Museums in the Second World War

Curators, Culture and Change

Catherine Pearson, Suzanne Keene

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781472479686
• eBook ISBN: 9781351702546
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Exploring the role of museums, galleries and curators during the upheaval of the Second World War, this book challenges the accepted view of a hiatus in museum services during the conflict and its immediate aftermath. Instead it argues that new thinking in the 1930s was realised in a number of promising initiatives during the war only to fail during the fragmented post-war recovery. Based on new research including interviews with retired museum staff, letters, diaries, museum archives and government records, this study reveals a complex picture of both innovation and inertia.

At the outbreak of war precious objects were stored away and staff numbers reduced, but although many museums were closed, others successfully campaigned to remain open. By providing innovative modern exhibitions and education initiatives they became popular and valued venues for the public. After the war, however, museums returned to their more traditional, collections-centred approach and failed to negotiate the public funding needed for reconstruction based on this narrower view of their role. Hence, in the longer term, the destruction and economic and social consequences of the conflict served to delay aspirations for reconstruction until the 1960s. Through this lens, the history of the museum in the mid-twentieth century appears as one shaped by the effects of war but equally determined by the input of curators, audiences and the state. The museum thus emerges not as an isolated institution concerned only with presenting the past but as a product of the changing conflicts and cultures within society.

Part I
1918–1939

Between the wars

The inter-war years

• 1919 Massive rally in Glasgow sparks fears of a Russian-style revolution
• 1919 Lady Astor becomes the first woman elected to parliament
• 1919 Made illegal to exclude women from many jobs
• 1920 Women at Oxford University allowed to receive degrees
• 1921 Unemployment reaches a post-war high of 2.5 million
• 1922 Irish civil war breaks out
• 1926 The General Strike of workers in Britain
• 1927 The BBC is created
• 1928 Women over age 21 get the vote
• 1929 Wall Street crash sparks the Great Depression in America
• 1934 Air Defence programme, 41 squadrons added to the RAF
• 1936 Jarrow march to London to highlight poverty and unemployment

1938

• February First refugee children of the ‘kindertransport’ arrive in Britain
• August 1938 German military mobilises; UK Parliament passes the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act
• September 1938 Gas masks issued to civilians in Britain
• The Munich Agreement is signed by Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler

1939

• June The Military Training Act comes into force; Men aged 20–21 called up for military service
• August Parliament recalled and enacts the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939; army reservists called up; the Fleet proceeds to war stations
• September Britain begins evacuation – about 800,000 children eventually evacuated from cities but many returned home before long; the Blackout begins
• 3 September 1939 British army officially mobilised; the Prime Minister, with Australia, New Zealand and France, declares war on Germany; Men 18–41 to register for service; identity cards introduced; meat rationing begins
• October Call-Up Proclamation: men aged 20–21 to register for service
• November Some evacuee children return; London schools start to reopen

The Phoney War: limited military activity in Europe following the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and before the Battle of France in May 1940

Museums and government

• 1918 Education Act includes libraries and museums as education providers
• 1919 Ministry of Reconstruction Adult Education Committee recommends that museums and libraries should be under the Board of Education, administered by local education authorities
• 1919 Museums Association debates the proposal but agrees that museums are not education institutions but primarily for collections, preservation and research: rejects transfer to the BoE
• 1921 British Institute of Adult Education (BIAE) set up to develop opportunities
• 1922 the MA calls for a Royal Commission to survey provincial museums. Government delays response
• 1925 Government rejects the call for a Royal Commission on provincial museums
• 1926, 1931, 1933 The Hadow Committee considers the contribution museums might make to schooling
• 1926 Carnegie UK Trust commissions Henry Miers to survey non-national museums
• 1927 A Royal Commission is appointed to survey national museums and galleries
• 1928, 1929 and 1930 Royal Commission on national museums report published (in parts)
• 1928 Miers Report on non-national museums published
• 1929 Frank Markham appointed first permanent secretary to the MA
• 1929–1931 The Depression strikes the economy
• 1931 Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries established as recommended by the Royal Commission
• 1931 Board of Education issues a memorandum encouraging collaboration between schools and museums
• 1931 The Carnegie UK Trust offers grants to museums to develop education services
• 1920s and 1930s Informal regional museum federations emerge
• 1938 Markham Report on non-national museums published, commissioned by Carnegie UK Trust to follow up Miers’s Report
• 1938 Markham Report calls on museums to expand their educational services. First call for a national museum service to be established
• 1939 De La Warr, President of the Board of Education, addresses the MA conference
• Mortimer Wheeler warns MA delegates about their error in 1919: MA resolves to urge the Prime Minister to recommend a Royal Commission to survey the whole museum sector
• 1939 War is declared. Proposal for a Royal Commission put on hold
• January 1940 Markham renews the call to the Board of Education for a Royal Commission. Ultimately withdrawn later in 1940 when CEMA established

1
Between the wars

Museums and cultural politics

The end of the First World War and the establishment of mass democracy after 1918 raised concerns amongst Britain’s ruling classes about the need to educate the newly enfranchised electorate in their rights and responsibilities as citizens. Following the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the emergence of alternative political systems such as Bolshevism and fascism, there were heightened fears that political power might be challenged by the irrational masses. Even museums were implicated: the Walker Art Gallery became a site of political protest in 1921 when it was occupied by unemployed workers.¹ Improvements in education were seen as a way to combat proletarian revolutions by offering working class people opportunities for betterment within the current framework of society. The 1918 Education Act and successive education reports on primary education and teaching methods identified museums as institutions that could make a useful contribution to schooling and social enlightenment.

Education, the electorate and museums

The 1918 Representation of the People Act expanded the electorate from 7.5 million to over 20 million by enfranchising the male population over the age of 21, abolishing the historical link between voting and property ownership and granting women over the age of 30 who met minimum property qualifications the entitlement to vote. The subsequent Representation of the People Act in 1928 completed the process towards establishing a democratic state by giving women the same electoral rights as men.

The 1918 Education Act in turn made important changes to schooling, raising the school-leaving age from 12 to 14 and considering provision for compulsory part time education up to the age of 18. Adult education was also scrutinised, and libraries and museums were seen as having an important contribution to make to state provision in this field. In 1921, the British Institute of Adult Education (BIAE) was established to coordinate these different providers and develop opportunities for informal education for the masses. In 1926, 1931 and 1933, the Hadow Committee reviewed the contribution that museums might make to schooling in successive reports on primary education and teaching methods.

Arising from the 1918 Education Act, in 1919, the Ministry of Reconstruction’s Adult Education Committee recommended that all museums and libraries should be placed under the Board of Education and administered by local education authorities ‘in order to ensure the closest relationship between the activities of schools, libraries and museums’.² The Museums Association (MA) debated these proposals at its annual conference that year but agreed that:

they did not think that transfer to Education Committees would be in the best interest of museums, since they were not fundamentally educational institutions. The functions in order of importance were: – (1) Collection and Preservation; (2) Research; (3) Education and Display. If transferred to Local Education Committees, the last would be developed at the expense of the first two.³

By adopting this stance, the museum profession retained its independence but ensured that the service remained starved of funding. This was the first of a number of subsequent debates within the MA about the place of education in museum practice, and the issue would continue to destabilise the museum profession at key moments in the reform process throughout the middle years of the twentieth century.

Despite rejecting the 1919 education proposals, in 1922, the MA called for a Royal Commission to be set up to investigate the provincial museum sector. The MA felt that this sector more urgently needed reform than the national museums. This time they agreed to argue that museums would be better financed if the Board of Education were to recognise the educational role of local museums through a Royal Commission, but the government prevaricated, delayed their response to the MA until 1925 and eventually declined, since it considered non-national museums to be a local and not a national responsibility.⁴

The 1919 Public Libraries Act had removed rate limitations on museum and library expenditure and sanctioned – but did not compel – the transfer of museum and library services to local education committees. In practice, therefore, there was little incentive for local authorities to increase funds to museums and the main beneficiaries were libraries whose lending services saw considerable expansion under County Council authorities.⁵ By the mid-1920s, it was becoming clear that museums were falling behind libraries in both status and financial resources, and that in the MA’s Memorandum of 1919, rejecting Board of Education finance, they had effectively sealed their own fate.

In this context, three significant reviews were undertaken of the UK’s museums during the inter-war years, prompted by the museum profession’s rejection of the education developments ushered in by the 1918 Education Act. These surveys were among a number of measures addressing the country’s political, social and economic state in the wake of the First World War and were aligned with wider political and ideological aims for society. In 1927, a Royal Commission was appointed, but to undertake a survey of the national museums and galleries, excluding non-national ones, despite the Museums Association’s argument that it was those that more urgently needed review. It was the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust (Carnegie UK Trust) that commissioned reviews of the country’s non-national museums, in 1926 and 1936, published as the Miers Report (1928) and the Markham Report (1938). In these three reviews, the complete sector was subjected to detailed outside scrutiny for the first time.⁶

The need to reform the museum service

At that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Timeline: major events around the Second World War and the Home Front
• Introduction: a new perspective
• PART I 1918–1939: between the wars
• PART II 1939–1940: at the start of the war
• PART III 1940–1944: during wartime
• PART IV Reflections on wartime practice
• PART V The aftermath of the war
• PART VI From austerity to reconstruction
• Appendix: primary sources
• References
• Index