Main Entrance. |
Roman floor mosaic |
The earlier galleries are aided by the archaeological riches this city seems to provide across pre-modern periods. The place is really a boggy receptacle ready to receive and preserve the detritus abandoned sometimes in panic but mainly in disinterest. Londoners are it seems inveterate litterers. There are not many other cities where a back garden dig can be so illuminating (and dangerous). Roman coins, pre-historic flints, bits of human bone and the odd unexpected world war II bomb turn up with a regularity that keep the Museum's research staff very busy. The displays on the mercantile development of the city, it's international character and bewildering variety of residents, bad habits, creativity and the disasters it has survived provide riveting subject matter. It is also an overly wide remit. I have always thought that London needs several new museums devoted solely to medicine, crime and policing, the Thames and commerce. In the case of the Museum of London their earlier displays always seemed more assured as if they were unsure how to proceed with the city's more immediate less archealogical past.
Costumes in the Vauxhall Pleasure Garden display. |
Part of the pre war London display. |
I also anticipated a real emphasis upon London's 20th century contributions to theatre, art and design, youth movements and music. These latter elements are the things that have really coloured the city and it's conception of itself. I expected a continuation of the themes running through the earlier displays: of trade and resulting migration, of conflict with authority, of creativity. I expected the Windrush, the closing of the Docks, Vietnamese Boat People, the Brixton Riots, the Dockers strike, CND marches, IRA campaigns, Soho in the fifties, slum clearance, Punk, The Thames Barrier, Black Monday and so forth. These elements were there in part but the general conclusion and focus was that London now was an entity completely different to it's previous incarnation. Yep, the wooly fluff that is the dreamy idea of multicultural London was the focal point and it was claimed that London is suddenly a completely different city to the one it had been previously.
So Roman London was the same as Jacobean London? And all those black people in Southwark in the 18th century and Jews and Huguenots in the East End in the 16th century played no part? And my own very mixed ethnic London ancestry counts for nothing because only new people have made this particular London I live in? London is shaped by all the communities that arrive here; equally London shapes them, that's why we can genuinely describe it as an international and cosmopolitan city. And this has been the case throughout all of London history as is shown by the entirety of the previous displays. And some twat wants to go changing what it is into what they would like their fantasy London to be.
The modern display was deeply patronising and in feeling the need to demarcate West Indian, African and Islamic Asians as a new or different kind of Londoner it was also quite racist. The 'unfashionable' groups were left out, Indians, Chinese, Jews, Portuguese and East Europeans barely factored. There was an inference that without these particular migrant sectors London would not be London. Certainly it might not be the same London but it would still have been here, and we cannot say whether the new communities have had a positive or detrimental effect. Who knows? history should make you think about what has really happened not maybes. I thought it was lazy and lacked the historical vigour in all the previous displays. The display even ended in a display of largely horrendously poor art work, a look at the names of the artists and their locations revealed that there was more tokenism on the go here. There was also very little on leisure activities such as the pub, the footie, the dogs or even sitting in the Park. Just a lot of guff about festivals.
I was also intrigued by a reticence to address what is undeniably the secret engine that drives London; The City. Where were the displays and tales of it's excesses and the banking sector? The Museum is funded by The City and perhaps they were reluctant to display their own recent history. It is also a disgrace that whilst crappy art works are in a bright room the Lord Mayors Coach is in an ante room, despite being the most famous object in the Museum.
Tucked away in a side room, the Lord Mayor's Coach. |
It is a museum full of wondrous objects, I love the Roman bits and bobs, the displays of debris that are displayed in glass panels under your feet and the dresses in the Vauxhall Pleasure Park section. I am also aware of the fact that one's view of one's home is subjective so my opinion is just that. However I feel the MOL should follow the Imperial War Museum's approach in dealing with difficult subjects and just tell it as it was.
Comments welcome as ever! x
Comments welcome as ever! x
15 comments:
Pretty refreshing analysis! I've never made it beyond the Plague section in 4 visits (I have 2 of those annoying children which leap on interactive gubbins & hinder progress) & this has spurred me on to get back & see more, however disappointing certain sections may be. I hope that Suffragette tea-towel was produced in irony...wonder how well it sells?
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