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www.celtic-connection.com
DECEMBER 2011/JANUARY 2012
Dr. Livingstone 'lied in famous account of slave market massacrey
A WOMAN looks at the artwork on display in the Ramsay Room of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.
Scotland's portrait gallery unveiled
after £17.6 million renovation
IS first-person account of a 19th century massacre in Africa helped to close one of the continent's most notorious slave markets.
EDINBURGH - Scotland's National Portrait Gallery has reopened after a £17.6 million renovation that finally fulfils the dreams of its architect when it first opened its doors 120 years ago.
It is the second multi-million pound artistic project to be completed in the Scottish capital this year - both on budget and on time.
The National Museum of Scotland reopened its doors in July in all its Victorian glory after a £47-million makeover gave it a spectacular boost into the 21a century.
The museum said more than a million visitors have passed through its doors since they reopened.
Portrait gallery director James Holloway and museum chief Gordon Rintoul both said the successful completion of the renovations was down to careful prior planning and sticking strictly to the plans and budgets.
This is in stark contrast to two other huge projects in Edinburgh: the Scottish national parliament which was years late and many millions over budget before opening in 1999, and a curtailed tram system under construction, which is also running years late and hugely over budget.
Gallery officials said the neo-Gothic sandstone building was the world's first
purpose-built portrait gallery when it opened on Queen Street in Edinburgh's New Town in 1889 to the design of architect Sir Robert Rowand Anderson.
But for more than a century much of the space was taken up as a museum store-house and offices, with art displays crammed into only a third of the building.
National Galleries director John Leighton said that the renovation had changed this dramatically.
"The portrait gallery now occupies the whole building for the first time," he said. "We have opened the upper floors to provide 60 percent more space."
Holloway said the building had been "brought back to life... its life force is so exciting."
The number of galleries, including beautifully arched top floor spaces with natural light from ceiling windows, has jumped to 10 from only three, providing space for an additional 606 works of art.
The gallery's collection comprises 3,000 paintings and sculptures and 25,000 prints and drawings.
It also houses the national collection of photography with some 38,000 historic and modern photographs.
Seventeen new exhibitions run through the history of Scotland from the Reformation, the 18th century Enlightenment, Empire, modernity and the contemporary.
ScotClans demand truth in marketing of tartans
EDINBURGH - Rodger Moffet, the CEO of ScotClans, a world-renowned online retailer of Scottish-made clan wear and merchandise, is warning that there are tough times ahead for traditional' clan' businesses unless something is done, and quickly.
He says the clan societies and the trading standards authority need to work together so regulations can be put in place to prevent misinformation, mislabelling and ultimately the miss-selling of traditional Scottish goods.
"Our Highland wear is famous all over the world, with proud Scots showing off their clan related products in every corner of the globe. However, how many of these proud Scots are actually wearing the genuine article?
"It is now common place for cheap imitations to be passed-off as genuine, or for inaccurate clan information to be given out just to make a fast buck," he says, "Something has to be done about this."
But researchers now believe legendary explorer Dr. David Livingstone may not have been telling the whole truth.
Using a procedure known as spectral imaging, an international team of academics believe they have decoded his long-illegible field diary and say it hints that his own men may have participated in the atrocity.
Dr. Adrian Wisnicki of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, who directed the project, said, "Livingstone's party might have been involved in the massacre." But he advised caution, "We're only beginning to analyze the evidence."
It's an explosive claim because Livingstone's account of the horror seen in the African village of Nyangwe galvanized British authorities to shut the slave market in Zanzibar, a critical hub for East Africa's human traffickers.
Livingstone himself denied allegations that his men had been involved. And while Livingstone biographer Tim Jeal praised Wisnicki's efforts, he said he was skeptical that the Scottish missionary would have tried to cover up his party's role in the killings.
"Nobody can know for sure, but I don't think the proof is there," said Jeal.
Regardless of the exact circumstances, the Nyangwe massacre was one of the darkest points of Livingstone's career.
In his posthumously published Last Journals, Livingstone described how a 'bright, sultry summer morning' in July 1871 had turned to hell when slavers opened fire on some 1,500 people at Nyangwe's market.
Pandemonium broke out as the marketgoers, many of them women, scrambled for their canoes or tried to swim across the nearby Lualaba River.
"Shot after shot continued to be fired on the helpless and perishing," Livingstone said, describing how many others drowned in the river.
"Some of the long line of heads disappeared quietly; whilst other poor creatures threw their arms high, as if appealing to the great Father above, and sank."
Livingstone saidhe couldn't know how many had died, although he cited estimates running into the hundreds.
When news of the massacre reached Britain, it ignited a wave of revulsion.
By 1873, the British consul had pressured the sultan of Zanzibar to close the island's large slave market.
Livingstone's account was first communicated to the outside world by journalist Henry Stanley, whose famous encounter with the explorer in October 1871 was immortalized by the words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"
DR. DAVID LIVINGSTONE 1813-1873
Later works, including the Last Journals, were based on the journal that Livingstone wrote in 1872, after Stanley had resupplied him with paper.
But it's Livingstone's field diary, improvised from bank checks and aging pieces of newsprint and written in ink made from seeds and berries, which Wisnicki claims as evidence for his theory that Livingstone's men were involved in the massacre.
The raw notes have long been considered unreadable - a result of the unusual writing material, the tropical
weather, and the unorthodox ink. But Wisnicki's team submitted the notes to spectrographic analysis.
The field diary makes clear that Livingstone - an ardent abolitionist -was horrified by the moral character of the freed slaves sent to reinforce his expedition. He describes them as ' senseless slaves with no honour.'
In Livingstone's account, they emerge as rebellious and violent - at one point he confides that 'if they go anywhere, I must go with them or murder is certain.'
In another passage, dated May 18, Livingstone says the slaves have mutinied and bought guns with his money.
Those passages were either sanitized or excised from Livingstone's 1872 journal.
Wisnicki claimed that the edits, combined with discrepancies between the field diary and the journal's descriptions of the massacre, suggest Livingstone may have had something to hide about the bloody incident.
Jeal acknowledged that the slaves were clearly very disobedient and violent men, but said it was unlikely that they would have gone on a rampage in Livingstone's presence.
Followers of the great explorer can decide for themselves. Scans and transcripts of the diary have been posted to the website of the University of California, Los Angeles.
The "Livingstone's 1871 Field Diary" project, funded by the British Academy and the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, is a free online public resource published by the UCLA Digital Library Programme in Los Angeles.
ILLUSTRATION of the Nyangwe massacre from Livingstone's diaries.
DR. ADRIAN WISNICKI of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, who directed the "Livingstone's 1871 Field Diary" project.