Royal Museums Greenwich has announced plans to mark the Centenary of the First World War at two of its museums: the National Maritime Museum and Queen’s House.
National Maritime Museum
Forgotten Fighters: the First World War at Sea
Opens August 2014
This new gallery at the National Maritime Museum will explore the naval and maritime dimensions of the First World War.
The Museum highlights how “the horrors of the Western Front have long dominated our understanding of those years”, but that “the war at sea was fought on an epic scale and with terrible human loss”.
The Forgotten Fighters exhibition will focus on personal stories of those who participated through a wide range of objects including weaponry, photographs, medals and ship models; in a gallery which “takes visitors from the heroism of merchant mariners to the shattering realities of naval battle, and from the Falkland Islands and the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the North Sea”.
A convoy, 1918 by Herbert Barnard John Everett © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
Queen’s House
Rozanne Hawksley: War and Memory
May – November 2014
Rozanne Hawksley, described as “one of the UK’s great textile art innovators” explores themes in her work including “the nature and meaning of the commemoration and memorialisation of war” considering the impact of conflict on combatants, family, friends and ultimately the nation”.
Rozanne Hawksley: War and Memory plans to examine remembrance, representation and memory.
The installation features new work alongside pieces from throughout Hawksley’s career including: Seamstress and the Sea which refers to the artist’s maternal grandmother – a widow who sewed sailor’s collars for a living from the First World War until her death during the Second World War; Prisoner, a sculpture created as a response to the work of the photographer Don McCullin; plus works from the memorials series.
War Artists at Sea
February 2014 – February 2015
A new display will “showcase the very best of Royal Museums Greenwich’s collection of First and Second World War art, including visually arresting and moving portraits, battle scenes, and depictions of everyday life during conflict”.
The exhibition will consider the role official war art played, from “revealing a ‘truth’ that went beyond the simple recording of events, official war art served the purposes of commemoration, instruction, documentation and propaganda as well as raising morale at home and at the front”.
War Artists at Sea features paintings and works on paper and consists of a rolling programme of displays throughout 2014.
Artists on display include: Leslie Cole, Eric Ravilious, Richard Eurich, Norman Wilkinson, Stephen Bone, William Dring, John Worsley, and Charles Wheeler.
Four figures carrying a body wrapped in a red ensign by William Lionel Wyllie © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
Source: Royal Museums Greenwich press release
Images courtesy of the National Maritime Museum, © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
Posted by: Daniel Barry, Centenary News