The World Culture and Archaeology departments at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery held a Winter Festival Discovery Day on Sunday 15th December. 

During the Roman Empire, The Festival of Saturnalia was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn which is in the Roman Forum. There was a public banquet and private gift giving as well as lots of parties and a carnival atmosphere. At the Museum, we celebrated through craft activities, making masks of the God Saturn, decorating gift boxes with stars and moons and making 3D stars.

World Cultures highlighted the winter traditions of cultures around the world such as Father Christmas’ shaman connections and the Museums amazing Inuit material which included a beautifully crafted baby’s sealskin coat.

This has been a busy week so I have picked four highlights of my week to share with you…

December’s edition of the Young Archaeologists Club ‘Young Archaeologist’ magazine arrived this week with my YAC Attack article in it!! Not long after I started working at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, I wrote an article about some of the artefacts in the Roman Empire: Power & People exhibition. I have been waiting excitedly since then to see it in print!! So pleased with it!!!

The next highlight of the week was meeting Henbury School’s Duke of Edinburgh Group for a second Kids In Museums Takeover Day session at Kings Weston Roman Villa. The students really enjoyed themselves and I was impressed with their skills and attention to detail!! Kings Weston Roman Villa was definitely looking better when we left! 

I was curious to know what the students thought about our Roman Villa, so I asked them. The answers really made my day – ‘Cool’, ‘It’s nice, just a bit dirty’ and ‘Someone could fall into the plunge pool!’

We had the last design session for the Roman Merchandising Project at Oasis Academy Brightstowe this week. We divided the students into groups, making jewellery, hand printing bags, hand printing mosaic designs and I worked with three students helping them to design a logo, labels to go with the products and an information panel which will sit beside the products in the Museum shop to tell customers about the products and who designed them. 

I enjoyed working with the three girls creating a logo and labels. The girls were very practical when it came to designing the labels. Taking inspiration from other product labels, the girls knew what they didn’t like and so got straight into designing. The girls wanted to include a message from the group to the customers in the shop:

Designed & made
by Year 10 Students at
Oasis Academy Brightstowe

Inspired by
Kings Weston Roman Villa

We were also joined in Bristol Museum & Art Gallery by the Cotham School After School Latin Group. Our ‘Little Latiner’s’ will be designing Latin-themed family friendly activities for during February half term holidays. Kate and I took the students on a behind the scenes store tour and showed them lots of Roman artefacts. The students were able to correctly guess what most of the artefacts were – I was impressed!!

We then sat down and described to them what a family friendly activity is and what you need to think about when you are creating and designing it. The students were enthusiastic about the project and already had some ideas. I am looking forward to seeing them again and hearing more of their ideas!!

Two Art Galleries in Bristol Museum & Art Gallery opened this week and I got to go to the opening!!!

One of the galleries is called ‘City Lives – Contemporary art in a changing world’. It highlights artists from around the world who have charted the changing landscapes, consumer culture, disaffection, subcultures and high hopes using a wide range of art and media from photography, video, sculpture and installation. Through the variety of media used in the gallery, we are given an insight into what the artists have envisioned city life to be, including our dreams, our worries, the past and the future.

This new exhibition is fascinating to walk around as it includes artists and pieces never before seen in Bristol!! There is photography by the Iranian artist Shirin Aliabadi who took the famous ‘Girls in Car’ photographs, a video by Israeli artist Omer Fast and installations from the African artist Meschac Gaba and Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari.

On top of that there are also photographs by the British artist Sarah Dobai and images of Bristol by Martin Parr. My favourite part of the gallery is the photographs of the Bristol Docks by Jem Southam. They beautifully trace the history of the dock over the past 40 years.

The second gallery is called ‘Places of Desire’ and it explores themes of travel, romance and modern life through the museum’s collection of Victorian and Edwardian era paintings which range in date from the 1840’s to the 1920’s. There are also pieces by the Pre-Raphaelites Millais, Burne-Jones and Arthur Hughes.

I was told that this time period was an exciting time for British and European Art because artists were experimenting with a wide range of styles and subjects. And wow! I could definitely see that when I explored the gallery!! The stories told in each of the painting were so clear, they simply drew you in.

My favourite painting is 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' by Frank Dickee which is based on the poem written by John Keats. The painting shows a young knight who doesn’t notice the beautiful countryside around him because he has fallen in love with the lady sitting on his horse. The painting, I believe, is a wonderful example of the Victorian fascination with chivalry.