COMETS
Town Hall, Kirkwall: Thurs 5-Tues 10, 0900-1600, closed Sun 8 Sept
A new introductory display created by Callum Potter, former president of the British Astronomical Society. Comets have fascinated humans since time immemorial, and often thought to be the portents of doom. Great Comets which are easily visible to the casual viewer are rare, but there are now thousands known to reside around our solar system. The display depicts comets in history from Halley to Neowise, along with the science behind comets, space missions to comets, and photographs of comets in the 20th and 21st century.
Funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council and supported by the British Astronomical Association
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A new introductory display created by Callum Potter, former president of the British Astronomical Society. Great Comets which are easily visible to the casual viewer are rare, but there are now thousands known to reside around our solar system. The display depicts comets in history from Halley to Neowise, along with the science behind comets, space missions to comets, and photographs of comets in the 20th and 21st century.
Photographic glass plates of stars, with words and music, show night sky discoveries of the 18th-century astronomer Caroline Herschel. In the background you can hear a recording of her own words, interwoven with specially created music. The audiovisual installation was created by the Orkney artist Lynda Laird while working as artist-in-residence for the Royal Astronomical Society through its bicentennial year of 2020.
Three exhibitions are woven together in the gallery near the harbour front. Mother of the Sea is linked to the Northlight Gallery exhibition. A Fragile Correspondence brings writers, artists and architects together to look at language and landscape, including Orkney’s seashore and the vanished Orkney Norn language. Earthbound Orkney features techniques of building in earth and stone in the Orcadian Neolithic.
From a crystal set to a U-boat radio, the Museum is a treasure chest of radio and social history. You can see early thermionic valve radios, and also Orkney’s first jukebox. There is the transmitter that sent wartime messages in Morse Code from Holm to Bomber and Coastal Command, and the Morse key that linked North Ronaldsay to the outside world through all weathers from before World War I.
An exhibition inspired by the story of how Dr Kathleen Drew Baker saved the Japanese sushi industry. Her research on the life cycle of the seaweed known as laver (in Japan, nori) earned her the title in Japan of 'Mother of the Sea'. The exhibition includes over a dozen artists who work with seaweed in printmaking, photography, painting, textiles and sculpture.
Paintings by the Italian artist Paola Folicaldi Suh of the Shackleton Antarctic expedition of 1914-17, in this 150th anniversary year of the birth of Sir Ernest Shackleton. The paintings, developed from the photographs and diaries of expedition photographer Frank Hurley, are on canvases made with upholstery fabrics.
From the Carina Nebula to the Starburst Galaxy, from the Nebra Sky Disk to the James Webb telescope: 100 artwork squares were created around the world and stitched together for the Royal Astronomical Society’s 200th birthday in 2020. The quilt has been specially brought to Orkney by the RAS, for display in the Cathedral.
Victoria Crowe, renowned for her landscapes and portraits of subjects including Professor Peter Higgs, made two trips to Orkney as part of her Royal Scottish Academy/Pier Arts Centre Residency award in 2022. She looked specifically at the contrasting light around the summer and winter solstice, the two most extreme periods of the celestial cycle.
Looking back at two decades of excavation – and ahead to the project’s next phase, analysing, interpreting and publishing. Timed to mark the final season of excavation, this exhibition, the biggest in the Museum’s history, features hundreds of finds from the Ness never before displayed in public.
Ted Kellock was an amateur geologist whose superb rock slide collection is looked after at the Museum. Matthew Forster Heddle, born and brought up in Hoy, was Scotland's greatest ever mineralogist. Dounby Primary School P6-7 have curated a section of the exhibition themselves, with input from textile designer Kirsteen Stewart and jewellery designer Sheila Fleet.
