"Rethinking the Holocaust displays at the Imperial War Museum"
Museums Association's Geraldine Kendall Adams on the Holocaust Galleries, designed by Casson Mann
25
Jan
2022
"Small, individual objects have replaced piles of artefacts, reclaiming the agency and humanity of victims."
"Designed by Casson Mann, the galleries are well lit and painted in muted tones of blue and green. They are designed to be viewed alongside the museum’s new second world war exhibition – one of the first times the stories of these distinct but connected events have been curated in tandem."
"The exhibition has chosen to avoid artificially recreating settings or moments from the genocide. There are no dioramas of concentration camps; instead, museum staff travelled to the sites where the genocide took place and filmed them as they look now."
"The perpetrators are also treated differently. As time has gone on, survivors and their relatives have become more willing to accept the presence of key Nazi leaders on the exhibition floor; their roles in the atrocity are explained on lifesize cut-outs that meet visitors at eye level, reinforcing the message that those who carried out the genocide were ordinary, unremarkable people."
"One of the key ethical questions for curators of Holocaust history is how much graphic evidence should be on display. Here, photographs from the death camps are displayed in the scale in which they were originally taken. Mostly pocket-sized, they are not hidden away, but visitors can make a conscious choice about how much detail they see."
Read the full MA article here.
View project:
The Holocaust Galleries
Imperial War Museum, London
The Holocaust Galleries
Imperial War Museum, London
The Holocaust Galleries
Imperial War Museum, London
Opening soon
The Holocaust Galleries
Imperial War Museum, London
Opening soon