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#1
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The people that run the museums are professionals in their field. They follow standard practice & guidelines when dealing with exhibits. They are not in the hobby of restoring things. You will notice my second paragraph said there is room for both camps. An example of leave alone is the LRDG Chev 30CWT at the IWM in London. It is displayed as found in the desert including rust & flat tires. The exhibit tells a story. A great example of restoration is Rob Love's work on the cadillac. It also tells a story that can be brought to the people. The point I was trying to make was that museums are a place where people can go to research or study original artifacts. If items are restored or modified then what happens to any historical significance? |
#2
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In any event, museum professionals feel they are at their best when they take a single 'significant' artifact, say a shoe, place it in a nicely back lit glass case and invite museum patrons to gaze upon it and say "...uhhhh...I feel deep emotion..." As to the restoration of artifacts, I really am of two minds. Greek pottery is not displayed in shards as found, it's pieced together. I guess there is a point where something is so far gone it cannot give the observer any sense of what it was like in life. Rob's ambulance may be one in that category. In New Orleans there is the universally acclaimed best American WW2 museum. It has two parts, the first being in the camp of introspection and has its share of those infamous back lit glass cases. They invite you to sit in a fake train car where you take on the persona of a WW2 participant (I declined that part) and, as with the CWM, I found a good number of errors in their artifact descriptions. The second part is a cavernous building with restored vehicles (Sherman, Stewart, Jeep, etc.), and restored aircraft (B-17, Avenger, Corsair, etc) suspended from the ceiling with elevated walkways allowing you to get right up close to them. Given the state of vehicles and aircraft that have been modified and left to the weather, there's no way the museum could have displayed them as found. |
#3
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There certainly have been some valid points made in this discussion, I do agree with Bruce MacMillan that provenance is key to an artifact although in the case of the museum Kettenrad that I included in my original post, all provenance has been covered up with a coat of 1950s RCEME/Museum German grey and fake markings to the point where there is nothing to research or study. I agree as well that FV432 Panzer IIIs are great crowd pleasers and movie props, but this is where I disagree as I am a firm believer that the viewing public needs to be well informed during living history displays that the vehicles are replicas.
Bruce Parker also made some great points that I agree with and I am envious as the American WW2 museum in New Orleans is on my list of institutions to visit. I also feel that museums (at least the ones in North America) seem to lean towards the art museum approach where an artifact has to evoke some emotion at the expense of how it was used or played a part in a serving military person’s life. Apparently the current perception is that military technology does not bring in 'Mom, Dad and the two Kids on a Sunday afternoon’ into a museum, but the ‘art gallery’ or ‘birthday party good time for all’ approach does. What I find difficult to understand is that people are willing to accept unrestored, tattered and poorly painted military vehicles on display in a national museum, yet I am hard-pressed to think of a single aviation museum where the visiting public are subjected to viewing aircraft in the same condition. As well, no-one goes to a vintage car museum to see wrecks on display and like greek pottery or artwork, you only see the best on display in those institutions which house them. I feel there is a perception that for whatever reason in Canada, military museum vehicles are somehow deemed not as worthy of the same display criteria as other major items and this school of thought is perpetuated by leaving poor examples on display – usually outside. The restored Kettenrad I posted shows the standard of work achieved by one man, with his own money in his garage. What started as a rusted hulk is now a masterpiece of restoration that not only preserves the patina and provenance of the vehicle he restored, but now shows an intriguing and unique vehicle in the correct way in which it was manufactured. From my point of view, when compared to the stripped down, tracks on backward, neglected museum vehicle, it is Gord and his painstaking garage restoration that has it right. The SdKfz 2 Kettenkraftrad is not the only unique vehicle that can be discussed, have a look at the comparison between this beautifully restored, privately owned VW 166 Schwimmwagen, and its neglected counterpart sitting in a national museum. IMG_8345 copy.jpg IMG_9030 copy.jpg |
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