Blog Post
The Opening
- By Karen Hayes
- •
- 12 Nov, 2016
- •
And finally, after all the anxieties and spelling corrections, after the boxes of exhibits piled up in the hall and most of the downstairs furniture banished to Nancy’s bedroom, after assurances and reassurances and numerous panic attacks, finally the hall is open again to the public after 250 years.
Last night the first of our collectors, Bhim and Yogesh tiptoed rather nervously up to the doors in the icy rain and were ushered into a blaze of light and warmth and the smell of mulling cider. Although this time people arrived in cars or on foot rather than in carriages, it felt like that original sense of wonder and curiosity was undiminished by the centuries. Half way through the evening it was Yogesh who blew into a conch, (or Shankh as she named it) to officially open the exhibition to the public.
The overall effect of the massed collections is extraordinarily moving, just as each initial visit and each first glimpse of those collections had been moving. Seeing them now, gathered together under Annie’s assured visual direction, is breathtaking. It is exactly what we had envisaged when we had sat at Piccadilly station two years ago and dreamed of the house being reopened for personal collections. It is what we’d hoped for when we wrote our application to the Arts Council for support and what we had promised our collectors when they agreed to work with us. On the night when the U.S elections have dominated the news with overtones of fear and ugliness and suspicion, I feel that we have managed to achieve a very small something which testifies to individual human generosity, creativity and warmth. As Mike, one of our collectors, so eloquently phrased it, this exhibition is about Things made with love.
Every alcove and shelf in the ground floor of the hall is now inhabited by the weird and wonderful, personal and intimate collections of the people of Middleton, Langley and Greater Manchester. I am sure the mulled cider contributed to the feeling but it really was as if the spirit of Lever himself and his urge to communicate and connect had reinhabited the Hall, for the colours, textures, personality and individuality of each collection are illuminated in these grand old rooms. It was quite a wonderful experience to hear the voices of our collectors, full of laughter and surprise, winding up the stairs and to watch them as they read their own very eloquent curation of their own belongings in their own words.
What I have loved about this project right from the beginning is the warmth that is at its heart and that is represented in Chris and Sian’s willingness to open up their own home and allow local strangers, who have now become friends, to share and celebrate human curiosity in their space. Listening to Jennifer Reid singing the eighteenth century tribute poem to Lever’s original exhibition as a ballad was a real moment of focus and of connection with the spirit of the Leverian collection. Similarly, listening to the Middleton Brass Band, ranged up the staircase with their instruments, playing followed by Jerusalem was a proper goose bump moment. Sian and I were both weeping, (again, blame the cider).
I loved hearing the bubble of excited voices mixed with Blod the dog’s little clatter of paws as her house was filled with happy visitors and punctuated by the sharp, high notes of the handbells rung from the collection in the hall. The whole experience has been a joy. Annie has done wonders with realising the look and feel of the exhibition as a sort of alchemical elision of the centuries and an affirmation of the questing spirit of Lever. Our wonderful student volunteers are presiding over a living archive, curated by them, of donated objects collected at the door. And in the middle of it all Chris, Sian and I are drinking our way through the kitchen collection of wine………………CHEERS, world.
Last night the first of our collectors, Bhim and Yogesh tiptoed rather nervously up to the doors in the icy rain and were ushered into a blaze of light and warmth and the smell of mulling cider. Although this time people arrived in cars or on foot rather than in carriages, it felt like that original sense of wonder and curiosity was undiminished by the centuries. Half way through the evening it was Yogesh who blew into a conch, (or Shankh as she named it) to officially open the exhibition to the public.
The overall effect of the massed collections is extraordinarily moving, just as each initial visit and each first glimpse of those collections had been moving. Seeing them now, gathered together under Annie’s assured visual direction, is breathtaking. It is exactly what we had envisaged when we had sat at Piccadilly station two years ago and dreamed of the house being reopened for personal collections. It is what we’d hoped for when we wrote our application to the Arts Council for support and what we had promised our collectors when they agreed to work with us. On the night when the U.S elections have dominated the news with overtones of fear and ugliness and suspicion, I feel that we have managed to achieve a very small something which testifies to individual human generosity, creativity and warmth. As Mike, one of our collectors, so eloquently phrased it, this exhibition is about Things made with love.
Every alcove and shelf in the ground floor of the hall is now inhabited by the weird and wonderful, personal and intimate collections of the people of Middleton, Langley and Greater Manchester. I am sure the mulled cider contributed to the feeling but it really was as if the spirit of Lever himself and his urge to communicate and connect had reinhabited the Hall, for the colours, textures, personality and individuality of each collection are illuminated in these grand old rooms. It was quite a wonderful experience to hear the voices of our collectors, full of laughter and surprise, winding up the stairs and to watch them as they read their own very eloquent curation of their own belongings in their own words.
What I have loved about this project right from the beginning is the warmth that is at its heart and that is represented in Chris and Sian’s willingness to open up their own home and allow local strangers, who have now become friends, to share and celebrate human curiosity in their space. Listening to Jennifer Reid singing the eighteenth century tribute poem to Lever’s original exhibition as a ballad was a real moment of focus and of connection with the spirit of the Leverian collection. Similarly, listening to the Middleton Brass Band, ranged up the staircase with their instruments, playing followed by Jerusalem was a proper goose bump moment. Sian and I were both weeping, (again, blame the cider).
I loved hearing the bubble of excited voices mixed with Blod the dog’s little clatter of paws as her house was filled with happy visitors and punctuated by the sharp, high notes of the handbells rung from the collection in the hall. The whole experience has been a joy. Annie has done wonders with realising the look and feel of the exhibition as a sort of alchemical elision of the centuries and an affirmation of the questing spirit of Lever. Our wonderful student volunteers are presiding over a living archive, curated by them, of donated objects collected at the door. And in the middle of it all Chris, Sian and I are drinking our way through the kitchen collection of wine………………CHEERS, world.