lifeasdaddy

Photographing museum labels: The retrospective user experience.

There's a discussion over at Cooper-Hewitt labs about the design and utility of museum labels.  A question has also been raised about how ordinary museum goers use photographs taken of museum labels.

As an ordinary museum goer who sometimes takes photographs of museum labels, I'll answer the implied question.

I take photographs of museum labels to prompt my memory later, sometimes years later, about what I've seen in the museum.  Firstly I take a photograph of the museum object(s) and then immediately afterward a photograph of the accompanying label.

 

Here are some examples.  Three years ago I was in the Louvre and saw an interesting sculpure display.  There was a temporary display of contemporary works amongst classical sculpture in one of the sculpture courts.

Firstly I took a photograph of the works:

 

 

and then took photographs of the two associated labels, this one:

 

and this one:

 

 

 As I can read French, I have not previously needed to record any translation to English.

So, I can say three years after having viewed the works that Tony Cragg's Manipulation (2008) was displayed in front of Antoine Cosevox's La Seine (1706).

We can see in the examples above that the classical sculpture which may have been on display for years, or even decades, has one type of label and that the temporarily exhibited work has a different type of label.  This inconsistency didn't much matter to the gallery goers. When confronted with magnificence people don't go around analysing label fonts and content.

I do have a longer shot photograph of the two works together showing the grander scale of Cragg's work, but I like the one above because it shows the typographic texture of his sculpture.

Another example from the Louvre. As we walked through some of the Egyptology galleries I asked me son which was his favourite item.  Out of thousands he chose this one, which is quite small, about 2cm long:

and

 So taking those photographs of museum labels has had some use for me.  I typically don't use the information for further research or Googling, I only need the title of the work and the creator. 

 

An open letter of advice to Miley Cyrus.

There has been some controversy in the last couple of days about some advice which Sinead O'Conner, an Irish Singer, has given to Miley Cyrus, a pop singer.

I thought I would give Miley the benefit of my own advice.

Dear Miley,

Please take this in the fatherly way it is meant. 

1. Buy blue chip shares. Now, people will try to get you to buy speculative stocks, but really blue chips with a strong income stream and decent capital growth are best. If they're Australian stocks, those with fully franked dividends are the ones to buy. But you don't have that system in the USA.

2. Travel while you are young Miley. Before you have kids

3. Have kids. Kids are great, but they might prevent you travelling so much.

4. Unless you have a nanny. But remember, don't get a nanny who might tempt your man. That way lays disaster. 

5. Go to a Springsteen concert before he gets too old to do his thing. Yes, Miley, a Springsteen concert.

6. Pay your taxes. Plenty of entertainers have tried to avoid taxes, the government always catches up with them. See number 7. 

7. The NSA is monitoring your calls, so be careful what you say.

8. Put out a Christmas album. Keeps a royalty stream coming every year, year after year. Bing Crosby is still selling Christmas albums and he's been dead for 40 years. Same for Elvis.

9. Don't pay any attention to that Irish singer. Don't tweet about her.

Yours,
Bob.

Added:

- Put the ice in the glass before the whiskey. (via @nickorloff)

Joseph Cox as a younger man.

I have written before about Joseph Christopher Cox, here and here. He was an Australian soldier who was killed in the First World War, and a distant relative.

Here is a photograph of the Cox family. The handwritten information on the back of the photograph states that it was taken "circa 1904".  If so he would have been 13 or 14 years old however he looks older than that age in this photograph so I suggest the photograph was actually taken in a later year.

He appears at top left in the photograph.

The handwritten caption on the back of the photograph reads Left to Right:

Back:  Joe, Grace, Rupert, Alma, Jack, Vi

Centre: Gert, Ede, Grandfather, Grandmother, Darcy, Ethel

Front: Eric, Rene.

Searching the online archive Trove, I found the following pieces of information about the family.

 In the 30 June 1916 issue of The Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate newspaper there is an item about the marriage of John Douglas and Alma Cox where it states,

"Mr. John Douglas, eldest son of Mrs. Douglas, and Miss Alma Cox,fifth daughter of Mr. and Mrs. F. Cox,of Buninyong (were married) ...She was attended by her sister Irene ... The bridegroom was attended by Mr. Joseph Cox, the brother of the bride...."

The 1912 wedding of Mr. John Cecil Cox (possibly Jack? ) to Miss Martha Raines is mentioned in the newspaper here. Miss Ethel Cox gave a present, and the bridegroom was attended by Mr. R. Cox (possibly Rupert?)

The 1912 wedding of Mr. Victor Rupert Bruce to Viola Elizabeth Cox is mentioned in the newspaper here.   Bridesmaids were the Misses Alma and Grace Cox, and Mr. J. Cox, brother of the bride was groomsman.

The 1921 wedding of Miss Irene Cox to Mr. J. Morris is mentioned in the newspaper here. 

 

 

Who is that dancer?

A photographic puzzle starts when I ask myself a question.

Who is that dancer?

Unidentified partner of ballet dancer Valentin Zeglovsky, 1947 / Max Dupain

Held by State Library of New South Wales.

Call number  

ON 247 / 688-716

  I can show you the answer:

 

How do I get from question to answer?

 

Well, with a little bit of photo detective work.

I sometimes browse the photographs on the photo sharing website Flickr and usually take in the photos posted there by the State Library of New South Wales.

One in particular caught my eye today:  Unidentified partner of ballet dancer Valentin Zeglovsky, 1947 / Max Dupain

It is a great photograph, well lit, well composed.

But, unidentified?? Such a good photograph, but we don't know of whom?  That's usually the sort of question to which I can find the answer. Someone who was worth Max Dupain taking the time to create that work of art, she should be known.

 

I clicked through to the website of the State Library of New South Wales to find out more about the photograph.

There I see an "Administrative/Biographical Note" which says:

For further information, see: "Valentin Zeglovsky: on stage, backstage and at the studio of Max Dupain" in the Valerie Lawson blog Dancelines, 12 November 2011. http://dancelines.com.au/valentin-zeglovsky-on-stage-backstage-and-at-the-studio-of-max-dupain/ (accessed November 15, 2011)

Hmm. Valerie Lawson. She's a well-known journalist. So let's look at her blog page here.

Valerie's blog post gives some background about the photographs, and a good deal of biographical information about Valentin Zeglovsky - a well-known ballet dancer of years past.

It also gives the information that Valentin Zeglovsky married dancer & actress Pamela Bromley-Smith in 1949, and that Valerie thinks she may be the unidentified woman.

Well, there's a working hypothesis right there.

Let's see if we can find a photograph of Pamela Bromley-Smith to compare with the many of the unidentified woman.

There are three excellent close-up photographs of the unidentified woman on Valerie's blog which will provide excellent comparison.

Ok, now the go-to place for biographical research into 20th Century Australians is the National Library of Austrlia's Trove website.

Let's type Valentin Zeglovsky into the search box and see how we go.

This is the result. The search returns 13 photographs, none of which are the unidentified woman.

The search also returns 28 digitised newspaper articles, none of which appear to refer to Pamela Bromley-Smith, nor have photographs of the unidentified woman nor Pamela Bromley-Smith.

Now, let's approach the solution from a different direction. Let's search Trove for Pamela Bromley-Smith. There is 1 irrelevant photograph result, and 43 digitised newspaper articles.

I inspected each of the digitised newspaper articles until I found this one:

(ref. Prizewinners in Miss N.S.W. Quest. (1947, November 22). The Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 - 1954), p. 1. Retrieved November 17, 2011, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55894727)

And there, on the right, is Pamela Bromley-Smith.

Wouldn't you know it, the same woman as the unidentified partner of Valentin Zeglovsky here and here.

Puzzle solved. 

( More on Valerie Lawson here. )

 

 UPDATE - 21 November 2011.

It seems that Valerie Lawson is not convinced that the photograph of Pamela Bromley-Smith in the newspaper item I've shown above is the same person as the mystery dancer in the Max Dupain photographs.

Valerie writes on her blog:

"Bob, the newspaper photo does look like the woman with Zeglovsky. I had seen it on Trove but was not completely certain as the photo is grainy and she seems to have dark hair whereas Pamela is blonde in the Dupain photos. But this is the closest we’ve got to identifying her so far."

and the State Library of New South Wales people are also unimpressed with my findings:

"Thanks Bob, we've investigated Pamela Bromley-Smith and aren't convinced. This woman is probably a ballet dancer as her ballet poses in other photographs with Zeglovsky look professional."

I'll have to do a bit more work then.

Valerie Lawson also mentioned on her blog that Pamela Bromley-Smith and Valentin Zeglovsky had two sons, Mark and Paul Zeglovskis who attended Holland Park School in London.

I'm trying to contact the family in London.

Valerie also mentioned that Pamela Bromley-Smith also at times used the stage name "Pamela Bromley". 

Searching Trove for that name also gives us an article on Page 16 of the Australian Women's Weekly magazine of Wednesday 4 July, 1951 about the London production of Kiss Me, Kate  which includes a phorograph captioned, "Dancers, led by Pamela Bromley, who comes from Neutral Bay, New South Wales, wait in the wings."

It's accompanied by this photograph:

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55461438

The photograph looks like the mystery dancer to me, but is a little bit too small to be certain.

The search continues for more evidence.

UPDATE - 24 November 2011

I have managed to contact Mr. Leo Zeglovskis in the UK. I asked him if he could identify the photographs on Valerie Lawson's blog post here:

http://dancelines.com.au/valentin-zeglovsky-on-stage-backstage-and-at-the-studio-of-max-dupain/

which contain, amongst others, photographs captioned as:

- Valentin Zeglovsky and unidentified dancer, photo © Max Dupain, ON247/705, Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

- Unidentified partner of Valentin Zeglovsky, © Max Dupain, 1947, ON247/710, Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

- Unidentified partner of Zeglovsky, photo © Max Dupain, Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, ON247/712

- Unidentified partner of Zeglovsky, © Max Dupain, 1947, ON 247/709, Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

He wrote back:

"These pictures are all of my mother Pamela Bromley-Smith."

 

 

Famous people I have met.

This is not for the purpose of name dropping.

It's to remind myself of moments I savoured as much as anything.  To make the list, I must have at least talked to the person.

When you spend lots of years working in some nice hotels you meet some nice people.  Some are not nice.

The only order is that in which they have popped into my head as I write this.

My friend Martin Miles has asked me to categorise these people into nice and not nice.

Here's the key:  N - Nice.  VN = Very Nice

Placido Domingo N - I was working as a doorman at the Hyatt On Collins in Melbourne where he stayed.  I got to open his car door and greet him several times.  Always polite.

Sir Anthony Hopkins VN - He was filming Spotswood and I was the night porter at his hotel.  At that time he already had Hanibal Lector from Silence of the Lambs in the can although it was not yet released. Therefore he was not as well known as he was soon to become. Being very careful with his health he left the hotel at 5.45am each morning to travel to another hotel with a swimming pool he preferred for his exercise.  We chatted several times while he was waiting for his car - he was gracious, charming and funny.

Paul Keating N - Shortly after his electoral defeat in 1996 he was staying in a hotel where I worked.  He absolutely shunned publicity at the time and appeared the opposite of the political brawler he was known to be.

Gough Whitlam N - In the early 2000s he would occasionally stop for a cup of coffee at a well known cafe in Darlinghurst Road not far from my work. I greeted him and told him I was a political admirer.  We exchanged pleasantries.

Kylie Minogue N - Stayed where I worked twice while touring.  A very private person.

Laurence Fishburne N - He attended a party at the hotel in Kings Cross where I worked while he was filming The Matrix in Sydney. We exchanged greetings.

Tom Jones VN - See my comment below. One of the two times in my life I witnessed electrifying charisma.

Max Walker VN - Met in an elevator.

Wendy Harmer N - Met her in an elevator too.

Peter Moon

Brent Thompson N - While I was a doorman in Melbourne helped him in and out of a car shortly after his retirement from horse racing.  It had taken a heavy toll on his legs.

Roy Higgins N - Opened doors and greeted him at a hotel.

Bart Cummings VN - Opened doors and greeted him.

Bill Hayden VN - During his term as Governor-General he stayed at our hotel several times when in Melbourne.

Sir Gustav Nossel VN  A friend introduced us at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.

Suzanne Corey VN  - Same friend introduced us at a party at her and husband Gerry Adams' house many years ago. 

Leo Schofield  VN - I was working as a taxi driver in Melbourne and picked him up at Rockman's Regency Hotel.  I recognised him by name which amazed him.  We had a good chat on the way to the airport.

Kamahl  VN

Tetsuya Wakuda  N

Thomas Keller N

Darren Hayes

Jimmy Barnes

Lady (Sonia )McMahon  (Who hasn't?)

Kerry Packer N

James Packer N

Malcolm  Fraser N

Seb Chan  VN

General William Westmoreland N - The year was 1988.  I was a porter at the Regent Hotel of Sydney and the General (long retired) and his wife came to stay. Lean, and hard and very polite.

Caspar Weinberger N

Jack Mundey

Lionel Rose VN

Sir Roden Cutler, V.C.  N - I was working at the Manly Pacific Parkroyal Hotel when he arrived driving his Rolls-Royce motor car to attend a funciton accompanied by his wife.  A tall striking man, with a stiff-legged walk.  We're in the elevator.  It Sir Roden, Lady Cutler, the hotel concierge and I. Sir Roden looks at his wife then says to the concierge, "I wonder if you can tell me how the Cutler Room got its' name?" The concierge, having no idea to whom he was speaking said, "No sir, I'm afraid I don't."  I chipped in to say, "You'll have to forgive him Sir Roden, he's from New Zealand.  The Cutler Room is named after a man who grew up in Manly and went on to a distinguished military career, including winning the Victoria Cross. And later to become Governor of our great state." Hotel concierge - you know who you are!

Olivia Newton-John   VN 

Mary Donaldson    [ prior to her Princesshood]

David Copperfield

Denis Cox  VN

Phillip Adams  VN - My friend George Lombard bought a painting at a charity auction with the proceeds going to aid refugees.  The painting was of Phillip Adams plus various allegorical features which had been a non-winning entry in the Archibald Prize for portraiture.  A bonus was that the winning bidder was invited to tea at Phillip Adams' house and a tour of Adams' collection of antiquities and objets d'art.  George kindly invited me to accompany him.  Phillip, a great raconteur, showed us around his collection and regaled us with anecdotes about significant pieces.  George mentioned my interest in wrist watches - and then Phillip picked up a skeletonised Breguet to show me. Phillip said that he and Barry Humphries were in London for the release of Barry McKenzie.  Humphries said it was about time that Phillip had a decent watch now that he was making some money.  The Breguet was the result.

Pauline Hanson  VN  [ I sat  next to her on a flight for 90 minutes.  We had a good chat - but not about politics.]

Tony Abbott  N - He's the Member of the House of Representatives for the electorate of Warringah.  I live in his electorate and have run into him a couple of times.

Elliott Gould N - A true eccentric.  This was the early 90s.  He was in Australia doing a movie and staying at the hotel where I worked.  His usual mode of dress in the hotel and on the way to and from work was a blue boilersuit - and that had nothing to do with his role.

Brian May N - He stayed at the hotel where I worked while his band was touring in 1998 or 1999. Looking every inch the rock star all the time, his behaviour was that of a very polite English gentleman.