%0 Journal Article
%T Wounded – an exhibition out of time
%A Stewart Emmens
%D 2020
%V 
%N Spring 2020
%K exhibitions
%K First World War
%K Interpretation
%K Medical care
%K Military medicine
%K Rehabilitation
%K Time
%K Wounded
%X The creation of an exhibition, from the original idea to the final public offering involves a series of developmental stages subject to a whole range of influences. During these processes different choices are presented as an initial concept is translated into real content with its accompanying interpretation. As the exhibition becomes fleshed out, significant departures from and adaptations to the original vision are almost inevitable, whether these are desired or imposed by circumstance. This paper will outline and discuss some of these processes in relation to a particular scenario; where the bold concept for one exhibition has been subsequently re-purposed as the basis for a different display. In this case a concept was shifted from a contemporary setting to a historic one and scaled up from a close, contained situation to one of vast sprawling size and complexity. How might original exhibition themes and ideas persist and develop in the new scenario and in what forms might they manifest themselves? Do the original characteristics hinder the development of that second exhibition or might they even flourish – perhaps in unexpected ways?
This article explores a case study: the Science Museum’s temporary exhibition Wounded: Casualties, Conflict and Care, which was open to the public between 2016 and 2018. Looking beyond what is simply suggested by the exhibition’s title, it examines how underlying elements present in an original concept for an exhibition emerged or evolved in the development of this final display. The main focus of this case study is to examine the nature of these elements and the challenges, opportunities and occasional contradictions that they presented throughout the exhibition process.
Fundamentally these elements related to concepts of time and of ‘scale’, both of which would ultimately infuse the interpretation of Wounded and be found layered throughout the exhibition, albeit expressed in subtly different ways. Manifestations of time were here conceived as linear and concisely measurable, and emotionally experienced or imagined. Scale appears, most tellingly, in the contrasts offered between the individual and the mass. Ultimately, I argue, these merge into notions of the ‘anonymous individual’, which had its own power to help emotionally engage visitors with the exhibition.
%Z Reuters: 10 June 2007. Archived at https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-afghan-soldier/british-soldier-killed-in-afghan-ambush-idUKKLR2125920070610
%Z Notably The Museum of Military Medicine, formerly the Army Medical Services Museum, at the Keogh Barracks, Mytchett, Surrey
%Z For example, Saving Lives: Frontline Medicine in a Century of Conflict, Imperial War Museum North, Manchester (2012–13), War & Trauma – Soldiers and Ambulance, Flanders Fields Museums, Ypres and Ghent (2013–14), and the medical elements within the Imperial War Museum’s permanent First World War gallery in London (2014–).
%Z An example being that what was established as good practice during the Boer War (1899–1902) for treating many battlefield wounds proved inappropriate when applied on the Western Front. Physical wounds received on the dry, sterile grasslands of southern Africa tended to be simple ‘in and out’ bullet wounds, usually needing minimal antiseptic interventions and then covered and left to heal.  When this approach was initially applied to the generally far more complex wounds being received on the Western Front, which were inevitably also contaminated by the heavily manured farmlands of France and Belgium, death or, at best, amputation was the common outcome.
%Z The author Captain Malcom Vivian Hay was wounded at the Battle of Le Cateau on the Western Front, in August 1914.
%Z For example: Carden-Coyne, A, 2014, The Politics of Wounds: military patients and medical power in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press);  Scotland, S and Heys, S (eds), 2013, War Surgery 1914–18 (Warwick: Helion and Company); Mayhew, E, 2014, Wounded: The Long Journey Home From the Great War (London: Vintage)
%Z For example: Wallace, C and Fraser, J, 1918, Surgery at a casualty clearing station (London: A & C Black); Carrel, A and Dehelly, G, 1917, The treatment of infected wounds (translated) (London: Baillière, Tindall & Cox); Robb Church, J, 1918, The doctor's part: What happens to the wounded in war (New York: D. Appleton and Company); Fauntleroy, Surgeon A M, 1915, Report On the Medico-Military Aspects of the European War from Observations Taken Behind the Allied Armies in France (Washington: Government Printing Office); Hull, A J, 1918, Surgery in War (London: J. & A. Churchill), as well as many wartime era articles in both The British Medical Journal and The Lancet
%Z From Wilfred Owen’s poem Dulce Et Decorum Est, posthumously published in 1920. Lines 9–12:
      Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
      Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time
      But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
      And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.
%Z This would have been a key content element had the original exhibition been developed. It also feels worth noting that in the course of researching content for the Wounded exhibition itself, several sources, including staff at The Royal British Legion Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College suggested that the devastating and complex wounds being produced by IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) in Afghanistan were very similar to those caused by shell fragmentation on the Western Front which numerically also accounted for the most casualties.
%Z For example; Guiou, N M, 1918, ‘Blood transfusion in a field ambulance’, British Medical Journal, June 22; 1(2999): 695–696; Milligan, Capt E T C and Capt F L Napier, 1918, ‘Memoranda: Blood transfusion and resuscitation’, British Medical Journal, Nov 30; 2: 603
%Z Some of the most significant findings were published as Reports of the special investigation committee on surgical shock and allied conditions, nos. I-IX, by the Medical Research Committee, HMSO, 1917–19.
%Z It should be noted that many wounded men would have been considered as having recovered enough after stays at Base hospitals on the French coast to be returned to the front lines. For others, it literally was the end of the line, given the size of many of the cemeteries that grew alongside the military hospitals. For example, the cemetery near the coastal town of Étaples alone has over 10,000 graves from the First World War, mostly containing men who died across the 16 hospitals that were once located nearby.
%Z A situation emphasised in the news media and captured through popular First World War history books such as Veterans: The Last Survivors of the Great War, by Richard Van Emden, Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 1998; Last Post: The Final Word from Our First World War Soldiers, by Max Arthur, Cassell, 2007; The Last Fighting Tommy, Harry Patch (with Richard Van Emden), Bloomsbury, 2007; and Kitchener’s last volunteer: The Life of Henry Allingham, the Oldest Surviving Veteran of the Great War, by Henry Allingham and Dennis Goodwin, Mainstream Publishing Ltd, 2008.
%Z Former US President Herbert Hoover. Speech in Chicago, Illinois to the 23rd Republican National Convention (27 June 1944)
%Z Online review: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-6283821/BRIAN-VINER-reviews-Peter-Jackons-colourised-WW1-documentary-Shall-Not-Grow-Old.html
%Z Peter Jackson interview: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/10/the-faces-are-unbelievable-peter-jackson-on-they-shall-not-grow-old
%Z As reported by Milo Garner, UCL Film and Society blog: https://www.uclfilmsociety.co.uk/blog/london-film-festival-they-shall-not-grow-old-review/
%Z This is unsurprising given the autochrome technique patented by France’s Lumière brothers in 1903.

%Z Anonymous ‘young man’, quoted in: How Did Visitors Respond to the ‘Wounded’ Exhibition?, internal report commissioned for Science Museum Audience Research and produced by The Susie Fisher Group, Spring 2017
%Z The war wounds that never healed by Jacqueline Winspear, The Telegraph online, 2012 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/9184088/The-war-wounds-that-never-healed.html
%Z For example: Van Orden, V, 2006, ‘Exhibiting Tragedy: Museums and the Representation of September 11’, The Journal of Museum Education, Vol. 31, No. 1; Museums and Relevancy, pp 51–62; and Whitehead, C, Eckersley, S, Lloyd, K and Mason, R, 2015, Migration and Identity in Europe: Peoples, Places and Identities (Farnham: Ashgate), p 191, (reference to Destination Tyneside exhibition at the Discovery Museum in Museums, 2013)
%Z “The photo of that man’s gas burns will stay with me for a long  time.” Visitor quoted in: How Did Visitors Respond to the ‘Wounded’ Exhibition?, internal report commissioned for Science Museum Audience Research and produced by The Susie Fisher Group, Spring 2017.
%Z Hari Kunzru, when referring to other objects in the Science Museum’s medical collections from his short story ‘The Collected’, in The Phantom Museum and Henry Wellcome's collection of medical curiosities, edited by Danielle Olsen and Hildi Hawkins, Profile Books, 2003, p 60.
%Z From the Greek word ‘kenotaphion’, which describes an empty tomb erected in honour of those whose remains are elsewhere.
%Z Noted, for example, by Zoe King in her foreword to Morris, J, 2015, The Church Lads’ Brigade in the Great War: A History of the 16th (Service) Battalion The King’s Royal Rifle Corps (Barnsley: Pen & Sword).
%Z Anonymous ‘visitor’, quoted in: How Did Visitors Respond to the ‘Wounded’ Exhibition?, internal report commissioned for Science Museum Audience Research and produced by The Susie Fisher Group, Spring 2017
%Z Character Richard Cantwell recalls his First World war experiences in Ernest Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees (New York: Scribner Classics), 1998, p 210.
%Z As the existing systems for the manufacture and fitting of artificial limbs for military amputees were overwhelmed in the early months of the war a new approach was needed. Queen Mary’s Hospital was established in 1915 and included on-site workshops, set up by American limb making companies, to cater for the growing numbers of amputees.
%Z Noted historically in, for example, Heather Bigg, H R, 1855, On Artificial Limbs, their Construction and Application (London: John Churchill), p 100, and more recently in, for example, Dillingham, T R, Pezzin, L E, MacKenzie, E J and Burgess, A R, 2001, ‘Use and satisfaction with prosthetic devices among persons with trauma-related amputations: a long-term outcome study’, The American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Aug; 80(8), pp 563–71.
%I The Science Museum Group
%@ 2054-5770
%B eng
%U https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/wounded/
%J Science Museum Group Journal