What Remains


Fascinating exhibition at the Imperial War Museum looking at how war damages cultural heritage.

It was a smaller show than I’d imagined but was packed full of stories and picked up stories between displays. It looked at why heritage is targeted both to destroy civilisations and to undermine morale. 

In the destruction section there was a display on how the Nazi’s hoarded and stole art but in the restoration section it looked at the work of the Monument Men who worked to reclaim the stolen art at the end of the war. That display included a picture of Ann Olivier who I had the privilege to meet many times at Charleston Farmhouse.

The picture is of a preserved book from the Louvian university library which was bombed by the Germans in the First World War, an act which backfired as the books were preserved like relics and was used as pro-war propaganda in England.

Coventry was used as an example of the Baedeker bombings where the German’s targeted British cities in the guide book to deliberately undermine moral but also as an example of restoration with some great archive material on the choices made in the rebuilding of the cathedral and comparing this to the choices made for the destroyed cathedral in Dresden.

There were lots of more modern examples such as the destruction of Palmyra and the recreation of destroyed objects from the Mosul Museum. I find the video of the destruction there very hard to watch.

Closes 5 January 2020

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