Oliver Green
Museums and pop music do not go together naturally. Unlike a traditional art gallery show, there is no well-established format for mixing the two media effectively in an exhibition or display. Music is so much about sound and performance, and many attempts to present and interpret it in a museum gallery have felt doomed to failure.
Remember the National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield? Not many people do. It folded within a year of opening in 1999, so hardly anyone got to visit it. Visitor numbers were low from the start and the plug was pulled on the project with almost indecent haste. The music might have been popular, but the organisers badly miscalculated
its effectiveness as an exhibition draw.
Displays on pop have often seemed fated to be either safe, worthy and dull or commercial, superficial and tacky. Imaginative explorations of pop culture have remained pretty thin on the ground.
So I half-expected this Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) exhibition to be a blatant crowd puller hung around a few flashy frocks, which seemed to be the essence of last year's Kylie show. The original concept may well have been a simple fashion show displaying the slinky dresses worn by the most successful girl group of all time, but it has become something far more interesting.
Motown was the soundtrack to my schooldays and I had serious doubts about even the V&A's ability to turn the story of the Supremes into an effective museum exhibition, but, it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable shows I've seen for years.
It is not a nerdy exhibition about pop trivia and it's not just about showbiz fashion. This is a fascinating slice of modern American social and cultural history that adds up to far more than a nostalgic look back at music, fashion and celebrity in the 1960s. It's about racial politics, role models and the experience of young African Americans only a generation ago.
That social background is important, and may be quite an eye-opener for British audiences who only know the Supremes for their strictly unpolitical music and glamorous style. Some of the context is presented here through familiar images and footage of the American civil rights movement.
Its links with the parallel rise of Berry Gordy's spectacularly successful African-American record label are a little hazy, but it frames the story of the Supremes themselves appropriately.
The Supremes were Motown's biggest stars between their first number one - Where Did our Love Go? - in 1964 and their break-up in 1970, when Diana Ross went solo and "departed for divadom".
This exhibition has been put together with great skill using the impressive collection of designer dresses, memorabilia and other material kept by Mary Wilson, the other surviving member of the original line-up of the trio from 1962. Texts and captions are concise and well written, with expertly selected video clips from Wilson and characters such as the indomitable Maxine Powell, who ran the Motown charm school.
It's a great story that goes well beyond the hackneyed "poor kids from the Detroit housing projects make it to fame and Las Vegas" showbiz trajectory.
The subtext seems to be that the Supremes made a major contribution to social change in America by sequinned subversion, though at the time they were just trying to "be beautiful and professional and do a good job", as Wilson puts it. I just wish I'd been there to hear her sing at the opening.
Oliver Green is the head of collections of the London Transport Museum
Tonya Nelson
As a child of the 1970s, I did not witness the meteoric rise of the Supremes. Instead, I saw the collapse of the group and the subsequent chronicling of the scandals that surrounded the trio - the fight to be lead singer; Diana Ross's affair with Berry Gordy; and Florence Ballard's dismissal from the group, followed by her alcoholism and untimely death.
The V&A's exhibition the Story of the Supremes from the Mary Wilson Collection, avoids rehashing these events. Instead, it reminds us of the incredible odds the group overcame to achieve their unprecedented success.
The curators cleverly use the dresses worn by the Supremes as the foundation for a discussion about racial segregation, the civil rights movement and Motown's success in bridging the racial divide.
I expected to see rows of mannequins wearing glamorous gowns and accessories. Given the beauty of the dresses designed by Bob Mackie and Michael Travis, that might have been enough. What I found instead was a succinct, yet thorough, overview of the state of race relations in America between 1930 and 1950.
It is not the light and breezy subject matter one might expect of an exhibition in the V&A's fashion galleries, but it is key to understanding the context in which the Supremes made their foray into popular music.
The struggles of African Americans during the 1950s and 1960s and the development of the Civil Rights movement are charted in parallel, sometimes tenuously, with the Supremes' rise to fame. What I appreciated most was the attention given to the less obvious problems the group faced as African-American women.
In a video interview. Wilson discusses how difficult it was to achieve their glamorous appearance. At the time, manufacturers did not make cosmetics for darker skin tones. Consequently, Wilson sometimes wore only Maybeline eyeliner.
The Supremes' unprecedented success would not have been possible without Gordy and the Motown team. The exhibition provides an insight into the effort that went into making the Supremes appeal to black and white audiences.
The group developed its poised presentation by taking etiquette lessons at the Motown finishing school. To some, the group was too polished. Upon meeting the Supremes in 1965, George Harrison of the Beatles said: "We expected soulful, hip girls. We couldn't believe that three black girls from Detroit could be so square."
In terms of the music, the exhibition highlights Gordy's business acumen and perfectionism. He wanted his teams to write songs that mixed pop music with rhythm and blues and avoided political messages.
Recognising that most people heard music for the first time in the car, Gordy asked for the songs to be first produced on a cheap acetate recordings to replicate the tinny sound of a car radio. This allowed the music to be mixed in a way that made it enjoyable to listen to while driving.
Although the exhibition offers a great deal of learning about a tumultuous period in American history, there is much here that is fun. You hear the Supremes singing their greatest hits and see clips of the group performing on large and small screens throughout the exhibition.
Among the range of album covers, jukeboxes and vinyl on display, one of the most interesting objects in the exhibition is a special edition wrapper for Wonder Bread, America's best-selling sliced bread, featuring the Supremes' faces.
This simple piece of plastic says a lot - it shows just how deeply the Supremes had penetrated popular culture. Even today, few female groups can claim this level of popularity. The V&A is to be commended for bringing the Supremes' achievements back to the forefront.
Tonya Nelson is a Museum Association Diversify management-level trainee. She is training at the London Transport Museum, focusing on museum governance and organisational strategy
Museums and pop music do not go together naturally. Unlike a traditional art gallery show, there is no well-established format for mixing the two media effectively in an exhibition or display. Music is so much about sound and performance, and many attempts to present and interpret it in a museum gallery have felt doomed to failure.
Remember the National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield? Not many people do. It folded within a year of opening in 1999, so hardly anyone got to visit it. Visitor numbers were low from the start and the plug was pulled on the project with almost indecent haste. The music might have been popular, but the organisers badly miscalculated
its effectiveness as an exhibition draw.
Displays on pop have often seemed fated to be either safe, worthy and dull or commercial, superficial and tacky. Imaginative explorations of pop culture have remained pretty thin on the ground.
So I half-expected this Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) exhibition to be a blatant crowd puller hung around a few flashy frocks, which seemed to be the essence of last year's Kylie show. The original concept may well have been a simple fashion show displaying the slinky dresses worn by the most successful girl group of all time, but it has become something far more interesting.
Motown was the soundtrack to my schooldays and I had serious doubts about even the V&A's ability to turn the story of the Supremes into an effective museum exhibition, but, it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable shows I've seen for years.
It is not a nerdy exhibition about pop trivia and it's not just about showbiz fashion. This is a fascinating slice of modern American social and cultural history that adds up to far more than a nostalgic look back at music, fashion and celebrity in the 1960s. It's about racial politics, role models and the experience of young African Americans only a generation ago.
That social background is important, and may be quite an eye-opener for British audiences who only know the Supremes for their strictly unpolitical music and glamorous style. Some of the context is presented here through familiar images and footage of the American civil rights movement.
Its links with the parallel rise of Berry Gordy's spectacularly successful African-American record label are a little hazy, but it frames the story of the Supremes themselves appropriately.
The Supremes were Motown's biggest stars between their first number one - Where Did our Love Go? - in 1964 and their break-up in 1970, when Diana Ross went solo and "departed for divadom".
This exhibition has been put together with great skill using the impressive collection of designer dresses, memorabilia and other material kept by Mary Wilson, the other surviving member of the original line-up of the trio from 1962. Texts and captions are concise and well written, with expertly selected video clips from Wilson and characters such as the indomitable Maxine Powell, who ran the Motown charm school.
It's a great story that goes well beyond the hackneyed "poor kids from the Detroit housing projects make it to fame and Las Vegas" showbiz trajectory.
The subtext seems to be that the Supremes made a major contribution to social change in America by sequinned subversion, though at the time they were just trying to "be beautiful and professional and do a good job", as Wilson puts it. I just wish I'd been there to hear her sing at the opening.
Oliver Green is the head of collections of the London Transport Museum
Tonya Nelson
As a child of the 1970s, I did not witness the meteoric rise of the Supremes. Instead, I saw the collapse of the group and the subsequent chronicling of the scandals that surrounded the trio - the fight to be lead singer; Diana Ross's affair with Berry Gordy; and Florence Ballard's dismissal from the group, followed by her alcoholism and untimely death.
The V&A's exhibition the Story of the Supremes from the Mary Wilson Collection, avoids rehashing these events. Instead, it reminds us of the incredible odds the group overcame to achieve their unprecedented success.
The curators cleverly use the dresses worn by the Supremes as the foundation for a discussion about racial segregation, the civil rights movement and Motown's success in bridging the racial divide.
I expected to see rows of mannequins wearing glamorous gowns and accessories. Given the beauty of the dresses designed by Bob Mackie and Michael Travis, that might have been enough. What I found instead was a succinct, yet thorough, overview of the state of race relations in America between 1930 and 1950.
It is not the light and breezy subject matter one might expect of an exhibition in the V&A's fashion galleries, but it is key to understanding the context in which the Supremes made their foray into popular music.
The struggles of African Americans during the 1950s and 1960s and the development of the Civil Rights movement are charted in parallel, sometimes tenuously, with the Supremes' rise to fame. What I appreciated most was the attention given to the less obvious problems the group faced as African-American women.
In a video interview. Wilson discusses how difficult it was to achieve their glamorous appearance. At the time, manufacturers did not make cosmetics for darker skin tones. Consequently, Wilson sometimes wore only Maybeline eyeliner.
The Supremes' unprecedented success would not have been possible without Gordy and the Motown team. The exhibition provides an insight into the effort that went into making the Supremes appeal to black and white audiences.
The group developed its poised presentation by taking etiquette lessons at the Motown finishing school. To some, the group was too polished. Upon meeting the Supremes in 1965, George Harrison of the Beatles said: "We expected soulful, hip girls. We couldn't believe that three black girls from Detroit could be so square."
In terms of the music, the exhibition highlights Gordy's business acumen and perfectionism. He wanted his teams to write songs that mixed pop music with rhythm and blues and avoided political messages.
Recognising that most people heard music for the first time in the car, Gordy asked for the songs to be first produced on a cheap acetate recordings to replicate the tinny sound of a car radio. This allowed the music to be mixed in a way that made it enjoyable to listen to while driving.
Although the exhibition offers a great deal of learning about a tumultuous period in American history, there is much here that is fun. You hear the Supremes singing their greatest hits and see clips of the group performing on large and small screens throughout the exhibition.
Among the range of album covers, jukeboxes and vinyl on display, one of the most interesting objects in the exhibition is a special edition wrapper for Wonder Bread, America's best-selling sliced bread, featuring the Supremes' faces.
This simple piece of plastic says a lot - it shows just how deeply the Supremes had penetrated popular culture. Even today, few female groups can claim this level of popularity. The V&A is to be commended for bringing the Supremes' achievements back to the forefront.
Tonya Nelson is a Museum Association Diversify management-level trainee. She is training at the London Transport Museum, focusing on museum governance and organisational strategy
Project data
Cost: V&A refused to disclose
Funders: Part-funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund
Curators: Adapted and curated by Geoffrey Marsh and Victoria Broackes with Carol Tulloch. The display originated at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, USA
Exhibition and graphic design: Peter Brooks Design
Lighting design: DHA Lighting
Exhibition ends: 19 October 2008
Cost: V&A refused to disclose
Funders: Part-funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund
Curators: Adapted and curated by Geoffrey Marsh and Victoria Broackes with Carol Tulloch. The display originated at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, USA
Exhibition and graphic design: Peter Brooks Design
Lighting design: DHA Lighting
Exhibition ends: 19 October 2008
