Thanks to generous support from main funder, the Blavatnik Family Foundation, the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries will be the UK’s first to explore how artists, photographers and filmmakers bear witness to and tell the story of war and conflict. With diverse displays from filmmakers including Peter Jackson, Geoffrey Malins and Omer Fast, and photographers including Olive Edis, Cecil Beaton and Tim Hetherington, the new, permanent galleries will reflect global conflict from 1914 to the present day.
Caro Howell MBE, Director-General of Imperial War Museums, said: “Artists, filmmakers and photographers are eyewitnesses, participants and commentators on conflict. Their work provides critical insight and perspective, while also having the power to deeply move us. We are therefore extremely grateful to our supporters, particularly the Blavatnik Family Foundation, for their generous support in making these beautiful galleries a reality, for enabling us to shine a light on our exceptionally rich visual media collections and for bringing them to a wider audience. Within these Galleries, visitors can explore the ways in which art, film and photography shape, challenge and deepen our understanding of war and conflict.”
Sir Leonard Blavatnik, founder of the Blavatnik Family Foundation, the predominant funder of the project, said: “I have long taken an interest in the history of conflict and the experience of those who suffer its impact. I am proud that my Family Foundation has supported this new initiative at the Museum, which confirms its pre-eminence in the field.”
The development of the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries is part of the third phase in the dynamic transformation of IWM London. They enable IWM to share works from its exceptional art collection, one of the world’s most important representations of twentieth-century British art. The Galleries will include around 500 works from IWM’s collection, showcasing some of the vast and era-defining film and photography collections, which include over 23,000 hours of footage and over 12 million photographs. This is the first time in IWM’s history that a permanent gallery space has been created to display the three collections together – visual art, film and photography.
Stepping into the Galleries, visitors will learn how the museum has been collecting and interpreting artistic responses to conflict since its inception during the First World War.
Objects on display will include Peter Jackson’s award-winning 2018 film They Shall Not Grow Old, which transformed original archive footage into colour for a reimagining of the First World War. Artworks from renowned artists from the First and Second World Wars will include works by Paul Nash, John Lavery and Laura Knight’s Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech-ring, one of the most inspiring artworks to come from the period. More contemporary works include Paul Seawright’s Mounds, commissioned by IWM in 2002 to respond to the war in Afghanistan and photographs from John Keane who recorded the war in Iraq in 1991. Together, these objects reflect a century of seismic change culturally, socially and politically.
A series of spaces further explore how artists, filmmakers and photographers have been driven to respond to and record conflict. For the first time, these galleries will be presented thematically – a significant change from other major galleries at IWM London.
At the centre of the Galleries Practice and Process will include objects such as a wooden pencil box belonging to artist and Second World War prisoner of war Ronald Searle and paintbrushes carried by John Nash on the Western Front.
Mind and Body will explore how the scale, brutality and disruption of twentieth and twenty-first-century conflict have changed the way the human body is seen and recorded.
Perspectives and Frontiers will show how artists, photographers and filmmakers have defined how we imagine and understand conflict spaces.
Power of the Image will explore the role of visual art as a form of propaganda and protest in twentieth and twenty-first conflict.
IWM London, Lambeth Road, London, SE1 6HZ. Opens 10th November. Admission: Free. Monday to Sunday: 10am – 6pm
