The British Museum at 250.

Cunliffe, Barry ; Renfrew, Colin ; Gosden, Chris 等

Barry Cunliffe

The opening of the Great Court in 2000 heralded the renaissance of the British Museum and one has only to glance through the bi-monthly give-away What's on to appreciate the new-found bounding energy of the institution in its 250th anniversary year. The pace of change over the last three years has been remarkable. The most striking symbol of the new order is The Great Court itself, a place of orientation and recreation for visitors, providing the Museum with a new heart--it pulsates with life; but behind the scenes a gentler revolution is underway. Among the many inspirations for this new sense of direction perhaps the most significant has been the return of the Ethnographic collection from Burlington Gardens, to be newly housed and displayed in space vacated by the old British Library. This has encouraged a new philosophy to emerge--the conscious breaking down of rigid Departmental boundaries to allow the collections to be presented in cross-cultural ways. Earlier exhibitions, Smashing pots and Pottery in the making were the pioneers. The new exhibition, The Museum of the Mind, is an ambitious and highly successful attempt to develop the concept still further. It echoes and underscores the Museum's now frequently displayed by-line 'Illuminating world cultures'.

The theme of the exhibition is simple--memory is essential to our being: it provides us with a sense of identity and continuity. Since all societies create images and objects to sustain memory, museums, as repositories of artefacts, are the guardian of the world's cultural memories. It is a neat restatement of the Museum's purpose and one highly appropriate to the multinational, multicultural audience which it seeks to serve. That said, it is an ambitious concept and one not easy to communicate in a popular way. Yet, by any standards, this exhibition must be judged a spectacular success. Part of that success lies in the crisp and highly selective presentation. Six clearly signposted themes are developed: the museum as the theatre of memory, aide-memoires, keeping memory alive, commemoration, mementos and the future of memory, this last reminding us of the unlimited power of computers and video to record memory. To illustrate the themes, sixty items from the museum collection are displayed. This deliberate restraint has paid off. The exhibition space is not large and is rather awkwardly shaped, rather like a wide corridor curved to fit around the old Library building. Previous experience has shown that it is not easy to use and can appear cluttered and confusing. This time the designers have been highly skilful, creating a simple bilateral symmetry with, at its local point, a stunning greater-than-life sized papier-mache skeleton, entwined with plants through which birds, snakes and animals crawl and nest, made for the Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations in the 1980s. You never see the skeleton full frontal but glimpse him wherever you are, often through clever use of mirrors. He provides a visual and intellectual focus for the entire exhibition.

This same visual excitement runs through the exhibition with unusual juxtapositions taking us by surprise and making us think comparatively. Gold death masks of the second century AD from Nineveh are placed next to a wax death mask of Oliver Cromwell while a rather dreary Roman funerary monument is outrageously upstaged by a brightly coloured Ghanaian coffin made in 1999 in the form of a rifle. The message is clear--cultures across time and throughout the world respond in similar ways to similar emotional needs.

Memory is, of course, a particularly relevant theme for the Museum celebrating the 250th anniversary of its foundation. As you turn to leave the exhibition, you are confronted by a striking construction crafted largely in white satin. It is a Mexican Day of the Dead altar created specifically to honour the BM's birthday. Made to resemble the facade of the museum, there, in the place usually reserved for an image of the revered ancestor, is an engraving of Sir Hans Sloane, looking slightly bewildered, in whose collection lay the Museum's origin. A nice touch of reverence.

This is my ideal of an exhibition brilliantly conceived and designed, original and thought provoking, often amusing ... and not too big.

Colin Renfrew

'Mind' is a somewhat cerebral concept, and to select an exhibition upon the theme of 'The Museum of the Miner in a major collection like the British Museum constitutes an overwhelming task, since, as John Mack (until recently Senior Curator at the Museum) rightly observes in his lively and informative accompanying publication (Mack 2003): 'museums are themselves instruments of memory'. In some senses, any assemblage or display of curated cultural objects is a museum of the mind. The current exhibition recognises this by making frequent references to the British Museum's collections as a whole. This notion is taken further in the accompanying pamphlet which follows the example of the last exhibit in this space, Antony Gormley's Field for the British Isles, by establishing a 'museum trail' which will take the visitor through the galleries of the Museum. The visit involves ten particularly memorable objects, from the colossal bust of Ramesses II in the Egyptian sculpture galleries, to the wonderful carved lintel from Yaxchilan depicting the vision of the Maya princess, Lady Xoc, in the Mexican Gallery.

The exhibition itself, in the Central Hotung Gallery in the Great Court, seems at first a rather overwhelming melange, yet it is redeemed by the coherence of its constituent themes, as set out by Mack. The first, the British Museum as a 'theatre of memory', has as its centrepiece a wonderful composition by the nineteenth century watercolourist, James Stephanoff. This brings together in a single architectural image an ornamental facade as a kind of collage, setting the Parthenon Marbles at the Summit, with Etruscan, Egyptian, Assyrian Mayan, and Indian works at progressively lower levels. That is certainly one way of ordering the world, although a robustly evolutionary one. The next section, 'In the Mind's Eye', is devoted to the working of memory, as experienced--although without reference to the physiology of the brain, a term which scarcely figures in the exhibition. This is followed by a section on mnemonic devices, perhaps the most directly informative on the central theme, incorporating the stick and shell navigational configurations ('maps') of Micronesia, the string quipu of the Inca, and a wealth of calendrical contrivances. The section, 'Living Memory', embraces portraiture, with ample selection from the Department of Coins & Medals, while the section 'In Memoriam' celebrates the commemoration of the dead. 'Remembering and Forgetting Events' celebrates their depiction, and "Holy Relics and Memorabilia' ranges from religious tokens and reliquaries' to the straightforward holiday souvenir, often on a somewhat elevated level, for instance some choice Roman sculptures from the Grand Tour.

The exhibition is perhaps at its best when it successfully reflects the thinking of its creator, John Mack. But while some exhibits, especially the mnemonic devices, are particularly effective in documenting the working of the mind and of memory, others lack specificity. Why is one portrait a better example of living memory or of commemoration than another? The exhibition is, however, full of good things and unexpected juxtapositions. I particularly enjoyed the (presumably unintentional) symmetrical placing, flanking the central Stephanoff watercolour, of the thirteenth-century life-size silver reliquary head of St. Eustace to the right with, on the left, the life-size bronze head by Elizabeth Frink of the former Director of the Museum, complete with spectacles 'made to Sir John Pope-Hennessy's own prescription'. The pious verisimilitude of the two august images transcends the centuries.

John Mack has put together an intriguing and stimulating exhibition, in which the ethnographic examples, from his own Department at the Museum, more than hold their own with their counterparts from the Classical world, thus subverting Stephanoff's hierarchically ordered vision.

Chris Gosden

Memory takes many forms. Many memories are personal--there are things only I remember--but many others are institutional, or cultural or national. Much of our memory derives from our connections with material culture: the smell, taste, touch, sound and sight of things evoke and maintain memory. Remembering and understanding are both part of complex processes of positioning ourselves in the world, of relating to the world in particular ways so that we can see, feel and shape that world in ways which (we hope) will make sense to us. Memory, like understanding, is an active and cultivated process and not something which just happens. Museums are current cultural institutions in which the processes of understanding and of memory are strongly linked, especially in the case of a national institution like the British Museum. The structure of the exhibition, starting with glimpses into the history of the BM and moving onto objects from ancient Rome and Micronesia, and Mexico to Nigeria, looked set to reflect on memory, but also museums' place in cultivating memories of particular types.

The Museum of the Mind exhibition was part of the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the British Museum and which had the complex task of reflecting on the history of the institution, as well as the range of human experience accessible through its collections. The current western concept of mind emphasises abstract thought based on empirical sense, impressions which provide information about the world. The sense most resonant with this concept of mind is that of sight, so that the process of observation is key to understanding. Seeing is not just believing, but is also the key to knowing in this view. Coincidentally or not, the museum is most at home with seeing, so that modes of display and representation treat the visitor primarily as viewer. However, an early visitor to the British Museum in 1786 had a different experience 'With what sensations one handles a Carthaginian helmet excavated near Capua, household utensils from Herculaneum ... There are mirrors too, belonging to Roman matrons ... with one of these mirrors in my hand I looked amongst the urns, thinking meanwhile, 'Maybe chance has preserved amongst these remains some part of the dust from the fine eyes of a Greek or Roman lady, who so many years ago surveyed herself in this mirror'. (La Roche 1933:107-8). We are shocked to discover that earlier generations of visitors handled the collections--now only specialists are allowed to touch, which denies perhaps a feeling of intimacy with the remains, an intimacy possible during excavation and analysis, but not display. John Mack attempts to overcome the emphasis on seeing by introducing sound, voices heard in the entrance way to which visitors could contribute and by alluding to touch. There is no way that a museum with six million visitors a year can allow them to touch valued objects, but a little more reflection on what sorts of experiences of memory and understanding a museum affords would have been welcome.

The exhibition contains wonderful objects, a testimony to the range and depth of John Mack's understanding of the object world and its human consequences. The objects did feel a little too loosely connected to each other to make the whole convincingly more than the sum of its parts, or to show what sorts of understanding a museum can create of the world in a manner that links with memory. A little more history showing how we have moved from a museum for a small number of visitors in the eighteenth century where touching, smelling or sounding the objects was possible, to a mass experience where only seeing is generally allowed would have been welcome. This is especially true as the most famous modern evocation of memory is Proust's revelation of the worlds of memory that taste could afford. This is a compelling exhibition and accompanying book, but suffers slightly from the mixed themes of memorialising the British Museum as well as exploring memory and material culture.

Helen Geake

I really wanted to like this exhibition. I love the British Museum and its peculiar scholarship. Its 250th birthday is a cause for celebration, and I was happy to think that it had enough self-confidence for this ambitious exhibition. But I came out worried, wondering if this beautiful whale of a place could survive much longer in its malnourished state.

The exhibition starts well. It's at the centre of the museum and it's free. The idea is simple; the importance of memory, and the way in which museums maintain these memories. The design, by the in-house team, is flawless. The first exhibit is a giant Mexican Day of the Dead altar dedicated to the museum. Big, batty, beautiful; just right. Then there is a section on the British Museum itself, with arresting images which economically create a sense of its remarkable history.

The exhibition then goes on to look at objects and memory. Timepieces and aides-memoires lead on to things which have lost their memory, like a now indecipherable Inca quipu. Good juxtapositions make the right connections in our minds.

From here, though, the exhibition falters. It's as if an excellent basic idea was spoiled because there wasn't enough time or energy to develop it. The concept of celebrating the BM disappears, and we find ourselves in a worthy display of objects relating to memory from around the world. Yoking the two exhibitions together has spoilt both. In this small space, a simple exhibition about the BM might have succeeded. But a complex idea such as The Museum of the Mind needs more consideration. I gather that in the accompanying book the concepts are better related, but it is sad that the display has suffered.

Good ideas are revisited--memories of the living and the dead are too similar to be different themes. In relics and souvenirs, the beautiful Christian relics are over-emphasised; an exploration of souvenirs in general would have been better. Strangely, there is nothing on modern Japanese souvenirs, despite an excellent recent temporary exhibition. One is struck by the quantity of objects from the Ethnography department, as one might have been struck decades ago by the emphasis on Classical civilisations.

There is little on the creation or manipulation of memories, and nothing about how museums contribute to this. The role of landscape in memory, a very interesting aspect of current archaeological research, is also neglected.

One leaves with the feeling that the overstretched curators in all the BM's departments have contributed what they can, and that John Mack has not had enough time or help to sort it all out. As he is Keeper of Ethnography, and knows a great deal about the BM, he has covered it all up with a thick layer of expertise. But this is not enough, and certainly not what we need from the top museum in the world's fourth largest economy. On the day I visited, fourteen galleries were closed all day due to budget cuts. The British Museum is our national memory. Have we forgotten this?

Nicholas James adds

Divergence among our reviewers' responses can be explained partly by looking through the book that accompanied the show (Mack 2003). Distinguishing between uninterpreted historical items and our reflections on them, John Mack (2003: 149) points out that 'As memory ... is on the move, so ... are the narratives, in which the meaning of objects is embedded, ... reshaped in order to make our sense of the present lead coherently to a desired future'. Perhaps it is only fair, this year, to indulge the Museum in reflection on itself and its visitors. As a leading social anthropologist, Mack is well qualified to do that, and his analysis of the Museum's evidence about how people, the world over, muse on their pasts is learned and systematic, witty, readable and delightfully'--if, in places, misleadingly--illustrated. Its value outlasts the exhibition itself. Yet one reason that many ANTIQUITY readers may share Helen Geake's disappointment is that the show--and the book--rejected the scientific purpose inspiring the Museum through most of its history.

A 'belief in some master narrative sits ill with contemporary approaches', explains Mack (2003: 17); and he and his exhibition ducked the issue by playing the archaeological collections down. At rough counts, of some 123 illustrations in the book and references in the text, more than 25 are ethnographic; 16 are selected from the Museum's Department of Medieval & Modern Europe; a dozen are from Greek & Roman Antiquities, eight from Japanese Antiquities (few archaeological), seven from each of Oriental Antiquities and Prehistoric & Early Europe (nothing Palaeolithic or Mesolithic), with only three from the Department of Egypt & Sudan, and a couple from the PreHispanic Americas; 21 are from the Department of Coins & Medals, and ten from Prints & Drawings. A worrying feature of some of the illustrations (of the Hinton St Mary mosaic, for example) is that the design gives little sense of their size. So what are we to make of the Museum's most obviously displayed and most famous, if not most numerous, exhibits? Barry Cunliffe's point about reunification of the ethnographic collections with the rest is very well taken but was it necessary so to pass the archaeology over?

Even if the 'master narrative' embarrasses the Museum, the exhibition could have acknowledged more of the methodological value in the archaeological collections. Previous publications of the Museum's have used them well to explain how archaeology is done. Like Chris Godsen, Mack (2003: 23) himself doubts whether a national museum is a 'theatre' of 'memory-work' in the way--as he explains--of some local museums. 2003's cautious commemoration was at odds with the gallery that show so much about peoples remote from poor contemporary London.

References

LA ROCHE, S. 1933. Sophie in London. London: Jonathan Cape.

MACK, JOHN. 2003. The Museum of the Mind: art and memory in world cultures. London: British Museum Press.

Barry Cunliffe, (1) Colin Renfrew, (2) Chris Gosden, (3) & Helen Geake (4)

(1) Institute of Archaeology 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PG

(2) Department of Archaeology, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ

(3) Pin-Rivers Museum, 64 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PN

(4) Portable Antiquities Scheme, Department of Archaeology, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ