Radical Exhibition as Heritage
“During the past thirty years, it has become increasingly apparent that in the United States, England, and Ireland museums are one arena among many in which the dominance of middle-class imperialist culture has been contested. As the notion of a monolithic national culture is debated” (Levin,2005,p.1).
Both the permanent collection at the Derryglad Folk and Heritage and the Hallyu! exhibition at the V&A 2022-2023 tackle the subject of the “ process of re-packaging and re-defining the nation ''(Levin,2005,p.13) in different ways. As each exhibition displays cultural products and artefacts, I am arguing that each are exhibitions as heritage and folklore. In pre-western-modernity “The collections did not include the material culture of everyday life unless an object was deemed an artefact of curiosity or was considered to represent the culture of the “other,” and “cabinets of curiosities” were the mainstay technique of displaying collections.” (Dewhurst, Kurt, 2011, p.249) an exhibition that goes against this tradition would be one that displays the everyday side by side without hierarchy with a priority of telling the story of the everyman or the story of his interaction with popular culture produced by the society.
This essay will go through two exhibitions which based on my visiting of them I have gotten a sense that they have a radical viewpoint on how culture and heritage should be presented in the museum setting. First each exhibition will be described in its historical context, subject matter, curation, place within its institution and how it is radical. Secondly they will be compared to each other and how these seemingly different exhibitions are actually quite similar with their modes of subversion.
Before beginning a working definition of exhibition should be given, for this I will use the one given by Lucy Steeds in the introduction of Exhibition (2014) as it is the best point of reference for my education of what an “exhibition” is in the context of the art and museum world. She argues that rather than saying that it is “ the medium through which most art becomes known” as this may “neutralise” exhibitions. “We might talk instead in terms of the potential exhibitions have to be discursive formations with multiple fields of possibility, activating critical exchanges about art that span the local and worldwide” (Steeds, 2014, pp.14-15). Here the word “art” is interchangeable with the objects that you would find in a museum.
The first exhibition that I will discuss is the permanent collection at the Derryglad Folk and Heritage Museum, Curraghboy, Co. Roscommon. It was founded by locals, Charlie and Bridie Finneran in 1998. The collection began when Charlie Finneran found a slate sundial dating to 1839 in the thatched roof of his family home. In their own words, the museum “tells the story of our rural community through everyday objects.” (Derryglad Folk & Heritage Museum, N/D). “Life at home is a frequent focus in the attempts to collect and record the social life of contemporary societies; the home is seen as a key site… the house is also viewed as a place of consumption of mass consumer goods. The home is an ideal context to reveal the use and meanings of everyday things in contemporary society.”(Rhys,2014,p.171). This sums up the ideology under which the curators at Derryglad collect.
The first time that I visited this exhibition was during my last year of primary school, circa 2016, as part of a school group tour. We were given a tour by the two founders, beginning with the objects which the collection began with and ending in the staged class rooms and shops. As we went around we were told stories about how different objects were acquired or how they relate to memories in the childhoods of the museum’s founders. None of this information could have come from wall texts or online searches or surrounding reading. It was entirely personal and deeply linked with the local area which all of us school kids also came from. The pieces from this visit which have stuck in my head through the years since have lingered there because their presentation was nothing like how I expected a traditional museum to display and preserve its objects. A large piece of bog butter which we saw slowly melting behind its glass case and uncanny shop mannequins used in the sets of retro shops and school room (Fig.9). At that young age I could tell that the priority of this exhibition was storytelling of the life of fellow and equal locals and nostalgia rather than a more traditional attitude towards preservation, study and “othering” of perceived primitive technologies, time and people.
It is notable that this museum and its subsequent permanent exhibition began in the late 1990s as this was a time of an influx of folk and heritage museums being founded on grounds which went against the status quo of institutions in Ireland set up in line with British colonial attitudes towards collecting.
These are concerned with “ethnographic collections” (Garvey,Siochain, Drazin,2012). “In nineteenth century museums, contemporary technology was collected both as a part of continuum of historic collecting and as examples of modern industry” (Rhys,2014, p.377). This shift from the more puritan and distanced Victorian attitude to the ethnographic collections of “peasant material culture”(Garvey,Siochain, Drazin,2012,pp.5-6) to a Modernist and holistic attitude began in the late 1920s in Britain and Ireland. Another difference in the uses of folk exhibitions pre and post 1920s is that before this time museum collections were mostly there to support scholarly research so everyday objects were not kept that much but then there was a shift towards a study of everyday objects (Dewhurst, Kurt, 2011, p.249).
In the 1920s, rather than a “valorisation of Irish peasant or farming culture… the study of folklife emerged, to some, too close to home for popular appreciation” (Garvey,Siochain, Drazin,2012, p.5). This catalyst of this shift has been described as a “stimulated self awareness” “drawing on oral literature of the common people” (Garvey,Siochain, Drazin,2012, p.6).
The collections of these irish objects are usually of rural objects- they're called “folklife material’” (Garvey,Siochain, Drazin,2012,p.5).As briefly mentioned above, at the time of my visit the exhibition consisted of a main room which consisted of old farm machinery (Fig.1)which went back up to 250 years up until just before the foundation of the museum, vintage metal signs which displayed advertisements, the sort you see on pub walls (Fig.2 a recreation of a shop counter, and the aforementioned bog butter (Fig.3). In surrounding, smaller outside buildings there are the recreations of a chemist and a school room (Fig.9), all
Fig.1,Tractor Seats, (Finneran, N/D) Fig.2, Shopfront with Signs, (Finneran, N/D)
displaying the artefacts from the time which actually would have been in an old chemist at the object’s origin. This evokes the sense of the small village that the museum is trying to represent. “Museums then can combine different perspectives to create a holistic view of native systems of organizing, understanding, making, using, and constantly recreating art in ritual and mundane situations.” (Shukla,2001,p.40).
Fig.3, Bog Butter, (McDanny, 2014)
The floor to wall salon-style curation of the walls (Fig.4) makes me feel like the curators do not want a single thing to be left unsaid. This collection of local objects brought by people who lived with them and saw their everyday beauty is similar to the Americana exhibition (1985) curated by Group Materials (Fig.4). “The group's main point of resistance was the commercial art world and its reliance on name artists and discrete, saleable objects.” (Green,2011).
“Group Material proposed a 'precise and innovative exhibition design', a layered and salon-style hanging of mass-produced commodities (such as a clothes washer and dryer, pop music and a TV continually broadcasting one of the networks) alongside historical works of social critique by artists under-recognised by the Whitney and works of contemporary art critical of North American culture. Group Material's self-stated aim was to 'demonstrate how art is dependent on a social context for its meaning'.” (Green,2011).
Both approaches share a common goal of engaging audiences through immersive storytelling and multisensory experiences.
This dense arrangement of objects creates a visually stimulating environment that immerses visitors in the material culture of the Irish midlands. It also maximises the use of space, showcasing a practical curatorial practice as independent, passion led institutions like Derryglad Folk Museum simply just do not have the same space and funding as an institution such as the V&A. This does lead to a loss of narrative coherence which I do not think is a negative. It does go against a traditional more white cube feeling of other historical museums but since this exhibition aims to represent the daily lives of people leading busy rural lives, the sense of clutter and motion makes intuitive sense thematically.
Again, unlike other larger institutions, Derryglad remains immersed in the rural life which it represents, there are no artefacts taken from ‘natives’ from another land and then placed in an urban institution to be ogled at “Despite the perceptions and realities of museums as sites of authoritative knowledge, their reservoir of social capital, and their potential to be agents and sites of civic engagement, museums are rarely at the center of community life.”(Dewhurst, Kurt, 2011, p.251), Derryglad is the antithesis of this.
Fig.4, Top left and right, Derryglad Folk Museum Salon Style, (2016), compared with bottom left and right, Group Materials, Americana (1985)
The object shown in the Derryglad Folk and Heritage Museum which has had the biggest impression on me in the sense of a radical display found in exhibition is the 5000 years old, 50 pound lump of bog butter which the museum acquired in 2000 after it was excavated in a Roscommon bog (Derryglad Folk & Heritage Museum, N/D) (Fig.3). The butter is in a wood framed glass case which from my visit I observed had cracks in the top back, letting air in, causing parts of the butter to start to melt and deteriorate. This is an undoubtedly radical element of the curation of this exhibition; this treatment of an object in a volatile state would never happen in, for example, a state museum. It raises questions about care and if this object is not being academically studied then does it matter if it is being kept in pristine condition so long as it serves the story telling aims of the museum.
The traditional thinking around these objects is usually based in “the existence of a market where these objects circulate at sometimes astronomical prices emphasises their great value”(Krzysztof,1994,p.161). This makes the deterioration of objects a usual worry of curators in institutions; ““The risk of corrosion caused by physical and chemical factors is reduced to a minimum by careful monitoring of variables such as light, humidity, temperature and levels of atmospheric pollution. Damaged objects are always restored to their former glory whenever possible”(Krzysztof,1994,p.161)
There exists philosophical arguments against the restoration of historical objects, I believe that these beliefs are extremely radical and that it is only in small folk museums that you see these philosophies in practice as they are the only places that either dare to do so or become comfortable with the fact that they must follow them because of the lack of funding they may have. These beliefs are argued as follows;
“The French art historian and archaeologist, Adolphe Napoleon Didron, famously said: ‘for ancient monuments, it is better to consolidate than repair, better to repair than to restore, and better to restore than to reconstruct’...We value them for their history; for their story. When they were first constructed, we can imagine them shiny and new. Then over the centuries, they take some knocks, get put to different uses, and eventually end up bearing the patina of age as we see them today. If we intervene now, to stop them decaying, we stop their story; we bring their history to a close.” (Matravers, N/D) and if there is no concern for an object’s use for academic study then why interfere. If something needs so much reconstruction does it not over time just become a fake.
“Artefacts show the signs of their wear; the marks upon them manifest their story.”(Matravers, N/D).
The second exhibition relating to heritage which is radical in its thematics and curation is Hallyu! - The Korean Wave (2022-2023) which took place in the V&A London. It was the first major exhibition in the V&A which was about South Korean Culture since 1961 (Kim, 2022, p.11). The exhibition discusses South Korean heritage through a presentation of the products of its rapid economic growth and globalisation which took place in the twentieth century. These “products” are entertainment and pop culture orientated (film, music, fashion, digital culture) and are shown along their modes of remediation ( television sets, radios (Fig.5), the first touchscreen phone) (Kim, 2022, pp.17-18). This rise of South Korea's soft power through the spread of the popularity of their pop culture is called “Hallyu” (Kim, 2022, pp.12-13). The exhibition explores this rapid modernization of South korea and the historical context that was the catalyst for this change,
Fig.5, first radio manufactured in korea the A-501 1959 designed by Park Yong Gui for Goldstar, (2022)
“The Korean war led to a coup led by Major general Park Chung-hee (1961). At the time South korea was considered a third world country, the new regime “pressed for rapid modernization and economic recovery” this led to an “export- orientated” market…In Park’s view, popular culture was for the promotion of moral and patriotic values” he saw the influx of american culture as “debauched”” (Kim, 2022, pp.24-25).
This need for globalisation as well as an aversion to american culture was the backdrop to South korea creating its own brand of popular culture designed to spread throughout the world, later dominating social media, being able to rival America.
My experience visiting this exhibition was in January of 2023 as part of a college study trip to London. The exhibition was a temporary, pay-in one at the V&A that my classmates and I decided to shell out for because of how unique it seemed. There seemed to be an irreverence with how topics and objects were displayed beside each other and we had never seen an exhibition that took the enduring topic of heritage and culture and displayed it as videos of minecraft youtubers dancing to Gangnam style… especially in the V&A.
The first thing I remember being hit with was this, a wall of screens playing videos of different parodies of this dance trend (Fig.6)(Kim, 2022, p.17) . The curators argued that the success of Opa Gangnam, Park Jae-Sang aka PSY, 2012, was the beginning of Hallyu and therefore should be the start of the exhibition. The song commentated on South Korea's materialistic cultural pursuits (Gangnam is a “glitzy” and “glamorous” area in Seoul, but forty years earlier it was “poor, desolated rice paddy field, bordered by the empty concrete shells of… apartment blocks” (Kim, 2022, p.17). The permanent exhibition in Derryglad does not do this.It shows Ireland’s poorer past alone and no comment on our own current
globalisation and urbanisation. I think this is to do with the distance that each exhibition has between the source of its objects and where the exhibition is held and viewed as in Derryglad is on the very land where some of its artefacts and characters come from whereas Hallyu! is a show for a foreign country.
Fig.6 , Gangnam Style Parody Wall, Fad Magazine, (2022)
“A dynamic display should broaden the viewer's understanding of the cultural functions and multiple contexts of an object, and it should broaden physical perceptions of the object as well.” (Shukla,2001,p.34).
These screens were followed by a narrative of “Japanese to American cultural imperialism “, artefacts of this time were lit in alcoves of a winding hallway which we had to walk through before seeing the examples of more recent South Korean pop culture. The transition point between the history of modern South Korea and its contemporary pop culture was an artwork which commented on the broadcasting revolution in South Korea (Fig.7). Nam June Paik’s Mirage Stage (1986), made up of 3-channel video shown on thirtythree TVmonitors and forty wooden tv carcasses (Kim, 2022, p.59).
“
Fig. 7, Mirage Stage (1986),Nam June Paik, (2022)
“Contemporary technology produces an enormous range of artefacts that are similar in appearance, that depend on the invisible software within, that have deep personal meaning, and which are only functional when connected to a large and complex network.”(Rhys,2014,p.377).
Towards the end of the exhibition there were interactive exhibitions about K-Pop dances where live videos of exhibition goers were projected and incorporated into the works, Twitter screenshots of K-Pop fans were displayed with the same importance as the material culture of Korean costume design and so on (Fig.8). What took me aback most about this exhibition and what it did differently in the context of an exhibition situated in the V&A is how seemingly high and low cultural artefacts were displayed beside each other equally. It is “ examining how the hybrid nature of each sector has been shaped by Korea’s compressed modern history” (Kim, 2022, pp.12-13).
Fig.8, Left: Historical South Korean Costume Design,V&A, (2022), Right, K-Pop fan Tweets,p.110,Kim, (2022)
“The V&A’s collections expanded in line with the growth of the British empire, in its official and unofficial guise, across southern Asia '' (Hunt, 2019). In the past, an exhibition about foreign cultures in the V&A would have had a strong colonial undertone as they were built upon collections gathered by conquerors which were then brought back. Hallyu! is the opposite, sponsored by South Korean companies and institutions ( Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism Republic of Korea and Genesis, a South Korean automotive brand) , it is a brightly coloured boasting of its cultural success and advertisement for its products.
“Scholars such as Brian Wallis have argued that much of what museums do now might be considered as "selling nations"-constructing a relatively homogeneous and stable image of a country in order to garner positive images abroad and to encourage tourists, corporations, and other nations to invest in the country” (Levin,2005,p.3).
“For a museum like the V&A, to decolonise is to decontextualise: the history of empire is embedded in its meaning and collections, and the question is how that is interpreted.” (Hunt,2019).
The change from the old rural korea to the contemporary South Korea that has economically and technologically surged can be read in parallel with the change of attitudes towards folklore studies in the twentieth century.
”The contribution of the psychological ethnologist (the post-Freudian folklorist) is to contextualise symbol making within a historical and cultural context, the changing priorities as people age, and chance or ritual encounters, such as creating “inside” jokes or socially bonding expression. Ethnographers call such encounters a cultural “scene” or “frame” in which people feel free to express themselves or connect to participants in ways that would be different outside the frame.” (Bronner, 2015, p.21). This is a radical change in thought that has parallels with the radical change of human relations and pattern making from old folk traditions in South Korea transitioning into “inside jokes” on BTS Stan Twitter.
Fig.9,Left, Derryglad School Room, (Finneran, N/D), Right, Mannequins used in Hallyu!, (V&A, 2022)
I think the best visual example which sums up how each subverts the typical heritage or folklore museum is in how each uses mannequins (Fig.9). The cluttered, local aura of the Derryglad Folklore and Heritage museum clashes with the Hayllu! exhibition in the V&A, at least upon first glance but I think their radical take on the subject is comparable in these examples. They are both visually striking in how they subvert the norm of what you would expect to find in a museum, neither are a typical white cube and each object is treated with the same respect, there is no platforming of a higher culture or no ideas of what is the most pristine and important object (ruffled, new wig on the teacher mannequin displayed alongside period pieces, nothing is lined along walls on plinths this is comparable to the mess of screens in Hayllu!, each flat, re-creatable image is just as important as the custom outfits on the mannequins). Both also align with Samdok’s “Home Pool” (a themed grouping of objects) (Rhys,2014,p.173) which goes against what contemporary European curators think is the best way to sort objects in a museum ( these curators tend to prefer the processes of “Contemporary material life studies”(Rhys,2014,pp.173-174)), showing how each exhibition, while contemporary anti-colonial ideas can be applied to them and modern aesthetics found in them, subvert and go against what is in trend in contemporary curatorial practices.
“The posture, proportions and sizes of modern mannequins made for store display mean they are only suitable for modern garments. It is extremely difficult to adapt them to older pieces” (Sustaining Places, 2017).Derryglad goes against this, modern mannequins are used in old situations, again this exhibition is more about feelings of nostalgia and the passing of knowledge than about keeping the physicality of the pieces un-deteriorated.
Both exhibitions focus on popular culture and how its been popularly consumed by people living in the countries of topic and focus on the visual culture of the everyday lives of a people of a nation rather than fine art.
They are also radical in how they subvert Victorian institutional practices.“Folklore is crucial evidence for formulating a symbolist theory of mind…This goal means shifting the Victorian idea of culture as a superorganic force upon which individuals as members of societies at a fixed level of progress have little control to one of individual, creative agents of tradition and identity.”(Bronner, 2015, p.19).
Derryglad and being traders in nostalgia not necessarily objects, this might be why “care” may not be an important thing to glorify, not an objectified exhibition as others are, it is not interested in selling pieces but creating a feeling and knowledge in the viewer. Both are radical in how they present heritage; nostalgia and storytelling over fetishisation of pristine objects; heritage as global influence and presented nearly advertisement and indifference in what material culture and digital culture is placed beside each other on an equal footing.
“ Partly to underscore the irrationality and backwardness of pre-industrial cultures, the Victorians denied the thoughtfulness or self-consciousness of participants in tradition or that customs could be strategically enacted for reasons at anything but the most literally perceived reasons” they are radical as it is the own people of each society depicted collecting their own history, this personal characteristic makes the traditional practice of “othering natives” impossible (Bronner, 2015, p.20).
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