Nijmegen Helmet at Tullie House

[buff-scrag]

Salve!

My first post on here...

Today I made a 180 mile round trip to see the new Roman Frontiers gallery at Tullie House Museum in Carlisle, and in particular to see the Nijmegen Helmet on loan from the Museum Het Valkhof in Holland.

As I expected, the helmet is stunning 'in the flesh' and has been thoughtfully displayed in a case where all sides of it can be examined. However, I was a bit taken aback by the interpretation (or lack of it). A small, four or five line label explained how such helmets may have been worn to 'intimidate the locals' or for special parade events etc. No mention was made of the find site; no dating details were given; no stylistic analysis was made. The fact that the helmet isn't complete wasn't even mentioned - this may sound obvious, but I'm sure most visitors would not appreciate that most of the helmet bowl is missing.

In fact, much of the interpretation of the new gallery was on a similar level - pretty shallow with very few (if any) details of provenance for many artefacts. Sure, the gallery looks very impressive and is full of child-friendly 'interactives', but by my reckoning the new display only has around 60% of the artefacts that were in the 'old' (1991) gallery.

I tackled the senior curator Andrew Mackay about the interpretation issue - he said that they wanted the gallery to be more 'story-led'. All well and good, but why alienate those with an genuine interest in Roman Carlisle for the sake of sexing up a few objects for those who have never encountered the Romans before. Surely both audiences can be catered for with careful, layered interpretation. On this point, Andrew Mackay did say that there would be some kind of hard-copy sheet available at some point - but having worked in museums myself, I'll believe that when I see it.

On a more positive note, Andrew did say that further helmets will be borrowed when the Nijmegen example returns to Holland in October, hopefully culminating in the Crosby Garrett helmet (I won't hold my breath for that one!). I was interested to hear that Tullie had attempted to get the Ribchester Helmet for their opening, but the BM refused.

Finally, I was pleased to see the two examples of scale armour from the 2001 (?) excavations. The one with the larger scales really is in an extraordinary state of preservation and is probably worth making the trip to see alone.

I'd love to know if any other RATs have visited the new gallery and what they think about the interpretation!

[Caballo]

Welcome, Nick, and thanks for a thought provoking first post- the new Tullie House is certainly on my list of museums to visit, and I rate the Carlisle Millenium Project book ( vol 2, the finds) as one of the best books published in recent years. It sounds as if the museum "makeover" has parallels with the new Ashmolean in Oxford - looks great,and excellent for periods that people know superficially, but not so good for the "deep dive" into the artefacts. Hey ho...

[buff-scrag]

Yes, I agree about the Carlisle Millenium Project Book Vol 2. I probably spent as much time drooling over that in the shop as I did in the gallery!

[mcbishop]

Well I did the round trip from darkest Tees-side today to check it out, coming back along the Wall for a spot of photography.

The first thing that needs to be said is that the 'old' gallery is still there upstairs, complete with reconstructed section of the turf wall and sundry bits of inscribed stone. Part of it was roped off with hazard tape whilst they were doing something... hazardous (putting up a picture) but the chap at the desk assured me there were no immediate plans to do away with this bit.

So, the upshot is that there is now more Roman stuff on display than before, which has to be good. The new gallery downstairs, which was the reason the Millennium excavations took place, replaces a rather iffy display that was there before – something to do with design, I think, but it didn't strike me as earth-shattering. The new gallery is a partnership with the BM, so there are odds and ends from the BM's reserve collection padding it out [cough, cough]. Like all modern museums, it suffers from museum designers, who appear stuck in a 1990s 'story'/'narrative' paradigm without actually being able to lay anything out so you can follow it logically. You stumble across bits and pieces, the obligatory tasks for kiddies to do (my kids always tired of those very quickly), and the equally obligatory dull audio-visual components (seemed to be running verrry slow (perhaps it runs on Vista :lol: ), even though the graphics were scarcely challenging).

The cavalry head bling from Nijmegen seemed out-of-place, except as an avatar for the CG helmet, which of course ain't there for reasons we all know (they do have piccies of it though). There was a complete reconstruction tent and – cute this – a couple of little dioramas of Wall building (got the foundations wrong, but hey, they tried).

Yes, it is dumbed down. Why can't they cope with all audiences, I find myself wondering? TV programmes like QI show a hunger for facts and detail amongst the general public, but museum designers seem terrified of doing anything even slightly challenging. And of course, it is all in big friendly (and screamingly dull) sans serif typeface. There is an AV wall with all sorts of frontiers and walls displayed (which should manage to offend a healthy cross-section of all foreign visitors).

No photos allowed, of course. Still, you can see the dinky little Staffordshire Moorlands pan (which Tullie House partly own), various bits of armour including the Newstead backplate (but I saw no armguards) and some of the Millennium scale, as well as various other pieces excavated not very far from where you view them – a nice little trick.

Worth seeing, but I look forward to the day when visitors are thought to have at least two brain cells to rub together, rather than be encouraged to partake in numpty touch-panel tasks (and the touch panels sucked too, a bit like one of those cheap resistive iPad imitators; had to prod several times to earn my rank as Dacian). Die-hard pedants like me will note that the date of birth should read AD67 and not 67AD!

[attachment=1310]Dacian.jpg[/attachment]

Go and see it and judge for yourselves. They have one of the best book/giftshops on the Wall, now, with Vindolanda's somewhat depleted and the Great North Museum a joke by comparison with the old Museum of Antiquities.

Mike 'Dacian' Bishop

[Gaius Colletti]

Nick perhaps I missed it, but which Nijmegen helmet are you referring to? The Gallic A?

[Nathan Ross]

which Nijmegen helmet are you referring to?

Cavalry 'sports' one, with facemask.

Here's a video (in Dutch) from the Museum Valkhof with close-ups of the helmet - you can also watch how they packed it up and sent it off to England (in the back of somebody's car, apparently...), or so I gather, without understanding the language

Museum Valkhof - Nijmegen Helmet