‘The dead past under glass’: rejecting cases in early twentieth-century museum

In the first half of the twentieth century in UK museums, there was a reaction against glass display cases by some curators, museum founders and visitors. Conventional case displays came to be seen as dull, and metaphors of deadness, dustiness and coldness were used to describe them. By contrast, displays which did not use cases but aimed to reconstruct the past using period rooms, parts of rooms, or entire buildings (all of which might be ‘real’ or replicas) became increasingly popular. Such displays were thought to bring the past to life, to be warm and attractive. The article traces the roots and growth of this phenomenon across a range of UK museums and curators, and argues that it demonstrates changing modes of cultural memory in the twentieth century, as democratic structures developed and entertainment cultures were profoundly influenced by developments such as cinema. For some people, the article shows, caseless museum displays were a source of new mystical and transcendent experiences giving them a much-wanted sense of contact with the past.