I went to the British Museum's Germany through its objects exhibition the other day, and came away underwhelmed. This was for a number of reasons.
Firstly, I was disappointed at how brief it was, and concluded that I was expected to go on to buy the book of the exhibition – another £30 – to overcome this limitation. I demured.
Then there was the question of the space devoted to science and maths. Oddly, there wasn't any. Given what Germans contributed to these fields in the 19th and early 20th centuries, this seems a curious omission. Perhaps it's all in the book of the exhibition, I thought, but it wasn't – and when Thomas Cromwell gets a mention in the index, but Werner Heisenberg doesn't, it look like a curator blind spot. Of course, you might think, this is all about objects, and how do you show what Heisenberg (and Boltzmann, Hertz, Haan, Meitner, Born, et al.) did in an object? Well, science museums manage this, you might counter.
The real problem was different, however, and more serious. It was the lack of any coherent underpinning narrative. What was it about the Germans and Germany that we were supposed to see through all these objects? I came away none the wiser. It just seemed a collection. How fortunate then that I'm reading German Genius by Peter Watson, as there are narratives galore running through this.
I'd say don't bother with Museum's object fetishing, read this book instead; you might just understand yourself a little bit more.
Responses
Thanks for the book tip Bill- it looks fascinating!