Books | Museums in the Second World War: Curators, Culture and Change, by Catherine Pearson

Bert was describing his visits to the National Gallery, London, which from 1942, though emptied of the bulk of its collection, mounted displays of single paintings. Bert recalled: “It was like rationing in a way and this Picture of the Month was your ration of vision, visual, spiritual nourishment and having got it you then went away to face the difficulties that were confronting you outside, enriched by what you’d seen.”


Her contention is with an existing characterisation of British museum history, that the second world war was a time when nothing much happened. Contrary to this position, Pearson argues persuasively that the period was marked by innovation and engagement, with regional museum attendance rising between 1941 and 1945.

Although chapters are set out in a simple chronology, the narrative flicks frequently back and forth as it teases strands of argument from differing perspectives, weaving them into a coherent picture of both success in adversity and, to an extent, success through diversity.

Although Pearson tracks developments in a wide variety of regional museums, she laments the comparative lack of extant official records covering 1939-1945: “Archives relating to its history are often the least cared-for records in a museum’s collection and many remain uncatalogued, haphazardly stored and in poor condition.”

Published sources and national records offset, to some extent, the lack of local archives. Consequently, mid-century national panjandrums, such as Herbrand Sackville 9th Earl De La Warr, Maynard Keynes and Kenneth Clark, are duly prominent.

But Pearson pays most attention to Frank Markham, the Museums Association’s president at the outbreak of hostilities. In 1938 Markham had submitted a report to the Carnegie Trust that identified structural weaknesses in the UK’s regional museums service and made detailed recommendations as to how matters could be improved. Markham’s subsequent heroic efforts to win government support for his ideas provide the backdrop to Pearson’s investigation of how museums responded as the war raged on.

Though never adopted as official policy, Markham’s report was enthusiastically taken to heart by a new generation of museum staff, many of whom were women. The oral and written testimony of these curators, and of museum visitors, vividly conveys how regional museums innovated as they strived to provide a valuable service for their communities.

Under the threat of enemy bombs, most museums transferred their collections to safer storage, often in hurried and unsatisfactory conditions. Without a collection to focus on, curators were compelled to look outwards at their prospective audience. Markham’s ideas on the museum’s educative function were developed through collaborative practice whereby the museum could act as “a temple to all the muses”.

Markham’s cherished dream of a national museum network was temporarily realised by the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, whose innovative touring exhibitions replaced earlier shabby attempts at propaganda by the Ministry of Information.

Far from shutting up shop, the regional museum for a time became that most millennial of entities, the community creative hub. The great sadness of Pearson’s account is that, once peace returned, so many of the advancements in museums made during the second world war were either cancelled, rolled back or forgotten as the (male once more) curatorial gaze returned fixedly to collections and research.

Pearson’s challenge is that museum historians, too, have privileged the fate of collections and buildings over the value of staff and audiences. Museums in the Second World War is a strong corrective to that point of view.

Mark Pomeroy is the archivist of the Royal Academy of Arts, London
 
Routledge, £110, ISBN 978-1472479686