Growing your own food, eating seasonal fruit and vegetables, reducing imports, recycling and healthy nutrition, sound like subjects for an exhibition about modern lifestyles and surviving the recession.
In fact, all of them feature in The Ministry of Food, the Imperial War Museum’s (IWM) exploration of how the British public adapted to food shortages during and after the second world war.
The exhibition, which comes 70 years after the wartime government introduced food rationing, is divided into seven main sections, with titles such as the Battle of the Land, Digging for Victory and the Kitchen Front.
Each area has some basic text, either a short description or a quotation, which is illustrated and expanded by contemporary posters, paintings, artefacts, and personal stories.
The Ministry of Food’s modern themes make it relevant to today’s visitors, but the real success of the exhibition is the way it recreates the informal feel of domestic environments. The atmosphere is cleverly created by out-of-case display props and scenes.
Home from home
In Digging for Victory, in addition to items in cases, there are stone planters (filled with fake earth), a compost bin, a greenhouse, some old chicken huts and buckets. This impression of earthiness is added to by the natural spillage of material on to the floor as visitors fiddle with it.
In the Kitchen Front section, the recreated 1940s kitchen has old doors fitted to the entrance, while a dustbin and dog bowls complete the feeling of domesticity. Visitors are not just viewing the scene, they are part of it. People can also enter a 1940s shop that features packets of food and notices about rationing.
Museums have strict guidelines about eating in galleries, so it is unsurprising that there is no real food on display. But the use of lots of very realistic fake food and drink is a good substitute.
This ranges from a cup of tea in Digging for Victory to a whole tea trolley with cups of tea, buns and scones in Communal Feeding. Again, the tea trolley is in the middle of the space so visitors can walk around it and touch it.
The Communal Feeding section also has a mock-up of a “push your tray along” type canteen, where trays of food are laid out on a wooden shelf. The tray of school dinners has a bowl of delicious-looking pudding with custard, with the base of the tray featuring further information about the subject. This is an interesting and unusual way to present material.
Forties-inspired themes continue in the IWM’s cafe, where visitors can try soup with national loaf and pot pie with vegetable mash. The book accompanying the exhibition, The Real Ministry of Food by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall, offers “thrifty wartime ways to feed your family today”.
Much of the information in the exhibition comes from official sources such as government-produced posters, booklets and quotations from speeches. Despite this, the overall feel of the gallery is not official, with lots of personal accounts adding context.
Much of this is provided via the headphones that are positioned at various heights throughout the gallery. Although this means that most are accessible to children or wheelchair users, some had wires too short for an adult to listen to while standing comfortably.
Pig bucket
Booklets produced on a thick canvas-type material fit in with the wartime feel and provide further information. Some contain personal reminiscences, such as those from pupils at the Kneller Senior Boys’ School in Twickenham describing how they turned their playing fields into allotments. Others feature government information on various subjects, including starting a cooperative pig club.
There are some fairly dry facts and figures among the recreated scenes and colourful posters, but these are needed to tell the story and the IWM uses innovative display techniques to make sure they are noticed.
In the Battle of the Land, a display case showing percentage changes in the breeding of livestock during the war, is made visually interesting by using 1930s toy farm animals to illustrate it. In the National Health section, facts about people’s health in 1941 are shown on a clipboard attached to a waiting-room chair.
Children will love the exhibition, which includes objects displayed at their eye-level, such as wellies, a pig bucket and a chicken at the start of the Digging for Victory section.
The recreated scenes and in particular the fake food will be fascinating to little fingers and minds. Many of the displays are fun, such as the Making up your Winter Store wall, with its model of a squirrel.
Themes such as cutting down on waste and being resourceful will strike a chord with many visitors. And the display techniques used to present some of the drier factual information that will draw people in. Overall, an enjoyable experience.
Julia Edge is a freelance arts journalist and was formerly the collections manager at the Horniman Museum, London
Cost £90,000
Main funder Imperial War Museum
Sponsor Company of Cooks
Curator Angela Godwin, director of masterplanning, Imperial War Museum London
Exhibition design Barry Mazur and in-house
Lighting Luminance
AV IWM
AV and construction work IWM
Exhibition ends 3 January 2011
In fact, all of them feature in The Ministry of Food, the Imperial War Museum’s (IWM) exploration of how the British public adapted to food shortages during and after the second world war.
The exhibition, which comes 70 years after the wartime government introduced food rationing, is divided into seven main sections, with titles such as the Battle of the Land, Digging for Victory and the Kitchen Front.
Each area has some basic text, either a short description or a quotation, which is illustrated and expanded by contemporary posters, paintings, artefacts, and personal stories.
The Ministry of Food’s modern themes make it relevant to today’s visitors, but the real success of the exhibition is the way it recreates the informal feel of domestic environments. The atmosphere is cleverly created by out-of-case display props and scenes.
Home from home
In Digging for Victory, in addition to items in cases, there are stone planters (filled with fake earth), a compost bin, a greenhouse, some old chicken huts and buckets. This impression of earthiness is added to by the natural spillage of material on to the floor as visitors fiddle with it.
In the Kitchen Front section, the recreated 1940s kitchen has old doors fitted to the entrance, while a dustbin and dog bowls complete the feeling of domesticity. Visitors are not just viewing the scene, they are part of it. People can also enter a 1940s shop that features packets of food and notices about rationing.
Museums have strict guidelines about eating in galleries, so it is unsurprising that there is no real food on display. But the use of lots of very realistic fake food and drink is a good substitute.
This ranges from a cup of tea in Digging for Victory to a whole tea trolley with cups of tea, buns and scones in Communal Feeding. Again, the tea trolley is in the middle of the space so visitors can walk around it and touch it.
The Communal Feeding section also has a mock-up of a “push your tray along” type canteen, where trays of food are laid out on a wooden shelf. The tray of school dinners has a bowl of delicious-looking pudding with custard, with the base of the tray featuring further information about the subject. This is an interesting and unusual way to present material.
Forties-inspired themes continue in the IWM’s cafe, where visitors can try soup with national loaf and pot pie with vegetable mash. The book accompanying the exhibition, The Real Ministry of Food by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall, offers “thrifty wartime ways to feed your family today”.
Much of the information in the exhibition comes from official sources such as government-produced posters, booklets and quotations from speeches. Despite this, the overall feel of the gallery is not official, with lots of personal accounts adding context.
Much of this is provided via the headphones that are positioned at various heights throughout the gallery. Although this means that most are accessible to children or wheelchair users, some had wires too short for an adult to listen to while standing comfortably.
Pig bucket
Booklets produced on a thick canvas-type material fit in with the wartime feel and provide further information. Some contain personal reminiscences, such as those from pupils at the Kneller Senior Boys’ School in Twickenham describing how they turned their playing fields into allotments. Others feature government information on various subjects, including starting a cooperative pig club.
There are some fairly dry facts and figures among the recreated scenes and colourful posters, but these are needed to tell the story and the IWM uses innovative display techniques to make sure they are noticed.
In the Battle of the Land, a display case showing percentage changes in the breeding of livestock during the war, is made visually interesting by using 1930s toy farm animals to illustrate it. In the National Health section, facts about people’s health in 1941 are shown on a clipboard attached to a waiting-room chair.
Children will love the exhibition, which includes objects displayed at their eye-level, such as wellies, a pig bucket and a chicken at the start of the Digging for Victory section.
The recreated scenes and in particular the fake food will be fascinating to little fingers and minds. Many of the displays are fun, such as the Making up your Winter Store wall, with its model of a squirrel.
Themes such as cutting down on waste and being resourceful will strike a chord with many visitors. And the display techniques used to present some of the drier factual information that will draw people in. Overall, an enjoyable experience.
Julia Edge is a freelance arts journalist and was formerly the collections manager at the Horniman Museum, London
Project data
Cost £90,000
Main funder Imperial War Museum
Sponsor Company of Cooks
Curator Angela Godwin, director of masterplanning, Imperial War Museum London
Exhibition design Barry Mazur and in-house
Lighting Luminance
AV IWM
AV and construction work IWM
Exhibition ends 3 January 2011
