Grasping for connection with the past in museums
Don't tell the Met I cheated on her with the V&A
Apologies for being MIA for a bit. I was being a huge tourist in Europe. Here are a few random thoughts I had about design history during my trip. (And stay tuned for a possible film dump soon!)
Last week, I spent a whirlwind of a week in Europe split between London and Amsterdam. It’s trips like these that get me thinking about dropping everything and exploring the world. My heart will always be in New York but there are some things that Europeans do better. People bike. People walk. People don’t have to tip workers so they can have a living wage. But they still have bizarre rituals surrounding backward tradition and monarchy, like the coronation during which our trip somehow fell.
As an American through and through, I find it difficult to grasp how old things in other countries are sometimes. Standing at the bottom of a cliff in Dover, Kent, I looked up at the castle on the peak thinking about how many people stood before me in that very spot. Suddenly, I’m a Roman lighthouse keeper, a subject of Henry II, and a British soldier sheltering during the Dunkirk evacuations. And I eat that shit up. It’s why I’m a fiend at museums. I constantly grasp for connections between folks from the past and myself with my very modern problems like my TikTok addiction or my fear of AI taking my job. A visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London made me feel like we’re not so different after all.
I was particularly excited to go to the V&A because it was an institution constantly mentioned in the History of Design lecture I took in my sophomore year of college, a class I found extremely influential in my own design practice today. Every two minutes, I would fangirl with my friend and fellow classmate oh my god is that an actual Colombo boby trolley?? No way that’s a full-scale model of the Crystal Palace that held the Great Exhibition of 1851?? It was the time to nerd out.
One of my favorite units in that lecture was on the Arts and Crafts Movement. The late 19th-century movement in Britain marked the value of the maker’s hand. It was a retaliation against mass industrialization and the low status of decorative arts. At the core of the movement was the humanization of the decorative arts and integrity in its creation, equal to its beauty and function. The designer William Morris was at the forefront of the movement, most known for his nature-inspired wallpapers. Morris was also the founder of the Socialist League (1885) which is unsurprising considering his grievances with factory-based production. He believed in the pleasure of craft from start to finish, not repetitive soul-less labor.
Morris believed passionately in the importance of creating beautiful, well-made objects that could be used in everyday life, and that were produced in a way that allowed their makers to remain connected both with their product and with other people. Source.
Another leader in the movement, John Ruskin, a leading art critic of the Victorian era suggested that the quality and beauty of a nation’s goods is intrinsically linked with the nation’s social health. From jewelry to architecture, the reform touched everything. They were not against manufacturing with industrial tools but rather against the idea of division of labor and the soul-crushing repetitiveness that came with it. Good design meant good living.
One can’t help but compare the sentiment to today with AI creeping up on us every time we look over our shoulders. I previously wrote a few weeks ago about the desire for maximalism. We want to see soul not minimalism–even if it’s just an illusion through the use of nostalgic hand-drawn typefaces or illustrations. AI takes away the human aspect of making if it’s used the wrong way. I’m not completely anti-AI. I actually see it as a tool, but I don’t know if it can truly replace good design because of the lack of human integrity. More than ever, we want connection and to feel the presence of others.
I walked through the museum in a daze, thinking about how little we’ve changed. Everything is a cycle. Modernism is just around the corner from the Arts and Crafts Movement. The minimalist movement that we know today was just a reaction to the mess of maximalism that was Y2K and the internet. We’re coming back around again to Y2K and loud everything. As I finished walking around the museum, I stood in the cafe that William Morris himself designed and thought goddamn this is really why I love museums, so I can feel a little less alone in the mess of a cycle that is life.
That’s it for this week. Until the next one! Peace and love from Paddington Bear.