Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves (3 page)

When the exhibition finally opened its doors, it was something of a triumph, a tribute to Robinson's unrivalled network and what the international press called his ‘incessant activity'.
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Probably no
one else could have made it happen. It clearly showed the value of bringing works of art together for comparison, and it began to inspire a new taste for the medieval and the Renaissance, then obscure periods that had received little critical attention. Robinson's scholarly catalogue, too, was recognized by specialists as ‘a work of the highest importance'.
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But perhaps more than anything else, the exhibition signalled to the world the extent of Victorian collecting. For the first time, it offered a glimpse of just how many collectors there might be. It gave a sense of the shared and irrepressible enthusiasm that brought together so many of the country's men and women, and it revealed the range and magnificence of the objects they collected. It brought into the open a fascination with things that was shaping people's homes, forging municipal and national identities, and putting the collector at the heart of an increasingly commodified world.

I
n all kinds of ways, the buzz of activity at South Kensington during 1862 was a legacy of the enormously successful 1851 Great Exhibition, a monumental enterprise that had as much influence on political, economic and social life as it did on art, science and technology. Like the 1862 International Exhibition, the earlier event was organized by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, which had been established in 1754 to support activities as diverse as spinning, carpet manufacture, tree-planting and painting. It soon became known informally as the Society of Arts (finally to become the Royal Society of Arts in 1908) and by the 1760s it was holding regular exhibitions, both of contemporary art and industrial innovations. But these were relatively modest affairs and there was little British precedent for such a huge and ambitious undertaking as the Great Exhibition. What is now commonly recognized as a landmark of Victorian achievement was a courageous experiment, and almost didn't take place at all.

The exhibition was intended to restore the fortunes of British trade and manufacturing, by showing off British endeavour, bringing together the best of the world's products as an inspiration to business and providing models for the future. A ‘Select Committee on Arts and their connection with Manufactures' reported to the government as early as 1835 that both manufacturers and the public needed educating in matters of art and design. Pandering to a public appetite for novelty, and with an eye on keeping production costs to a minimum, British design standards were falling. Skills were dwindling and foreign competitors were flourishing. In the shops and department stores increasingly powerful middle-class consumers were flexing their spending muscles in unexpected directions, choosing goods from rival countries – tableware and furniture from France, Italian ornaments, and even glassware or jewellery imported from America. They were displaying what the government regarded as dubious taste; turning up their noses at traditional British wares and instead filling their drawing rooms with showy conversation-pieces that more obviously displayed their wealth and status. In the face of such competition, British manufacturers were suffering and the economy was faltering. What was needed was a showcase where examples of the best design could be displayed; where diligent manufacturers and aspiring young designers could come and study; where they could learn new skills and be inspired by new patterns.

In the course of the planning process leading up to 1851, however, and in response to the need to raise money and support for the project, the organizers attempted to head off public criticism by accommodating, wherever they could, all kinds of aspirations for the event. The apparently simple original plan – to raise the standards of British industrial design – was reshaped to take account of a range of other preoccupations and priorities. Local committees were established to help source objects and raise
awareness and funds, but these often had their own agendas, from Chartism to women's rights. While on a national level it became clear that, to survive, the exhibition would need to reflect, among other things, the enthusiasm of the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, for celebrating commercial liberalism and free trade; the desire of the influential East India Company to show off the Empire's raw materials; the Church's concern with illustrating divine benevolence; and the conviction of the liberal middle classes that the show should assert the British political and social model to the rest of the world. Not surprisingly, these pressures took their toll. The original intentions faded in the face of so many demands and the clear purpose of the exhibition faltered. The final display, while spectacular, was confused and often discordant, and the ‘meaning' of the exhibition was further addled by the enormous variety of interpretations offered by the press and visiting public. No one could quite agree, it seemed, exactly what they were looking at.

Yet, despite these problems, the idea of the exhibition caught the popular imagination, both at home and abroad. Enough of the original focus on manufacture and trade remained to inspire generations of industrial spectacles across the world over the course of the century, while in the immediate aftermath it spurred the French into organizing a World Exhibition of their own, with an understandable emphasis on restoring French manufacturing and design to pre-eminence. The French, in fact, had already hosted an Industrial Exhibition in 1844 and had a tradition of official exhibitions of art and industry stretching back to the late eighteenth century. The London show, however, had been on a different scale, forcing organizers across the English Channel to redouble their efforts in response. The subsequent 1855 Paris Exhibition was even larger and more elaborate than the Great Exhibition had been, although it was significantly less successful financially (leaving a crippling shortfall of over 8 million francs)
and visitor numbers were comparatively low. It succeeded in inflaming old Gallo-British rivalries even further, however, and driving home the idea that British design was still lagging behind its European counterpart. In London, there seemed nothing for it but to stage yet another event, bigger and better than any that had preceded it, demonstrating beyond doubt the technological progress that the British were making across the world. So work began on the 1862 International Exhibition and, despite financial setbacks, conflict in Italy and America which threatened to derail foreign loans, and the untimely death of Prince Albert in December 1861, just months before the scheduled opening, the show managed, in scale at least, to eclipse all others.

But the International Exhibition was not the only legacy of 1851 at South Kensington. Surplus funds from the Great Exhibition (around £180,000) were set aside to improve standards of science and art education, and parcels of land were bought around the district for a number of educational and cultural projects. One of these was the new museum, which had been in a temporary home at Marlborough House on Pall Mall, and which also inherited large numbers of objects from the Great Exhibition. Just as significantly, the museum's first Director, Henry Cole, had been a key organizer of both the 1851 and 1862 extravaganzas, and brought with him a commitment to the original Great Exhibition principles of improving standards in manufacturing, raising the quality of industrial design and educating public taste through the display of objects. Perhaps the greatest legacy of the 1851 exhibition, however, was the least tangible one: a growing sense that collecting and display was a serious, public affair. Coverage in the press, political debate and drawing-room gossip began to discuss, appraise and compare works of art, and in the wake of this enormous attention there was an increasing appreciation that objects could have profound personal and social meanings.

The Great Exhibition offered the most visible, spectacular evidence of a fascination with collecting that had been growing since the beginning of the century. It showed just how many issues might be inherent in the apparently simple idea of making a collection. And, as a result of this, there was increasingly open and varied debate about what kind of role art might have in public life, about the purpose of design, and about thorny questions of taste, patronage, ownership and education. This was a period when even many of the defining terms we take for granted today were new and the distinctions between them ambiguous: what, exactly, was a ‘public' collection? What was a work of ‘decorative' or ‘applied' art? How could you define the difference between an amateur, a connoisseur and a professional? What was a curator's role?

Many of these questions would take decades to resolve; some are still being debated today. But what was immediately clear was that there was more interest than ever in what collecting might mean, and how collections might best be achieved. By the middle of the century, debates that had been rumbling for years, and which were implicit in the collecting activities of Robinson's influential colleagues and the wealthy members of the Fine Arts Club, were being aired ever more frequently in public. It was increasingly evident that collecting could not be seen as a private interest detached from events going on around it; it was part of a wider conversation inextricably linked to political ideology and social change. Robinson's 1862 loan exhibition came, in many ways, at the perfect time. It made collecting visible, topical and desirable at the moment when the discussions inspired by the Great Exhibition were reaching maturity.

Appointing Henry Cole as Director of the South Kensington Museum signalled the government's desire to continue with the work they had begun at the Great Exhibition. Intimately involved
with both the 1851 event and the 1862 International Exhibition, and publicly espousing the values behind them, Cole was an enthusiastic advocate for the campaign to improve standards and educate public taste. He would use the objects on display at the museum to show people what they could and could not like; what they did and did not want to buy. He would change habits and restore manufacturing fortunes. He would, he boasted, ‘make the public hunger after the objects. . . then they [will] go to the shops and say, “We do not like this or that; we have seen something prettier at the Museum”; and the shop-keeper, who knows his own interest, repeats that to the manufacturer and the manufacturer, instigated by that demand, produces the article.'
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Even by Victorian standards, Cole was fiercely energetic, an apparently unstoppable force of opinions and activity. By the end of his life, in 1882, he was an institution, known as ‘Old King Cole', but both his stubborn, temperamental approach and his reforming zeal tended to arouse admiration and antipathy in equal measure: ‘His action has often been harshly criticized,' began his obituary in
The Times
. ‘His untiring energy and perseverance have frequently made him enemies.'
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He was a career civil servant; having joined the Public Record Office in 1823 at the age of fifteen, he was the author of a series of pamphlets advocating reform of the public record system. He wrote for a range of newspapers and journals and in 1840 won a prize for developing a workable Penny Postage plan. By the time he turned his attention to art and manufacturing, around 1845, he was already an experienced and confident administrator. He immediately began to assist the Society of Arts on a series of exhibitions to stimulate industry and invention, finally securing his place, according to his obituary, as ‘the leading spirit and prime mover' of the reform impulses which led to the Great Exhibition.
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Following this success, Cole was invited in 1852 to reorganize the government Schools of Design. These had been established
in twenty cities from 1837, one of the earliest indications of the government's commitment to design reform. Created by the Board of Trade, they were supposed to promote an establishment consensus on art and good taste, improving education and training new designers in approved styles and techniques. In practice, however, many of the Schools had concentrated as much on academic art as on industrial design and during the 1840s a series of internal battles raged over exactly what should be taught. Cole aimed to give the system a new sense of direction and control, and put the focus firmly back on to ‘useful' skills. As the first step, he put the Schools under the control of a new Department of Practical Art, soon renamed the Department of Science and Art, a subdivision of the Board of Trade. He appointed himself Superintendent, and made clear his intention to direct things with a firm hand: the new department was to be managed from South Kensington, with his protégés slotted into key roles.

The new museum was part of the same package. It was seen as another weapon in the battle for design reform, working alongside the Schools but with a more public emphasis. It fell under the same umbrella at the Department of Science and Art, which meant there was no independent board of Trustees to distract or hinder Cole. It could build on the impetus that had been created by the two industrial exhibitions, giving a more permanent face to government policy and taking its place without restrictions as the flagship of a wider movement for improving practical education nationwide. The galleries were intended to be just as instructional as any school, driving home messages about art and its role in national life. Cole glowed with the righteousness of educational principles: in a rallying speech, he laid out his aim to ‘woo the ignorant' and ensure objects at the museum were ‘talked about and lectured upon' until no one could be left in any doubt about what constituted good taste.
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No longer would the manufacturing and shopping public make bad choices: they
had someone to guide them. The South Kensington Museum would be useful, practical and modern, displaying things that could be copied, redesigned and mass-produced, providing clear information about process and construction, and lucid explanations of design principles. It could show reproductions, if that's what it took to make a point. It would show art with a purpose; art which could, with Victorian skill and confidence, be made to shape the future.