrase, and also by him, to celebrate Anne Lonsdale's Chairmanship of the Syndicate, a Chinese porcelain snuff bottle famille rose, Daoguang mark, and perod (1821-50), decorated with boys playing in a garden: one holding a branch of osmanthus which represents high achievement in the official exams, one dragging a large peach along the ground which represents longevity.
The Art Fund and the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund contributed generously to the acquisition of Marco Benefial's The vision of St Philip Neri, an excellent example of Roman religious painting of 1721. Again both these funds generously contributed towards the purchase of two prints from James McNeill Whistler's First Venice Set. Both prints, which were made 1879-80, are printed in brown ink and involve etching and drypoint. The Beggars was printed with surface tone in brown ink, and for the even more atmospheric The Doorway, Whistler also used the roulette and printed it with surface tone and 'monotype' wiping. The MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund also enabled the gift from the Friends of Pablo Picasso's Suen**L371**o y mentira de Franco (Dreams and lies of Franco), a portfolio including Picasso's title, poem, and two prints (etching and aquatint) published in 1937.
The Howard Hodgkin exhibition attracted the generosity of Paul Cornwall-Jones who gave two of the set of four soft-ground etchings by Hodgkin entitled 'In the Museum of Modern Art': Late Afternoon in the Museum of Modern Art, printed from one plate in black and published in 1979 and Early Evening in the Museum of Modern Art, printed also in 1979 from one plate in black, with hand-colouring in black gouache.
Nicholas and Judith Goodison continue to give contemporary objects through The Art Fund, including this year a porcelain Black and White Mist Tall Box with gintekisai (silver mist) overglaze and a cast black glass lid by Takahiro Kondo (b. 1958). From the Biffen Fund the purchase of a hitherto unknown Academic nude study of a boy and a bearded man, by Richard Parkes Bonington added considerable interest to the Museum's small collection of his work.
The Museum was touched to receive from Jane Roberts, in memory of Marianne Joannides, Gabriel Ferrier's Sketchbook of views in Italy; from Professor Paul Joannides, in memory of Philip Conisbee, an eighteenth century drawing, Landscape capriccio with figures; and from Alice Fleet, in memory of her husband, Stephen Fleet, Honorary Treasurer of the Friends and Master of Downing, a fired clay bottle, made in Corinth about 570 BC and decorated in the black-figure technique with three rows of long-haired women walking in procession.
The Syndics approved the acquisition of the group of marked up and corrected proofs of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, of which the original manuscript was given by the author in 1911. Generous grants have been received from the Friends of the Fitzwilliam, the Friends of the National Libraries, the John Murray Charitable Trust, the B. H. Breslauer Foundation, the Marlay Group, the Getty Trust, the Robert Gavron Charitable Trust, Macmillan Publishers, Mr Nicholas Baring, Dr Tom Rosenthal, and various other supporters.
The Department of Coins and Medals continues its active programme of acquisitions and grateful thanks are noted to the following for their gifts: Ritchie W. Post (via Cambridge in America) for a collection of 335 coins, tokens, and paper notes formed by the late Professor F. Martin Post (d. 2005) as a teaching collection when he was Professor of Business at Orange Coast College in Orange County, CA; to his son, Mr Ritchie Post, who also donated to the Fitzwilliam $150,000 to establish a Visiting Fellowship in memory of his father and a Book-Purchasing Fund in memory of his mother, Margaret R. Post; to Professor Giles F. Carter for a collection of 456 Roman coins formed for study and for metrological analysis; to Professor Ted Buttrey for various ancient and modern coins and banknotes; to the Friends of the Museum for Cambridge penny of Henry I, type 10 - a unique, newly discovered coin, first of this issue from Cambridge mint; and lastly to Mrs Gillian Surr for a collection of British military medals, miniature medals, and regimental badges and brooches formed by Hugh Kenneth Lapage (1916-2006), Principal Assistant at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1980.
The Jeeps Fund provides money to purchase oriental coins: this year 342 coins have been bought from it - Islamic, Indian, and Far Eastern. With money provided by former Syndic John Porteous, in memory of Philip Grierson, three early seventeenth century Bavarian broadsides publishing edicts on coinage forbidding the circulation of rival foreign coinage were acquired. The Burn Fund and the Buttrey Fund helped buy Ancient coins, the Grierson Fund medieval coins, and some modern coins were bought from the Buttrey Fund as well.
At the end of July 2008 the total number of object records on the central collections database had reached over 161,000. This represents an increase of nearly 12,000 records over the year. Nearly one third of the Museum's collections now have digital records, the majority of which are available on OPAC (the online public access version of the catalogue). Much of this increase is the result of the ongoing Renaissance-funded retrospective documentation and digitization of the coins and print collections by two full-time members of staff. Prints being scanned are mainly portraits and work has continued from the sequence of engravings to mezzotints. The majority of prints acquired since 1997 have been added to the database. The latest batches include works by Frank Auerbach, Pablo Picasso, Hughie O'Donoghue, Howard Hodgkin, the large collection of works by twentieth century and contemporary artists given by the Print Studio, Cambridge, and the recent purchases of two Whistler prints, The Beggars and The Doorway. Additions to the coin records include Roman coins, mainly gold and silver pieces from the early and central centuries of the Empire. With this upload the entirety of the Museum's Roman collection from Augustus (27 BC-14 AD) to Septimius Severus (193-211 AD) was brought online, excepting only acquisitions made during 2007, and makes the Museum's Roman Imperial Collections one of the largest online.
For Applied Arts, the collections of Oriental weapons and armour, and European silver were catalogued and transferred to the central database.
Feedback from users of the online catalogue consistently demonstrates the value of images of objects and 15,000 images were added to the catalogue during the year. Further work on developing data standards, improving the quality of the information on the database, and the ease with which it can be retrieved has continued with the assistance of central documentation staff.
The Conservation Division, which incorporates the Hamilton Kerr Institute and includes conservation in all disciplines in the Museum, has experienced a busy and fruitful year, with numerous practical conservation interventions undertaken, and all members of staff have been involved in lecturing, seminars, and educational outreach activities. Research, often in collaboration with other institutions, was an important aspect of the Division's achievements, and interns continued to make valuable contributions. Towards the end of the period, two new staff members were welcomed, Richard Farleigh and Rupert Featherstone.
In September 2007 an international conference 'Decorated Surfaces on Ancient Egyptian Objects: Technology, Deterioration, and Conservation' was co-organized by Julie Dawson, assisted by other Museum conservators and staff, together with the Institute of Conservation (ICON) Archaeology Group. The two-day event, which attracted 110 participants, was preceded by a seminar day which focused on objects examined and treated during the Egyptian Galleries refurbishment project and was followed by post-conference studio tours, lectures, and workshops in the Museum. The attendance at the conference of one Sudanese and four Egyptian colleagues was generously sponsored by the Marlay Group. The proceedings will be available in English and in Arabic. Part I of the papyrus conservation project concluded with the display of the Book of the Dead of Ramose in the Passport to the Egyptian Afterlife exhibition (June to September 2007) and papyrus conservator Renée Waltham progressed to Part II of the project, which comprises conservation of the rest of the Museum's papyri.
In the return part of an exchange, Julie Dawson undertook a two month attachment in the Department of Conservation, Documentation, and Science at the British Museum (October and November 2007). She worked principally on the examination and treatment of Attic pots. On study leave in April 2008, she undertook conservation work at the site of Tel El-Amarna in Egypt. She then visited conservation projects in Cairo and gave a lecture at the Department of Conservation, Faculty of Archaeology, University of Cairo. During the year she supervised two conservation internships in the Department of Antiquities conservation laboratory and acted as an assessor for candidates of the national scheme for the professional accreditation of conservators. In 2008, the principal conservation activity for the Department of Antiquities conservator and technicians was planning for the project to refurbish the Greek Gallery (which commenced in August 2008) and associated technical examination, research, and conservation work.
For the Department of Applied Arts, conservator Jo Dillon cleaned, repaired, and stabilized objects for the permanent displays including silver for the two new cases installed in the Armoury Gallery and bronzes and ceramics for the Korean and Glaisher Galleries, as well as for temporary exhibitions and for loans. With volunteer help from some of the Friends, she repacked a collection of over 600 earthenware sherds for the Glaisher Sherds Project and, from these, identified and bonded numerous joins including reassembly of two of the most complete and highly fragmented vessels. Steady progress was made on the condition survey of Oriental weapons to identify objects' treatment needs and those that may benefit from further investigation, such as analysis or radiography. Many need some treatment, about half of these requiring priority action. She carried out X-radiography for the Museum and for several external clients, including examining a large bronze écorché horse on loan to the Museum. She began to research and radiograph the important collection of excavated bronzes, in preparation for the technical section of the forthcoming catalogue.
In the Department of Manuscripts and Printed Books, Robert Proctor completed the conservation of the Macclesfield Psalter (MS 1-2005). The manuscript came to the Museum in its eighteenth-century binding, broken in three parts. The spine had been damaged during a previous binding campaign, reducing some bifolia to loose single leaves. Pine folds were reconstructed and the text block re-sewn. It was re-bound in boards of quarter sawn oak with alum tawed goatskin covers and brass clasps in a style characteristic of late medieval English manuscripts. Robert Proctor's full report on the conservation and rebinding of the manuscript is included in the recently published commentary volume and complete reproduction (Stella Panayotova, The Macclesfield Psalter, Thames & Hudson, October 2008) and in an interactive film in the series Conserving Art on the Museum website (http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/).
Robert Proctor also spent time at the Monastery of St Catherine in Sinai, as part of a multinational conservation team completing a six year survey of the monastery's collection.
Svetlana Taylor finished work, begun in November 2007 with a generous grant from the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust, on Thomas Hardy's manuscript of Jude the Obscure. Since then a number of Hardy scholars have been consulted and several existing manuscripts in London, Cambridge, and Dublin were examined. Based on the findings, it was decided that the manuscript should undergo a full conservation treatment. The original, poor quality, damaged binding was removed. The thick layer of adhesive along the spine was removed. The text block was separated into 436 single folios, each of which underwent conservation treatment. Finally, the conserved manuscript was bound in full goatskin leather. Dr Trevor Emmett from Anglia Ruskin University examined the manuscript using a portable Video Spectral Comparator (VSC2000) which revealed hidden or erased writing. The conserved manuscript will be displayed in the exhibition I turned it into a Palace (November 2008 to March 2009) next to the recently acquired proofs of Jude the Obscure, annotated by Hardy.
One of the Museum's finest Flemish Books of Hours (MS 1058-1975) was examined by Spike Bucklow at the Hamilton Kerr Institute for a forthcoming facsimile to be published by the Folio Society. Using microscopy, ultraviolet, infrared, and transmitted light photography, differences were observed in the technique of the four illuminators. A coat of arms, which had been partly erased and overpainted, was revealed sufficiently to assist in tracing the manuscript's early ownership.
Bryan Clarke carried out conservation of prints and drawings in preparation for a number of exhibitions that included Reason to Revolution, Ethiopian Encounters, two Whistler print exhibitions, The Gentle Art and Palaces in the Night, as well as watercolours by Robert Hills, John Ward, and David Cox for the The fields call me to labour. By April 2008 he had also completed the conservation of 65 Rembrandt etchings. He undertook structural work on a pastel by Wright of Derby wanted for loan and a fragile drawing by Cambiaso which was revealed to be double sided. He made storage enclosures for a small number of broadsheets for the Department of Coins and Medals as well as conserving seven fans for the Department of Applied Arts. He also oversaw large improvements to the storage areas for prints and drawings on the Mezzanine floor.
In October 2007, having made the case for the appointment of an assistant before his retirement and the training opportunity it would offer, he was pleased to learn of the generous support of the Newton Trust. This and matching funding led to the appointment, in July 2008, of Richard Farleigh for three years as Newton Paper Conservator.
The Museum continues to benefit from the expertise of external conservators, interns, and other external experts. Penny Bendall began a condition survey of the reserve collection of European ceramics, repairing a number of them on site and conserving a further eight in her studio. Anthony Beech conserved five pieces of fabric-covered furniture, and Brian Jackson worked on the locks of the Tompion Drayton House Clock. Test areas on the back of Glory (sculpture and plinth) by Giovanni Baratta M. 3-1885, were cleaned by Alison Ayres in order to decide on the method to be used for the whole.
In December, Dr Trevor Emmett from the Department of Forensic Science and Chemistry at Anglia Ruskin University identified real and fake gemstones in a small selection of European jewellery and Indian weapons using portable Raman spectroscopy, as a viability trial for a proposed larger survey.
Antiquities and Applied Arts hosted a number of conservation students as part of their continued commitment to providing professional training opportunities. In Applied Arts, Ingrid Seyb, a student on the Ceramic Conservation Course at West Dean College, worked as a volunteer for three weeks in the summer (2007) and Cindy Curtis, a student on the same course, worked for a month in the spring (2008), both on the ceramics collection. During her six-week autumn work placement, Kirstie Williams, a Lincoln University conservation course student, conserved objects in a variety of media as well as assisting with the Technology of Ancient Egyptian Bronzes workshops for the September conference and with various preventive conservation projects. Kathryn Etre, a student from the M.Sc. Degree conservation course at the Institute of Archaeology, University of London, and Dominique Schauss from the B.Sc. Degree conservation course at Cardiff University, undertook internships in the Department of Antiquities. Both worked on the technical examination and conservation of Egyptian funerary material.
Conservation officers assisted with museum-wide environmental monitoring to identify and remedy problems and intervene, e.g. by creating appropriate cased environments for vulnerable new loans in the increasingly dry Southern suite of ground-floor galleries. They advised on new display case designs for the Museum, Colleges, and others. The Museum's pest survey was continued.
At the Hamilton Kerr Institute, the resignation of Ian McClure as Director, to take up the post of Susan More Hillis Chief Conservator at Yale Art Gallery on 1 July, marked the end of an era. Ian, who was also the Assistant Director for Conservation for the Museum, had been at the Hamilton Kerr for over twenty-five years, and under his leadership the Institute has developed into an internationally recognized leader in the field of conservation, as well as a major research centre. More recently he had contributed materially to the Conservation Division at the Museum. The staff and students of the Institute, both past and present, owe him an enormous debt of gratitude and wish him well in his future career.
During this period, the Hamilton Kerr Institute returned twelve paintings to the Museum after treatment, including The Four Day Battle by Abraham Storck, Interior of an Italian Coffee House by Thomas Patch, Italian Landscape and Italians with Dogs by Karel Dujardin, Shore Scene with Shipping by Francis Holman, The Vale of Clwyd by David Cox, Sky Study by Constable, Boy with Goats by Cornelis Saftleven, and Captain and Mrs Hardcastle by John Russell.
Marie Louise Sauerberg, with Lucy Wrapson and two interns, Kristin Kausland and Andrea Sartorius, completed the treatment in-situ of the Sedilia at Westminster Abbey, dated c. 1307. The Westminster Abbey Sedilia is a set of four canopied stalls located in the Sacrarium in Westminster Abbey, painted both front and back and each incorporating a painted figure. Across the surface, there were extensive areas of blistering and tenting paint, and the main aim of conservation treatment was to stabilize the fragile paint layers. In addition, surface cleaning improved its appearance, removing a significant amount of fine, black surface dirt. Work took place on a scaffolding in four phases since the practical work began in January 2008. The conservation treatment was accompanied by technical examination, including x-radiography and dendrochronology, to elucidate the construction and history of the Sedilia.
Ian McClure and Jenny Rose completed the treatment of Stubbs' Grey Horse and Arabian Groom, from Grimsthorpe Castle, and Ian McClure and Kristin Kausland treated Caxton by Daniel Maclise, from Knebworth House, removing the existing distorting strip-lining and replacing it.
Mary Kempski, with students Emma Boyce and Daniela Leonard, completed the treatment of the altarpiece by Siciolante, The Deposition (King's College Chapel), a painting given to the College at the end of the eighteenth century, which was covered with discoloured brown varnish and an underlying grey layer, and disfigured by old retouchings and drips on the surface. After restoration, the painting was returned to King's College Chapel in June.
The reconstruction of Cimabue's crucifix at San Domenico in Arrezzo was completed for the Catholic Chaplaincy in Cambridge. Lara Broecke researched the technical information derived from its conservation about ten years ago at the Soperintendenza in Arezzo. The reconstruction has also enabled the instructions in Cennino Cennini's Libro dell' Arte to be closely followed and evaluated at a practical level.
In January, work started on Sebastiano del Piombo's Adoration of the Shepherds from the Museum. The painting has suffered extensive damage in the past, apparently mostly as a result of its transfer from panel to canvas in the eighteenth century, and there are very large areas of old loss and abrasion. Renate Woudhuysen and Youjin Noh, a first year intern, are carrying out the removal of numerous layers of discoloured and obscuring overpaint and extensive old fills. Despite the damage, the remaining areas of well-preserved paint include most of the important elements of the composition, and are of the highest quality, and the importance of the picture merits the extensive amount of work to be undertaken over the coming years.
An anonymous Dutch seventeenth century painting, The Yarmouth Collection from Norwich Museum, was cleaned by Renate Woudhysen and Daniela Leonard. Close examination revealed that the black clock on the right had been painted by a different hand than the rest of the still-life, obscuring a female head. This second painter had also modified other parts of the composition. The question why the female figure on the right was painted out with the clock remains a puzzle.
The AHRC funded research project on the 'Winsor and Newton Colourman's Manuscript Archive' was completed in March by Dr Mark Clarke and Eike Friedrich. Every recipe in the 17,000 page archive has now been examined, and a record entered for it in the database. Eike Friedrich has built a website to host an online index of the information from the archive.
Information on teaching and related activities carried out by Museum staff is available from the Museum. The full Report will be available shortly.
Martin Allen, 'Coin', in A. Hardy, B. M. Charles, and R. J. Williams, Death and Taxes. The Archaeology of a Middle Saxon Estate Centre at Higham Ferrars, Northamptonshire (Oxford, 2007), p. 133.
Martin Allen, 'Henry II and the English coinage', in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. C. Harper-Bill and N. Vincent (Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer, 2007), pp. 257-77.
Martin Allen, 'Medieval coin', in J. Timby, et al., Settlement on the Bedfordshire Claylands. Archaeology along the A412 Great Barford Bypass, Bedfordshire Archaeology Monograph 8 (Bedford, 2007), p. 285.
Martin Allen (with John A. Davies), 'Coins' in P. A. Emery with E. Rutledge, Norwich Greyfriars: Pre-Conquest Town and Medieval Friary, East Anglian Archaeology 120 (Gressenhall, 2007), pp. 146-7.
Martin Allen, 'The proportions of the denominations in English mint outputs, 1351-1485', British Numismatic Journal 77 (2007), pp. 190-209.
Martin Allen and T. Webb Ware, 'Two notes on Stephen BMC type 7', British Numismatic Journal 77 (2007), pp. 281-3.
Martin Allen, Mark Blackburn, and Adrian Popescu, 271 entries in 'Coin Register 2007', edited by Martin Allen, Philip de Jersey, and Sam Moorhead, British Numismatic Journal, 77 (2007), pp. 307-41.
Martin Allen, 'Finds from a medieval pilgrimage and fair site at West Acre, Norfolk', CCNB Newsletter 43 (Spring 2008), p. 3.
Martin Allen, 201 entries in Numismatic Literature 148 (2006).
Sally-Ann Ashton, Cleopatra and Egypt (Oxford, 2008).
Mark Blackburn (with Kenneth Jonsson), Royal Coin Cabinet, Stockholm, Supplement to Part VI: Anglo-Norman Coins, Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles 54B (British Academy, London, 2007).
Mark Blackburn, 'Obituaries: Graham Pollard', The Independent, 22 December 2007, p. 40.
Mark Blackburn, 'Viking of the Southern Danelaw penny', in P. A. Emery with E. Rutledge, Norwich Greyfriars: Pre-Conquest Town and Medieval Friary, East Anglian Archaeology 120 (Gressenhall, 2007), p. 147.
Mark Blackburn, 'Bibliography for 2005, Sect. 7. Numismatics', Anglo-Saxon England 35 (2007 for 2006), pp. 359-62.
Mark Blackburn, 'Bibliography for 2006, Sect. 7. Numismatics', Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007), pp. 293-6.
Mark Blackburn, 'Presidential Address 2004. Currency under the Vikings. Part 3: Ireland, Wales, Isle of Man, and Scotland in the ninth and tenth centuries', British Numismatic Journal 77 (2007), pp. 119-49.
Mark Blackburn, 'President's review of the year 2006', British Numismatic Journal 77 (2007), pp. 354-6.
Mark Blackburn, 'Obituaries: Graham Pollard', The Independent, 22 December 2007, p. 40.
Mark Blackburn, 'Crosses and conversion: the iconography of the coinage of Viking York ca. 900', Cross and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. K. L. Jolly, C. E. Karkov, and S. L. Keefer (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2007), pp. 172-200.
Mark Blackburn (with Shunji Ouchi and Shinichi Sakuraki), 'Vietnam Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge', Shimonoseki City University Review 51:1-3 (2008), pp. 115-26.
Mark Blackburn, 'The 2006 symposium and beyond', Two Decades of Discovery, ed. T. Abramson, Studies in Early Medieval Coinage 1 (Woodbridge, 2008), 69-72.
Lara Broecke, 'Reconstructing the Past' (On the reconstruction of the Cimabue Crucifix at the Hamilton Kerr Institute), News in Conservation, February 2008, pp. 4-5.
Spike Bucklow, 'A tale of two blues', The Cambridge Illuminations, ed. S. Panayotova (Harvey Miller, London, 2007), pp. 205-14.
Spike Bucklow was the subject of a profile in Research Horizons (University of Cambridge Research Magazine), 5, Spring 2008, p. 32.
Lucilla Burn, 'Recent Acquisitions at the Fitzwilliam Museum', Journal of Hellenic Studies, Archaeological Reports for 2006-07, pp. 191-7.
Mark Clarke, Reviews of: 'Artists' Pigments: A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics: Volume 4' and of 'Natural Dyes - Sources, Tradition, Technology, Science', ICON newsletter, September 2007, pp. 33-4.
Mark Clarke, 'Gems of colour: pigments of the Colourmen', Research Horizons, (University of Cambridge Research Magazine), 5, Spring 2008.
Mark Clarke, 'Nineteenth-century English artists' colourmen's archives as a source of technical information', S. Kroustallis et al. (eds), Art Technology: Sources and Methods, Proceedings of the 2nd symposium of the Art Technological Source Research study group (London, Archetype Publications, 2008), pp. 75-84.
Mark Clarke, 'Asymptotically Approaching the Past: historiography and critical use of sources in art technological source research', in S. Kroustallis et al. (eds), Art Technology: Sources and Methods, Proceedings of the 2nd symposium of the Art Technological Source Research study group (London, Archetype Publications, 2008), pp. 16-22.
William Day, 'A small hoard of Venetian grossi from Jordan', Cercetări numismatice 12-13 (2006-07), pp. 229-36.
Nicola Gauld, exhibition brochure, 'The field calls me to labour' Watercolours of rural England by Robert Hills (1769 - 1844) and his contemporaries.
Craig Hartley, The Gentle Art: Friends and Strangers in Whistler's prints, handlist to the exhibition in the Charrington Print Room, September 2007.
Jonathan Jarrett, 'The Political Range of Áedán mac Gabrán, King of Dál Riata', Pictish Arts Society Journal 17 (2008), pp. 3-24.
James Lin, 'Armour for the Afterlife', in Jane Portal (ed.), The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army (London, British Museum Press, 2007), pp. 180-91. James Lin acted as advisor for the Chinese section in the book, 30,000 Years of Art, (London, Phaidon Press, 2007).
James Lin, 'Khotan Jades from the Collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge', Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology (Belgium, Brepols Publisher, 2007), pp. 117-22.
James Lin, 'Jade: the 'Stone of Heaven'', Research Horizons, Cambridge: University of Cambridge research magazine, 2008, vol. 6, p. 9.
Ian McClure, 'A Developing Approach to the Re-Integration of Medieval Panel Paintings', Postprints of the Image Reintegration conference at Northumbria University in September 2003, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2007, pp. 113-20.
Jane Munro, 'Harris: visual chronicler of Ethiopia and its inhabitants' and catalogue entries in Ethiopian Encounters, exh. cat., Cambridge, 2007, pp. 32-57.
Jane Munro, 'Charles Ricketts (1866-1931) et Charles Shannon (1863-1937): collectionneurs de dessins au tournant du XIXe et du XXe siècle', in Catherine Monbeig Goguel (ed.), L'Artiste Collectionneur de Dessin II. De Giorgio Vasari à aujourd'hui, (Paris, 2007), pp. 149-60.
Jane Munro, Hidden Burne-Jones, book/exhibition review, Print Quarterly, vol. XXV, 1, 2008, pp. 95-7.
Stella Panayotova, editor and co-author with James Marrow, Kay Sutton, and Christine van Ruymbeke, Private Pleasures: Illuminated Manuscripts from Persia to Paris, Cambridge, The Fitzwilliam Museum, 2007.
Stella Panayotova, 'I would be only too happy to collaborate: François Avril on Cambridge Manuscripts', in Quand la peinture était dans les livres: Mélanges en l'honneur de François Avril, ed. M. Hofmann and C. Zöhl (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 247.
Stella Panayotova, 'From Toronto to Cambridge: The illuminated manuscripts of Lord Lee of Fareham', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society vol. XIII, pt. 2 (2005, published 2008), pp.187-220.
Stella Panayotova, 'Guillaume de Deguileville's Pelerinage de l'ame at the Fitzwilliam Museum', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society vol. XIII, pt. 2 (2005, published 2008), 221-30.
Stella Panayotova, nine entries in the exhibition catalogue The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia, and New Zealand, ed. B. Stocks and N. Morgan (Melbourne, 2008), nos. 15, 33, 35, 36, 84, 85, 87, 90, 91.
Julia Poole, 'Curator's Choice' (a silver fruit dish by Gilbert Marks), The Silver Society, Newsletter 65 (October 2007), p. 5.
Julia Poole, 'Contemporary Glass in the Fitzwilliam Museum', Glass Circle News, no. 114 (2008, pp. 12-3).
Julia Poole, Review of Aileen Dawson, 'The Art of Worcester Porcelain 1751-1788, Masterpieces from the British Museum Collection', The Burlington Magazine, Vol. CL (June 2008), pp. 411-2.
Julia Poole, 'Capodimonte Scent Flask', 'Trevor Coldrey Gift', 'Nicholas and Judith Goodison Gift', and 'Dr John Shakeshaft Gift', The Art Fund 2007/2008 Review, p. 17, 154, 156, 159.
Adrian Popescu, 'Pierced Roman coin' in P. Spoerry and M. Hinman, 'Early Saxon and medieval remains adjacent to the round moat, Fowlmere', Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 96 (2007), p. 138.
Christina Rozeik, The papyrus of Nakhtefmut: new life for a Book of the Dead, The Fitzwilliam Museum, 2007.
Christina Rozeik and Julie Dawson (with T. F. Emmett and N. Wood), 'The Egyptian Gallery of the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge University UK): opportunities for the application of Raman spectroscopy and other spectroscopic techniques', P. Vandenbeele and L. Moens (eds), GeoRaman '08: 8th International conference on Raman Spectroscopy Applied to the Earth Sciences - Book of Abstracts, Ghent, Belgium 2-6 June 2008, p. 87.
David Scrase, Willem Pietersz. Buytewech, 'Elegant company on a balustrade overlooking a garden' in In Arte Venustas. Studies on drawings in Honour of Teréz Gerzsi, Szépmávészeti Múzeum (Budapest, 2007), pp. 137-8.
Woudhuysen, R., 'Reconstruction of tempera painting techniques: some examples, including gesso sottile' in S. Kroustallis, J. H. Townsend et al. (eds) Art Technology; Sources and Methods. Proceedings of the 2nd symposium of the Art Technological Source Research study group (London, Archetype Publications, 2008), pp. 166-73.
We gratefully acknowledge support for the Museum from the following individuals and organizations.
The Art Fund
Arts & Humanities Research Council
Association of Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections (AMARC)
Barclays Bank
Bonhams
Mr Jerome Booth
The B. H. Breslauer Foundation
Cambridge City Council
Cambridge University Press
Christie's UK
John Coates Charitable Trust
John S. Cohen Foundation
The Estate of Dennis Cole
J. F. Costopoulos Foundation
Crescent Trust
Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
DCMS/Wolfson Fund
Domino UK Ltd
Eridge Trust
Eskenazi Ltd
The Esmée Fairbairn Trust
Ms Janice Fearnley
The Folio Society
The Friends of The Fitzwilliam Museum
Robert Gavron Charitable Trust
J. Paul Getty Jr Charitable Trust
Grocers' Trust
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Headley Trust
Institute for Conservation (ICON)
Idlewild Trust
Leche Trust
A. G. Leventis Foundation
John Lewis Partnership
Lowell Libson Ltd
Mr George Loudon
Manifold Charitable Trust
Marlay Group
Emily Rose Marrow and James Marrow
D. G. Marshall of Cambridge
MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund
John R. Murray Charitable Trust
Museums, Libraries, and Archives Council
National Manuscripts Conservation Trust
The Estate of Professor Spärck Needham
Nelson Fund
Mr S. M. Osborne
Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers
Pilgrim Trust
The Princes Foundation for Children and the Arts
Mr and Mrs Nigel Pye
Ridgeons
R. K. Charitable Trust
E. S. G. Robinson Charitable Trust
Dr Tom Rosenthal
Charles Russell LLP
Sasakawa Foundation
Schilizzi Foundation
Scott Finnis Foundation
Denis Severis
Mr Melvin Seiden
Dr John Shakeshaft
The Estate of Mrs Joan Anne Simms
Stanley Foundation
Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Mr Howard Thompson
Thriplow Charitable Trust
Trinity College
Trusthouse Charitable Foundation
University Library
Westminster Foundation
Mrs Jane Wickstead
Xaar
| MARTIN DAUNTON (Chair) | CAROLINE HUMPHREY |
| NICHOLAS BARING | JOHN KEATLEY |
| PAUL BINSKI | JEAN MICHEL MASSING |
| JOHN BROWN | DAVID MCKITTERICK |
| PAUL CARTLEDGE | SARAH SQUIRE |
| RICHARD CORK | RICHARD WILSON |
| CHRISTOPHER HUM |
October 2008