Staatliche Museen zu Berlin -- Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Bode and Museum Display: The Arrangement of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum and the
South Kensington Response
Author(s): Malcolm Baker
Source: Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 38. Bd., Beiheft. "Kennerschaft". Kolloquium zum
150sten Geburtstag von Wilhelm von Bode (1996), pp. 143-153
Published by: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin -- Preußischer Kulturbesitz
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 BODE AND MUSEUM DISPLAY: THE ARRANGEMENT
OF THE KAISER-FRIEDRICH-MUSEUM
AND THE SOUTH KENSINGTON RESPONSE

by MALCOLM BAKER

um collections,
In 1891 the London periodical, the Fortnightly Re- the interpretative principles they
assume,
view, published an essay on the Berlin collections in the relationship between ideology and
which Bode wrote in characteristically decisive
display, and the very existence of museums are live
terms about how works of art should be displayed.'
issues of debate it is hardly surprising that Bode's dis-
Criticising those museum displays with cases packed
plays are now attracting close attention. Of especial
with objects, he comments that: relevance here in Berlin at this particular time, they
Most museums are now more or less large may also serve more widely as a focus for current
receptacles in which pictures and sculptures concerns about the ways in which works of art are
are like herrings one above the other. interpreted and contextualised. As an influential
Instead of displays in which the visitor's attention A>is model for museum displays elsewhere in Europe
distracted by works standing too near together and and North America, Bode's period arrangements
by the general ill-effect of overcrowded rooms<, he attract attention now not least because of an increa-
suggests that: sed awareness of how such institutional framing
the chief aim should be the greatest possible iso- and re-contextualisation determine the different and
lation of each work and its exhibition in a room
shifting meanings with which works may be in-
vested.2
which, in all material aspects, such as lighting
and architecture, should resemble, as near as The account of Bode's displays offered here will
may be, the apartment for which it was origi- not add much to the contributions of Thomas Gaeht-
nally intended. gens and Volker Krahn among others who have writ-
In this brief statement Bode was summarising ten about Bode's activities and the history and future
the principles underlying his re-arrangement of the of the Berlin collections.3 Instead my view is that of
collections at the Altes Museum and the thinking that an outsider whose interest in Bode's displays comes
underlay the planning of those familiar and influ- from a concern with the interpretation of objects in
ential rooms in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum. museums and, more specifically, the work current-
In a period when the re-arrangement of muse- ly being done in London for an exhibition about the

This essay, which is a slightly revised version of the paper given 1 W. Bode, The Berlin Renaissance Museum, in: Fortnightly
in December 1995 to the colloquium, >Kennerschaft<, marking the Review, 50, 1891, pp.506-15.
150th anniversary of Bode's birth. It makes use of material 2 The rapidly growing and diverse literature ranges from studies
assembled in the preparation of the exhibition about the of individual institutions such as A. McClellan, Inventing the
development of the Victoria and Albert Museum's collections to Louvre, Cambridge, 1994, to series of essays on wider themes such
open at the Baltimore Museum of Art in October 1997. I am as D.J.Sherman and I.Rogoff, eds., Museum Culture. Histories
particularly indebted to my colleague Anthony Burton who has Discourses Spectacles, Minneapolis, 1994. A particularly illumin-
generously made available to me his research over many years ating case of the changing contexts of a work in Berlin is provided
on both the history of the V&A and the contemporary literature by F. Forster-Hahn, The Politics of Display or the Display of
about applied arts museums in Europe in the nineteenth and early Politics? in: Art Bulletin, vol. 78, 1995, pp. 174-79.
twentieth centuries. My interpretation of the relationship between 3 T. Gaehtgens, Die Berliner Museumsinsel im Deutschen Kai-
South Kensington and Berlin is in large part based on that serreich, Berlin 1987; V. Krahn, Forschen - Sammeln - Prisentie-
developed by him in a series of unpublished lectures and confe- ren. Wilhelm von Bode und die italienische Skulptur, in: Jahrbuch
rence papers over the past ten years. Michael Conforti has also der Berliner Museen, Vol. 34, 1992, pp.105-19. For other discus-
offered me much advice and information in the course of our work sions of the Berlin museums see P. Bloch and C. Holz (eds.), Ber-
on the Baltimore exhbition. I am grateful too for helpful comments
lins Museen. Geschichte und Zukunift, Munich/Berlin 1994, and A.
and information from Stephen Bann, Tim Barringer, Richard Joachimides, S. Kuhrau, V. Vahrson and N. Bernau (eds.), Mu-
Dunn, Alexis Joachimides, Volker Krahn, Sven Kuhrau, Barbara seumsinszenierungen. Zur Geschichte der Institution des Kunst-
Mundt, Clive Wainwright and Jeremy Warren. museums. Die Berliner Museumslandschaft 1830-1990, Dres-
den/Basel 1995.

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 144 MALCOLM BAKER

Fig. 1. Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Itali

history Victoria of the

& Albert
Friedrich Museum opened in 1904.5 As we shallMuseum
see,
and thehowever,
of they had in some respects
afterlife
objects in beenthat anticipatedcollec
inevitably involved not
by Lessing in only
his redisplay consider
of the Kunstgewerbe Mu-
temporary issues seum
about
in 1880, wherethe interpretat
the arrangement according to
tions but also a growing
materials on the upperawareness
floor was complemented by of th
of Bode's displays for
the display the
on the upper re-organis
floor that presented a
collections at South Kensington
period-based in
history of the applied arts.6 The mainthe f
this century. features of Bode's displays are well known. One of
I shall therefore be
their looking
striking characteristics was the at Bode's
integration of
of display in an international context
paintings, sculpture and - to some extent, at least - an
to locate them in terms of the debates about alter- applied arts. (Fig. 1) These were arranged in rooms
native methods of classification and presentation intended to evoke period styles. They were not
current in the early twentieth century in Berlin and designed, however, as period rooms in the sense that
London. My discussion will also touch on two other these are used to show works of the period, arranged
themes. The first concerns the implications that Bo- as they might have been at the time. Instead, these
de's approach to display had not only for collections works are shown relatively well-spaced and sym-
of fine art but also for museums of applied arts. The metrically arranged so as to emphasise the central
second is that of the relationship between Bode's masterpiece. (Fig. 2) But, while the spectator's atten-
activities as a museum impressario and his skills and tion might be drawn to specific pieces in this way,
achievements as a connoisseur. the arrangement of the rooms recognised the visi-
The principles simply stated by Bode in his tor's 1891
freedom of movement so that there is no strict
article were put into practice first in the Altes sequence
Mu- of rooms and no line follow through the
seum and the loan exhibition of Berlin collections in collection.7
the 1880s and then in the displays in the Kaiser Bode's approach to display made use of a variety

Berliner Museen, vol. 34, 1992, pp.173-81. On Lessing see also C.

4 M. Baker and B. Richardson,A Grand Design: TheArt ofthe V&A,
Riickert and B. Segelken, Im Kampf gegen den >>Ungeschmacko.
(exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art and other venues),
New York/London, 1997 (forthcoming). Das Kunstgewerbemuseum im Zeitalter der Industrialisierung,
in: A. Joachimides (as note 3), pp.108-21.
5 For a contemporaryview of Bode's innovations, dicussed in the
context of other museum displays, see H. Dedekam, Reisestudi- 7 This account is based on the analysis in Gaehtgens, (as note 3),
pp.41-63. For Bode's rooms see also B. Paul, Wilhelm von Bodes
um, in: Museumskunde, Vol.1, 1905, pp.75ff. I owe this reference
to Anthony Burton. Konzeption des Kaiser Friedrich-Museums. Vorbild fiir heute? in:
Bloch and Holz (as note 3), pp.165-80.
6 B. Mundt, 125 Jahre Kunstgewerbemuseum. Konzepte, Bauten
und Menschen fiir eine Sammlung (1867-1939), in: Jahrbuch der

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 THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE KAISER-FRIEDRICH-MUSEUM AND THE SOUTH' KENSINGTON RESPONSE 145

Fig. 2. Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Italian 15th century room, c. 1920

of interpretative and historical models as well as a effective primarily by means of the ambiguity of this
range of contemporary practices for viewing works rich allusiveness and the range of response that this
of art. Although aesthetically rather than historically made possible for individual viewers.
oriented, his >>style rooms<< in some ways made Bode's displays could hardly contrast more
visible in a museum context some of Burkhardt's
markedly with those that were to be found at South
notions of cultural history. But here historical and
Kensington in the late 19th century. These were
cultural references are employed with an awareness
indeed the very type of display which Bode saw as
of the appeal of such rooms to a bourgeois public.
showingIt objects >packed like herrings<< and he went
as if Bode was keeping simultaneously in play
on tothe
remark that >>for the enjoyment of works of art
requirements of history and aesthetics, periodno
asso-
more miserable collections [are] than those of the
ciations and contemporary viewing practices, as wellor South Kensington ... for it is impossible to
Louvre
as references to both public and private settings.
show properly their thousands of art-products in
Although the viewer's attention is directed such
by the
labyrinths<. In 1879 Burkhardt had responded
arrangement in individual rooms, Bode's displays
to the displays at South Kensington in a similarly
allowed the spectator to bring to the works of differ-
negative way:
ent periods a varied range of associations. It might
After having a meal in one of the oldests pubs in
be said that Bode's displays offered the spectator theacity ... I took the Underground train to the
cluster of possible connections, none of which was South Kensington Museum. There my amaze-
too specific, too closely defined. At the risk of ana-
ment grew immensely! Where shall our art hi-
chronistically seeing in Bode's displays the potenti-
story lead when when a collection is assembled
in this manner and nobody provides a general
al for a post-modern multiplicity of meanings on the
part of the viewer, I am suggesting that these displays
view. ... What confuses me terribly is that, apart
were characterised by a rich allusiveness, a wide from the decorative and applied arts, this collec-
range of possible associations. This type of display
tion includes so incredibly many important
was so widely adopted and seems so familiar that original
it artistic objects of the ... highest rank.8
has become naturalised. Perhaps only now with In a sense what Burkhardt, in his frustration, is fan-
recent critiques of museums as institutions are these about here is making sense of the collections
tasising
seemingly >>natural< arrangements more susceptible
historically in much the way that Bode was soon to
to analysis and deconstruction. Settled and ordered
do with the collections in Berlin.
though they might appear, Bode's displays were
When both Burkhardt and Bode visited South

8 J. Burkhardt, letter of 2 August 1879. I am grateful to Marta

Ajmar for drawing my attention to this reference.

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 146 MALCOLM BAKER

Kensington however, was added ain

independently second1879
but subsidiary
theyaim of wou
seen a
expanding rapidly
spreading >a knowledge museum
and Appreciation of Art incollec
its widest and deepest
contents of which ranged from sense<<. Inmajor
accord with this
works
decision that
Renaissance sculpture, a the collection >>should
display of definitely
animal be p
ceramics from medieval German stoneware to con-developed as a Museum of Applied Art<<, a ration-
temporary French porcelain, building materials,alisation was proposed, redistributing to other insti-
patented inventions and John Sheepshanks' bequest tutions classes of material seen as irrelevant to such
of British painting.9 By this date the collection wasa museum and, for example, limiting sculpture
already vast but confusingly arranged. Though acquistions to >>such objects as have an important
originally organised according to material the con- bearing on applied design<<. This along with various
tinuing growth of the collection and the piecemeal other similar suggestions was not of course done.
addition of buildings meant that The Times could re-However, the concomitant scheme of arrangement
mark slightly later: based on such a view of the museum was for the most
At present in those dark galleries and amongpart adopted.
those crowded cases ... nobody knows what Mu- The arrangement followed when the new build-
seum contains or where to look for it.o1 ing opened in 1909 was based on a classification
This was to change when after years of agitation thestrictly according to materials - >illustrating the
Government agreed to provide a new building - or technical and artistic development of the particular
rather add to the existing structures a vast ex- industry<. By adopting such an arrangement the
tension.11 In part because the museum was run at thisinstitution demonstrated through its displays a re-
point by the head of the Science division and hissistance to cultural history and denied any possibil-
military colleagues, and lacked any senior figures ity of contextual interpretation. The rhetoric of the
with an expert knowledge of the art collections, little
1908 report and the relentless and systematic logic
thought seems to have been given to how the collec-that its tone implies suggest that this was the obvious
tion was to be displayed and the implications of thisand even the only way of ordering the collection. The
for the design, layout or even scale of the building.many documents recording evidence given to the
The foundation stone was laid by Queen Victoria in committee, on the other hand, show that quite a
1899- it was then that the museum was renamed the number of other options were proposed. Visits were
Victoria and Albert Museum - and the building was made to many of the major European museums and
largely complete when in 1908 a Committee of Re-the characteristics of their respective collections,
arrangement was set up.12 These circumstances buildings and classifications drawn up on a chart.
compare rather unfavourably with the planning of Prominent among these museums was of course the
the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, where the disposition newly opened Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum. The formal
of the collection may to some extent have been paper about the relevance of these institutions to
determined by the architectural restrictions but theSouth Kensington states baldly in its reference to
re-arrangement and the planning of the buildingBerlin that the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum was of no
were interlinked. My more important point, how-relevance to South Kensington, a view based on the
ever, is the contrast between the issues discussed byalready made decision that the V&A was to be simply
this committee and the principles and systems an applied arts museums. But other independent
underlying Bode's arrangement. accounts and above all the lengthy articles in the
When the Committee of Re-arrangement was London press criticising both the proposed arrange-
faced with the challenge of introducing some order ment and the displays to be seen when the museum
to the great but confused collections at South Ken- opened suggest something quite different. Here
sington choices had to be made between various Bode's recently opened galleries represented a norm
options. The committee's starting point was to returnand - despite the official silence - the debate about
to the Museum's original purpose - that >>of stimu- the organistaion of the new museum at South Ken-
lating the craftsman and manufacturer and inspiring sington was conducted in terms effectively estab-
the designer and student who is engaged in the pro-lished by Bode in Berlin.
duction of objects of modern manufacture<. To this, When the proposed scheme was announced,

9 For Bode's critical view of South Kensington on this visit see W. vided by A. Burton, People and politics at South Kensington,
Bode, Mein Leben, Berlin 1930, vol. I, p.174. (forthcoming).
10 The Times, 21 Nov. 1908. 12 Although not formally issued as a published document, the Re-
11 For the detailed history of the building see J. Physick, The port of the Committee of Re-arrangement was printed in 1908.
Victoria and Albert Museum. The history of its building, London The memoranda, statements, statistics, submissions and reports
1982. A vivid account of the political and institutional history of on which the Committee based its conclusions are held in the
the Museum and the personalities involved at this period is pro- Museum's Archive of Art and Design, National Art Library.

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 THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE KAISER-FRIEDRICH-MUSEUM AND THE SOUTH KENSINGTON RESPONSE 147

Claude Phillips (then Keeper of the Wallace Collec- less pictures. Paintings of the earlier German
tion and art critic of the Daily Telegraph) wrote a schools are grouped with the wood-carvings and
detailed critique.13 His view was that the Museum sculpture of the same period; Donatello and
would, if ordered in this way, be: Luca della Robbia are grouped with Filippo Lip-
only in the second place what it should above all pi and Botticelli; statues by or ascribed to Mi-
be - a temple of the finest art for the aesthetic chelangelo appear with Raphael, Del Sarto, and
satisfaction of the public, for the illustration of Bronzino. Dresden china - and this is the great-
styles and developments of applied art generally est innovation in a foreign picture gallery of the
in their progress though the centuries, for the first rank - is grouped with paintings by Watteau,
realisation of given periods of artistic culture, Lancret and and De Troy.
not only by scientific differentiation and dissec- Suggesting that this type of arrangement might be
tion, but by harmonious combination of all the introduced at the National Gallery, Phillips follows
artistic products of this period. his comments about Berlin with the observation that
He contrasts the *projected ... drawing together of a >unique opportunity now presents itself at the new
irksome bonds< at South Kensington with the Victoria and Albert Museum for judiciously ... en-
>general tendency of the European museums, espec- larging and systematisising a mode of arrangement
ially those of the newly organised, ... to relax the that already exists there in many departments<. In
rigidity of such a classification<<, adding that this his view, it is the >new museums of Berlin ... [that]
>system of grouping by style and period had been have an organisation and arrangement ... in advance
universally expected< before the scheme was anno- of all others. It is thus that doubtless will be con-
unced. Developing further this comparison with con- structed, developed and organised the two great mu-
tinental museums, Phillips refers specifically to the seums now proposed on the initiative of the Direc-
*>new Bavarian National Museum* where >>the styles, tor general of Fine Arts, Dr Bode, to be added to the
the whole social and artistic culture of the successive existing group in Berlin<<.
eras in a nation's history< were exhibited. Here, in Phillips is the most knowledgable and effective
his view, >too much is sacrificed to picturesque and critic of the V&A and the writer most aware of the
decorative charm, to magnificence and impressive- significance of Bode's innovations. But this aware-
ness of general effect<< and the displays in Munich areness of the developments in Berlin surfaces in much
contrasted with the >happy mean< found in the In- of the critical reception in the British press of the re-
dustrial Museum of Berlin. In the museum as re- display of the collections at South Kensington. It is
ordered by Lessing (although he is not mentionedalso of course evident in continental reports.
by name here) >on the first floor, the ceramics, theNot surprisingly the long discussion of the newly
metalwork, the enamels, the glass are arranged opened South Kensington building by Richard Graul,
Director of the Leipzig Kunstgewerbe Museum,
much as it is now proposed to arrange the same
categories of industrial art at the Victoria and Albert
develops the contrast with Bode's arrangements fur-
Museum<< while >the whole of the ground floor ther.14
... is This is not entirely to South Kensington's
discredit. The display of fifteenth- and sixteenth-
divided into a series of rooms, each of which exhibits
in well-chosen examples the furniture, tapestry,
century Italian sculpture, for example, is regarded
decorative paintings, ceramics, textiles and metal-
here as well-lit, appropriate and (in Graul's words),
work of a given time and a given nationality<<. The
>far simpler than that in the Kaiser Friedrich Muse-
merits of the contextual displays introduced by um<<.
Les- In general, however, the arrangement ac-
cording to materials was seen as inadequate com-
sing, which in some ways anticipate those developed
pared with the schemes adopted by new continen-
by Bode, are given their due here but Phillips writes
tal
most fully of all about the Kaiser-Friedrich-Muse- museums. In Graul's view:
um. If we are to make use of the art treasures of ap-
At the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, too, the plied arts museums not as cheap models for
scheme of arrangement of which, notwithstan- new industries but as artistic organisms of past
ding a few minor mistakes, may serve as a model cultures, ... then we must present them in a way
to all innovators, every effort has been made, so that makes us aware of the conditions in which
far as this can be done without detriment to the they were created.
works of art exhibited, to group bronzes, A similar line was taken by Raymond Koechlin in his
marbles, ceramics, even textiles with the price- review in Chronique des Arts.'5 Criticising both the

in London, in: Kunstchronik, N.F. 21, 1909/10, 83-90.

13 C. Phillips, Art Notes. Victoria and Albert Museum, in: Daily
Telegraph, 7 Nov. 1908. 15 R. Koechlin, Le nouveau Musee de South Kensington, in: La
14 R. Graul, Zur Neuaufstellung des Victoria und Albert MuseumsChronique des Arts, 6 Nov. 1909, pp.272-3.

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 148 MALCOLM BAKER

Fig. 3. Victoria and Albert Museum, d

ruthless logic that Bode's gave

displays. Furthermore,
the museum in another section, a
the boredom induced stating that aby >>single long
superb work galleries
of art ... may be,
tiles were followed and often by is, moreyet illuminating
more than a series
textiof
mics by yet more specimens<<,
ceramics, we have morehe than a contras
hint of Bode's
Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, along with Munich and isolation of the individual masterpiece.
the Muste des arts d6coratifs, as examples of grou- By the 1920s there was even some reflection of
ping by period. Such responses leave us in no doubt this shift through the introduction of a few period
that the new displays were to be judged, above all, displays. The earliest seems to have been an ex-
against what Bode had achieved. hibition of eighteenth-century English objects.
Only a few years later some acknowledgment (Fig. 3) Already in his 1909 review Graul had won-
was beginning to be make that Bode's interpretative dered whether it would not be possible to present
approach was after all relevant to the V&A's collec- English domestic applied arts of the eighteenth cen-
tions. In 1912, following the departure of the key civil tury - >>still a pride of the nation<<, as he puts it - more
servants responsible for the 1908 scheme, another effectively. Such a display was indeed recommended
report appeared in which a change of emphasis is in the 1912 report on the basis that >the beauties most
apparent.16 Now the educational goal of the Muse- easily appreciated by the general English public are
um was interpreted far less narrowly in phrases that precisely those which have the claim of relationship
recall some of Bode's own words. The collections
and were produced by men of the same blood and
were intended to encourage an understanding oftradition<. The rather belated result was a
historic
the methods by which and the spirit in which
display of the mid 1930s that was set rather incon-
men of all countries and all ages have tried to
gruously amid the oriental textiles and hardly stands
make beautiful the things which they used comparison
and with Bode's rooms, even if it seems to
wore, the houses in which they lived, and adopt his principles of symmetrical arrangement.
the pu-
blic buildings in which they worshipped,Hereadmi-the Museum was responding to current anxie-
nistered justice, or did the work of government.
ties about national identity by creating a display that
Here, then, is a recognition of the cultural context
would articulate one notion of that identity more ef-
that was suggested, if not directly represented, in To achieve this end the material based
fectively.

16 This was printed in 1912 as a confidential report with the title,

Victoria and Albert Museum. The purposes and functions of the
museum.

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 THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE KAISER-FRIEDRICH-MUSEUM AND THE SOUTH KENSINGTON RESPONSE 149

scheme was not very useful and an arrangement ac- arts museum makes its use in the displays in Berlin
cording to period and culture was far more potent. appear less unproblematically natural.
This new approach, feintly echoing that of Bode, One striking characteristic of the Kaiser-Fried-
was not adopted for other parts of the collection rich Museum displays was their integrated nature;
until the late 1940s. In the meantime American mu- the inclusion of the applied arts - especially furniture
seums and their curators had adopted schemes - plays an important role in this. I mentioned earlier
based on Bode's or least embodying similar princip- the rich associative possibilities offered to the viewer
les. These included Valentiner's in Detroit and Fiske by some displays - a quality that contrasts markedly
Kimball's in Philadelphia but, most influentially, thewith the tight rigidity of the South Kensington
organisation of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston scheme - and it is these very possibilities that were
according to the plan formulated by Benjamin opened up largely by the inclusion of the applied arts.
Gilman.17 South Kensington, on the other hand,While pieces of furniture, for example, are presented
remained largely resistant, allowing Sauerlandt toin these rooms not as domestic objects to be used but
comment when he visited the Museum in the mid as works to be appeciated visually in their own right,
1920s: the applied arts are always subsidiary. Although
I always have the same impression - a truly essential to the total effect, they are very much
unbelievable, and unbelievably barbaric wealthaccompaniments to the paintings and sculpture.
of valuable things ... If only the Gobelins When Bode discussed the display of applied arts
tapestries were united with the sculpture!s1 at length in an 1896 article on the purpose of applied
In one sense what I have described here as the resi-
arts museums published in Pan, his criticisms were
telling but the solutions proposed were less con-
stance at South Kensington to Bode's type of display
might be seen as a misguided and ill-informed at- vincing.19 One possibility suggested here was the
organisation of objects into period or style rooms.
tempt to cling to an outdated mode of interpretati-
But, as Lessing rightly retorted in a highly revealing
on. But this attempt to present material so differently
from what was the dominant mode on the continent response, this had already been done, and Bode's
and in the U.S.A. may, in another sense, be used to proposals involved in any case a reduction in the
set Bode's achievements in relief. number of objects shown.20
Seeing how Bode's model of museum arrange-A major problem for those wishing to adopt Bo-
ment in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum was resisted de's type of display in an applied arts museum was
at South Kensington, where in the same decade a vastthe use of symmetrical layouts to draw attention to
collection of the applied arts and sculpture wasthe masterpiece. The lack of any pantheon of de-
reconfigured, allows us to examine Bode's displays
signers or craftsmen - at least one that was familiar
in a different way. The collections were of course not
to a wide public - meant that the isolation of a single
strictly comparable but precisely because Bode'swork of applied art appeared more contrived than in
model could not be applied as directly as it could in
the case of paintings and the constructed nature of
American museums where paintings, sculpture and any such canon perhaps too evidently an invention.
the applied arts were in the same collection, the Within such a framework or set of aesthetic hier-
debate about its relevance to South Kensingtonarchies, sculpture occupied an ambiguous status. If
makes us aware of features of Bode's displays that placed within a collection of applied arts it could be
are less immediately obvious. To consider the rele- given a privileged position, so taking the place of
vance of Bode's approach to such a collection of painting as their canonical or masterpiece works.
applied arts and sculpture prompts us to question the This may indeed be seen in the Italian Renaissance
hierarchies and categories that are assumed in the galleries which still largely follow the arrangement
Berlin arrangement. In particular, the treatment of by John Pope-Hennessy in the 1950s where sculp-
the sculpture to accord with the aims of an applied ture provides the central and dominant narrative of

17 For American museums and their relationship to European 19 W. Bode, Aufgaben der Kunstgewerbemuseen, in: Pan, Vol.2,
museums see M. Conforti, The Idealist Enterprise and Museums 1896, pp.121-27. On this and Lessing's response see Mundt (as
of the Applied Arts, in: Baker and Richardson (as note 4). For the note 6). The significance of this exchange was brought to my
influential arrangement at Boston see A. Fairbank, The New attention by Anthony Burton.
Building for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, in: Museums 20 J. Lessing, Aufgabe der Kunstgewerbe-Museen, in: Kunstge-
Journal, vol. 8, 1908-09, pp.163-70 and B.I. Gilman, Aims and werbeblatt, N.F. 8, 1897, pp.81-87. For a further response to this
Principles of the Construction and Management of Museums of debate see B. Bucher, Die Aufgaben der kunstgewerblichen Mu-
Fine Art, in Museums Journal, vol. 9 1909-10, pp.28-44. seen, in: Mittheilungen des K.K. Oesterreich. Museums fiir Kunst
18 M. Sauerlandt, Im Kampf um die moderne Kunst. Briefe 1902- und Industrie, N.F. 12, 1897, pp.338-45.
1933, Munich 1957, p.197. I am grateful to Norbert Jopek for let-
ting me know of this reference.

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 150 MALCOLM BAKER

Fig. 4. Victoria and Albert Museum, It

stylistic change. As the bronzes

(Fig. 4) In exhibition
the >Von allen Seiten
1909 displ
the organisation of the collection according to schoen<< has shown, there can be no doubt as to the
material (or at least category of work) meant that the importance of sculpture for Bode. Unsurprisingly,
sculpture was shown separately; it was, nonetheless,sculpture also plays a constant, and ever-present,
role in his displays. But it is nonetheless a subsidiary
given pride of place through its location in the largest
courts, near the main entrance. Displayed separatelyrole, if not as subsidiary as that given to the applied
in this way, especially in spaces with which most ofarts.21 Significantly, the works of sculpture that figure
it was incommensurate in scale or function, its de- most prominently are the reliefs, which here may be
contextualised status becomes very apparent. (Fig.5) said to serve almost as honorary paintings. Even the
In Bode's displays, by contrast, sculpture appears St John, with its central position, is contained and
to have been shown in a context, making it seem less framed by a textile so that it stands, as it were, in the
uprooted. But these were of course fictive. While in place of a painting. (Fig. 6)
some cases - the bronzes on the table or the devo- If this relationship between different classes of
tional figures in the niches of the basilica, for workex-- painting, sculpture and the applied arts - in
ample - there is some direct reference to original Bode's displays involves various tensions, so too does
set-
tings, most of the sculpture is shown in arrange- the relationship between Bode's displays and the
ments more reminiscent of collectors' interiors. The subject of connoisseurship that has been central to
harmonious qualities of Bode's rooms mask the recent discussions of Bode. And this relationship
underlying disjunction between original setting and between connoisseurship and the disposition and
the place of the de-contextualised figure in the mu- presentation of the museum collections may be used
seum. to interpret further the differences between the
arrangement
While having more of a period feel than any of displays
of in Berlin and London and
the displays of sculpture at Souththe
Kensington, andthey articulate.
types of classification
One way of
sometimes at least using setting and related understanding this distinction is in
objects
to suggest a work's function (most terms of different
obviously in interpretative
the systems: one a form
case of the devotional figures), the of cultural history
sculpture at and
Ber-the other a classification ac-
lin was in most cases no more culturally
cording tointerpreted
materials and processes of manufacture.
than in London. Comparison of Bode's But the two approaches
displays withmay also be seen in terms of
the sculpture displays in London in different
this way assumptions
brings that were being made about
into focus a contradiction in Bode's treatment of the anticipated audiences. While Bode may have
sculpture. been looking to a bourgeois public, the authorities

21 In his 1891 article (as note 1, p. 515) Bode tellingly describes

the >,small figures in bronze<< as >>always a beautiful appendix to
a museum<<.

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THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE KAISER-FRIEDRICH-MUSEUM AND THE SOUTH KENSINGTON RESPONSE 151

Fig. 5. Victoria and Albert Museum, interior of sculpture court, c. 1908

Fig. 6. Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Italian High Renaissance room, c. 1920

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 152 MALCOLM BAKER

Fig. 7. Victoria and Albert Museum, displa

Bequest, c. 1910

at South Kensington had

tial part in of
of the practice mind
connoisseurship.an (Fig. audie
7)
signers and manufacturers,
By contrast, Bode's assemblingas envisaged
of Berlin's collections
Museum was founded may have overbeen firmly based on hisyears
fifty extraordinaryearl
Bode himself argued, applied
skills as a connoisseur (albeit of arts museu
a rather intuitive
1900 lost this function sort) but their display may be said to have dis-
and, when the disp
actually set up, another couraged this type public
of comparison. Thehad to be
Kaiser Fried-
the collection at South rich MuseumKensington.
triumphantly exhibited the results This
of w
soon after the 1908 report
connoisseurship; the displaysand at SouththeKensington,furt
produced in 1912 on about
the other hand, the
provided the purposes
visitor with a frame- of
um acknowledged work openly that:
that allowed the spectator to practice connois-
the interests of the seurship, craftsman, the collec
almost a machine for connoisseurship.
specialist, the amateur In this comparison andof Bode's the
displays andgenera
those
may compete andestablished even in the Victoria and Albert Museum a few
conflict.
The mention of >the collector,
years later the of
I have argued for the centrality speciali
Bode's
amateur<< is significant because
innovations (as well together
as Lessing's) for the re-thinking
stituted a composite figure
of museum displays thatthat
was takingcame to st
place in the first
ideal viewer of the V&A's collections for much of the decade of the twentieth century. I have also sugge-
first half of the twentieth century - that of the sted that this comparison throws Bode's approach to
connoisseur.22 display into relief and prompts questions about both
By grouping objects by material, arranging them the classificatory systems employed as well as the re-
in series in tightly packed cases the V&A was pro-
lationship between museum display and connois-
viding the perfect conditions for that close com-
seurship. Many of the issues involved here have a
parison of versions and variants that forms an essen-
strongly contemporary resonance for us today."3 The

22 This was apparently the view still taken in 1959 when Arthurpp.19-28). The assumption seems to have been that any visitor
Lane, Keeper of Ceramics, stated that >there is much to be was saida potential connoisseur. I am grateful to Oliver Watson for
this reference.
for treating all members of the public as if they were potentially
serious. Anyone who owns a piece of china should be able to walk
23 For a discussion of various interpretative options for display-
along the galleries, and by comparing it with the labelled pieces
ing sculpture see M. Baker, Recontextualisation des monuments
exhibited in the cases, form some idea of what it is likely to du
be<XVIIIe sibcle: functions, cadres, significations et histoires, in:
(The English Ceramic Collections in the Victoria and Albert J.-R.
Mu- Gaborit (ed.), Sculpture hors contexte, Paris 1996.
seum, in: Thansactions of the English Ceramic Circle, vol. 4, 1959,

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 THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE KAISER-FRIEDRICH-MUSEUM AND THE SOUTH KENSINGTON RESPONSE 153

interest in Bode the museum curator is not merely Bode's displays were of course specific to his period
the outcome of an anniversary but part of a far wider and it would be simplistic to regard the rooms in the
concern with the history of museums, their insti- Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum as models to be directly
tutional practices, architecture and displays and in- imitated at the end of the twentieth century. But the
terpretative strategies that has been prompted by an questions that consideration of Bode's displays and
awareness of how the meanings with which works contemporary responses to them raises are im-
of art are invested is conditioned by their institutio- portant ones for current debates in Berlin and else-
nal settings. The meanings given to works of art in where.24

24 A present-day connection between Berlin and London is seen house project at the V&A for which see Blueprint, July/August
in the commissioning of Daniel Liebeskind for the new Boiler- 1996.

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