Tuesday was one of those odd days off. It meant I could take S to the train station, then go my own way for a day and see where the wind took me. The plan was to see as many LCC-owned museums as I could, as detailed on their Museums and Galleries page, and I'd booked a trip around the Discovery Centre at 9:30 to start it all off. I was so anxious to get started, of course, that I was half an hour early, so I parked up (and found a bloody brilliant photographic subject that I'll have to shoot one day, while trying to find a parking space; an enormous tower, industrial complex, for what I think is industrial sand or glass) and went for a wander down to the river and around Clarence Dock. The river was looking particularly pleasant that morning, and there was a narrowboat-dweller who'd chosen to dry his socks (possibly washed in the Aire, bu-dum *tschh*) in the air.
Poking around Clarence Dock was interesting; I found out where the church that looks like Batman actually was (I can see it every morning on my bus into work, and it always reminds me of Batman), and there's some new shiny balls that just demand to be photographed from interesting angles.
There's a cookware shop there I keep meaning to visit, but forget that it exists. Hm. Anyway, the Discovery centre beckoned.
Alas, I forgot to ask about photography inside the centre - indeed, I forgot to take my camera out of my pocket, I was so startled by it. A purpose-built warehouse for the collections owned by LM&G, it's a huge room at 16°C, with three smaller rooms for document and photographic storage. They have large objects, but not many bigger than pianos; the star is a life-sized giant squid model made for an exhibition a few years back, but they have no need for it now and can't bear to throw it out. It hangs from the ceiling. Most of the collections are quite small. A selection of things confiscated by customs, like butterflies and turtles as souveniers (both of which are illegal to import). Some spears, and other arms and armour that the Royal Armouries don't really need. Clothing from house estates, porcelein (some of which is really horrible), board games, chairs, stuffed animals, victorian showers, cookers, random bits of rock, a fantastic geology collection including meteorites (I got to hold something that had come from outer space!). A previous curator had an interest in molluscs, so out of their fairly large natural history collection all the shellfish are incredibly well organised and the aim is to get everything in the store that well catalogued. They have formerly private lepidoptery and beetle and insect collections, including a case I randomly opened that was full of hymenoptera, with special emphasis on bees.
They also have photo archives that are uncatalogued. Now, I'm a huge fan of photo archives, and what they have are industrial archives, personal photo collections and a lot of stuff that isn't in WYJA or Leodis, such as the building of Headingley and LS6, social history stuff that I want to get my hands on. And all I have to do is get in touch with the curators. It's mostly uncatalogued, so I may offer myself as an intern, perhaps building a DB and front end to all this, inputting it, and plugging it into OpenLeeds. The thought of it gives me damp palms and cottonmouth.
The people there are lovely, too. Very friendly, exceptionally helpful and appreciative of thanks. If you live in Leeds and want to spend half an hour wandering about the things they don't show to the public you could do much worse than phoning them up and asking for a quick shufty.
My research has told me there are 9 LCC museums, plus the Thackray, Armouries, technically Harwood House is a museum, Horsforth Village Museum is on the list, as is the Otley Civic, although I expect the last two are a bit pokey. Still, they have LS postcodes, so count. At this point on the journey I am only 1/9th of my way through the LCC museums, but by the end of the day I hoped to be considerably further...
(to be continued)
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