Bone and Oil: The long nineteenth-century visual and material cultures of whaling

作为《白鲸》推荐的资源，现在赫尔海事博物馆收藏的鲸鱼是约克郡最受欢迎的景点之一的关键部分，每年有73-8万游客。该博物馆的藏品包含国家海事博物馆以外最重要的海洋文化宝库之一。该博物馆收藏了300多幅油画、大量的版画收藏，以及美国以外最大的剪刀--在鲸鱼和海象的骨头上雕刻--以及大量的捕鲸和北极纪念品，反映了这座城市悠久的海洋历史，是该地区最有前途、开发最少的艺术历史资源之一。19thC海洋绘画代表了收藏的核心，特别强调了北极捕鲸和探索的相互关联的主题，这一领域的其他资源可在邻近的费伦斯艺术画廊获得。到目前为止，有相当多的当地历史学者研究19世纪长时间的捕鲸，其中一个强调了赫尔作为维多利亚时代英国捕鲸之都的中心地位(参见Arthur G Credland，《船体捕鲸贸易》[1995])。关于《白鲸》及其来源也有丰富的评论(参见沃森·G·布兰奇，《赫尔曼·梅尔维尔：关键遗产》[1974])。相比之下，学者们几乎没有注意到19世纪的捕鲸艺术历史文化。这令人惊讶，因为最近人们对英国海洋艺术的兴趣重新抬头，证明了这一点：《特纳与海》(Turner and the Sea，2013-4)的成功，即将在耶鲁大学英国艺术中心(Yale Center For British Art)举办的英国海洋绘画展览，以及杰夫·奎利(Geoff Quilley)(2011)等人的主要专著。事实上，到目前为止，关于赫尔收藏品的现有学术研究包括PCF的《约克郡之东骑行》卷中绘画的墓碑条目和礼品店中出售的简短的游客指南书籍，这些书籍可以追溯到一代人的历史：阿瑟·G·克莱德兰的《赫尔的海洋绘画穿过三个世纪》(1993)，以及克雷德兰和珍妮特·韦斯特的《斯克里姆肖：捕鲸者的艺术》(1995)。《骨与油：维多利亚捕鲸的视觉和物质文化》首次对其主要北极捕鲸收藏品进行了持续的艺术史分析，旨在将赫尔具有国际意义的收藏品重新放在学院内的中心舞台上，并为多元化的公众做好准备，为2017年赫尔作为英国文化之城年的聚光灯角色做好准备。该项目将集中于收藏品的两个主要领域：以鲸鱼为主题的北极海洋绘画，以及博物馆的涂鸦和其他雕塑实例，例如19世纪40年代在约克郡巡回演出的两名因纽特旅行者的半身像，将这些置于博物馆和邻近的费伦斯画廊广泛的、相关的捕鲸版画收藏中，并更广泛地与其他英国收藏品(如国家海事博物馆)和美国捕鲸博物馆的多媒体收藏品联系起来。在这样做的过程中，该项目将介入当前的四场学术辩论。它将为研究19世纪英国海洋绘画的日益成熟的学术做出贡献。它将提供一个关键的艺术历史证据基础，挑战占主导地位的维多利亚时期捕鲸的文学/历史描述。它将使斯普林肖回归到19世纪的雕塑研究，由于最近一个高度复杂的跨学科工艺研究的新领域的发展，业余工艺传统的重要性日益活跃。它将为新的、又一次快速增长的跨学科动物研究做出贡献，仅仅是在艺术史上站稳脚跟。该项目还将在两个主要方面产生影响：通过对博物馆陈列的演讲、参观和讲座，以及通过其在线目录收藏中重要的新解释资源。

Recommended as a resource in 'Moby Dick', the whaling collections now within the Hull Maritime Museum form a key part of one of Yorkshire's most popular attractions, with between 73-80k visitors per year. The Museum's collection contains one of the most significant repositories for maritime culture outside of the National Maritime Museum. Housing more than 300 oil paintings, a sizeable print collection, and one of the largest collections of scrimshaw - carving upon whale and walrus bone - anywhere outside the U.S., as well as numerous pieces of whaling and Arctic memorabilia, the museum reflects the city's long maritime history, and is one of the most promising, least explored art historical resources in the region. 19thC marine painting represents the heart of the collection, with a particular emphasis on the inter-related topics of Arctic whaling and exploration, with additional resources in this area available at the adjacent Ferens Art Gallery. To date, there is a considerable local-historical scholarship on long-19thC whaling, one emphasising Hull's centrality as the whaling capital of Victorian Britain (see Arthur G Credland, 'The Hull Whaling Trade' [1995]). There is also a rich set of commentaries on 'Moby Dick' and its sources (see Watson G. Branch, 'Herman Melville: The Critical Heritage' [1974]). By contrast, scholars have paid virtually no attention to the 19thC art historical cultures of whaling. This is surprising given the recent resurgence of interest in British maritime arts, evidenced by the success of 'Turner and the Sea' (National Maritime Museum, 2013-4), the forthcoming exhibition of British marine painting at the Yale Center for British Art; as well as by major monographs by Geoff Quilley (2011) and others. Indeed, to date, the extant scholarship on the Hull collections comprises the briefly contextualised tombstone entries for the paintings in the PCF's 'East Riding of Yorkshire' volume and the short visitor guide books available in the gift shop, which date back a generation: Arthur G. Credland's 'Marine Painting in Hull Through Three Centuries' (1993) and Credland and Janet West's 'Scrimshaw: The Art of the Whaler' (1995). Providing the first sustained art historical analyses of its key Arctic whaling collections, 'Bone and Oil: The Visual and Material Cultures of Victorian Whaling' seeks to return Hull's internationally significant collections to centre stage, within the academy and for a diverse public in readiness for the museum's spotlight role in Hull's year as the UK City of Culture in 2017. The project will focus on two main areas of the collection: the whaling themed Arctic marine paintings, and the museum's scrimshaw and other examples of sculpture, such as the life cast busts of two Inuit travellers who were toured round Yorkshire in the 1840s, contextualising these within the museum and the neighbouring Ferens gallery's extensive, related whaling print collections, and more broadly in relation to other British collections, such as the National Maritime Museum, and the multimedia collections of American whaling museums. In so doing, the project will intervene in four current scholarly debates. It will contribute to the increasingly sophisticated scholarship on long 19thC British marine painting. It will provide a key art historical evidence base to challenge the dominant literary/historical accounts of Victorian whaling. It will return scrimshaw to a 19thC sculpture studies increasingly alive to the importance of amateur craft traditions, thanks to the recent development of a highly sophisticated new field of interdisciplinary craft studies. And it will contribute to a new, again fast growing, interdisciplinary animal studies, just finding its feet in art history. The project will also achieve impact in two key ways: through talks, tours and lectures of the museum's displays, and through significant new interpretive resources within its online catalogue collections.