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Imperial War Museum |
| Imperial War Museum | |||
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| Established | 1917 | ||
| Location | Lambeth Road, London SE1, England | ||
| Visitor figures | 712,000 (2006) [6] | ||
| Director | Diane Lees | ||
| Nearest tube station(s) | Lambeth North, Waterloo, Southwark, Elephant & Castle | ||
| Website | www.iwm.org.uk | ||
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The Imperial War Museum is a museum in London, England which documents British and Commonwealth history since 1914, with an emphasis on the causes, course and consequences of conflict. The Museum's collections include military vehicles and aircraft, weapons, war memorabilia, an extensive library and archive of personal and official papers, film and photographic archives, a large art collection and a sound archive of oral history interviews and other material. The museum serves as headquarters of a 5-branch system of related museums, a number of which are based on historic sites.
The Imperial War Museum is partly funded by government grants as well as individual contributions and revenue generation through retailing, licensing income and other commercial activity. The museum is a Non-Departmental Public Body. Since October 2008, the museum's Director General has been Diane Lees. The previous Director General, from 1995 to 2008, was Sir Robert Crawford, CBE.
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On 27 February 1917 Sir Alfred Mond, an MP and First Commissioner of Works, wrote to the Prime Minister David Lloyd George to propose the establishment of a National War Museum. This proposal was accepted by the War Cabinet on 5 March 1917 and the decision announced in The Times on 26 March. A committee was established, chaired by Mond, to oversee the collection of material to be exhibited in the new museum.12
This National War Museum Committee set about collecting material to illustrate Britain's war effort by dividing into subcommittees examining such subjects as the Army, Navy, the production of munitions and women's war work.3 There was an early appreciation of the need for exhibits to reflect personal experience in order to prevent the collections becoming dead relics. Sir Martin Conway, the Museum's first Director General, saying that exhibits must "be vitalised by contributions expressive of the action, the experiences, the valour and the endurance of individuals".4 In December 1917 the name of the Museum was changed to the Imperial War Museum in order to reflect the contribution of the Empire to the war effort.
The Museum was opened by the King at Crystal Palace on 9 June 1920. Four years later in 1924 the Museum moved to the Imperial Institute (now Imperial College London) in South Kensington. While this location was more central and in a prestigious area for museums, the accomomdation itself proved cramped and inadequate5 and in 1936 new permanent location was found in Lambeth Road, Southwark. That building, designed by Sydney Smirke, had originally been a psychiatric hospital, Bethlem Royal Hospital (otherwise known as "Bedlam"), located in St. George's Fields. In 1939, the Museum began including displays relating to what became the Second World War, and then finally in 1953 it began its current policy of including memorabilia from all modern British conflicts.
On 13 October 1968 the Museum was attacked by an arsonist, Timothy John Daly, who claimed he was acting in protest against the exhibition of militarism to children. He caused damage valued at approximately £200,000, not counting the loss of irreplaceable books and documents. On his conviction in 1969 he was sentenced to four years in prison67.
The Imperial War Museum maintains an online database of its collections named Collections Online.
The Deparment of Sound Records, now known as the Sound Archive, administers a collection of over 56,000 hours of historical recordings and was opened to the public in July 197710. The core of this collection are oral history interviews with people who were affected by war in the 20th century. This collection has been used for a series of radio programmes and books, called Forgotten Voices, about war in the 20th century. The collection also includes historic broadcasts, and actuality sound effects recorded during conflicts.
The Film and Video Archive is one of the oldest film archives in Britain11 and preserves a range of historically significant film and video material. The collection includes the official British film record of the First World War and the 1916 feature film The Battle of the Somme, which is inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World register. The collection also includes the official British film record of the Second World War, amateur film and film of other conflicts since 1945. Material from the collection was used to make a number of well-known TV documentary series including The Great War and The World at War.
The Photograph Archive preserves the official British photographic record of both World Wars and conflicts since 1945. It currently holds more than 6,000,000 images and the Second World War collection includes the work of photographers such as Bill Brandt, Cecil Beaton12 and Bert Hardy.
Both the Film and Photograph Archives are official repositories for material produced by the Ministry of Defence and so include material from contemporary operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Department of Documents holds private papers such as letters and diaries from both individual soldiers and civilians to high-ranking officers such as Field Marshals Bernard Montgomery,13 Sir John French14 and Henry Maitland Wilson. Also of note are manuscripts by war poets Isaac Rosenberg and Siegfried Sassoon. The Department holds the official British records of the Nuremburg and Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals and a variety of other official records.
The Art department holds much of the work of official war artists from both world wars, and contemporary art from after 1945. As early as 1920 the art collection held over 3,000 works15 and included pieces by John Singer Sargent, Wyndham Lewis, John Nash and Christopher Nevinson. The collection expanded again after the Second World War, holding around 70% of the 6,000 works produced by the Ministry of Information's War Artists Advisory Committee.16
The Department of Exhibits and Firearms is responsible for the care of the Museum’s collection of three-dimensional objects. The cores of the collection are the firearms collection, collections of artillery, ordnance and vehicles, and medals and decorations such as the Victoria Cross and George Cross. In addition to the Museum's own collection of these medals, in 2008 it was announced that Lord Ashcroft's private collection of 152 VCs will go on public display at the Museum17. Many of the department’s larger exhibits are on display and can be seen in the photographs below. Other exhibits include artillery pieces whose crew won the Victoria Cross,18 a Lee Enfield rifle used by T E Lawrence,19 and a Colt 1911 automatic pistol owned by Winston Churchill.
The Department of Printed Books is responsible for the Museum’s collection of printed materials including books, maps and ephemera. When the Museum was established the distinguished historian Sir Charles Oman was given responsibility for the library. In 1922 the library collection contained a reported 20,000 items20 and 60,000 items in 195321. Today the Museum gives the size of its library collection as 270,000 items22.
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Imperial War Museum London |
 Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms |
 HMS Belfast |
 American Air Museum at Duxford |
 Imperial War Museum North |
The Museum in Lambeth serves as headquarters of a five-branch series of inter-related museums located throughout the United Kingdom. The other branches are:
 Sherman M4A4 tank |
 Jagdpanther tank destroyer, frontal view |
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 "Ole Bill", a LGOC B-type bus |
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 An M3 Grant tank, used by Bernard Montgomery as a command vehicle |
 QF 25-pounder Mk II |
 The gun at which Jack Cornwell won his Victoria Cross |
 The Néry Gun, a 13-pounder used in a VC-winning action in September 1914 |
 A Sopwith Camel biplane fighter |
 An Ordnance QF 18-pounder field gun |
 An 88mm Flak 18anti-aircraft gun |
 A British 9.2-inch heavy howitzer |
 Fragment of the Berlin Wall |
 Two 15-inch (381 mm) guns from HMS Ramillies (left) and HMS Resolution and HMS Roberts (right) |
 An exhibit on espionage |
 A Korean war exhibit |
 A replica of the Colditz "Cock" Glider |
Admission is free to both Imperial War Museum London and Imperial War Museum North, while an admission fee is payable at HMS Belfast, Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, and Imperial War Museum Duxford. Admission for children under 16 is free at all sites. Full details can be found at the external links below.
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