21st Jun 2017 1:00pm
G4, Grand Parade
A University of Brighton Design Archives occasional seminar
Dr Steven Cooke, Deakin University
This paper examines the origins, development and reception of the Warsaw Ghetto Exhibition held in London 1961 and 1962. Created by renowned graphic designer George Him and sponsored by among others the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the exhibition is a site through which complex debates over Anglo-Jewish identity, the memory of the Holocaust in Britain, and the relationship between industrial, graphic and exhibition design can be understood. It shows how representations of the Holocaust were shaped by both local concerns and an emerging global network of information, artefacts, people, and institutions involved in remembrance. It explores the politics of the development of the exhibition, the poetics of its displays, the part played by survivors and the plans to tour the exhibition both nationally and internationally. In particular, the paper focuses on the use and arrangement of photographs in the exhibition. Through this we can see a shift from exhibitions as part of regulatory technologies to the ways in which visitors are understood as co-curators: the exhibition as a performative space and an exhibition practice which subtly encouraged the agency of the visitor without negating the explicit political message. I therefore argue that George Him’s approach presaged later developments in exhibition design and, along with the work of other key designers, necessitates a reappraisal of the history of the new museology: one which places greater emphasis on the early influence of other disciplines such as architecture, industrial and graphic design than has been the case to date.
All welcome.
