Other Navies, Other Views

The project starts

Last year, three "entities" started to cook a new temporary exhibition to be held in the Museu de Marinha (Navy Museum) in Lisboa, Portugal. The entities were the Museu de Marinha (obviously), the GAMMA - Grupo dos Amigos do Museu de Marinha (Group of Friends of the Navy Museum) and a non-entity, that I am going to call Grupo de Modelistas (Modelers Group). This Grupo de Modelistas, was formed after the first contact by the Navy officials with one of the members, which contacted what he considered good ship modelers to make the exhibition richer and also dignifying to the Museu de Marinha, one of the best Naval Museums in the world. Soon, there were seven modelers involved, which in their turn would supply some of their models to this half year long event.

Gathering the "Private Shipyards"

So, with the crew complete for this first trial, we started to see what would be the theme, which models to go and the way that they were grouped. It was a fairly easy task, since most of us only had a couple or little more "duplicates", which was good, for obvious reasons. I would say that the main scale represented is 1/700, with some 1/35 (not a typo, it is 1/35!), 1/400 and 1/72. The total of the displayed models is 96.

The exhibition

The exhibition is divided in several glassed cabinets, with all models identified with a number and on a board next to it, it's clearly stated the "theme" of the cabinet and the relation between number with ship name, type, nation and scale.

- Work in progress cabinet, with 1/700 IJN CVE Unyu, model box and parts (almost all there), some tools and references used.

- World War Two Cabinet, with most of all diorama/sea based models (actually it includes one pre-WWII and one that although made during WWII is portrayed in a post WWII guise).

- The Submarine Force Cabinet

- Cold War Cabinet

- 1/72 Typ VII-C Uboot table

- Small/Other Navies Cabinet

- Battle of Cape Matapan (not the one you're thinking, but depicted is part of the naval battle held in 1717, between the Portuguese and the Turkish)

- Midget Submarines and Manned Torpedoes Cabinet

- Three Cabinets with scratch built models representing the Early Ship Evolution, from the Museum own collection (donated by modeler).

First results...

As I have said, this was kind of a test for future modeling events in the Museu de Marinha.
Right on the opening, most visitors showed their marvel towards the quality of the models displayed and the amount of detail put on such small models.
The grand opening was set for the Dia da Marinha (Navy Day - May 20th, the day Vasco da Gama reached India, after a sea-bound trip across the African continent, in 1498), and these points were mentioned by the speeches made by the Museum Director and also by the GAMMA President. The representative from the Grupo de Modelistas gave a brief explanation about what was there for visitors to enjoy, emphasizing all the research in and for books, plans, photos and the work skills needed to achieve the "end product" that was displayed.
A medal was given by the GAMMA to all modelers that participated in this event.

During the period of the exhibit, a Honor Book for comments is continuously being written with remarks from visitors, from portuguese (the majority), to spanish, english, finish, chinese and even japanese, amongst others.

This was win win situation, for the Museum, the ship modeling community and for future model related events, being exhibitions or contests.

NOTE: Most of the photos were taken while we were arranging the layout. Not all the models are here portrayed. Taking photos with glass cases is always tricky, so my apologies for the quality of some photos...