The Prairie Paladin Medieval Market and Faire Spotlight: Scottish Country Dancers

With the Prairie Paladin Medieval Market and Faire fast approaching, the staff and volunteers of the Museum of Antiquities would like to acknowledge some of the groups that have made the medieval festival wildly successful. Throughout the coming weeks before the festival, the Museum will be posting interviews done with these groups, allowing our readers to understand better the different parts of the festival.

Our first interview was with Diane Davis, the Demo Coordinator for the Saskatoon Scottish Country Dancers. Having sent Diane a list of questions she sent me back her answers to help us at the Museum, and the wider community, understand better what her group is all about.

Q: Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions Diane. The first thing I would like to know is what your position within your group is and how long have you been involved?

A: I am the Demo Coordinator for the Saskatoon Scottish Country Dance Demonstration Team and have been dancing with the Saskatoon club for 5 years. Prior to that I danced in New Zealand for 15 years. The group is part of an international organization with clubs all over the world.

Q: That is fantastic! What inspired you to join the Scottish Country Dancers, both in New Zealand and in Saskatoon?

A: I originally started dancing in New Zealand as a social outlet and for an activity that would keep me fit. I was a total beginner and was very much encouraged by the club members. All clubs provide trained teachers to help in the process of learning steps and patterns. What is exceptional is that in any clubs that I have been a part of, all members are very kind and patient in helping beginner dancers to feel confident. I discovered in the process that I really enjoyed dancing, so when I came to Saskatoon, one of the first things I did was look for a Scottish Country Dance club. It also provided me with a way to meet new people when I was a newcomer. I have to say I was welcomed with open arms and I have never looked back.

Q: What a journey you have been on! It is amazing that you were able to find another club within this international organization that welcomed you so warmly that you decided to become the Demo Coordinator for Saskatoon’s club, which leads me to my next question: what is your day time job and what motivates you to volunteer your time to the club?

A: I am mostly retired but I’m currently working as an office temp from time to time. As a volunteer, I dance with the Scottish Country Dance Club and with the Demo Team because I love to dance. I believe that is true for the whole Demo team. It also provides a social network of like-minded people from all walks of life. The Demo team in particular hopes to demonstrate that anyone can join and learn. We have qualified teachers to help the beginners, as I have already described. We especially want to show how much fun it is and to promote Scottish Country Dancing as an enjoyable and social way to keep fit and to meet new people.

Q: The motivation of being around like-minded people, combined with doing something that you are very passionate for, is something that I find is a common trait of community members like yourself who strive to help and encourage people to pursue their passion. This is one of the reasons why we, at the Museum, are glad that you have decided to be part of our Prairie Paladin Medieval Market and Faire, as you bring both your passion for dance and your dance-style’s history onto the stage. Do you find that you gain more insight and become more connected to the history of Scottish country dancing? If so, could you please describe an aspect of that insight?

A: When we learn dances, we always hear the origin of the dance and perhaps the idea that sparked the dance in the first place. Often dances have been written for a person or event or particular place. For the medieval festival in particular, we look at the oldest dances in our Scottish heritage and learn how the old dances differed from today. It makes an interesting contrast to newer devised dances. Sometimes the style of fashions in the day dictated why certain moves were made. For instance, because ladies in the very early days wore court shoes, they couldn’t bend their toes very much so we curtsey to accommodate a flat soled shoe.

Q: How fascinating! It is great to see how the historical impact on the Scottish dance style is still understood today and can be shared with those who know very little, if any, about it. One of our goal’s for this medieval festival is to show how the past still impacts the present, and your group is a fantastic example of that. Now, I only have a few questions left, each with a two part answer. The first thing is out of all the amazing things you described, what is your favourite part of being involved with your group and what do you see in the Saskatoon’s Scottish Country Dance club’s future?

A: The dancing is my favourite part!! Being on the demo team means I get to do more dancing. And of course our aim is to ensure that Scottish dancing is an ongoing activity for anyone who is interested. To this end, we have an open house on Wednesday September 9^th at St. Marks Hall, 1406 8^th Avenue North at 7:00 p.m. Anyone is welcome to come for a free night to try out Scottish Country Dancing. No partners are required and there is no age limit. We have a member still dancing in his nineties.

Q: I was able to see your group perform at the Scottish pavilion at Folkfest this year, and I definitely understand the appeal of dancing, as I used to do multiple dance styles myself. And if the attention and cheering your group received at Folkfest shows anything, it’s that people have the same desire to keep their heritage alive. Now my final question for you is: what is your favourite part of being involved with the Museum’s medieval festival, and what would you like to see in its future?

A: Being a part of the festival’s atmosphere and activities is great. Also, we do research into our oldest dances and have an opportunity to learn about and to do dances that are not done in clubs so much anymore. However it is developed and matures, I hope our Scottish Country Dance Demo Team will continue to be included in the festival’s plans.

Scottish Country Dance 2015 Demonstration Team

This will be the Scottish Country Dancing Demo Team’s second year participating in the festival, and the Museum is glad they are able to join us again in expanding the community’s knowledge and awareness of the impact our heritage has on us in the present and in the future. The Demo team will be performing at the festival twice in the afternoon, and trust me, it’s something you don’t want to miss!

By: Helanna Miazga

The Prairie Paladin Medieval Market and Faire

The Museum of Antiquities at the University of Saskatchewan (U of S) will host its annual Prairie Paladin Medieval Market and Faire on Saturday, September 26^th, 2015.

As part of the national Culture Days initiative, the Museum of Antiquities is hosting its third annual medieval festival from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm in he Bowl and at Nobel Plaza on the U of S campus. The public will be able to enjoy combat demonstrations, a medieval market, musical and dance performances, games and children’s activities. The event will be run by Museum volunteers and community groups including the Society for Creative Anachronism, the Nordhere Viking Living History Re-Enactors, the Saskatoon Historical Fencing Society and the Saskatchewan Archaeological Society.

The museum’s previous festivals known as Weapons and Warriors and Return of the Kynge sparked an interest in the community, which led to the creation of The Prairie Paladin Medieval Market and Faire in 2014, which received more than 700 visitors.

“We are so happy to see how much the festival has grown in such a relatively short time since its inception,” said Courtney Tuck, the former event co-ordinator of the festival. “It is always so exciting to see so many members of the local community coming out, getting involved and engaging with history.”

This family-friendly medieval festival is the only one of its kind in Saskatchewan, making it a unique experience for local community members who are unable to travel long distances to other medieval festivals in Canada and the United States. The museum’s goal is to create a medieval festival that will generate awareness of past cultures that still influence the world today, including not only medieval European culture, but also the First Nations cultures of Saskatchewan.

 

The Museum of Antiquities, located in the Peter MacKinnon Building at the U of S, houses art work from the ancient Near East, Greece, Rome, and the medieval world. The museum’s collection contains both original artifacts and replicas.

For more information, contact:

Helanna Miazga, Museum of Antiquities

Room 116 Peter MacKinnon Building, 107 Administration Place

University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A2

(306) 966-7818

museum_antiquities@usask.ca

Volunteers and the Vibrant Museum

This coming Friday March 20, 2015 the Museum of Antiquities will be hosting its annual volunteer appreciation event.  The event, which includes a wine and cheese reception, is held not only to acknowledge and thank the volunteers for the hundreds of hours they put in at the Museum every year, but also to celebrate their many successes gained through the experience and knowledge obtained while at the Museum.

As many of you know, the Museum has been around for some forty years now.  In some ways, the Museum and its collections had humble and lonely beginnings.  The collection was homeless for its first few years and had a keeper who wanted to reserve the collection for academic eyes only, as well as librarians who felt the nude statues should be covered up with fig leaves, or better yet locked away behind closed doors.  Fortunately in the early 1980s, a new permanent home for the collection was found in the Murray Library along with a new curator, Ms. Catherine Gunderson, which led to birth of the Museum’s volunteer program.  The first volunteer was Brian Hubner, a Master’s student in the Department of History.  Since then the program has grown from a few volunteers to a substantial 15-25 volunteers at any given time.  The majority of these volunteers are University of Saskatchewan students, but there are also several high school students and members of the general public.  The volunteers receive training and provide support in many areas of our Museum’s day-to-day operations including collections management and research, exhibit design, and educational and outreach programming.  Since the program began more than 125 people have served as volunteers of the Museum.

I became acting director and then full-time director of the Museum of Antiquities starting in 2008.   While my job as director includes many facets such as teaching, curating, research and administration, the part of my job that I find most fulfilling and rewarding is leading the Museum’s wonderful team of volunteers.   The volunteers have heard me say this many times before, but I WILL say it again, and again, and again: the Museum would not be as successful as it is without the help of its many volunteers.  As the only full-time staff person at the Museum there is no way that I alone could plan, organize and especially execute all of the programming that the Museum does.  The volunteers, who come from a wide range of academic backgrounds (Classics, History, and Education to name a few), have played a key role in helping the Museum to do all the things that the “Big Guys” do, such as special exhibits, conservation and preservation of artifacts, children’s summer camps, programs for elementary and high school classrooms, and cultural and community outreach initiatives.  And the list most certainly goes on.  I know I am blowing the Museum’s collective horn here, but one of the programmers from the Western Development Museum, arguably the largest museum in Saskatoon, considers the Museum of Antiquities to be one of Saskatoon’s “Big Three” museums, not because of its size, but because of the impact on the community of everything we are able to do.  None of this would be possible without the help of the volunteers.

Another thing that I am very proud of and willing to shout out from the rooftops is the success our volunteers have had once they leave the Museum.  The experience the students gain while volunteering and working here as student staff also has a significant impact.  I too was a volunteer of the Museum of Antiquities while doing my undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Saskatchewan.  I credit my Museum experience with helping me to achieve several professional successes including my PhD in Classical Archaeology from the University of Alberta, as well as being selected for the prestigious American Numismatic Society Summer Graduate Student Seminar in 2004.  One of the curators who taught me at the seminar said my Museum experience played a key role in my being selected.  Other former student volunteers have also done very well professionally, including Anneka Richer, manager of the Children’s Discovery Museum in Saskatoon, Carla Watson, manager of Admiralty House Communications Museum in Mount Pearl, Newfoundland, and Sarah Vela, IT specialist and information architect at the University of Waterloo.  The list of Museum success stories is long and I wish I could list them all here, but I look forward to seeing the list grow!  Many students have said to me that the Museum played an integral part in their success.

This being my first blog I don’t want to go on and on, even though I have many wonderful stories to tell about our volunteers.  I look forward to taking the opportunity thank our volunteers formally this coming Friday.  And I am sure I will have much to blog about them in the years to come!

By: Dr. Tracene Harvey

My Fascination With Hannibal And Napoleon

In 1989 the Museum of Antiquities received a beautiful bronze bust from Judge John C. Currelly of Port Hope, Ontario. At this time, the true identity of the bust was unknown, and the general consensus was that it was a French baroque bronze portrait of the Emperor Hadrian. However research done by the previous Museum Director Catherine Gunderson and Professor Paul Hamilton (Department of Art and Art History) revealed the portrait to be Hannibal, accomplished Carthaginian general and nemesis to the Roman Republic during the Second Punic War (218-201 BCE). Moreover, this sculpture is a 17^th century CE French original crafted in the workshop of Francois Girardon (1628-1715). Girardon is best known for his position as a sculptor for King Louis XIV of France and primary contributor to the abundant artwork at the Palace of Versailles. Francois Souchal, Professor of Art History at the Paris West University Nanterre La Défense in France (now retired), a noted authority on 17^th and 18^th century French sculpture, verified the work as being a product of either Girardon himself or his protégé, Sebastien Slodtz (1655-1726), claiming the bust is “of great quality and certain authenticity.” The bust is unique to the Museum since no other casting of it exists. It appears in a set of engravings entitled La Galerie de Girardon by Nicolas Chevalier published in the 18^th century.

Original bronze bust of Hannibal

While we know who the sculpture represents and who made it, an air of mystery had come with the bust when it was acquired. During the first round of research in the late 80s and early 90s, a secondary source mentioned that Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) owned a bronze bust of Hannibal. This initial research led to my interest and my follow up on the connection to Napoleon.

Napoleon Crossing the Great St. Bernard Pass
http://www.napoleon.org/en/essentials_napoleon/key_painting/files/482581.asp

In August of 2014 we found evidence in the The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Court of the First Empire by Baron Claude Francois Meneval (1778-1850) that Napoleon did in fact own a bronze bust of Hannibal, one of his military idols. Meneval was Napoleon’s private secretary from 1802-1813. In his memoir of Napoleon, Meneval describes the Chateau de Saint Cloud which was used by Bonaparte as a seat of power after 1804, and states that in Napoleon’s study there:

“his [Napoleon’s] usual place was on a settee, covered with green taffeta,

which stood near the mantelpiece, on which were two fine bronze busts of Scipio and Hannibal.” (pg. 174, volume 1)

           I believe that the bronze bust of Hannibal mentioned in the memoirs had to have been close to contemporary with Napoleon as Meneval did not call the busts of Scipio and Hannibal ‘antique’. Meneval makes a distinction in volume one between ancient and contemporary busts:

“the only ornament of the bedroom on the ground floor...was an antique bust of Caesar, which stood on the mantle piece.” (pg. 174)

“This drawing-room was also used for private audiences; it was decorated with a fine portrait of Charles XII [1682-1718].” (pg. 174)

       These few statements have lead me to believe that the bronze bust of Hannibal mentioned in the memoirs had to be contemporary, and since there is only one such piece created in the 17^th century (which we have), ours must be the one Meneval is describing.

St. Cloud Chateau
http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/images/conway/de873f94.html

As a next step, I feel that it is necessary to study the journey the bust took to arrive at the Museum of Antiquities all the way from Girardon’s 17^th century workshop via the Chateau de Saint Cloud, to Edward Berwind’s New York residence (previous owner of the bust), and  to a New York auction house. I am continuing my research to find the links between these different places so that we can have a complete provenance of this bust.

This discovery shows the importance of the Museum of Antiquities in the academic and scholarly world, and the impact it can have on the wider community. The Museum can offer unique research opportunities for students and academics, which can be seen through the research done on this bust. With the collection of original artifacts growing, there is more potential for our knowledge of the past to grow and to share it with the world.

By: Helanna Miazga 

Welcome To Our Blog!

Welcome to the Museum of Antiquities’ new blog! This is our inaugural post. Thank you for checking us out!
As 2014 has now come to a close, we look back at the year in which the Museum’s collection  turned 40.  We take the opportunity to reflect on the Museum’s history and think about what we will strive toward in the future. 

We celebrated our 40th anniversary on October 16^th, 2014 with a presentation in Convocation Hall and a reception in the Museum’s gallery.  Brent Nelson, Tracene Harvey, Dean Peter Stoicheff and President Gordon Barnhart spoke about the history of the Museum and its impact on the University, the students who have passed through the volunteer program, as well as the world of cast collections. We also unveiled our new acquisition: a replica bust of the Augustus Bevilacqua from the Atelier Moulages du Louvre workshop, which we were able to purchase thanks to the generosity of donors and supporters. The event was well attended and enjoyed by all.

          The Museum of Antiquities’ collection was formed in 1974 thanks to the Museum’s founders Michael Swan and Nicholas Gyenes, both professors at the University of Saskatchewan.  The collection began as a group of full-scale replicas of Greek Sculpture, which were purchased from the Atelier de Moulages du Louvre.  The collection found a permanent home in 1981 in the Murray Library and the Museum of Antiquities was born.  Thanks to the generosity of donors, the Museum’s collection has grown over the years to include both replica and original sculptures and artifacts.  The Museum’s collection outgrew its space in the Murray Library and in 2005, the Museum moved into the current gallery space in the College Building, recently renamed the Peter MacKinnon
Building.

           The last few years at the Museum of Antiquities have seen a considerable amount of growth in many aspects.  Our visitor numbers have increased on average by 2,000 people every year since 2011.  Our Living History Summer Camps for kids has grown, both in weeks offered and in participants.  We have had so much great feedback from the community regarding our existing programming that we decided to branch out and create more programming, which expands to reach new facets of our local community. We now have monthly drop-in craft and story programs for kids and our annual medieval festival for Culture Days has been very popular. We are reaching out to our on-campus community as well, developing workshops and tours that will expand on the learning done in the classroom.  Follow this blog for more updates on our programming!

           So what does the future hold for the Museum of Antiquities?  We hope to take all of the momentum we’ve been building up over these past few years and keep moving forward! With growing interest and participation from the on-campus community, as well as the community at large we plan on continuing to bring the same exciting take on ancient and medieval history you all know and love. Stay tuned for more events, activities, tours, research and exciting new exhibits to come.  The future for the Museum of Antiquities can be as bright as we want it to be, so keep an eye on us and what we have on offer in the years to come!
 - Blog post by Courtney Tuck