I recently visited the V&A Museum of Childhood in London, Bethnal Green. Compared to “children museums”, where the participatory quality and the active engagements of kids is predominant, the Museum of Childhood has a more complex nature due to its history and to the history of its collections. In fact, the museum in Bethnal Green was originally formed in 1872 as a branch of the South Kensington Museum, to serve the public of East London. The interest in children and the collection of toys date back to the 1920s, thanks to the curator Arthur Sabin, who wanted to do something specifically devoted to children from that part of the city, who looked bored and noisy when visiting the museum (for the history of the museum, in addition to the website, see the article by Anthony Burton, 1997). After the Second World War, under the curatorship of Montague Weekley, the collection of toys grew further, but it was only in 1974 – under the direction of Sir Roy Strong at the V&A – that it was decided to devote the museum entirely to childhood: collections that were not relevant were moved to South Kensington and the institution was finally renamed “Museum of Childhood”. Today different souls do coexist within the museum, as they are represented by the permanent exhibitions (with objects and interactive play areas), temporary shows, and activities and workshops organized for schools and families.
The curatorial approach adopted in the museum has been variously criticized over the years, especially with the advent of the New Museology, with the new wave of thinking that has characterized the world of museums over the past twenty years, as well as the reflection on the construction of knowledge. In an essay published in 1989, in the book New Museology, for instance, Ludmilla Jordanova complained about the abstract, idealised and coercive nature of the Museum, ending with presenting the public with a “certain” idea of childhood, that shows no shadows (i.e. it does not pay any attention to real contexts, where children often had no toys nor any form of education) and that appears, paradoxically, to be without children. More generally, Jordanova criticized the claim the Museum made that the very display of objects could bring to the public the variety of stories and cultural meanings of which objects, as documents, are the carriers – this is the wrong assumption that Jordanova read in the Museum’s claim of being an institution that «tries to preserve something of everybody’s childhood», «a museum that should appeal to everybody, for there is no one who was not once a child», finally a place where objects «often speak louder than words and statistics, and can help museum visitors to sense what it was like to be a child, or a parent, in the past». Conversely, Jordanova underlined how only the act of interpretation and contextualization of artifacts can help the plurality of childhood’s stories and meanings to emerge. Actually, this is not really what a survey conducted later, in the 1990s, has revealed: in fact when asked whether they had expected the displays of the Museum «to reveal more about the domestic, educational or working aspects of children’s lives», adult visitors of Childhood Museum usually answered they did not – in a way, proving that in their minds, the equation exists “childhood museum = toy museum”, and that the idealistic idea persists that childhood is sufficiently represented through toys, as Sharon Roberts has recently noted in a paper about the representations of children and childhood in British museums.
However, twenty years after the paper by Jordanova, although one could not say that the Bethnal Green Museum has fully addressed and resolved the issues mentioned by the scholar, the current mission of the Museum appears to be pointing in a different direction, at least showing a renewed awareness of its role and tools: to «encourage everyone to explore the themes of childhood past and present, and to develop an appreciation of creative design through our inspirational collections and varied public programme» (here online).
The permanent collections are displayd in three galleries that do not follow a chronological order but a thematic one – Moving Toys, Creativity, and Childhood – and that occupy most part of the building (the same since 1872) with a series of large showcases. The galleries offer different access keys for both toys and childhood, presented through introductory texts that suggest a number of possible considerations and comparisons. In the case of Moving Toys, for example, toys are presented depending on the type of movement necessary to put them into action, or the type of “movement” that can create (for example the moving image); in this section activities are also included, like a peep show. The Childhood gallery is divided into six subsections, where toys are displayed to invite visitors – adults as well as children – to reflect on the experience of childhood in different periods and cultures: Babies, Home, What We Wear, Who Will I Be?, How We Learn, and Good Times – in this section, one can see adults and children engaging in board games, while kids play in a sandpit beach. Finally, Creativity consists of vitrines and interactive stations where children can experience and express their imagination and creativity – the latter being presented as belonging to everybody, «everyone is creative», as the ability to «question, play, take risk and come up with new ideas» and as an ability that also helps children develop their self-esteem and their social relations.
While looking around and reading the texts in the Museum, it is hard not to think about design and its relationships with creativity, with children, with play, and about how these aspects can be displayed in the museum context: both in the sense just indicated, of playing and creativity as important factors in the design process and of how designers have addressed the theme of play and toys, as well as in the sense of how these design issues and features can be exhibited in a museum, especially in a museums that is primarily aimed at children. During my visit these thoughts were particularly stimulated by two temporary exhibitions, both specifically revolving around design.
The first exhibition, Use Your Imagination (November 28, 2009 - June 13, 2010), displayed in the entrance hall, was devoted to child-centered toy design, aiming at critically reflecting on design and toy industry in contemporary society.
«Play is a vitally important element in a child’s social, emotional, physical and intellectual development. It is how we learn about the world. Toys are the tools of children’s play and need to be well designed to fit the purpose. The market is saturated with commercially hyped, over-packaged products with short lived appeal. But what makes a “good” toy?»,
asked the introductory label.
In an article published in 1947, presenting his cat Meo Romeo, Bruno Munari wrote that for him, to design books and toys for children was a great pleasure, since «children are the ideal audience: they know what they want, have no preconceptions, and if they do not like something they just say it» (translation is mine; the original text here). Use Your Imagination seems to be based on a similar conviction, that is that children are the best judges. BA Applied arts students from Middlesex University have been invited to create design solutions that try to respond the issue “what makes a good toy”. Not only students could draw inspiration from the archive of toy producers Paul and Marjorie Abbatt, precursors of the child-centered design (the archive is part of the Museum and some pieces were also on show), but their designs were tested by a critical panel of children, aged 5 to 10 years.
The second exhibition, Sit Down: Seating for Kids (February 6 - 5 September 2010), as the title suggests, is dedicated to seats for children, focusing on comfort and design (see the presentation online).
«We take sitting down and a degree of comfort for granted, but it has not always been so simple. [...] Designers have approached seating for children in many ways as attitudes have changed. Let us show a variety of chairs spanning three hundred and fifty years and ask an important question = what makes the perfect seat for you?»,
reads the introductory text.
The exhibition, curated by Catherine Bornet (it is nice to see her picture as a child and to learn about her favorite games here!), presents a rich display of chairs and other seats for children, running through the history of furniture from the seventeenth century to today. Three main questions provide the framework for the display, under which the visitors’ attention is constantly engaged by a series of questions and annotations that invite them to observe different aspects and to form their opinion.
The first question is only deceptively simple “What is a seat?”. The tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears offers the perfect set to suggest that, beyond the certainty that a chair is a place or thing to sit upon, over the centuries and in everyday life several factors and considerations have contributed in producing a wide variety of models – in respect to which visitors are asked to express their preference, trying some of the seats on display and using criteria such as comfort, style, size, color, material.
The next section “Who are seats for?” invites visitors to consider how seats function in different contexts (kitchen, bathroom, school, outdoors, etc.) and in relation to the adult-sized world where seats were, or are, used. Here seats are not only introduced with panels and catching phrases, but also “personified” through cartoons and jokes that express their qualities: “Sit up straight” cries out a deportment chair designed by Sir Astley Paston Cooper to force children’s posture, both physically and morally.
Finally, “How are seats made?” presents a parade of chairs, focusing on design, materials (displayed on panels that can be touched), and production techniques, from Chippendale to Jane Atfield, from handcraft to industrial production, from wood to recycled plastic. This section concludes with an area where children are encouraged to assemble a chair and to design themeselves and show their seats.
Both these temporary exhibitions, Use your imagination and Sit Down, as well as some sections of the permanent exhibition at the Childhood Museum, offer interesting insights on how design can be displayed and presented in the museum context. One might say that having children and families in mind – rather than an élite of art or design passionates – can help in developing a curatorial approach that aims at providing an engaging experience for the public.
References
Anthony Burton, Design History and the History of Toys. Defining a Discipline for the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, in “Journal of Design History”, vol. 10. 1997, n. 1, pp. 1-21.
Ludmilla Jordanova, Objects of Knowledge. A Historical Perspective on Museums, in The New Museology, ed. by Peter Vergo, Reaktion Books, London, 1989, pp. 22-40.
Sharon Roberts, Minor Concerns. Representations of Children and Childhood in British Museums, in “Museum and Society”, vol. 4, 2006, n. 3, pp. 152-165; online.
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