Imperial Story‐lands: Architecture and display at the Imperial and Commonwealth Institutes

Abstract

This article uses two buildings in London – the Imperial Institute in South Kensington, and the Commonwealth Institute in Holland Park – to examine an apparent parallelism in British architecture, in the history of museums, and in the political movement from empire to commonwealth in twentieth‐century Britain. The Imperial Institute was created at the crest of imperial confidence and its galleries displayed a global circuit of commodities (an ‘index collection’) intended to improve trade and help develop resources within the empire. In the 1920s this approach was re‐routed in favour of the telling of an exhibitionary narrative (an ‘empire story‐land’). In the 1950s the Imperial Institute was demolished, in part due to a perceived loss of function, in part to a disillusionment with its architecture. The latter, it is contended, also affected site planning in the museums area of South Kensington. Replacing the Imperial Institute and moving its collections to a new site, the Commonwealth Institute was designed with the belief that architectural form and urban space might be reconceived so as to signify post‐imperialism. The article argues that whilst the Imperial Institute manifests a conflict between the roles of empire builder and empire spectator, the Commonwealth Institute presents a seeming image of multi‐culturalism – a display of equals – whilst constructing the visitor as a ‘British’ subject, outside the field of visuality.