We promise to clean this up before anyone steps in a can.

The loans were unpacked last Friday under the supervision of Andy Holbrook, the loans shipment courier who is the Collections Care Manager at the IWM, and our Quarantine Inspector from AQIS. read on

The many different versions of Seven pillars of wisdom are sometime difficult to understand, but since I put a small box of text about our 1926 subscribers’ edition into an article I wrote for Wartime, I have had to field a few questions about them. When we’ve solved our image attachment problem in WordPress, I’ll attach what images we have of each of them for further identification.

I’ll now attempt to summarise the differences for you here in text form:

The 1922 “Oxford Times” text
After losing almost all of his first draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom at Reading railway station in 1919, Lawrence was urged by his friends to rewrite the lost material. He completed a revised manuscript (which he later gave to the Bodleian Library, Oxford) in May 1922. To prevent loss of the second text, he had eight copies made by the Oxford Times printing works. Five of these were bound and circulated to his wartime colleagues and other close advisers for critical review. It was never available for sale to the public. You can read about the two copies held by the British Library, including copy #2, donated by George Bernard Shaw, here (fourth paragraph). read on

With only a week to go before we open, much progress is being made. Recently a number of us have been heavily engaged in the following list (not exhaustive) of activities:

• The final stages of the design process to do with balancing and sequencing objects, art works and images as we finalise the plans for the exhibition space.
• Re-drafting, proofing and printing all exhibition text including wall panels and captions.
• Drafting and proofing magazine articles and our four catalogue essays.
• Arranging press and other media coverage. (This includes the production of more text and the provision of more images including moving images and sound files and arranging all relevant rights and permissions. Today alone I did three interviews and so far I have two lined up for Friday 30 November.)
• Marketing the exhibition.
• Arranging public talks, tours and other public programs for the life of the exhibition.
• Arranging the exhibition launch on 6 December and all that this entails.
• And demounting the previous exhibition, To Flanders fields, 1917, and preparing the space, including the installation of our new display cases for our exhibition. read on

By now you’ll probably have noticed that the blog has a new look. Adam Bell is responsible for that. He is our web developer. The design features elements of the exhibition design that have been developed by our designers, Jesse and Nicki, from Arketype in Adelaide.

I’m a tad biased but I think they’ve picked up some of my odd ideas really well and there are some really wonderful design elements that reflect and highlight some of the key features of the exhibition: the written word; textiles; the environment; the twin historical stories; and the culture of the Middle East.

We have a few interesting public talks and a film screening before the end of the year. Here is all the information you’ll need. The Telstra Theatre is inside the Memorial, on the lower ground floor.

27 November 2007, 10.30-11.30 am, Telstra Theatre

Author Talk: James Barr
James Barr’s book about Lawrence and the Arab revolt, Setting the Desert on Fire: TE Lawrence and Britain’s secret war in Arabia 1916-18, was published in Britain in paperback this year. He will discuss travelling extensively in the Middle East and delving into the archives in London to do his research.
Free, booking not required

7 December 2007, 3:00 pm, Telstra Theatre

Curator talk: Dr Norma Aubertin-Potter, Senior Librarian, Codrington Library, All Souls College, Oxford, UK
Join us for a 40-minute talk from Norma Aubertin-Potter, who will provide a fascinating insight into T.E.Lawrence’s time at All Souls College, and into the items from the All Souls collection borrowed for our exhibition.
Free, booking not required

read on

The Memorial’s regularly published magazine Wartime has a cover story and major feature on our exhibition in the Wartime current issue (#40). We have four articles in this issue:

• Nigel Steel addresses the liberation of Damascus from the Turks in October 1918. Credit has mostly been given to Feisal’s Arabs and Lawrence was responsible for this claim as that is what he said in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Nigel points out the entry of the 10th Light Horse Regiment at first light on 1 October 1918 in his article, “The sword in their midst”.
• Robyn Van Dyk has two articles: “Creating a legend”, about the contribution to the legend of the Light Horse made by the pen of Ion Idriess; and “Horsemen of the air”, about the light horsemen who swapped saddles for cockpits and joined the Australian Flying Corps during the war.
• I have an article that explores the differences between Lieutenant General Sir Harry Chauvel and Lieutenant Colonel T.E. Lawrence. As I researched this exhibition, my admiration for both men grew enormously. I found it strange that they didn’t see eye-to-eye when they met in Damascus and have suggested a few reasons.

The magazine contains some good images of Lawrence, Chauvel and the Light Horse. You can purchase it at the Memorial, in newsagents around Australia and also via our website on this page.

September was a really busy month for us. We all had to meet deadlines for text, get the initial design concepts endorsed by management and write essays for magazines and our catalogue. So, just in case you are interested in what has gone on so far, here is a pretty comprehensive listing of the process and a few images we have taken along the way.

Several senior staff from the Memorial viewed the IWM Lawrence of Arabia: The life, the legend exhibition in London.

An informal approach was made to the IWM for their assistance and cooperation. (They replied favourably.)

A curator (Mal) and assistant curator (Robyn) were appointed, and the exhibition team formed.

A concept paper (with an audience segmentation summary) was developed, and the project manager (Susie) developed a draft budget and the development schedule (I was glad that I didn’t have to do that!). read on

In this post I will begin to cover my second trip to London in late June 2006 to negotiate

loans from the UK, mostly for the Lawrence side of our exhibition. It really was a great priviledge to be able to do this and to return to London so soon after my quick visit over Easter to see the IWM’s Lawrence exhibition. Museum’s are not made of money and this trip was made possible because my colleagues here in Art and Travelling Exhibitions, Lola Wilkins and Jude Savage, generously allowed for me to travel as their courier, bringing our art works in Shared Experience back from their London show.

Before packing up Shared Experience, I had almost two weeks to race around, negotiating loans from various collections in and around London. So, on to my stories about loan negotiations and at last, some interesting facts about the items we will be bringing out to Australia for the first and maybe the only time. read on

A while back, one of our regular readers was talking to me about what we were doing and expressed some surprise at what effort is going into this exhibition. He said that he thought we just went out the back and grabbed things to put into cabinets and presto, an exhibition is born. Well, words to that effect. Others have emailed me recently about being interested in what goes into putting our exhibitions together.

The process isn’t actually that simple and with about half of this exhibition being devoted to international loans regarding Lawrence, it is even more complex than our normal temporary exhibition process. So, for those of you who might be interested, I will now attempt to outline the key elements of our process thus far. I suspect that it’ll take a few posts, based just on my rough notes and there won’t be too many relevant images, so if you don’t have a deep abiding interest in our process, I suggest you turn away very quickly now and do a crossword puzzle or look at one of our other blogs. My colleagues working on the To Flanders Fields, 1917 exhibition are doing a great job with excellent content, so maybe check that one out. read on

A while back, actually a long while back, I promised to enlighten you about a couple of inspiring things that I saw in London in 2006 during my visits to view the IWM’s Lawrence of Arabia, the Life, the Legend exhibition and to negotiate our UK loans. So after a long delay and absolutely no requests to read the second part of my story, here it is. I must tell you that what I’ve written below were my impressions, recorded in London over Easter 2006. Since then, I’ve worked on the challenges presented by our exhibition and I’ve developed an even deeper appreciation of the work that went into these exhibitions.

Firstly, I found the IWM’s relatively new Churchill Museum absolutely stunning. Located with the Cabinet War Rooms, it is visually splendid and makes full use of modern exhibition technology to educate visitors about Churchill’s amazing life by very clever use of sound, documents, images, film footage, interactives and the display of selected objects. I went for a quick visit, just to breeze through and found myself there for some hours. You get a very good sense of the man and his achievements without being confused or overwhelmed by too much content or context.

read on