ITP Diary 11th August 2014 : Fatih Yucel

One Day in the ITP 11 August 2014 Fatih Yucel

Today was one of the most interesting days in our programme. We started the day with the amazing Ian Jenkins who is a specialist in Greek art and culture. He showed us the Enlightenment Gallery which is the first part (Room 1) of the British Museum. He told us about the earlier times and the development of the museum through the pieces on display and books belonging to the precursors of the museum.

Later he took the group outside and told us about the details of the pediment above the main entrance of the British museum. This significant pieces tells the development of the human-beings from a simple auto-subsistent creature to the wise, scientific person.

Then Lucinda Smith gave us a presentation about the storage of the collections and about the different material used for  storing the collections. We then split into groups and I went to the store room of the Asian collection.  Seeing all of these artifacts, pottery, etc. from different sites of Asia was very interesting, and as a group we evaluated the condition of the store room.

After lunch Antony Loveland, senior librarian in the Anthropology Library talked to us about the different libraries in the museum and we had the chance to examine some of the very early books from Anthropology Library’s collection.

The last presentation of the day was delivered by David Bilson, who is the head of the British Museum Security. This talk as well was quite interesting, he told us about certain dangers that can occur in the museum and the mediums to prevent them.

After coming back to Schafer House and after dinner Costa and I went to a walk to Camden.

Fatih Yucel / Turkey