Art of the State: Liverpool:World Museum.

Art The old Liverpool Museum has changed much since it began as a two room display of the 13th Earl of Derby's natural history collection on Duke Street in 1851. Between remodelings and recreations both before and after a bombing decimated the building during the Blitz it expanded to fill the space across the bottom end of William Brown Street. My own connection with the museum began at school and continued through working there in the late nineties on the reception desk during the brief period when the eight museums and galleries in what was then National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside (NMGM) attempted a nominal charging structure.

The redevelopments have continued.  In 2005, the current atrium and entrance was created and since various displays have been refreshed, notably most recently the classical world galleries, which have allowed for much more of the collection to go on display.  It's name has also changed to World Museum so as not confuse things with the new Museum of Liverpool on the city's waterfront.  But some of the displays, notably the horology galleries and natural history sections are almost exactly as they were when I was in primary school, so visiting now really is like stepping back in time.  Presumably this means that the refurbishment will continue shortly.

Accessibility of Collection.

The museum is open daily from 10am-5pm and is free to enter, although none of the works shown on the Art UK website are apparently on obvious public display (it is possible that they were amid the World Cultures gallery although speaking to the invigilators led me to believe that wasn't the case).  Including general museums in Art UK does open up a discussion about why what are considered ethnographic or historical items in museums aren't included.  Much of what's there now is built on the old BBC Your Paintings project and is expanding to feature sculpture, but will it eventually include any items of artistic merit such as ancient polytheistic icons, cultural heritage of the Americas or the Roman and Greek statuary?

Collection Spotlight.


© the artist. Photo credit: World Museum Liverpool
Tsewang Tashi's Untitled No. 6 (2006) is part of the museum's Tibet collection, which contains "over 2,000 Tibetan objects gives an insight into the lives of British India officers connected to Tibet and the Himalayas."  Tashi was born in 1963 in Lhasa and as the entry on the museum website indicates, that although it's not currently on public display, this painting's inclusion in the collection helps in "understanding the development of the younger artists now emerging out of Lhasa" and that it is "also reminiscent of the colonial officer’s attempts at ethnographic photography".  Nothing in the image indicates directly that the subject is Tibetan, which could be seen as a reference to how the people of that area are viewed within China and the rest of the world.  Tashi stringently refuses to include any elements in his work which perpetuate the myth of Tibet being some kind of Shangri-La, knowing that "contemporary art cannot be created when contemporary life is ignored."