Exhibition Ends on a High
As a send-off for the highly popular Nora Davison exhibition (seen by over 2500 visitors), a private view was held ahead of a screening and Q&A with the Director of the film War Paint: Women at War. The event was attended by 81 people, including boys, members of the Eton Community and Friends of the Eton College Collections.
Antiquities Return to Eton
Over 500 objects have returned to Eton’s Museum of Antiquities, having been on a 15-year loan to the University of Birmingham. It has been an incredibly rewarding loan for both parties: the University has had the opportunity to utilise the material as teaching and research tools for the Department of Classics & Ancient History, and this has enabled us to enhance our understanding of the material and improve Eton’s catalogue records. We are looking forward to refreshing some of the displays with objects that are now safely back in the museum.
Bio-coding a Manuscript
Over the summer a non-destructive ‘bio-codicological’ analysis was conducted on College Library’s MS 177 as part of the University of Exeter’s project Learning Anglo French. The proteomic and genetic analysis will shed light on what animal species were used for the manuscript’s manufacture and where they may have come from. At the same time the study will recover any historic human DNA present and map chromosomal frequencies to understand whether the readers were mainly women or men, as well as gather information on profiles of any bacteria and viruses present, such as human acne or sheep-pox. Stay tuned!
Photographs Acquired for the Archives
A new acquisition for the Photographic Archive is an album compiled by Edward Denis Festus Kelly, at Eton 1894-99. In addition to the usual selection of house photos are some wonderful images of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and boys playing with a pet monkey.
