Ancient Worlds After Hours event – Thursday 15th November

Photo by Paul Cliff

The Manchester Museum, Thursday 15th November, 6:30-9:30pm

With a contemporary twist on the ancient world, explore the new Ancient Worlds galleries at night and meet the people who created them. Mummify an orange, go on mini tours with Bryan Sitch, Curator of Archaeology and Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and Sudan and take part in a conservation masterclass.

You can also take part in Clay OK’s Ancient Fragments workshop – where you can sketch a fragment of your favourite textures and shapes from the displays and be guided in translating the pattern into a plastic relief stamp, which you can impress into a large clay tablet – contributing to a contemporary artefact of the event!

We’ll also be joined by, Cairo Chaos, with the esteemed poet extraordinaire, Toot and Carboot in collaboration with the terrifyingly talented magician, Watt the Heka. More ‘laffs than a safari full of mere cats. More rhythm than a Nile river cruise. Hear words and see magic in a story. That will amaze baffle and amuse.

With music by Glenn Sharp (Oud -representing Egypt) and Kostas Papvasileiou (Bouzouki – representing Greece). 
 
After Hours are evening social events where you encounter the unexpected. Artists, scientists, filmmakers, writers and musicians animate our collections in special one-off performances.

Curator’s Diary 26/4/12: Ancient Egypt for the visually impaired

On Thursday I met with a group of around 30 visitors from Henshaws, a charity that provides support for blind and visually impaired people.

I confess to a little trepidation at the task of describing in sufficient detail objects that I am used to presenting in primarily visual terms – through photos or line drawings. We tend to speak of Egyptian ‘visual culture’ rather than ‘tangible culture’, and most museum displays assume that objects – because they are usually behind glass – are only viewed by sight. But what if you are blind or visually impaired?

The selection of objects for the session was dictated mainly by texture. Along with Conservator Irit Narkiss, Andrea Winn, the Museum’s Curator of Community Exhibitions, and I chose objects that provided a range of surfaces: part of a carved limestone block with a biographical inscription; a pre-Dynastic cosmetic palette, worn on one side; a small travertine kohl pot; a Late Period hard stone scarab amulet.

All our handling objects are accessioned pieces from the collection judged safe enough to touch. That sense of being able to touch the past was something that instantly struck a chord with our Henshaws visitors.

Usually I would discuss an object based on appearance, and this would invite questions about age or function immediately. However, in this case questions were more likely to arise once each person had handled the object. In that sense, engaging with the pieces was a much more individual experience than is usually the case in a museum handling session. The question of how certain objects were made – asked more frequently than how old they were or what they were used for – gave me a greater appreciation of how tactile objects can be, picking up details that I have otherwise missed.

Meeting the Henshaws group afforded a genuinely new perspective on how people experience ancient Egyptian material culture. Our new Ancient Worlds galleries will include handling objects as well as new Hapic technology that will allow users to experience the feel of objects too fragile to be touched regularly, but which can be simulated through advanced computer software programmed to control a stylus. This will enable visitors to trace the contours of an object remotely – a very exciting innovation in how we interact with museum objects.

Read a blogpost about the visit from a member of the Henshaws group here.