Samuel Beckett: the Irish European, Museum of Reading
Samuel Beckett changed the nature of theatre and influenced generations of playwrights. This year the centenary of his birth is being celebrated through events and exhibitions across the world.
In this, Reading has an advantage over everywhere else: its university is home to the Beckett International Foundation and guardian of the Beckett Collection, which is the world's largest archive solely dedicated to the writer.
But visitors to Samuel Beckett: the Irish European, at the Museum of Reading would be hard pushed to tell this is the case. There is only a handful of original material on show here, and much of that suffers from poor display and interpretation.
The internationally renowned Beckett Collection began with the Samuel Beckett Exhibition held at the University of Reading's library in 1971 and the collection grew from there. Among other material it includes manuscripts, correspondence, books, artwork and theatre production material, much of it donated by Beckett.
It is a fantastically rich resource, and the Museum of Reading has been able to draw on it for this exhibition. It is surprising, then, that so many items on display are poor copies.
The exhibition starts promisingly, with an appropriately theatrical entrance. On the wall of the corridor outside the gallery are posters from a variety of Beckett productions over the past 50 years. The doorway frames two of John Haynes's famous black and white photos of Beckett's deeply lined face. But inside the drama ends and a municipal exhibition begins.
The exhibition is in a single room, which is never an easy space to deal with. The curators and designers have tackled it with an 'around the wall' approach: Beckett's biography is outlined in text panels and images on the walls of the room and this, together with eight small cases, forms the bulk of the exhibition.
The biography is divided into decades, each one with a short introductory text panel that gives brief information about what Beckett was doing in that period: where he was living, what he was working on and the key people in his life. There are additional text panels that should give more in-depth information, but often they comprise the introductory panel with a few extra paragraphs.
Accompanying these panels is what is one of the most disappointing features of the exhibition: a series of black and white copies of Beckett-related documents that have been mounted on foam board and stuck on the wall.
In this section the documents are copies of photographs and ephemera such as Beckett's birth certificate and they include items such as pages from his 'Whoroscope' notebook, which are small and positioned well above the eye-line of the average visitor. Given that the Beckett Collection must contain the originals, it is rather galling that they are not on display here; or at least that visitors aren't treated to better reproductions, better displayed.
Original material is shown in the eight cases that are dispersed throughout the room. These contain typescripts of plays next to published editions and publicity material for productions. It all lies rather passively in the cases with labels that merely state what the objects are. Often the material is rather hard to see as the lighting from the overhead track is obscured when visitors peer into the case. But there are a couple of gems.
One of these is in the first case. The label says it is Beckett's 'Dream' notebook, the one he filled with ideas for his first novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women. It is a hardback lined notebook filled with Beckett's exquisitely neat writing in purple ink, not a crossing out in sight. It is a very beautiful object, and its place next to a manuscript of the novel is a nice juxtaposition.
The curators have kept rigidly to a biography of Beckett but they do the visitors and the collection a disservice in the process. We have heard of Beckett because he was a famous playwright - but what made him so special? Waiting For Godot is hailed as a revolution in theatre, but how was it first received? How did Beckett develop his style?
Having posted Beckett's biography around the walls of the gallery the curators and designers have then been left with the space in the middle. This is filled with a large scaffold structure divided into compartments which hold props that could be used in Beckett plays.
In one compartment visitors are provided with costumes, props and 16 lines from Waiting For Godot and are invited to put on their own performance. This is a nice idea, but the rest of the 'installation' feels like a space-filler.
Thirty-five years ago an exhibition triggered a unique relationship between Reading and one of the 20th century's most important literary figures. This exhibition had the opportunity to show the product of that relationship, and to allow visitors to explore Beckett's work. What a shame that opportunity hasn't been better used.
Rachel Souhami is a freelance curator and lecturer in science communication at Imperial College London
Project data
Cost: £10,000
Funder: University of Reading
Curator: Julian Garforth
Exhibition design: University of Reading, Museum of Reading
Showcases: Click Systems
Photographic banners: Exhibition Display Solutions
Exhibition ends: 25 June
Samuel Beckett changed the nature of theatre and influenced generations of playwrights. This year the centenary of his birth is being celebrated through events and exhibitions across the world.
In this, Reading has an advantage over everywhere else: its university is home to the Beckett International Foundation and guardian of the Beckett Collection, which is the world's largest archive solely dedicated to the writer.
But visitors to Samuel Beckett: the Irish European, at the Museum of Reading would be hard pushed to tell this is the case. There is only a handful of original material on show here, and much of that suffers from poor display and interpretation.
The internationally renowned Beckett Collection began with the Samuel Beckett Exhibition held at the University of Reading's library in 1971 and the collection grew from there. Among other material it includes manuscripts, correspondence, books, artwork and theatre production material, much of it donated by Beckett.
It is a fantastically rich resource, and the Museum of Reading has been able to draw on it for this exhibition. It is surprising, then, that so many items on display are poor copies.
The exhibition starts promisingly, with an appropriately theatrical entrance. On the wall of the corridor outside the gallery are posters from a variety of Beckett productions over the past 50 years. The doorway frames two of John Haynes's famous black and white photos of Beckett's deeply lined face. But inside the drama ends and a municipal exhibition begins.
The exhibition is in a single room, which is never an easy space to deal with. The curators and designers have tackled it with an 'around the wall' approach: Beckett's biography is outlined in text panels and images on the walls of the room and this, together with eight small cases, forms the bulk of the exhibition.
The biography is divided into decades, each one with a short introductory text panel that gives brief information about what Beckett was doing in that period: where he was living, what he was working on and the key people in his life. There are additional text panels that should give more in-depth information, but often they comprise the introductory panel with a few extra paragraphs.
Accompanying these panels is what is one of the most disappointing features of the exhibition: a series of black and white copies of Beckett-related documents that have been mounted on foam board and stuck on the wall.
In this section the documents are copies of photographs and ephemera such as Beckett's birth certificate and they include items such as pages from his 'Whoroscope' notebook, which are small and positioned well above the eye-line of the average visitor. Given that the Beckett Collection must contain the originals, it is rather galling that they are not on display here; or at least that visitors aren't treated to better reproductions, better displayed.
Original material is shown in the eight cases that are dispersed throughout the room. These contain typescripts of plays next to published editions and publicity material for productions. It all lies rather passively in the cases with labels that merely state what the objects are. Often the material is rather hard to see as the lighting from the overhead track is obscured when visitors peer into the case. But there are a couple of gems.
One of these is in the first case. The label says it is Beckett's 'Dream' notebook, the one he filled with ideas for his first novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women. It is a hardback lined notebook filled with Beckett's exquisitely neat writing in purple ink, not a crossing out in sight. It is a very beautiful object, and its place next to a manuscript of the novel is a nice juxtaposition.
The curators have kept rigidly to a biography of Beckett but they do the visitors and the collection a disservice in the process. We have heard of Beckett because he was a famous playwright - but what made him so special? Waiting For Godot is hailed as a revolution in theatre, but how was it first received? How did Beckett develop his style?
Having posted Beckett's biography around the walls of the gallery the curators and designers have then been left with the space in the middle. This is filled with a large scaffold structure divided into compartments which hold props that could be used in Beckett plays.
In one compartment visitors are provided with costumes, props and 16 lines from Waiting For Godot and are invited to put on their own performance. This is a nice idea, but the rest of the 'installation' feels like a space-filler.
Thirty-five years ago an exhibition triggered a unique relationship between Reading and one of the 20th century's most important literary figures. This exhibition had the opportunity to show the product of that relationship, and to allow visitors to explore Beckett's work. What a shame that opportunity hasn't been better used.
Rachel Souhami is a freelance curator and lecturer in science communication at Imperial College London
Project data
Cost: £10,000
Funder: University of Reading
Curator: Julian Garforth
Exhibition design: University of Reading, Museum of Reading
Showcases: Click Systems
Photographic banners: Exhibition Display Solutions
Exhibition ends: 25 June
