Pre-Raphaelites Exhibtion

After my Friday morning lecture on Museography I visited the Pre-Raphaelites exhibition at the Tate Britain with fresh eyes. Mueseography is the study of the contents of museums, looking at how they interpret the things they hold. I was particular interested in the debate between the public and private. The public being the fact it is open to everyone, and the private being each persons individual experience of the museum.  Do museums allow you to have a personal experience? And even when they do, how personal is that experience in reality, as the museum has selected the art work they perceive as being a correct representation of, e.g a certain period.  When walking round the exhibition I thought about the paintings that had been selected to represent the Pre-Raphaelite period, who decides what to show, and more importantly what not to show.

The exhibition was divided up into 7 categories, for example Beauty, History, Nature ect, all meant to summarize the Pre-Raphaelitie period. The categories defiantly made the exhibition easier to follow, giving you clear indications of the next category of time you were in, people even invested in £4 to listen to an audio tour of the exhibition  It was all very straight forward and clearly labeled. However I couldn't help but notice how difficult it was to take any sort of personal interposition of the exhibition  What if the categories were all mixed up, in the wrong order, how would it be perceived then? Would each person take a completely unique inference of the Pre-Raphaelite period? To me it felt in someways that  the Museum was giving you your thoughts and telling you what to think. Not only that but the numbered chronological categories made it almost impossible to walk your own way round the exhibition, and  if you did so, you felt a definite sense that you were interrupting the current. The audio guide made this even more impossible as you were literally being told where to go and what to see. People were queuing in straight lines around the paintings, all with headphones on being directed like sheep in a pen. Having said this, its important to have context of a period so alien to modern culture. The context makes the art work more accessible and enables people to relate to the painting and gain a greater understanding of what they are seeing. But to what extent can the labels be trusted? In the 90's art photographer David Hamilton's work was removed from every gallery everywhere almost overnight, as his work showed young children in 'unsuitable' photographs, conveying pictures representing pedophilia. Regardless of Hamilton's intentions, the fact that the entire narrative had been rewritten, as if Hamilton's work had never existed, shows the power institutes have to rewrite history. It is more evident to think about not what the museum is showing us, but what they have choose the miss out, and why.