̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Heritage Lottery Fund

Museum archive reconnects a London-based Congolese community with its heritage

lw355 — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 09:30:18 +0000

̽��ֱ��community is a London-based group called the Congo Great Lakes Initiative (CGLI). Its members aim to help people with Congolese and African heritage, some of whom are victims of post-conflict trauma, better integrate in the UK.

“One way for building confidence and skills has been to re-connect ourselves and our children to their heritage through museum collections,” says Didier Ibwilakwingi Ekom, Executive Director of CGLI and project coordinator. “It’s helping us to find new ways to tell our stories.”

Reverend Smith’s collection of 242 photographs is held at Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and now forms part of a collection that numbers around 650 images from the Congo Basin, many of them still on their original glass plates. In addition, the Museum has around 1,200 objects from the Congo, just under 400 of them associated with members of the Baptist Missionary Society.

With funding raised from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the CGLI worked with the Museum to unlock new understanding of the images through CGLI members’ unique indigenous insights. Their collective efforts have resulted in an exhibition, 'Carriers of Culture: Women, Food and Power from the Congo Basin', currently at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Hear what matters about the photographs to the community, how the Museum has some brand-new materials, and why every party needs kwanga...

“During the 19th and 20th centuries, Britain was a major supplier of missionaries to Africa and around the world, many of them sending home materials from these early encounters,” explains the Museum's Dr Chris Wingfield. “Missionary collections have been under-researched and overlooked in Britain and yet histories of missionary activity can really matter to people in these now strongly Christian parts of the world. One of our interests has been to understand who cares about this material today, in what ways, and how this can influence the ways we engage with collections.”

̽��ֱ��Great Lakes region of Africa straddles the equator of the continent and in recent decades has suffered interlinked conflicts, famine, violence and refugee-related problems. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alone, the war that officially ended in 2003 claimed up to six million lives, displacing over two million people.

“When refugees first arrive, questions of heritage are not necessarily the priority,” adds Wingfield. “But after 10 or 20 years there can be a search for connection and a desire to discover traces of shared histories. This group in particular has been very active in drawing out those aspects of Britain’s history that connect and crossover with the Congo.”

One CGLI member describes what the exhibition has meant to her and her family: “Involvement in political activities led to me fleeing my country. This exhibition has made me really proud that [information] can be passed on from generation to generation. I’ve got my grandson who is five years old and he keeps on asking me questions. He has learned, and in the future he can pass it to his brother, his siblings.”

Wingfield adds: “Re-engaging with the collection, identifying themes and then co-curating the exhibition with the community has been enlightening. This project has partly been about giving children who are growing up in London a link to their Congolese heritage. These kinds of collections are a resource they can draw on. But it’s also given the Museum a sense of the different ways people feel they have an ongoing stake in historic collections.”

Among the collection is a series of photographs showing women making kwanga, a manioc bread. It’s a laborious process. Manioc roots are harvested, then soaked, dried, sieved, boiled, pounded, wrapped, re-steamed and re-dried – the multistep process is needed to rid the starchy vegetable of its cyanide-like poison.

̽��ֱ��community returned again and again to these images, and suggested they form the heart of the exhibition. “We looked at these pictures of women carrying huge baskets of manioc to market and we thought that’s really where the power lies – in those who sustain life,” explains Pamela Campbell, Vice Chair of CGLI. “That’s not to denigrate men. But keeping things going is powerful and that power lies with women.”

Kwanga is still an important part of Congolese life both in the DRC and in the UK. As Ibwilakwingi-Ekom says, “there is no single party where you won’t find kwanga… if there is none there has not been a party.”

Remarkably, women are still processing the vegetable almost the same way, a century on, as shown in contemporary photographs donated to the Museum by the CGLI. One photograph taken in the DRC shows a woman carrying the manioc she’s harvested, the effort etched on her face of hauling the heavy basket. It’s surprisingly similar to photographs taken in the 1890s by Smith; the basket is almost identical to one collected by Baptist Missionaries and given to the Museum in 1910, and which now forms the centrepiece of the exhibition.

For Wingfield and his colleague Dr Johanna Zetterström-Sharp, the project represents a “new path” for working with museum collections. “It’s really important to work with communities like the CGLI because they bring fresh approaches to the curation of objects,” she says. “We often think about our collections in relation to the disciplines that we come from but there are lots of other forms of knowledge and understanding that projects like this bring out, and our perspectives are shifted as a result.”

̽��ֱ��community describes the partnership as one in which universities have the knowledge, but members have the information.

Ackys Kituba, President of the Congolese Community in the UK, adds: “Although we are educated, we are discovering new things about our country. ̽��ֱ��link will be stronger than before. We are learning something as a group but we are doing it for our children.”

Nine-year-old Enoch was born in the UK and travelled to Cambridge with his Congolese family to see the exhibition. Asked what he’d remember most, he says: “How they make kwanga. It was really interesting. It’s helping me find out more about my family. It’s kind of clever… they wouldn’t make it for no reason.”

'Carriers of Culture: Women, Food and Power from the Congo Basin' is at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology until 2 April 2017.

Inset images: photographs from the exhibition (credit: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology).

When Reverend Kenred Smith captured moments of life in the Congo over 120 years ago, he couldn’t have imagined that the photos – now in Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology – would be chosen by a Congolese community to help them remember a country that many of them had fled.

We looked at these pictures of women carrying huge baskets of manioc to market and we thought that’s really where the power lies – in those who sustain life.

Pamela Campbell, Vice Chair of CGLI

Josh Murfitt

CGLI members visit the exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

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From Shakespeare to Austen: King’s College celebrates the Thackeray Collection of rare books

amb206 — Sat, 18 Jun 2016 09:00:00 +0000

When King’s College was bequeathed a library of some 4,000 books by George Thackeray, who was its Provost from 1814 to 1850, the gift arrived as a mixed blessing. Right up until the 1830s, the College library had been held in the side chapels of its world-famous chapel and there was nowhere suitable to house this large influx of volumes. Eventually bookcases were made for an outstanding collection of rare and precious books ranging in date of publication from the 1470s to 1850.

̽��ֱ��Thackeray Collection came to King’s in two instalments – a first donation on Thackeray’s death in 1850 and a second larger gift on the death of his daughter, Mary Ann, in 1879. Its contents reflect Thackeray’s interests in divinity, natural history, poetry and literature as well as travel and sport. ̽��ֱ��piecemeal nature of the donation, the wide range of books it encompasses and the lack of resources to organise it meant that a comprehensive and accurate catalogue of the collection in its entirety was never made.

Despite the lukewarm response to its arrival, and the absence of detailed descriptions of its contents, Thackeray’s library is now fully appreciated as one of the three most important gifts of books to King’s College in its long history, ranking alongside collections given by the scholar Jacob Bryant (1715-1804) and the economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946).

Last month King’s was awarded a generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund that will enable its librarians to catalogue and conserve around 1,600 of the volumes bequeathed by the Thackerays in a project titled ‘Shakespeare and Austen at Cambridge: Celebrating their Centenaries in 2016 and 2017’. Funding is earmarked for the 1,000 or so works of English literature in the collection, which includes titles by some of the foremost names in literary history, among them John Milton, John Donne, Edmund Spenser and Ben Jonson.

̽��ֱ��variety of subject matter covered by his books reveals Thackeray to be something of a polymath. He bought items that interested him personally and he purchased both antiquarian and contemporary titles. Among the works of literature, of particular note on the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s death is a First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, collated and published in 1623.

̽��ֱ��First Folio is one of 233 known surviving copies (only about 45 of which are in the UK). Also in the collection are the Second (1632) and Fourth Folios (1685) of Shakespeare’s plays. ̽��ֱ��front cover of the Fourth Folio is detached and cannot currently be used in exhibitions. One of the first tasks will be to repair this book so it can feature in the forthcoming outreach activities marking Shakespeare’s death.

Next year marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Jane Austen: Thackeray’s collection includes a complete set of Austen’s works. Highlights in the Austen collection include rare first editions of her novels Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion along with early editions of Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Pride and Prejudice.

̽��ֱ��creation of a comprehensive catalogue of the novels, poetry and plays acquired by Thackeray will entail producing detailed online catalogue records for each book that include full publication details, physical descriptions, collation, description of marginalia, illustrations of rare and historic bindings, Library of Congress Subject Headings, provenance information, and bibliographic references.

Once complete this catalogue will be made available online, allowing scholars worldwide to search the contents of the collection and to consult items in the Library’s established reading rooms or request copies through its imaging services. Outreach is a key aspect of the award: planned is a series of exhibitions, talks, open days and workshops for the public. An appeal for volunteers to help with the organisation of outreach projects has met with an enthusiastic response.

“Many of these books are in need of conservation and cannot be consulted by users or used in exhibitions because of the risk that handling them may cause further damage: covers are detached; spines damaged; fragile items need to be placed in bespoke archival boxes, and so on. ̽��ֱ��risk is that further deterioration to the books will occur if we do not act now,” said King’s College Librarian, Dr James Clements.

An intriguing and tragic personal story underlies the Thackeray collection. George Thackeray was born into a wealthy family and was a cousin of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, best known for his novel Vanity Fair. George Thackeray attended Eton College and then King’s, where he took a BA followed by an MA. He returned to Eton as a teacher and then became private chaplain to George III and three successive monarchs. In 1814 he was elected Provost of King’s. A preferred candidate had been deemed too young. Thackeray, whose health was known to be poor, was seen as a convenient stopgap.

Thackeray remained stubbornly alive for a further 36 years – and shortly before his death was reported by Makepeace Thackeray to be looking “perfectly healthy, handsome, stupid and happy”. But Thackeray’s life was marked by loss. His first wife died shortly after their marriage. When his second wife went into labour with the couple’s first child, the physician attending her had been badly affected by the death of a previous patient, the Princess Charlotte. When Mrs Thackeray showed similar symptoms, the doctor shot himself. Mrs Thackeray died five days later.

It’s thought that Thackeray never recovered from this terrible blow and that his book collecting may have offered solace for his grief. His obituary notes that “there was not a vendor of literary curiosities in London who had not some reason for knowing the provost of King’s”. ̽��ֱ��tribute continues: “He was an erudite classic, and an eminent naturalist; and his collection and library, in connection with his study, are reputed (as private ones) to rank among, even if they are not the best in England.” Many of the volumes he purchased were sumptuously and expensively rebound in leather. All were identified by the addition of a bookplate featuring the Thackeray coat of arms.

As Provost of King’s, Thackeray steadfastly resisted change and dealt with miscreants with “an almost Roman firmness”. He was, however, outstandingly generous both to individual King’s scholars and to the college itself – though he could be acerbic and crabby. He blocked reform to an antiquated system whereby students at King’s were exempt from ̽��ֱ�� examinations – and it was only after this death that the College was able to phase out this privilege.

̽��ֱ��writer of his obituary comes to a blunt conclusion: “Many men have been more widely popular.” But Thackeray’s alleged grumpiness was accompanied by huge generosity of spirit – and, thanks to a generous award , scholars worldwide will soon have increased access to an important collection of rare books.

A generous award will allow King’s College to catalogue and conserve an important part of an outstanding collection of rare books given to the College by George Thackeray, a former Provost. Behind the Thackeray Collection lies an intriguing and tragic personal story.

It’s thought that Thackeray never recovered from this terrible blow [the death of his wife] and that his book collecting may have offered solace for his grief.

King's College Library

Books from the Thackeray Collection

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A Handful of Objects

sjr81 — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:25:53 +0000

A Handful of Objects, developed in conjunction with teachers and young people, aims to introduce the objects to new audiences while Kettle’s Yard is closed as part of a multi-million pound redevelopment that will transform its gallery spaces and house a new, four-floor education wing and cafe.

̽��ֱ��objects range from paintings and ceramics to natural objects displayed within the Kettle’s Yard house.

̽��ֱ��five objects are:

‘Red Stone Dancer’ a sculpture by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska,
‘Five Ships – Mount’s Bay’ a painting by Alfred Wallis,
‘March 1962 (Argos)’ a painting by Ben Nicholson,
‘Bowl (aka Wave/Shiny White)’ by Lucie Rie
‘Spiral of Stones’ an arrangement of pebbles by Kettle’s Yard founder Jim Ede.

Lucy Wheeler, Assistant Education Officer at Kettle’s Yard, said: "A Handful of Objects showcases five exceptional works from the Kettle's Yard collection. ̽��ֱ��beauty and importance of the objects is illustrated through high quality images, films and archive material. I hope visitors find the resource easy and enjoyable to use and hope they will add their thoughts online to create a wider discussion about this rich collection.”

Kettle’s Yard hopes to add more objects to A Handful of Objects in the future, making other famous objects from its collection of 1,200 objects.

A Handful of Objects allows viewers to experience artworks close up through high-quality images and the option to zoom-in, as well as 360-degree carousels to see sculptures and ceramics in the round. ̽��ֱ��process of making the artworks is also examined through sound clips, sketchbooks and images of the artist at work.

Throughout the resource there are options to share information through Facebook and Twitter – as well as inviting people’s thoughts and comments about the artworks themselves.

Robyn Llewellyn, Head of Heritage Lottery Fund East of England, who funded the work, said: “We are delighted that, thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to fund this innovative new resource that will allow many more people to explore objects from the collection at Kettle’s Yard and learn about their fascinating histories.”

Kettle’s Yard is the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s modern and contemporary art gallery. Kettle’s Yard is a beautiful house with a remarkable collection of modern art and a gallery that hosts modern and contemporary art exhibitions.

Five key objects from the world-class collections at Kettle’s Yard have been made available online to view through film, sound, photographs and 360 degree views.

A Handful of Objects showcases exceptional works from the Kettle's Yard collection.

Lucy Wheeler

Alfred Wallis Film

Kettle's Yard

Detail from Five Ships - Mounts Bay (1928) by Alfred Wallis

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Pre-closure celebrations at the Museum of Zoology

amb94 — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:52:42 +0000

̽��ֱ��Museum was awarded initial support from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for the ‘Animals Galore – preserving and safeguarding diversity’ project in January 2013. ̽��ֱ��project aims to completely refurbish the display spaces of the Museum, to create a Learning Space and School Room and to build new Stores with more space, state-of-the-art preservation conditions and guided public access. ̽��ֱ��project aims to display and illuminate the history of animal life. New interpretation will tell some of the stories behind the collections and the people associated with them, such as Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Hugh Edwin Strickland and Hugh Cott. It will also explore the science behind the understanding of animal diversity and the threats to it, and explain how the community of conservation scientists in Cambridge are seeking to preserve biodiversity.

Visit the museum before the transformation begins. Saturday June 1st is the last day the museum will be open to the public until 2016. Visit between 11 and 4 for free hands on activities, behind the scenes tours, story telling and more. Add a butterfly to the swarm of monarch butterflies in the galleries, make your own museum specimen to take home with you, have a go at being a museum curator and hear stories about the amazing Finback Whale skeleton that hangs above the museum.

During the May half term holidays the Museum will be hosting a number of events to celebrate the proposed changes set to happen here. ̽��ֱ��museum will be open on Bank Holiday Monday 27th May from 11-4. On Tuesday 28th and Thursday 30th May from 11-12 and 2-3 interactive gallery talks will take place in the museum: ̽��ֱ��Animal Awards. Hear the nominations and vote for the animals you think are the spookiest, most disgusting, most surprising or with the best adaptation. There will also be activity packs available all week with museum trails and other activities, and chances for you to tell us your museum favourites.

“ ̽��ֱ��Museum of Zoology is wonderful space, full of beautiful specimens from mammal skeletons to mollusc shells. We are excited about the proposed changes to the museum, and the opportunity to refresh the displays to showcase the amazing collections held here. ̽��ֱ��new learning space will give us the capacity to teach groups in the museum and, when not being used for school groups, the space for more interactive displays. These celebrations in May will give people the chance to enjoy the museum before it closes, and to have their say about what they like about and would like to see in the museum.” (Roz Wade, Education and Outreach Officer)

̽��ֱ��museum will have an active outreach programme while it is closed, details of which will be available on the website (www.museum.zoo.cam.ac.uk) and through its facebook page. There are also projects allowing digital access to the collections, including the Animal Bytes blog telling stories behind the collections (www.animalbytescambridge.wordpress.com).

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� Museum of Zoology, Cambridge will be closed to the public from June 2nd 2013. Subject to planning permission, the museum will be undergoing a major redevelopment.

These celebrations in May will give people the chance to enjoy the museum before it closes, and to have their say about what they like about and would like to see in the museum

Roz Wade

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Bella Italia: an Englishman’s adventures abroad

amb206 — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 11:15:48 +0000

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was a man who defied easy categorisation: he has been most commonly described as a polymath, maverick and iconoclast. He was a scholar and writer, artist and photographer, musician and composer, traveller and sheep farmer. Prodigiously talented and hard-working, he was also forthright and disputatious, famously arguing that the Odyssey was not the work of Homer but of an unknown female author from Sicily.

Above all, Butler was an enthusiast who immersed himself in subjects that ranged from devotional art to the concept of evolution. He is best known for his novel Erewhon – ‘nowhere’ spelt (almost) backwards – a satire on Victorian society that challenged the accepted doctrine of the church and wider establishment.

Tomorrow the Old Library at St John’s College, Cambridge, will host an exhibition titled ‘Adventures in Italy’ that offers a rare glimpse into Butler’s varied and immensely productive life, focusing in particular on his passion for Italy, a place he described as his “second country”. ̽��ֱ��exhibition is open to the public, free of charge.

Three talks taking place at St John’s the same day, also free of charge, explore different aspects of Butler’s links with Italy – including the way in which he was perceived by the Italian intelligentsia as a “great novelist and English biologist friend of Italy”.

̽��ֱ��artefacts on display in the exhibition are drawn from the extensive collection of Samuel Butler materials that were given to St John’s, where Butler was an undergraduate in the 1850s. Among these are photographs, watercolours, pen and ink sketches, maps and souvenirs, as well as a copy of Butler’s guide book to the Alps complete with descriptions of visits to historic buildings and conversations with local people. Also on display will be one of Butler’s passports, a document that for more than a century had been tucked away inside a small leather wallet, and has now been opened up and conserved.

Butler first visited Italy with his family aged eight. He returned many times as an adult, walking hundreds of miles between towns and villages from the rugged Alps in the north to the shores of Sicily in the far south. Wherever he went, he made sketches and took photographs using the latest techniques and equipment, which made snapshot photography possible for the first time during the 1880s.

By the time he was exploring Italy on foot, Butler was largely estranged from his family, who had intended that he would enter the church – something he found impossible after losing his faith. This development had prompted him to sail to New Zealand, where he established a sheep station in the early 1860s. It was there that he gathered the material for his first novel Erewhon, which was initially published anonymously.

A later novel, ̽��ֱ��Way of All Flesh, which attacks Victorian hypocrisy, was published after Butler’s death following his instructions that it should not appear during the lifetime of his sisters as it was based on his own family experiences.

̽��ֱ��Samuel Butler Collection was given to St John’s College in 1918 by Butler’s friend and biographer Henry Festing Jones. In July 2011, a generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund kick-started a two-year project to catalogue the collection and open it up to the public through special events and the creation of online resources.

Saturday’s event, the second of three Butler Days, is part of that project. It has been organised by Rebecca Watts, Butler Project Associate at St John’s College Library. She says that the task of cataloguing the collection, though substantial, has benefited from Butler’s unusually meticulous way of working: each of the thousands of glass plate negatives that arrived at St John’s as part of the Collection came in envelopes noting when they were taken and what they show. This allows researchers to pinpoint with accuracy the scenes and characters depicted.

A series of talks during the afternoon begins with a lecture by Cristiano Turbil, who will offer an Italian perspective on the reception of Butler and his works. This will be followed by an exposition by painter and art historian Clarice Zdanski, of how Butler has influenced her own work and teaching. Finally, Julia Powles, a graduate student at St John’s who last year undertook a series of epic walks along Butler’s routes through the Italian Alps, will take the audience along her journey with the aid of words and pictures.

̽��ֱ��‘Adventures in Italy’ exhibition in the Old Library at St John’s College is open to the public tomorrow (12 January) 10am to 4pm. ̽��ֱ��talks take place at 12 noon (Cristiano Turbil on ‘Samuel Butler, un Amico dell’Italia: ̽��ֱ��History of a Cultural Partnership’), 2pm (Clarice Zdanski on ‘Consigning the Old Masters to Limbo: Samuel Butler’s Influence on How I Teach Art and Art History’) and 3.30pm (Julia Powles on ‘Over the Range with Samuel Butler and Some Remarkably Persistent Gnats’), in the newly refurbished Divinity School, opposite St John’s Great Gate. To reserve a place at the talks contact Rebecca Watts on rew35@cam.ac.uk or telephone the Library on 01223 339362.

For more information on the Samuel Butler Project go to https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/samuel-butler-project

A Butler Day at St John’s College tomorrow (12 January) celebrates the many trips to Italy undertaken by the polymath Samuel Butler, author of Erewhon. ̽��ֱ��event comprises an exhibition and talks which are open to the public and free of charge.

He was also forthright and disputatious, famously arguing that the Odyssey was not the work of Homer but of an unknown female author from Sicily.

By permission of the Master and Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge

Oil painting of Varallo, Italy, by Samuel Butler, 1885

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Celebrating the centenary of Captain Scott reaching the South Pole

bjb42 — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:20:28 +0000

Descendants, politicians, historians and scientists have gathered in Cambridge for a symposium to consider Scott’s scientific, historical and cultural legacy.

̽��ֱ��Institute’s Director, Professor Julian Dowdeswell said, “ ̽��ֱ��centenary gives us the perfect opportunity to reflect on Scott’s achievements and his legacy and to celebrate a century of Antarctic science. ̽��ֱ��Institute’s education and outreach activities are designed to encourage the next generation of young people to take up careers in polar science and to be inspired by Scott’s example.” ̽��ֱ��conference will be followed by a gala dinner to be attended by HRH ̽��ֱ��Duke of Edinburgh and HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco.

In addition, the photographs taken by Captain Scott on his final expedition to the South Pole will be saved for the nation by SPRI, thanks to the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) enabling their purchase.

This remarkable collection consists of 109 photographs, and gives a view of the Antarctic as seen through Captain Scott’s eyes as he documented the first part of his epic journey to the South Pole. Subjects include his companions, the ponies and sledges, the scientific work they were undertaking and the breathtaking Antarctic landscape.

̽��ֱ��photographs themselves were printed in the Antarctic by members of Scott’s team as they waited for his return from the Pole, and for most of the past 70 years were considered lost.

̽��ֱ��purchase of the photographs by SPRI will allow the images to be reunited with Scott's camera, which was given to the Institute by the late Lady Philippa Scott in 2008. Once they have been fully conserved, the photographs will be digitised and made available online.

“Scott’s photographs bring to life, in vivid detail, his party’s sledging journey into the interior of Antarctica,” says Dowdeswell. "From men and ponies struggling through deep snow, to panoramas of the Transantarctic Mountains, the images are very powerful. They are a superb complement to the Antarctic photographs of Herbert Ponting, which the Heritage Lottery Fund also helped us to acquire.”

Robyn Llewellyn, Head of Heritage Lottery Fund East of England, said “This stunning collection provides a fascinating insight into Captain Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition. Although he was never to return, the research and records that were undertaken by his team are of historic and scientific importance. We at the Heritage Lottery Fund are delighted to play a part in bringing these photographs to the Scott Polar Research Institute where they will be conserved and made available for everyone to see.”

̽��ֱ��British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition was led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott RN with the twin objectives of being the first to reach the geographical South Pole and to undertake scientific research on the Antarctic environment.

Scott and four companions attained the pole on 17 January 1912, to find that a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen had preceded them by 34 days. Scott's entire party died on the return journey from the pole. Some of their bodies, journals, and personal effects were discovered by a search party eight months later.

Captain Scott’s photographs were developed in the Antarctic by the geologist, Frank Debenham, who later became the founding Director of SPRI. ̽��ֱ��images were returned to the UK by members of the expedition in 1913 and it was intended that they be used to illustrate books, reports and lectures; however, difficulties with establishing copyright meant that only a handful were ever used.

̽��ֱ��First World War intervened and confusion over ownership was never resolved, any remaining negatives were lost and the prints passed to Herbert Ponting. On Ponting's death in 1935 the prints were sold to the photographic agency Popperfoto, who in turn sold them at auction in New York in 2001 and they have remained in private hands ever since.

As part of the centenary celebrations, SPRI has put on display a special exhibition ‘These Rough Notes: Capt. Scott’s Last Expedition’ which includes manuscript material from the planning of the expedition to the diaries of the men on the search party who discovered the fate of Scott and his men.

Tuesday 17 January 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the first British team reaching the South Pole. Founded as a memorial to Captain Scott and his four companions, the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) is marking the occasion with two days of celebrations.

̽��ֱ��Institute’s education and outreach activities are designed to encourage the next generation of young people to take up careers in polar science and to be inspired by Scott’s example.

Professor Julian Dowdeswell

Scott Polar Research Institute - Centenary of Scott reaching the Pole

Scott Polar Research Institute

Foundering in soft snow: Bowers' sledge team; Wilson pushing; Oates and PO Evans repairing, Beardmore Glacier, 13 December 1911

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Yes