Imperial War Museums and the Centenary of the First World War

Transcription

1 Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2016, pp doi: /tcbh/hww041 Paul Cornish* Imperial War Museums... Imperial War Museums and the Centenary of the First World War Abstract This paper surveys Imperial War Museums response to the Centenary of the First World War. It outlines IWM s centenary-related activities, including its lead role in the First World War Centenary Cultural Partnership and Programme. In particular it focuses on the creation of IWM London s new First World War Galleries. In the wake of the astonishing level of public engagement with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, it is hard to recall that such a response was by no means seen as certain during the years leading up to However, irrespective of predictions, good or bad, regarding the likely impact of the forthcoming commemorations, Imperial War Museums (IWM) made an early decision to place itself at the centre of them. The reason was twofold. First, this would mark a reaffirmation of IWM s original raison d être: to record the efforts and sacrifices made by the people of Britain and the Empire in fighting the Great War. To quote words spoken by its first Chairman, Sir Alfred Mond, at its opening in 1920, The museum was not conceived as a monument of military glory, but rather as a record of toil and sacrifice. Digital technology and the internet now offered exciting new opportunities for pursuing this mission and strengthening public engagement with it. Secondly, IWM London was in urgent want of regeneration. It needed to upgrade visitor facilities which had remained essentially the same since 1989 and to replace permanent exhibitions of similar age. Little or no public money could be expected to be forthcoming for the redevelopment required, so IWM principally through a fund-raising * pcornish@iwm.org.uk Advance Access publication 30 September 2016 ß The Author [2016]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please journals.permissions@oup.com

2 514 PAUL CORNISH trust set about securing the finance for a comprehensive transformation of IWM London. This would be completed in time for the centenary, and would feature new, permanent First World War galleries which would tell the story of the war and the British Empire s part in it to a new generation of visitors. This physical, London-based, response to the centenary was to be complemented by a set of wider-ranging efforts. Projects were initiated to complete the digitization of IWM s vast collection of First World War official photographs, and to fully digitize its holdings of film from the era. Meanwhile, key recordings from IWM s oral history archive were made available online via a series of podcasts Voices of the First World War. 1 To engage interactively with the public online, work began on Lives of the First World War. This website would offer online access to hundreds of thousands of military and civilian personal records to which members of the public could add information or images, with the overall aim of creating a permanent digital memorial. IWM also secured a position as lead institution for Britain s First World War Centenary Cultural Partnership and Programme. 2 This government initiative was intended to provide a focal point for not-for-profit organizations planning events or programmes linked to the centenary. Joining as a partner gave access to an extranet website where members could share ideas, expertise, and resources. Also on offer were free digital assets from the IWM collections for members to use in their programmes and a do-it-yourself exhibition. Members were also entitled to use centenary branding. In conjunction with this project, IWM would host NOW, a programme independent of the museum, devoted to commissioning a wide range of artistic responses to the centenary. 3 Work on the transformation of IWM London commenced in At the same time a project team began work on the creation of new First World War galleries. The restructuring of the interior of IWM London, the vision of architects Foster and Partners, involved the removal of the existing atrium floor to create a towering cathedral-like space. Around the newly revealed ground floor, a gallery space measuring over 1,000 square metres was created to house the First World War galleries. The physical nature of this area had a strong influence on the exhibition which was created to fill it. In addition to having more than doubled the footprint of the previous First World War gallery, this area was able to accommodate large objects. This afforded the opportunity to integrate major pieces of 1 Voices of the First World War 2 Centenary Partnership NOW

3 IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS AND THE CENTENARY 515 military technology such as artillery pieces, a tank, and even an aircraft with the context in which they were developed and used. The First World War project team were particularly grateful to be able to display large guns and shells in galleries devoted to what was, essentially, a war of artillery. Furthermore, the continuous, elongated space, wrapping itself around the rear of the atrium area but completely separate from it, permitted the creation of a homogenous, immersive atmosphere. 4 Finally, for the same reasons, it was ideally suited to the representation of the war in narrative form. Decisions over how to structure these narratives were informed by audience research. Evaluations of potential visitors, which were conducted both among the general public and visitors to UK museums and heritage sites, showed an extremely variable level of familiarity with the First World War. Around 37 per cent of those surveyed admitted knowing little about the war and 10 per cent very little. The galleries would necessarily have to assume relatively limited knowledge and provide a strong level of guidance. It was therefore decided at an early stage that the narrative within the galleries would be largely chronological. The project team was also tasked with putting the war in the context of what the world in particular the British Empire was like in the years before the war, and what it was like in the aftermath of the war. The galleries would attempt to answer four big questions: How did the war break out? Why did it go on so long? How was it won and lost? What was its aftermath? These questions would be answered using IWM s incredibly rich First World War collections in conjunction with a narrative based on the latest historiography. This presented a potential challenge, as the work of academic historians has traditionally had very little impact on British public perceptions of the First World War. The vision of the war as a futile slaughter carried out in mud-soaked trenches remains powerful, but represents only a partial truth at best. Adherence to cutting-edge historical scholarship on the war meant that IWM would be challenging this cherished vision. The project team understood that this needed to be accomplished without alienating visitors by implying that everything you know is wrong. Happily, it was no challenge to incorporate the elements of the war with which people were most familiar. Indeed the galleries explicitly show how certain famous photographs and paintings made at the time came to fix our image of what the First World War looked like. An interesting development of recent years has been the elevation of the Battle of the Somme to a dominant position in our memory of the 4 P. Cornish, Sensing War: Concept and Space in the Imperial War Museum s First World War Galleries, in N. Saunders & P. Cornish, eds, Killer Instincts: Conflict and the Senses (Routledge, 2016).

4 516 PAUL CORNISH war. This was certainly not the case when the previous gallery was designed in the 1980s, when the names Passchendaele and Gallipoli would have enjoyed equal resonance. The passage of time and the fixation of popular history, particularly television history, with the men of the New Army who fought there especially on the tragic first day have narrowed our focus. Rather than fight this tendency, the project team decided to embrace it and to show the battle as the pivotal point in the war. Not only was it Britain s costliest battle but the first in which it played the major role, the first in which it employed its new volunteer army, equipped with the products of a whole new war industry, en masse, and the first which would be seen by the British public through the media of official art, photography, and film. We attempted to place Britain s war in a novel and challenging context by including much material from the home front. By displaying this alongside exhibits from the fighting front it was intended to make a direct connection between the two. The war could not have been fought without the efforts of those at home and, rather more disturbingly, would not have been continued at such great cost without the strong backing of the great majority of the public. Thus, the material exhibited relates not only to war production and to the provision of man (and woman) power for factories and the front but also to voluntary efforts, hatred of the enemy, the crisis in food supply faced by both sides, and the failure of voices calling for a negotiated peace. One further innovation in the gallery content proved to be of major assistance in presenting a fresh view of the war: the adoption of a policy of contemporaneity. This stemmed from the idea that the drama and immediacy of the narrative could be heightened by using only the voices of people which were contemporary to the events under discussion. Their words are quoted in the exhibition text and provide the titles of each of the galleries subsections. They also appear printed or debossed on the fabric of the exhibition itself. All of them were either written or spoken within weeks of the events to which they refer. Likewise, the exhibition text avoids, as far as possible, looking forward to events which do not occur until later in the narrative. It was hoped that this approach would allow visitors to see the war as it was seen at the time, and to help them to understand that decisions made during the war were made without the gift of hindsight. It soon became clear, however, that contemporaneity offered another advantage, in that it freed IWM s retelling of the story from all the post-1918 accretions of myth and memory and from the many historical controversies which contribute to Britain s unique and peculiar engagement with the First World War. In short, it circumvented many of the potential pitfalls of presenting a story which frequently diverged from familiar tropes.

5 IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS AND THE CENTENARY 517 In July 2014 IWM London reopened with, as its principal offers, the new First World War Galleries 5 and a temporary exhibition of IWM s unrivalled collection of First World War Art: Truth and Memory. As we now know, the intensity of public interest in the centenary of the First World War during 2014 and early 2015 exceeded all expectations. IWM London received over a million visitors between its reopening in July 2014 and the end of the financial year. This was double the estimated figure and four times the average achieved prior to redevelopment. Interestingly there appears to have been a strong crossover with the reported 5 million visitors to the Tower of London s Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red poppy installation, with many people doing the centenary by combining a viewing of the installation with a visit to IWM London. Beyond its London site, IWM attracted an additional 400,000 visitors to a year-long exhibition, From Street to Trench: A World War that Shaped a Region, held at IWM North in Salford from April Well before the centenary events got underway, thousands of people were already accessing the podcasts of Voices of the First World War. The number of downloads now approaches 1 million. IWM s other online initiative, Lives of the First World War has, at time of writing, gained over 83,000 members, with almost 900,000 items of information added. The IWM-led centenary partnership has grown to encompass over 3,000 non-profit organizations in more than fifty countries. These ranged from government departments, museums, archives, libraries, and universities to music and art organizations, special interest groups and associations. Importantly, membership proved crucial in enabling many of these partners to secure funding for their centenary activities. 6 IWM also collaborated with ITV on its series The Great War: The People s Story, with the Sunday Telegraph on its Inside the First World War series of supplements, and with the Guardian to create First World War Interactive. 7 Following the successful opening of the First World War Galleries, the richness of IWM s collections was further exploited to create a touring exhibition, the WW1 Centenary Exhibition, which was hosted by Melbourne Museum in Australia between April and October IWM is currently gearing up for the 2016 centenary of the Battle of the Somme. This anniversary looks set to spark a new wave of commemoration and public engagement, in which IWM will continue to play a central role. 5 P. Cornish. The First World War. IWM (Accompanies the First World War Galleries). 6 Kings College London case study: Centenary Partnership cultural/culturalenquiries/partnership/case-study-first-world-war-centenary-partner ship.pdf. 7 Guardian newspaper: First World War Interactive world/ng-interactive/2014/jul/23/a-global-guide-to-the-first-world-war-interactivedocumentary.