“Each step was so small, so inconsequential... one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing,” wrote the American journalist Milton Sanford Mayer about the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s.
The Museums Journal of that decade provides a record of a sector that, like the rest of society, is unaware everything is about to change. With the benefit of hindsight, one can’t help but search for signs that museum professionals of the era had any inkling of the catastrophe that lay in store at the decade’s end, but how could they?
Instead, the magazine is mostly preoccupied with the minutiae of day-to-day working life. It was a decade of significant policy developments.
A summary of the Museums Association’s (MA) June 1930 conference in Cardiff reports that “several momentous events have occurred in the history of the museum movement”, not least the release of the final report by the recently established Royal Commission on National Museums and Galleries.
The commission’s report shows that some contemporary debates in the sector go back a long way. It deplores “the absence of any united connection between National and Provincial institutions” and calls for a “more organic connection” between the two. Plus ça change...
Advertisement
A fresh perspective
Other recommendations from the commission lay the groundwork for what now seems standard in modern museum practice, proposing that “exhibits should be periodically changed; that temporary exhibitions should be held; …that artificial lighting should be more seriously considered; …and that labelling should be made simpler”.
Amid the broader sector discourse, quirky individual interests jump out. For instance, one of Museums Journal’s past editors appears to have had a fascination with rural and open-air museums in Scandinavia. It’s curious to think that this coverage may well have inspired the creation of similar institutions in the UK.
Then, as now, curators express frustration at public misconceptions about the sector. “We are growing rather tired of the continued attacks in the press on the dry-as-dust, the lumber-room and the curiosity-shop types of museum; but we realise that the poor journalist must live,” writes one exasperated 1931 editorial.
In 1930, angered by an exhibit at the Belfast Museum (now the Ulster Museum) on human evolution, the local branch of the British-Israel World Foundation unanimously passed a resolution proclaiming that the display “violates the religious feelings of multitudes of our fellow-citizens and ratepayers, and we call for its removal forthwith.”
The Museums Journal editorial of its day proposes a somewhat weak-willed response, agreeing that “we do feel that the exhibit in question is open to criticism” and proposing that it would be “more correct, as well as advisable, to label this and similar exhibits as presenting the views of such and such scientific authorities. That course surely could offend nobody and could always be defended as a simple statement of fact”.
Advertisement
A few pages later, a disgruntled letter from the museum’s curator points out that the offended party “absolutely deny that a ‘simple statement of fact’ is possible at all”, and castigates Museums Journal’s unnamed editor for “[going] out of your way to comment on work you have not seen” and for taking the side of the museum’s offended adversary.
Although the subjects have evolved, it is notable that, almost a hundred years later, similar ideological debates are still raging – and there never was some bygone era of neutrality, even if there are those who would prefer to “offend nobody”.
Unsurprisingly, the paternalist and racist attitudes that shaped UK museums also filter through to the pages of Museums Journal. Every so often, there is a particularly jarring example: a piece about the African Gallery in Liverpool Public Museums writes that it is “most fitting that the great port which receives the products of the hands of Africans… should include amongst its public institutions a place for the study of their minds.
“These objects are not curious relics of dead civilisations but are eloquent of the characteristics of peoples very much alive today,” the writer continues, “whose moral and educational guidance is presenting embarrassing problems to the European nations that have them in tutelage.”
The article goes on to note that: “The museum’s quota of the captured bronzes of Benin is fully representative of the skill and artistry of that lost art and its mysterious origin. They illustrate what [the British consul Richard Burton] called ‘the ethnographical peculiarity of Benin in the contrast between a comparative civilisation and abominable barbarity.’”
A time to reflect and respond
While celebrating this 125th year, it’s also vital to confront the fact that views like this were once propagated in the pages of Museums Journal – it is a long-lasting legacy that must be addressed.
Advertisement
Towards the end of the decade, the clouds of war finally begin to appear on the magazine’s horizon. The August 1939 edition celebrates the MA’s 50th anniversary, and among the president’s reflections on how the sector has transformed, he sends out a “message of sympathy and encouragement” to curators across the world, emphasising the value of museums in overcoming the “myopia” besetting the human race.
“Early mentions of the conflict show a sector struggling to fully appreciate the difficulties to come”
Another piece details an MA pamphlet about air raid precautions for museums, although it also mentions criticism that the advice given assumes “large numbers of people would be available and that museums would have ample resources in protective material”. Like the Covid pandemic, those early mentions of the conflict show a sector struggling to fully appreciate the difficulties to come.
And then, suddenly, it’s September 1939 and the world is at war. Almost the entire focus of Museums Journal shifts to “museums in war-time”, reporting on the removal of valuable collections; war-damage insurance; the takeover of institutions for emergency use; the skeleton staff left as museum professionals transfer to wartime service; and the closure of all of London’s national institutions. Of the latter, one reader writes: “A black-out of physical life is irksome enough; let us not, Sir, have a mental black-out imposed on us too!”
The MA “strongly urges” museums to remain open wherever possible, advocating for the educational work they can carry out in neutral or evacuation areas. The Ministry of Information gets in touch to discuss the “value of temporary exhibitions” to war-time propaganda. One subsequent effort at Leicester Museum disseminates government advice about protecting against poison gas through a display of “masks grim and gay”.
Throughout the war, Museums Journal continues as a monthly publication, although the number of pages reduces. Advertising, which began appearing in the early 1930s, dries up. Reports of destruction begin trickling, and then flooding, in: an air-raid damages Bristol Museum and Art Gallery; a bomb wrecks a third of Leeds City Museum, wiping out its bird room; Portsmouth’s City Museum is “almost entirely destroyed”.
Eventually a council is formed to record the destruction of historic buildings, and discussions begin about post-war reconstruction.
“A black-out of physical life is irksome enough; let us not, Sir, have a mental black-out imposed on us too!”
In the midst of all this, however, there are some important museum sector developments. A 1941 article reports on the “tentative emergence of a code of conduct” for museum professionals, the precursor to today’s Code of Ethics.
Finally, in 1945, thoughts turn to the post-conflict role of culture and museums. “The world is looking forward, after the war, to a higher general level of wellbeing… but material advances are of limited value unless they are accompanied by progress on the cultural and spiritual planes,” states that year’s June editorial.
This emerging view of culture as essential to the happiness and wellbeing of society, alongside more material necessities – the “bread and roses” philosophy – will eventually find its way into government with the foundation of new postwar bodies such as the Arts Council of Great Britain.
Thoughts turn to planning for the 1951 Festival of Britain, which the sector agrees must not simply revolve around London’s South Bank. Local museums are tasked with bringing “the strong regional propensities and characteristics, so characteristic of Britain, into the lime-light”
After the austerity of the war years, the 1950s bring a fresh sense of style to Museums Journal. The sober blue-grey front covers of previous years give way in 1955 to a white and red colour palette and elegant font, eventually evolving into bright new colour pairings every month.
Turning a new page
The typography of the magazine also changes. The dense text of earlier years is replaced by white space, and black and white images start to pop up. A special issue of Museums Journal in October 1956 marking the International Campaign for Museums uses a brightly illustrated front cover and glossy paper for the first time.
The 1950s also see significant technological developments. There is great excitement about the potential of Perspex in museum displays, while new studies on visible and ultraviolet radiation herald advances in museum lighting.
In spite of progress in the sector, however, an awareness remains that there is much still to do to make the political case for museums.
“A large part of the numbers who throng our buildings is apt to think that these came into existence by some Act of God, and that by some equally mysterious but automatic process they maintain themselves and their collections,” says MA president Philip Hendy in his 1957 conference address.
The magazine sees out the dying days of the 1950s with an extended feature about a scientific expedition to Anglesey’s Puffin Island. The swinging sixties are just around the corner but, as of yet, Museums Journal, and the puffins, remain blissfully unaware.