: Amgueddfeydd, Arddangosfeydd a Digwyddiadau

Fel cymaint o ddigwyddiadau yn ystod yr amseroedd anhygoel hyn, cwtogwyd ein harddangosfa Chwarelwyr  mis diwethaf pan gaeodd Amgueddfa'r Glannau ei drysau. Roeddem am ddod o hyd i ffordd i barhau i'w rannu gyda chi, felly dyma ychydig o gefndir i'r arddangosfa gan Carwyn Rhys Jones, a'i datblygodd. Ynddo mae'n siarad am yr ysbrydoliaeth a sut y cafodd ei siapio gan straeon ac atgofion pump o chwarelwyr. Rydyn ni wedi ychwanegu delweddau o'r arddangosfa ac yn gobeithio y byddwch chi'n mwynhau'r profiad.

Dechreuais y prosiect hwn fel datblygiad o waith yr oeddwn wedi ei wneud yn y brifysgol am dirwedd chwareli. Roedd y prosiect yn cynnwys rhai chwareli yng Ngogledd Cymru, gan gynnwys Mynydd Parys, Dorothea, Penrhyn, Alexandra ac Oakeley. Canolbwyntiodd hwn ar sut roedd y tir wedi newid oherwydd y diwydiant a sut y ffurfiodd tirwedd newydd o amgylch y chwareli. Y cam naturiol nesaf oedd edrych ar bobl y chwareli. Yn anffodus, ychydig o chwarelwyr sydd bellach, felly roedd yn amserol i gipio a chofnodi'r hanes a'r dreftadaeth bwysig hon.

Gyrrwyd y prosiect hwn gan syniadau’r chwarelwyr, felly roedd hi ond yn briodol i enwi’r arddangosfa yn ‘Chwarelwyr’. Mae'r arddangosfa wedi'i ffurfio o ddwy ran: rhaglen ddogfen fer a ffotograffiaeth i gyd-fynd â hi. Trefor oedd y chwarelwr cyntaf i mi gyfweld. Roedd yn adnabyddus yn lleol fel Robin Band oherwydd bod y rhan fwyaf o'i deulu mewn bandiau. Bu'n gweithio yn chwarel lechu Trefor am rai blynyddoedd, a rhannodd atgofion gwych am yr amseroedd da, drwg a doniol yno.

Y nesaf oedd Dic Llanberis, a oedd, fel yr awgryma ei enw, wedi ei leoli yn Llanberis. Roedd gan Dic brofiad blynyddoedd a chymaint o wybodaeth am hanes Chwarel y Dinorwig. Defnyddiais yr un broses ar gyfer pob un o'r pum Chwarelwr: eu cyfweld, yna ffilmio ac yn olaf, tynnu lluniau ohonynt. Gweithiodd Dic yn y chwarel hyd yn oed ar ôl iddo gau i lawr ym 1969, er mwyn helpu i glirio'r llechi oedd yn weddill.

Wedyn, tro Andrew JonJo a Carwyn oedd hi. Roedd y ddau wedi gweithio yn chwarel y Penrhyn ym Methesda ar gyrion Bangor. Fe wnes i gyfweld a’r ddau ohonynt yn yr Amgueddfa Lechi yn Llanberis lle maen nhw bellach yn gweithio. Andrew yw'r olaf o chwe chenhedlaeth o chwarelwyr yn ei deulu a oedd i gyd wedi gweithio mewn dwy chwarel: Dinorwic a Phenrhyn. Fel y gallech ddychmygu, siaradodd yn deimladwy am y ffordd y ganwyd i mewn i'r diwydiant. Daw Carwyn o deulu chwarela mawr hefyd, roedd rhai ohonynt wedi gweithio yn yr Ysbyty’r Chwarelwyr yn Llanberis. Gellir dod o hyd i nifer o lofnodion ei hynafiaid yn llyfrau'r Amgueddfa’r Ysbyty Chwarel, yn cofnodi gweithdrefnau llawfeddygol.

Yn olaf, cwrddais â John Pen Bryn, a leolir yn Nhalysarn, ychydig y tu allan i Gaernarfon. Roedd y chwarel hon mor fawr fel ei bod yn cynnwys pentref cyfan, a John wedi ei godi yno. Mae bellach yn berchen y chwarel ac wedi byw yn Nhalysarn ar hyd ei oes. Dangosodd fi o gwmpas y chwarel a lle'r oedd y pentref yn arfer bod – anodd dychmygu nawr ei fod unwaith yn lle prysur gyda thair siop, tu fewn iddi. Roedd John yn llawn straeon ac yn gwybod popeth oedd wedi digwydd yn ei chwarel dros y blynyddoedd.

Yn anffodus, mae Robin Band a Dic Llanberis ill dau wedi eu claddu ers cwblhau'r arddangosfa, ac felly mae'r ffilm sy'n cyd-fynd â hi yn gorffen gyda delweddau ohonynt. Roedden nhw, fel finnau yn falch tu hwnt ein bod wedi llwyddo i gipio rhai o'u straeon a dogfennu'r dreftadaeth a'r hanes pwysig hwn mewn pryd. Rwy'n ddiolchgar iawn i bawb a gymerodd ran yn y gwaith o greu’r arddangosfa. Gobeithio y byddwch yn ei fwynhau. 

Tynnais y llun hwn ym mis Mehefin 2011, dan y ddaear ym mhwll glo Aberpergwm ger Resolfen. Yn y llun mae tri o lowyr oedd yn dangos y gweithfeydd i mi. Y fenyw yn y canol, Katherine Voyle, oedd daearegydd y pwll. Ei gwaith hi oedd astudio’r wythïen lo a phenderfynu pa gyfeiriad i ddatblygu’r pwll er mwyn gallu cloddio mwy.

Es draw i’r pwll glo i recordio cyfweliad fideo gyda Katherine am ei bywyd a sut y daeth i wneud y swydd hon. Rhan o fy ngwaith yw casglu hanesion pobl ‘go iawn’ er mwyn i genedlaethau’r dyfodol gael darlun cywir o fywyd yr oes hon. Gofynnais iddi a oedd yn deimlad rhyfedd bod yr unig fenyw ymysg 300 o ddynion. Dywedodd ei bod yn od i ddechrau ond ei bod wedi dod i arfer â’r peth yn ddigon buan. Roedd y dynion yn ei derbyn hi fel ‘un o’r bechgyn’ nawr, yn enwedig pan oedd hi’n gwisgo oferôls, ond roedden nhw’n cael sioc o’i gweld wedi newid yn ôl i’w ‘dillad swyddfa’!

Mwynglawdd drifft yw Aberpergwm – hynny yw, mae’n torri i ochr dyffryn yn hytrach nag i lawr mewn siafft ddofn. Mewn gwirionedd, roedd y pwll glo’n gostwng yn serth wrth i ni gerdded dros filltir i’r ffas lo. Yno, roedd peiriant enfawr yn brysur yn torri, a’r sŵn yn fyddarol. Ar ôl fy nhaith ac ar ôl cynnal cyfweliad fe gerddon ni fyny’n ôl i’r heulwen. Er nad oeddwn wedi gwneud unrhyw waith corfforol, roedd fy nghoesau’n brifo ar ôl cerdded i mewn ac allan!

Dywedodd Katherine, sydd o Abertawe, ei bod wedi gweithio ar lwyfannau olew ym Môr y Gogledd ac yn yr Iseldiroedd cyn dod i Aberpergwm. Yr amgylchedd a byd natur oedd ei phrif ddiléit, ac roedd yn gweithio ar greu llwybr natur ar y tir uwchben y pwll glo.

DOLENNI I WYBODAETH BELLACH

Erthygl gan Ceri Thompson, Curiadur (Glo) am Katherine Voyle ar gyfer cylchgrawn Glo:

https://museum.wales/media/24679/GLO-Magazine-2012-web.pdf

Today is National Autusm Day, a chance to spread awareness and increase acceptance of Autism. Here at Amgueddfa Cymru National Museums of Wales, we believe passionately in making our museums and galleries accessible to everyone, and more than that to creating welcoming, comfortable spaces for all. To that end, a couple of years ago, with the support of autistic volunteers and family members, the National Waterfront Museum created a 'chill-out-room', and began offering 'quiet hours' each month. Here, Ian Smith Senior Curator of Modern & Contemporary Industry at the Waterfront Museum explains how this special space came about.

“In October 2016 we had a staff training day in ‘Autism Awareness’. It opened our eyes to how they see the world and how we can support their needs. It showed us how even the simplest of environmental changes can affect a person with autism. Things like light and sound levels, the colour of walls and floors. In fact the general layout of a space which might be deliberately made stimulating and flashy might cause many autistic people to retreat within themselves.

It was around this time that we welcomed a new volunteer at the museum. Rhys, 17, has autism. His mother contacted us and asked if he could volunteer with us to help his confidence when meeting people and in a real work environment. Rhys helps to run an object handling session, usually with another volunteer or a member of staff, and he has taken to it really well. We have all noticed that he’s become more outgoing and will now hold conversations with total strangers.

With the growing awareness of autism the Museum decided to create an Autism Champion. Our staff member Suzanne, who has an autistic son, readily agreed to take up the challenge. She now attends meetings with our sister museums where issues and solutions around autism are discussed.

During our training session we discovered that some organisations have created ‘chill-out’ rooms. These are for anyone who is feeling stressed or disturbed to go to and relax and gather themselves together. These rooms are especially useful for autistic people. We put a small group together to look at creating a safe, quiet space somewhere in the Waterfront Museum. After considering options, we decided that a little used first aid room on the ground floor offered the best place.

Rhys came into his own. He offered us a number of suggestions on how we could change the space to make it autism friendly. These included making the light levels controllable and sound proofing the room so that gentle music or relaxing sounds could be played. Suzanne too came up with a number of ideas from her own experience of looking after her son. Additionally, a local special school, Pen-y-Bryn, with whom we had an established relationship also offered us their valuable expertise.

The room we’ve created is a very soothing space and we find it gets regular use by people with a range of needs, and is clearly much appreciated as shown by the comments in the visitor’s book:

“Fantastic resource! My daughter really needed this today – thank you!”

“Lovely place to get away from the hustle and bustle for a little one.”

“Lovely idea for people on the spectrum to come for quiet.”

“Really helped my son to have some time out.”

This has been a very big learning curve for most of us, but it has been made much easier by talking to people who have direct experience of autism. Their input as part of our team has been invaluable.”

The Museum is of course, closed right now, but for those of you interested, the times for our 'quiet hours' are posted on our events pages each month. We look forward to welcoming you all back in the coming months. 

On 15 March we launch our new LGBTQ+ tours at National Museum Cardiff. The tours have been developed in partnership with Pride Cymru working with self-confessed Museum queerator Dan Vo and an amazing team of volunteers.

You may already have read Norena Shopland's blog about the Ladies of Llangollen, and Young Heritage Leader Jake’s post, Queer Snakes! There are so many more LGBTQ+ stories in our collection – stories that have been hidden in dusty museum closets for too long. Friends, it’s time for us to let them out!

To whet your appetite, here’s a quick glimpse at one of the works you might spot on the tour…

The Mower, by Sir William Hamo Thornycoft

The Mower is a bronze statuette on display in our Victorian Art gallery. It is about half a metre high and shows a topless young farmworker in a hat and navvy boots resting with his arm on his hip, holding a scythe. This sassy pose, known as contrapposto, was inspired by Donatello’s David - a work with its own queer story to tell.

The Mower was made by William Hamo Thornycroft, one of the most famous sculptors in Britain in the nineteenth century, and was given to the Museum in 1928 by Sir William Goscombe John. An earlier, life-size version is at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and is said to be the first significant free-standing sculpture showing a manual labourer made in Britain.

Thornycroft became fascinated with manual labourers and the working classes after being introduced to socialist ideas by his wife, Agatha Cox. He wrote ‘Every workman’s face I meet in the street interests me, and I feel sympathy with the hard-handed toilers & not with the lazy do nothing selfish ‘upper-ten.’ In The Mower, he presents the body of a young working-class man as though it's a classical hero or god – a brave move for the time.

Queering the Mower

With the rising interest in queer theory, many art historians have drawn attention to the queer in this sculpture. In an article by Michael Hatt the work is described as homoerotic, which he describes as that ambiguous space between the homosocial and homosexual.

One of the main factors is the artist’s relationship with Edmund Gosse, a writer and critic who helped establish Thornycroft’s reputation in the art world. Gosse was married with children, but his letters to Thornycroft give us a touching insight into their relationship.

He describes times they spent together basking in the sun in meadows and swimming naked in rivers; and they are filled with love poems and giddy declarations of affection. ‘Nature, the clouds, the grass, everything takes on new freshness and brightness now I have you to share the world with,’ he wrote. Gosse was so obsessed with Thornycroft that writer Lytton Strachey famously joked he wasn’t homosexual, but Hamo-sexual.

Gosse and Thornycroft were spending time together when the first inspiration for The Mower hit. They were sailing with a group of friends up the Thames when they spotted a real-life mower on the riverbank, resting. Thornycroft made a quick sketch, and the idea for the sculpture was born. A wax model sketch from 1882 is at the Tate.

The real-life mower they saw was wearing a shirt, but for his sculpture Thornycroft stripped him down. He explained to his wife that he wanted to ‘keep his hat on and carry his shirt’ and that a brace over his shoulder will help ‘take off the nude look’.

Brace or no brace, it’s difficult to hide the fact that this is a celebration of the male body designed for erotic appeal. Thornycroft used an Italian model, Orazio Cervi. Cervi was famous in Victorian Britain for his ‘perfectly proportioned physique’ (art historical speak for a hot bod!)

Later in the century, photographs of The Mower and other artworks were collected and exchanged in secret along with photographs of real life nudes, by a network of men mostly in London – a kind of queer subculture, although it wouldn’t have been understood in those terms back then.

This was dangerous ground. The second half of the nineteenth century saw what has been described as a ‘homosexual panic’, with rising anxieties around gender identity, sexuality and same-sex desire. Fanny and Stella, the artist Simeon Solomon and Oscar Wilde were among many who were hounded and publicly prosecuted for ‘indecent’ behaviour.

These tensions showed up in the art world too. Many of the artists associated with the Aesthetic and Decadent movements in particular were under scrutiny for producing works that were described as ‘effeminate’, ‘degenerate’ or ‘decadent’. But works like The Mower suggest that art might have provided a safer space for playing out private desires in a public arena at this time.

Book your place on our free volunteer-led LGBTQ+ tours here, and keep an eye on our website and social media for future dates!  

The current display Imagine a Castle: Paintings from the National Gallery, London offers a great opportunity to see a selection of European Old Master paintings for the first time in Wales alongside Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales’s own collection.

Comparing European and Welsh castles and the history and legends that come with them plays a vital part in defining Welsh cultural identity. Yet the history of castles in Wales is, for some, contentious.

To find out why we need to go back to the thriteenth century. During this time, there were many disputes between Welsh princes and English kings. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (last Prince of Wales) was involved in many disputes with Edward I, who launched a vicious campaign on the Welsh. This resulted in Llywelyn losing his power, land, titles and ultimately his life.

Following this English victory, Edward began the most ambitious castle-building policy ever seen in Europe. His collection of fortresses became known as the infamous ‘iron ring’ and included those at Harlech, Caernarfon and Conwy. They were intended to intimidate the Welsh and subdue uprisings. Along with these English-built fortresses came new towns that were intentionally populated with English settlers. Welsh people were forbidden to trade or sometimes even enter into the towns’ walls. Yet, while these castles remind us of English power over the Welsh, the strength of their construction underlines that Edward was conscious of the formidable and ever-present threat of Welsh resistance.

To acknowledge the histories of castles in Wales, we have included works from two Welsh artists, the ‘father of British landscape painting’, Richard Wilson, whose works offer an eighteenth-century perspective, and contemporary artist Peter Finnemore.

Wilson’s work reflects his travels to Italy and the influence of the hugely important French landscape painter, Claude Lorrain, whose work can also be seen in this exhibition. Wilson painted many Welsh landscapes and is recognised as changing the face of British landscape painting. While his work encouraged artists to come to Wales, many of his later Welsh compositions, such as Caernarfon Castle (Edward’s main seat in Wales) remind us more of the warmer climates of Italy. As such, they also point to his inspirations outside of Wales.

On the other hand, Finnemore’s photographic works, Lesson 56 – Wales and Ancient Ruler Worship (made especially for this display), look at castles in Wales from a more recent Welsh perspective. Finnemore’s work revolves around his Welsh-speaking grandmother’s school textbooks that were written from an English standpoint. Her childhood drawings in these books humorously undermine the didactic English text. Ancient Ruler Worship depicts Castell Carreg Cennen and looks back to World War II. It is taken from a still in Humphry Jennings’s propaganda film, Silent Village, that portrayed this castle as a site of Welsh resistance during an imagined Nazi invasion. The film demonstrated solidarity with Lidice, a mining village in the Czech Republic that was totally destroyed by the Nazis.

Whatever we may feel about their history, many of Edward’s Welsh castles are now designated as UNESCO World Heritage sites. Edward left a unique and internationally important legacy of medieval military architecture that can only be seen in Wales.