Exhibiting the ‘Foreign’ in a National Museum: Imperial War Museum London and Languages at War

Abstract

Languages at War sits squarely within the mission of the Imperial War Museum (IWM), which is to enable people to understand human behaviour through the lens of war and conflict. Yet the policy and practice of languages in war has previously been one of a raft of issues or themes which have been at best difficult, sometimes even ‘unsayable’, for museums, not least the IWM. Particular historical threads might be difficult to address for any number of reasons. We as museum professionals might fear that our audiences will not be interested in them. They might, say, prick the bubble of national myth and ‘heritage’ or be politically controversial. On a practical level, they might be difficult to render in a museum display because the evidence for them is unappetizing for museum audiences — not least a display of documents in an unfamiliar, foreign language. Some subjects might demand the use of disturbing imagery. Indeed, we might not even have any material in the collections to deliver certain challenging narratives. Our hugely successful partnership with the Universities of Reading and Southampton has naturally led us to think of how we deal with our own practice as regards foreign languages and cultures in an exhibition environment and how we might exploit further the richness and diversity of our collections. This has become an imperative as we embark upon a major redevelopment programme, Regeneration: Imperial War Museum London, the first phase of which will see a new World War I gallery for the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War in 2014.