The National Maritime Museum’s 2005 Exhibition, ‘Nelson & Napoléon’: Intention and Reception

Abstract

This chapter reflects critically on the National Maritime Museum' 2005 blockbuster exhibition ‘Nelson & Napoléon’. It identifies and explains significant gaps between the intentions of Museum Trustees, management, and curators on the one hand, and public reception and responses on the other, with respect both to the composition of the exhibition audience and to ‘meaning making’. It suggests that public responses to the 2005 anniversary indicate that Britain is beginning to take its maritime heritage more seriously, a process that is expected to continue with the complex bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in 2007.