MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOISON IN a paper presented last week to the Royal Society of Arts, Sir Leigh Ashton described with patient melancholy some of the difficulties that assailed a Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The building allotted to him in South Kensington was, he said, one of the most "intractable" that he had ever known. This was an under-statement. Since the day when the younger Tredescant bequeathed to Elias Ashmole his "Closet of Curiosities," there has persisted in this country a confusion between Art and Science, and this confusion, throughout the nineteenth century, produced many a congested agglomerate. When in 1857 the "Museum of Manufactures" was transferred to South Kensington from Marlborough House it contained, in addition to fine examples of the plastic arts, such incongruous exhibits as building 'materials, models of patented inventions, animal products, appliances for scholastic education and food-substances. The great gaunt galleries were soon over-crowded, .and haphazard additions were constructed in 1862, in 1868, in 1872 and in 1884. Finally, in 1899, Queen Victoria laid the foundation-stone of the frontage on Cromwell Road designed by Sir Aston Webb; behind this comparatively uniform facade were entangled the courts and galleries of previous decades. It was not then fully realised that knowledge is vast and that the flesh is weak. A museum in those days was a building in which the largest possible number of objects were ranged one beside the other in galleries as austere as any cathedral. The boots of the custodians echoed upon the tessellated pavements: the feet of the visitors dragged in weariness from room to room. The fact that objects of beauty were jumbled up with other objects that were merely curious or rare rendered it difficult to derive from the exhibits any detached aesthetic impression. We slouched away from the Victoria and Albert, our limbs aching with lassitude, our eyes strained, and our memories heavy as lumps of dough stuffed with currants and sultanas. * * * * ...
The difficulty about art-experts is that they are unsympa- thetic to those who are not experts in art. Why should the massive majority of the untutored be pandered to by arranging exhibits in such a manner as to make an immediate appeal to their false and ignorant eyes ? If people are bored by stone- ware or sgraffito, if they derive no pleasure from the con- templation of German cavalry pistols of the seventeenth century, then all they have to do is to stay away. To isolate from their companions a few objects of special beauty is to com- promise with scholarship and to vulgarise learning. I confess to a certain sympathy with this austere point of view; I do not believe that the appreciation of art or literature can be achieved wholly without tears. Yet surely there exists a middle way between popularising great works of art and preserving our collections in mausoleums for the specialist ? It seems to me that Sir Leigh Ashton has discovered this middle way. His first action has been what he'calls to " mask " the more emphatic architectural features bequeathed to his museum by the designers of the nineteenth century. Realising as he does the mutability of human judgement and the variations of taste, he has not destroyed these relics, but merely concealed them from our eyes. The day may come when the fashion for Victorian decoration will revive; the " masks " of Sir Leigh Ashton can then be removed and the heavy cornices and entablatures of 1862 can be ceremonially unveiled. I regret that I shall not live to hear the speeches that will be delivered on that occasion. * * * * Sir Leigh Ashton, although by temperament as scornful as any of his fellow art-historians, realises that he owes to the ignorant a certain sense of responsibility. He knows that a modern museum must be something more than a mere research- centre for the scholar or the student; that it must convey to the general public, if necessary by methods of segregation and emphasis, some conception of the best that has been produced in every branch of art. He has thus divided the vast material in his possession into two distinct categories, namely the primary collections and the study collections. "It is felt," as the short guide book modestly informs us, "That this re- organisation of the Museum galleries gives proper scope to both the educational appeal of the collections and to the scholarly approach to the material." By a completely new arrangement, design, and above all lighting, of the show-cases, he has been able, not only to concentrate attention upon objects of special value, but to display these objects better than they have ever been displayed before. As a result we can today visit and leave the Victoria and Albert with a feeling of elation in place of that old burdensome feeling of ignorance and indigestion. What fills me with awe and admiration is to think upon the tremendous feat of memory, measurement and plan- ning that so vast a reorganisation must have entailed. The actual logistics of such an operation would have aged and shattered most general staffs. Yet the authorities of the Victoria and Albert have managed completely to transform their museum without conveying to the visitor any impression of violence, artifice or strain. Now that it has been accom- plished, it all looks so easy, almost so light-hearted; yet the difficulties must have been formidable indeed.
I am, I suppose, a bad sight-seer, but I do enjoy seeing sights. When on a holiday abroad, the rapid, almost perfunc- tory, manner of my visits to foreign galleries has aroused comment and even disapproval in my companions. But when in London I derive pleasure and solace from short and frequent visits to one or other of our great galleries. Surely it is a good habit, and not a bad habit, to dash into the National Gallery for some twenty minutes every week for the purpose of seeing one picture at a time. Until the reformation under- taken by Sir Leigh Ashton, I used to find that the Victoria and Albert inspired me with feelings, not of pleasure, but of pain. flow agreeable it is today to slip into that jumbled edifice and to consult the charming model in the entrance- hall which enables one at a glance to distinguish the primary from the study collections and to find one's way to the case one needs. Almost immediately the visitor is faced by the room containing recent acquisitions, where objects of different dates and origins glitter in their show-cases like tiaras in the Rue de la Paix. A few steps lead him into the gallery of Islamic art where he can stand entranced in front of the Ardabil carpet, glowing fresh and wet with all the colours of a bowl of fruit. On and on he wanders through the centuries and the continents, startled suddenly by the Constable drawings, examining miniatures displayed as they have never been dis- played before. Then out again into the Cromwell Road, conscious that the sadness of South Kensington is not, after all, so very sad. It is not surprising that at such moments we should feel grateful to Sir Leigh Ashton and his gifted staff.
I am glad once again to pay my tribute to the Victoria and Albert. We are inclined to take our aediles for granted, and to grumble at them for the many inconveniences of urban condi- tions; it is thus only fair to „praise those who do their jobs supremely well. "The liberating and purifying function of art," wrote the late Benedetto Croce, "is another aspect and another formula of its character and activity. Activity is the -deliverer, just because it drives away passivity." I am sure that frequent visits to a fine museum or gallery do produce exactly that effect. They "drive away passivity." It is not only that we are refreshed by the contemplation of objects of lasting beauty; it is that we return to our own world, with its undergrounds and its zebra crossings, stimulated by renewed awareness.
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