Aplogies for X-posting.....

From its September 2001 issue, the Journal of Transport History will be
reviewing museums and exhibitions of transport. Please find below the
text of my introductory 'editorial', which as you see contains an
invitation to potential reviewers. Any comments, or offers, most
welcome!

Colin Divall
IRS York

"Exhibiting transport history


With this issue the Journal of Transport History embarks upon a new
phase in its development with the publication of the first of what is
hoped will be a continuing series of full-length reviews of transport
museums and exhibitions. In a way it is strange that the Journal has
taken so long to move in this direction. One of the founding editors,
Jack Simmons, was passionate in his advocacy of museums as a means of
informal education in transport history. His Transport Museums in
Britain and Western Europe (George Allen and Unwin, 1970) was for long
the standard – indeed, the only – full length critical work in English
on the subject. Parts of it were adumbrated in the Journal in the 1960s,
but no-one else took up the challenge of regularly reviewing
exhibitions. In retrospect this failure was all the more disappointing
because it meant that the Journal, always catholic in its willingness to
embrace audiences apart from the obvious one of professional, academic
historians, missed an opportunity to work closely with the rapidly
expanding world of museums. Historians were denied the chance of being
alerted to displays of particular interest, exhibitors lost the benefits
of constructive criticism.
 Now is the time to try again. The success of this section will depend
in no small measure on the willingness of the Journal's readers, and
others, to undertake the sometimes arduous but usually enjoyable task of
reviewing. It is my hope that the Journal will be able to offer a
critique of new museums or exhibitions not too long after they open. In
the case of temporary exhibitions this becomes something of a priority,
for obvious reasons. And while new museums might not be opening at quite
the rate of a few years ago, the task of assessing the existing stock of
exhibitions is a substantial one in its own right. Some transport
displays have already been noticed in other learned journals, but even
so there may well be a case for revisiting them in the light of
renewals, revisions and visitors' changing expectations.
     What then is required of reviewers? An ability and willingness to
engage critically with a display's themes and evidence by drawing on the
relevant historiography, naturally. But another prerequisite is a sense
of what it is that museums are trying to achieve in terms of
communicating with a wide and varied public, as is a recognition that in
any good museum ideas always outstrip the resources available to put
them into practice. Acknowledging these factors allows the reviewer to
come to a fair judgement on the effectiveness of the presentation in
terms of its intended audience. Often an exhibition's audience will be
readily apparent even if the reviewer does not belong to the target
group. But this is not always so, and it is one reason why I recommend
that whenever possible reviewers enter a dialogue with an exhibition's
creators as part of the review process.
     ince space here is limited I can do no better than recommend that
anyone interested in learning more about the purpose and methodology of
museum reviews turns to Bernard S. Finn's model article, ‘Exhibit
reviews – twenty years after' (Technology and Culture, vol. 30 (4),
1989: 993-1003). Should anyone be interested in the practical task of
reviewing, they are invited to contact me. "

Colin Divall
Exhibitions' review editor
Journal of Transport History

Institute of Railway Studies
National Railway Museum
Leeman Road
York
YO26 4XJ
UK

P +44 1904 686229 or 432990
F +44 1904 611112 or 432986
[log in to unmask]