#leeds college of art

[mit-university-shillong]

[thosewickedlovelies]

A guide to writing fics set in museums / with a museum worker character

Hey hi hello it’s your local museum worker here, offering you some insight and tips to writing museum-related fics! This is primarily organized as a list of different jobs you could have in a museum and what their duties entail. This post might also be useful to you if you’re considering working in museums and want to know What Goes On In There. Let’s go!

For simplicity/fic-writing purposes, I would divide museums into 2 very rough groups: large national or city museums that Have Money (think the Smithsonian or British Museums, or the Chicago Field Museum or the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds); and smaller local museums. These could be local industry and culture/history-of-our town museums, historic houses, or  really niche subject museums run by One Person With A Passion.

Big national museums have a fuckton of staff and money (museums can never have enough money. But these places are very well-off compared to somewhere small that might always be hustling and writing grant applications). If you work here you’re likely to have a specific role in a particular department, and you probably won’t do much outside this role (ex., if you work in collections management, you probably won’t also design exhibits)

The smaller the museum, the more varied your workload will be/the more likely you are to be doing a little bit of everything. You’re probably organizing collections storage, manning the front desk, and desperately running fundraising efforts, all at once. 

To this end, smaller museums are more likely to be closed one or two days a week- you’ll be there, probably cleaning displays or managing storage, but visitors won’t be.

A lot of (most?) universities also have museums, so a college town setting is also doable. But the same big vs small museum disparity is still possible! At Penn State University, for example, the Palmer Art Museum is its own (recently redone iirc) building in the center of campus with a lovely plaza out front, while the Matson Museum of Anthropology is uhhhhh a couple classrooms in the Anthropology Department (which they’re currently rebuilding tbf, so we’ll see what they’ve done with it in 2025).

Types of Jobs

Curator

The one museum job that everyone can name. Nominally the person in charge. Probably laments that their job is way more admin than fun hands-on stuff now.

Actually this is the role I have the least knowledge of, but I think that’s partially because this job might vary the most from place to place? Structural organization can vary a lot between institutions, but I think the higher up you get in any field, the more your job tends to consist of meetings/overseeing, designating, and ~liaising~

A list of things a curator might do:

Planning or approving events and fundraisers, schmoozing with donors and members at said events, approving or designing a schedule of exhibits, publish outreach/advertising or research materials, oversee hiring, approve new object acquisitions (or de-acquisitions), generally make sure that the museum is working within the scope of its mission and if necessary, change or refine their mission

The curator might not necessarily control a museum’s funds; in this case they’ll liaise with the people who do, likely a Board of Executives or Board of Trustees. Once they get the money from these people, though, they could potentially redistribute it as they see fit.

 If you work in a fuckoff museum like the BM, you could also be the curator of a specific department, arranged by overarching subject, geographic area, time period, or even object type (eg Curator of Archaeobotany, Curator of Korean Collections, curator of coins from the medieval period). These categories can be more or less specific depending on what kind of holdings your museum has. I think these types of curators would still be able to do interesting things, as they aren’t the ones who Oversee The Whole Place.

You can also be an assistant or associate curator, like being an assistant manager.

Education/Engagement

These are the people who design fun extra activities (esp for kids) in the galleries or relevant events/workshops/lectures the public can attend. They might be called Engagement/Education Officer or Events Manager or anything similar

Again, the bigger the museum you work at, the more specific your role is likely to be. You might focus on web content/outreach and social media, manage the ‘friends/members of the museum’ program, or engage with shareholders, etc

Or you might do things like develop content and events to engage adult audiences. Workshops or lectures connected to new exhibits, after-hours visits. These people are also probably the ones with an eye on accessibility- you’ve probably seen advertisements for museums’ early or late hours for older visitors, or ‘quiet hours’ for people who might be overstimulated by normal museum hubbub, or tactile workshops designed for visually impaired folks.

I think most places would try to have someone specific for kids activities at the very least. They’ll be designing little activities or dress-up stations for the galleries, kiddie mascots or scavenger hunt trail kind of things, as well as, potentially, activities for any digital elements in the museum. They probably also coordinate school visits and act as a tour guide for classes, and will lead the kids in specific workshops or lessons in classrooms attached to the museum.

As a note on technology- some people would probably say that integrating digital elements into exhibits is the ~next big thing~, that museums have to get with the times in this regard, but opinions vary. Big science and technology museums are the most likely to have the most digital and techy elements in their exhibits, so if this is your setting, your character could also be a generic “tech person”. I would go so far as to say the smaller/more local the museum, the less technology you’re likely to have, but smaller museums are able to get grants, some of them potentially for specifically this type of thing, so it’s totally possibly that they have a few tablets with integrated activities, or some other Digital/Screen Thing.

Engagement Officers are probably the most likely people to be drafted for out-of-hours events, so that’s a potentially fun thing for your character to do. Some museums, particularly bigger ones, have event spaces attached that anybody can rent out, for weddings, galas, markets, etc, so they might also take care of these bookings as well.

Exhibit Design

This role has a lot of nebulous terms: exhibit coordinator, design constructor, exhibit programmer- but these are the people who design the exhibits. They’ll come up with a theme or narrative, a design scheme, choose the objects, write the text. They’ll probably come up with some marketing material as well, that matches the design scheme, or they’ll liaise with the marketing people who will.

These people might not be as familiar with the collections as the collections management folk (below), depending on how strictly divided your roles are, so they’ll likely consult with the collections people on choosing objects for a particular exhibit or theme (they say that good exhibit design builds an exhibit from the objects up, but I digress).

These people will also direct and participate in the install and deinstall (the actual terms) of exhibits- putting the objects on the right plinths/stands and arranging everything just so in the cases. Genuinely there’s a lot of psychology behind exhibit design- colors, lighting, the way you might design an exhibit to be navigated vs the path people will actually take through the gallery, people’s sight lines and where their eyes go first, how the display of any given object affects people’s perception of the importance of that object. Fascinating stuff, many books on the subject. 

There are also a lot of accessibility concerns to be considered here- how bright is the gallery, how large is your display text, at what height is the central eyeline of your cases?

Museums often loan objects to and from each other’s collections, so if you’re building an exhibit and you’d really like to include X type of object but your museum doesn’t have any, you can borrow some from another museum (this isn’t necessarily a guarantee- museums are allowed to say no to these requests, but I think manners would dictate that they should have a good reason)

Museums sometimes tour whole exhibitions as well- the objects, the text placards, maybe even the stands for super special or fragile items- and exhibit coordinator people are the ones who would handle those arrangements.

Potentially good opportunities for angst stories here- wow things come to life at your museum, you fall in love with a statue but oh no it’s only at your museum for three months

Collections Care

People who work in Collections Management have the most direct contact with the museum objects themselves. You probably work here if you prefer objects to people. When a museum gets new material, these are the people involved. They might not always initiate acquisitions, and the final approval is probably down to the relevant curator, but 98% of the time they’d be consulted (I hope).

A mind-boggling statistic is that most museums only have like 10% of their collections on display at any given time. Yeah. Forreal lol. But collections folk will know where the other 90% is and what’s in it (particularly the longer they’ve been there). 

There’s usually a head Collections Manager. Other workers might be a Collection Assistant/Associate, Collections Officer (we like calling people Officers for some reason), Registrar, or some variant of these depending on the specific flavor of your duties. 

Main job duties can be divided amongst documentation and database work, organization and storage of objects, and lite conservation. Just how much/how technical the conservation work depends on your own training, but also on the size/funding of your museum. The more money, the more likely your museum is to have its own lab with people specifically trained as conservators. More on them later. 

Here’s what happens when a museum gets new stuff!:

Ideally, it goes to a ‘quarantine zone’ first. This is a separate space or room where the objects can relax for a few weeks to a few months (ultimate best practice is actually a year, but, you know. that’s a long time) to ensure that they’re not harboring anything icky (bugs, mold, etc) that will infect the rest of the collections. It’s ideally super-sealed and climate-controlled, but the primary feature should be that it’s away from the main collections store.

Collections folk do the paperwork. They’ll give each individual object a unique number (following their preexisting system that will allow it to be identified distinct from all the other objects in the collection). They’ll create a ‘collections record’ for the object- documentation containing any and all information about the object. This includes the accession paperwork (everything that says ‘we legally own this now’); provenance info (all previous owners and everywhere else the object has been in its life); measurements and description (in painful detail); and conservation history and concerns (ie ‘there’s a crack in the side so pick up with care’, ‘this was repaired in the 70s so that glue is gonna fall apart any day now’).

(I'll say as a fic writer that this would be an great time to wax poetic over a beautiful statue or painting; you can’t write “This golden crown deserved to be worn by a great king, or maybe by that broody Roman general in the painting in Gallery B” in the collections paperwork, but you can think it.)

For fiction’s sake, your collections records could be either paper or digital, but in an ideal world a museum would have both setups, for security’s sake. So you’d fill out some long forms and/or input all the information to the digital collections management system (‘the CMS’, or referred to by your specific software’s name, as there are many out there). The CMS is not a static archive, but rather a living register that’s updated every time an object is interacted with. The object records also include where an object is at any given time (‘normally in Case E in the Fancypants Gallery, currently in Conservation Lab A for repairs’).

Once the objects are done in quarantine, they’ll go to storage. If they’re being displayed immediately, they’ll probably go to some interim storage space/shelf with other objects for the same exhibit and in that case only get a temporary setting. Every object will get labeled with their object number (directly on them, with a special pen that’s safe for this. Or if it’s really tiny, like a coin or jewelry, then their own tiny box will get the label). Small or fragile items, or items grouped together, will go in their own boxes (made of acid- and lignin-free cardboard or polyethylene plastic, like Rubbermaid totes; lined with polyethylene foam and then acid-free tissue paper). Stable ceramic vessels might sit directly on lined shelving, particularly if they’re very large or heavy, like many stone objects.

Listen, every type of object has a particular way(s) of storing that’s best for them, you’re gonna have to look that up yourself or consult someone if you need that level of detail

Ideally, before being stored away, objects are also photographed. This could be part of the Collection Officer’s duty, and/or your museum could have a photographer on staff. (say it with me:) This is more likely if your museum is really huge and/or has a backlog of unphotographed collections and has hired someone specifically, even if temporarily, to improve its collections documentation.

I would say a collections person, or anyone with a museum studies degree, should have some minimum amount of conservation knowledge that includes basic storage standards for different object materials, how to spot potential preservation problems (like if your bronze axe head is actively oxidizing or if that green spot looks the same as it always has since starting and pausing decaying), and maybe how to give objects a basic clean or deal with certain types of problems. But the nitty-gritty science is more the realm of Conservators, someone with a degree that ends in -Sci or who’s done some other certification course.

The general collections store should always be dark, slightly too cool for prolonged human comfort, and labeled to high heaven. Objects will most likely be grouped by material- ceramics/pottery, metals, precious metals and stones (jewelry or beads), stone, glass, wood, bone/ivory/other organic material like feathers or teeth or anything that can be decorative, textiles, paintings. A museum often has some paper material/documents, usually part of or related to a group of objects they acquired, but generally paper and photographic material is the realm of archives and archivists. Yet again, the bigger/more well-funded the museum, the more likely it to have a separate archive department, so your character could also work as an archivist in a museum.

Another thing the collections care folk probably do is ship objects. Remember how I said that  museums loan objects and exhibitions to each other? The stuff’s gotta travel somehow! If things are being shipped internationally, they’ll go in big wooden crates, with specifically dimensioned partitions inside. Then it will be lined with our favorite foam and tissue paper, cut so the objects sit snugly inside. I haven’t personally worked anywhere with a possibility of local shipments, so I can’t say where the threshold might be as to when a museum would just pay an employee to drive the objects over vs ship them with a shipping company. But the preparations would be similar, minus the big wooden crate but with extra-careful packing (and paperwork and insurance etc)

Conservation

Conservators are the people who work in labs with fancy equipment. Not every museum will have a formal conservator or a lab of any kind; sometimes the collections care person fills this role, or if something urgently needs care beyond the abilities of the museum’s equipment, they might send it away to a lab elsewhere, the same way you can send your old VHS home videos to a professional archive to be digitized.

If an object is actively deteriorating in a way that could harm itself or other objects (as opposed to like, at risk of fading bc the lighting is wrong, which is a straightforward fix related to the environment), that’s when a conservator would intervene.

Some methods/machinery by which you can analyze objects:

Ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) light - Different materials absorb and react to light differently, which you can use to identify them. Useful for seeing things like the different layers of paintings

Stereo-microscopy (microscopes, of varying strengths)

At magnifications of x5-x100 you can see things like tool marks from an object’s manufacture, traces from wear, deposits, and coatings

At x50-x500, with a thin sliver of a sample, you can see (and hopefully identify) fibers, layers, particles, metallographic structures 

You can get information from objects without taking samples, but samples are usually worth the information. 

energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDXRF) - EDXRF allows you to identify the elemental composition of the surface layer of an object. So it might tell you what a tool is made of, and also the composition of the objects it was used on, if they left traces

scanning electron microscopy (SEM) - an SEM uses a focused beam of electrons to produce a magnified, high-resolution image of the surface of an object

X-radiography, both film and digital - X-rayy are beneficial for objects that might be covered by dirt or corrosion and can show you details of an object’s construction or hidden structural weaknesses

I’m not a conservator, so if you want more hard science-based info, ask one of them lol

Listen to me. If you take nothing else away from this post, let it be this:

 Once an object is in a museum, it is never seeing natural daylight again. Sunlight is the ultimate enemy of every object’s lifespan. If you need to see an object in the sun or moon light for ~magical spell reasons~, you will straight up be stealing that object to smuggle it outside.

Okay. That being said, you do hear (and could probably google) stories about museum employees stealing things from their museums on purpose to prove a point about security or insurance to their higher-ups, so like. Depending on your type of museum, it might not be impossible to steal from lmao. (Don’t tell anyone I said that.)

Possibly the most useful advice for you to keep in mind when writing your conservator or collections care characters would be that touching objects hurts them. It might not hurt them now, it might not even hurt them in ten years, but every time you handle an object, there’s a risk that you’ll damage it. Not on purpose, obviously, but to err is human. The simplest, most effective advice my conservation professor ever gave us was “don’t handle an object if you don’t have to.” That means don’t move an object without a plan and a place to put it, first examination should always be visual, not tactile, etc. Unfortunately, that means that your character cannot walk around lovingly handling and caressing their favorite objects (unless this is a Night at the Museum situation where the objects are caressing them back, ykwim)

Museum Technician

These people probably have a lot of different names, but basically, technicians are the background muscle of the museum. They do the technical construction of bigger pieces of exhibition material, up to and including the exhibition cases themselves. 

So they wouldn’t deal with the small mount that the object rests on, but they might build the big plinth that the mount sits on. They’ll help move things around the building, particularly big heavy things, hang big framed works, assist with exhibit installs, and generally do most things which might involve power tools/equipment or heavy lifting

I worked in a big museum that hired a third party company to supply their technicians; I interviewed at another place that hired their own. If you’re a small museum, you might just have a freelance person that comes in once or twice a week to help move things.

Other

Other miscellaneous roles one could have in a museum: researcher (for exhibits and/or collections), gift shop or cafe worker, security guard, room attendant, translator, archaeologist, consultant

Honestly, TL;DR? Just have your character be a consultant of some kind. “Oh no, I don’t work here, I’m Y’s friend. They called me in to provide some expertise on X subject that they’re doing an exhibit on.” This could work for literally any subject- history/archaeology/anthropology, art, transportation, science and technology, anything you might find pictures of in an archive, idk. This could get you into an office or meeting room of some kind in the ‘employee only’ space of the museum, or potentially all the way into the collections store if you’re giving them information they were missing about some objects. Otherwise you’d probably (hopefully) need a key or some other kind of security clearance to get into the collections store.

Whew, that was a ride, huh? I hope this guide was useful to someone! I’m always open to answering questions if you think I forgot something or if anyone wants more details <3

[adarlingmess]

Meet my Spidersona Phoebe L. Peña, also known as the Spider-Widow!

She's definitely not affiliated with Natasha Romanoff and other Widows in the Marvel universe though. I'm going to my cyberpunk-loving roots and made her futuristic and glowing neon. Have a slightly long-ass, slightly angsty, and definitely self-indulgent backstory below because you guys know how I love hurting my own feelings

Phoebe is the granddaughter of the Ned Leeds of her universe, which serves as the Uncle Ben counterpart of her canon. Her parents departed from the USA to live in the Philippines and go back to their roots, but Phoebe found herself moving to the USA after her parents died. She stays with her Lolo Ned who's happy to get to know and dote on his granddaughter like his lola did to him in his youth. In her adulthood, she pursued an art degree in a NY art school.

At some point, she meets her universe's Miguel O'Hara and the two started dating on and off thanks to their busy college schedule. Once he secured a position in Alchemax, they started taking their relationship more seriously, and ended up tying the knot.

When Tyler Stone started to pressure Miguel into conducting more ethically questionable experiments, he decided to turn in his notice. Phoebe is one of the few people he opened up to, so she knows the company's practices to some extent.

In order to keep Miguel on his leash, Tyler sends his goon to kidnap his wife. She gets drugged with Rapture, and the only way to cure her was for Miguel to come back to Alchemax. A botched attempt to save her life ends up mutating her, splicing her DNA with that of a Black Widow spider. Tragically, still delirious from the drug, Phoebe ends up biting her own husband. That killed Miguel's counterpart of her universe.

When she came to her senses, Phoebe mourned him and swore vengeance against Alchemax. At some point, she joins the Spider Society... led by an older, worn-out version of her dead husband from another universe. Searching for a higher calling that didn't involve revenge, she joined up. She changed her surname back to her maiden name to avoid any confusion and to distance herself from the Miguel O'Hara of Earth-928B. Phoebe pushed her longing down and dove headfirst into work in an attempt to distract herself from her grief, and her new boss.

Smol trivia about her name: Peña is my maternal grandmother's maiden surname, and Phoebe is how she and some of my relatives pronounce my name🥹

[venomlion3]

Wahoo I've been working on this dude on-and-off since June 2023 when I saw ATSV in theaters!! I'll probably find more things to tweak right after I submit this but I'm tired of looking at him and I wanted him up in time for Art Fight so I'm releasing him from containment 🏃 More info about him under the cut!

Introducing Steven "Seth" McLilliard Stryker, or the Spider-Man of Earth-40712! Also known as the Peacock-Spider or Spider-Lily, he's been his city's "Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" since he was 15 y/o. As of now he's been the host to two separate symbiotes--his first being Scourge/Calamity (Scourge is what it went by when bonded to Seth, Calamity is what it currently goes by) and his second/current being Malignant/Goliath. Seth is kinda both Spider-Man and Eddie Brock/Venom in his world--moreso the Sonyverse trilogy Eddie/Venom than anything. Anyways, he's in a polycule with Malakai “MJ” Jeriah-Watson (eventually known as Jackpot), Harvey “Harry” Edwin Leeds-Osborn (still debating on if he becomes New Goblin/Hobgoblin/whatever), Feliciano “Felicia” Hardy (also known as Black Cat), and Malignant/Goliath of course. Prior to them he did date a few other people, notably Gavyn “Gwen” Stacy in high school and Dr. Oliver “Liv” Osnick Octavius (later known as Doctor Octopus and eventually [REDACTED]) in his early college years. Still workshopping names but we're getting somewhere! Also still figuring out his villains--Calamity is meant to be his version of Carnage (although I might still make canonical expies of Peter/Venom/Carnage/etc in this verse, not sure yet), and outside of Doc Ock I've got ideas for Green Goblin and the Kingpin (the latter of which is actually his uncle 🫢). But you can expect most of Spider-Man's regular rogues gallery to show up at some point!

I'm really happy with how he came out! I'm still not super confident drawing humans but fixating on this guy's ref really forced me to push through any anxiety I had! His costume went through a few designs before I got it where I wanted it (a bunch of WIP shots will be shown in his TH gallery), but I think I did ok for my first ever fanmade Spidey design :] In regards to his canon event it's gonna suck so much for him, but I'm going to keep details regarding that a secret for now ;3c All I can say is that post-canon-event he's almost exactly like MCU!Peter after Aunt May's death. Think when he's fighting Green Goblin and he goes to stab him with his own glider, only Raimi!Peter isn't there to stop him,,,

ANYWAYS I could yap for hours about this guy but so take these instead:

-Here's a link to his Toyhouse page! I spent a good chunk of time making it all pretty and even though it isn't done yet I wanna share it with y'all 🤠

-And here is a link to his playlist! It's got songs mixed in that fit with other Earth-40712 characters, but 98% of the songs in there are related to him!

[theinconvenientlifestyle]

When

04/05/2024 - 05/05/2024

All Day

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Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza has killed over 34,000 Palestinians, and displaced the vast majority of the population. Palestinians are experiencing massacre after massacre. Palestinians in Gaza are facing imminent famine.

We must keep taking action to demand the government ends its complicity in Israel’s attacks and stop arming Israel, for an end to Israeli apartheid, and freedom and justice for Palestine.

Many PSC branches are joining local May Day rallies and demonstrations. Check with your local PSC branch for more information.

Saturday 4 May

Abergavenny: Meet at Post Office Square, 11am

Brecon: Outside St. Mary’s Church, 11am-12noon

Bristol: Assemble at Water Tower, BS9 1FG, 12noon. Rally in College Green.

Carlisle: Barclays, English Street, 12noon-1pm

Ceredigion: Stall and leafletting at Guildhall, Cardigan, 11am-1pm

Coventry: Barclays, High Street, 10am-11.30am

Cromer: West Street & Church Street, NR279HZ, 10.30am-12noon

Exeter: Bedford Square, 12noon-2pm

Guildford: Junction of Guildford High Street with Quarry Street. 12noon-2pm

Kirkwall, Orkney: St Magnus Cathedral, 1pm-2pm

Leamington: Town Hall, 11am-12noon

Leeds: May Day March for Peace, Assemble 11.30am outside Leeds Art Gallery.

London, Camden: Meet Mornington Crescent, Statue of Richard Cobden at 10.30am. Rally from 12noon outside Barclays, Tottenham Court Road, W1T 1BH.

London, Enfield: Stall outside Barclays, Enfield Town, 11am

London, Hackney: Ride-along, meet behind Hackney Town Hall, E8, Mare Street.

London, Tower Hamlets: Cycle for Palestine, Mile End Park South (Burdett Road opposite junction with Eric Street), 11am; Cycle to protest at Pret A Manger, 121 Bethnal Green Road

Merton: Majestic Way, Mitcham Fair Green, CR4 2JS, 1-2:30pm

Milton Keynes: 86 High Street, Newport Pagnell, MK16 8PY, 1.30-3pm

Northamptonshire: Wellingborough town Centre, opposite Hind Hotel, 2pm; Evening info stall at Digger Fest 2024

Newport, Isle of Wight: St Thomas Square, 12noon.

Sheffield: Devonshire Green, 11am (join May Day protest)

Telford: Southwater Lake, TF3 4EJ, 2pm

Wellingborough: Town Centre (opp. Hind Hotel), 2pm

Sunday 5 May

Dorchester: Organising Assembly for Palestine at The Pointe, Old Salvation Army Hall, Durngate Street, 2pm-4.30pm

Ipswich: Peace and Justice March. Assemble at Ipswich Town Hall, IP1 1DH, 11am.

Newcastle: Walk the Tyne for Palestine – More info.

Reading: Outside HSBC, Broad Street, 2pm

West Surrey: Palestine Film Night – More info here.

[writeouswriter]

Winter Reading/Arting/Writing Tag

Thanks so much for the tag, @ink-bunny-blue! (X)

Describe one creative WIP project you plan on working on over winter

I always “plan on” working on a thousand things and then do none of them 😭 because I haven’t been in so much a “creative slump” as I’ve been in an iron gripped chokehold by hyperfixation for the last year, so on one hand I’ve been unable to focus on any of my original writing because it’s not about The Interest™️, and then on the other hand I haven’t even been able to write anything about The Interest™️ because the fixation on it is so strong, everything I write for it has to be Perfect™️ (and nothing’s ever perfect, you know). On that note, if my ability to write returns from the war and I ever get a day off from this purgatory of a job, I really really really want to work on this comparative essay about The Interest™️ involving analyzing parallels to a certain classic play, and looking into various aspects of the tragicomic structure and themes of identity and change. Also, God willing, I’d love to get one fic done, just one, please please please, I have a few winter-y or Christmas-y ones I’m dying to get my brain to sign off on despite my lack of free time, come on, brain, yip yip.

Art, same thing, something Christmas-y for The Interest™️, also I gotta finish some zine pieces.

As for original writing, would love to work on my untitled WIP about an astrobiologist and team of other assorted scientists brought in by a somewhat questionable facility to study an extraterrestrial artefact and being affected strangely by it, but it’s a bit up in the air plot wise. Would love to answer asks about it though if anyone is interested 😭

Recommend a book

Definitely mentioned it before but:

Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds by Brandon Sanderson

“Stephen Leeds is perfectly sane. It's his hallucinations who are mad.”

This is like speculative fiction/thriller/mystery that’s hard to explain, but perfect balance of humour and sincerity, sci-fi and reality, and character and plot, probably my favourite standalone novel ever (well it’s really 3 novellas that somewhat connect and come together to form a novel, but either way).

Survive the Night by Riley Sager

Charlie Jordan is being driven across the country by a serial killer. Maybe.

This is a thriller book set in the 90s that as its title suggests, takes place over the course of one night, where a troubled, film-obsessed college girl (and unreliable narrator) who recently witnessed her friend’s murder (but can’t recall the killer’s face) decides to travel back home via a ride share where her driver may or may not be said killer, and has to, you guessed it, survive the night.

Now, this is actually one of Sager’s lowest ranked and seemingly most universally hated novels, whereas it’s the only one of his I actually thoroughly enjoyed/didn’t find mediocre and thought had a sense of style as I like the almost cinematic way it was written?? It was fast paced, it was fun, it had unique prose, and I think it perfectly captured the vibes of a cheesy 90s B-movie (said as a compliment).

Recommend a fic

I still cannot recommend From Out the Ocean Risen by Bluestar enough, it acts as a sequel fic to the movie Pacific Rim, and has some of the most gorgeously well executed cinematic prose and imagery I’ve ever read, not to mention impeccable character dialogue, and an incredible grasp on the balance between drama/angst/action/heart/humour.

What’s a Little B&E Between Friends by VoiceOfNurse is also a fantastic Pacific Rim series with a solid grasp on both character dynamics/POV and style. A fascinating, very humanizing character study, both angsty and fun.

Recommend Music

I’ve suddenly never heard a song in my life.

The Killing Moon by Echo & The Bunnymen is stuck in my head again, so, *tosses that at you*

She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult also in my head so *throws that also*

Also, even though I haven’t actively listened to them in a while, I’m still still actually super excited for Green Day’s new album, so *one more toss*

Dilemma

The American Dream is Killing Me

Tagging if you want to do it no pressure!: @the-angriest-bunny-of-the-fandom, @writing2sirvive, @druidx, @universalfanfic, @karolinarodrigueswrites, @multi-lefaiye, @transmasc-wizard, @drabbleitout, @merelyafigment, @aritany, @rockium-z, @caffernnn and anyone who wants to do this, feel free to say I tagged you, you’re tagged.

[abwwia]

Chila Kumari Singh Burman MBE is a British artist, celebrated for her radical feminist practice, which examines representation, gender and cultural identity. She works across a wide range of mediums including printmaking, drawing, painting, installation and film.

Born in Bootle, near Liverpool, England, to Indian Hindu Punjabi parents, Burman attended the Southport College of Art, Leeds Polytechnic and the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL where she graduated in 1982. Via Wikipedia

[vgilantee]

oh of course!! i was thinking of college Nick Nelson at Leeds University that I’ve seen Alice has drawn, but since that isn’t part of the main storyline, especially in the show I totally get that! Thank you for being so clear cut there I appreciate you

ah!! that's okay, it was just because you said watched i wasn't sure if you were talking about just the show! because I have read and do own the nick and Charlie novella where he's in uni, and have seen a lot of Alice's art where nick and Charlie are adults with their dogs and just living their best lives haha. so yes, if you wanna talk about university age/adult nick im happy to ^^

[yama-bato]

             Alarah Gee                                                  

             C05 / S / BB            

“ Alarah Gee is based in Yorkshire, North of England. Her practice is centered around the science of line drawing and her recurring fascination with the circle. She has recently added Japanese Sumi-e technique to her practice. Gee received a Bachelor’s degree in Textile Design from Nottingham Trent University and a Foundation in Fine Art from Leeds College of Art. “

[portraituresque]

Raymond Coxon - self-portrait - 1921

Raymond James Coxon (18 August 1896 – 31 January 1997) was a British artist. He enrolled at the Leeds School of Art, the Royal College of Art, and became a teacher in the Richmond School of Art. The creative work of his long and successful career—singly and in various art groups—included landscape and portrait painting, abstract works, creating church murals and serving as a war artist during World War II. In particular he was known for the bold style of his figure and portrait work. After  World War Two his paintings became more abstract.

[mybeingthere]

Horticulture is Kazuhito Takadoi’s first love. Having studied at Hokkaido Agricultural and Horticultural College at Sapporo, Japan and the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley, nature is his biggest inspiration.

Takadoi began collecting leaves and mosses from gardens, which he’d use to make embroidered greeting cards. After completing a BA in Art and Garden Design at Leeds Metropolitan, he quickly realised that Art was his true calling. Heavily influenced by artists like Andy Goldworthy and David Nash, his work is defined by his use of natural materials and contemporary appeal. 

His detailed sculptures and pieces always exemplify his fascination with the intricacies of nature, preserving them for his audience to enjoy.

https://www.sofst.org/kazuhito-takadoi-woven-nature/

[umbershift]

can u pls share ur webcomic Lists

I'm putting together a proper List and it's taking way longer than I thought it would so I'm gonna go ahead and throw out my favorites with links to the About pages if I can manage it:

Midnight Furies: My current favorite comic, has been for a couple years now. Urban fantasy basketball. It’s got a shark lesbian and a Best Girl and a sorta himbo and just some SUPER cool art. Read it

White Noise: At least to me, this one’s got a strong focus on grief and community and relationships. And xenophobia. Lots of fantasy creatures and magic in a modern setting. A good comic if you like world building. It just finished its first story arc and has a big backlog, so this is a very good time to start reading!

Shot & Chaser: Tre and Olly, a matched set, go storm-chasing. I found this one because of a short sort of nsfw sketch comic that made me fall in love with Tre and Olly. I first read it less than a month ago and I’ve reread it in its entirety about four times

Check, Please!: This one’s completed! Eric Bittle (Bitty) is gay and just started playing college hockey, and the comic covers his years on the team! It’s very cute and sweet, and I love the support that Bitty gets from people around him throughout the comic.

O Human Star: This one’s also completed! It’s sci-fi, it's got robots and it discusses gender and queerness and being out and being closeted. The last pages make me cry every single time I read them.

Barbarous: I love love love the art and paneling and colors on this one. Percy is a super smart magic school dropout helping maintain/run an apartment building (I can't remember the job description) along with Leeds, a big monstrous-looking guy with, shall we say, some secrets. It’s got some really cool “who is the monster and who is the man” vibes

I'm trying to focus on non-webtoons here but I can't not recommend Lavender Jack. It's only on Webtoon, as far as I know, but I ADORE it. Think batman-style crime fighter but with Spider-man levels of banter, and also he's a 1910’s gentleman. This one's also completed!

Also, and I cannot stress this enough: if you like a webcomic, go follow the artists/writers on social media. They often share webcomics and creators they like, which leads you to more webcomics to read. I found out about a lot of these from artists I was following.

[dakota-zen]

Escultura Jonathan

Owen🌈

Jonathan Owen, nacido en 1973 en Liverpool, estudió Bellas Artes en la Universidad Metropolitana de Leeds, donde se graduó en 1996, antes de obtener un MFA de Edinburgh College of Art en 2000, Owen comenzó a exhibir con exposiciones individuales en la Galería Colectivo, Edimburgo, y doggerfisher, Edimburgo ( tanto en 2001), y como parte de la muestra colectiva Nuevo: Adquisiciones recientes del arte británico contemporáneo en la Galería Nacional Escocesa de Arte Moderno, en Edimburgo (2002). La Galería Ingleby, Edimburgo, celebró exposiciones individuales de trabajo de Owen en 2011 y 2014 ha pasado a exposición en el Reino Unido e internacionalmente. Vive y trabaja en Edimburgo.

El arte de Jonathan Owen es la transformación. Encontrar las fotografías que se han reproducido en los libros, el artista utiliza un caucho ordinario para borrar partes de la imagen; que no añade nada a la superficie de la página. Hasta la fecha Owen ha trabajado en dos de estas series: estatuas públicas y estrellas de Hollywood en el set. En los primeros ejemplos que opera de una manera sistemática, mientras que sus obras más recientes han visto moverse de una manera más intuitiva. Owen sabe que la tarea fácilmente podría lograrse con programas de ordenador como Photoshop ® . Sin embargo, valora las imperfecciones inevitables que surgen cuando se hace a mano con una goma de borrar ordinaria. La traza residual de la figura, que se parece a una aparición fantasmal, deja pistas en cuanto a lo que una vez fue allí.

Owen describe este proceso de eliminación como una forma de talla de dos dimensiones. Por lo tanto, tiene sentido que su obra ha evolucionado en tres dimensiones. Esto comenzó con los cascanueces de madera que Owen alterada intrincadamente a través de la talla, muestra por primera vez en 2011 Estas pequeñas esculturas, cautivantes fueron seguidas por intervenciones audaces con estatuas de mármol del siglo XIX, que se transforma en parcialmente colapsadas reducciones y elegantes de su forma original.

Mercurio (2012) muestra el interés de Owen en la alteración de la dinámica de la figura. El artista ha tallado la figura del torso de Mercurio en la forma de una cadena. La cabeza de la escultura ahora se desploma hacia adelante, como si lamentándose. Por el contrario, en Untitled (2013) la cabeza de una figura militar se distorsiona de manera espectacular, sin embargo, el torso se mantiene intacta. El artista ha tallado la cabeza de la figura en una jaula con un patrón de estrella tridimensional compleja que se hace eco de la medalla en la solapa. Una esfera de mármol móvil está atrapado en el interior. En la eliminación de los rasgos faciales y no la titulación de la obra, se centra la atención en el aspecto físico de la escultura como un objeto en lugar de una declaración biográfica o alegórica. Owen está interesado en cómo las cifras son inmortalizados a través de la escultura y la fotografía y cómo sus propias acciones cuestionan su lugar en la historia.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Buenos días🌞☕️

[nethmi-mga2022mi5015]

Artist 1 | ANNE HARDY

Anne Hardy is a British artist (London, England). Her art practice spans photography, sculptural installation and audio. She completed an MA in photography at the Royal College of Art in 2000, having graduated from Cheltenham School of Art in 1993 with a degree in painting. Hardy lives and works in London. (Google)

Born: 1970 - 53 years old

Anne Hardy is internationally recognised for her photography and large-scale sculptural installations or ‘FIELDWORKS’, which combine physical materials with light and sound to create immersive and sensual environments. These works derive from places she calls ‘pockets of wild space’ – gaps in the urban space where materials, atmospheres, and emotions gather. Hardy thinks of these works as moments out of time – voids within the ‘everyday’ space, that act as a spell or dream in which to re-encounter our relationships to the worlds that we inhabit.

Hardy builds each of her sets entirely from scratch; a labour-intensive process of constructing an empty room, then developing its interior down to the most minute detail.

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Here are some of my favourite works from her.

Ciper (2007)

Meteor (2022)

Tate Britain (2019)

Leeds Art Gallery (2018)

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Anne Hardy’s subjects exude the not-quite-right ambience of dreamscape or madness. Though her scenes are built in actuality, their compositions are developed to be viewed from one vantage point only and it’s only their 2 dimensional images that are shown. Her photographs compound a sense of disjointedness and isolation. Their hermetic aura and invitation to scrutiny affirms their uncanniness or ‘unrealness.’ 

Anne Hardy: http://anne-hardy.co.uk/

Tate Gallery: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/anne-hardy-25372

[bm2ab]

Crowd Scene . 11 November 2024 . Victoria Station WWI . Bernard Meninsky .1916

Meninsky, Bernard (1891-1950) - 1918 Victoria Station, District Railway Oil on canvas; 76.5 x 50.8 cm.

Bernard Meninsky (25 July 1891 – 12 February 1950) was a figurative artist, painter of figures and landscape in oils, watercolour and gouache, draughtsman and teacher.

He was born in Karotopin now in the Ukraine but raised in Liverpool where he attended the Liverpool School of Art in 1906 after initially attending evening classes in art. He won the King’s Medal in 1911 and went on to study briefly at Royal College of Art in London and the Académie Julian in Paris. After being awarded a scholarship he was able to enter the Slade School of Fine Art in 1912-13. In 1913 he worked for Edward Gordon Craig at his theatre school in Florence, later returning to teach at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

According to Lisa Tickner, the family name was Menushkin, ‘but it was unceremoniously entered as ‘Menisky’ by an English customs officer, whilst Meninsky himself added the second ‘n.’’ See: Tickner, Lisa. Modern Life and Modern Subjects: British Art in the Early Twentieth Century. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2000, p 288 (note 77).

During the first world war he joined the Royal Fusiliers, fighting with General Edmund Allenby in Palestine. He was naturalised a British Citizen in 1918 but had a nervous breakdown and was discharged from service after six months as a Ministry of Information war artist.

In 1920 he was appointed as a tutor of life drawing at the Westminster School of Art, where he was renowned as a superb figure draughtsman. In this period he was also associated with the Bohemian Bloomsbury Group and the Garman sisters. In 1940 he moved to Oxford City School of Art, and returned to the Central School in 1945.

Bernard Meninsky held his first solo show at Goupil Gallery in 1919 along with The London Group and the New English Art Club (NEAC). He published Mother and Child: 28 Drawings in 1928 and illustrated the 1946 volume of Milton's poems L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. In 1935 he designed sets for the ballet 'David' for the Markova-Dolin Company.

Meninsky suffered from mental illness for much of his life and committed suicide in 1950.

A Meninsky memorial exhibition was organised by the Arts Council in 1951-52, and a retrospective show was staged at the Adams Gallery in 1958.

His works are on show at the Arts Council, British Museum, Imperial War Museum, National Gallery of Ireland, Tate Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, and galleries in Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Sheffield.

[lboogie1906]

Dr. Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka (July 13, 1934) known as Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first sub-Saharan African to be honored in that category.

He was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta, Nigeria. He attended Government College in Ibadan and University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds. He worked with the Royal Court Theatre. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres, and on the radio. He took an active role in Nigeria’s political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. He seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. He was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years.

He was a Professor of Comparative literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. He was made professor emeritus. He taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts and then at Emory University, where he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. He has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at NYU’s Institute of African American Affairs and Loyola Marymount University. He has taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard, and Yale. He was a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University.

He was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the “Special Prize” category awarded to someone who has “contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples”.

He married Barbara Dixon (1958), Olaide Idowo (1963), and Folake Doherty (1989. He had 10 children. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence