Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War reopened after essential maintenance on Saturday 13 September. In this blog, Education Specialist Laura Jones and Curator History Stephanie Gibson reflect together on recent changes to the exhibition and the critical thinking behind their work with students and history.
Learning programmes can be an amazing opportunity to develop critical thinking for ākonga who we welcome into the museum. Gallipoli is especially prone to being seen as an exhibition to pay homage to – rather than one where we can think critically about the past.
Laura’s experience of bringing education audiences to Gallipoli over many years can be utilised to inform reflective practice by curators and other Te Papa teams.
Laura: Why is the only person crying in Gallipoli a woman? Don’t you think that the male soldiers ever cried?
This is a crucial question I ask ākonga when visiting the exhibition. We then consider what things would have made men cry. Students can all imagine feeling homesick, feeling hopeless and the distress of seeing friends die. I encourage them to look at the exhibition critically – to see the exhibition as a forum for discussion, not as a shrine for pilgrimage.
We understand that behind the scenes, the exhibition developers decided to give the male figures in the exhibition battle-angry or world-weary looks, and the one woman (a nurse), tears and a look of anguish.
Stephanie: Since Gallipoli opened in 2015, we have received huge amounts of positive feedback about the exhibition. Many visitors come away from the exhibition with feelings of awe for the hyper-realistic giant figures created by Wētā Workshop and sorrow for the sacrifices made by New Zealanders in the First World War (1914-19).
Less often, we receive critical feedback about the exhibition. Sometimes it is easily answered (e.g. people miss the information they’re seeking in the exhibition). At other times the feedback is pertinent and helps us reflect on the choices we made when developing the exhibition – what was included, how it was delivered, and what was left out.
Laura: The consideration of perspectives, including whose voices we hear and whose voices are quiet or even silent is a key historical enquiry tool. It is incredible to see ākonga come alive as they realise that they can ask critical questions about exhibitions like Gallipoli. They come to understand that all exhibitions come about after many conversations and much compromise and that it is possible to appreciate something while also asking questions about it.
Stephanie: I find history exhibitions tricky to develop. Vast historical events such as the First World War require tough decisions about which and whose stories are selected in order to create a meaningful and manageable experience for audiences. There will always be gaps and silences.
Laura: Silences is a great way to think about this. I observe that most people will not pick up on these silences; they will accept the narrative as it is presented. Only when prompted, do people start to look deeper at the content on show, which is why the simplest of things like asking questions and encouraging speculation can be so powerful.
Bringing in more women’s stories
I really enjoyed being at Te Papa, however I wish that there were more women’s stories told at the Gallipoli exhibit instead of that one nurse.
– Visitor feedback, September 2024
Stephanie: We had long hoped for the chance to include more women’s voices and found an opportunity when a fragile object needed to come off display. We were able to keep the theme of the case (i.e. dead soldiers’ effects sent back to loved ones), but we were able to profile a particular woman’s experience on the home front and the impact of the war on her for the rest of her life. Dorothy Broad was engaged to be married to Captain Thomas Wyville Rutherfurd. He survived Gallipoli and the Western Front but died of pneumonia in Iran three weeks before the war ended. Remnants of his uniform were sent home to Dorothy in New Zealand, and she kept them as personal memorials, turning some pieces into mourning jewellery.
This perspective is vital because women across all walks of life were impacted by the First World War, either as nurses near the front line, or in countless ways on the home front.
Laura: This change is small but significant. Some visitors might walk past, but I can draw students’ attention to it and open a kōrero around the appalling impact of war on women and whānau domestically. Our learning programmes can amplify important narratives like this not only to the students but also to the kaiako teachers accompanying whānau and even to surrounding visitors if they are listening in. Being able to widen and deepen the conversation is crucial. Shifting the focus away from the battlefield and guns to the lasting legacies and impacts of conflict is necessary if we are to challenge traditional war narratives.
Changing a violent interactive
Providing the visitor with means to harm another is both desensitising and dehumanising and ultimately glorifying.
– Emma Cullen, Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War. Postscript, Issue 1, July 2021, pp. 3-4.
The ‘sniper’ game in which you watch an animation through a little mirror and the instruction says to kill your ‘enemy’ or else you’ll get shot feels really wrong in the context of the exhibition. It makes killing human beings a fun game while dehumanizing them by using the word “enemy”. Especially with all those wars going on nowadays I think it’s important to stress that there’s nothing heroic about it…
– Visitor feedback, December 2023
For the first ten years of the exhibition, there was an interactive entitled ‘Have a shot’. The intention of the interactive was to explain how Anzac and Turkish soldiers shot at each other from close trenches through periscope rifles. The interactive directed visitors to ‘Press to fire’ as they peered through the viewfinder. For some members of staff and visitors, it was considered distasteful and immoral in its blunt encouragement to shoot a human being.
Laura: From an education perspective, it was tonally wrong and inappropriate to have an invitation to kill/wound situated beside the sobering and visceral ‘Exposed Wounds’ interactive directly to its left, which shows the devastating impacts of different weapons on the human body. The sniper interactive had little educative value and worked against developing a deeper narrative regarding the wounds suffered and the inability of medics to attend to those wounds.
Stephanie: We have now changed the exhibition label from ‘Have a shot’ to ‘Safer shot’; and replaced ‘Press to fire’ with ‘Step up to look’. Visitors can still experience and learn about the ingenious periscope rifles created by the soldiers, without pretending to hurt someone.
What did we learn?
Stephanie: Regardless of the choices made in the creation of Gallipoli, and its seemingly fixed nature, we believe it’s important for staff to remain critically engaged with the exhibition, for example, through education programmes and fixing labels. Education programmes have the benefit of being quick to adapt and improve, whereas making physical changes can take months or years, but it is well worth the commitment.
Our aim is to keep up to date with relevant scholarship, keep a watching brief on wider sociopolitical contexts, understand critical feedback, and act accordingly where we can.
Laura: Yes – absolutely. I would add that this is especially important with an exhibition like Gallipoli, which has become a part of a national narrative largely by being up for so long. I would argue that we need to be particularly sensitive to societal shifts with such exhibitions and work quickly to update content.
Useful links
World War I teaching resource | Te Papa
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Kia ora Saige – thank you very much for your comments and support of our work.
Ngā mihi nui
Stephanie
Thank you for bringing out the hidden narratives of war – including women’s voices. The voices of victims are often submerged including those whose life view was forever changed.
My maternal grandfather, Philip Lewis, a sapper, served at Gallipoli and the Sommes and returned a pacifist. He loathed the violence.
My paternal Grandfather’s cousin George Augustus King led the Pioneer Battalion and was killed at Passchendaele, buried at a formal tangi. His wife never remarried. The teddy bear his daughter gave him returned, her father did not.
My English great uncle Lionel Bertram Champ died of the Spanish flu during WW1 and is buried in a cemetery in London.
Lionel had married his sweetheart after a long courtship during which he worked and saved to give them a way out of the slums. That sweetheart became an adept typist winning prizes. She never remarried and never had children.
And now we see thousands killed – thousands of children, health carers, teachers and truth-tellers – in a genocide.
The cost of lessons never learned or learning not applied. Imperalism, greed, extermination for expansion, it continues today.
Kia ora Stuart – these are very good points thank you. The exhibition marked the centenary of the First World War through a creative museum experience. The large figures literally acknowledge the scale of the commitment of the people involved, and they help focus visitors on the real people behind the figures. Many of the themes and historical facts you note are addressed in the exhibition, from initial enthusiasm to disillusion, sickness and death. The exhibition ends with a large figure on the Western Front. A reflective space at the end of the exhibition is a good idea. We have installed a whakanoa bowl in the final space for visitors to release the heaviness of the exhibition.
Ngā mihi nui
Stephanie
What are the objectives of the exhibition? Why are the figures so large? Subtle heroism? One objective would be to tell the AoNZ experience, i.e., initial enthusiasm of pre-conditioned young men, mostly 15-25 yo, volunteering for an exciting experience. Brain development incomplete (easily recruited as “cannon fodder” unbeknownst to them). Soon disillusioned with death, gross injuries (some enduring disabilities), mis-navigation to a badly-chosen landing point, discovery that ANZACs were different from the British, and also Aussies different to Fernleaves. Disgusting conditions and food. “Shell shock”. Eventual withdrawal, and on to the Western Front for more of it! Stalemate there, and eventual agreement to call it quits. What was gained? Those returning said little to their families. What did “Lest we forget” mean to them? Surely, “Never again”. Little understanding of their experience by those “at home”. Everyone should be weeping when they leave the “exhibition”. A debriefing space /opportunity provided?