Museums have rarely addressed popular music adequately. There are some excellent celebrations of the importance of music in individual cities, such as at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry and the Museum of Liverpool.
But most museums rarely go beyond displaying a copy of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, lost in displays of ephemera of the 1960s.
This has always seemed counter-productive. Museums are constantly striving for ways to widen audiences and there are few parts of our lives that can cross cultural divides in the way that music can.
In recent years London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has achieved critical acclaim and huge visitor numbers for its retrospective on the career of David Bowie and the recent Records and Rebels exhibition. These not only placed popular music within the walls of one of our national institutions, but also in its social and political context. They illustrated the essential truth that music matters.
This is a truth that the British Music Experience (BME) aims to communicate and it is unashamedly nostalgic and celebratory in doing so. The museum has just completed the move from its original London home to the Cunard building in Liverpool, one of the famed Three Graces on the city’s waterfront.
Liverpool is an obvious location as music is such a strong part of the city’s culture. There are buskers on every street corner around the Cunard building, and the latest Beatles statue (the fourth in the city and never free of selfie takers) was unveiled just outside on the Albert Dock in 2015. Liverpool University even offers a BA in popular music.
Harmonious content
This environment is important for the BME as it does a fine job of setting the context for the displays inside. Visitors enter the space into a central atrium, surrounded by screens showing footage of various seminal artists.
The experience has been divided into eight time periods and it is tempting to just follow the songs you want to hear, as so many recognisable performances are screened. The central stage periodically plays a hologram of Boy George performing Culture Club’s Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, recorded especially for the museum. It is a graceful and intimate experience.
The cases are mostly displayed in a familiar fashion, as a collage of ephemera that together portrays the essence of the period. Text on the labels is mercifully kept to a minimum as most of the objects speak for themselves. What more can be said about Buddy Holly’s guitar, or a Rolling Stones tour poster, or a Blur set list? The aim is to create a blanket image of the music of the period.
Where visitors want more depth and context to the displays, there are good touchscreens alongside every case. These display more material from the period as well as archive footage of performances.
Like much of the experience, the information is slick and professionally produced. The interviews with key personalities are where the real interest lies. There is an excellent discussion from the 1960s with pivotal individuals such as the record producer Joe Boyd and Peter Blake, the pop artist who made the iconic image for the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
Key notes
The interactives do shed light on one issue the BME has had to face – being at the mercy of the limitations of its collection. This is of course true for all museums, but is particularly clear in a space with such a tight thematic focus. For example, only the most hard-core of music enthusiasts will retain the same level of interest looking at the many guitars on display, no matter how many important names are associated with them.
It is also easy, despite yourself, to count the gaps – there are no objects representing Radiohead, Amy Winehouse or the Streets, for instance, and little relating to hip hop or northern soul. The collection is always being expanded, however, with new material added in response to publicity around the museum. And it is here that the interactives are important too – they are an excellent tool for plugging these gaps in the absence of physical objects.
So many of the objects here are dazzling and iconic though. The power of being in the presence of the handwritten lyrics to New Order’s Blue Monday, or one of Adam’s Ant’s amazingly detailed costumes, with an awareness of the impact these have had on so many lives, is undeniable.
Poignant celebration
The objects that are likely to attract the most attention are the costumes worn by Bowie, including the last one he wore when performing as Ziggy Stardust. In the wake of his death in 2016 these costumes have a renewed emotional chemistry, as if he was just a figment of our collective imagination. One costume still has a smudge of his make-up on the sleeve.
Another central exhibit is the original door from 3 Savile Row, the Apple Corps office (not the computer company) in London that was established by the Beatles in 1968. It is covered in graffiti by the band’s fans and gives a colourful snapshot of the craziness that surrounded them.
Among this seminally recognisable material there is still space for poignant, personal objects. I spent a surprisingly long time with Dusty Springfield’s dress, its intricate beauty and tiny size somehow adding to the fragility of her voice. There is also a hilarious and oddly touching letter from one woman to the secretary of her local Beatles fan club, explaining that she is cancelling her membership as her new husband “doesn’t want me to carry on with it”.
The BME is by no means a comprehensive, academic enterprise. Rather, it is an unashamedly glossy celebration of British popular music. The feeling lingers that there is still the opportunity for a forensic analysis of the impact of music. But the BME doesn’t aspire to do this. And when the experience is this enjoyable, that can wait for another day.
Simon Brown is the curator of community history and world cultures for Nottingham City Museums and Galleries, and the curator of collections at Newstead Abbey
Cost £2.6m (fit-out only)
Main funders Liverpool City Council; British Music Experience
Exhibition design Cubit3D
Graphic design Cubit3D
Interpretation In house
Display cases Armour
Installation Martin Speed; the V&A; in house
Contractors Abercorn Construction
Lighting Des O’Donovan, DHA Designs
Audiovisuals D J Willrich
Software Clay Interactive
Admission £16 Adult; £14.50 Student; £11 Child 5-15 years; Free for under 5s
But most museums rarely go beyond displaying a copy of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, lost in displays of ephemera of the 1960s.
This has always seemed counter-productive. Museums are constantly striving for ways to widen audiences and there are few parts of our lives that can cross cultural divides in the way that music can.
In recent years London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has achieved critical acclaim and huge visitor numbers for its retrospective on the career of David Bowie and the recent Records and Rebels exhibition. These not only placed popular music within the walls of one of our national institutions, but also in its social and political context. They illustrated the essential truth that music matters.
This is a truth that the British Music Experience (BME) aims to communicate and it is unashamedly nostalgic and celebratory in doing so. The museum has just completed the move from its original London home to the Cunard building in Liverpool, one of the famed Three Graces on the city’s waterfront.
Liverpool is an obvious location as music is such a strong part of the city’s culture. There are buskers on every street corner around the Cunard building, and the latest Beatles statue (the fourth in the city and never free of selfie takers) was unveiled just outside on the Albert Dock in 2015. Liverpool University even offers a BA in popular music.
Harmonious content
This environment is important for the BME as it does a fine job of setting the context for the displays inside. Visitors enter the space into a central atrium, surrounded by screens showing footage of various seminal artists.
The experience has been divided into eight time periods and it is tempting to just follow the songs you want to hear, as so many recognisable performances are screened. The central stage periodically plays a hologram of Boy George performing Culture Club’s Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, recorded especially for the museum. It is a graceful and intimate experience.
The cases are mostly displayed in a familiar fashion, as a collage of ephemera that together portrays the essence of the period. Text on the labels is mercifully kept to a minimum as most of the objects speak for themselves. What more can be said about Buddy Holly’s guitar, or a Rolling Stones tour poster, or a Blur set list? The aim is to create a blanket image of the music of the period.
Where visitors want more depth and context to the displays, there are good touchscreens alongside every case. These display more material from the period as well as archive footage of performances.
Like much of the experience, the information is slick and professionally produced. The interviews with key personalities are where the real interest lies. There is an excellent discussion from the 1960s with pivotal individuals such as the record producer Joe Boyd and Peter Blake, the pop artist who made the iconic image for the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
Key notes
The interactives do shed light on one issue the BME has had to face – being at the mercy of the limitations of its collection. This is of course true for all museums, but is particularly clear in a space with such a tight thematic focus. For example, only the most hard-core of music enthusiasts will retain the same level of interest looking at the many guitars on display, no matter how many important names are associated with them.
It is also easy, despite yourself, to count the gaps – there are no objects representing Radiohead, Amy Winehouse or the Streets, for instance, and little relating to hip hop or northern soul. The collection is always being expanded, however, with new material added in response to publicity around the museum. And it is here that the interactives are important too – they are an excellent tool for plugging these gaps in the absence of physical objects.
So many of the objects here are dazzling and iconic though. The power of being in the presence of the handwritten lyrics to New Order’s Blue Monday, or one of Adam’s Ant’s amazingly detailed costumes, with an awareness of the impact these have had on so many lives, is undeniable.
Poignant celebration
The objects that are likely to attract the most attention are the costumes worn by Bowie, including the last one he wore when performing as Ziggy Stardust. In the wake of his death in 2016 these costumes have a renewed emotional chemistry, as if he was just a figment of our collective imagination. One costume still has a smudge of his make-up on the sleeve.
Another central exhibit is the original door from 3 Savile Row, the Apple Corps office (not the computer company) in London that was established by the Beatles in 1968. It is covered in graffiti by the band’s fans and gives a colourful snapshot of the craziness that surrounded them.
Among this seminally recognisable material there is still space for poignant, personal objects. I spent a surprisingly long time with Dusty Springfield’s dress, its intricate beauty and tiny size somehow adding to the fragility of her voice. There is also a hilarious and oddly touching letter from one woman to the secretary of her local Beatles fan club, explaining that she is cancelling her membership as her new husband “doesn’t want me to carry on with it”.
The BME is by no means a comprehensive, academic enterprise. Rather, it is an unashamedly glossy celebration of British popular music. The feeling lingers that there is still the opportunity for a forensic analysis of the impact of music. But the BME doesn’t aspire to do this. And when the experience is this enjoyable, that can wait for another day.
Simon Brown is the curator of community history and world cultures for Nottingham City Museums and Galleries, and the curator of collections at Newstead Abbey
Project data
Cost £2.6m (fit-out only)
Main funders Liverpool City Council; British Music Experience
Exhibition design Cubit3D
Graphic design Cubit3D
Interpretation In house
Display cases Armour
Installation Martin Speed; the V&A; in house
Contractors Abercorn Construction
Lighting Des O’Donovan, DHA Designs
Audiovisuals D J Willrich
Software Clay Interactive
Admission £16 Adult; £14.50 Student; £11 Child 5-15 years; Free for under 5s