Panel 6: War, crisis and exhibition design
Panel Overview:
Laia Anguix (Northumbria University, UK) ‘A rather “fresh” smell of paint’: wartime exhibitions at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle
Claire Wintle (University of Brighton, UK) Exhibition Making in Crisis: professional identity and radical design after the Second World War
Diana Jeha (Independent, Lebanon) Nicolas Sursock Museum design
Áine McKenny (University of Brighton, UK) Feeling through the Troubles: the emotions of displaying conflict
Kasia Tomasiewicz (University of Brighton/Imperial War Museum, UK) ‘All the fun of the fear’: using exhibition histories to understand the challenges of contemporary curation
Individual Papers:
Laia Anguix (Northumbria University, UK) ‘A rather “fresh” smell of paint’: wartime exhibitions at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle
In the summer of 1939, the Laing Art Gallery (Newcastle), following advice from the Ministry of Information, hid away at the Northumberland hills the whole of its permanent collection. During the following six years, its empty galleries hosted a total of eighty-five temporary exhibitions, which received a record number of 900,000 visitors. These unparalleled numbers in the history of the gallery gather further significance when considering that the management was done with significant budget reductions and with only a third of the usual staff. Some of these exhibitions lasted less than a week and several of them were arranged within hours. Nevertheless, the staff’s capacity for organization and their speed of execution meant that the openings took place ‘to the minute, with nothing more as evidence of the hustle except a rather “fresh” smell of paint.’
This paper will analyse the design, the contents, the subjects and the management strategies of this frenetic succession of exhibitions, showing how the Laing was put at the service of the public as a cultural and leisure venue and as a showcase for propaganda. It will also demonstrate how the gallery successfully implemented new exhibition policies that evolved in response to the changing needs of the wartime context. The comparison with the exhibitions taking place at other British regional galleries during the same period will ultimately pay tribute to the resilience of these institutions, acknowledging their ability to keep urban cultural life active during troubled times.
Laia Anguix has recently been awarded a PhD in museum history at Northumbria University. Her thesis, entitled ‘From wood shavings to an art collection: the early history of the Laing Art Gallery (Newcastle) and the creation of its permanent collection (1904-1957)’, aims to provide a better understanding of the origins of the Laing’s permanent collections. Her latest articles are ‘“A collection of mere travesties of time-honoured originals”: The rejection of the Shipley bequest’ (Journal of the History of Collections, 2020) and ‘The North-East can make it: Post-war design exhibitions at the Laing Art Gallery’ (Journal of Design History, forthcoming). She has also written several entries on historical London dealers for the Art Market Dictionary (De Gruyter, forthcoming) and has co-authored the guidebook Valencia Museos y Monumentos (Publicacions de la Universitat de Valencia, 2007).
Claire Wintle (University of Brighton, UK) Exhibition making in crisis: professional identity and radical design after the Second World War
Crisis reigned in the post-war period for British museum curators, especially for those who cared for objects from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. Even at that time, their collections were seen as problematic – potent reminders of imperial guilt, and a perceived drain on institutions seeking to expunge their global links and cement their provincial, ‘British’ identities. Public funds were being re-directed to essential post-war regeneration, while museums and their bomb-damaged sites were stretched to extremes. The curatorial profession was also in crisis: war-time staffing levels were slow to recover, and the curator’s centrality was soon to be challenged by new professional roles within the museum, including that of the designer.
There was no single reaction to this atmosphere of crisis in exhibition making. Some curators responded directly to the world of commercial design, anticipating the specialist museum design departments of the 1960s. They designed their own modern exhibits featuring innovative materials, lighting and object placement. Elsewhere, commercial design techniques were of little concern: exhibitions were instead driven by the pressures of collections and limited resources. Exhibition design became a ‘hand-to-mouth’ activity (as one curator described it), with a makeshift and almost DIY character. Yet crucially, as part of this crisis-fuelled practice, and well before debates about the place of Britain, museums and curators in a post-war world were settled, several alternative exhibition opportunities emerged: artists, academics, young people, and local communities – including people of colour – were temporarily and tentatively accepted into the museum as exhibition makers. Other curators moved away from their damaged, burdensome sites to make exhibitions beyond the walls of the museum, or loaned objects to community-led exhibitions.
This paper seeks to document this post-war history of museum exhibition making in a time of crisis. It identifies a critical moment in the emergence and professionalisation of modern museum exhibition design, but also points to some of the unexpected tropes that emerged in this period of flux: engulfed by crisis, exhibition design became a site of what we might term radical practice. The results of these endeavours were not necessarily progressive; nor were they born of progressive politics. Yet an examination of this history may give some insight into how museums can respond to our current moment of crisis, of funding, of empire, and of responsibility.
Dr Claire Wintle is Principal Lecturer in Museum Studies and the History of Design at the University of Brighton, UK. Her research focuses on the relationship between museums, collections, empire and decolonisation. She leads the ‘Museums, Archives and Exhibitions’ research area within the Centre for Design History and her publications include Colonial Collecting and Display (Berghahn, 2013), and Cultures of Decolonisation (Manchester UP, 2016, edited with Ruth Craggs). This paper is part of her current project on the professional practice of curators working with anthropology collections in the mid-twentieth century: Curating Decolonisation: Museums in Britain, 1945-1980 is funded by a mid-career fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art.
Kasia Tomasiewicz (University of Brighton/Imperial War Museum, UK) ‘All the fun of the fear’: using exhibition histories to understand the challenges of contemporary curation
Since the late 1980s, war museums have actively moved away from representing military histories towards more emotive social histories. Since their popular proliferation following the First World War, war museums have struggled to navigate the changing boundaries of the ‘politics of respect’ (Witcomb, 2009) that underpins representations of conflict. In the Imperial War Museum (IWM), the exhibition that most visibly typifies both this shift and its often-fraught politics is the Blitz Experience (1989-2014). Lasting an impressive twenty-four years, it continues to be divisive some seven years after its removal.
Much can be learnt from looking at the collaborative working practices of production and professionalization that underpinned the exhibition ‘behind the scenes’, but also the innovative and captivating exhibition design as ‘experience’. For all its faults – from ‘sanitizing’ war, to being ‘too scary’ – it also has captured visitor’s imaginations in ways that museums can often struggle to achieve. At the same time, however, it has so profoundly reached some audiences that we might see how the exhibition has come to haunt the Museum as it attempts to maintain relevance during recent political upheavals.
Untangling the complex relations underlying exhibition production, representation, and reception of an exhibition over a prolonged period of time, this paper uses on-going archival and ethnographic research to explore the role of Britain’s national war museum in making war entertaining for visitors. In doing so it looks at the intersections between politics, museum practice, and narratives of conflict to ask, ‘how do museums make war appear ‘fun’?’, ‘what’s Margaret Thatcher got to do with it?’, and ‘what is the relevance of this all in a post-Brexit world?’
Kasia Tomasiewicz is a final-year PhD researcher at the University of Brighton and the Imperial War Museum. Her research traces the changing landscapes of Second World War memory and commemoration at the Museum’s flagship London site. She uses archival, ethnographic and oral history research methods, and is particularly interested in methodological approaches to museum spaces and the complex relations between past, present and future in conducting research on and in museums.
Comments
Thread: Nicolas Sursock Museum
Dear Diana, thank you for sharing this description of the Nicolas Sursock museum, and particularly for documenting the damage sustained in the recent explosion in Beirut. I was so sorry to see this, and hope that you and your loved ones are managing ok. As I was listening to your presentation, I wondered two things: 1) whether you thought that the experience of the Civil War in Lebanon had shaped the space and design of the museum as it emerged in the 1990s/2000s at all, and 2) what lessons might be learnt from that period of unrest, in the current drive to rebuild the museum? Thanks again, Claire Wintle
Dear Claire,
Thank you very much for your concern about the situation in Lebanon and for organizing the conference in these challenging times.
Regarding your first question, the primary aim during the restoration/ expansion work was to keep the building as it was before the civil war, they paid a lot of attention to keep everything like it was originally designed.
Regarding your second question, in my opinion, the volatile region and considering how conflicts can impact on the museum, should be taken into consideration. In my view the rare and special collections is best kept underground.
At the moment the building is very exposed and with it the artwork of Lebanese pioneers. Again taking into account the current unrest in Lebanon, I would prefer improving the security of the building, without compromising the architectural design and cultural impact of the main entrance.
I hope that Lebanon and the museum will see better days in the future.
Thanks again,
Diana Jeha
Dear @diana It seems that basic necessities take over in times like these, don’t they? Very best of luck with it all. I’m really interested in the ways in which the post-war team were able to understand the aims and practices of the original design – what kinds of archives and other modes of understanding they used to reconstruct, conceptualise and enact the museum’s built history. But those things are quite difficult to find information out about…I’d be happy if you did have any insights, but understand if not!
Dear Claire,
Thank you again for your interest. Sorry I don’t have this information. I checked all the published data and couldn’t fined any relevant informations.
Thanks again,
Diana
Dear Diana, I join Claire and I am sure many others in wishing for the best for the museum and you and your colleagues as you move forward. It must be truly heartbreaking afer all the recent efforts to renovate the museum so beautifully. Thank you for sharing, Barbara
Dear Barbara,
I would like to thank you for your concerns. its really heartbreaking to see museum in a damage, its a challenging time in the country but with all the efforts and support the museum will be restored.
many thanks again,
Diana
Dear Áine and Kasia,
Thanks to you both for your fascinating papers. I was really struck – in both of your presentations – by your brief evocation of the emotional labour of the staff involved in the Blitz and the Museum of Free Derry projects. Can you tell me a little more about this aspect of your respective projects – how have you accessed and processed this material in your own research? Thanks again to both of you – I learnt a lot!
Claire
Dear Aine, many thanks for you so sensitive presentation. Exhibiting conflicts involves so many actors that it’s quite a challenge to find an appropriate display and to get the best way to “show” such historical material. Museums have to manage questions regarding memory, trauma and intimate feelings, and it must be difficult to set a relevant display. Do you study how the contemporary art exhibitions deal with this kind of issue? I especially have in mind European biennals, which regularly try to focus on current conflicts and social diseases.
Thank you for watching and for your question!
As part of my research, I am looking at an art exhibition entitled ‘Troubles Art’ that featured artists’ responses to the Troubles. It was on display last year and this year as a travelling exhibition. There is also ‘Art of the Troubles’ which was on display in 2014, that originally included works featured in the recent exhibition.
I’ve been intrigued by the differences in interpreting and displaying the Troubles through art compared to historical artefacts and object. I am interested in exploring how this might allow different themes to arise or allow different narratives to be presented within the exhibition space and interpretation.
In terms of your thinking of European biennials – as part of my MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies, I was able to take a course on ‘Critical and Curatorial Challenges in Contemporary Art’ taught by Griselda Pollock which looked at Documenta. I really enjoyed this approach of using biennials (or documenta’s quinquennial form) to look at exhibition histories. In my work, I specifically looked at Documenta 13, which was an interesting example to consider art and conflict, time, objects and locations, as well as themes of trauma, collapse and recovery.
Do you have thoughts on any of this?
Hello Áine,
Thank you for your sensitive and considered presentation of the Free Derry museum. Your approach felt really well-aligned with the your analysis of the museum (‘the political is personal’). Your articulation of the appropriateness of sharing images from the museum that depict violence was a great example of strong ethical approach in your research process – a thought process that is important to share.
I am very interested in hearing about your PhD research. Can you say a little more about what you have found/ are looking at in terms of the representations and absences of women’s narratives in these exhibitions?
You may have come across this already but I listened to an interview with Bernadette Devlin McAliskey on the Blind Boy podcast last year which was really excellent.
Best of luck with your research,
Enya Moore, PhD candidate, UTS Sydney (originally from County Kerry)
Áine McKenny 11/09/2020 11:08 am
Dear Claire @claire-w, thank you for watching and your question!
There is an ongoing question of how to access and process such material, if it exists, in my research. In keeping with the topic of ‘difficult’, it can be hard to access materials that reveal the difficulties staff face from a personal and emotional perspective. With the Museum of Free Derry, this was somewhat more available to see. I think is partly because they want to highlight the personal connections staff have to the content of the exhibit for authenticity. It is central to the narrative, of a community telling their story. Also, to show the ongoing negotiations and the evolving display.
With access in mind, I am going to interview practitioners involved in the designing and displaying of exhibitions, hopefully from various aspects of this process, and can hopefully develop an analysis from this.
If you have any thoughts on this or suggestions I would love to hear them!
Dear Áine, it is really interesting to reflect on how visible the design team’s emotions are in the physical exhibit they produce, and the Museum of Free Derry sounds like a fascinating case study through which to explore this. I’d be really interested to discuss these wider questions with you – my next project will look at the emotional labour of curators and other museum professionals working with challenging collections (imperialism, slavery, sexual abuse, etc) so it would be good to think through these things together at some point. Best wishes, Claire
Absolutely, I’ll look forward to it and to hearing more about the project – it sounds fascinating!
Best,
Áine
Hi Aine, I precisely studied the case of Documenta in a 2015 paper dedicated to digital display, and I recently focused on the Biennale di Venezia for an upcoming article. As temporaries events, biennals and contemporary art shows can be used in a political or even a ideological way, it’s particularly obvious concerning the history of Venetian exhibition, even if curators has to be involved in aesthetic studies and artistic research field. The topic is deeply fascinating, maybe you could let me know about your current research expectations on that matter.
Dear Claire, Thanks for a great talk, very well presented. I was fascinated by the cross fertilisation of fashionable shop window display and ethnographic collections in the period. I was also very interested in the point you made (very well) about how a crisis in staffing and resources led to improvised strategies that could be innovative as a result. However, I wondered if you had a sense of what exhibition-makers might have liked to do if money was no object. Did you get a sense of this? I wondered if the aesthetics of a Selfridges type display would not have appealed to the good design morals of the period and that sparse and modest displays, while cheap, represented high-mindedness as well as lack of funds. Just musings! Happy to hear your thoughts.
Dear Claire, such an interesting paper – thank you! – so much food for thought. I’m intrigued by the point you made early on about the responsibilities of exhibiting “problematic collections”. Do you think there were particular curatorial/ design strategies for displaying these collections, perhaps masking or mitigating strategies or signs that the displays were acknowledging/ apologising for previous abuses of power? Also, I’m interested in your mention of where display influences were coming from. Beyond trade fairs, commercial contexts and window displays, how far afield were British museum keepers of the 1960s looking for models of good museum exhibition design practice? What were the model institutions/ nations? What a wonderful conference – congratulations to you, Kate and Hajra – such a tonic to have all this wealth of fascinating material at my finger tips – such a very rich diet after my almost monastic academic existence. Thanks again and all best, Harriet
Dear Bella, thank you for your nice comments. Are there any useful readings on fashionable shop window displays, 1945-1980 (the scope of my wider project) that I should be looking at? Recommendations gratefully received.
If money was no object… The main thing that curators were asking for during this period (as perhaps in most periods?!) was physical space. More space to spread things out and create less crowded displays (so ‘sparse’, but in terms of objects). Modernist paradigms were of interest, but there was just no space to show collections in this way. The idea that many objects could remain in store rather than on display was only slowly becoming acceptable. On that note, I’ve been working on the concept of ‘object anxiety’ and am beginning to conceptualise how many of the museum makers at this time seemed to be terrified of the objects they had on their hands (particularly of how many there were) – it seemed they dreamed of more space and no collections?!
In terms of design, and your speculation that commercial design practices were unappealing in the museum arena: I think that’s right. Certainly, some museums were happy to associate with commercial aesthetics and realms (I’ll have to investigate the Birmingham display at the National Trades and Home Life Exhibition further!) – Leeds were specifically adopting modern display techniques borrowed from trade fairs and exhibitions and shop window displays. But I get a sense that many in the museum sector looked on commercial design with deep suspicion. My most compelling examples are from the post-1965 period, when clashes between professional designers and curators become more explicit as more in-house designers are appointed. But, even when I interviewed Margaret Hall, who came from a commercial background and was appointed as the British Museum’s first professional inhouse designer in 1964, she said that she didn’t think that shop and trade fair designs melded well with the museum world: ‘I didn’t think they were necessarily appropriate for the museum […] I thought probably commercial design was a bit too flashy and that museum design had to be a bit more serious.’ So, I think you’re probably right Bella! I will reflect on the issue of ‘morals’ in my research as it limps on! Thanks again, Claire
Dear Harriet,
Glad you’re enjoying the conference. Thanks for your kind words, and for your questions (on all of the papers).
The main strategy for masking and mitigating abuses of power in the 1945-1965 period was to erase and expunge – to take objects off display (and sell them or even repatriate them) as a conscious act of forgetting (Robert Aldrich is good on this). Where abuses of power are confronted, it is usually to defend the British perspective (at the Commonwealth Institute in the case of Mau Mau, for example). There is a case in Bristol, where, at the public opening of the “Focus on Colonial Progress” exhibition in 1959, a woman in the audience with a linen banner pinned to her chest bearing the legend “Stop the War in Malaya” interrupted the proceedings to make a speech about the injustice of ‘training our sons as thugs and throat-slitters’. She is – of course, branded ‘semi-hysterical’ and ejected from the event.
There have been lots of seminal texts on the ways in which typological, aesthetic and collaborative modes of display (both used in the mid-20th century) mask the realities of colonial encroachment and injustice (Annie Coombes and Constance Classen are good places to start, and Nikki Grout (UoB) is doing amazing work on the limits of collaborative practice during this period). But slightly later, in the late 1960s and 1970s (but before the 1980s, when people tend to think this kind of practice started), several new curatorial strategies emerged, in which museums like the Museum of Mankind (part of the British Museum) and Ulster Museum in Belfast tangentially/tentatively referenced colonial legacies in their displays (by highlighting environmental destruction and competitive land claims in the Americas and the Middle East, for example). The curator at Ulster Museum in Belfast in the 1970s, while characterising some of her donors as ‘charitable and philanthropic’, also explicitly pointed out in an exhibition catalogue that some museum objects were robbed from graves by their collectors. Interestingly, rather than condemning this outright, she uses the distancing mechanism of academia to frame her critique, saying that the objects that were collected in this way have no cultural or aesthetic significance (and are therefore not on display – again, erasure rather than full acknowledgment).
In terms of the geographical location that display influences were coming from – ICOM-organised visits to investigate good practice were to Switzerland in 1956, and the Netherlands in 1962 (there may have been others). Individually, curators also travelled abroad throughout Europe (especially Scandinavia and the Netherlands) and the US. David Wilson, in his history of the British Museum identifies the Statens Historiska Museum in Stockholm (redesigned in 1930s/40s) and US museums as pioneering and influential at this time. Slightly later (in the 1970s), museum curators with experiences of working in North America and New Zealand came to the UK, and instigated some more progressive forms of display and collections management as a result of the inspirations they gained there.
Hope that helps!
Claire
Dear Claire, thank you – for organising the conference and also for your paper. I am intrigued by your description of the woman bearing “Stop the War in Malaya”, which occurred during the Malayan Emergency and would like to learn more about it. Can you point me to the resource for further reading? Thanks again, Kelvin
Hi Kelvin – it will be explored in my book (when it gets written!) I found details about it in the archive in the museum in Bristol. I really enjoyed your paper by the way – such an exciting methodological proposal!
Thanks Claire. I wondered about that showy (commercial) versus sober (curatorial) split so that was really interesting. Object anxiety sounds fascinating. In terms of retail display design histories, I’m aware of Patricia Lara Betancourt et al’s edited collection, Architectures I’d Display (2018) and Visual Merchandising: The Image of Selling (2013) but I’ve only flicked through them. Looking forward to your book!
Super – thanks Bella.
Dear Claire, thank you for your kind words. I wait with anticipation for your book.
Hi Claire – thanks to you and your team for organizing this conference. Much needed as Harriet says for the academic stimulus as well as for the critical assessment of exhibition making. I wanted to acknowledge your use of the term “exhibition makers” rather than designers – exhibition creation takes a wealth of talent from a myriad of disciplines often with no formal design training and that’s what makes it one of the most rewarding areas.
Thanks for your fascinating paper – the other comments here have pointed out the contested influences designers brought into museums during the early 60s – namely commercial and retail related. Professional design as a method of practice is tied to commerce and economics among other things – essentially it is a product of the socio-economic climate of the time – if new materials are available designers will want to use them, if Scandinavian inspired simplicity is all the rage, designers will want to deploy it – my point is that design is inherently present to future orientated and this has at times rubbed up against the general museum practice of acknowledging the past because that’s what museums do – to collect and interpret the past (most of the time). You mentioned the work of museum technicians who partnered with curators to design and build many of the exhibits cited – this partnership still exists in many museums today because there is an advantageous power dynamic involved for the curator who will likely always get their way. Please don’t take my comments as those of a disgruntled designer 😀 – I’ve worked with amazing curators on highly collaborative projects as equals – as Kate’s paper points out Margaret Hall perfected this relationship over time as did Gill Ravenel at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. as a contemporary of Hall’s. Great subject and lots to delve into – thanks
Dear Tim,
Thanks for these comments and your contributions to the conference so far.
I’m intrigued by your hints towards a dichotomy of design=future and museums=past. One of the things that I’ve enjoyed finding out about in this conference, including in your excellent paper, is the powerful role of the past in professional design practice. This is especially the case in Roberta Marcaccio’s paper on Ernesto Rogers’ relationship with history (Panel 9), and in the papers advocating decolonial practice in Panel 1. But it is also striking throughout: seeing so many of our presenters acknowledging past luminaries in their practice makes me very aware of how status and expertise are often affirmed through the process of connecting with the past. It is also of course the case, that – just as in the design world – museums are deeply entwined with economic structures, through the value assumptions that visitors (but also those working in museums) bring to and create through the museum space, and through the need to fundraise and participate in a capitalist economy more generally.
You’re absolutely right to call out the power dynamics of the technician (and other exhibition makers) and the curator. In my rush to celebrate technicians and museum assistants in my paper (and in this conference more generally), I brushed over the hierarchies that have always existed and need to be challenged. I’m not sure about curators always getting their way though. I think some really close material analyses of how technicians, museum assistants, designers and others have ‘got their way’ through small but powerful material interventions would be fascinating. Could exhibition making even be a form of resistance? You can see some of this incredible creative contribution, even within these power dynamics, in Barbara Fahs Charles paper, in Sarah Longair’s work on Juma Rajab at in colonial Zanzibar (Panel 9), and in Hajra’s interview of Nima Poovya Smith, a curator who cautions us to ‘never underestimate your local community’ (Panel 10).
Anyway, I hope one day we can have these conversations over a cup of coffee in person. Very much looking forward to the book! Claire
Claire and Tim, may I join your coffee discussion of power dynamics? In person someday, I hope. In the meantime, a small anecdote relative to the dynamics of curators and preparators. When I worked on my first project at the Chicago Historical Society, c1974, I wasn’t allowed into the preparator’s workshop even to see things being prepared for an exhibition that we were designing. I then learned that none of the curators, all of whom were women, were permitted into the workshop. So, while the two preparators, both male, had to listen to the curators (and female designer’s) requests in the galleries, they maintained their own space that they totally controlled. Claire, a huge thank you to you and your colleagues for organizing this terrific conference. I have learned a lot. Barbara Fahs Charles
Dear Barbara, thank you for documenting and raising this issue. Gender is such an important aspect of the power dimensions in all this and I am sorry to hear about your unacceptable marginalisation. Your note also made me think of the spatial dynamics of the museum/design office, of closed offices for curators, open plan spaces for designers – this is another aspect of collaboration and exhibition making that seems critical. Thanks again.
Claire, enjoyed your paper so much — thank you, again, another paper where I learned so much and that I wish I had the time to re-listen, have a conversation in person about… (Also, “engraved perspex!!!!”, that really made me giggle!)
These have been such inspirational ten days, thank you and the others for putting this together — much looking forward to this afternoon’s panel! J
Claire,
i never felt marginalized—more amused. A question that could be interesting is whether museum design has changed with so many more women in the field. Fabricators tell me that earlier, designers were more likely to have an industrial design background and now more of the designers they work with come from graphics, which may be related. Fabrication shops are still mostly male, but the pin-ups on the carpenters work areas have disappeared. Barbara
Claire, thank you for your brilliant presentation! I found the examples design influence absolutely fascinating and would love to discuss this further (maybe in my next supervisory meeting).
Hi Claire, it’s quite amazing to see how current museums seem to face the same problems than museums you studied (!). Professionalization is expected as ever and each exhibition create debates about the impact of design on contents. Here in France, private designers are regularly requested for imagining the most appropriate display (even in public institutions) and exhibition tour tends to be observed as the masterpieces themselves are. However, I have in mind that the aesthetic issue remains the major motive of such stagings, even if visitors (and curators) could find some additional significant accounts.
Dear Kasia,
Thank you for your very stimulating talk, which was very informative, entertaining and well constructed.
I sensed some tensions that intrigued me, especially between your presentation of some aspects of the Blitz Experience as comically grotesque in contrast to the remarkable engagement and investment they produced as visitor effects. You represented the comments on Trip Advisor as perhaps ridiculous or wrongheaded but I was felt they might have captured exactly what the museum wanted: an appeal to an irregular museum attendee (rather than a regular ‘museum type’) plus an impression so profound it could be reflected in decades later! I also note that elsewhere experiential, sensory and immersive curatorial strategies come highly praised (while also noting the seriousness of the critiques that made a game of war).
I’m not sure how these tensions can be reconciled but I find their antagonism very interesting. Your thoughts welcome!
Well done, again,
Bella
Hi Bella,
Thanks for your question! I didn’t mean to make the comments appear wrongheaded, but they are so fantastically descriptive that I think I am a little amazed by them. I have also noticed this tensions, but haven’t been able to articulate them. I think this is definitely one to ponder..!
Laia – thank you for a really fascinating paper on the wartime Laing! It’s so interesting seeing the coverage of the installation of MOI’s Poison Gas in that location – I have been researching MOI exhibitions and have images of that exhibition’s installation elsewhere (many at Charing Cross station) but hadn’t seen it at the Laing – and find it so fascinating how those MOI exhibitions were subtly reinterpreted when they were re-sited around the country. The material about the Ashington group shows at Laing was also fascinating. Again, I’ve seen images of earlier installations (eg when they were working with Mass Obs in the 1930s at Benham Grove) but not at the Laing site. I was also intrigued by the Stevenson curatorial handover from father to son!
As you can tell, I haven’t any insightful questions to ask (although the luxury of this format is that something might suddenly strike me over the next few days! So I’ll come back to you if I do). But just to say thanks again and all best, Harriet
Dear Laia, Just to add another appreciative comment about your presentation to add to Harriet’s. I enjoyed seeing the Ashington Miners featured. Many of these paintings are now decorating the walls of William Feaver’s house!
A practical question: I was struck by the enormous workload of running exhibitions for a mere 15 days (I think you said) especially with skeleton staffing. If 5000 people a day were coming, clearly this was a strategy that worked but I can’t help reflect on the differences to today’s practices where exhibitions typically run for much longer. What was the reason, do you know?
Thanks again for a great talk.
Thank you so much for your feedback, Harriet! I’m glad you enjoyed the paper. I was also fascinated by the different reinterpretations of the MOI’s exhibitions in regional galleries around the country, as well as by the curators’ varied reactions towards them. Whilst Stevenson seemed happy to host these displays at the Laing, curators at other regional galleries opposed them vehemently. I guess that these different attitudes may also explain the different reinterpretations of the installations, have you found any example? As you may have noticed, I’m very interested in how curators shaped the history of museums! And indeed, the Stevensons are a great example of this: between father and son, the family ran the gallery for over 80 years.
Regarding the Ashington group, the Laing had already hosted what I believe was their first major show (after the one at the Hatton) in 1938. Before that, Stevenson had already visited the members’ exhibitions at Ashington and guided the group on tours of the Laing’s watercolour collection. It’s a fascinating topic!
Thanks again for your appreciation and all the best,
Laia
Dear Annebella,
Thank you very much for your positive feedback, I really appreciate it. Regarding your question, I guess that there was a combination of factors behind the decision to host such a huge number of exhibitions. According to Pearson (Museums in the Second World War: Curators, Culture and Change. 2017), regional art galleries were more or less forced to accept war-themed exhibitions such as the ones designed by the MOI. These were touring displays that had to visit several cities within a short timeframe, before the message that they were intended to transmit to audiences became outdated. The Laing exhibition space was really small and these displays occupied it most of the time. However, at the same time, Stevenson did not want to renounce to the Laing’s original scope as an art gallery. Therefore, he used every empty calendar slot available to display whatever art-related materials he had within reach: prints, watercolours, other small works that had not been sheltered away, or the loans that he managed to obtain from local artists or from CEMA. Then, once a new official war-themed exhibition arrived, he had to quickly rearrange the galleries to give them priority, as requested by the Government. There may be other reasons, such as avoiding criticisms, because influential citizens in Newcastle had been very critical to the fact that the Laing stayed open during WWI. I guess that Stevenson wanted to avoid repeating this situation, so he made great efforts to prove that the gallery was ‘useful’. Troubled times for art galleries, indeed!
Thank you again and best wishes,
Laia
Kasia Tomasiewicz (University of Brighton/Imperial War Museum, UK) ‘All the fun of the fear’: using exhibition histories to understand the challenges of contemporary curation
Since the late 1980s, war museums have actively moved away from representing military histories towards more emotive social histories. Since their popular proliferation following the First World War, war museums have struggled to navigate the changing boundaries of the ‘politics of respect’ (Witcomb, 2009) that underpins representations of conflict. In the Imperial War Museum (IWM), the exhibition that most visibly typifies both this shift and its often-fraught politics is the Blitz Experience (1989-2014). Lasting an impressive twenty-four years, it continues to be divisive some seven years after its removal.
Much can be learnt from looking at the collaborative working practices of production and professionalization that underpinned the exhibition ‘behind the scenes’, but also the innovative and captivating exhibition design as ‘experience’. For all its faults – from ‘sanitizing’ war, to being ‘too scary’ – it also has captured visitor’s imaginations in ways that museums can often struggle to achieve. At the same time, however, it has so profoundly reached some audiences that we might see how the exhibition has come to haunt the Museum as it attempts to maintain relevance during recent political upheavals.
Untangling the complex relations underlying exhibition production, representation, and reception of an exhibition over a prolonged period of time, this paper uses on-going archival and ethnographic research to explore the role of Britain’s national war museum in making war entertaining for visitors. In doing so it looks at the intersections between politics, museum practice, and narratives of conflict to ask, ‘how do museums make war appear ‘fun’?’, ‘what’s Margaret Thatcher got to do with it?’, and ‘what is the relevance of this all in a post-Brexit world?’
Kasia Tomasiewicz is a final-year PhD researcher at the University of Brighton and the Imperial War Museum. Her research traces the changing landscapes of Second World War memory and commemoration at the Museum’s flagship London site. She uses archival, ethnographic and oral history research methods, and is particularly interested in methodological approaches to museum spaces and the complex relations between past, present and future in conducting research on and in museums.
Comments
Thread: Nicolas Sursock Museum
Dear Diana, thank you for sharing this description of the Nicolas Sursock museum, and particularly for documenting the damage sustained in the recent explosion in Beirut. I was so sorry to see this, and hope that you and your loved ones are managing ok. As I was listening to your presentation, I wondered two things: 1) whether you thought that the experience of the Civil War in Lebanon had shaped the space and design of the museum as it emerged in the 1990s/2000s at all, and 2) what lessons might be learnt from that period of unrest, in the current drive to rebuild the museum? Thanks again, Claire Wintle
Dear Claire,
Thank you very much for your concern about the situation in Lebanon and for organizing the conference in these challenging times.
Regarding your first question, the primary aim during the restoration/ expansion work was to keep the building as it was before the civil war, they paid a lot of attention to keep everything like it was originally designed.
Regarding your second question, in my opinion, the volatile region and considering how conflicts can impact on the museum, should be taken into consideration. In my view the rare and special collections is best kept underground.
At the moment the building is very exposed and with it the artwork of Lebanese pioneers. Again taking into account the current unrest in Lebanon, I would prefer improving the security of the building, without compromising the architectural design and cultural impact of the main entrance.
I hope that Lebanon and the museum will see better days in the future.
Thanks again,
Diana Jeha
Dear @diana It seems that basic necessities take over in times like these, don’t they? Very best of luck with it all. I’m really interested in the ways in which the post-war team were able to understand the aims and practices of the original design – what kinds of archives and other modes of understanding they used to reconstruct, conceptualise and enact the museum’s built history. But those things are quite difficult to find information out about…I’d be happy if you did have any insights, but understand if not!
Dear Claire,
Thank you again for your interest. Sorry I don’t have this information. I checked all the published data and couldn’t fined any relevant informations.
Thanks again,
Diana
Dear Diana, I join Claire and I am sure many others in wishing for the best for the museum and you and your colleagues as you move forward. It must be truly heartbreaking afer all the recent efforts to renovate the museum so beautifully. Thank you for sharing, Barbara
Dear Barbara,
I would like to thank you for your concerns. its really heartbreaking to see museum in a damage, its a challenging time in the country but with all the efforts and support the museum will be restored.
many thanks again,
Diana
Dear Áine and Kasia,
Thanks to you both for your fascinating papers. I was really struck – in both of your presentations – by your brief evocation of the emotional labour of the staff involved in the Blitz and the Museum of Free Derry projects. Can you tell me a little more about this aspect of your respective projects – how have you accessed and processed this material in your own research? Thanks again to both of you – I learnt a lot!
Claire
Dear Aine, many thanks for you so sensitive presentation. Exhibiting conflicts involves so many actors that it’s quite a challenge to find an appropriate display and to get the best way to “show” such historical material. Museums have to manage questions regarding memory, trauma and intimate feelings, and it must be difficult to set a relevant display. Do you study how the contemporary art exhibitions deal with this kind of issue? I especially have in mind European biennals, which regularly try to focus on current conflicts and social diseases.
Thank you for watching and for your question!
As part of my research, I am looking at an art exhibition entitled ‘Troubles Art’ that featured artists’ responses to the Troubles. It was on display last year and this year as a travelling exhibition. There is also ‘Art of the Troubles’ which was on display in 2014, that originally included works featured in the recent exhibition.
I’ve been intrigued by the differences in interpreting and displaying the Troubles through art compared to historical artefacts and object. I am interested in exploring how this might allow different themes to arise or allow different narratives to be presented within the exhibition space and interpretation.
In terms of your thinking of European biennials – as part of my MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies, I was able to take a course on ‘Critical and Curatorial Challenges in Contemporary Art’ taught by Griselda Pollock which looked at Documenta. I really enjoyed this approach of using biennials (or documenta’s quinquennial form) to look at exhibition histories. In my work, I specifically looked at Documenta 13, which was an interesting example to consider art and conflict, time, objects and locations, as well as themes of trauma, collapse and recovery.
Do you have thoughts on any of this?
Hello Áine,
Thank you for your sensitive and considered presentation of the Free Derry museum. Your approach felt really well-aligned with the your analysis of the museum (‘the political is personal’). Your articulation of the appropriateness of sharing images from the museum that depict violence was a great example of strong ethical approach in your research process – a thought process that is important to share.
I am very interested in hearing about your PhD research. Can you say a little more about what you have found/ are looking at in terms of the representations and absences of women’s narratives in these exhibitions?
You may have come across this already but I listened to an interview with Bernadette Devlin McAliskey on the Blind Boy podcast last year which was really excellent.
Best of luck with your research,
Enya Moore, PhD candidate, UTS Sydney (originally from County Kerry)
Áine McKenny 11/09/2020 11:08 am
Dear Claire @claire-w, thank you for watching and your question!
There is an ongoing question of how to access and process such material, if it exists, in my research. In keeping with the topic of ‘difficult’, it can be hard to access materials that reveal the difficulties staff face from a personal and emotional perspective. With the Museum of Free Derry, this was somewhat more available to see. I think is partly because they want to highlight the personal connections staff have to the content of the exhibit for authenticity. It is central to the narrative, of a community telling their story. Also, to show the ongoing negotiations and the evolving display.
With access in mind, I am going to interview practitioners involved in the designing and displaying of exhibitions, hopefully from various aspects of this process, and can hopefully develop an analysis from this.
If you have any thoughts on this or suggestions I would love to hear them!
Dear Áine, it is really interesting to reflect on how visible the design team’s emotions are in the physical exhibit they produce, and the Museum of Free Derry sounds like a fascinating case study through which to explore this. I’d be really interested to discuss these wider questions with you – my next project will look at the emotional labour of curators and other museum professionals working with challenging collections (imperialism, slavery, sexual abuse, etc) so it would be good to think through these things together at some point. Best wishes, Claire
Absolutely, I’ll look forward to it and to hearing more about the project – it sounds fascinating!
Best,
Áine
Hi Aine, I precisely studied the case of Documenta in a 2015 paper dedicated to digital display, and I recently focused on the Biennale di Venezia for an upcoming article. As temporaries events, biennals and contemporary art shows can be used in a political or even a ideological way, it’s particularly obvious concerning the history of Venetian exhibition, even if curators has to be involved in aesthetic studies and artistic research field. The topic is deeply fascinating, maybe you could let me know about your current research expectations on that matter.
Dear Claire, Thanks for a great talk, very well presented. I was fascinated by the cross fertilisation of fashionable shop window display and ethnographic collections in the period. I was also very interested in the point you made (very well) about how a crisis in staffing and resources led to improvised strategies that could be innovative as a result. However, I wondered if you had a sense of what exhibition-makers might have liked to do if money was no object. Did you get a sense of this? I wondered if the aesthetics of a Selfridges type display would not have appealed to the good design morals of the period and that sparse and modest displays, while cheap, represented high-mindedness as well as lack of funds. Just musings! Happy to hear your thoughts.
Dear Claire, such an interesting paper – thank you! – so much food for thought. I’m intrigued by the point you made early on about the responsibilities of exhibiting “problematic collections”. Do you think there were particular curatorial/ design strategies for displaying these collections, perhaps masking or mitigating strategies or signs that the displays were acknowledging/ apologising for previous abuses of power? Also, I’m interested in your mention of where display influences were coming from. Beyond trade fairs, commercial contexts and window displays, how far afield were British museum keepers of the 1960s looking for models of good museum exhibition design practice? What were the model institutions/ nations? What a wonderful conference – congratulations to you, Kate and Hajra – such a tonic to have all this wealth of fascinating material at my finger tips – such a very rich diet after my almost monastic academic existence. Thanks again and all best, Harriet
Dear Bella, thank you for your nice comments. Are there any useful readings on fashionable shop window displays, 1945-1980 (the scope of my wider project) that I should be looking at? Recommendations gratefully received.
If money was no object… The main thing that curators were asking for during this period (as perhaps in most periods?!) was physical space. More space to spread things out and create less crowded displays (so ‘sparse’, but in terms of objects). Modernist paradigms were of interest, but there was just no space to show collections in this way. The idea that many objects could remain in store rather than on display was only slowly becoming acceptable. On that note, I’ve been working on the concept of ‘object anxiety’ and am beginning to conceptualise how many of the museum makers at this time seemed to be terrified of the objects they had on their hands (particularly of how many there were) – it seemed they dreamed of more space and no collections?!
In terms of design, and your speculation that commercial design practices were unappealing in the museum arena: I think that’s right. Certainly, some museums were happy to associate with commercial aesthetics and realms (I’ll have to investigate the Birmingham display at the National Trades and Home Life Exhibition further!) – Leeds were specifically adopting modern display techniques borrowed from trade fairs and exhibitions and shop window displays. But I get a sense that many in the museum sector looked on commercial design with deep suspicion. My most compelling examples are from the post-1965 period, when clashes between professional designers and curators become more explicit as more in-house designers are appointed. But, even when I interviewed Margaret Hall, who came from a commercial background and was appointed as the British Museum’s first professional inhouse designer in 1964, she said that she didn’t think that shop and trade fair designs melded well with the museum world: ‘I didn’t think they were necessarily appropriate for the museum […] I thought probably commercial design was a bit too flashy and that museum design had to be a bit more serious.’ So, I think you’re probably right Bella! I will reflect on the issue of ‘morals’ in my research as it limps on! Thanks again, Claire
Dear Harriet,
Glad you’re enjoying the conference. Thanks for your kind words, and for your questions (on all of the papers).
The main strategy for masking and mitigating abuses of power in the 1945-1965 period was to erase and expunge – to take objects off display (and sell them or even repatriate them) as a conscious act of forgetting (Robert Aldrich is good on this). Where abuses of power are confronted, it is usually to defend the British perspective (at the Commonwealth Institute in the case of Mau Mau, for example). There is a case in Bristol, where, at the public opening of the “Focus on Colonial Progress” exhibition in 1959, a woman in the audience with a linen banner pinned to her chest bearing the legend “Stop the War in Malaya” interrupted the proceedings to make a speech about the injustice of ‘training our sons as thugs and throat-slitters’. She is – of course, branded ‘semi-hysterical’ and ejected from the event.
There have been lots of seminal texts on the ways in which typological, aesthetic and collaborative modes of display (both used in the mid-20th century) mask the realities of colonial encroachment and injustice (Annie Coombes and Constance Classen are good places to start, and Nikki Grout (UoB) is doing amazing work on the limits of collaborative practice during this period). But slightly later, in the late 1960s and 1970s (but before the 1980s, when people tend to think this kind of practice started), several new curatorial strategies emerged, in which museums like the Museum of Mankind (part of the British Museum) and Ulster Museum in Belfast tangentially/tentatively referenced colonial legacies in their displays (by highlighting environmental destruction and competitive land claims in the Americas and the Middle East, for example). The curator at Ulster Museum in Belfast in the 1970s, while characterising some of her donors as ‘charitable and philanthropic’, also explicitly pointed out in an exhibition catalogue that some museum objects were robbed from graves by their collectors. Interestingly, rather than condemning this outright, she uses the distancing mechanism of academia to frame her critique, saying that the objects that were collected in this way have no cultural or aesthetic significance (and are therefore not on display – again, erasure rather than full acknowledgment).
In terms of the geographical location that display influences were coming from – ICOM-organised visits to investigate good practice were to Switzerland in 1956, and the Netherlands in 1962 (there may have been others). Individually, curators also travelled abroad throughout Europe (especially Scandinavia and the Netherlands) and the US. David Wilson, in his history of the British Museum identifies the Statens Historiska Museum in Stockholm (redesigned in 1930s/40s) and US museums as pioneering and influential at this time. Slightly later (in the 1970s), museum curators with experiences of working in North America and New Zealand came to the UK, and instigated some more progressive forms of display and collections management as a result of the inspirations they gained there.
Hope that helps!
Claire
Dear Claire, thank you – for organising the conference and also for your paper. I am intrigued by your description of the woman bearing “Stop the War in Malaya”, which occurred during the Malayan Emergency and would like to learn more about it. Can you point me to the resource for further reading? Thanks again, Kelvin
Hi Kelvin – it will be explored in my book (when it gets written!) I found details about it in the archive in the museum in Bristol. I really enjoyed your paper by the way – such an exciting methodological proposal!
Thanks Claire. I wondered about that showy (commercial) versus sober (curatorial) split so that was really interesting. Object anxiety sounds fascinating. In terms of retail display design histories, I’m aware of Patricia Lara Betancourt et al’s edited collection, Architectures I’d Display (2018) and Visual Merchandising: The Image of Selling (2013) but I’ve only flicked through them. Looking forward to your book!
Super – thanks Bella.
Dear Claire, thank you for your kind words. I wait with anticipation for your book.
Hi Claire – thanks to you and your team for organizing this conference. Much needed as Harriet says for the academic stimulus as well as for the critical assessment of exhibition making. I wanted to acknowledge your use of the term “exhibition makers” rather than designers – exhibition creation takes a wealth of talent from a myriad of disciplines often with no formal design training and that’s what makes it one of the most rewarding areas.
Thanks for your fascinating paper – the other comments here have pointed out the contested influences designers brought into museums during the early 60s – namely commercial and retail related. Professional design as a method of practice is tied to commerce and economics among other things – essentially it is a product of the socio-economic climate of the time – if new materials are available designers will want to use them, if Scandinavian inspired simplicity is all the rage, designers will want to deploy it – my point is that design is inherently present to future orientated and this has at times rubbed up against the general museum practice of acknowledging the past because that’s what museums do – to collect and interpret the past (most of the time). You mentioned the work of museum technicians who partnered with curators to design and build many of the exhibits cited – this partnership still exists in many museums today because there is an advantageous power dynamic involved for the curator who will likely always get their way. Please don’t take my comments as those of a disgruntled designer 😀 – I’ve worked with amazing curators on highly collaborative projects as equals – as Kate’s paper points out Margaret Hall perfected this relationship over time as did Gill Ravenel at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. as a contemporary of Hall’s. Great subject and lots to delve into – thanks
Dear Tim,
Thanks for these comments and your contributions to the conference so far.
I’m intrigued by your hints towards a dichotomy of design=future and museums=past. One of the things that I’ve enjoyed finding out about in this conference, including in your excellent paper, is the powerful role of the past in professional design practice. This is especially the case in Roberta Marcaccio’s paper on Ernesto Rogers’ relationship with history (Panel 9), and in the papers advocating decolonial practice in Panel 1. But it is also striking throughout: seeing so many of our presenters acknowledging past luminaries in their practice makes me very aware of how status and expertise are often affirmed through the process of connecting with the past. It is also of course the case, that – just as in the design world – museums are deeply entwined with economic structures, through the value assumptions that visitors (but also those working in museums) bring to and create through the museum space, and through the need to fundraise and participate in a capitalist economy more generally.
You’re absolutely right to call out the power dynamics of the technician (and other exhibition makers) and the curator. In my rush to celebrate technicians and museum assistants in my paper (and in this conference more generally), I brushed over the hierarchies that have always existed and need to be challenged. I’m not sure about curators always getting their way though. I think some really close material analyses of how technicians, museum assistants, designers and others have ‘got their way’ through small but powerful material interventions would be fascinating. Could exhibition making even be a form of resistance? You can see some of this incredible creative contribution, even within these power dynamics, in Barbara Fahs Charles paper, in Sarah Longair’s work on Juma Rajab at in colonial Zanzibar (Panel 9), and in Hajra’s interview of Nima Poovya Smith, a curator who cautions us to ‘never underestimate your local community’ (Panel 10).
Anyway, I hope one day we can have these conversations over a cup of coffee in person. Very much looking forward to the book! Claire
Claire and Tim, may I join your coffee discussion of power dynamics? In person someday, I hope. In the meantime, a small anecdote relative to the dynamics of curators and preparators. When I worked on my first project at the Chicago Historical Society, c1974, I wasn’t allowed into the preparator’s workshop even to see things being prepared for an exhibition that we were designing. I then learned that none of the curators, all of whom were women, were permitted into the workshop. So, while the two preparators, both male, had to listen to the curators (and female designer’s) requests in the galleries, they maintained their own space that they totally controlled. Claire, a huge thank you to you and your colleagues for organizing this terrific conference. I have learned a lot. Barbara Fahs Charles
Dear Barbara, thank you for documenting and raising this issue. Gender is such an important aspect of the power dimensions in all this and I am sorry to hear about your unacceptable marginalisation. Your note also made me think of the spatial dynamics of the museum/design office, of closed offices for curators, open plan spaces for designers – this is another aspect of collaboration and exhibition making that seems critical. Thanks again.
Claire, enjoyed your paper so much — thank you, again, another paper where I learned so much and that I wish I had the time to re-listen, have a conversation in person about… (Also, “engraved perspex!!!!”, that really made me giggle!)
These have been such inspirational ten days, thank you and the others for putting this together — much looking forward to this afternoon’s panel! J
Claire,
i never felt marginalized—more amused. A question that could be interesting is whether museum design has changed with so many more women in the field. Fabricators tell me that earlier, designers were more likely to have an industrial design background and now more of the designers they work with come from graphics, which may be related. Fabrication shops are still mostly male, but the pin-ups on the carpenters work areas have disappeared. Barbara
Claire, thank you for your brilliant presentation! I found the examples design influence absolutely fascinating and would love to discuss this further (maybe in my next supervisory meeting).
Hi Claire, it’s quite amazing to see how current museums seem to face the same problems than museums you studied (!). Professionalization is expected as ever and each exhibition create debates about the impact of design on contents. Here in France, private designers are regularly requested for imagining the most appropriate display (even in public institutions) and exhibition tour tends to be observed as the masterpieces themselves are. However, I have in mind that the aesthetic issue remains the major motive of such stagings, even if visitors (and curators) could find some additional significant accounts.
Dear Kasia,
Thank you for your very stimulating talk, which was very informative, entertaining and well constructed.
I sensed some tensions that intrigued me, especially between your presentation of some aspects of the Blitz Experience as comically grotesque in contrast to the remarkable engagement and investment they produced as visitor effects. You represented the comments on Trip Advisor as perhaps ridiculous or wrongheaded but I was felt they might have captured exactly what the museum wanted: an appeal to an irregular museum attendee (rather than a regular ‘museum type’) plus an impression so profound it could be reflected in decades later! I also note that elsewhere experiential, sensory and immersive curatorial strategies come highly praised (while also noting the seriousness of the critiques that made a game of war).
I’m not sure how these tensions can be reconciled but I find their antagonism very interesting. Your thoughts welcome!
Well done, again,
Bella
Hi Bella,
Thanks for your question! I didn’t mean to make the comments appear wrongheaded, but they are so fantastically descriptive that I think I am a little amazed by them. I have also noticed this tensions, but haven’t been able to articulate them. I think this is definitely one to ponder..!
Laia – thank you for a really fascinating paper on the wartime Laing! It’s so interesting seeing the coverage of the installation of MOI’s Poison Gas in that location – I have been researching MOI exhibitions and have images of that exhibition’s installation elsewhere (many at Charing Cross station) but hadn’t seen it at the Laing – and find it so fascinating how those MOI exhibitions were subtly reinterpreted when they were re-sited around the country. The material about the Ashington group shows at Laing was also fascinating. Again, I’ve seen images of earlier installations (eg when they were working with Mass Obs in the 1930s at Benham Grove) but not at the Laing site. I was also intrigued by the Stevenson curatorial handover from father to son!
As you can tell, I haven’t any insightful questions to ask (although the luxury of this format is that something might suddenly strike me over the next few days! So I’ll come back to you if I do). But just to say thanks again and all best, Harriet
Dear Laia, Just to add another appreciative comment about your presentation to add to Harriet’s. I enjoyed seeing the Ashington Miners featured. Many of these paintings are now decorating the walls of William Feaver’s house!
A practical question: I was struck by the enormous workload of running exhibitions for a mere 15 days (I think you said) especially with skeleton staffing. If 5000 people a day were coming, clearly this was a strategy that worked but I can’t help reflect on the differences to today’s practices where exhibitions typically run for much longer. What was the reason, do you know?
Thanks again for a great talk.
Thank you so much for your feedback, Harriet! I’m glad you enjoyed the paper. I was also fascinated by the different reinterpretations of the MOI’s exhibitions in regional galleries around the country, as well as by the curators’ varied reactions towards them. Whilst Stevenson seemed happy to host these displays at the Laing, curators at other regional galleries opposed them vehemently. I guess that these different attitudes may also explain the different reinterpretations of the installations, have you found any example? As you may have noticed, I’m very interested in how curators shaped the history of museums! And indeed, the Stevensons are a great example of this: between father and son, the family ran the gallery for over 80 years.
Regarding the Ashington group, the Laing had already hosted what I believe was their first major show (after the one at the Hatton) in 1938. Before that, Stevenson had already visited the members’ exhibitions at Ashington and guided the group on tours of the Laing’s watercolour collection. It’s a fascinating topic!
Thanks again for your appreciation and all the best,
Laia
Dear Annebella,
Thank you very much for your positive feedback, I really appreciate it. Regarding your question, I guess that there was a combination of factors behind the decision to host such a huge number of exhibitions. According to Pearson (Museums in the Second World War: Curators, Culture and Change. 2017), regional art galleries were more or less forced to accept war-themed exhibitions such as the ones designed by the MOI. These were touring displays that had to visit several cities within a short timeframe, before the message that they were intended to transmit to audiences became outdated. The Laing exhibition space was really small and these displays occupied it most of the time. However, at the same time, Stevenson did not want to renounce to the Laing’s original scope as an art gallery. Therefore, he used every empty calendar slot available to display whatever art-related materials he had within reach: prints, watercolours, other small works that had not been sheltered away, or the loans that he managed to obtain from local artists or from CEMA. Then, once a new official war-themed exhibition arrived, he had to quickly rearrange the galleries to give them priority, as requested by the Government. There may be other reasons, such as avoiding criticisms, because influential citizens in Newcastle had been very critical to the fact that the Laing stayed open during WWI. I guess that Stevenson wanted to avoid repeating this situation, so he made great efforts to prove that the gallery was ‘useful’. Troubled times for art galleries, indeed!
Thank you again and best wishes,
Laia
Diana Jeha (Independent, Lebanon) Nicolas Sursock Museum design
Nicolas Sursock Museum in Beirut is a modern and contemporary art museum which opened in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1961. The Museum is housed in the private residence of an aristocratic Lebanese family which was built in 1912. During that era Lebanon was under the control of the Ottoman Empire and this is reflected in the museum architecture which integrates Venetian and Ottoman elements that were typical in Lebanon at the turn of the century. The museum aims to collect, preserve and exhibit local and international exhibitions.
In order to transfer the house from a private residential space into an exhibition space, an expansion project was undertaken in 1970 by the Lebanese architect Grégoire Sérof. Work on the museum stopped during the civil war and was resumed in 2008 when the museum underwent extensive renovation work which was completed in 2014. The museum reopened its doors to the public in 2015. The renovation added four floors beneath the museum’s garden which expanded the total surface area of the museum from 1,500 square meters to 8,500 square meters. This area includes additional exhibition space (special exhibitions hall, twin galleries, research Library, auditorium, two storage spaces for the museum’s permanent collection and archives and a restoration workshop, a store and café). The architecture of the museum provides all the necessary components for the museum to function as a conference and educational centre in addition to presenting collections and exhibitions.
The paper examines the renovations and designs that made the transformation of a private residence to a main museum in the Middle East possible. Unfortunately, the museum is currently facing many financial, political and cultural challenges all of which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 Pandemic. For the museum to survive the managers and curator have to balance between modernizing the museum whilst keeping it relevant to the Lebanese and Arabic Culture.
Diana Jeha (https://dianajeha.wixsite.com/dianajeha) holds a PhD in History of Art from Holy Spirit University Kaslik Lebanon and a Masters degree in Fine Art from The Lebanese University. She also holds a diploma in piano from the Lebanese conservatory of Music. Her PhD Research focused on critically analyzing the art work of the forgotten Lebanese artist Youssef Hoyeck. Her research interests focus on re-discovering forgotten Lebanese artists and evaluating ways to encourage art to the new generation in Lebanon.
Diana has participated in a number of conferences (University of le Mans France, Royal Anthropological Institute organised by the British Museum and the SOAS University of London, Lecture at Center for Art & Humanities AUB Lebanon), Atelier N 4 Hemed le Mans France). She will be presenting in a virtual conference in August: ACHS 2020-Futures, Association of Critical Heritage Studies Conference, at University College London, UK. She has participated in art exhibitions in Lebanon and abroad (Usek University main Library, Safadi Cultural Centre Tripoli, Vernon Park Art Gallery, Stockport, Candid Art Trust Gallery, London, first round shortlisted to visual art open Chester in 2018 & 2019).
She has published articles in Lebanese journals (Chronos journal UOB N 38-39, Literature and linguistics journal N19 USEK, Mirrors of heritage issue N9 LAU, article online Uoh.fr atelier Hemed).
Áine McKenny (University of Brighton, UK) Feeling through the Troubles: the emotions of displaying conflict
The word ‘difficult’ is frequently used to describe histories and subject matters that are challenging for museum practitioners to interpret, represent or display in the context of exhibitions. Histories are also described as ‘difficult’ where they may present challenges for museum visitors—either because they may evoke unsettling emotions at the moment of encounter, and/or because they deal with subjects that remain contested. Histories that include war, genocide, massacre, apartheid, state repression, or other forms of political violence are particularly sharp examples of these ‘difficult’ histories. These subjects may entail a close engagement with historical crimes or violences still ‘alive’ within the memories of the local population. This is particularly the case in contexts like Northern Ireland, where the 30 years of armed conflict known as ‘the Troubles’ has only recently been concluded.
This paper explores in close and critical terms some of the central complexities surrounding the act of interpreting and displaying the ‘difficult’ history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It considers the process of displaying the violent past within the ‘post-conflict era’ and how to engage visitors with a terrain of public memory that is still unresolved and contested. Specifically, it considers how violence has been presented in exhibitions from an emotional perspective. It asks how museum practitioners balance the effort to educate ‘outside’ visitors who may know little about the conflict, whilst respecting the experiences of those who lived through it without invalidating or retraumatising them. It seeks to examine the emotional communication and responsibilities of exhibitions in the decision of how to display conflict and violence in public- facing contexts.
Áine McKenny is a second-year PhD researcher based in the Centre for Memory, Narratives and History at the University of Brighton. Her research interests concern conflict, memory, ‘difficult’ histories, contested histories, oral history, cultural representations of the past and the display of these subjects in exhibition spaces. Her PhD research examines public memory narratives of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, with a focus on the representations and absences of women’s narratives, and how these are displayed within exhibitions concerning the conflict.
Kasia Tomasiewicz (University of Brighton/Imperial War Museum, UK) ‘All the fun of the fear’: using exhibition histories to understand the challenges of contemporary curation
Since the late 1980s, war museums have actively moved away from representing military histories towards more emotive social histories. Since their popular proliferation following the First World War, war museums have struggled to navigate the changing boundaries of the ‘politics of respect’ (Witcomb, 2009) that underpins representations of conflict. In the Imperial War Museum (IWM), the exhibition that most visibly typifies both this shift and its often-fraught politics is the Blitz Experience (1989-2014). Lasting an impressive twenty-four years, it continues to be divisive some seven years after its removal.
Much can be learnt from looking at the collaborative working practices of production and professionalization that underpinned the exhibition ‘behind the scenes’, but also the innovative and captivating exhibition design as ‘experience’. For all its faults – from ‘sanitizing’ war, to being ‘too scary’ – it also has captured visitor’s imaginations in ways that museums can often struggle to achieve. At the same time, however, it has so profoundly reached some audiences that we might see how the exhibition has come to haunt the Museum as it attempts to maintain relevance during recent political upheavals.
Untangling the complex relations underlying exhibition production, representation, and reception of an exhibition over a prolonged period of time, this paper uses on-going archival and ethnographic research to explore the role of Britain’s national war museum in making war entertaining for visitors. In doing so it looks at the intersections between politics, museum practice, and narratives of conflict to ask, ‘how do museums make war appear ‘fun’?’, ‘what’s Margaret Thatcher got to do with it?’, and ‘what is the relevance of this all in a post-Brexit world?’
Kasia Tomasiewicz is a final-year PhD researcher at the University of Brighton and the Imperial War Museum. Her research traces the changing landscapes of Second World War memory and commemoration at the Museum’s flagship London site. She uses archival, ethnographic and oral history research methods, and is particularly interested in methodological approaches to museum spaces and the complex relations between past, present and future in conducting research on and in museums.
Comments
Thread: Nicolas Sursock Museum
Dear Diana, thank you for sharing this description of the Nicolas Sursock museum, and particularly for documenting the damage sustained in the recent explosion in Beirut. I was so sorry to see this, and hope that you and your loved ones are managing ok. As I was listening to your presentation, I wondered two things: 1) whether you thought that the experience of the Civil War in Lebanon had shaped the space and design of the museum as it emerged in the 1990s/2000s at all, and 2) what lessons might be learnt from that period of unrest, in the current drive to rebuild the museum? Thanks again, Claire Wintle
Dear Claire,
Thank you very much for your concern about the situation in Lebanon and for organizing the conference in these challenging times.
Regarding your first question, the primary aim during the restoration/ expansion work was to keep the building as it was before the civil war, they paid a lot of attention to keep everything like it was originally designed.
Regarding your second question, in my opinion, the volatile region and considering how conflicts can impact on the museum, should be taken into consideration. In my view the rare and special collections is best kept underground.
At the moment the building is very exposed and with it the artwork of Lebanese pioneers. Again taking into account the current unrest in Lebanon, I would prefer improving the security of the building, without compromising the architectural design and cultural impact of the main entrance.
I hope that Lebanon and the museum will see better days in the future.
Thanks again,
Diana Jeha
Dear @diana It seems that basic necessities take over in times like these, don’t they? Very best of luck with it all. I’m really interested in the ways in which the post-war team were able to understand the aims and practices of the original design – what kinds of archives and other modes of understanding they used to reconstruct, conceptualise and enact the museum’s built history. But those things are quite difficult to find information out about…I’d be happy if you did have any insights, but understand if not!
Dear Claire,
Thank you again for your interest. Sorry I don’t have this information. I checked all the published data and couldn’t fined any relevant informations.
Thanks again,
Diana
Dear Diana, I join Claire and I am sure many others in wishing for the best for the museum and you and your colleagues as you move forward. It must be truly heartbreaking afer all the recent efforts to renovate the museum so beautifully. Thank you for sharing, Barbara
Dear Barbara,
I would like to thank you for your concerns. its really heartbreaking to see museum in a damage, its a challenging time in the country but with all the efforts and support the museum will be restored.
many thanks again,
Diana
Dear Áine and Kasia,
Thanks to you both for your fascinating papers. I was really struck – in both of your presentations – by your brief evocation of the emotional labour of the staff involved in the Blitz and the Museum of Free Derry projects. Can you tell me a little more about this aspect of your respective projects – how have you accessed and processed this material in your own research? Thanks again to both of you – I learnt a lot!
Claire
Dear Aine, many thanks for you so sensitive presentation. Exhibiting conflicts involves so many actors that it’s quite a challenge to find an appropriate display and to get the best way to “show” such historical material. Museums have to manage questions regarding memory, trauma and intimate feelings, and it must be difficult to set a relevant display. Do you study how the contemporary art exhibitions deal with this kind of issue? I especially have in mind European biennals, which regularly try to focus on current conflicts and social diseases.
Thank you for watching and for your question!
As part of my research, I am looking at an art exhibition entitled ‘Troubles Art’ that featured artists’ responses to the Troubles. It was on display last year and this year as a travelling exhibition. There is also ‘Art of the Troubles’ which was on display in 2014, that originally included works featured in the recent exhibition.
I’ve been intrigued by the differences in interpreting and displaying the Troubles through art compared to historical artefacts and object. I am interested in exploring how this might allow different themes to arise or allow different narratives to be presented within the exhibition space and interpretation.
In terms of your thinking of European biennials – as part of my MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies, I was able to take a course on ‘Critical and Curatorial Challenges in Contemporary Art’ taught by Griselda Pollock which looked at Documenta. I really enjoyed this approach of using biennials (or documenta’s quinquennial form) to look at exhibition histories. In my work, I specifically looked at Documenta 13, which was an interesting example to consider art and conflict, time, objects and locations, as well as themes of trauma, collapse and recovery.
Do you have thoughts on any of this?
Hello Áine,
Thank you for your sensitive and considered presentation of the Free Derry museum. Your approach felt really well-aligned with the your analysis of the museum (‘the political is personal’). Your articulation of the appropriateness of sharing images from the museum that depict violence was a great example of strong ethical approach in your research process – a thought process that is important to share.
I am very interested in hearing about your PhD research. Can you say a little more about what you have found/ are looking at in terms of the representations and absences of women’s narratives in these exhibitions?
You may have come across this already but I listened to an interview with Bernadette Devlin McAliskey on the Blind Boy podcast last year which was really excellent.
Best of luck with your research,
Enya Moore, PhD candidate, UTS Sydney (originally from County Kerry)
Áine McKenny 11/09/2020 11:08 am
Dear Claire @claire-w, thank you for watching and your question!
There is an ongoing question of how to access and process such material, if it exists, in my research. In keeping with the topic of ‘difficult’, it can be hard to access materials that reveal the difficulties staff face from a personal and emotional perspective. With the Museum of Free Derry, this was somewhat more available to see. I think is partly because they want to highlight the personal connections staff have to the content of the exhibit for authenticity. It is central to the narrative, of a community telling their story. Also, to show the ongoing negotiations and the evolving display.
With access in mind, I am going to interview practitioners involved in the designing and displaying of exhibitions, hopefully from various aspects of this process, and can hopefully develop an analysis from this.
If you have any thoughts on this or suggestions I would love to hear them!
Dear Áine, it is really interesting to reflect on how visible the design team’s emotions are in the physical exhibit they produce, and the Museum of Free Derry sounds like a fascinating case study through which to explore this. I’d be really interested to discuss these wider questions with you – my next project will look at the emotional labour of curators and other museum professionals working with challenging collections (imperialism, slavery, sexual abuse, etc) so it would be good to think through these things together at some point. Best wishes, Claire
Absolutely, I’ll look forward to it and to hearing more about the project – it sounds fascinating!
Best,
Áine
Hi Aine, I precisely studied the case of Documenta in a 2015 paper dedicated to digital display, and I recently focused on the Biennale di Venezia for an upcoming article. As temporaries events, biennals and contemporary art shows can be used in a political or even a ideological way, it’s particularly obvious concerning the history of Venetian exhibition, even if curators has to be involved in aesthetic studies and artistic research field. The topic is deeply fascinating, maybe you could let me know about your current research expectations on that matter.
Dear Claire, Thanks for a great talk, very well presented. I was fascinated by the cross fertilisation of fashionable shop window display and ethnographic collections in the period. I was also very interested in the point you made (very well) about how a crisis in staffing and resources led to improvised strategies that could be innovative as a result. However, I wondered if you had a sense of what exhibition-makers might have liked to do if money was no object. Did you get a sense of this? I wondered if the aesthetics of a Selfridges type display would not have appealed to the good design morals of the period and that sparse and modest displays, while cheap, represented high-mindedness as well as lack of funds. Just musings! Happy to hear your thoughts.
Dear Claire, such an interesting paper – thank you! – so much food for thought. I’m intrigued by the point you made early on about the responsibilities of exhibiting “problematic collections”. Do you think there were particular curatorial/ design strategies for displaying these collections, perhaps masking or mitigating strategies or signs that the displays were acknowledging/ apologising for previous abuses of power? Also, I’m interested in your mention of where display influences were coming from. Beyond trade fairs, commercial contexts and window displays, how far afield were British museum keepers of the 1960s looking for models of good museum exhibition design practice? What were the model institutions/ nations? What a wonderful conference – congratulations to you, Kate and Hajra – such a tonic to have all this wealth of fascinating material at my finger tips – such a very rich diet after my almost monastic academic existence. Thanks again and all best, Harriet
Dear Bella, thank you for your nice comments. Are there any useful readings on fashionable shop window displays, 1945-1980 (the scope of my wider project) that I should be looking at? Recommendations gratefully received.
If money was no object… The main thing that curators were asking for during this period (as perhaps in most periods?!) was physical space. More space to spread things out and create less crowded displays (so ‘sparse’, but in terms of objects). Modernist paradigms were of interest, but there was just no space to show collections in this way. The idea that many objects could remain in store rather than on display was only slowly becoming acceptable. On that note, I’ve been working on the concept of ‘object anxiety’ and am beginning to conceptualise how many of the museum makers at this time seemed to be terrified of the objects they had on their hands (particularly of how many there were) – it seemed they dreamed of more space and no collections?!
In terms of design, and your speculation that commercial design practices were unappealing in the museum arena: I think that’s right. Certainly, some museums were happy to associate with commercial aesthetics and realms (I’ll have to investigate the Birmingham display at the National Trades and Home Life Exhibition further!) – Leeds were specifically adopting modern display techniques borrowed from trade fairs and exhibitions and shop window displays. But I get a sense that many in the museum sector looked on commercial design with deep suspicion. My most compelling examples are from the post-1965 period, when clashes between professional designers and curators become more explicit as more in-house designers are appointed. But, even when I interviewed Margaret Hall, who came from a commercial background and was appointed as the British Museum’s first professional inhouse designer in 1964, she said that she didn’t think that shop and trade fair designs melded well with the museum world: ‘I didn’t think they were necessarily appropriate for the museum […] I thought probably commercial design was a bit too flashy and that museum design had to be a bit more serious.’ So, I think you’re probably right Bella! I will reflect on the issue of ‘morals’ in my research as it limps on! Thanks again, Claire
Dear Harriet,
Glad you’re enjoying the conference. Thanks for your kind words, and for your questions (on all of the papers).
The main strategy for masking and mitigating abuses of power in the 1945-1965 period was to erase and expunge – to take objects off display (and sell them or even repatriate them) as a conscious act of forgetting (Robert Aldrich is good on this). Where abuses of power are confronted, it is usually to defend the British perspective (at the Commonwealth Institute in the case of Mau Mau, for example). There is a case in Bristol, where, at the public opening of the “Focus on Colonial Progress” exhibition in 1959, a woman in the audience with a linen banner pinned to her chest bearing the legend “Stop the War in Malaya” interrupted the proceedings to make a speech about the injustice of ‘training our sons as thugs and throat-slitters’. She is – of course, branded ‘semi-hysterical’ and ejected from the event.
There have been lots of seminal texts on the ways in which typological, aesthetic and collaborative modes of display (both used in the mid-20th century) mask the realities of colonial encroachment and injustice (Annie Coombes and Constance Classen are good places to start, and Nikki Grout (UoB) is doing amazing work on the limits of collaborative practice during this period). But slightly later, in the late 1960s and 1970s (but before the 1980s, when people tend to think this kind of practice started), several new curatorial strategies emerged, in which museums like the Museum of Mankind (part of the British Museum) and Ulster Museum in Belfast tangentially/tentatively referenced colonial legacies in their displays (by highlighting environmental destruction and competitive land claims in the Americas and the Middle East, for example). The curator at Ulster Museum in Belfast in the 1970s, while characterising some of her donors as ‘charitable and philanthropic’, also explicitly pointed out in an exhibition catalogue that some museum objects were robbed from graves by their collectors. Interestingly, rather than condemning this outright, she uses the distancing mechanism of academia to frame her critique, saying that the objects that were collected in this way have no cultural or aesthetic significance (and are therefore not on display – again, erasure rather than full acknowledgment).
In terms of the geographical location that display influences were coming from – ICOM-organised visits to investigate good practice were to Switzerland in 1956, and the Netherlands in 1962 (there may have been others). Individually, curators also travelled abroad throughout Europe (especially Scandinavia and the Netherlands) and the US. David Wilson, in his history of the British Museum identifies the Statens Historiska Museum in Stockholm (redesigned in 1930s/40s) and US museums as pioneering and influential at this time. Slightly later (in the 1970s), museum curators with experiences of working in North America and New Zealand came to the UK, and instigated some more progressive forms of display and collections management as a result of the inspirations they gained there.
Hope that helps!
Claire
Dear Claire, thank you – for organising the conference and also for your paper. I am intrigued by your description of the woman bearing “Stop the War in Malaya”, which occurred during the Malayan Emergency and would like to learn more about it. Can you point me to the resource for further reading? Thanks again, Kelvin
Hi Kelvin – it will be explored in my book (when it gets written!) I found details about it in the archive in the museum in Bristol. I really enjoyed your paper by the way – such an exciting methodological proposal!
Thanks Claire. I wondered about that showy (commercial) versus sober (curatorial) split so that was really interesting. Object anxiety sounds fascinating. In terms of retail display design histories, I’m aware of Patricia Lara Betancourt et al’s edited collection, Architectures I’d Display (2018) and Visual Merchandising: The Image of Selling (2013) but I’ve only flicked through them. Looking forward to your book!
Super – thanks Bella.
Dear Claire, thank you for your kind words. I wait with anticipation for your book.
Hi Claire – thanks to you and your team for organizing this conference. Much needed as Harriet says for the academic stimulus as well as for the critical assessment of exhibition making. I wanted to acknowledge your use of the term “exhibition makers” rather than designers – exhibition creation takes a wealth of talent from a myriad of disciplines often with no formal design training and that’s what makes it one of the most rewarding areas.
Thanks for your fascinating paper – the other comments here have pointed out the contested influences designers brought into museums during the early 60s – namely commercial and retail related. Professional design as a method of practice is tied to commerce and economics among other things – essentially it is a product of the socio-economic climate of the time – if new materials are available designers will want to use them, if Scandinavian inspired simplicity is all the rage, designers will want to deploy it – my point is that design is inherently present to future orientated and this has at times rubbed up against the general museum practice of acknowledging the past because that’s what museums do – to collect and interpret the past (most of the time). You mentioned the work of museum technicians who partnered with curators to design and build many of the exhibits cited – this partnership still exists in many museums today because there is an advantageous power dynamic involved for the curator who will likely always get their way. Please don’t take my comments as those of a disgruntled designer 😀 – I’ve worked with amazing curators on highly collaborative projects as equals – as Kate’s paper points out Margaret Hall perfected this relationship over time as did Gill Ravenel at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. as a contemporary of Hall’s. Great subject and lots to delve into – thanks
Dear Tim,
Thanks for these comments and your contributions to the conference so far.
I’m intrigued by your hints towards a dichotomy of design=future and museums=past. One of the things that I’ve enjoyed finding out about in this conference, including in your excellent paper, is the powerful role of the past in professional design practice. This is especially the case in Roberta Marcaccio’s paper on Ernesto Rogers’ relationship with history (Panel 9), and in the papers advocating decolonial practice in Panel 1. But it is also striking throughout: seeing so many of our presenters acknowledging past luminaries in their practice makes me very aware of how status and expertise are often affirmed through the process of connecting with the past. It is also of course the case, that – just as in the design world – museums are deeply entwined with economic structures, through the value assumptions that visitors (but also those working in museums) bring to and create through the museum space, and through the need to fundraise and participate in a capitalist economy more generally.
You’re absolutely right to call out the power dynamics of the technician (and other exhibition makers) and the curator. In my rush to celebrate technicians and museum assistants in my paper (and in this conference more generally), I brushed over the hierarchies that have always existed and need to be challenged. I’m not sure about curators always getting their way though. I think some really close material analyses of how technicians, museum assistants, designers and others have ‘got their way’ through small but powerful material interventions would be fascinating. Could exhibition making even be a form of resistance? You can see some of this incredible creative contribution, even within these power dynamics, in Barbara Fahs Charles paper, in Sarah Longair’s work on Juma Rajab at in colonial Zanzibar (Panel 9), and in Hajra’s interview of Nima Poovya Smith, a curator who cautions us to ‘never underestimate your local community’ (Panel 10).
Anyway, I hope one day we can have these conversations over a cup of coffee in person. Very much looking forward to the book! Claire
Claire and Tim, may I join your coffee discussion of power dynamics? In person someday, I hope. In the meantime, a small anecdote relative to the dynamics of curators and preparators. When I worked on my first project at the Chicago Historical Society, c1974, I wasn’t allowed into the preparator’s workshop even to see things being prepared for an exhibition that we were designing. I then learned that none of the curators, all of whom were women, were permitted into the workshop. So, while the two preparators, both male, had to listen to the curators (and female designer’s) requests in the galleries, they maintained their own space that they totally controlled. Claire, a huge thank you to you and your colleagues for organizing this terrific conference. I have learned a lot. Barbara Fahs Charles
Dear Barbara, thank you for documenting and raising this issue. Gender is such an important aspect of the power dimensions in all this and I am sorry to hear about your unacceptable marginalisation. Your note also made me think of the spatial dynamics of the museum/design office, of closed offices for curators, open plan spaces for designers – this is another aspect of collaboration and exhibition making that seems critical. Thanks again.
Claire, enjoyed your paper so much — thank you, again, another paper where I learned so much and that I wish I had the time to re-listen, have a conversation in person about… (Also, “engraved perspex!!!!”, that really made me giggle!)
These have been such inspirational ten days, thank you and the others for putting this together — much looking forward to this afternoon’s panel! J
Claire,
i never felt marginalized—more amused. A question that could be interesting is whether museum design has changed with so many more women in the field. Fabricators tell me that earlier, designers were more likely to have an industrial design background and now more of the designers they work with come from graphics, which may be related. Fabrication shops are still mostly male, but the pin-ups on the carpenters work areas have disappeared. Barbara
Claire, thank you for your brilliant presentation! I found the examples design influence absolutely fascinating and would love to discuss this further (maybe in my next supervisory meeting).
Hi Claire, it’s quite amazing to see how current museums seem to face the same problems than museums you studied (!). Professionalization is expected as ever and each exhibition create debates about the impact of design on contents. Here in France, private designers are regularly requested for imagining the most appropriate display (even in public institutions) and exhibition tour tends to be observed as the masterpieces themselves are. However, I have in mind that the aesthetic issue remains the major motive of such stagings, even if visitors (and curators) could find some additional significant accounts.
Dear Kasia,
Thank you for your very stimulating talk, which was very informative, entertaining and well constructed.
I sensed some tensions that intrigued me, especially between your presentation of some aspects of the Blitz Experience as comically grotesque in contrast to the remarkable engagement and investment they produced as visitor effects. You represented the comments on Trip Advisor as perhaps ridiculous or wrongheaded but I was felt they might have captured exactly what the museum wanted: an appeal to an irregular museum attendee (rather than a regular ‘museum type’) plus an impression so profound it could be reflected in decades later! I also note that elsewhere experiential, sensory and immersive curatorial strategies come highly praised (while also noting the seriousness of the critiques that made a game of war).
I’m not sure how these tensions can be reconciled but I find their antagonism very interesting. Your thoughts welcome!
Well done, again,
Bella
Hi Bella,
Thanks for your question! I didn’t mean to make the comments appear wrongheaded, but they are so fantastically descriptive that I think I am a little amazed by them. I have also noticed this tensions, but haven’t been able to articulate them. I think this is definitely one to ponder..!
Laia – thank you for a really fascinating paper on the wartime Laing! It’s so interesting seeing the coverage of the installation of MOI’s Poison Gas in that location – I have been researching MOI exhibitions and have images of that exhibition’s installation elsewhere (many at Charing Cross station) but hadn’t seen it at the Laing – and find it so fascinating how those MOI exhibitions were subtly reinterpreted when they were re-sited around the country. The material about the Ashington group shows at Laing was also fascinating. Again, I’ve seen images of earlier installations (eg when they were working with Mass Obs in the 1930s at Benham Grove) but not at the Laing site. I was also intrigued by the Stevenson curatorial handover from father to son!
As you can tell, I haven’t any insightful questions to ask (although the luxury of this format is that something might suddenly strike me over the next few days! So I’ll come back to you if I do). But just to say thanks again and all best, Harriet
Dear Laia, Just to add another appreciative comment about your presentation to add to Harriet’s. I enjoyed seeing the Ashington Miners featured. Many of these paintings are now decorating the walls of William Feaver’s house!
A practical question: I was struck by the enormous workload of running exhibitions for a mere 15 days (I think you said) especially with skeleton staffing. If 5000 people a day were coming, clearly this was a strategy that worked but I can’t help reflect on the differences to today’s practices where exhibitions typically run for much longer. What was the reason, do you know?
Thanks again for a great talk.
Thank you so much for your feedback, Harriet! I’m glad you enjoyed the paper. I was also fascinated by the different reinterpretations of the MOI’s exhibitions in regional galleries around the country, as well as by the curators’ varied reactions towards them. Whilst Stevenson seemed happy to host these displays at the Laing, curators at other regional galleries opposed them vehemently. I guess that these different attitudes may also explain the different reinterpretations of the installations, have you found any example? As you may have noticed, I’m very interested in how curators shaped the history of museums! And indeed, the Stevensons are a great example of this: between father and son, the family ran the gallery for over 80 years.
Regarding the Ashington group, the Laing had already hosted what I believe was their first major show (after the one at the Hatton) in 1938. Before that, Stevenson had already visited the members’ exhibitions at Ashington and guided the group on tours of the Laing’s watercolour collection. It’s a fascinating topic!
Thanks again for your appreciation and all the best,
Laia
Dear Annebella,
Thank you very much for your positive feedback, I really appreciate it. Regarding your question, I guess that there was a combination of factors behind the decision to host such a huge number of exhibitions. According to Pearson (Museums in the Second World War: Curators, Culture and Change. 2017), regional art galleries were more or less forced to accept war-themed exhibitions such as the ones designed by the MOI. These were touring displays that had to visit several cities within a short timeframe, before the message that they were intended to transmit to audiences became outdated. The Laing exhibition space was really small and these displays occupied it most of the time. However, at the same time, Stevenson did not want to renounce to the Laing’s original scope as an art gallery. Therefore, he used every empty calendar slot available to display whatever art-related materials he had within reach: prints, watercolours, other small works that had not been sheltered away, or the loans that he managed to obtain from local artists or from CEMA. Then, once a new official war-themed exhibition arrived, he had to quickly rearrange the galleries to give them priority, as requested by the Government. There may be other reasons, such as avoiding criticisms, because influential citizens in Newcastle had been very critical to the fact that the Laing stayed open during WWI. I guess that Stevenson wanted to avoid repeating this situation, so he made great efforts to prove that the gallery was ‘useful’. Troubled times for art galleries, indeed!
Thank you again and best wishes,
Laia
Diana Jeha (Independent, Lebanon) Nicolas Sursock Museum design
Nicolas Sursock Museum in Beirut is a modern and contemporary art museum which opened in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1961. The Museum is housed in the private residence of an aristocratic Lebanese family which was built in 1912. During that era Lebanon was under the control of the Ottoman Empire and this is reflected in the museum architecture which integrates Venetian and Ottoman elements that were typical in Lebanon at the turn of the century. The museum aims to collect, preserve and exhibit local and international exhibitions.
In order to transfer the house from a private residential space into an exhibition space, an expansion project was undertaken in 1970 by the Lebanese architect Grégoire Sérof. Work on the museum stopped during the civil war and was resumed in 2008 when the museum underwent extensive renovation work which was completed in 2014. The museum reopened its doors to the public in 2015. The renovation added four floors beneath the museum’s garden which expanded the total surface area of the museum from 1,500 square meters to 8,500 square meters. This area includes additional exhibition space (special exhibitions hall, twin galleries, research Library, auditorium, two storage spaces for the museum’s permanent collection and archives and a restoration workshop, a store and café). The architecture of the museum provides all the necessary components for the museum to function as a conference and educational centre in addition to presenting collections and exhibitions.
The paper examines the renovations and designs that made the transformation of a private residence to a main museum in the Middle East possible. Unfortunately, the museum is currently facing many financial, political and cultural challenges all of which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 Pandemic. For the museum to survive the managers and curator have to balance between modernizing the museum whilst keeping it relevant to the Lebanese and Arabic Culture.
Diana Jeha (https://dianajeha.wixsite.com/dianajeha) holds a PhD in History of Art from Holy Spirit University Kaslik Lebanon and a Masters degree in Fine Art from The Lebanese University. She also holds a diploma in piano from the Lebanese conservatory of Music. Her PhD Research focused on critically analyzing the art work of the forgotten Lebanese artist Youssef Hoyeck. Her research interests focus on re-discovering forgotten Lebanese artists and evaluating ways to encourage art to the new generation in Lebanon.
Diana has participated in a number of conferences (University of le Mans France, Royal Anthropological Institute organised by the British Museum and the SOAS University of London, Lecture at Center for Art & Humanities AUB Lebanon), Atelier N 4 Hemed le Mans France). She will be presenting in a virtual conference in August: ACHS 2020-Futures, Association of Critical Heritage Studies Conference, at University College London, UK. She has participated in art exhibitions in Lebanon and abroad (Usek University main Library, Safadi Cultural Centre Tripoli, Vernon Park Art Gallery, Stockport, Candid Art Trust Gallery, London, first round shortlisted to visual art open Chester in 2018 & 2019).
She has published articles in Lebanese journals (Chronos journal UOB N 38-39, Literature and linguistics journal N19 USEK, Mirrors of heritage issue N9 LAU, article online Uoh.fr atelier Hemed).
Áine McKenny (University of Brighton, UK) Feeling through the Troubles: the emotions of displaying conflict
The word ‘difficult’ is frequently used to describe histories and subject matters that are challenging for museum practitioners to interpret, represent or display in the context of exhibitions. Histories are also described as ‘difficult’ where they may present challenges for museum visitors—either because they may evoke unsettling emotions at the moment of encounter, and/or because they deal with subjects that remain contested. Histories that include war, genocide, massacre, apartheid, state repression, or other forms of political violence are particularly sharp examples of these ‘difficult’ histories. These subjects may entail a close engagement with historical crimes or violences still ‘alive’ within the memories of the local population. This is particularly the case in contexts like Northern Ireland, where the 30 years of armed conflict known as ‘the Troubles’ has only recently been concluded.
This paper explores in close and critical terms some of the central complexities surrounding the act of interpreting and displaying the ‘difficult’ history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It considers the process of displaying the violent past within the ‘post-conflict era’ and how to engage visitors with a terrain of public memory that is still unresolved and contested. Specifically, it considers how violence has been presented in exhibitions from an emotional perspective. It asks how museum practitioners balance the effort to educate ‘outside’ visitors who may know little about the conflict, whilst respecting the experiences of those who lived through it without invalidating or retraumatising them. It seeks to examine the emotional communication and responsibilities of exhibitions in the decision of how to display conflict and violence in public- facing contexts.
Áine McKenny is a second-year PhD researcher based in the Centre for Memory, Narratives and History at the University of Brighton. Her research interests concern conflict, memory, ‘difficult’ histories, contested histories, oral history, cultural representations of the past and the display of these subjects in exhibition spaces. Her PhD research examines public memory narratives of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, with a focus on the representations and absences of women’s narratives, and how these are displayed within exhibitions concerning the conflict.
Kasia Tomasiewicz (University of Brighton/Imperial War Museum, UK) ‘All the fun of the fear’: using exhibition histories to understand the challenges of contemporary curation
Since the late 1980s, war museums have actively moved away from representing military histories towards more emotive social histories. Since their popular proliferation following the First World War, war museums have struggled to navigate the changing boundaries of the ‘politics of respect’ (Witcomb, 2009) that underpins representations of conflict. In the Imperial War Museum (IWM), the exhibition that most visibly typifies both this shift and its often-fraught politics is the Blitz Experience (1989-2014). Lasting an impressive twenty-four years, it continues to be divisive some seven years after its removal.
Much can be learnt from looking at the collaborative working practices of production and professionalization that underpinned the exhibition ‘behind the scenes’, but also the innovative and captivating exhibition design as ‘experience’. For all its faults – from ‘sanitizing’ war, to being ‘too scary’ – it also has captured visitor’s imaginations in ways that museums can often struggle to achieve. At the same time, however, it has so profoundly reached some audiences that we might see how the exhibition has come to haunt the Museum as it attempts to maintain relevance during recent political upheavals.
Untangling the complex relations underlying exhibition production, representation, and reception of an exhibition over a prolonged period of time, this paper uses on-going archival and ethnographic research to explore the role of Britain’s national war museum in making war entertaining for visitors. In doing so it looks at the intersections between politics, museum practice, and narratives of conflict to ask, ‘how do museums make war appear ‘fun’?’, ‘what’s Margaret Thatcher got to do with it?’, and ‘what is the relevance of this all in a post-Brexit world?’
Kasia Tomasiewicz is a final-year PhD researcher at the University of Brighton and the Imperial War Museum. Her research traces the changing landscapes of Second World War memory and commemoration at the Museum’s flagship London site. She uses archival, ethnographic and oral history research methods, and is particularly interested in methodological approaches to museum spaces and the complex relations between past, present and future in conducting research on and in museums.
Comments
Thread: Nicolas Sursock Museum
Dear Diana, thank you for sharing this description of the Nicolas Sursock museum, and particularly for documenting the damage sustained in the recent explosion in Beirut. I was so sorry to see this, and hope that you and your loved ones are managing ok. As I was listening to your presentation, I wondered two things: 1) whether you thought that the experience of the Civil War in Lebanon had shaped the space and design of the museum as it emerged in the 1990s/2000s at all, and 2) what lessons might be learnt from that period of unrest, in the current drive to rebuild the museum? Thanks again, Claire Wintle
Dear Claire,
Thank you very much for your concern about the situation in Lebanon and for organizing the conference in these challenging times.
Regarding your first question, the primary aim during the restoration/ expansion work was to keep the building as it was before the civil war, they paid a lot of attention to keep everything like it was originally designed.
Regarding your second question, in my opinion, the volatile region and considering how conflicts can impact on the museum, should be taken into consideration. In my view the rare and special collections is best kept underground.
At the moment the building is very exposed and with it the artwork of Lebanese pioneers. Again taking into account the current unrest in Lebanon, I would prefer improving the security of the building, without compromising the architectural design and cultural impact of the main entrance.
I hope that Lebanon and the museum will see better days in the future.
Thanks again,
Diana Jeha
Dear @diana It seems that basic necessities take over in times like these, don’t they? Very best of luck with it all. I’m really interested in the ways in which the post-war team were able to understand the aims and practices of the original design – what kinds of archives and other modes of understanding they used to reconstruct, conceptualise and enact the museum’s built history. But those things are quite difficult to find information out about…I’d be happy if you did have any insights, but understand if not!
Dear Claire,
Thank you again for your interest. Sorry I don’t have this information. I checked all the published data and couldn’t fined any relevant informations.
Thanks again,
Diana
Dear Diana, I join Claire and I am sure many others in wishing for the best for the museum and you and your colleagues as you move forward. It must be truly heartbreaking afer all the recent efforts to renovate the museum so beautifully. Thank you for sharing, Barbara
Dear Barbara,
I would like to thank you for your concerns. its really heartbreaking to see museum in a damage, its a challenging time in the country but with all the efforts and support the museum will be restored.
many thanks again,
Diana
Dear Áine and Kasia,
Thanks to you both for your fascinating papers. I was really struck – in both of your presentations – by your brief evocation of the emotional labour of the staff involved in the Blitz and the Museum of Free Derry projects. Can you tell me a little more about this aspect of your respective projects – how have you accessed and processed this material in your own research? Thanks again to both of you – I learnt a lot!
Claire
Dear Aine, many thanks for you so sensitive presentation. Exhibiting conflicts involves so many actors that it’s quite a challenge to find an appropriate display and to get the best way to “show” such historical material. Museums have to manage questions regarding memory, trauma and intimate feelings, and it must be difficult to set a relevant display. Do you study how the contemporary art exhibitions deal with this kind of issue? I especially have in mind European biennals, which regularly try to focus on current conflicts and social diseases.
Thank you for watching and for your question!
As part of my research, I am looking at an art exhibition entitled ‘Troubles Art’ that featured artists’ responses to the Troubles. It was on display last year and this year as a travelling exhibition. There is also ‘Art of the Troubles’ which was on display in 2014, that originally included works featured in the recent exhibition.
I’ve been intrigued by the differences in interpreting and displaying the Troubles through art compared to historical artefacts and object. I am interested in exploring how this might allow different themes to arise or allow different narratives to be presented within the exhibition space and interpretation.
In terms of your thinking of European biennials – as part of my MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies, I was able to take a course on ‘Critical and Curatorial Challenges in Contemporary Art’ taught by Griselda Pollock which looked at Documenta. I really enjoyed this approach of using biennials (or documenta’s quinquennial form) to look at exhibition histories. In my work, I specifically looked at Documenta 13, which was an interesting example to consider art and conflict, time, objects and locations, as well as themes of trauma, collapse and recovery.
Do you have thoughts on any of this?
Hello Áine,
Thank you for your sensitive and considered presentation of the Free Derry museum. Your approach felt really well-aligned with the your analysis of the museum (‘the political is personal’). Your articulation of the appropriateness of sharing images from the museum that depict violence was a great example of strong ethical approach in your research process – a thought process that is important to share.
I am very interested in hearing about your PhD research. Can you say a little more about what you have found/ are looking at in terms of the representations and absences of women’s narratives in these exhibitions?
You may have come across this already but I listened to an interview with Bernadette Devlin McAliskey on the Blind Boy podcast last year which was really excellent.
Best of luck with your research,
Enya Moore, PhD candidate, UTS Sydney (originally from County Kerry)
Áine McKenny 11/09/2020 11:08 am
Dear Claire @claire-w, thank you for watching and your question!
There is an ongoing question of how to access and process such material, if it exists, in my research. In keeping with the topic of ‘difficult’, it can be hard to access materials that reveal the difficulties staff face from a personal and emotional perspective. With the Museum of Free Derry, this was somewhat more available to see. I think is partly because they want to highlight the personal connections staff have to the content of the exhibit for authenticity. It is central to the narrative, of a community telling their story. Also, to show the ongoing negotiations and the evolving display.
With access in mind, I am going to interview practitioners involved in the designing and displaying of exhibitions, hopefully from various aspects of this process, and can hopefully develop an analysis from this.
If you have any thoughts on this or suggestions I would love to hear them!
Dear Áine, it is really interesting to reflect on how visible the design team’s emotions are in the physical exhibit they produce, and the Museum of Free Derry sounds like a fascinating case study through which to explore this. I’d be really interested to discuss these wider questions with you – my next project will look at the emotional labour of curators and other museum professionals working with challenging collections (imperialism, slavery, sexual abuse, etc) so it would be good to think through these things together at some point. Best wishes, Claire
Absolutely, I’ll look forward to it and to hearing more about the project – it sounds fascinating!
Best,
Áine
Hi Aine, I precisely studied the case of Documenta in a 2015 paper dedicated to digital display, and I recently focused on the Biennale di Venezia for an upcoming article. As temporaries events, biennals and contemporary art shows can be used in a political or even a ideological way, it’s particularly obvious concerning the history of Venetian exhibition, even if curators has to be involved in aesthetic studies and artistic research field. The topic is deeply fascinating, maybe you could let me know about your current research expectations on that matter.
Dear Claire, Thanks for a great talk, very well presented. I was fascinated by the cross fertilisation of fashionable shop window display and ethnographic collections in the period. I was also very interested in the point you made (very well) about how a crisis in staffing and resources led to improvised strategies that could be innovative as a result. However, I wondered if you had a sense of what exhibition-makers might have liked to do if money was no object. Did you get a sense of this? I wondered if the aesthetics of a Selfridges type display would not have appealed to the good design morals of the period and that sparse and modest displays, while cheap, represented high-mindedness as well as lack of funds. Just musings! Happy to hear your thoughts.
Dear Claire, such an interesting paper – thank you! – so much food for thought. I’m intrigued by the point you made early on about the responsibilities of exhibiting “problematic collections”. Do you think there were particular curatorial/ design strategies for displaying these collections, perhaps masking or mitigating strategies or signs that the displays were acknowledging/ apologising for previous abuses of power? Also, I’m interested in your mention of where display influences were coming from. Beyond trade fairs, commercial contexts and window displays, how far afield were British museum keepers of the 1960s looking for models of good museum exhibition design practice? What were the model institutions/ nations? What a wonderful conference – congratulations to you, Kate and Hajra – such a tonic to have all this wealth of fascinating material at my finger tips – such a very rich diet after my almost monastic academic existence. Thanks again and all best, Harriet
Dear Bella, thank you for your nice comments. Are there any useful readings on fashionable shop window displays, 1945-1980 (the scope of my wider project) that I should be looking at? Recommendations gratefully received.
If money was no object… The main thing that curators were asking for during this period (as perhaps in most periods?!) was physical space. More space to spread things out and create less crowded displays (so ‘sparse’, but in terms of objects). Modernist paradigms were of interest, but there was just no space to show collections in this way. The idea that many objects could remain in store rather than on display was only slowly becoming acceptable. On that note, I’ve been working on the concept of ‘object anxiety’ and am beginning to conceptualise how many of the museum makers at this time seemed to be terrified of the objects they had on their hands (particularly of how many there were) – it seemed they dreamed of more space and no collections?!
In terms of design, and your speculation that commercial design practices were unappealing in the museum arena: I think that’s right. Certainly, some museums were happy to associate with commercial aesthetics and realms (I’ll have to investigate the Birmingham display at the National Trades and Home Life Exhibition further!) – Leeds were specifically adopting modern display techniques borrowed from trade fairs and exhibitions and shop window displays. But I get a sense that many in the museum sector looked on commercial design with deep suspicion. My most compelling examples are from the post-1965 period, when clashes between professional designers and curators become more explicit as more in-house designers are appointed. But, even when I interviewed Margaret Hall, who came from a commercial background and was appointed as the British Museum’s first professional inhouse designer in 1964, she said that she didn’t think that shop and trade fair designs melded well with the museum world: ‘I didn’t think they were necessarily appropriate for the museum […] I thought probably commercial design was a bit too flashy and that museum design had to be a bit more serious.’ So, I think you’re probably right Bella! I will reflect on the issue of ‘morals’ in my research as it limps on! Thanks again, Claire
Dear Harriet,
Glad you’re enjoying the conference. Thanks for your kind words, and for your questions (on all of the papers).
The main strategy for masking and mitigating abuses of power in the 1945-1965 period was to erase and expunge – to take objects off display (and sell them or even repatriate them) as a conscious act of forgetting (Robert Aldrich is good on this). Where abuses of power are confronted, it is usually to defend the British perspective (at the Commonwealth Institute in the case of Mau Mau, for example). There is a case in Bristol, where, at the public opening of the “Focus on Colonial Progress” exhibition in 1959, a woman in the audience with a linen banner pinned to her chest bearing the legend “Stop the War in Malaya” interrupted the proceedings to make a speech about the injustice of ‘training our sons as thugs and throat-slitters’. She is – of course, branded ‘semi-hysterical’ and ejected from the event.
There have been lots of seminal texts on the ways in which typological, aesthetic and collaborative modes of display (both used in the mid-20th century) mask the realities of colonial encroachment and injustice (Annie Coombes and Constance Classen are good places to start, and Nikki Grout (UoB) is doing amazing work on the limits of collaborative practice during this period). But slightly later, in the late 1960s and 1970s (but before the 1980s, when people tend to think this kind of practice started), several new curatorial strategies emerged, in which museums like the Museum of Mankind (part of the British Museum) and Ulster Museum in Belfast tangentially/tentatively referenced colonial legacies in their displays (by highlighting environmental destruction and competitive land claims in the Americas and the Middle East, for example). The curator at Ulster Museum in Belfast in the 1970s, while characterising some of her donors as ‘charitable and philanthropic’, also explicitly pointed out in an exhibition catalogue that some museum objects were robbed from graves by their collectors. Interestingly, rather than condemning this outright, she uses the distancing mechanism of academia to frame her critique, saying that the objects that were collected in this way have no cultural or aesthetic significance (and are therefore not on display – again, erasure rather than full acknowledgment).
In terms of the geographical location that display influences were coming from – ICOM-organised visits to investigate good practice were to Switzerland in 1956, and the Netherlands in 1962 (there may have been others). Individually, curators also travelled abroad throughout Europe (especially Scandinavia and the Netherlands) and the US. David Wilson, in his history of the British Museum identifies the Statens Historiska Museum in Stockholm (redesigned in 1930s/40s) and US museums as pioneering and influential at this time. Slightly later (in the 1970s), museum curators with experiences of working in North America and New Zealand came to the UK, and instigated some more progressive forms of display and collections management as a result of the inspirations they gained there.
Hope that helps!
Claire
Dear Claire, thank you – for organising the conference and also for your paper. I am intrigued by your description of the woman bearing “Stop the War in Malaya”, which occurred during the Malayan Emergency and would like to learn more about it. Can you point me to the resource for further reading? Thanks again, Kelvin
Hi Kelvin – it will be explored in my book (when it gets written!) I found details about it in the archive in the museum in Bristol. I really enjoyed your paper by the way – such an exciting methodological proposal!
Thanks Claire. I wondered about that showy (commercial) versus sober (curatorial) split so that was really interesting. Object anxiety sounds fascinating. In terms of retail display design histories, I’m aware of Patricia Lara Betancourt et al’s edited collection, Architectures I’d Display (2018) and Visual Merchandising: The Image of Selling (2013) but I’ve only flicked through them. Looking forward to your book!
Super – thanks Bella.
Dear Claire, thank you for your kind words. I wait with anticipation for your book.
Hi Claire – thanks to you and your team for organizing this conference. Much needed as Harriet says for the academic stimulus as well as for the critical assessment of exhibition making. I wanted to acknowledge your use of the term “exhibition makers” rather than designers – exhibition creation takes a wealth of talent from a myriad of disciplines often with no formal design training and that’s what makes it one of the most rewarding areas.
Thanks for your fascinating paper – the other comments here have pointed out the contested influences designers brought into museums during the early 60s – namely commercial and retail related. Professional design as a method of practice is tied to commerce and economics among other things – essentially it is a product of the socio-economic climate of the time – if new materials are available designers will want to use them, if Scandinavian inspired simplicity is all the rage, designers will want to deploy it – my point is that design is inherently present to future orientated and this has at times rubbed up against the general museum practice of acknowledging the past because that’s what museums do – to collect and interpret the past (most of the time). You mentioned the work of museum technicians who partnered with curators to design and build many of the exhibits cited – this partnership still exists in many museums today because there is an advantageous power dynamic involved for the curator who will likely always get their way. Please don’t take my comments as those of a disgruntled designer 😀 – I’ve worked with amazing curators on highly collaborative projects as equals – as Kate’s paper points out Margaret Hall perfected this relationship over time as did Gill Ravenel at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. as a contemporary of Hall’s. Great subject and lots to delve into – thanks
Dear Tim,
Thanks for these comments and your contributions to the conference so far.
I’m intrigued by your hints towards a dichotomy of design=future and museums=past. One of the things that I’ve enjoyed finding out about in this conference, including in your excellent paper, is the powerful role of the past in professional design practice. This is especially the case in Roberta Marcaccio’s paper on Ernesto Rogers’ relationship with history (Panel 9), and in the papers advocating decolonial practice in Panel 1. But it is also striking throughout: seeing so many of our presenters acknowledging past luminaries in their practice makes me very aware of how status and expertise are often affirmed through the process of connecting with the past. It is also of course the case, that – just as in the design world – museums are deeply entwined with economic structures, through the value assumptions that visitors (but also those working in museums) bring to and create through the museum space, and through the need to fundraise and participate in a capitalist economy more generally.
You’re absolutely right to call out the power dynamics of the technician (and other exhibition makers) and the curator. In my rush to celebrate technicians and museum assistants in my paper (and in this conference more generally), I brushed over the hierarchies that have always existed and need to be challenged. I’m not sure about curators always getting their way though. I think some really close material analyses of how technicians, museum assistants, designers and others have ‘got their way’ through small but powerful material interventions would be fascinating. Could exhibition making even be a form of resistance? You can see some of this incredible creative contribution, even within these power dynamics, in Barbara Fahs Charles paper, in Sarah Longair’s work on Juma Rajab at in colonial Zanzibar (Panel 9), and in Hajra’s interview of Nima Poovya Smith, a curator who cautions us to ‘never underestimate your local community’ (Panel 10).
Anyway, I hope one day we can have these conversations over a cup of coffee in person. Very much looking forward to the book! Claire
Claire and Tim, may I join your coffee discussion of power dynamics? In person someday, I hope. In the meantime, a small anecdote relative to the dynamics of curators and preparators. When I worked on my first project at the Chicago Historical Society, c1974, I wasn’t allowed into the preparator’s workshop even to see things being prepared for an exhibition that we were designing. I then learned that none of the curators, all of whom were women, were permitted into the workshop. So, while the two preparators, both male, had to listen to the curators (and female designer’s) requests in the galleries, they maintained their own space that they totally controlled. Claire, a huge thank you to you and your colleagues for organizing this terrific conference. I have learned a lot. Barbara Fahs Charles
Dear Barbara, thank you for documenting and raising this issue. Gender is such an important aspect of the power dimensions in all this and I am sorry to hear about your unacceptable marginalisation. Your note also made me think of the spatial dynamics of the museum/design office, of closed offices for curators, open plan spaces for designers – this is another aspect of collaboration and exhibition making that seems critical. Thanks again.
Claire, enjoyed your paper so much — thank you, again, another paper where I learned so much and that I wish I had the time to re-listen, have a conversation in person about… (Also, “engraved perspex!!!!”, that really made me giggle!)
These have been such inspirational ten days, thank you and the others for putting this together — much looking forward to this afternoon’s panel! J
Claire,
i never felt marginalized—more amused. A question that could be interesting is whether museum design has changed with so many more women in the field. Fabricators tell me that earlier, designers were more likely to have an industrial design background and now more of the designers they work with come from graphics, which may be related. Fabrication shops are still mostly male, but the pin-ups on the carpenters work areas have disappeared. Barbara
Claire, thank you for your brilliant presentation! I found the examples design influence absolutely fascinating and would love to discuss this further (maybe in my next supervisory meeting).
Hi Claire, it’s quite amazing to see how current museums seem to face the same problems than museums you studied (!). Professionalization is expected as ever and each exhibition create debates about the impact of design on contents. Here in France, private designers are regularly requested for imagining the most appropriate display (even in public institutions) and exhibition tour tends to be observed as the masterpieces themselves are. However, I have in mind that the aesthetic issue remains the major motive of such stagings, even if visitors (and curators) could find some additional significant accounts.
Dear Kasia,
Thank you for your very stimulating talk, which was very informative, entertaining and well constructed.
I sensed some tensions that intrigued me, especially between your presentation of some aspects of the Blitz Experience as comically grotesque in contrast to the remarkable engagement and investment they produced as visitor effects. You represented the comments on Trip Advisor as perhaps ridiculous or wrongheaded but I was felt they might have captured exactly what the museum wanted: an appeal to an irregular museum attendee (rather than a regular ‘museum type’) plus an impression so profound it could be reflected in decades later! I also note that elsewhere experiential, sensory and immersive curatorial strategies come highly praised (while also noting the seriousness of the critiques that made a game of war).
I’m not sure how these tensions can be reconciled but I find their antagonism very interesting. Your thoughts welcome!
Well done, again,
Bella
Hi Bella,
Thanks for your question! I didn’t mean to make the comments appear wrongheaded, but they are so fantastically descriptive that I think I am a little amazed by them. I have also noticed this tensions, but haven’t been able to articulate them. I think this is definitely one to ponder..!
Laia – thank you for a really fascinating paper on the wartime Laing! It’s so interesting seeing the coverage of the installation of MOI’s Poison Gas in that location – I have been researching MOI exhibitions and have images of that exhibition’s installation elsewhere (many at Charing Cross station) but hadn’t seen it at the Laing – and find it so fascinating how those MOI exhibitions were subtly reinterpreted when they were re-sited around the country. The material about the Ashington group shows at Laing was also fascinating. Again, I’ve seen images of earlier installations (eg when they were working with Mass Obs in the 1930s at Benham Grove) but not at the Laing site. I was also intrigued by the Stevenson curatorial handover from father to son!
As you can tell, I haven’t any insightful questions to ask (although the luxury of this format is that something might suddenly strike me over the next few days! So I’ll come back to you if I do). But just to say thanks again and all best, Harriet
Dear Laia, Just to add another appreciative comment about your presentation to add to Harriet’s. I enjoyed seeing the Ashington Miners featured. Many of these paintings are now decorating the walls of William Feaver’s house!
A practical question: I was struck by the enormous workload of running exhibitions for a mere 15 days (I think you said) especially with skeleton staffing. If 5000 people a day were coming, clearly this was a strategy that worked but I can’t help reflect on the differences to today’s practices where exhibitions typically run for much longer. What was the reason, do you know?
Thanks again for a great talk.
Thank you so much for your feedback, Harriet! I’m glad you enjoyed the paper. I was also fascinated by the different reinterpretations of the MOI’s exhibitions in regional galleries around the country, as well as by the curators’ varied reactions towards them. Whilst Stevenson seemed happy to host these displays at the Laing, curators at other regional galleries opposed them vehemently. I guess that these different attitudes may also explain the different reinterpretations of the installations, have you found any example? As you may have noticed, I’m very interested in how curators shaped the history of museums! And indeed, the Stevensons are a great example of this: between father and son, the family ran the gallery for over 80 years.
Regarding the Ashington group, the Laing had already hosted what I believe was their first major show (after the one at the Hatton) in 1938. Before that, Stevenson had already visited the members’ exhibitions at Ashington and guided the group on tours of the Laing’s watercolour collection. It’s a fascinating topic!
Thanks again for your appreciation and all the best,
Laia
Dear Annebella,
Thank you very much for your positive feedback, I really appreciate it. Regarding your question, I guess that there was a combination of factors behind the decision to host such a huge number of exhibitions. According to Pearson (Museums in the Second World War: Curators, Culture and Change. 2017), regional art galleries were more or less forced to accept war-themed exhibitions such as the ones designed by the MOI. These were touring displays that had to visit several cities within a short timeframe, before the message that they were intended to transmit to audiences became outdated. The Laing exhibition space was really small and these displays occupied it most of the time. However, at the same time, Stevenson did not want to renounce to the Laing’s original scope as an art gallery. Therefore, he used every empty calendar slot available to display whatever art-related materials he had within reach: prints, watercolours, other small works that had not been sheltered away, or the loans that he managed to obtain from local artists or from CEMA. Then, once a new official war-themed exhibition arrived, he had to quickly rearrange the galleries to give them priority, as requested by the Government. There may be other reasons, such as avoiding criticisms, because influential citizens in Newcastle had been very critical to the fact that the Laing stayed open during WWI. I guess that Stevenson wanted to avoid repeating this situation, so he made great efforts to prove that the gallery was ‘useful’. Troubled times for art galleries, indeed!
Thank you again and best wishes,
Laia