Memory & Oblivion pp 439-443 | Cite as
An Object Manufactured for Exhibition at the Bottom of the Sea
Abstract
This paper deals with issues raised by the “Wreck of the Titanic” Exhibition, the result of a collaboration between the National Maritime Museum London and the New York based salvage company RMS Titanic Inc. Greenwich was the first venue for this international touring exhibition of artefacts retrieved from the seabed which is intended to culminate in a permanent Titanic memorial museum. This paper considers the implications of a major national museum mounting a commemorative exhibition on the Titanic in the mid-1990s. It focuses on what this exhibition revealed about the status of museums in post-industrial Britain as well as the ways in which the displays of carefully restored Titanic artefacts constituted new narratives of transcendence and nationhood.
Keywords
Object Manufacture Sunday Time Projected Titanic Private Collector Debris FieldPreview
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Notes
- 2.See Patrick Wright, “Can the centre hold?”, The Guardian, 3 April 1995, p. 1.Google Scholar
- 3.Walter Lord, A Night to Remember, Bantam Books, New York 1980, pp. 141–142. (Originally published 1955 by Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York.)Google Scholar
- 4.Bernard Levin, “Plumbing the depths”, The Times, 26 July 1994.Google Scholar
- 5.Miss Hughes, Plumstead, “Star Letter”, News Shopper, 10 August 1994.Google Scholar
- 6.Such artefacts involve a financial as well as a curiosity value; not only private collectors but also certain dealers specialise in Titanic memorabilia and the estimated price (for example) of a postcard sent from the ship is about, 3,000. See Peter Johnson, “Awash with Titanic memories-Collector’s file” in the Personal Finance section of The Sunday Times, 7 August 1994, p. 7.Google Scholar
- 7.See, for example, Patrick Wright, On Living in an Old Country-the national past in contemporary Britain, Verso, London 1985 and in particular the essay “Falling Back Together in the Nineteen Eighties: The Continuing Voyage of the Mary Rose”, pp. 161–92.Google Scholar
- 8.On 12 January 1912 British coal miners voted overwhelmingly to strike for a minimum wage; the strike was settled 6 April. For an account of the social and political tensions of this period, see Jane Beckett and Deborah Cherry, (eds.), The Edwardian Era, Phaidon Press and Barbican Art Gallery, Oxford and London 1987.Google Scholar
- 10.The Sunday Times, Business Section, 2 January 1994.Google Scholar
- 11.“Voici un objet manufacturé pour une exposition éventuelle au fond de la mer”. (The ship was la Normandie.) Bice Curiger, Meret Oppenheim, Parkett Publishers and ICA, Zurich and London 1989, p. 42.Google Scholar