Meet the Victorians Exhibition at Aldershot Military Museum

http://www3.hants.gov.uk/victorians.html

The Meet the Victorians exhibition has been put together by Hampshire County Council and is currently installed at Aldershot Military Museum, but will be moving to a number of other museums across Hampshire in coming months. I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for a while and in hindsight its actually probably better that I haven’t done so before now, for I’ve warmed to it since my first encounter. I was very critical in my initial assessment, but have recently been encouraged to reconsider my original conclusions, purely for the reason that it has been extremely successful in engaging children.

On my first visit I definitely had my ‘historian’ hat on. I felt that the exhibition didn’t flow particularly well. It was not clear where to start from and so visitors could easily miss the introduction to the characters, which itself was presented in a contradictory fashion to Victorian hierarchy. I would have expected to have ‘met’ the father, grandparent, mother, child and then the servants, but that was not how the exhibition was laid out. The open nature of the exhibition space also means you have no sense of direction as to what you should be looking at and as such it is all too easy to overlook things as you dart in the direction of something that has caught your eye.

Panorama of the Exhibition

Then there were also a few silly mistakes I felt had crept in. For example, the intention of the publicity was to show the Dexter family posing for a photograph, accounting for their glum expressions. However, due to a lack of space, the smiling servants have been attached to the family sending mixed messages about life in the Victorian period. It would be very easy for a young child to look at that and conclude that life was good for servants and glum for the middle classes. It feels careless, but it is something that could be easily resolved. Similarly on the handling table, the letter box has been secured on upside down. It just feels as though they were in a rush to put it together at the end, the individual components not necessarily flowing together and that’s a shame, because it’s a really family friendly and engaging exhibit which uses the limited space that it has well.

Children are definitely the intended audience for this exhibition and there are a number of interactive elements to attract their attention. There is a dolls house that replicates the layout of a Victorian home and inside has miniature characters which the kids can play with and move about the house. There are a number of puzzles and toys that give children an idea of what there Victorian counterparts would have played with; as well as a shopping list, with old coins where they are encouraged to work out the price of items such as bread and milk.



There is also a handling table and smell boxes which conjure smells that would have been found in a Victorian home, for example coal and carbolic soap. These give children a more immersive experience. But it is the dressing up that is the most popular with young visitors, surprisingly with the boys as well as the girls. Often, the girls will get dressed up and then ‘play’ in the replica kitchen or use items from ‘Rose’s Cupboard’ which encourages them to pick the correct items to complete daily chores. The boys on the other hand will often dress up and sit in the parlour, posing for photos along the way. I hadn’t appreciated how enthusiastic children would be about this exhibition when I first viewed it, but over the last few weeks, as I’ve seen more and more families interact it and come expressly to see it (often to aid with school projects), I have been forced to review that initial judgement. They really enjoy it and the parents have trouble dragging the children away.

With an existing knowledge of Victorian Britain I can’t say that I learnt a great deal from this exhibition but it’s clear to me now, that I’m not part of the intended audience. There were a few eye catching artefacts that drew my attention but it’s the interactive activities for the kids that are the big draw. By getting them to engage the exhibition is encouraging the children to learn, and in that sense, this exhibition is a huge success and one I’ve grown increasingly fond of.