The Imperial War Museum was founded in 1917 and most remarkably has retained its name.
It is not perfect, I will get onto that later, but to retain “Imperial” and “War” is a fine thing, to remain true to its original purpose is a fine thing and to educate younger people about the realities of war is a fine thing. Even the guns outside are an uncompromising statement about war. Not many institutions show that resolve and I will get onto that later.
It was founded to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of Great Britain and its Empire during the First World War. During the Second World War the museum collected more material and in 1953 began its current policy of collecting material from all modern conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces were involved. Its stated remit is “to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and ‘wartime experience'” (IWM).
An important part of the museum’s collection is art and photography, indeed that was the main reason for my visit last week. Even in 1920 there were more than 2,000 pictures and today well north of 85,000 and eleven million photographs. Obviously only a selection can be shown and I saw some of the best by among others Paul and John Nash, John Singer Sargent, Eric Ravilious, Stanley Spencer and Cecil Beaton’s photographs. These used to be hung roughly chronologically so that each work could be properly seen with helpful signage about the artist and the subject. Now it’s like the sketch in which Morecambe (or Wise?) tells Andre Previn he has just played all the right notes, only in the wrong order. It is a hectic jumble that belittles these great works.
On the other hand the museum’s relevance, at least last week, seems to be for schools to visit. This is admirable and if that’s the price of getting a million visitors a year through the back door so be it. (School groups go through their own entrance at the side.)
I went to a museum in Paris on Sunday in a beautiful building that has not stayed true to its purpose, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature. Last time I went more than twenty years ago it was all chasse and in depicting that the nature was obvious. Now it has got nervous and tacked on nature. Much worse was the room devoted to kitsch pictures of animals. It can easily be avoided but no – more are sprinkled around the rest of the collection. It was disappointing but escargots, ris de veau and Paris-Brest restored my humour. Rather a rich lunch.
Brilliant!
And Recordings. They have a brilliant programme of recording veterans of conflicts and, these days, all are available a click away on their site. I find it amazing that after all these years you can access my mother giving her detailed account of her time in the Wrens during WW2, to and fro across the Atlantic between Greenock and New York, (she danced to the music of Louis Armstrong), as a cipher officer dodging U-boats in the Queen Elizabeth. An astonishing and down-to-earth link to those extraordinary and terrifying days.
And of course the Ashcroft collection of VCs.
Sadly, and laudable though the intent, I found my own instinct that ‘less is more’ came to the fore as I went from VC to VC. A personal connection to a recipient would add much, but they really belong in the family, ship, regiment or station…in my ‘umble.
I have often enjoyed the Imperial War Museum and have recently wondered if it would for long be able to hang on to its name. Of course its title does not imply that it is required to celebrate the role either of imperialism or war. Luckily, its being a museum implies that provided it sticks to revealing past facts and feelings it can usefully refuse to opinionise on any of them. It can memorialise rather than moralise.
I have often thought a visit to Le Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature would be a highlight of any Paris holiday. I don’t know whether it has recently bolted-on “la Nature”, but I am pretty sure I wouldn’t enjoy exhibits which declared some modish peace treaty between humans and nature. It’s not so much that I deny that bunny-hugging has always been a feature of civilisation. It’s more that I adore quirky and even perverse museums which allow one to re-inhabit the past rather than spray anachronism sauce over it.
For decades I have loved monasteries and I am afraid the attraction was that they were replicas of ways of life which changed as little as possible over centuries. So my respect was mixed with voyeurism. I did and do admire monks and nuns, though the more they thought they could mix-in with the modern world the more they usually seemed to mimic dime-a-dozen Guardian-readers.
In short, updating museums is a tricky business. My watchword is that we are not superior to our ancestors. I can’t help looking backward in the hopes of finding habits and reasonings that had redeeming features, some of which are furtively recurring and some happily redundant.
All that applies sharply in the case of wars, empire, the hunt and monasteries. I don’t suppose I would have been any good at any of them. I am short of endurance and courage, and am glad so far to have escaped much need to draw on my slight reserves of them. All the more reason to admire the stalwart risk-takers, dead and alive.