‘History and Reality Have Become the Same Thing’: City Museums and City Plans in London, 1912–2012

Abstract

The Museum of London’s recent reinterpretation of a large portion of its permanent exhibition offers occasion for a look at the intertwined fates of urban planning and museology across a century of metropolitan change. This article examines the ongoing efforts of one of the world’s pioneering city museums to memorialize an urban past in a manner never quite free of the hopes and assumptions of the urban present. Considering display techniques, artefact selection, and audience response, I look at London as an exemplar of the complex relation of urban historical narratives and planning visions in a period that has seen a loss of faith, across the developed world, in the perfectability of urban plans.