Museology and Victorian Avant-Garde

Museums and art galleries have long been a place where the general public can be enlightened about past cultures. Relics, everyday objects and artworks give us an insight into the ways of the past. But what are the limitations of these 'sacred' spaces?

The 'British' Museum

Museum curators attempt to create exhibitions which give us great insight into a certain time in history. However could it be that the many artefacts on display are only those which are deemed interesting or of historical worth? If this is the case then perhaps we are not seeing the full story if only the best is on show. The mundane everyday objects, or ways of the past we are not shown could be the key to understanding the very make up of past cultures. The same could be said for art exhibitions, as these paintings give us not only an idea of the fashions and styles of the time but also an insight into their everyday life, or so it would seem. Are we being shown the official truth here, what 'they' want us to see?

The Pre-Raphaelites Exhibition currently showing at the Tate Britain is undoubtedly one which inspires. Beautiful images of beautiful women grace the walls of this crowded exhibition space. Just listening to some comments people had about these paintings was very interesting; 

"oh that's good" and "weren't they pretty in those days"

This perhaps raises the question where are the painting of the average woman? Surely not all the women of the 1800's were drop dead gorgeous and shrouded in fine fabrics, however this is what some people appear to believe. In the Beauty section we are reminded not to take these painting as exact truth but more as an insight into the things which were highly valued and admired at the time. We are informed that 'beauty came to be valued more highly than truth'. In Lynn Nead's text The Magdalen in Modern Times, Neads speaks of 'the fulfilment of the respectability and moral purity of the feminine ideal' and indeed for a middle class audience paintings of this era were expected to fulfil this ideal or else be deemed vulgar. Neads text also touches on the domestic setting in which most women were depicted and cites a review of an 1863 exhibition at the Royal Academy; 'England, happy in her homes, and joyous.....in her snug firesides...the hallowed relations of domestic life' This perhaps acts as a social narrative to the era; the place of the woman in contemporary art as the wife, the mother and the daughter in the home.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Beloved - Tate

So what can we learn from this? perhaps that things are not always what they appear to be. We can see museum and exhibition spaces as a place of truth and enlightenment but only to a degree, the things that are not on display are perhaps the most important and insightful, but how will we ever know?

Links

http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain