1951 Festival of Britain

There are many ways of explaining the perceived failure of the Millennium Dome in London, which opened to commemorate the new millennium in 2000. But this chapter—from the collection edited by Peggy Deamer, Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2013)—argues that the Dome's failure was phenomenological: it failed as a spectacle, because its program was unable to pinpoint what was to be celebrated. And this inability was ultimately attributable to the philosophical and moral lacunae of late capitalism: the Dome's creators were embarrassed by a tacit program of "reskilling" devised to satisfy its sponsors' demand for flexible labor and the state's unease about the loss of traditional industries. The state and capitalism alike lost their ability to induce the wonder of the 1851 Great Exhibition and 1951 Festival of Britain, and late capitalism, we can speculate, is beyond representation.

A Contemporary Archaeology of London’s Mega Events explores the traces of London’s most significant modern ‘mega events’. Though only open for a few weeks or months, mega events permanently and disruptively reshape their host cities and societies: they demolish and rebuild whole districts, they draw in materials and participants from around the globe and their organisers self-consciously seek to leave a ‘legacy’ that will endure for decades or more. With London as his case study, Jonathan Gardner argues that these spectacles must be seen as long-lived and persistent, rather than simply transient or short-term. Using a novel methodology drawn from the field of contemporary archaeology – the archaeology of the recent past and present-day – a broad range of comparative studies are used to explore the long-term history of each event. These include the contents and building materials of the Great Exhibition’s Crystal Palace and their extraordinary ‘afterlife’ at Sydenham, South London; how the Festival of Britain’s South Bank Exhibition employed displays of ancient history to construct a new post-war British identity; and how London 2012, as the latest of London’s mega events, dealt with competing visions of the past as archaeology, waste and heritage in its efforts to create a positive legacy for future generations.

This book offers significant new directions for the study of mega events in its comparison of how three mega events changed London over three centuries. Drawing on a varied selection of theoretical and methodological frameworks and a rich array of sources, it demonstrates the great potential of contemporary archaeology for re-examining recent processes of urban transformation.

In 1951, forerunner of Pop Art Barbara Jones opened an exhibition of popular British art titled "Black Eyes and Lemonade". A powerful retrospective of Jones' legacy, “Black Eyes and Lemonade: Curating Popular Art” at the Whitechapel Gallery presents artefacts that cast a fresh eye on Jones' rejection of traditional museum hierarchies and connoisseurship.

The seventieth anniversary of the Festival of Britain occurs in May 2021, providing an opportunity to revisit various aspects of the Festival, not least the various archival collections. The Festival Office records at The National Archives U.K. comprises a range of materials with exciting research potential. This article introduces readers to the collection, highlighting the importance of these records as a unique design-research resource, intersecting with art and photography histories. It will examine the nature of the collection and provide research tips on how to negotiate it effectively. The vast administrative paperwork, some of it amassed through commissioning process, can provide other useful insights. One particular issue is gender in the design profession and how women fared within the Festival’s commissioning process. Previous studies have not only omitted the many lesser known contributions of female artists and designers, but also the nuanced reasons why women artists have not secured successful public commissions during the postwar era. By examining archived original designs by artists Prunella Clough and Hilda Chancellor-Pope, the article reflects on two very different women’s contributions to the Festival; and how decision-making in the commissioning process impacted on the overall look of designs as display.

The history, natural resources, and constitution of the land of Britain have preoccupied writers from the ancient Greeks onwards. The Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands exhibition currently at the British Library presents these histories in a tour around a series of place-writing genres (Rural Dreams, Dark Satanic Mills, Wild Places, Beyond the City, Cockney Visions, and Waterlands), using the work of individual authors to build an eclectic composition of the magical and factual realm of Britain. In both the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue, a neo-romantic version of the idea of genius loci works to celebrate literary Britain as a ‘cornucopia’ of local and localised texts, invoking chorographical traditions. This article examines the problematic geographical vision of Writing Britain, particularly its supra-historical approach, its reductive truth binaries, and its conservative reliance on belonging. Its ‘exhibition as landscape’ approach is also compared to that of the 1951 Festival of Britain and to another 2012 exhibition at Tate Britain, The Robinson Institute.

► Analyses the landscape of the exhibition Writing Britain compared to the Festival of Britain and The Robinson Institute. ► Shows how Writing Britain is inspired by chorography, but takes a supra-historical approach to literature and place. ► Critically discusses the dominance of ‘genius loci’ in its treatment of its texts and artefacts. ► Examines the exhibition’s geographical vision through the expressions of its maps and textual signage.