Giles Watson's poetry and prose
The New Ashmolean: A Review
The New Ashmolean: A Review
I am always in a state of anxiety when I enter an old and familiar museum after it has been refurbished. Too often, I return to discover that the delightful clutter of objects – itself a material testimony to a Victorian passion for collecting – has been shifted into the catacombs, and replaced by videos, interactive displays, flashing neon signs, and, most tantalizingly of all, by the occasional photograph of a genuine artefact. Imagine my trepidation when my favourite museum of all, the Pitt Rivers in Oxford, was closed for refurbishment. Jeannie and I delayed our return for months after it had re-opened, and it was a singular relief when we discovered that the displays had been left more or less untouched, and it was only the shop, the toilets and the staircases which had been modernised. It seemed an encouraging sign: perhaps there was no reason to fear the rebuilding of the Ashmolean.
I first returned to the Ashmolean in January, when my daughter and I had a spare half hour and wanted to see a Turner painting. My initial, fleeting impression, based on those rooms, was that not much had changed, and although the sensation of becoming lost in a space once so familiar was not entirely agreeable, I put my misgivings down to a mere nostalgic conservatism.
It was only on my second visit, in the company of Jeannie, who is currently studying the Anglo-Saxons, that the misgivings started to give way to despair. The Ashmolean used to have a vast collection of British archaeological material on display. To our bewilderment, all of the British artefacts were now in a single room, covering the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, the mediaeval period, and even the Elizabethans. The most spectacular finds were all there – the Alfred jewel, the brooches studded with garnets – but other items were missing, and many of the exhibits were undated. Some were not labelled at all. We wandered around the rest of the museum, hoping that the other British exhibits would be in some other room.
It was a relief to discover that the Egyptian exhibits were all there, but we became increasingly frustrated as we made our way through the more heavily refurbished parts of the museum. The lighting was so poor that many exhibits were hardly visible, and one room, in defiance of any logic we could ascertain, contained Celtic weaponry alongside the skulls of early hominids, all of them unlabelled. No doubt the information will come eventually, but on the basis of the perfunctory labelling of the Anglo-Saxon objects, it is doubtful whether future visits will leave us any the wiser. Eventually we made our way to the room full of porcelain. This is undoubtedly the best exhibit in the museum: row upon row of brightly-lit glass cases show off an enormous range of quaint and curious objects from the mediaeval period through to the twentieth century, all of them clearly labelled, and all present and accounted for in a delightful, cluttered profusion.
Designers of museums and galleries have never been immune to the architectural hubris which tempts them to try to make their own buildings more overpowering than the objects they are designed to house. The new staircases in the Ashmolean are, no doubt, an architect’s dream come true: all those clean lines and great expanses of modern glass. At the risk of sounding like Prince Charles, I had better confess that I do not understand the modern passion for featureless glass. Glass with facets, painted glass, glass with flaws and bubbles: all of these fascinate me, but brash glass that reflects without distortion, and barely refracts, leaves me cold. However, this new space is open to criticism not only on the basis of taste, but also in terms of practicality. No doubt some visitors will revel in the vast airy space in the centre of the museum, where the staircases sweep upward from floor to floor. Unfortunately, we would have preferred to have seen that vertigo-inducing space filled with some of those exhibits from the catacombs, or failing that, with wider staircases to accommodate the enormous crowds the refurbishment has attracted. As it is, this open area feels less like a museum, and more like a richly furnished but impractically-designed entrance to a tube station. With senses over-stimulated, and heads pounding from all the clattering footsteps and jabbering voices in that echoing atrium, we retreated to the café, where we were relieved to discover that it is still possible to procure a cup of real tea: not Twinings.
The new Ashmolean is not the disaster it might have been – it still provides one of the most marvellous cultural experiences this country has to offer – but the changes are not a promising foretaste of the future of museum planning. It possesses some of the most delightful objects ever made by human hand, but somewhere in those catacombs, there lurk other objects which used to be on display, and it was these which cast light on the real lives of the makers of masterpieces such as the Alfred Jewel. The fundamental purpose of a museum is to enable the public to view and understand the artefacts in the museum’s possession, both sublime and prosaic. Museum designers and curators forget this, not perhaps at their own peril, but at the peril of those who will never see what used to be on display, and who will now always be wondering whether that delightful little unlabelled duck brooch belonged to the sixth, twelfth or sixteenth century.
The New Ashmolean: A Review
The New Ashmolean: A Review
I am always in a state of anxiety when I enter an old and familiar museum after it has been refurbished. Too often, I return to discover that the delightful clutter of objects – itself a material testimony to a Victorian passion for collecting – has been shifted into the catacombs, and replaced by videos, interactive displays, flashing neon signs, and, most tantalizingly of all, by the occasional photograph of a genuine artefact. Imagine my trepidation when my favourite museum of all, the Pitt Rivers in Oxford, was closed for refurbishment. Jeannie and I delayed our return for months after it had re-opened, and it was a singular relief when we discovered that the displays had been left more or less untouched, and it was only the shop, the toilets and the staircases which had been modernised. It seemed an encouraging sign: perhaps there was no reason to fear the rebuilding of the Ashmolean.
I first returned to the Ashmolean in January, when my daughter and I had a spare half hour and wanted to see a Turner painting. My initial, fleeting impression, based on those rooms, was that not much had changed, and although the sensation of becoming lost in a space once so familiar was not entirely agreeable, I put my misgivings down to a mere nostalgic conservatism.
It was only on my second visit, in the company of Jeannie, who is currently studying the Anglo-Saxons, that the misgivings started to give way to despair. The Ashmolean used to have a vast collection of British archaeological material on display. To our bewilderment, all of the British artefacts were now in a single room, covering the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, the mediaeval period, and even the Elizabethans. The most spectacular finds were all there – the Alfred jewel, the brooches studded with garnets – but other items were missing, and many of the exhibits were undated. Some were not labelled at all. We wandered around the rest of the museum, hoping that the other British exhibits would be in some other room.
It was a relief to discover that the Egyptian exhibits were all there, but we became increasingly frustrated as we made our way through the more heavily refurbished parts of the museum. The lighting was so poor that many exhibits were hardly visible, and one room, in defiance of any logic we could ascertain, contained Celtic weaponry alongside the skulls of early hominids, all of them unlabelled. No doubt the information will come eventually, but on the basis of the perfunctory labelling of the Anglo-Saxon objects, it is doubtful whether future visits will leave us any the wiser. Eventually we made our way to the room full of porcelain. This is undoubtedly the best exhibit in the museum: row upon row of brightly-lit glass cases show off an enormous range of quaint and curious objects from the mediaeval period through to the twentieth century, all of them clearly labelled, and all present and accounted for in a delightful, cluttered profusion.
Designers of museums and galleries have never been immune to the architectural hubris which tempts them to try to make their own buildings more overpowering than the objects they are designed to house. The new staircases in the Ashmolean are, no doubt, an architect’s dream come true: all those clean lines and great expanses of modern glass. At the risk of sounding like Prince Charles, I had better confess that I do not understand the modern passion for featureless glass. Glass with facets, painted glass, glass with flaws and bubbles: all of these fascinate me, but brash glass that reflects without distortion, and barely refracts, leaves me cold. However, this new space is open to criticism not only on the basis of taste, but also in terms of practicality. No doubt some visitors will revel in the vast airy space in the centre of the museum, where the staircases sweep upward from floor to floor. Unfortunately, we would have preferred to have seen that vertigo-inducing space filled with some of those exhibits from the catacombs, or failing that, with wider staircases to accommodate the enormous crowds the refurbishment has attracted. As it is, this open area feels less like a museum, and more like a richly furnished but impractically-designed entrance to a tube station. With senses over-stimulated, and heads pounding from all the clattering footsteps and jabbering voices in that echoing atrium, we retreated to the café, where we were relieved to discover that it is still possible to procure a cup of real tea: not Twinings.
The new Ashmolean is not the disaster it might have been – it still provides one of the most marvellous cultural experiences this country has to offer – but the changes are not a promising foretaste of the future of museum planning. It possesses some of the most delightful objects ever made by human hand, but somewhere in those catacombs, there lurk other objects which used to be on display, and it was these which cast light on the real lives of the makers of masterpieces such as the Alfred Jewel. The fundamental purpose of a museum is to enable the public to view and understand the artefacts in the museum’s possession, both sublime and prosaic. Museum designers and curators forget this, not perhaps at their own peril, but at the peril of those who will never see what used to be on display, and who will now always be wondering whether that delightful little unlabelled duck brooch belonged to the sixth, twelfth or sixteenth century.