museo_ghosts

@noahangell.bsky.social

1626 Followers 1718 Following

Artist / Author of Ghosts of the British Museum, a narrative non-fiction work about the BM's many ghosts. Currently completing a film. Wayfaring North Carolinian. Literary rep: Zoe Ross at United Agents. https://linktr.ee/ghostsofthebritishmuseum

A photograph of Ghosts of the British Museum (paperback version) by Noah Angell
a photograph of text printed from the booklet of the lp, Tidewater Blues: " 4. "Motorcycle Swing"-Henry Harris, guitar. Recorded in Newport News, Virginia, on March 8, 1979, by Kip Lornell, 1:33. This instrumental was learned at about the same time as "Albemarle County Rag," heard on the other side of this record. It is one of several blues-like dance tunes Mr. Harris heard while at- tending country dances in Albemarle County dur- ing the 1920's. "Motorcyle Swing" is an unadorned eight bar tune and its primary function was to provide music for dances such as "Ballin' The Jack," "The Sally Long" or the "Black Bot- tom." The song's title is associated with Mr. Harris' passion for motorcycles which goes back to 1925. Henry moved from Warren, Virginia, to Rich- mond, Virginia, in 1936 and embarked on a career of motorcycle racing, repair and sales. He worked for the Tidewater Motorcycle Company in Rich- mond until they transferred him to Newport News where he has remained since 1940. In the bigger cities it has been easier for Henry to keep up with another of his interests, cowboy movies. He still enjoys both cowboy movies and motorcycles and one of his most valued possessions is a color photograph of himself in full cowboy regalia atop a motorcycle. Few of his neighbors, in fact, are aware of his legal name because to most people he is simply, 'Cowboy.'"
an excerpt from the liner notes of a Mainer's Mountaineers lp: There was a man standing at the railroad track that went by the Cafe and he was leaned up against a tele- phone pole and was playing a fiddle. He had been drinking some and was pretty drunk, played the number "The Drunk- ard's Hiccoughs." I never will forget it! When he got done playing he started across the tracks and Number Nine hit him and killed him. I got his fiddle and kept it. We never did find out who he was. I decided to go home, took the fiddle with me and I still have it! So that's where I learned to play the tune "Drunkard's Hiccoughs."
excerpt of liner notes from an lp of Library of Congress' banjo collection: Thee was a barber in Hyden, whose shop at one time was on the corner across from Keen's Variety Store. He was nick- named by the local children "warthog." Hoskins accidently shot himself to death thru the chin, although some thought it suicide, in approximately 1966.
photograph of a paragraph which reads: Another email came from a former CIA agent who had worked in the Stargate Project, which was about remote viewing. For two decades both the United States and the Soviet Union employed psychics to see what was on the other side of the Iron Curtain. They scored many hits, and therefore the program kept going for twenty years. Of course, there are people who say it was not for real. Anyway, he was also very happy to see one detail in my book, something he had experienced.
Taiwanese edition of Ghosts of the British Museum, with a maroon cover and the Lost Caryatid with bright, glowing eyes.
Excerpt from poem: "In the grey vertical forest of the hurricane season, when the dirty sea returns the wreaths of the dead, all the village could do was listen to the gods in session,..."
A lush pine tree bent, as if frozen in a storm, over a pond on a summer afternoon in rural North Carolina
Photo of a black Independent trucks skateboard tee with a logo that resembles the SS's iron cross.
An old, faded black and white photo (circa 1940s?) of a man in denim overalls standing beside a dirt road in the mountains. A bandage wrapped over his nose obscures his face.
On 21 May, the museum’s director Nicholas Cullinan circulated an internal memo seen by MEE saying that when considering the request to hold the event, the museum management “looked at the fact that other embassies had held similar events here”. “We also considered our status as an arms length body (and each of our status as public servants) – which means that we cannot deviate from, or undermine, the UK government’s foreign policy,” he added. Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage and Jimmy Carr attend secret Israeli party at British Museum “I know that there are some who feel we should have consulted or informed staff in advance,” he said, citing “advice of police regarding security” for the lack of transparency in the run-up to the event.
excerpt from Clarice Lispector's The Apple in the Dark: ""What would her freed soul do, without a body in which to exist? It would hurt in the windows until the living people said: what a windy day."
Text excerpt from the article: "Not everyone in the DRC wants their abducted dead to be brought home. In 2018 the universities of Geneva and Lubumbashi signed an agreement for the restitution of seven ‘pygmy’ skeletons that were dug up in Wamba, in the north-eastern DRC, in the 1950s. But descendants of these dead fear that a physical restitution would bring on metaphysical disaster. At a colloquium on stolen remains in 2023, Wamba’s customary chief, Alexandre Medjedje, suggested that Geneva wanted to cast out the restless forces they embodied and repatriate them to Congo along with the bones. ‘Do these spirits not haunt you,’ he asked, ‘so that you decide today to bring these ghosts to us?’ "
A photograph of a white house as seen through a tangle of vines, from a distance you can see graffiti spray painted in black on the back of the house
A kaleidoscopic, hall-of-mirrors-like image of various Native American baskets in the British Museum's North America galleries, taken from a screenshot from Google Street View.
Author Noah Angell standing in the British Museum's Great Court during a walking tour that focuses on the museum's many ghosts.
Wall of (ornamental?) axes and swords in a retail setting with a sign that reads "PLEASE LIMIT HOW MANY SWORDS/KNIVES YOU ASK TO TOUCH."
Pauli Murray historic marker in Durham, North Carolina.
3 crocheted watermelons & 3 crocheted Palestinian flags affixed to a schoolground fence
Mosaic at Zoologischer Garten train station in Berlin with ghostly-looking deer, whales and storks.
screenshot of tweet with shot of the parthenon in athens which reads: "As a former employee of the British Museum of many decades, I've made my walk of shame to the Pantheon. Not that it's any consolation to the Greek nation, but the BM also treated their collections, myself and my colleagues with negligence and contempt. Vandals in many ways."
quote from linked FT article: " “I hate politics, but what President Talon has accomplished in the past few years is incredible,” says the artist Romuald Hazoumè, sitting at a table on the terrace of his family home in Cotonou. “Do you know what a few people here are saying about the restitution?” Hazoumè looks at me expectantly. “They are saying that in the end it wasn’t the French government or the Beninese people that made it happen. They say it was the objects themselves that decided to come back, because they knew better than anyone who could take care of them.”
Gold spray-painted graffiti on a white brick wall that reads "NUKE MOSCOW NOW"
October 2023 Der Spiegel cover: Scholz is endorsing mass deportations.
Stolpersteins for Abraham Sichel, Israel Nussbam, Toni Therese Nussbam.
Bartningallee 7 in Hansaviertal Berlin.
casket-shaped basket with carriage, in a barn-like building filled with nautical supplies.
Whale vertebrae on a grassy shore in the north of Norway; they were used as stools
Maum says: Oyster shells, conch shells, and pretty bottles do very well to outline and decorate graves. When the grave is marked and the dirt leveled off, put the man's or woman's chair on the grave so that he or she can rest comfortably. Also put on the grave the person's pipe, glasses, teeth, medicine, or anything else that he or she might need. Then the person will have no excuse to come wandering back in the house.
BM Xmas party with foam faux Stonehenge and snow made of white felt.
photo of "A New Face on the Countryside" by Timothy Silver.
Ceramic teapot by Josiah Wedgwood
promo image: Ghosts of the British Museum is available for 99p on Kindle for the month of November.
Image of Coastal home in the Upper South, with the shudders and doors painted in "haint blue" to ward off unwelcome spirits.
Book cover: Bits of Mountain Speech by Paul Fink
pic of an index which reads ""Hainty - chiefly Southern variant of haunt, unpleasant attitude or behavior, snobbish."
pic of a book titled" The Squaw Tree: Ghosts, Mysteries and Miracles of New Mexico" by Alice Bullock
Screenshot of a viral tweet about an online group that forced the British Museum's twitter account into dormancy through a relentless online campaign to return the stolen Moai to Rapa Nui.
a somewhat blurry snapshot of the railway as you enter Berlin, speeding down the tracks in the morning sun