The rhetoric of looking: a case study about the exhibition of cleaned pictures of 1947

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe discursive turn in heritage studies has made major contributions to our understanding of heritage as a set of processual practices, demonstrating how they are inherently contingent while acknowledging their role in the legitimation of specific relationships of power. More recently, there has been a related interest in the rhetorical uses of heritage, and the paper builds on these debates to explore the ways in which the National Gallery (London) mobilised a rhetoric about access as part of its scheme of post-WWII reconstruction. The popular ‘Exhibition of Cleaned Pictures’ (1947) sheds light on the rhetorical devices employed by the Gallery. These were a cogent example of the Gallery’s intended programme of emancipatory viewership, premised on visitors’ the right to look, but simultaneously reinforced the Gallery’s authoritative discourses. The paper shows how photography’s reportedly unbiased language became embedded in the Gallery’s democratising agenda and helped shape distinctive forms of publicness which fostered a consensual view about the Gallery’s practice of cleaning. Rather than seeing both episodes as mutually exclusive, the paper investigates the internal logic of democratisation and professionalisation as a series of co-dependent rhetorical operations that simultaneously enabled freedom and coercion.