July 9, 2013

FINEST HOUR 128, AUTUMN 2005

BY  ROB HAVERS
Mr. Havers ([email protected]) is executive director of the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in the United States.

ABSTRACT
AN IMPRESSIVE BLEND of traditional museum form with innovative, interactive elements, the new Churchill Leadership Gallery aims to tell the story of Churchill’s life in a new and compelling way, offering a level of knowledge about WSC and his times to all ages and backgrounds.

====================

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024
More

As the new Churchill Museum opened this year in Britain, a major upgrade was being planned for the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in the United States. The Memorial, at Fulton, Missouri, site of Churchill’s 1946 “Sinews of Peace” or “Iron Curtain” speech, is housed in a Christopher Wren London church, laboriously dismantled and transported to Missouri, then rebuilt stone by stone in the late 1960s.

Plans to renovate the main exhibition at the Memorial have reached the final design phase. The sketches and renderings shown here, provided by Design Craftsmen in Michigan, are what the new Churchill Leadership Gallery will look like. The new design is an impressive blend of traditional museum form with innovative, interactive elements.

The aim is to continue to tell the same story of the life and impact of Winston Spencer Churchill, but to update how we do it. To begin, we have considerably expanded the scale of the exhibition. What previously were administration offices, work rooms and storage areas in the Memorial undercroft have now been given over to additional exhibition space. This has allowed us to expand our display area by nearly 30 percent.

In addition to updating the style of the Churchill exhibition, one of the key aims of the renovation is to ensure that displays will appeal to as many people as possible. The new exhibits will work on many intellectual levels and appeal to different levels of knowledge about Churchill specifically and modern history in general.

For example, while the seasoned and well-informed Churchillian will always come away having learned something new, it is important not to exclude those whose knowledge may be less extensive. For some considerable time at the Churchill Memorial, much thought has been expended on how best to interest and engage new generations in the study of WSC: the young people for whom Churchill does not possess the same historical resonance as for older generations.

With this constituency in mind, the new exhibitions will employ state-of-the-art museum technology to convey Churchill’s life and experience in as thoughtful and interesting a fashion as possible. Churchill led a long and eventful life; we aim to convey his influence upon the modern world by examining some of his lesser-known exploits: creating Iraq, for example, and establishing the “two Irelands” that still exist today. Thus the Churchill Memorial will underscore the continuing relevance of Churchill in the 21st century.

NEW ENTRY LOBBY

Although all entry lobbies are rather mundane spaces, it is important that a professional and businesslike image is presented. As the above “before and after” illustrations suggest, the new entry space is smart and functional, wholly in tune with the wider exhibition, and a considerable improvement on the existing entrance.

THE SINEWS OF PEACE ROOM

In this new room the visitor is prompted to push a button located on the stage, triggering the lights at this end of the gallery to dim. Without video the visitor hears President Truman introduce Churchill. The screen comes to life with footage of the famous Fulton speech, interspersed with comments from noted Churchill experts and others. Once again, the thinking behind this room is to build on what was done before while employing new technology to present it more effectively.

THE GATHERING STORM ROOM

One of the most interesting new features is the suite entitled “The Gathering Storm.” At the left, the space is dominated by what appear to be “trees.” At the right is a an innocuous picture of Adolf Hitler looking, as many people in the 1930s saw him, like a benign German politician. The visitor to the new Leadership Gallery can see this picture and then stand on a marked spot on the floor to see the Hitler Churchill saw. This places the visitor in line with the five tree-like structures that are actually multi-media projectors, showing a tape of Hitler at a political rally, dressed in full Nazi regalia and conforming to the true image of the man.

The point of this exhibit is to demonstrate clearly and simply that Churchill in the 1930s saw Hitler very differently than most of his contemporaries. To many British politicians, and to others in Europe, Hitler was no bad thing; he had put Germany back to work through methods similar to those employed successfully by Roosevelt in the “New Deal”; and a strong Germany offered a bulwark to what many in the 1930s considered to be the real menace: communism.

This display will show that Churchill thought differently about unfolding events. We hope this type of innovation will engage visitors, whet their appetites, and encourage them to read in more detail—from more traditional types of museum signage—exactly how and why Churchill proved so prescient, and why so few were interested in much of what he had to say. Yet even if visitors stop at the level of these interactive exhibits, they will still come away with a grounding in modern history and a useful working knowledge of Churchill’s life and times.

WIT AND WISDOM ROOM

The new exhibition attempts also to explore other dimensions of Churchill’s life. Additional highlights in the design include the “Wit and Wisdom Room,” where visitors can learn what Churchill had to say on a vast range of topics (as well as finding out exactly what he didn’t say, an occupation that keeps The Churchill Centre, as well as the Memorial, busy).

This room brings together, in an accessible form, many of the verbal and written quotations and quips. They range from the inspiring and amusing to the pleasingly and devastatingly acerbic. The room will feature comfortable chairs where people can search a database of Churchill quotations arranged according to subject or “keyword.” The interactive element to the exhibition is apparent in all the various rooms, with visitors encouraged to open “envelopes” containing correspondence to and from Churchill and his wife, Clementine.

All in all, the new Churchill Leadership Gallery will be an exhibition featuring state-of-the art museum technology and highly innovative modes of display. This, we are confident, will enable us to continue to fulfill our mission of promoting the life and achievements of Winston Churchill and, now, to underscore even more convincingly his relevance to, and influence on, the modern contemporary world. 

 

A tribute, join us

#thinkchurchill

Subscribe

WANT MORE?

Get the Churchill Bulletin delivered to your inbox once a month.