Medieval London Gallery, Museum of London
All city museums have a significant hurdle to get over. They have to represent a dynamic, complex, irreducible organism through a display of historic artefacts preserved by chance, corroded by time and/or rendered meaningless by redundancy.
When the Museum of London opened in Kensington Palace in 1912, an anonymous reviewer in Museums Journal was unable to find 'the guiding principle' behind the displays.
Another critic was even more forthright: 'I found a number of rooms of varying sizes, each crammed with as many mid-Victorian funeral exhibition cases as it could hold, and each case crammed with as many specimens as possible.'
Things have come on a bit since then. The permanent displays at the Museum of London are less cluttered and have been carefully themed to 'tell a story' about the development and growth of the city. And permanence is very much a relative concept in museums; all long-term displays get tired after a while.
The items shown in the Museum of London's medieval gallery have been in existence for hundreds of years. Their 20-year-old surroundings, however, were in dire need of refurbishment. The medieval gallery was closed for about a year while things were spruced up.
The story of London from the departure of the Romans in 410AD to the accession of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558 now has new cabinets to house the many items, acres of fresh white-painted plaster and MDF, new laminate floors, computer displays and plenty of focused lighting.
After a table-projected computer flythrough of the London of the period - perhaps a bit too brisk for my tastes, but then I am of a pre-MTV generation - the dominant object is the large model of St Paul's Cathedral before the Great Fire.
Readers familiar with the previous galleries will remember this model, but they could never see it so clearly before. It has pride of place in the main space of the new display, shown on a rather lower plinth which makes it far easier for children to get a clear view.
The daily life of Londoners is at the centre of the gallery, with displays dealing with the concepts that influenced their lives. Wall texts and interactive material stress the links between the items on display and our present-day lives.
Another main audiovisual presentation concerns the Black Death. A semi-enclosed separate area with room for about ten or 12 people is set aside for this grim narrative - which has clear parallels with modern fears of a new pandemic coming from the east.
A great many metal objects are on display. Metal artefacts usually last better than organic ones, so there are swords, spear tips, locks and keys in abundance.
As London slowly emerged from the horror of the Black Death and grew more wealthy, boys' toys begin to appear. These often originated abroad, though not from China as they do today, but from Europe.
The ones I noted were a fancy French watch and a clockwork gadget intended for the dinner table. The latter novelty, which came from Germany, is a wheeled carriage supporting a barrel intended to sprinkle rosewater onto diners' outstretched hands as it travelled slowly down the centre of the table.
A commonplace object among the displays may suddenly reassert a link with the past. A child's glove dating from about 1400, found at Bankside, looks like a mitten of today.
Crudely made, it resembles an oven glove more than a supple leather glove, but a Londoner made it, and another Londoner owned it and wore it, until one day he or she lost it in the river.
Any such partial refurbishment within a large museum tends to show up the condition of the surrounding galleries. The fresh white paint and new lighting of the Medieval and Tudor galleries make the basic fabric of the museum building - brick floors, timber handrails and concrete columns - look shabby.
The Stuart London displays now seem dowdy by contrast, the fittings absurdly old-fashioned, the 'concealed' loudspeakers prehistoric.
Children were greatly in evidence when I visited the gallery, as it was a special weekend with crowds of 'medieval Londoners' doing medieval things. The actors were talking about arms and armour, stringing bows, running a herbal remedy service, and sundry other everyday activities.
Eavesdropping on the children and parents in the galleries, I genuinely overheard 'I think it's fascinating' and 'No, I'm not bored' from different children at different times. They were joining in with quizzes and trying on replica Tudor clothes; who could ask for anything more?
David Brady teaches in London
Project data
Cost: £775,000
Main Funders: Corporation of London, Livery Companies of London, DCMS/Wolfson Challenge Fund
Exhibition designer: At Large
Audiovisuals: New Angle
Fit-out: Blueprint Exhibitions
Graphics: BAF Graphics
Cases: Netherfield
All city museums have a significant hurdle to get over. They have to represent a dynamic, complex, irreducible organism through a display of historic artefacts preserved by chance, corroded by time and/or rendered meaningless by redundancy.
When the Museum of London opened in Kensington Palace in 1912, an anonymous reviewer in Museums Journal was unable to find 'the guiding principle' behind the displays.
Another critic was even more forthright: 'I found a number of rooms of varying sizes, each crammed with as many mid-Victorian funeral exhibition cases as it could hold, and each case crammed with as many specimens as possible.'
Things have come on a bit since then. The permanent displays at the Museum of London are less cluttered and have been carefully themed to 'tell a story' about the development and growth of the city. And permanence is very much a relative concept in museums; all long-term displays get tired after a while.
The items shown in the Museum of London's medieval gallery have been in existence for hundreds of years. Their 20-year-old surroundings, however, were in dire need of refurbishment. The medieval gallery was closed for about a year while things were spruced up.
The story of London from the departure of the Romans in 410AD to the accession of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558 now has new cabinets to house the many items, acres of fresh white-painted plaster and MDF, new laminate floors, computer displays and plenty of focused lighting.
After a table-projected computer flythrough of the London of the period - perhaps a bit too brisk for my tastes, but then I am of a pre-MTV generation - the dominant object is the large model of St Paul's Cathedral before the Great Fire.
Readers familiar with the previous galleries will remember this model, but they could never see it so clearly before. It has pride of place in the main space of the new display, shown on a rather lower plinth which makes it far easier for children to get a clear view.
The daily life of Londoners is at the centre of the gallery, with displays dealing with the concepts that influenced their lives. Wall texts and interactive material stress the links between the items on display and our present-day lives.
Another main audiovisual presentation concerns the Black Death. A semi-enclosed separate area with room for about ten or 12 people is set aside for this grim narrative - which has clear parallels with modern fears of a new pandemic coming from the east.
A great many metal objects are on display. Metal artefacts usually last better than organic ones, so there are swords, spear tips, locks and keys in abundance.
As London slowly emerged from the horror of the Black Death and grew more wealthy, boys' toys begin to appear. These often originated abroad, though not from China as they do today, but from Europe.
The ones I noted were a fancy French watch and a clockwork gadget intended for the dinner table. The latter novelty, which came from Germany, is a wheeled carriage supporting a barrel intended to sprinkle rosewater onto diners' outstretched hands as it travelled slowly down the centre of the table.
A commonplace object among the displays may suddenly reassert a link with the past. A child's glove dating from about 1400, found at Bankside, looks like a mitten of today.
Crudely made, it resembles an oven glove more than a supple leather glove, but a Londoner made it, and another Londoner owned it and wore it, until one day he or she lost it in the river.
Any such partial refurbishment within a large museum tends to show up the condition of the surrounding galleries. The fresh white paint and new lighting of the Medieval and Tudor galleries make the basic fabric of the museum building - brick floors, timber handrails and concrete columns - look shabby.
The Stuart London displays now seem dowdy by contrast, the fittings absurdly old-fashioned, the 'concealed' loudspeakers prehistoric.
Children were greatly in evidence when I visited the gallery, as it was a special weekend with crowds of 'medieval Londoners' doing medieval things. The actors were talking about arms and armour, stringing bows, running a herbal remedy service, and sundry other everyday activities.
Eavesdropping on the children and parents in the galleries, I genuinely overheard 'I think it's fascinating' and 'No, I'm not bored' from different children at different times. They were joining in with quizzes and trying on replica Tudor clothes; who could ask for anything more?
David Brady teaches in London
Project data
Cost: £775,000
Main Funders: Corporation of London, Livery Companies of London, DCMS/Wolfson Challenge Fund
Exhibition designer: At Large
Audiovisuals: New Angle
Fit-out: Blueprint Exhibitions
Graphics: BAF Graphics
Cases: Netherfield
