The Imperial War Museum North in Manchester

The Imperial War Museum North (IWMN) in Manchester, which opened its cur-rent permanent exhibition in 2002, serves as the second example of secondary experientiality in this book.⁴⁷At first glance, there appear to be many similarities between the IWMN and the Bundeswehr Military History Museum (MHM), though most of these similarities originate with Daniel Libeskind’s architecture (see fig. 16), which creates an effect of asymmetry in both museums.⁴⁸As with

 The IWMN sees approximate 250,000 visitors a year, which is the lowest number of the five branches of the Imperial War Museum. In 2016–2017, 251,416 people visited the museum (Impe-rial War Museum 2016–2017, 14). Regarding fostering visitor engagement in the IWMN, see Po-well and Kokkranikal 2014.

 Bagnall and Rowland offer a critical perspective about the limitations of Libeskind’s design as a participatory museum (2010, 54–59). Similarly, Greenberg notes that Libeskind’s architec-ture has made the exhibition more cinematic than theatrical: Libeskind’s“object-making vision has overwhelmed the experience and has taken precedence over the story and the characters in Fig. 16Outside view of Imperial War Museum North, Manchester (Photo: Author, 2018).

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the MHM, the IWMN combines a chronological approach with numerous themat-ic displays: six thematthemat-ic silos, two TimeStacks with rotating trays and thematthemat-ic objects, the Big Picture multimedia shows, and large display objects on the cen-tral axis of the main exhibition space. However, a closer analysis will demon-strate that the IWMN creates considerably less historical specificity in its second-ary narrative than the MHM while using more individual historical voices, which suggests a primary form of experience despite its staging as secondary experien-tiality. In other words, the IWMN functions as a hybrid that constructs new struc-tural, i.e. secondary experiences, while relying on primary voices and experien-ces.

Entering the main exhibition space of about 3,500 square meters, two panels introduce the visitor to the museum’s mission. One instructs the visitor as fol-lows:“Explore and discover how war shapes and changes people’s lives.”The other points out that the Imperial War Museum has been assembling“a national collection”since 1917:“Since then, it has collected thousands of stories about people’s experiences during war and conflict.”This indicates that any individual might find an object in the collection to which they can relate. The museum fo-cuses on memory and personal experience, rather than an analysis of historical fact (Bagnall and Rowland 2010, 62). It clearly balances a global mandate with one based on national experiences, which at times strongly shifts toward the British war experience. To understand how secondary experientiality works, when it is based on collective primary experiences, this analysis will first com-pare the exhibition techniques of the IWMN to those of the Bundeswehr Military History Museum.⁴⁹Therefore, it makes sense to start with the six thematic silos in the permanent exhibition. These consist of interior rooms with two entrances with open ceilings:“Experience of War,” “Women and War,” “Impressions of War,” “Empire, Commonwealth and War,” “Science, Technology, and War,”

and“Legacy of War.”

The“Experience of War”silo is introduced with the following text:“In this exhibition a small selection of personal stories have been chosen from the

Mu-that story”(2005, 232). Angela Loxham argues after analyzing the concepts of architecture, space, and objects in the museum that the museum is not haptic enough:“At IWM North, the architecture and exhibition space envisioned by Libeskind show promise but staff and object mediation instead allow for the familiar to be powerfully reaffirmed. The affect created is dimin-ished and the reinsertion of familiarity and comfort prevent the need for mental reflection be-cause the habitus of the body is not challenged” (2015, 533). For further details on the IWMN’s architecture, see its discussion in chapter 8 on the Air War.

 Both museums extensively use artwork to open up the museum experience to the visitor (see chapter 9).

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seum’s collection to show some of the many ways in which people have experi-enced war since 1914.”The silo focuses particularly on the experiences of prison-ers of war, the evacuation of children from British cities, the Kindertransport from Germany to Britain, and recruitment. The stories told here are predominant-ly British. Except for audio stories under the headers“A Sense of Loss,”relating to children’s experiences in the Second World War and“Pride,”relating to the experience of homosexual experiences in the military, the exhibition uses both large and small display cases arranged around a single story or theme. It briefly contextualizes these stories with factual texts without interpretation; its open style is similar to that of the MHM. For example, the exhibition includes a cluster of exhibits on internment in the Far East from 1941 to 1945; the European theater of war is represented through POWs–Germans in the United Kingdom – and British soldiers in Germany. The visitor sees a coffee pot, letters, postcards, and an apron, among other objects. The visitor is invited to pick an object and think about its implications, such as what it would mean to parents to receive a letter from their son explaining that he had become a POW. A wooden food box, a copy of the Japanese Penal code, and instructions for decoding POW post-cards make the visitor consider the reality faced by POWs in the Far East. Unlike in the MHM, handwritten texts are not easy to read and are not transcribed. The museum uses far fewer photographs in the silos than the MHM, running the risk that the objects will merely become illustrative if they are not accompanied by a clear story.⁵⁰Such stories are narrated from an audio station. For example, Ruth Watts was a 15-year-old schoolgirl in Berlin who one morning saw the remains of a British airman, who had been killed the previous night. Such a vivid story can allow visitors to empathize with the storyteller and consider what the impact of such an experience on them would have been.

Despite IWMN’s story-rich, open approach that allows for structural constel-lations, there are two major differences here to the secondary experientiality seen in the MHM. First, the IWMN’s focus is on primary experiences that are merged through different museum techniques to create structural experiences and secondary experientiality, whereas the MHM presents a combination of sym-bolic and structural objects, primary experiences, and photographs (among oth-ers), requiring an active visitor to connect possible themes. Secondly, the IWMN’s networking effect is significantly diminished. With the exception of the Big Pic-ture Shows, the prisoner of war experience and the children evacuees are barely present in the rest of the museum. In contrast to the MHM, the“Experience of War” section simply seems to add further historical aspects and perspectives

 For the IWMN’s use of illustrative images see also Hawig 2019, 85.

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of the war, sorted into themes that are not part of the historic timeline on the outer walls of the interior exhibition space. Here, it makes sense to compare the MHM’s“War and Memory”section as discussed above to the IWMN’s third silo,“Impressions of War,”and the sixth one,“Legacy of War,”in order to under-stand the differences in how these museums create secondary experientiality.

The silo“Impressions of War” asks what shapes our impressions. It also highlights the means of war propaganda and the post-war reception of conflicts, particularly in relation to the two world wars and the Falkland War from an ex-clusively British perspective. It is set up to look like a living room scene with couches, a TV playing wartime news footage, bookcase-like display cases, framed war posters that seem like paintings, and other decorative items. The Sec-ond World War is represented on a shelf with war propaganda and in a display case full of games including the title pages of books, comics, a spitfire bottle, and toy soldiers. The panel description explains the fascination that many chil-dren have with‘refighting’the war. Since the IWMN does not give the visitor any information about the objects, most visitors will accept the idea of reenacting historical war through play.Visitors are neither asked to envision concrete stories about specific objects, nor will they understand the anthropological impact of war. The question of what playing war means for society and whether it differs from war to war is not asked. There is no reason for the visitor to actively engage with or challenge the display; they merely consume these impressions. This lack of contextualization is also evident in a wall calendar installation about war myths. On the front side, the visitor reads a myth, e.g. “The ‘Little Ships’

saved the British Army at Dunkirk.”On the flipside, the visitor can read the ‘re-ality,’in which 95% of the British and French troops saved were rescued by larg-er ships and“The‘Little Ships’with their civilian volunteer crews brought back 19,000 Allied troops to Britain in very dangerous conditions.”Alongside this fact, the visitor also learns that there is mythmaking in war remembrance, which can be resolved factually without addressing complex memory patterns. Occasional-ly, there are objects that can trigger the visitor’s active imagination. On the coffee table in front of the TV, the visitor was previously able to see an Argentinian mag-azine with a title page relating to the Falklands War, which indisputably repre-sents then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a Nazi; she is wearing a German steel helmet with a Swastika, which created some openness about what this pic-ture signaled–historically and today–with regard to the moral implications of different conflicts from various perspectives.⁵¹

 This observation is based on a visit in August 2013. At my last visit in May 2018, the Thatcher 5.2 The Imperial War Museum North in Manchester 153

In the last silo“Legacies of War,”the IWMN highlights the injuries occurring in war, the effect of landmines in war zones, forced migration due to and during the war, the re-building of Manchester after the Blitz in the Second World War, remembrance, and the readjustment to civilian life. Stories either have positive or negative outcomes, allowing the visitor to reflect upon the impact of war in general. The silo covers all conflicts in which the United Kingdom has been in-volved since the First World War. Although the IWMN’s presentation is more il-lustrative and didactic than that of the MHM, the visitor can still develop a wide range of thoughts about the transformation from war to civilian life. The exhibi-tion moves chronologically from war to peacetime. Though visitors obtain a structural experience of the effects of war, they remain directly linked to the per-spectives of actual soldiers and wartime collectives.

The museum interweaves a number of interdependent representational strat-egies to create an experiential space.⁵² Besides the silos, the timeline, and the Big Picture Shows discussed below, these include large objects spread through-out the exhibition hall, the architecture including the voids, the uneven floor, light and temperature changes, and two TimeStacks with six rotating trays each.⁵³ Visitors can call up object clusters from specific historical areas such as the Holocaust or the Blitz, or themes such as“Children’s War.”The TimeStack trays are mainly illustrative and fairly didactic; they are particularly useful for guides who employ everyday objects in“object-handling sessions,” although they also help connect the exhibition to different sections of the museum.⁵⁴ Whereas the Bundeswehr Military History Museum (MHM) creates a complex balance of historical and structural displays, the IWMN interweaves historical themes. Its displays rely far more on the stories of individuals than those of col-lectives and on the thematic topics are arranged in a more chronological se-quence. This still creates structural experiences; however, it also highlights indi-vidual memory, stories, and the overall idea of the war’s cost, rather than anthropological elements of violence.

title and two other titles from Argentinian magazines had been removed, leaving exclusively British sources and consequently reducing the openness of the display.

 The museum points visitors to other areas where they can learn more about certain subject areas found in the silos and TimeStacks.

 As in other museums, especially seen in the newer exhibitions in the Bundeswehr Military History Museum and the Bastogne War Museum, certain technologies are extremely prone to mechanical failure. In May 2018, neither TimeStack was working, reducing their effect to repre-senting only one topic each.

 The exception is the Holocaust tray, which connects the displayed objects to four Holocaust survivors, see chapter 7 for further details.

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To further understand this difference, it is important to analyze the muse-um’s timeline cabinets and displays as well as its core, the Big Picture Shows.

The museum’s chronologically ordered timeline includes one introductory and five main sections, starting with the First World War and the section on the in-terwar years,“Between the Wars,”and ending with the section“1990–Present:

Into a New Century.”At first glance, the exhibition’s technique here seems sim-ilar to that of the MHM. However, a closer analysis by way of an example from the section“1939–1945: Second World War”reveals significant differences. The visitor is confronted with large info panels, six glass display cases full of objects and photographs, smaller object captions, larger posters, and some film footage.

The perspective here is documentary from above, fairly neutral, and purely illus-trative; even ego-documents as artifacts depicting the voices or stories of individ-uals merely serve as illustrative placeholders. The motto of the timeline is“Total War,”written in large letters on the wall above the exhibits. The introductory text confirms the section’s global approach, using a language full of pathos:“Global war brings mass death and destruction. 55 million die on battlefields, in death camps, in their homes. Millions more become refugees. Cities, towns and coun-tryside are devastated. Societies are smattered and nations smashed. The impact of this war is total.”The chronological panels consist of one photo, a header, and a brief paragraph; they are also global and written in a factual style. The six display cabinets are structured according to theater of war, with the exception of the concluding genocide display case⁵⁵:“War at Sea,” “Land War in Europe,”

“War Effort”(i.e. home front),“Air Attack,” “War in the Desert and Jungle,”and

“Genocide”(i.e. Holocaust). For example, the cabinet“Land War in Europe,” un-like the chronological panels, is exclusively British, as the survey panel reveals.

It vaguely mentions losses in 1940, and the D-Day landing is the only concrete event named here. The actual cabinet displays objects such as a leather jerkin, two steel helmets, items of personal equipment (a knife, food powder etc.), a gas mask, a battledress blouse, a letter about D-Day,⁵⁶ a Christmas card, a rifle, a light machine gun, a first aid kit, hand grenades, a breakfast kit, and two smaller clusters of items.

Except for the final displays of the cabinet“Land War in Europe,”which tell two brief stories, none of the items produce experientiality and no object seems to automatically link to something presented elsewhere in the exhibition. The historical specificity that allows the chronological display cabinets in the

 See also its detailed analysis in chapter 8.

 As is the case throughout the exhibition, there is no transcription of ego documents such as letters or diaries. Therefore, whether the visitor can relate to it depends on whether the caption provides more than an identifier and tells a short story of the document’s context.

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MHM to stage living spaces of the past does not exist in the IWMN. The items could be from any British land operation in Europe. The ego documents can cre-ate a certain experientiality, yet they still fulfill a primarily illustrative function.

For example, the“War at Sea”cabinet contains a letter and diary by the First Boy First Class William Crawford who was killed on the battleship HMS Hood during its battle with the Bismarck. Even if museum visitors are very unlikely to deci-pher the letter or the diary, they might take away the message of the cruelty of war when looking at the telegram informing his mother about the boy’s death.

This connects to other sections about the cost of war in the exhibition. The mu-seum’s“Timeline”only constitutes a small part of the museum, which indicates that the museum universalizes historically specific events to a greater degree than the MHM.

The IWMN’s signature piece is the audio-visual Big Picture Show, which runs approximately every hour for six to twenty-two minutes. The interior of the IWMN becomes a 360-degree cinema, with the gallery walls and floors turned into screens with thirty-two audio channels for a multi-sensorial experience (Ar-nold-de Simine 2013, 114–118). The core shows of the museum are “Children and War,” “Weapons of War,”⁵⁷and “War at Home”(see fig. 17). The first two focus on a variety of conflicts between 1914 and the present, whereas the third focuses on the Second World War and the collective British experience. The mu-seum highlighted in an earlier edition of its mumu-seum brochure as follows: “De-liberately thought-provoking, the shows encourage debate and discussion about strong and often controversial subjects. The experience envelops the Main Exhi-bition Space, surrounding visitors in a constantly changing environment of im-ages and sound.”⁵⁸ The multiple projections of images are reflected and frag-mented on the inner walls, especially on the void-like walls of the thematic silos. The museum’s description continues on to note that“[t]he award-winning Big Picture is a dramatic and engaging way to see and hear IWM’s outstanding collection of photographs, art and sound.”The effect of the Big Picture Show on the visitor is integral to understanding secondary experientiality in the museum.

The observation of the show is not particularly voluntary; if one is standing in the main exhibition, one is automatically immersed in the show and it becomes

 Not shown in May 2018, when“Remembrance,” “Build the Truce,”and “Al-Mutanabbi Street,”completed the line-up. In 2019, the IWMN presented two new shows:“Mightier Than War,”a show,“exploring the triumph of the human spirit in times of conflict,”and“Life on the Line: with footage from Peter Jackson’sThey Shall Not Grow Old,”see https://www.iwm.

org.uk/events/big-picture-show, accessed 13 October 2019.

 Imperial War Museum 2012, 6. The latest guidebook (Imperial War Museum 2017b, 14) uses a more measured description and spends less time on introducing specific Big Picture Shows.

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impossible to see any other parts of the exhibition.⁵⁹The IWMN is certainly the museum building by Daniel Libeskind in which architecture and interior exhibi-tion are the most interwoven,⁶⁰in contrast to the MHM or the Jewish Museum in

impossible to see any other parts of the exhibition.⁵⁹The IWMN is certainly the museum building by Daniel Libeskind in which architecture and interior exhibi-tion are the most interwoven,⁶⁰in contrast to the MHM or the Jewish Museum in