Understanding Conflict Through The Objects We Value

‘Culture Under Attack’ is a season of three exhibitions at the Imperial War Museum London that explore how war threatens not just people’s lives, but also things that help define us: our history, heritage, and culture. 'What Remains' is the biggest show in the season and, in collaboration with Historic England, the show explores why cultural heritage is attacked during war and the ways we try to save, protect and preserve what’s targeted.

Carl Warner, curator and historian at the IWM London, was one of the brains behind the show and here he describes the challenges of putting together an exhibition about objects that have been destroyed in warfare and why culture is so linked to our identity.

How did the ‘What Remains’ exhibition come about?

We'd been looking for a while at different thematic approaches to the effects and the consequences of war on people’s lives.

What kept coming up was this idea that war can sometimes deliberately attack the things that people value the most. So we started to look at tangible manifestations of culture such as buildings, artworks, sculptures and things and news reports from the last few years tended to feed into that as well. Through this process we started to unlock different stories that were really quite powerful.

Why do you feel this kind of show is relevant now?

Warfare kills people, that's the brutal bottom line, but it can also take away their reason for living. Culture helps bring us a sense of identity, helps provide meaning and structure to our lives, if you are religious or spiritual it can also have that dimension. When that's taken away, dislocated, or removed from you it's incredibly powerful. The problem is, the perpetrators of this kind of thing realize that, which is why they attack it.

I think it's important when we look around our own environment and see the things that actually mean a lot to us, to look at them with a little more respect, more reverence. This concept unlocks what museums are all about, which is that objects have value and meaning, and we wouldn’t gather them together in buildings like this if they didn't.

What has it been like working with Historic England? What have they added to the experience?

It's been really fascinating because although their work is obviously focused on England, the story we’ve been able to explore with them is rooted around the National Buildings Record and this idea of preservation through record. A group of people were concerned with the importance of architecture and our built environment at the start of the Second World War. They realized that we were going to lose an enormous amount of what we consider to be extremely important cultural buildings. So they sent these amazing photographers to capture all of these buildings in cities before and after destruction, and got a hold of plans and sketches. This became the NBR and the IWM was able to have complete access to that whole archive of material.

You mentioned preservation and the ways that’s been achieved over the years, how does technology feature in the exhibition?

The question remains the same, how do you preserve? Is it possible to preserve even after something has been destroyed? That's where those photographers and the National Building Record came up with the idea of preservation through record. Now technology has moved on. For instance, we got in contact we Rekrei on the work they've been doing to crowdsource pieces of at-risk and already destroyed architecture or sculpture, and using that imagery to create effective 3D models. They've got a brilliant process which we explore in the exhibition.

What do you hope people take away from the exhibition?

For me, one of the sad things is that people have become quite desensitized to destruction and the assumption is that, because war is very destructive and has become a lot more mechanized, people just assume that's it. Of course it's destructive, we've seen the photographs. What we want people to take away is that sometimes the story is a little bit darker than that. The perpetrators of these kinds of acts can turn your love of, and interest in, culture and hold it hostage by threatening or destroying it.

If people begin to realize how devastated they would be if the things most precious to them were destroyed they might understand why these objects are important. Visitors to this exhibition will hopefully begin to understand this is about people suffering because the things they care about have been taken from them.