Are we learning to hate the past?
ATHENA took the opportunity of a visit to Cambridge last week to see the newly refurbished first-floor painting galleries at the Fitzwilliam Museum. They make a splendid series of five rooms and it was, at one level, magnificent simply to see them opened together for the first time in four years. The landings of the staircase hall were (almost) free from the clutter that has long resided there. As a consequence, E. M. Barry’s 1870s interior packs all the bravura punch of an opera-house entrance. The galleries opening off it have been handsomely decorated in strong colours —deep purple, rich blue and burgundy— that set off the paintings to advantage and enhance these grand spaces. The encircling balcony of the largest gallery interior remains unused (as it has done for many years). Presumably, it is impossible to operate and unaffordable to remove.
The rehang is organised by theme— interiors, migration, landscape and portraiture—and combines pictures of every date from the 17th century to the present. It also includes some new acquisitions, both contemporary and historic. As the museum website declares: ‘The new display offers different perspectives and a new lens through which to consider both our
The new labels seek to emphasise that past worlds had a dark underbelly
past and future.’ Certainly, there is much to enjoy here and, if there is a weakness, it is the inclusion of a few items of furniture. It’s a good idea, of course, but the objects seem awkwardly dwarfed in the space.
In this university city, and one which recently witnessed an attack on a de László portrait of Arthur Balfour—as Foreign Secretary in 1917 the signatory of the Balfour Declaration—by a pro-palestinian group earlier this month, it’s perhaps not surprising that there is an edge to the short labels that accompany the new hang. Even in the 70 words or so that describe the 1764 portrait of the museum founder, Viscount Fitzwilliam, we are told that his grandfather amassed wealth ‘through the transatlantic trade of enslaved people’. Such observations will seem important to some, irritating to others. In the main, Athena is accepting and these labels are, at least, intelligently written.
That said, she does question the cumulative effect of fresh labels in this—as well as every other new display she has seen in the past four years across the world—seeking to emphasise in relatively formulaic terms that the 18th- and 19th-century worlds had a dark underbelly that artists and patrons idealised, obscured or ignored. By extension, this approach raises questions about the rationale for the display. Are we shown two 1730s chairs, for example, in order to admire them or merely—as the bulk of the label explains—to learn about mahogany? And, knowing that, is it acceptable to like them? Put simply, by fixating on the failings of the past, are such displays encouraging visitors to hate the art and the past they present? It would be a strange achievement for a museum.