I’m back from our “raid on London” and attempting to return to some kind of routine. The past few days have been very interesting in several ways, which I expect to share with you over the next week.
One of the places I hoped to visit in the capital was the Imperial War Museum. I have been there on at least one previous occasion, but I wanted in particular to go there again because I had heard that they had completely re-hung their art collection, and I wanted to find out what that involved. The exercise had indeed been dramatically novel, and represented a very new way of presenting art.
When we think of an “art gallery” I guess that we expect normally to see a space which is devoted principally (even exclusively) to the celebration of works of art, these being surrounded by a kind of “aura”. Art requires special kind of place in which to display it, and an important function of this arrangement is to make sure that we appreciate the special and distinctive status of art objects. This approach has been abandoned completely at the IWM.
Now art works appear throughout the gallery alongside all kind of other objects and representations of experience (such as photographs) and their future is to contribute to and deepen the viewer’s understanding of the subject in question. So: to take one example, in a display relating to the use of poison gas in the Great War, there are gas masks, film depicting the difficulty of donning a mask correctly under conditions of imminent danger, photographs of the kind of damage which exposure to poison gas inflicts. There is also Sargent’s celebrated picture Gassed. This depicts a column of soldiers all of whom have been blinded by exposure to gas, being led hesitantly and with difficulty by their attendants. This immensely moving image is given savage point by the fact that in the background a football match is shown, taking place among soldiers who (presumably) are enjoying a break from their duties at the front. One cannot help but ask two questions. Will these shattered victims of a gas attack ever enjoy a game of football again? How long will it be before the vigorous and enthusiastic young players in the background find themselves being led helplessly wherever they need to go?
At first I thought that perhaps this new way of displaying art might result in a “downgrading” of art in some way. Now I wonder if I might prefer to see it adopted more widely.