It’s been a funny couple of weeks since my last post as I’ve been off sick for a lot of it with a horrible cold. Before I went off sick I organised specialist training for our volunteers looking at how to condition assess and basic clean taxidermy specimens. The training was carried out by Lucie Mascord, Natural History Conservator based at the Conservation Studios in Preston. Lucie led a really fascinating day on how to handle and condition check taxidermy specimens and then the volunteers had a really practical session on how to basic clean specimens with a brush and using swabs of de-ionised water to clean beaks and feet. Everyone learnt something new and the volunteers feel a lot more confident working with this collection now, which is great.
This week I’ve been to Aintree Racecourse for another meeting about the history tent display at this year’s Grand National. The plans are really progressing nicely and the whole tent is going to be a celebration of Red Rum to mark the 40th anniversary of his historic third win.
On a completely different subject, I’ve had a meeting with the Sefton Coast Landscape Partnership to discuss the new interactive that we are creating for the museum corridor. We were recently awarded funding through the Royal Society Local Heroes scheme and we are going to use this to create a touchscreen interactive about Bessie Downes, a local artist who created lots of beautiful watercolours of local plants. We’re looking to create a touchscreen map with icons on that you can click to see one of Bessie’s images and we also want to create articles to put on the interactive so people can learn more about the Sefton Coast and find out why it is so important and unique.
I’ll end this post with one of Bessie’s images of anemones that was painted in Southport in February 1900. Enjoy!
Nicola Euston
Museum Manager
Posted on 3 February 2017 under Exhibitions, Museum
