̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Mark Elliott

Opinion: ̽��ֱ��Great Repeal Bill White Paper in 20 tweets

fpjl2 — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 09:17:59 +0000

The tweets have been collected below. A longer piece from Prof Elliott on the White Paper and the key areas of constitutional law and politics it engages, is available on his blog site Public Law for Everyone.

̽��ֱ��White Paper

̽��ֱ��Great Repeal Bill White Paper has been published. It is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-great-repeal-bill-white-paper

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

General approach

No major changes beyond what's necessary, but will accommodate possibility of functioning statute book if no deal. Hard circle to square. pic.twitter.com/8rifGZpsoe

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

̽��ֱ��three key elements of the Great Repeal Bill:

Repeal ECA

Convert EU law

'Correct' the statute book. pic.twitter.com/pJjOpbJqrN

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

EU law and UK law

Directly applicable EU law will be converted into domestic law.

Domestic law that already gives effect to EU law will be preserved. pic.twitter.com/jz6b023ivU

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

̽��ֱ��case law of the Court of Justice of the EU

UK courts interpreting domesticated EU law will be required to do so 'by reference to ' CJEU case law as it stands on Brexit Day. pic.twitter.com/bauQZDeKn9

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

Pre-Brexit Day CJEU case law will have same domestic status in terms of precedent as UK Supreme Court judgments. Music to Brexiters' ears. pic.twitter.com/ViHATAB5qL

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

Supremacy of EU law

'General supremacy' of EU law to be ended: new UK legislation will take priority over EU-derived law that is preserved by Great Repeal Bill. pic.twitter.com/yTwKlYjr5h

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

But EU-derived law will continue to take priority over pre-Brexit Day UK law, including Acts of Parliament. More music to Brexiters' ears. pic.twitter.com/GQ2MlwDbFt

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

Delegated powers

'Very significant proportion' of EU-derived law contains provisions that will not be workable post-Brexit. ̽��ֱ��solution? Delegated powers. pic.twitter.com/OLHIA4KHnZ

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

Delegated powers will enable statute book to be 'corrected'; for problems to be 'rectified'. Devil is in detail of what those terms mean. pic.twitter.com/o1mMJ7D5bD

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

These are circumstances in which Government says secondary legislation will be justified. In combination, these circumstances are very broad pic.twitter.com/ZOaLr0bCzH

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

Delegated power not to be used for policy changes unconnected by deficiencies in EU-derived law. Implies some policy changes *will* be made. pic.twitter.com/3A2RUGs05C

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

Up to 1,000 statutory instruments (piece of delegated legislation made by Ministers) will be needed to make EU-derived law work post-Brexit. pic.twitter.com/KW4Lib2Emy

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

Parliamentary scrutiny

'Right balance' must be struck between need to 'speed' & 'scrutiny'. Existing processes to be used. No plan for super-affirmative procedure pic.twitter.com/VkthcjCSxW

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

White Paper is 'beginning of a discussion' about approach to scrutiny of delegated powers. Govt's thinking looks extremely undeveloped here. pic.twitter.com/7tbXD3XpFL

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

White Paper fails to engage in meaningful way with HL Constitution Committee's detailed proposals for scrutiny. See https://publiclawforeveryone.com/2017/03/07/the-great-repeal-bill-and-delegated-powers/

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

Devolution

Just over one page in the White Paper on 'interaction with the devolution settlements'. pic.twitter.com/D9AiGF0xWZ

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

No guarantee that repatriated EU powers will go to devolved institutions, even in relation to subject-areas that are currently devolved. pic.twitter.com/i1ZxCpN1No

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

Implication seems to be *new* reserved matters will be carved out of existing devolution settlements. Raises some Qs of const'l politics.

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

On other hand, even if there are some new reservations to devolved competence, Govt anticipates overall net expansion of devolved competence pic.twitter.com/QMPP24b3yk

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) March 30, 2017

Mark Elliott, Professor of Public Law, posted a number of tweets yesterday extracting key paragraphs from the Government’s White Paper on the Great Repeal Bill and offering some preliminary thoughts.

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Yes

Another India exhibition gives voice to India’s most marginalised communities

sjr81 — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 13:59:14 +0000

Putting on display never-before-seen objects from the Museum’s historic collections, as well as stunning, newly-commissioned works from contemporary Adivasi sculptors, Another India tells the stories behind a remarkable collection of artefacts while confronting head-on the role played by Empire and colonialism in the gathering together of this material. ̽��ֱ��exhibition also features 23 works acquired by its curator Mark Elliott, using a New Collecting Award from Art Fund.

“This is an exhibition about the India – or the many Indias – that most people in the UK don’t know,” said Mark Elliott. “It’s about 100 million people of Indigenous or Adivasi backgrounds who are marginalised by majority populations and the state. It’s an exhibition about identity, diversity and belonging; and the role that objects play in creating a sense of who we are.

“These are issues that affect all of us, particularly now when Identity – who we are, where we come from and where we belong – is being fought over here in Britain. Another important story is how these things came to Cambridge in the first place. Many of the artefacts were acquired through colonialism: sometimes fair exchanges, sometimes gifts, sometimes not. This is about legacies of empire for people in the UK and India.”

Among the objects going on display are a head-hunters skull, pieces of the Taj Mahal and a snake-charmer’s flute. Ten new sculptures, specially commissioned by Elliott after working closely with Adivasi and indigenous artists at workshops across India, will also take pride of place in Another India, thanks to the prestigious New Collecting Award from Art Fund. ̽��ֱ��workshops took place from Gujarat in the west to Nagaland, right on the border with Myanmar (Burma) in the North east.

̽��ֱ��sculptures, the largest of which is 13 feet (3.9m) high and the heaviest of which is almost a tonne, have been shipped from the sub-continent and will sit alongside stunning photographic portraits of Indigenous Indians – from the late 19th century to the 21st. ̽��ֱ��most recent works include photos of Naga men in their 80s and 90s proudly displaying their tattooed faces and bodies.

“We are trying to make this less of a show about dead white guys by living white guys,” added Elliott. “We showed artists across India some of our collections and said ‘here’s the stuff we have from your place, what do you think? What would you make now if we asked you?’ ̽��ֱ��whole brief was to produce new works in response to the collections we have.”

Ruby Hembrom, an Adivasi writer and activist, who has worked closely with Elliott and MAA on the planning of the exhibition, said: “Another India is the only India we Adivasis know. Identity is belonging and we belong to this India. We belong to the objects of this India and belong to the feelings they trigger and emotions they evoke. ̽��ֱ��India that ‘others’ use is the one where we are confronting hatred, racism, sexism, exploitation, brutality, dehumanisation and stereotyping in our everyday lives.

“No matter how much we’ve talked of or engaged in social and political change, very little has changed for us. This is not the India our ancestors sacrificed for, or hoped for us, and this is not the one we want for our descendants.”

Among the historic objects going on display at MAA is a coin necklace from the ‘Criminal Tribes’ settlement in Maharashtra which was collected by Maguerite Milward in 1936. Milward went on expedition to make portrait sculptures of Indigenous and Adivasi men and women. ̽��ֱ��necklaces show how Adivasis whose lives were transformed by colonialism, reappropriated and repurposed coins issued by the British Raj as jewellery, signs of wealth and status.

̽��ֱ��head-taker’s skull meanwhile comes from Nagaland and was worn on the chest by a Konyak warrior who had captured an enemy head. ̽��ֱ��monkey skull, with red, white and black hair woven into the crown, was collected by JH Hutton, Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills and later a Professor of Anthropology at Cambridge, who put it in a glass jar and kept it in his office until he retired.

Headhunting was a popular but ambivalent topic of anthropology in the first half of the 20th century. It was an aspect of Naga culture that the British sought to eradicate but found fascinating, and which despite the coming of Christianity, remains a hugely important part of Naga identity today.

“Another India is talking about a very different India to most people’s expectations in Britain and possibly India too,” said Elliott. “We didn’t want to do a show about Bollywood, saris and curry, but instead highlight a massive body of marginalised people – numbering nearly twice the population of the UK – who to a great extent aren’t seen as having culture, heritage and history of their own.”

Many of the objects going on display – whittled down from the 10,000 plus Indian objects in MAA’s collections – are the product of an extraordinary industry of exploration, survey and classification whose advance started with the East India Company and continued under the Crown until independence in 1947.

By the mid-19th century, scholars and administrators were working through masses of linguistic, economic, ethnographic and criminological data to decode the demography of India, defining groups of people as distinctive on the basis of shared language, customs, religious belief and ‘racial’ characteristics.

By the end of that century, such groupings had been consolidated into a fundamental distinction between ‘castes’ and ‘tribes’. Tribes were identified as groups of people who were separated geographically, socially or both from ‘mainstream’ caste society. Often living in more isolated territories away from large population centres such as hill and forest regions. These groups were defined first as being outside the caste system but furthermore as ethnically or culturally distinct, often being described as ‘primitive’.

While the constitution of India identifies these groups as Scheduled Tribes or ‘Tribal’, this term is widely seen as derogatory with connotations of primitivism, backwardness and even savagery. In truth, all the categories are remarkably slippery. Indigenous, Adivasi and Tribal identities are still fiercely contested.

“ ̽��ֱ��objects on display resist pigeonholing, just as people do,” added Elliott. “ ̽��ֱ��identities presented here are ambiguous and contested. But this is not just an historical exhibition, the artefacts and the stories they tell are the stories of communities who are living, struggling and thriving today.

“Putting together this exhibition has brought me and the museum into contact with extraordinary people: scholars, activists and artists and more – from the tribes, groups and communities that we are incredibly proud to represent here in Cambridge.”

Another India is the centrepiece of the ̽��ֱ��’s wider celebrations entitled India Unboxed. To mark the UK-India Year of Culture 2017, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Museums and Botanic Garden, are hosting a shared season on the theme of India with a programme of exhibitions, events, digital encounters, discussions, installations and more within the museums and the city of Cambridge. Rooted in the Cambridge collections, the programme will explore themes of identity and connectivity for audiences in both the UK and India.

For further information, visit the Another India website.

Hundreds of objects which tell the story of 100 million of India’s most marginalised citizens – its Indigenous and Adivasi people – are to go on display for the first time in a ground-breaking exhibition at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) from today.

We didn’t want to do a show about Bollywood, saris and curry, but instead highlight a massive body of marginalised people.

Mark Elliott

A head-hunter's skull from Nagaland which was worn on the chest of a Konyak warrior who had captured an enemy head.

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Brexit: Listen to experts from Cambridge and beyond discuss how, why and what next for Brexit Britain

fpjl2 — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 12:40:50 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge recently held a week-long series of Brexit talks and discussions, featuring senior experts in law, politics, history, science and economics from Cambridge and beyond.

̽��ֱ��aim was to engage both ̽��ֱ�� students and the local community in debates on how Britain moves towards departure from the European Union in the wake of June’s referendum.

You can listen to some of the talks below, or download from iTunesU here.

How Did We Get Here?

Tuesday 18th October

Robert Tombs, Professor of Modern European History at Cambridge's Faculty of History

Robert Tombs is the author of a recent epic history of England, and a renowned expert on nineteenth-century French political history and the relationship between the French and the British. During the EU Referendum campaign, he was a signatory on a letter produced by ‘Historians for Britain’, which supported a Leave vote, and has written about the future of the UK post-Brexit.

Dr Victoria Bateman, Fellow and College Lecturer in Economics at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge

Victoria Bateman is an economic historian at Cambridge, and a Fellow at the Legatum Institute think tank. Her current research focuses on the European economy from early-modern times to the present. Victoria has called for a sexual revolution in economics due to a lack of women in the discipline, and wrote articles in favour of a Remain vote in the run-up to the EU Referendum. She tweets at @vnbateman.

Dr Chris Bickerton, ̽��ֱ�� Lecturer in Politics at POLIS and Official Fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge

Chris Bickerton’s research focuses on the dynamics of state transformation and the challenges facing representative democracy in Europe. He has written a recently published book called ̽��ֱ��European Union: A Citizen’s Guide. During the run-up to the EU Referendum, Chris wrote in favour of a Leave vote, making the left-wing case for Brexit. He tweets at @cjbickerton.

Key Issues for the UK and EU Post-Brexit

Wednesday 19th October

Coen Teulings, Professor of Labour Economics and Industrial Relations at Cambridge’s Faculty of Economics

As well as holding the Montague Burton Chair at Cambridge, Coen Teulings is a Professor of Economics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Amsterdam. He has written extensively about wages and income inequality, and spent seven years as the Director of the Central Planning Bureau — the Netherlands’ official economic forecasting agency. He has talked publicly about the risks posed by Brexit to free trade.

Athene Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory and Master of Churchill College

Athene Donald has served on the ̽��ֱ��’s Council and as its gender equality champion. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2010, and Master of Churchill College in 2013. Athene wrote and talked extensively on the dangers that a Leave vote posed for UK science during the run-up to the EU Referendum. She is a regular blogger, and tweets at @AtheneDonald.

Charles Clarke, former Home Secretary

Charles Clarke is a Visiting Professor at the Policy Institute of Kings College London. He was MP for Norwich South from 1997 to 2010, and served as Home Secretary between 2004 and 2006 in Tony Blair’s Labour Government. During the run-up to the EU Referendum, Charles co-authored a report warning that intelligence relationships would be damaged by a Leave vote.

Process and Politics of the UK Leaving the EU

Thursday 20th October

David Runciman, Professor of Politics and Head of Department at POLIS and Fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge

David Runciman’s current research projects include the Leverhulme-funded Conspiracy and Democracy project and Future of Intelligence centre. In 2013, he published the book ̽��ֱ��Confidence Trap, a history of democratic crises since WWI. David hosts the weekly podcast Talking Politics from his Cambridge office, and has written that the Referendum vote shone a light on the education divide in democracy.

Mark Elliott, Professor of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, and Fellow at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge

Mark Elliott has written a number of books on public law, and is Legal Adviser to the House of Lords Constitution Committee. Mark writes a highly regarded blog called Public Law for Everyone, on which he analyses many of the legal issues surrounding the triggering of Article 50 and Theresa May’s Great Repeal Bill. Mark tweets at @ProfMarkElliott, and the slides from this talk are available at his blog.

Global Britain? ̽��ֱ��Future of British Trade after Brexit

Thursday 20th October

̽��ֱ��Rt. Hon. Greg Hands MP, Minister of State in the Department for International Trade, delivered this year’s Alcuin Lecture at Cambridge’s Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS). Greg was appointed to his current position by Theresa May in July 2016, where he serves as number two to Secretary of State Liam Fox. He tweets at @GregHands.

̽��ֱ��UK and Brexit: How, Why and Where Now?

Friday 21st October

Matthew Elliott, Head of Vote Leave

Matthew Elliott is the former Chief Executive of the Vote Leave campaign. He is now Editor-at-Large of BrexitCentral, recently launched with the aim of “promoting a positive vision of Britain after Brexit”. He was a founder and former Chief Executive of the political think tank ̽��ֱ��TaxPayers’ Alliance. Matthew tweets at @matthew_elliott.

Catherine Barnard, Professor of European Union Law and Employment Law at the Faculty of Law, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge

Catherine Barnard is a leading expert on EU internal markets and employment law, publishing extensively in these fields. She is a Senior Fellow of the ESRC’s UK in a Changing Europe initiative, and is jointly leading the EU Migrant Worker research project. Catherine regularly commented in the media during and after the EU Referendum. She has recently written that there could be free movement of workers in any Brexit deal. Catherine tweets at @CSBarnard24.

Jonathan Portes, Principal Research Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research

In addition to his role at the NIESR, Jonathan Portes is also a Senior Fellow of the UK in a Changing Europe initiative. Previously, he served as Chief Economist at the Cabinet Office. Jonathan’s new book, 50 Capitalism Ideas You Really Need to Know, has just been published. During the run-up to the EU Referendum, he wrote on the misrepresentation of migration by sections of the media. Jonathan tweets at @jdportes.

Anand Menon, Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King’s College London

Anand Menon is the Director of the UK in a Changing Europe initiative, and has written widely on many aspects of EU politics and policy and on UK-EU relations. As part of the initiative, he recently led on a report suggesting that “Brexit has the potential to test the UK’s constitutional settlement, legal framework, political process and bureaucratic capacities to their limits”. Anand tweets at @anandMenon1.

Listen to some of the talks that were given as part of the ̽��ֱ��'s 'Brexit Week' series, which took place from 18 - 22 October.

Ed Everett

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Law in Focus: 'Brexit: Legally and constitutionally, what now?'

fpjl2 — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 15:52:32 +0000

In the early hours of 24 June 2016, the result of the UK referendum on EU membership was announced. By a narrow but clear majority the vote was to leave the European Union. This result has begun a chain of seismic political consequences in UK and the EU, and will have widespread consequences for the law and constitution in the UK.

In this video, Mark Elliott assess the immediate impact of the result.

Professor Mark Elliott is a Professor of Public Law at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. His main research interests are in the fields of constitutional and administrative law. He writes a blog: Public Law for Everyone. This video was based on a recent post.

In this video, Professor Mark Elliott from the Faculty of Law discusses some of the key legal points that will be critical in the Brexit process.

Brexit: Legally and constitutionally, what now?

Prof Mark Elliott

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Yes

Human Rights in the United Kingdom: Where Now?

fpjl2 — Fri, 22 May 2015 15:59:09 +0000

First, what lies behind the desire of some politicians to secure the Human Rights Act’s repeal? Second, how might a British Bill of Rights differ from the present legislation? And, third, what constitutional obstacles might lie in the way of the implementation of these reforms?

In relation to the last of those three issues, the argument is developed that although the UK Parliament has the legal power to legislate for the proposed changes, the increasingly multi-layered nature of the British constitution limits Parliament’s capacity to exploit its sovereign legislative authority. In particular, the constraining effects of international law - in the form of the European Convention on Human Rights - and the devolved nature of the modern British constitution are likely to limit the UK Government’s room for manoeuvre. As a result, it is likely to be difficult to deliver upon the manifesto commitments that were made in a legally coherent and constitutionally legitimate manner.

Dr Mark Elliott is a Reader in Public Law at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. His main research interests are in the fields of constitutional and administrative law. Dr Elliott's recent publications include Elliott and Thomas, Public Law (2nd ed OUP 2014); Elliott, Beatson, Matthews and Elliott's Administrative Law: Text and Materials (OUP 2011, 4th edition); and Forsyth, Elliott, Jhaveri, Scully-Hill and Ramsden (eds), Effective Judicial Review: A Cornerstone of Good Governance (OUP 2010). Dr Elliott was the 2011 Legal Research Foundation Visiting Scholar at ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Auckland, New Zealand. In 2010, he was awarded a ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Pilkington Prize for excellence in ̽��ֱ�� teaching. He writes a blog which includes information for people applying, or thinking of applying, to study Law at university.

For more information about Dr Elliott, you can also refer to his Faculty profile.

Law in Focus is a series of short videos featuring academics from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty. Law in Focus is available on YouTube, or to subscribe to in iTunes U.

Prior to the 2015 general election, the Conservative Party undertook in its manifesto to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and to enact a British Bill of Rights. In this video, Mark Elliott addresses three key questions raised by these proposals.

Human Rights in the United Kingdom: Where Now?

Catching light

Human Rights Day

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Yes

Animal, vegetable, mineral: the making of Buddhist texts

amb206 — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 08:00:00 +0000

A yak will provide most of the things humans need to survive: meat and milk, fibre and fuel, traction and transport – and, last but not least, warmth and companionship. A traditional Tibetan recipe for making a luxurious blue-black paper goes a step further: it lists fresh yak brain, along with soot and a small amount of hide glue. Mixed into a glutinous paste, these ingredients create the glossy surface used to stunning effect in illuminated manuscripts.

Buddha’s Word: ̽��ֱ��Life of Books in Tibet and Beyond, an exhibition at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), explores not just the cultural and religious significance of the texts used in Tibetan manuscripts but also the production of these manuscripts – from the making of paper using locally available plants through to the sourcing of pigments used for writing and painting – as well as their transmission across mountains and oceans.

̽��ֱ��interdisciplinary exhibition is the outcome of a number of AHRC-funded projects that made it possible to explore the vaults of Cambridge libraries and museum, connect literary artifacts to their place of origin, and the living traditions of book making, and in some cases discover the significance of objects that have long been kept hidden in boxes and never put on display before.

Suspended above the entrance to Buddha’s Word is an oblong book wrapped in bright orange cloth. This is a Buddhist text. “Its presence reminds us of the Tibetan pilgrims’ practice of walking underneath book shelves in the monasteries they visit to get the blessing from the sacred scriptures,” said Dr Hildegard Diemberger, curator of the exhibition with colleagues Dr Mark Elliott and Dr Michela Clemente.

“It also reminds us of a story narrated in many Tibetan texts telling of the miraculous arrival of the first Buddhist scriptures. At the dawn of the Buddhist civilisation, a text fell from heaven and was received by a king. Unable to read it, and unsure what to do, he placed it in a casket and worshipped it. ̽��ֱ��scripture dispensed its blessings and the king’s youth and vigour were restored.”

Diemberger went on: “Tibetan stories and ritual practices highlight the power of the written word and connect the Land of Snow to the wider context of Buddhist civilisations in which books containing the words of the Buddha and of Buddhist masters have travelled widely and shaped the spiritual and material world of many peoples.”

Buddha’s Word and the accompanying catalogue provide a window into the world-wide scholarship that explores the techniques and technologies developed by Tibetan craftsmen and scholars to illustrate and disseminate the teachings of Buddha. “In creating the displays we’re telling multiple interconnecting stories about the production and dissemination of texts right up to the present day when Buddhists have embraced the opportunities offered by digital media and the internet,” said Diemberger. “We’ve also made exciting connections across time and space as we’ve traced objects in Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� collections back through their trajectories to their sources.”

A wide range of beautiful exhibits that found their way to Cambridge from various parts of Asia over the 19th and early 20th century are on display, including some of the world most ancient extant Buddhist illuminated manuscripts. Together they provide an insight into the variety and beauty of Buddhist literary artifacts, setting Tibetan book culture in its wider context.

For the first time in the UK, the public are also able to see the tools and processes used to create sacred texts that are both spiritually significant and visually stunning. They include examples of the moulds, mallets and stirrers used to make paper, and the printing blocks and cutting tools needed to produce prayer flags as well as pens and pen cases.

“ ̽��ֱ��objects we have taken out of store for the first time include an iron pen case given, along with other items, to MAA by Alexander (Sandy) Wollaston, a doctor on the 1921 British Everest Exhibition, and we can imagine it being used by a local official in Kharta or one of the other valleys north of Mount Everest. Other objects come straight from the living context like the bamboo pen recently donated to the exhibition by a hermit living in the Sherpa area to the south of Mount Everest,” said Diemberger.

̽��ֱ��curators have invited experts from throughout the world to contribute their insights into the craftsmanship of manuscript production. Among them is James Canary of Indiana ̽��ֱ��, who has travelled extensively in the Himalayan region researching Tibetan book craft. In an article for the catalogue, he focuses on the production of mthing shog manuscripts – those in which a burnished blue-black surface provides the background to sacred writings.

“To prepare the black mixture, the craftsman kneaded by hand the brains of a freshly slaughtered yak, sheep or goat combined with the very fine powdered soot and a small amount of cooked glue hide,” explained Canary.

“If there is too much brain material in the mix the paper will have an oiliness that will resist later writing and can also develop saponification problems, resulting in a white soapy bloom. ̽��ֱ��paste is painted on the surface of the paper which is then burnished with a piece of conch shell or a bead to make a lustrous surface for the calligraphy.”

On display in the exhibition is a modern mthing shog manuscript by the late Sonam Norgyal, one of the few artists to have maintained the tradition to the present day. Collected by Canary, its gold lettering on a rich background is a fine example of a technique known to scholars as chrysography.

Wood, birch-bark and palm leaf predated paper as a writing surface in Tibet: palm-leaves, which do not grow in Tibet, have had a long lasting impact on the physical characteristics of Tibetan books; the majority of them is in fact made of narrow long sheets of paper that remind of the ancient palm-leaf manuscripts with which Buddhist teachings travelled from India to Tibet and across Asia. It is thought that the craft of paper-making spread from neighbouring countries at a time when Tibet developed a powerful empire and record keeping became a critical undertaking. Research suggests that from at least the ninth century Tibetans began to collect plants growing locally to make paper.

A number of plants in the Thymelaeaceae family have stems and roots with conductive tissue that is strong and fibrous – ideal for making string and paper. Several early medical treatises listing plants used for medicinal purposes also mention their suitability for paper making. ̽��ֱ��widespread use of some of these plants, according to reports by British visitors to Tibet, continued right up until the 1920s - and even today a few printing houses and paper-making centres make use of plants gathered locally to make specialist products.

Research by paper specialist Agnieszka Helman-Wazny ( ̽��ֱ�� of Arizona) shows that the hand processes of making paper from plant material has changed little over the centuries with each sheet being made separately. Paper pulp is prepared by beating the plant material on a stone with a wooden mallet. ̽��ֱ��resulting fibrous mass is mixed with water and poured into a mould. This mould is ‘floated’ in water and tipped to and fro until its contents are evenly distributed. ̽��ֱ��mould is then removed from water and left to dry.

“Further processes were often used to make a smooth surface for writing and to produce particular types of paper. Tibetan paper makers often glued several sheets together using a paste of boiled wheat flour or animal-based glue,” said Helman-Wazny. “They were extremely resourceful in their exploitation of materials to make books and used ramie, hemp and mulberry bark as well as stone, metal and rock.”
Tibetan artists and painters used pigments and colourants obtained locally from minerals and plants.

One of the star items in the exhibition are two pages/folios of the 1521 Royal Edition of the Mani bka’ ‘bum (One hundred thousand proclamations of the Mantra), a treasure given to Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library by Lt-Col Laurence A Waddell in 1905 following the Younghusband Military Expedition to Tibet. A non-invasive analytical technique called reflectance spectroscopy, carried out by experts at the Fitzwilliam Museum, revealed that the colours seen in the figures it depicts were achieved using a red obtained from cinnabar, blue from azurite, indigo from woad, and yellow from arsenic, a chemical that had the added benefit of protecting manuscripts from insect damage.

Developments continue. Tibetans and the worldwide community of Tibetan scholars have enthusiastically embraced the opportunities offered by digital media and the internet to collate and open up access to manuscripts that lie scattered across the world. Just as past technologies – such as printing – provided a means for circulating Buddhist teaching so are digital technologies being increasingly explored and used today. In the words of the well known Tibetan lama Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche:

I’ll be doing prostrations every morning to this computer.
Thank you so much
You are giving all of us a huge gem,
a jewel and a gem.

Inset images: detail of Mani bka' 'bum (Tibetan 149) (Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library), example of mthing shog by late Sonam Norgyal (James Canary); manufacture of daphne-bark paper in Bhutan (Karma Phuntsho).

̽��ֱ��wide-ranging objects on display at Buddha’s Word, an exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, show how Tibetan book makers used the resources around them to produce manuscripts conveying the messages of a faith in which texts themselves are sacred objects.

In creating the displays we’re telling multiple interconnecting stories about the production and dissemination of texts right up to the present day when Buddhists have embraced the opportunities offered by digital media and the internet.

Hildegard Diemberger

Maria-Antonia Sironi

Buddhist books are paraded through the valleys and invited to bless the environment

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

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We ask the experts: why do we put things into museums?

sj387 — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 08:45:00 +0000

There’s something innately human about our desire to gather, sort and display things. Not just to trade in objects or put them to use in a practical sense - but also to use them to create stories about ourselves. Museum attendance is booming with blockbuster shows attracting record audiences. But the picture is uneven: some collections struggle for support and many institutions do not have the space or resources to display the many objects they have in store. Maybe we need to think differently about sharing what we have. We asked four people for their views.

Katy Barrett is Curator of Art pre-1800 at Royal Museums Greenwich and former convenor of the CRASSH seminar series, ‘Things’, at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��. Dr Lucilla Burn is the Keeper of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Mark Elliott is Senior Curator at the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��poet Daljit Nagra recently took part in Thresholds, a creative residency programme at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� museums.

Q1 What can we learn from objects?

Katy Barrett Objects give us a special kind of access to the past. They allow us to touch (within careful parameters usually) something that was used by people, and thus get a physical feel for their lives. We can learn about past societies' values from what they kept, and what materials they made things from - or about daily life from such simple things as cooking utensils and furniture. Objects bear the marks of how they've been used, giving us access to ideas that may have been too fundamental to a person's life ever to have been written down. ̽��ֱ��wear and tear on books can show us how people read them, with some even showing the rust marks of the knife used to cut the pages in an era when text was printed on large sheets of paper which were folded the size of the finished book.

Lucilla Burn As Katy says, objects can provide a very tangible link between us and people of past societies. Besides the insights they can offer into contemporary art, craft and technology, trade or settlement patterns, they can also illuminate individual lives. In the Fitzwilliam collection, for example, a roughly-cut and not very grammatical inscription on a Roman funerary urn, explaining how an ex-slave had acquired it to hold her own ashes and those of her beloved husband, with whom she had lived for 23 years, provides not just important evidence for social mobility in the 1^st century CE but also a direct glimpse of a bereaved individual whom we would know nothing about if she hadn’t bequeathed us this ‘object’.

Mark Elliott For me, objects can be simultaneously more and less expressive than any number of words. There’s an immediacy in an encounter with a material thing that is right in front of us, whether it’s separated by a pane of glass or not. Some things are easier to interpret than others. One of my favourite objects in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is a brick from the city of Babylon that has the seal of King Nebuchadnezzar II stamped on it, but also a beautifully-formed footprint. You can instantly imagine how this happened, and it can lead you to think about how cities were built, how people worked, or the politics of sixth-century BC Babylon. Sometimes the clues are easier to read than others: I think the most valuable lesson objects can teach us is how to really look. Everything follows from there.

Daljit Nagra From a poet’s perspective, museums are a sensual resource to the past. In the hands of great poets this resource becomes a valuable tool. I think of Seamus Heaney finding metaphors to help him negotiate the Troubles in Northern Ireland, in particular his great poems about the peat bog finds in Denmark. Heaney opens one poem: ‘Some day I will go to Aarhus…’ and this visit to a museum feels like a dream of accomplishment as he tries to appreciate the bog bodies as a way of understanding our past so we can move forwards positively. Perhaps museums can help us become ourselves at our best.

Q2 Why do we go (or not go) to museums?

KB I'm glad that museums seem to be going from strength to strength in visitor numbers. Most of us will go to see the treasures housed in national museums when we go on holiday, or flock to the growing number of blockbuster exhibitions to see these treasures on tour. But we run the risk of forgetting our local museums and permanent collections through focusing on these 'once in a lifetime' experiences. Museums can also be the heart of communities, preserving important local and national stories, which reward you with new ideas every time you visit. ̽��ֱ��Bridewell Museum, for instance, highlights the vibrant industries in the history of the city of Norwich. They are great for visits with family and friends to inspire interests and discussions. We need to put to bed permanently the view of museums as elitist, hide-bound institutions. ̽��ֱ��Hepworth in Wakefield – the kind of contemporary art museum, which you might expect to be particularly elitist – is a hub for local residents on a Sunday.

LB While I clearly have a vested interest in attracting as many people as possible to the Fitzwilliam, I think that realistically we need to face the fact that museums, like music festivals, opera, rock-climbing, bird-watching or football matches, are not to everyone’s taste, and also that people’s relationship with them is likely to ebb and flow at different periods of their lives. I agree it’s interesting that many people who expect to visit museums when on holiday don’t drop into their local museum at the weekend. One of our challenges, and something museums spend a lot of time on, is creating special events and exhibitions that will give local audiences the incentive to come in and enjoy something ‘new’. Many Cambridge students are ‘non-visitors’ to Cambridge museums – they would probably say they are too busy….but maybe (to take a positive and global perspective) the local student deficit is made up for by their holidaying counterparts from Spain or Italy?

ME This is actually a really hard one. Many of us probably have an idea about why we go to museums ourselves, or indeed why other people might go. But the truth is none of us are really sure. Our experience of a museum, and our reasons for being there in the first place, can depend on so much: the people we are with, the mood we are in, or how much we want to spend on activities that day. But ‘why’ we go to museums doesn’t really matter as much as what we get out of our visit. We may go to see a famous artwork, and end up meeting someone special. We may go to get out of the rain and come face to face with an artefact that changes the way we think, or lifts us somehow; something that sets us on a wholly new journey of discovery. That’s why I go to museums: because they are where the unexpected happens.

DN: I would feel better about museums if I felt they had a strong focus in winning over students from ‘ordinary’ backgrounds. I studied at a school where pupils took CSEs rather than O levels, I remember never visiting a museum, and when I visited the British Museum, as an adult, I felt intimidated by the aloof joyless manner of the entrance. I felt there was a code of self-presentation that I needed to rapidly adopt so that I looked as though I fitted in. On a positive note, at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, I heard students from a socially deprived comprehensive school, similar to the one I went to, gasp as they heard the Education Officer, Sarah-Jane Harknett, blowing their minds away with the significance of flint. Yes, flint of all things!

Q3 Can digital collections replace real objects?

KB Online access increasingly rules how we approach information today and museums have to engage with this to stay relevant. Some museums have put a lot of work into making their collections accessible online with high quality images and a good depth of information. ̽��ֱ��British Museum in London and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam are notable examples. They allow visitors to access information outside of the museum, and researchers to use collections more effectively. Admittedly this requires a commitment of substantial financial resources, but it also needs vision and staff investment in creating digital content. Seeing a picture, however, can't ever replace material engagement with an object. We can't anticipate the kinds of questions we'll want to ask of objects in the future, so a digital record should never take the place of an object or image. There's no replacement for the real thing, as any excited group of visitors around a museum handling table will show you.

LB Obviously museums are keen to capitalise on the possibilities offered by the internet. It’s a great way of extending access, and apart from collections databases there are lots of other opportunities to exploit its possibilities - online exhibitions, for example, can remain on view indefinitely after the physical show has been dismantled but also give people the opportunity to examine works of art in greater detail than they can in the gallery: see for example the exhibition that accompanies the current Fitzwilliam exhibition of Japanese prints, ‘ ̽��ֱ��night of longing’ - http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/nightoflonging/index.html. It’s helpful and potentially exciting for everyone, from interested members of the public to scholars working on the other side of the world, to be able to explore a museum’s collections remotely. But the short answer to this question is of course ‘no!’ Digital collections can enhance what museums have to offer but can never substitute for the physical presence of the real thing.

ME No. But they can do a lot of the same things, and indeed they can do things that ‘real’ objects can’t. A reproduction of an artefact, whether it’s a photograph or a digital version of it, for example, can travel much further than the artefact itself. It can be in many places at once and so dramatically enrich the conversations that surround it. You lose something when you are engaging with a work of art or a specimen on a computer screen. You can’t walk around it, or touch it, or see how light plays upon its surface. It can be hard to appreciate the scale of something – whether it’s incredibly delicate or whether it dominates the room. In fact that room and the people in it is incredible important – Katy mentioned the excited crowds in her gallery, and it’s the communal effect of the crowd gathered around an exhibit that is so special.

DN From the perspective of a writer, I wish more museums around the world offered an exciting online experience. My poems and my verse-novels are heavily research-based and as I have young children and a busy day-to-day schedule online accessibility would enrich my creative work. Digitalised museums are not a replacement for the real thing but should be an alternative reality.

Q4 Who should have what?

KB ̽��ֱ��long histories behind many European museums inevitably involve legacies of colonialism, war and expropriation. Collections include objects with complex pasts that were acquired in settings very different from today. This means that museums now care for objects with contested ownership which, at least UK national museums, are legally prevented from de-accessioning. ̽��ֱ��sector has developed guidelines for returning particularly sensitive objects, such as human remains or objects expropriated in the Nazi era. Likewise, countries have a process of export bars to stop objects of national significance passing out of the country through sale. Museums need to be sensitive to the pasts of their objects in these ways, as much as in how they interpret them, but what would be the point of museums if they all contained only locally produced objects? Surely one point of museums is to showcase the strange and the foreign as well as the local and familiar? Cultures and nations don’t develop in isolation, objects help us to tell stories of entangled histories, and to compare very different cultural developments.

LB This is an enormous and quite unanswerable question which Katy has answered very well…. I would just like to add, rather tangentially, that while requests for repatriation can make headline news, the useful relationships and collaborative programmes of research and outreach frequently developed between colleagues in museums or countries that might popularly be supposed to be at cultural loggerheads are very often overlooked.

ME None of us who work in museums would want to be apologists for the sometimes murky processes by which objects entered our collections in the past. Even when the transactions were honest and equal, the descendants of people who once owned an object in a museum can of course feel a sense of loss. But often, through the kinds of relationships that Lucilla mentioned (relationships that only exist because objects from ‘there’ are ‘here’), some really important conversations, and new understandings, can develop. In this way, as others have said, the artefact can be an ‘ambassador’ of sorts – forging and renewing relationships between people separated as well as united by a common history.

DN I agree with Katy and Lucilla and would only add that perhaps items, if they were acquired dubiously, should be judged on individual merit as to whether they should stay here or be returned to their source. Some cultures do not have a tradition of visiting museums, some countries do not fund their museums well, and some countries are deeply unstable and prone to conflict, so in all these cases I am glad that the objects are safe in British museums.

Q5 In a notional disaster scenario, which collection or museum would you rescue?

KB For me it would have to be the Sir John Soane Museum in London, it's a glorious gem of a collection, a museum in miniature. I love house museums that give you a sense of the person behind their creation. At the Soane you feel that you've stepped straight into the eighteenth century, almost into the brain of Sir John Soane, thanks to his eclectic collection of architectural fragments and designs. What a way to learn about architectural history! Soane also had a spectacular painting collection, which includes the two famous series by William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress and An Election. They’re displayed in his original painting room, hung on layers of hinged walls that are specially opened daily. You can even visit by candlelight once a month to experience the house as his dinner guests might have.

LB I think I’m forbidden by the terms of my contract from saying anything other than the Fitzwilliam - but if I can have two choices, please might I also rescue the Isles of Scilly Museum? A refuge for holiday-makers on rainy days, it’s a wonderful place to glimpse and marvel at the resourceful lives of generations of Scillonians – and the evidence for others who passed, or attempted to pass, through Scilly - from the brooches and coins left by Roman traders, to the poignantly personal possessions salvaged from the many wrecks that ring the islands. Harrowing first-hand accounts of maritime tragedies make for compelling reading, while equally absorbing are the sepia photographs of 19th-century tourists, embarking in wildly impractical clothing on the same pleasure trips that visitors take today. A pilot gig rigged with oars and sail, ancestor of those now rowed by the islanders for sport, forms an impressive centre-piece to the displays and drives home the Museum’s central message, that the life of the islands has always both depended on – and been threatened by - the sea.

ME This is a cheat of an answer, but I would save a collection that I haven’t seen, and don’t know about: the small collections of objects, experiences and histories that are made in households, villages and communities throughout the world – in shoe boxes, in living rooms or in community spaces. Keep collecting, people! But also keep coming to museums and sharing your stories.

DN I love the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology! This beautifully small museum is packed full of amazing objects from the four imagined corners of the globe such as textiles, stones, paintings, sculptures, masks, weapons and skins. I suspect we would be able to construct the whole history of mankind and mankind’s relationship to the planet with a few of the MAA’s objects spanning hundreds of thousands of years.

Inset images from top: Ammonite (©Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Cambridge); Silver Penny from the Reign of William I, 1066-1087 (© ̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge); Green jade disc, Chinese, 300-100 B.C (© ̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge); Wheel from Cambridge Folk Museum (©Leo Reynolds); Faience bowl, from Sedment, Egypt, New Kingdom, 1479-1425 B.C (© ̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge)

Our lives are bound up with objects. Museums are evidence of our deep preoccupation with the things that surround us, whether natural or the product of human endeavour. Why do we keep stuff, what do we learn from it – and what does our fascination for objects from our past tell us about being human today?

Objects bear the marks of how they've been used, giving us access to ideas that may have been too fundamental to a person's life ever to have been written down

Katy Barrett

Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences

Drawer of ammonoids from the Woodwardian collection, the founding collection of the Sedgwick Museum, dating to the late 17th and early 18th century

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