“It was colonel mustard in the study with the candlestick” –
crime is an embedded part of modern society. Not a day goes by when the news
doesn’t report a crime of some
description, or a video game is released that allows players to steal cars (or
worse), or thousands sit down to watch a peak time televised crime drama. It
surrounds us and in many ways we’ve become somewhat desensitised to it as a
society. Or at least that’s what I’d have previously argued until a visit to The Crime Museum Uncovered exhibition at
the Museum of London a few months ago called that view into question. Unfortunately
the exhibition has now ended but it raised some interesting questions for me
about the challenges faced when putting an exhibition together.
Prior to the launch of this exhibition I had never heard of
the Crime Museum and it would never have occurred to me that Scotland Yard would
have their own museum and an artefact collection used for the training of new
recruits. It’s not the usual function you associate with a museum is it really,
although it feels somewhat obvious now it has been pointed out. Anyway, back in
February we decided we’d visit and I have to say the very subject of the
exhibition made me a little apprehensive about visiting. Crime. It is one thing
to indulge in an episode of Criminal Minds or Shetland once a week, but it is
something completely different to be physically confronted with remnants of
crime; items once belonging to victims or perpetrators - murder weapons,
newspaper reports and execution materials- the list goes on. The mind boggles
around the ethical implications behind this exhibition, but my experience of
Museum of London exhibitions has always been good and I was certainly intrigued
to see what it had to offer on this occasion.
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| Free Museum Guide |
The sheer popularity of this exhibition has been staggering;
I was certainly not alone in my curiosity. And my first impressions were good,
although I couldn’t decide if their choice of museum guide (a newspaper style
document with headlines matching displays and giving descriptions of items
within cases) was pure genius or downright distasteful. I’m still undecided,
but then again the whole exhibition tapped into this idea that something so
macabre can at the same time be so captivating – there is something quite
disturbing to be said there about human nature when you think about it.
Anyway, back to the exhibition which was divided into three
main sections. The first was mainly about the history of Crime Museum alongside
some items from its collections. This included illustrations, a visitor book
and museum catalogue, as well as death masks and prison records, which included
mugshots. However, the items that still stick out for me from this section were
the execution ropes in a case as you moved towards the second section of the
exhibition. You were told about the individual who was hung from each rope and
their crime, however, rather than recoil, I was left questioning how they could
possibly know it was those exact ropes? I think if curators are going to make a
claim like that it needs more explaining. Was it because records show which
execution boxes (shown later on in the exhibition) are used for which cases in
some sort of register, as we theorised? If that’s the case then that needed to
be made clearer. Explain processes, especially if it is as something as simple
as that, because our questioning took away from the impact those items had on
us as visitors. And this also demonstrates what I mean about being desensitised
to this sort of information, I was hung up on validity of evidence rather than
the fact this rope had in part been responsible for taking someone’s life.
The second section of the exhibition broke into a large
area, with specific case studies across the time span covered located down one
side of the exhibition room, while along the other ,and at islands platforms in
the centre, a more thematic approach was taken by showing a specific type of
crime. For each case study the year was given, the offenders and their charge
listed, and their victims named. Some crimes you knew, some you didn’t, but at
this stage you really got a sense of the human story – of both the victim and of
the perpetrator – that lay behind the exhibition.
Finally, at the end of the exhibition there was a room for
reflection. A chance for you as a visitor to decompress on what you’d just seen
but also to hear from those involved with the curation of the exhibition –
their intentions, hopes and considerations in compiling, what was both a
confronting and thought provoking exhibition. I was particularly struck by two
comments made in the videos. The first was by one of the curators who said that
‘Museums shouldn’t be afraid to confront
the uncomfortable’ and I couldn’t agree more. I also think the exhibition
has been successful in doing this and has shown how it can be made possible.
The second comment, and unfortunately I can’t exactly remember who made it, was
that ‘Everyone is somebody to someone’ -
a reflection on the ethical complications of putting this exhibition together.
I still think it had been well done. It wasn’t overly emotional, nor was it
cold and clinical. It’s taken a complicated history in which a number of groups,
families and individuals are invested and presented it in such a way that
visitors left not only knowing about particular crimes, but also about the
history of policing and crime solving.
This is a poorly timed blog as the exhibition closed back in April but I just thought I would share my reflections on
what was an unusually captivating exhibition by the Museum of London.
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