An exquisite lift, a debtor's prison cell and a two metre wide dress, all on show at the soon to be opened Galleries of Modern London, leave Lauren thoroughly impressed.
While I'll always have a soft spot for the museums on the South Ken strip, returning from the new Galleries of Modern London, I think the Art Deco Selfridge's lift, graffiti engraved debtors' prison cell and the walk through a Georgian pleasure garden might just have eclipsed that blue whale. The Galleries of Modern London, part of a spectacular £20 million redevelopment of the Museum of London, charts the story of Londoners and the city from the 1666 Great Fire to the present day in a 7,000 object “sensory overload”, as one rather chirpy museum guide puts it.
A colossal piece of carpentry starts the snaked tour through the galleries – it's a wooden common printing press from 1780. Napoleon once called England a nation of shop keepers, and rightly so, the room suggests, as every glass cabinet teems with gold, silk, embroidery and precious metals. One item in particular immediately catches my attention: Ann Fanshawe's court dress from 1750, with a two-metre wide skirt that takes flamboyant to a whole new level. On closer inspection the intricate gold stitched hops and barley motif might seem like an odd choice of embellishment, but it apparently comes with the territory when your dad, the Mayor, is a brewer in search of a bit of economical advertising.
Past an exquisite stand of bejewelled pocket watches and other gleaming trinkets, a collection of original Hogarth prints and a fortified iron monstrosity of a door – a relic from Newgate prison – depict a decidedly murkier story. A portable amputation set gleams in an alcove, light glinting off the jagged edges of the polished saws, while just round the corner from the heavily bolted prison door, stands the highlight of the room, the Wellclose Square Prison Cell – a wooden debtors' prison, the walls of which are scored with the names and artwork of past inmates.
However misfortune is quickly shrugged off by the illustrious parade of flâneurs ambling through the Georgian pleasure gardens. Tealights hang from tree branches in the secluded space, encircled by video projections playing scenes of social intrigue. An orchestra interrupts the dialogue of the speakers and fireworks illuminate the shadowy space where upside down jesters and elaborately dressed, turban-wearing entertainers surround a pavilion. Behind glass screens, women pose resplendent in floral silk gowns, accompanied by foppish men with ribboned walking canes and pinstriped socks. The original Georgian outfits are contrasted with astonishingly beautiful hats by milliner Philip Treacy and striking recycled electrical copper-wired wigs by Yasemen Hussein. Hussein's extraordinary quiffs, wiry lamb chop sideburns and massive swoops of beards bring the male characters in particular to life.
The Victorian Walk, salvaged from the museum's original collection, puts in a welcome appearance, and its parade of quaint Victorian shops, complete with the most ornate urinal ever, makes way for the People's City 1850-1940s. Here, the unashamedly decadent, beautiful Selfridge's lift from 1928 dominates. Bronze tinged light trickles through the glass pains, illuminating a backdrop of Greek mythological scenes. All this glamour is thrown into relief by Charles Booth's Survey of Life and Labour in London alongside the wax head of a boil-faced syphilis sufferer encased in a jar of fluid
Through to the People's Capital and an impressive assortment of Suffragette memorabilia is on show: like a shard of glass from the Westminster Palace Hotel window smashed by a suffragette in 1911, and a padlocked belt the women used to chain themselves to railings. There's also a series of emotive audio diaries of the Blitz, a brick-sized Citymans 900 Nokia mobile phone, and the original placard belonging to Protein Man Stanley Green, who paced up and down Oxford Street in his 30 year campaign against eating protein. Things coming grinding to a halt with the glorious Lord Mayor's Coach. Built by Joseph Berry of Leather Lane in 1757 for a snip at £860, it stands in all its golden glory in a new light-filled space with street level windows.
There's no denying that as museums go the Galleries of Modern London has got it covered, and with just enough bizarre, emotive and show-stopping exhibits to bring those glass cabinets to life I suppose it probably is my favourite London museum of the moment. And given that I don't usually do history or interactive displays, or museums even, this is pretty high praise indeed.
The Galleries of Modern London opens Friday 28 May.
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