Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum

Saturday 14 January – Saturday 14 April 2012. A collaboration between three artists who have depicted the dramatic landscapes and ancient archaeological sites of Hardy’s Wessex landscape. Key works were specifically selected by the artists to show their varied and eclectic response to the places in Wiltshire that Hardy wrote about. Ranging from compressed charcoal drawings, prints, steel etchings and oil paintings, the work of Dave Gunning, David Inshaw and Rob Pountney is displayed in the Museum’s upstairs gallery.

By personally selecting a small number of key pieces from their huge bodies of work, these artists give a unique glimpse into their own reactions to their art. They are showing what they consider to be their most revealing and emotional responses to a landscape they have got to know intimately, both through Hardy and through their own experience of it.

Where

Salisbury Museum

Admission

Normal admission charges apply. No additional cost.

Website

http://www.salisburymuseum.org.uk/what-s-on/exhibitions/232-landscapes-of-thomas-hardys-wessex-works-by-dave-gunning-david-inshaw-and-rob-pountney.html

Saturday 28 January – Saturday 12 May 2012. When the climate changes from warm to freezing, the plants and animals you rely on for food and clothing die out or disappear, how would YOU survive? Packed full of fun activities set alongside Ice Age animal bones and the oldest objects made by people found in this area, this exhibition looks at how the earliest people survived over 300,000 years ago.

Specially suited for primary school ages or families, but with something of interest for everyone, you will be asked to think about whether you think you could have lived in a time before farming, when people survived by hunting and gathering and when extreme climate change threatened their existence.

Plus, if you enter our cave Art Competition, you get free admission in to the exhibition if you bring your entry with you. We will display it in the exhibition and you have chance of winning a special Behind the Scenes tour with the Museum’s Director who will even let you touch a real mammoth bone!

Suitable for

• Any age

Where

Salisbury Museum

Admission

Normal admission charges apply. No additional cost.

Website

http://www.salisburymuseum.org.uk/what-s-on/exhibitions/231-surviving-the-stone-age.html

Circles and Tangents: Art in the Shadow of Cranborne Chase

25 May — 29 September 2012

Circles and Tangents presents a visual account of networks and circles of artists living and working on Cranborne Chase from the 1920s to the present day. During this time the Chase has continued to be a landscape of inspiration, seclusion and bare-boned beauty. Now a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, this vast and ancient landscape bridges the counties of Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire.

Items in the exhibition have been drawn from a variety of sources, many from private collections, and range from early neo-romantic works to contemporary pieces made specifically for this exhibition.

Artists in the exhibition from the earlier generation include the Nicholson family (William, Ben, Winifred, E.Q. and Tim), John Craxton, Lucian Freud, Augustus John, Henry Lamb, Frances Hodgkins and Katharine Church (Kitty West).

Katharine Church, who ran the Hambledon Gallery in Blandford Forum, had a celebrated circle of friends, including Frances Hodgkins and Mary Fedden, who was also a frequent visitor to Elisabeth Frink's home at Woolland, near Blandford. Frink’s work is represented in the exhibition along with sculpture by Peter Thursby, John Hitchens, Jay Battle, Tim Harrisson, Don Potter, and Ian Middleton. There is also stained glass by Joseph Nuttgens and a number of oils and drawings by Augustus John, Henry Lamb and other celebrated painters of that age, including Stanley Spencer.

The Chase retains the power to inspire artistic creativity and progressive new art. Contemporary artists include Tim Nicholson, Ursula Leach (who explores 'the new face of agriculture’), and Brian Rice, Paul Jones and Brian Graham, who all draw inspiration from ancient sites on the Chase.

The exhibition is accompanied by a book of the same title by Vivienne Light available at the Museum

image credit: E.Q. Nicholson, Boveridge, c.1949 (c) Private Collection.

Admission

Charges to be advised

Website

http://www.salisburymuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/exhibitions/236-circles-and-tangents-art-in-the-shadow-of-cranborne-chase.html

The Sepia Gentlemen of File 106

14 February 2012

This lecture by Andrew J. Lawson will shed light on the achievements of some of the people captured in the remarkable series of nineteenth-century portraits held in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. In particular, it will look at the role of eminent archaeologists in defining the Palaeolithic Age. Includes Q&A.

A lecture in the Salisbury Museum Archaeology Lectures (SMAL) series. SMAL lectures are held on the second Tuesday of each month from September to April.

image of William Blackmore credit © Salisbury Museum

Suitable for

• 18+
• 16-17
• Not suitable for children

When

7:30-8pm

Where

Salisbury Museum

Admission

Museum members £2.00; non-Members £3.50; payable on the door.

Website

http://www.salisburymuseum.org.uk/lectures/lectures/220-the-sepia-gentlemen-of-file-106.html

The more you dig, the less you know: Devilish Mysteries at the former MoD Estate Offices, Durrington

13 March 2012

A talk by Andy Manning, Wessex Archaeology. Recent fieldwork by Wessex Archaeology in late 2010 and 2011 on the site of the former MoD estate offices has uncovered something of a mystery. Although evidence for an Iron Age and Romano-British settlement on the site has been known for some years, the fieldwork has uncovered some remarkable discoveries. These confirm the site of a Late Iron Age and Romano-British enclosed settlement, but the initial results suggest the settlement may be much larger than previously thought, perhaps even underlying the northern half of the modern town. But perhaps even more significantly, befitting a site in Durrington which is home to Durrington Walls, below the settlement, a number of Neolithic monuments have emerged, which tantalisingly may be associated with the henge, itself. Whatever happens, we won’t be looking at Durrington in the same way again.

A lecture in the Salisbury Museum Archaeology Lectures (SMAL) series. SMAL lectures are held on the second Tuesday of each month from September to April.

image of the excavations © Wessex Archaeology

When

7:30pm-

Where

Salisbury Museum

Admission

Museum members £2.00; non-Members £3.50; payable on the door

Website

http://www.salisburymuseum.org.uk/lectures/lectures/226-durrington-walls-mod-site.html

The Parkers of Heytesbury: The First Field Archaeologists

10 April 2012

A lecture by Dr Paul Everill. Histories of archaeology often focus on the role of wealthy, educated men and women in the development of the field techniques and the production of knowledge. While it is undeniable that these individuals were, in many senses, the instigators of archaeological endeavour and interest, traditional histories of the discipline ignore the central contribution of the ordinary excavators. Principal amongst these forgotten pioneers must be Stephen and John Parker of Heytesbury, the two labourers employed by William Cunnington on all his excavations between 1801 and his death at the end of 1810. This lecture uses evidence from the original letters and documents held at Devizes Museum to illuminate the role of the Parkers, and argues that the two men should be given greater credit for their contribution to the fledgling discipline of archaeology.

Dr Paul Everill currently teaches applied archaeological techniques at the University of Winchester. He has established research interests in contemporary commercial archaeology; the history of archaeology; the development of fieldwork techniques and contemporary practice; and archaeological pedagogy. He is co-director of an archaeological expedition to the former Soviet republic of Georgia, which has been running since 2001.

A lecture in the Salisbury Museum Archaeology Lectures (SMAL) series. SMAL lectures are held on the second Tuesday of each month from September to April.

image credit: Barrow digging (the Parkers at work, being supervised by Cunnington and Colt Hoare) © Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes

When

7:30pm-

Where

Salisbury Museum

Admission

Museum members £2.00; non-Members £3.50; payable on the door.

Website

http://www.salisburymuseum.org.uk/lectures/lectures/224-the-parkers-of-heytesbury-the-first-field-archaeologists.html