Kirkgate, Castle Museum, York
The city of York is changing. Railway engineering is in decline and the chocolate and confectionery trade is melting away. Retailers in highly fashionable and picturesque areas such as the Shambles are giving up their leases in the face of falling income and rising costs.
The city is relying more and more on tourists. Given that there are more than 70 heritage attractions there is substantial competition, resulting in a constant need to update and innovate. Nowhere is this more evident than at York's Castle Museum.
The museum world has considerable cause to thank John Kirk. As a gifted amateur historian and medical practitioner visiting patients in and around North Yorkshire in the early 20th century he observed that lifestyles were rapidly changing.
His compulsive hoard of 'bygones' and memorabilia grew, filling his house and outbuildings. In the 1930s the city of York offered a permanent home for these motley collections and the Castle Museum was born.
Kirk's mission was to show everyday items in everyday settings, in a way that was edifying and entertaining. He was much influenced by Sweden's Artur Hazelius, who founded Skansen's open-air museum.
The centrepiece was a recreated street, named Kirkgate after its founder, in which frontages, shop fittings and street furniture were dressed with real objects. The project proved popular and has remained so. The image of the street with its hansom cab and replica horse is recognised worldwide.
Today the Castle Museum, Kirkgate apart, remains one of the most effective social history museums in Britain. Period room settings, costumes, children's and military galleries are those you might expect in any competent provincial museum. But two exhibitions are particularly memorable.
From Cradle to Grave is a highly intelligent and sensitive excursion into the three rites of passage: birth, marriage and death. The displays are comprehensive, well-designed and full of interest.
Equally moving is Seeing it Through, an exhibition on the lives of the people of York during the second world war. A collection of artefacts, oral recordings, photographs and ephemera is combined with wit, style and an attention to detail that is a great credit to the curators.
The present promotional material for the museum barely mentions these excellent galleries. Instead the refurbishment of Kirkgate is repeatedly trumpeted in language that owes much to media hype.
'Britain's most famous Victorian street experience,' we are informed, in words more suited to cheap daytime television shows, 'has had a massive makeover… there's a whole 30 per cent extra space to investigate… the closest thing to a time-tunnel experience England has to offer!' 'You've seen the street,' shouts the brochure, 'now meet the people!'
What does this mean in practice? Entering an archway guarded by a warder seated on a modern folding chair, one discovers an area that feels like a stage or television studio set for a touring production of Lionel Bart's Oliver.
Kirk had directorial oversight of the original design, specifying the placement of shops, and choosing the precise shade of paint for each architectural feature. He was especially insistent on natural daylight from a series of skylights.
In defiance of his wishes his successors have painted these black. Daylight is replicated by modern stage lighting. Every 20 minutes as part of 'the big show', night falls with a crash of simulated thunder, flashes of lightning and the sound of torrential rain. Owls hoot, voices call to each other, artificial gaslights flicker and footsteps run across the cobbles until, a few minutes later, an artificial dawn seeps back.
Standing still in the middle of this nonsense are the horse, hansom cab and driver, undrenched and unaffected by the night's events. As an experiment in living history the performance barely breathes; it is ineffectual and vulgar. There is a lack of intellectual rigour.
What date has the time tunnel sucked us back to? We appear to be in a vaguely pantomimic Victoriana, a period defined by supporting educational material that suggests we are bouncing between January 1870 and December 1899. Even Dr Who would be confused by this looseness.
New to the street are people in costume. They can be found in the toyshop, sweetmakers, grocers and school and some, like the policeman or a pawnshop user, speak to you. They are affable and pleasant but appear to have a narrow remit, speaking as themselves rather than in character, either first or third person.
The shops they inhabit, their windows and cabinets, all contain real objects but none are identified or priced. The result is the loss of integrity for the artefacts; they have become mere stage props. Caught in this rapid artificial passing of time there is no chance to look, ponder and wonder.
I spent some hours in the museum watching school parties and individual visitors. Each spent more time looking and commenting in the conventional galleries. I watched three sequences of day and night in Kirkgate. Most participants were confused, uncertain how to react and left quickly. Is this a deliberate ploy by the consultants and designers to ensure a fast throughput at peak times?
There are some things to praise. A free factual newssheet, the Kirkgate Examiner, provides valuable information. An adjacent exhibition, the Reflections Corridor, traces the lives and beliefs of contemporary residents of York, with a vibrancy that puts to shame the shallow values of the main exhibition.
The combined effect of the 'massive makeover' is not improvement but a sad dumbing down of Kirk's original hopes. Kirkgate has gained a gimmick and lost its soul. As Mark Twain once said of a similar farce: 'It may be clever - it may be quaint - but entertainment it ain't.' Nor, alas, is it educational or edifying.
Peter Lewis is a writer and a contributor to Museum Practice on
living history. He is a past director of Beamish, the North of England
Open Air Museum
Project data
Cost: £305,000
Main funders: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, York Museums Trust
Exhibition design: Exhibition Plus
AV: Centre Screen Productions
Lighting design: Nick Jones Lighting Design
Graphic production: EPS
The city of York is changing. Railway engineering is in decline and the chocolate and confectionery trade is melting away. Retailers in highly fashionable and picturesque areas such as the Shambles are giving up their leases in the face of falling income and rising costs.
The city is relying more and more on tourists. Given that there are more than 70 heritage attractions there is substantial competition, resulting in a constant need to update and innovate. Nowhere is this more evident than at York's Castle Museum.
The museum world has considerable cause to thank John Kirk. As a gifted amateur historian and medical practitioner visiting patients in and around North Yorkshire in the early 20th century he observed that lifestyles were rapidly changing.
His compulsive hoard of 'bygones' and memorabilia grew, filling his house and outbuildings. In the 1930s the city of York offered a permanent home for these motley collections and the Castle Museum was born.
Kirk's mission was to show everyday items in everyday settings, in a way that was edifying and entertaining. He was much influenced by Sweden's Artur Hazelius, who founded Skansen's open-air museum.
The centrepiece was a recreated street, named Kirkgate after its founder, in which frontages, shop fittings and street furniture were dressed with real objects. The project proved popular and has remained so. The image of the street with its hansom cab and replica horse is recognised worldwide.
Today the Castle Museum, Kirkgate apart, remains one of the most effective social history museums in Britain. Period room settings, costumes, children's and military galleries are those you might expect in any competent provincial museum. But two exhibitions are particularly memorable.
From Cradle to Grave is a highly intelligent and sensitive excursion into the three rites of passage: birth, marriage and death. The displays are comprehensive, well-designed and full of interest.
Equally moving is Seeing it Through, an exhibition on the lives of the people of York during the second world war. A collection of artefacts, oral recordings, photographs and ephemera is combined with wit, style and an attention to detail that is a great credit to the curators.
The present promotional material for the museum barely mentions these excellent galleries. Instead the refurbishment of Kirkgate is repeatedly trumpeted in language that owes much to media hype.
'Britain's most famous Victorian street experience,' we are informed, in words more suited to cheap daytime television shows, 'has had a massive makeover… there's a whole 30 per cent extra space to investigate… the closest thing to a time-tunnel experience England has to offer!' 'You've seen the street,' shouts the brochure, 'now meet the people!'
What does this mean in practice? Entering an archway guarded by a warder seated on a modern folding chair, one discovers an area that feels like a stage or television studio set for a touring production of Lionel Bart's Oliver.
Kirk had directorial oversight of the original design, specifying the placement of shops, and choosing the precise shade of paint for each architectural feature. He was especially insistent on natural daylight from a series of skylights.
In defiance of his wishes his successors have painted these black. Daylight is replicated by modern stage lighting. Every 20 minutes as part of 'the big show', night falls with a crash of simulated thunder, flashes of lightning and the sound of torrential rain. Owls hoot, voices call to each other, artificial gaslights flicker and footsteps run across the cobbles until, a few minutes later, an artificial dawn seeps back.
Standing still in the middle of this nonsense are the horse, hansom cab and driver, undrenched and unaffected by the night's events. As an experiment in living history the performance barely breathes; it is ineffectual and vulgar. There is a lack of intellectual rigour.
What date has the time tunnel sucked us back to? We appear to be in a vaguely pantomimic Victoriana, a period defined by supporting educational material that suggests we are bouncing between January 1870 and December 1899. Even Dr Who would be confused by this looseness.
New to the street are people in costume. They can be found in the toyshop, sweetmakers, grocers and school and some, like the policeman or a pawnshop user, speak to you. They are affable and pleasant but appear to have a narrow remit, speaking as themselves rather than in character, either first or third person.
The shops they inhabit, their windows and cabinets, all contain real objects but none are identified or priced. The result is the loss of integrity for the artefacts; they have become mere stage props. Caught in this rapid artificial passing of time there is no chance to look, ponder and wonder.
I spent some hours in the museum watching school parties and individual visitors. Each spent more time looking and commenting in the conventional galleries. I watched three sequences of day and night in Kirkgate. Most participants were confused, uncertain how to react and left quickly. Is this a deliberate ploy by the consultants and designers to ensure a fast throughput at peak times?
There are some things to praise. A free factual newssheet, the Kirkgate Examiner, provides valuable information. An adjacent exhibition, the Reflections Corridor, traces the lives and beliefs of contemporary residents of York, with a vibrancy that puts to shame the shallow values of the main exhibition.
The combined effect of the 'massive makeover' is not improvement but a sad dumbing down of Kirk's original hopes. Kirkgate has gained a gimmick and lost its soul. As Mark Twain once said of a similar farce: 'It may be clever - it may be quaint - but entertainment it ain't.' Nor, alas, is it educational or edifying.
Peter Lewis is a writer and a contributor to Museum Practice on
living history. He is a past director of Beamish, the North of England
Open Air Museum
Project data
Cost: £305,000
Main funders: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, York Museums Trust
Exhibition design: Exhibition Plus
AV: Centre Screen Productions
Lighting design: Nick Jones Lighting Design
Graphic production: EPS
