Another McMenace

Denise the Menace costume designed and worn by Ellie Diamond for an appearance on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. Acquired by Leisure and Culture Dundee in 2021 with a grant of £3,000 from the National Fund for Acquisitions, funded by the Scottish Government.

© Dundee Art Galleries and Museums, DC Thomson & Co Ltd. Image by GSR Photographic

To celebrate the 80th birthday of Beano in 2018, The McManus gave the best present it could and became … The McMenace. It seems only fitting that the museum continues to earn its stripes from Beano’s most cherished wild child. But in 2020 there was a new kid on the block …

Red and black stripes? Check!

Mad mop of black hair? Check!

A trusty sidekick in the form of a black-and-white dog? Check!

Move over Dennis because Ellie Diamond is serving up some Denise realness.

Dundee’s very own drag queen, Ellie Diamond, sashayed onto screens in the first episode of the second series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK as Denise the Menace. In response to the challenge ‘Queen of Your Home Town’, Ellie wanted to celebrate Dundee’s rich history through her love of comics. It really shouldn’t come as any surprise that we were very keen to acquire the outfit and, thanks to the National Fund for Acquisitions, we successfully purchased it from Ellie.

Ellie made the outfit herself from material bartered from a local haberdashery (Dennis would be proud). Not able to find an appropriate Gnasher, she spray-painted a white dog and glued in some joke-shop teeth (again a move that her name-sake would wholeheartedly approve).

But beyond the fun of the acquisition, on a deeper level it allowed the museum to acquire and represent an area of the collection that had not previously been openly showcased in our history exhibits – LGBTQ+ voices and experiences. Thanks to funding from Museums Galleries Scotland, we were able to purchase a bespoke mannequin to display the outfit in all its glory. We fully acknowledge that this is just one element in the huge rainbow of LGBTQ+ collecting and that we have a lot more to do to make our displays more inclusive and representative of our City. But as a first step, we think we’ve earned a coveted RuPeter badge on our stripes.

© Dundee Art Galleries and Museums, DC Thomson & Co Ltd, Ellie Diamond. Image by Alan Richardson

Carly Cooper
Curator (Social History)
Leisure and Culture Dundee
https://www.leisureandculturedundee.com/culture

The Dandy, Dundee and Daddy McCartney

The Dandy print shirt and trouser suit, 2016, designed by Stella McCartney, acquired by Leisure and Culture Dundee in 2017 with an NFA grant of £517.

 

It all started with Twitter. It’s where I keep up-to-date with most museum-related news these days. Stella McCartney was releasing a new clothing line after approaching Beano Studios to collaborate for The Dandy’s 80^th anniversary in 2017. It featured a trouser suit, t-shirts and a dress showing Korky the Cat, Dinah Mo and twins Cuddles and Dimples. We had to have it in the collection.

Stella McCartney, The Dandy shirt and trouser suit, 2016. © Dundee City Council (Dundee’s Art Galleries and Museums).

 

The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum has a large costume collection with strengths in female Victorian costume and Dundee couture costumiers, including Miss Laing, active in the 1870s, and Maison Souter, active from the late 1870s to the 1920s.

 

Bodice and skirt by Miss Laing, 1873-77. © Dundee City Council (Dundee’s Art Galleries and Museums).

Bodice and skirt by Maison Souter, c1894. © Dundee City Council (Dundee’s Art Galleries and Museums).

There was a burst of collecting during the 1970s and ’80s but little was added to the collection from the 1990s to the present. This could be an indication of changes in society and our throwaway culture but it is something that we aim to address. I am keen to develop this area of the collection by focusing on clothing made in Dundee or inspired by Dundee, hence Stella and her Dundee-centric DC Thomson collection.

The collaboration seems to have come about due to Dad, Paul McCartney’s, love of The Dandy, first issued on 4 December 1937. Dundee publisher DC Thomson & Co Ltd pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable for a comic at the time – figures of authority were mocked and slapstick humour was championed. Just before the comic ceased printing and went digital in 2012, Paul McCartney fulfilled a lifelong ambition when he featured in the comic alongside Desperate Dan and Bananaman.

Having successfully secured funding from the National Fund for Acquisitions we purchased the shirt and trouser suit towards the end of 2017. Now fully accessioned, it’s waiting for its first outing. The plan? Over the next year or so we are keen to redisplay some of the cases in The McManus to get more of the costume collection out on view, including the trouser suit. Stella, meanwhile, has continued her collaboration and, in keeping with 80^th birthdays, has designed a range of kid’s clothing featuring Beano characters for Beano’s 80^th this year.

Now, where did I put that NFA application form …

 

Carly Cooper
Curator (Social History)
Leisure and Culture Dundee

http://www.leisureandculturedundee.com/

 

 

From Outer Space to Museum Case: a Whiff of the Strange and Exotic

Two fragments of iron meteorite from Canyon Diablo Meteor Crater, Arizona, acquired by Leisure and Culture Dundee in 1983 with an NFA grant of £170.97; polished slice of meteorite from Kainsaz, Russia, 13 September 1937, acquired by the Hunterian in 2009 with an NFA grant of £164.77; fragment of Strathmore meteorite, 3 December 1917, acquired by Leisure and Culture Dundee in 2011 with an NFA grant of £2,000.

There is no question that meteorites have more than a whiff of the strange and exotic about them – and one or two types of meteorite actually do smell! As mankind explores further and further into space and discovers more and more about the origins of the Solar System and the Universe, so the interest in acquiring and studying meteorites has increased and this has led to an increasing awareness by the public.

In response to this, museums are re-evaluating, strengthening and expanding their meteorite collections and the support of the National Fund for Acquisitions is absolutely vital to achieving this goal. The increasing popularity of meteorites has led to a vigorous market in buying and selling these stones and this has resulted in an increase in their value. Some specific types of meteorites can fetch very high prices indeed and this can put them out of the range of most museum budgets. It has been my good fortune, as expert adviser to the NFA, to be involved in the two most recent acquisitions at auction of specimens by the Hunterian in Glasgow and Leisure and Culture Dundee.

Fragment of the Strathmore meteorite

The specimen bought by Dundee is of particular note as it was a small fragment of the Strathmore meteorite which fell in the Blairgowrie/Coupar Angus area in 1917 and is one of the best documented of the four known Scottish falls. At the time of writing, the fragment is on display at the Mills Observatory in Dundee along with other meteorites, including one on loan from National Museums Scotland. In supporting these bids I was keen to both promote the expansion of these meteorite collections and to see a wider public appreciation of these strange but wonderful objects.

Peter Davidson
Curator of Mineralogy and Expert Adviser to the NFA
National Museums Scotland

www.leisureandculturedundee.com

www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian

Desperately Seeking Dan

Christmas 1943 issue of The Beano published by D C Thomson, Dundee, acquired by Leisure and Culture Dundee in 2007 with an NFA grant of £145

Despite Dundee being home to such iconic popular characters as Desperate Dan and Dennis the Menace, not a single Beano or Dandy was to be found in the museum collection. In fact we didn’t have anything at all to represent D C Thomson, the company behind journalism in Dundee’s ‘3 Js’; jute, jam and journalism.

 

With responsibility for selecting objects for The Making of Modern Dundee in the redeveloped McManus Gallery, I set about filling this gap and found a Christmas 1943 issue of the Beano on ebay. With a cartoon on the front cover showing the Beano office and the old printing presses, it was a gift to interpretation!  It also contains some fascinating wartime propaganda. Cartoonist Dudley Watkins, who was responsible for Desperate Dan and Lord Snooty and His Pals, frequently lampooned both Hitler and Mussolini in episodes which saw them outwitted and humiliated by his characters. This issue carries an appeal to readers to help the war effort by recycling their comic: ‘To Adolf, here’s wishing you a terrible Xmas and a worse New Year. All our readers are saving all their waste paper to make sure you’re beaten in 1944’.

Through discussions with staff at NFA I knew I would have to move fast in order to receive financial support. I contacted the seller and he agreed to take the comic to a curator at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery who had kindly agreed to help with condition checking. I was now ready to bid. I had a good idea of how much other comics had sold for and managed to buy ours for just under our top price. Bidding in the final moments was nerve racking but we won.

The seller posted our Beano immediately and we were able to prepare it for display alongside other items from D C Thomson and a typewriter on loan from National Museums Scotland. The display has captured the interest of young and old and our Learning and Access team have used the idea of a comic strip to introduce schools groups to the gallery, helping to bring social and industrial themes to life for children.

My next challenge is to update the display and rest our Beano to prevent light damage – so I am now on the lookout for an interesting and aged Dandy!

Rhona Rodger
Curator (Social History)
Leisure and Culture Dundee
http://www.leisureandculturedundee.com/