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The Women’s Library

May 10, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

The Women's Library

Call for the government to earmark funding for the Women’s Library:

Just over a decade ago, in early 2002, I attended the opening of the Women’s Library in Old Castle Street, East London, in a fine new building constructed on the site of some former wash houses. It was a wonderful event. Antonia Byatt, the library’s first director, gave an upbeat address, as did Tessa Jowell, who was culture minister at the time. Women and men from all sides of the political spectrum were there. The great and the good gladly rubbed shoulders with us lesser mortals, wine glasses in our hands. We all felt that at long last, this unique collection about women’s lives in the past and present had a proper home. That it all came about was due to a £4.2 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the support of London Guildhall University, and (especially) the enormous efforts of a large number of people, including the Friends of the Library.

What a difference a decade makes. On 14 March this year, the board of governors at London Metropolitan University (formed in 2002 by the merger of London Guildhall and the University of North London) announced that the institution could no longer afford to maintain the Women’s Library, nor the Trades Union Congress Library, at a joint cost of approximately £1 million a year.

It was proposed that if by the end of December 2012 a new home, owner or sponsor of the Women’s Library could not be found, then opening hours would be limited to one day a week for a period of three years, with a further review after that. It was also decided that further investigation would be undertaken into the feasibility of constructing a lecture theatre within the library building to meet the demand on that campus for a medium-sized lecture space.

Read full story or visit The Women’s Library.

Filed Under Museum Tagged With Funding, The Women's Library

Academic Lives @MassObsArchive

September 16, 2010 By admin 1 Comment

Academics are being invited to take part in a research project that is investigating the ways in which academics represent, share and change their teaching practices.

In a move inspired by the Mass Observation programme established in the 1930s, university teachers are being asked to keep a diary of their teaching on the 15th day of each month over the course of the next year, starting next week.

Sally Fincher, professor of computing education at the University of Kent and leader of the Share project, chose the novel way of collecting data after visiting the Mass Observation archives in Brighton.

“I’ve become increasingly aware of the limitations of traditional methods of gathering research data, such as questionnaires and semi-structured interviews which put the researcher into the frame,” she said.

The Mass Observation project, set up in 1937, used different methods. It aimed to record the lives of ordinary people in Britain via a panel of volunteer observers, creating what the founders described as “an anthropology of ourselves”.

Via “day surveys”, members of the public were asked to send in accounts of a day in their lives in the form of a diary.

Read full story, and letter in response.

Filed Under contemporary relevance, Museum Tagged With mass-observation, Times Higher Education

Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre

December 3, 2009 By drbexl 1 Comment

Shanghai“This collection of posters serves as a valuable historical document providing a remarkable glimpse into a critical period in the history of twentieth-century China.

As Winston S. Churchill famously said, “The Empire of the future will be the empire of the mind.” In the days before CNN and Fox News, a still image truly was worth a thousand words and these posters were how Mao and his group informed and restored the collective mind of the Chinese people. It was a time of a heroic saga of countless victories over momentous struggle. Even so, behind the cheerful faces beaming from the posters, one can sense the true-life anxieties and hardships of the people they are purported to represent. Indeed, each poster is both a work of art and an insight into the events of those times.

These Chinese propaganda posters are most rich in content and style. The early posters had a surreal cartoon-like style reminiscent of European early forays into the new medium of large-scale industrial print propaganda. As the Korean war drew to a close you can see the emergence of more socialist-realism influences with the idealized and heroic worker in their utopian communities. An interesting side note was the influence of the 1930s Shanghai calendar girl posters on some of these 1950s pieces. Big Leap Forward and Cold War posters, of the later 1950s and early 1960s, saw the creation of quite a few interesting folk art paintings. The change to the red-art style, of the Cultural Revolution and the violent and militaristic themes, represents a sudden shift that reveals the mood of the time.  There is great power in the red and black woodcut style posters made by the art school student rebellion groups.

Posters were designed to not only meet the demand of the government but to also be embraced by the masses. In striving to achieve these works, many artists reached deep inside themselves, producing extraordinary poster designs perfectly capturing the indomitable nature of the human spirit, the transformational power of unbridled industriousness, and the soaring spirit of the people’s optimism. Even considered among works of fine art a large number of these posters will prove of exceptional quality and forever hold significance in the history of Chinese art.

Today China’s economic path to prosperity is well defined. With a shift toward a more modern and forward-thinking society it would be a mistake to forget the events of our recent history and therefore our art center is very proud to be the only place in China to offer the most comprehensive collection of poster art.

Due to political changes in the past years many posters had been destroyed. With more than 5000 pieces produced between 1949 and 1979, this is the greatest collection in the world. It is an art treasure and a part of our culture heritage.

May it inspire creativity and ignite the imagination of the generations to come.

Yang Pei Ming

Director of Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center“

Podcast by a visitor

Filed Under Museum, poster, propaganda Tagged With poster, propaganda, Shanghai

Unseen Duxford (16th December)

December 1, 2009 By drbexl Leave a Comment

Useen Duxford“A new tour gives visitors to Imperial War Museum Duxford the opportunity to step back in time to between the First World War and the commencement of the Second World War in Britain. Laura Jean Morris explores the history of the new attraction at the popular Cambridgeshire museum.

WITH everything from a dance hall, gymnasium and cinema to boast of, the airfield at Duxford was one of Britain’s most important bases during the Second World War.

And a new 90-minute tour of the airfield’s North Side, just unveiled by the Imperial War Museum, aims to show visitors just what life was like in the ‘mini-village’ of the base that was first built as a ‘temporary air station’.”

Read full article, and check out Duxford to book for the 16th December.

Filed Under Museum, second world war Tagged With Duxford, Museum, second world war

Outbreak 1939, Imperial War Museum, London

August 23, 2009 By drbexl 1 Comment

Outbreak 1939

20 August 2009 to 6 August 2010. Free admission.

“At 11.15am on 3 September 1939, the British public heard Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announce that Britain and France were at war with Germany.

Seventy years after the announcement that signified the start of the Second World War and changed the lives of millions, this special exhibition explores how being a nation at war shaped the lives of ordinary men and women as well as those who were actively involved in the political negotiations and their aftermath. Historical material and personal memorabilia will illustrate the build-up to war, an hour-by-hour countdown of events on 3 September, and the early months of the conflict.”

Great online poster gallery, with explanation on a number of posters, some of which I recognise! 22nd October, get an exclusive tour with Terry Charman.

The Independent has already given a review, to which I have responded that it’s rather strange if the Imperial War Museum have put Keep Calm and Carry On up as posters from 1939… that’ll be one to address in Creating and Consuming history module in Semester 2! Culture 24 also has an expanded article with a lot of interesting information!

Filed Under Exhibition, keep calm and carry on, Museum Tagged With Imperial War Museum, keep calm and carry on, War Anniversary

Second World War posters continue to fascinate many!

April 12, 2009 By drbexl Leave a Comment

National Archives: The Art of War

The National Archives: The Art of War
 In 2005, whilst The National Archives were looking for artist biography material, they came across my website www.ww2poster.co.uk, read about my PhD thesis, and decided they needed my expertise. I was contracted in as an editorial consultant. It was a great opportunity to go behind the scenes at the National Archives (where “all” (well, about 3% per year) of government records are housed at Kew. I’d already spent weeks at the National Archives (along with weeks at Colindale, the Imperial War Museum and Mass-Observation, with shorter stints at other archives), but continued with some further research, and then wrote the following content for the site:

Saatchi and Saatchi
Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi worldwide has picked up on the Keep Calm and Carry On poster (and I am pleased to say, has referenced my work, as did Barter Books in the first instance!)… it is an inspiring poster, particularly for 2009, even if it never came into play during the war years!

Keep Calm-o-Matic
Make your own version of the slogan using an online generator! No wonder there’s so many different versions out there… get parody-ing!  Here’s what I generated!

Filed Under contemporary relevance, keep calm and carry on, Museum Tagged With keep calm and carry on, ministry of information, National Archives, Saatchi and Saatchi

Waste Not, Want Not: The Museum of Brands and Packaging

April 11, 2009 By drbexl Leave a Comment

museum

The Robert Opie Collection
I have always enjoyed looking at Robert Opie’s collection of material, although I was unable to make use of it in my PhD, I definitely referred to it in a module I taught on ‘Advertising and Branding’ for Media Studies a few years ago, and have just surfed to see if collection is now more accessible, which it clearly now is. Robert Opie started collecting emphemeral material (especially packaging) at the age of 16, and maintained a collection in Gloucester, in 2005 transferring the material to London where he created the http://www.museumofbrands.com/, definitely high on my list of places to visit.  In teaching ‘Using Visual Material as Historical Sources’, we always start from the perspective of what can that material tell us at a surface level, and then start to go deeper, and this museum looks at the “history of consumer culture is revealed decade by decade in the “time tunnel”, from Victorian times to the present day. Discover the trends of daily life, the revolution in shopping habits, the groceries, sweets and household goods, the changes in taste and tempo, the advent of motoring, aviation, radio and television, the gradual emancipation of women and the effects of two world wars.”

Current Exhibition: Waste Not, Want Not
You already know about my obsession with war posters (I am notoriously fickle in my interests, but have been studying Second World War posters for 16 years, with associated interests in teaching/learning/personal development/the online world/Christianity and contemporary culture), so I’m very pleased to see that the current exhibition focuses on the 1940s: “Waste Not, Want Not, which draws parallels between the austerity practiced as a result of wartime shortages and the increasing importance of sustainability today.” I have been interested to see the increasing DEMONSTRATABLE relevance of history to modern life (after years when it appeared to be disappearing out of site), through the application of historical material to modern concerns, as this exhibition demonstates with eco-concerns, and new organisations such as History and Policy indicate. After presenting a paper at a Public History conference at Ruskin College (no ivory towers for us please!), I started to think about how I could re-use my material in the modern day. In December 2008 I attended a PR course with Chantal Cooke of Passion for the Planet, and started to pull together a press release as to how posters could be used to demonstrate the relevance of wartime thinking in the current recession… with my main focus on the jobs pages in newspapers/online, I hadn’t twigged the huge fuss that Keep Calm and Carry On was making, and it’s very exciting to see just how much these posters still DO resonate…. listen to the mock radio interview created on that day. So, I’m putting my interest in making knowledge accessible online in developing this blog, and resuming work on my other plans for publication!

Filed Under contemporary relevance, Museum Tagged With Museum of Branding and Packaging, poster, Robert Opie, Waste not/Want Not

London Transport Posters in Wartime

April 10, 2009 By drbexl 1 Comment

london_transport_postersLondon Transport Posters: A Century of Art and Design OK, so maybe I’m going for the easy entries over the next few days, but I’ve got plenty to add on bits and pieces. I tried to get my original research material out from storage today, but it’s going to have to wait…. I have lots materially digitally stored!

London Transport Museum’s Exhibition ‘The Art of the Poster‘ finished last week, and was accompanied by the book London Transport Posters: A Century of Art and Design, for which I wrote a chapter (finishing as much as I could do in an internet cafe in Melbourne, Australia!). London Transport Museum are notoriously protective of their copyright, so it was a great chance to continue some research on further posters… I still get excited when I see a poster I’ve not seen before, or even one I have seen before making it’s way into the modern public domain… such as the Keep Calm and Carry On posters! My thesis focused largely on posters produced by the Ministry of Information, but they called upon the expertise of organisations such as London Transport and Shell in the formation of the Ministry of Information, as these organisations had demonstrated a proficiency in publicity. It was also interesting to study First World War posters, to which I’d referred in my thesis (noting that they were far more King & Country whereas the Second World War was a much more democratic effort), as the chapter was about wartime posters, not just the Second World War. LTM had been working on digitising their poster collection whilst I was doing my PhD research, and the materials launched online whilst I was writing this chapter. My PhD research had turned up some really interesting information which the London Transport archives didn’t have (and I spent some time both in Covent Garden and the main archives, along with the V&A, and we had meetings out at Acton… some great materials stored there), so really felt I made a good contribution. My chapter ended up as a joint publication as David Bownes completed it whilst I was hopping around New Zealand, before I proof read it in the midst of Bolivia, after a great day blowing up dynamite in the silver mines, before returning in time for the book/exhibition launch in October!

Further Resources  (in no particular order)

Filed Under Museum, poster, publication Tagged With Bex Lewis, David Bownes, London Transport Museum, propaganda, publication, war poster

Posters: Persuasion and Subversion

June 30, 1998 By drbexl Leave a Comment

V&A, 12th-13th June, 1998

The effectiveness of the poster as a publicity medium and the pervasiveness of the poster image were examined in the context of developments in 20th century graphic communication.

The conference examined the history of the poster from the ‘artistic’ posters of the late 19th century, to the large-scale billboard campaigns of the modern day, which are an inescapable feature of the modern landscape.

Margaret Timmers edited a great text “The Power of the Poster” to accompany the conference and exhibition.

Further Links from the V&A

Filed Under Book Review, Conference, Museum Tagged With Conference, Exhibition, publication, The Power of the Poster, Victoria & Albert Museum