: Museums, Exhibitions and Events

At long last the female has been seen carrying food into the nest so we know at least one egg has now hatched.

As the eggs are incubated as soon as she lays them the others should hatch at 1-2 day intervals.

The west wing natural history galleries have now been closed for well over a year. This has been due to the building works replacing the west wing roof and installing the new contemporary art galleries on the top floor. These works are completed and we are now working hard to get the ground floor natural history galleries back into shape.

The front gallery remains mainly the same but we have taken the opportunity to give the dioramas a deep clean, replace the carpet and redo the lighting. As a result the space is looking much brighter and fresher.

The remaining ground floor gallery space has seen some big changes. We are currently installing a new display area called ‘Insight’. This is a series of modular displays, many with interactive touch screens, which will explore the science that goes on behind the scenes at the museum.

Beyond this is another new display area that looks at evolution, and provides a linking space to the newly refurbished science education room.

These spaces will all be fully open to the public on April 16^th when we look forward to welcoming you back into these gallery spaces.

Unfortunately the mezzanine area gallery spaces, where the Leatherback Turtle and Humpback Whale can be found, will remain closed a few months longer. Once the ground floor is open we will be cleaning and redoing some of the displays in this area in preparation for the BBC Wildlife Photographer exhibition which opens in mid June.

Welcome to the 2011 season of Peregrines on the Clock Tower.

There has been plenty of activity around the tower in the last few weeks - in fact the adults have not left all winter. Perhaps more surprising is that 2 of the youngsters from last year have also been putting in occasional appearances.

3 weeks ago the young female was flying around calling for food when the adult male flew in clutching a bird in its talons. Then last week I was lucky enough to see the young male tearing at a carcass alongside his mother - who didn't seem to mind the intrusion, although he only butted in once she had eaten her fill!

The bad news this, as far as we're concerned, is it looks like they're going to use the nest on the north face of the tower. This will make life difficult for all of us trying to watch what's going on.

It's not all doom and gloom though, we can still see the nest - just not as well as the one on the east side - and we'll be able to see the adults bringing food into the chicks a little later in the summer.

Here's to a successful 2011 season.

Breaking news

Female appears to have started incubating.

May 2010.  I’m standing next to the largest head I’ve ever seen.  Carved in sandstone and painted, it belongs to the vast reclining Buddha at the heart of the Baodingshan cave temple.  Baodingshan, ‘Summit of Treasures’, is the most impressive of the seventy-five rock-carved temple sites that make up the Dazu World Heritage Site in south-west China.  10,000 individual figures populate its 500m-long tree-shaded sandstone cliff, all carved between AD1177 and 1249.

The experience is overwhelming.  I’m astonished by the sheer ambition of this Buddhist complex, by the sophisticated imagination that planned it, by the skills of the artists that fashioned it.  I’m here with colleague Steve Howe to plan an exhibition of Dazu carvings at the National Museum in Cardiff early in 2011, and I’m wondering how we are going to convey the magic of these places to our visitors.

This visit to Dazu was my first time back in China since working there in the mid 1980s.  China had changed hugely, of course, and the pace of change is as breathtaking as the ferociously spiced Sichuanese food (the best in China, in my view) which our generous hosts pressed on us at every opportunity.  The most important things, however – the sociability of the people, their rightful pride in a distinguished cultural heritage – remain undimmed.

Our week’s work with colleagues at the Dazu Rock Carvings Museum developed a warm and trusting friendship, along with the realisation that we had an opportunity to create something really special back in Cardiff.  Dazu, after all, represents the last great flourishing of the cave-temple art form and its treasures of Song-dynasty (AD960-1279) sculpture had never been seen outside China before.

Back in Wales, the whole exhibition team rose enthusiastically to the challenge and, under serious time pressure, captured the serene drama of visiting a rock-carved cave temple.  The exquisite beauty of the carvings, something both spiritual and deeply human, shines out.  From a number of favourite pieces, I would highlight the meditating figure of Zhao Zhifeng, the designer of the Baodingshan complex, and, in complete contrast, the charmingly characterised family group from a tomb complete with serious father, delighted mother and two naughty children.  Pride of place, though, goes to the central Sakyamuni Buddha, whose authoritative dignity greets visitors to the exhibition and provides a profoundly spiritual focus for the whole experience. 

I was particularly pleased to see the delight of our Chinese colleagues at the results, but equally so to see the enthusiasm of so many visitors of all kinds, whether people from Cardiff or China, specialists or local school children.  If the multitude of Buddhist figures and schools of thought, and their interweaving with Confucian and Daoist ideas, all seem like too much to grasp, not to worry.  Just enjoy the spectacle and take heart from another Dazu inscription that expresses the essential simplicity of Buddhist thinking:  ‘to know clearly means that there is nothing to know’.

Andrew Renton, Head of Applied Art, National Museum Cardiff