Tracing the Wounded: A Reflection on Six First World War Exhibitions in Australian Museums

Abstract

88 Health & History, 2015. 17/2 Exhibition Reviews Tracing the Wounded: A Reflection on Six First World War Exhibitions in Australian Museums Australia in the Great War Australian War Memorial Treloar Crescent, Campbell ACT, Australia Permanent exhibition on display in the First World War Galleries from 1 December 2014. Open 10am–5pm daily. https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/first-world-war-galleries/ Compassion and Courage: Doctors and Dentists at War Medical History Museum, University of Melbourne Level 2, Brownless Biomedical Library Grattan Street, Parkville VIC, Australia 24 April 2015 – 30 April 2016. Open Monday to Friday 10am–5pm, Saturday 1pm–5pm. http://medicalhistorymuseum.md hs.unimelb.edu.au/exhibitions Anzac Surgeons of Gallipoli College of Surgeons’Gardens, RoyalAustralasian College of Surgeons 250–290 Spring Street, East Melbourne VIC, Australia From 24th April 2015. Open 9am–5pm Monday–Thursday. http://www.surgeons.org/news/anzac-surgeons-of-gallipoli/ The Home Front: Australia During the First World War National Museum of Australia Lawson Crescent, Acton Peninsula, Canberra ACT, Australia 3 April – 11 October 2015. http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/the_home_front All that Fall: Sacrifice, Life and Loss in the First World War National Portrait Gallery King Edward Terrace, Parkes ACT, Australia 27 March – 26 July 2015. http://www.portrait.gov.au/exhibitions/all-that-fall-2015 WWI: Love and Sorrow Melbourne Museum Nicholson Street, Carlton Gardens VIC, Australia 30 August 2014 for four years. http://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/whatson/wwi-loveand -sorrow/; http://loveandsorrow.com/ Health & History ● 17/2 ● 2015 89 In the case of the First World War, the emphasis on those who lost their lives—on the dead not the wounded—derives not only from the sheer scale of the slaughter but also from the enduring landscape of memorialisation and commemoration. When John McCrae’s elegiac poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ is recited every Remembrance Day ... it is all too easy to forget that he wrote those lines not only to commemorate the death of a close friend but that he did so at Essex Farm Advanced Dressing Station. – Derek Gregory, ‘Divisions of Life’, 2015 How have the medical aspects of World War I (WWI) been acknowledged in commemorative exhibitions? This is the quest I created for myself as I set out to visit a number ofAustralian museums where exhibitions have been developed especially for the 2015–2018 centenary. As I went from museum to museum over a period of some weeks in mid-2015 I found both convergences and divergences in the way medical history was presented, and I also came to realise that the exhibitions I saw were cumulatively mapping out a geography of the wounded. One hundred years on, as historians challenge themselves to find new perspectives from which to interpret the Great War and its aftermath, increasing attention is being given to its damaged survivors. Scholars are addressing the ‘strange disappearance’ of the wounded from the field of battle once they are struck down, and their absence from remembrance rituals.1 They are unpicking the selfedited memories of veterans who aligned their personal stories to the dominant public narrative, and are questioning family mythologies that obfuscate the suffering, not only of veterans themselves, but of their loved ones as well.2 To a greater or lesser degree the museums I visited are embracing these new narratives and while only some of them specifically address personal trauma, the presence of the wounded and damaged is signalled indirectly in other exhibitions through the display of medical paraphernalia used to transport and treat them. In fact it is apparent that heritage collections acrossAustralia quietly represent the sick and wounded in many tangible ways, and that these artefacts of suffering are a match for the more conspicuous memorialising edifices built to represent the dead. If you read the small print on exhibition labels, as I did, you will find that material from different collections has been swapped backwards and forwards as curators borrow artefacts to suit their particular themes. Large government institutions—like the 90 EXHIBITION REVIEWS Australian War Memorial—have lent objects and images to university museums; volunteer-managed collections—like the Society for the Preservation of Artefacts of Surgery and Medicine (SPASM)—have lent to state...