Your Manchester

Your Manchester

We wanted to create a reflexive exhibition that would make people think about their own relationship with Manchester, and consequently go out and explore the city. Each member of the group chose an aspect of Manchester which appealed to them, the objects represent this. By presenting a variety of objects and ideas, our exhibition appeals to a wide audience and creates a starting point for further exploration of the city. By looking at the objects the viewer can create their own dialogue with the city.

Installing the Exhibition

We wanted viewers to fully engage with our exhibition, to offer an haptic scopic regime and were determined from the outset to provide some sort of feedback facility, whereby viewers can record their own thoughts about Manchester. This builds on the idea of viewers being central to the exhibition. After much discussion about the most effective way to achieve this, we decided to use a string and clothes pegs, as this is visually distinct and is reminiscent of the terraced housing which is so prevalent in Manchester.

Corrie Cards

The photograph of the bee mosaic in Manchester Town Hall was chosen as the backdrop because it is the symbol of Manchester, representing the city’s rapid growth during the Industrial Revolution, and the industriousness of its inhabitants.

Bee Mosaic

Unveiling Voices: 21 Perspectives of Manchester

Unveiling Voices

During Preliminary discussions we focussed on Manchester as an international city. The student population of Manchester University alone at present consists of 7,400 international students. We became interested in preconceptions of those unfamiliar with the city and how these changed upon visiting and experiencing Manchester. We also considered hidden elements of Manchester; places which people had discovered whilst staying in the city. This was also extended to popular and well known attractions which, when mentioned in personal anecdotes were given a fresh perspective.

In our approach we wanted to exclude the curatorial voice as far as possible, instead placing the emphasis on numerous individual perspectives of Manchester. We were aware of our limitations in achieving this: our selection of specific quotes from the approximately fifty interviews carried out, and our accounts of places referred to by interviewees, irrefutably illustrate a curatorial bias. We distributed the preparative work and the installation of the exhibition evenly. For example, each member of the team conducted several preliminary interviews which resulted in a more diverse range of voices to draw from.

Labels

We were aware that our audience would be passers by, on their way to seminars, lectures or meetings in the Mansfield Cooper building. This audience necessitated concise and easily accessible information which would invite multiple viewings. We hoped that multiple voices present in the display prompt the viewer to consider their own view of Manchester. We therefore invited them to interact with the exhibition, adding their own voice to a comments board.

Our method of display aimed to recreate a scrapbook effect, drawing numerous and diverse views of Manchester together. We colour coded different themes such as music, architecture and entertainment and highlighted text which referred to a specific theme in the corresponding colour.  This playful method of cross referencing was intended to create a visually stimulating means of comprehending the information presented.

The objects displayed within the case have little or no monetary value, their greatest worth being sentimental. Yet they become tangible specimens of personal accounts of Manchester. In this context they have worth projected onto them.

Chalkboard

Unveiling Voices was intended to offer varied and informative views of the city of Manchester in a captivating and accessible format. We hope to prompt our audience to consider aspects of and places within Manchester that they have not previously visited.

Assembling the display collage

Manchester: The Multi-Story City

 “It is impossible to think of cities without thinking of buildings…Buildings are powerful and complex symbols, important landmarks on those mental maps through which we make sense of the urban world. But such symbols are not permanent, they change over time.”

The cultural biography of an object is the process of consumption that the object undergoes once it has been made. These processes of consumption result in the creation of social lives of objects that are both processual and relational; as they are continuously ongoing and dependent on the context in which the object is being consumed. Kopytoff has argued that the approach of examining biographies of people, which is often used in anthropology as a way of understanding cultures, can be applied to ‘things’ – “biographies of things can make salient what otherwise might remain obscure.” The relationships that make up an object’s social life both have and make meanings and therefore examining cultural biographies can reveal the hidden meanings of objects.

The Multi-Story City

Our exhibition explores the theme of ‘Manchester’ by examining certain aspects of the cultural biographies of its buildings so as to “make salient what otherwise might remain obscure.” Our display views buildings as artefacts of Manchester and through examining the cultural biographies of these artefacts their often hidden meanings and therefore Manchester, as a living and changing metropolis from whence these buildings sprang, is revealed.

The buildings that this exhibition investigates have been carefully chosen as their biographies each reveal a characteristic Manchester theme that we feel is an important aspect of its identity, such as Roman beginnings, the Industrial Revolution, politics, academic achievement, popular music, the IRA bomb and football.

Installing the display case

The display reveals that exhibitions can enhance certain meanings of objects and obscure others, for example the Radisson Hotel in our display is presented solely as a hub of radical politics when this building is also known to many as a hotel and also has numerous famous historical associations with music and drama that this display has ignored. This aspect of our display demonstrates how museums can enhance meanings of objects; this display has re-contextualised buildings into artefacts of Manchester and has transformed them into metonyms which represent wide cultural aspects of the city, for instance the Abbey National bank in Piccadilly Gardens now stands for the culture of football in Manchester. 

The display allows the viewer to glimpse hidden underground Manchester by revealing aspects of some of the networks of secret tunnels that lie below our feet. The purpose of this glimpse of the underground is to show the audience that there are many more hidden biographies in Manchester that are just waiting to be revealed. The display itself invokes a typical Manchester scene – rain falling down upon the buildings of the city.

The Lost Stage being installed

We knew from the start that we were keen to exhibit something of Manchester’s hidden layers, peeling back time to show something lost, something that spoke of Manchester past and, therefore, of Manchester present.

As discussions focussed on the ‘dramatic’ changes in Manchester in the 18th and 19th Centuries, the lost theatres of our city emerged as our subject, reflecting something of Manchester’s social history. We also felt it would appeal to our audience, the staff and students of the School of Arts Histories and Cultures. Our exhibition would aim to give an alternative view of the city and an historical insight to inspire and intrigue Mancunians and newcomers alike.

Handbills in the Display Case

As you will see from our exhibition, the beginning of the 19th Century saw a flourish of theatre building in Manchester; A prime example of a countrywide emergence of an Industrial Revolution-fuelled bourgeoisie in search of entertainment and new social spaces. Manchester’s theatres arrived to meet the demands of its new middle-class and some beautiful buildings emerged to house them.

The Curators

Within a century, those once lively theatres had largely gone, taking with them some wonderful histories of Victorians at play.

The Lost Stage

We aim to tickle with tales from theatres past and tantalise with architectural clues.

Download this map for your very own walking tour of Manchester city centre. Don’t forget to look up!

Lost Stage Walking Map

Elephas maximus

A1225

Meet Maharajah…

…a male Asian elephant standing at over two metres tall. His early years were spent in a travelling circus, before arriving in Edinburgh in 1872 at the age of eight. When his owner retired, Maharajah was sold to Manchester’s Belle Vue Zoo for £680, £30,000 in today’s money. Maharajah was intended to board a train to Manchester but, unhappy with his travel arrangements, burst out of his horsebox. Instead his trainer Lorenzo Lawrence accompanied him on a 200-mile walk to Manchester. Maharajah’s epic journey brought him fame even before arriving at Belle Vue Zoo, where he spent ten years wowing audiences with his performances. Following his death in 1882 his skeleton was displayed in the zoo’s museum until 1941, when he was sold to the Manchester Museum for £30. He now stands proudly at the heart of our Manchester Gallery for the enjoyment and education of all.

Whitworth Art Gallery

KHARITA (SEAL) BAG                (1870-85)

This bag came to England as part of a collection of Indian silk textiles put together by Sir Thomas Wardle. It was exhibited at the Colonial & Indian Exhibition in London in 1886 and then in Manchester at the Royal Jubilee Exhibition in 1887. Sir Wardle (1831-1909) was a Victorian entrepreneur sent to India by the British government to collect such artefacts.

KHARITA (or KHALITA) is thought to be the name for a bag / purse that would have been used for containing / transporting maps or items of communication such as letters. This one in particular was used to store the wax seal of a Maharaja.

Museums and Restitution is a two-day international conference organised by the Centre for Museology and The Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester. The conference examines the issue of restitution in relation to the changing role and authority of the museum, focussing on new ways in which these institutions are addressing the subject.

Restitution is one of the most emotive and complex issues facing the museum world in the twenty first century. Its current high profile reflects changing global power relations and the increasingly vocal criticisms of the historical concentration of the world’s heritage in the museums of the West. The 2002 Declaration of the Importance and Value of Universal Museums, which was signed by the directors of eighteen of the world’s most prominent museums, pushed the subject to the forefront of debate as never before.

Over recent years, the issue of restitution has taken on a new complexion with different processes emerging. We have seen an increasing emphasis on museums working with source communities, and with new forms of restitution other than object restitution – such as visual and knowledge restitution. The language of discussion too has changed, with the term ‘reunification’, for example, rather than ‘repatriation’ now often being used in relation to the Parthenon Marbles. The opening of New Acropolis Museum in Athens in June 2009 has added a further dimension to the debates. We are also seeing new countries gaining increasing prominence in restitution debates: for example, the official response from the government of the People’s Republic of China to the Yves Saint Laurent auction of Chinese looted bronzes at Christie’s in Paris in March 2009. This is a trend clearly set to continue.

This conference will bring together museum professionals and academics from a wide range of fields (including museology, archaeology, anthropology, art history and cultural policy) to share ideas on contemporary approaches to restitution from the viewpoint of museums.

Possible themes

• New museums, new developments
• Visual, knowledge and digital repatriation
• Authority and power: voices listened to, voices heard
• Beyond ownership? Loans, travelling exhibitions, exchanges
• Reflections on returns

Please send a title and a short proposal of no more than 300 words and biographical details to Louise Tythacott louise.tythacott@manchester.ac.uk and Kostas Arvanitis kostas.arvanitis@manchester.ac.uk

Deadline for Abstracts: Friday 11th December 2009
http://www.manchester.ac.uk/museumsandrestitution

Download the Call for Papers

The video of the ‘Manchester on Display’ student exhibitions 2008-9 is now available. MA students in Art Gallery & Museum Studies curated four exhibitions on the theme of ‘Manchester’ in the Museology showcase in the foyer of the Mansfield Cooper Building. Each exhibition was up for a week from November to December 2008. Images of the installations are also available on Flickr.