Nearly 8 months after Lindow Man a Bog Body Mystery closed the Museum is still receiving comments about the exhibition. WE receive between 500 and 1000 visits to the Blog every month. This is an email received by Stephen Devine (New Media and Photographic Officer) from Jean N.:
‘I have just visited the Lindow Man web page. How can you hold
a ‘responsibility to treat human remains with respect and dignity’
yet show an image of a ‘Care Bear’ underneath the heading ‘Lindow
Man’? It conveys the wrong message completely!’
This is Steve’s reply:-
Our Lindow Man exhibition presented a number of prespectives relating to memories of the discovery of Lindow Man. The Care Bear, selected by one of the members of the public involved in the exhibition, represents one of these.
The Care Bear was something that reminded the participants of that time in her life and of the discovery of Lindow Man.
This was one of a number of images used extensively in the exhibition and for the marketing of the exhibition. As such I feel that on our website the image represents the exhibition rather than Lindow Man himself.
While there was a number of different reactions to the use of the Care Bear there was never any intention of disrespect towards Lindow Man.
Personally I feel that connecting Lindow Man with viewpoints of the living and the focus on related objects from modern times as well as his own the exhibition showed a great deal of respect.
I replied:- ‘ A number of people have commented on the Care Bear. It might help you to appreciate why we put this in the exhibition if I explain about the consultation that we did over a year in advance of opening. Recognizing that human remains are more of an emotive topic nowadays than the last time the Museum displayed Lindow Man back in 1987 and 1991, we invited a wide-ranging group of people to consult about the exhibition. The invitees included curators, archaeologists, students, members of Manchester City Council, members of the public and pagans. We put them in mixed groups and all five groups reported back that they wanted a respectful treatment of Lindow Man and for his interpretation to reflect the different theories about how and why he died. We decided to implement those recommendations by interviewing a number of different people, each of whom had had experience of Lindow Man in one way or another. They included a forensic scientist, two peat diggers, a landscape archeologist, someone who lives at Lindow Moss, museum curators from the BM and Manchester Museum and a Pagan. We asked the interviewees to recommend objects as exhibits for each section. Susan Chadwick, who lived at Lindow Moss when she was a little girl, told us about her Care Bear and how it reminded her of the time when Lindow Man was discovered. We thought that it was useful as a device to help people remember when Lindow Man was found and to think about what they were doing when he was discovered and reactions to the discovery. The toy was intended to show visitors that the perspective on Lindow Man was that of someone who is now a mature adult but who was just a child in 1984. Susan’s testimony gives us a unique perspective: through her eyes we find out what it was like to find her favourite paths closed off by Police “Crime Scene investigation” tape or the feelings of local people when Lindow Man goes off to London. As this section was separate from the display of Lindow Man, I personally don’t think it was insensitive to show the Care Bear and it also helped young children to engage with some of the ideas. Of course I accept that different people will have different ideas of what constitutes respect and sensitive treatment but we did consult and, in the context of the approach we took to the exhibition, I still personally feel that it was respectful. Human remains are such a contentious area that probably no two people are going to agree entirely. It was that kind of exhibition I’m afraid but we did try to obtain consensus through our consultation. Jean has replied:- ‘Thank you for your reply. My comment was in no way a criticism of the exhibition (which I have not seen) but the strange juxtaposition on the web-page. I am sure that the exhibition treated the remains with respect and I now appreciate that in 1984 the Care Bear might strike a chord with other children. What struck me as strange, however, was the motif of the Care Bear directly underneath the title ‘Lindow Man’ on the web-page as if the Care Bear was a representation of Lindow Man. That surely wasn’t the intention. Maybe no-one else has made that assumption? My present interest in Lindow Man is as a student on the new OU course Understanding Global Heritage although I was aware of him from previous studies. I come from a museum family and I write also as one who has been involved in museum display and interpretation in the Highlands on an occasional consultancy basis.’ Our thanks to Jean for these comments and allowing us to post the correspondence on the Lindow Man Blog.
The following comment was written in the comments book in the photographic exhibition about Lindow Moss:-
“dear curator-type guy, although myself and my amazing girlfriend are aware that there is little chance of you actually reading this we feel the need to congratulate you on the wonderful experience we have had of your museum… as avid historians we feel a little more depths to the descriptions would be useful as many questions were left unanswered. However this is only a mild complaint lost in a sea of awe concerning the educational environment which you have constructed. Much love Sammy and Naomi xx (heart) xx’
I can’t claim any credit for the temporary exhibition about Lindow Moss but I love the salutation “curator-type guy” and Sammy & Naomi criticize us so nicely it would be churlish not to share this with others.
Or what about:-
“I was born and brought up at Lindow and played on the moss as a kid. “The Bog” we called it. Back then in the 60s a lot of the cutting was still by hand with neat stacks of cut peat next to each trench. Everything was taken away on the narrow guage railway. We used to paly on the trucks. When I’ve been there recently I hardly recognize it. The industrial scale of the detruction is very upsetting. I wish more would be preserved. Sue S.”
I’ll bet Bruce Mould, who contributed to the Lindow Man exhibition, which closes on 19th April, cut the peat that Sue saw. The recent TV programme about peat also explored the subject of the conservation of bogs ‘v’ use of peat in gardens.
This is great stuff and thanks to all, too numerous to include every one, who have left comments.
Yesterday afternoon I saw the first drafts of reports on visitor feedback for the Lindow Man exhibition for the second two quarters of last year. The feedback has been compiled from visitors’ completed comments cards. For the period July to September 2008 806 cards were collected but 79 were rubbish, i.e. they had graffiti, doodles or other meaningless scribbling on them. The comments broadly cover two categories of information: views for and against the display of human remains and responses to the exhibition. The data was lumped together and, of the total comments, 52% of visitors wanted the bodies to be displayed.
But this is misleading because it confuses two categories of information: comments about whether or not human remains should be displayed and responses to the exhibition.
If we unpick the responses a far clearer picture emerges. 375 cards wanted human remains to be displayed, 37 were against. So out of a total of 412 cards, 375/412 x 100 or 91% were for. Compare this with the origianl figure of just 52% of “total comments” wanting the remains to be displayed.
If we look at the cards that record qualitative responses to the exhibition 191 were positive and 48 negative. So if we do the maths, 191 + 48 + 8 (the “not sure”s) = 247. That means 191/247 x 100 = 77% of visitor cards record broadly positive comments about the Lindow Man exhibition.
The figures for the quarter October to December 2008 can be worked out in a similar way and they give an emphatic 92% of comments about human remains want human remains to be displayed in the Museum and 90% of visitiors had a broadly positive view of the exhibition.
I wonder if we’ve been doing ourselves a disservice in the interpretation of the cards? I checked with Cat Lumb, Lead Educator (Secondary Humanities), this morning and she thought it might be a systemic error but felt that sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference between someone wanting human remains to stay on display and responding well to the exhibition. She gave the example of a card saying “Really loved the display of Egyptian mummies”. That seems to be both for displaying human remains and a positive response to the exhibition. Could our visitor satisfaction rating based on the comments cards have been higher than we thought in the 2nd quarter of 2008?
What is even more interesting is the comments themselves. I picked up one today that says: “A body is a machine for living in, not a person. An old dead body is just interesting that’s all! To which I reply, well it depends on your philosophical viewpoint, but to some people the body and the spirit are part and parcel of the same thing. That is why native American Indians or indigenous peoples in Australia feel so strongly that the remains of their ancestors should be returned to them. They are not leftover pieces of no longer functioning machinery but are deeply charged with spiritual importance for these communities.
It’s really interesting how the Lindow Man exhibition has brought out these differences in attitudes amongst our visitors. In the last month or so of the exhibition it makes me think we have contributed to the debate on this issue.
Mr Will Charlton, a Trustee of the LSW Museum, visited the Lindow Man exhibition as part of a fact finding tour last December. He writes:
‘My next impression from a first reading of the text on some of the walls was that the information and conclusions of each of the 7 persons were presented as of equal value: a Druid’s on a par with the Professor who had been brought in to supervise the investigation, with those of the men who had found the body etc. And that the exhibition itself was, as I had inferred from the web-site, focused on Lindow Man: I found no reference to finds of other humans buried in peat/bogs. My confusion became anger: leaving aside subjectivity and knowledge and the off-handed presentation of Lindow Man himself, the exhibitors seemed unware of the possibility of degrees of detached knowledge (and therefore utility)….I left dis-satisfied, very dis-satisfied.’
This was not the end of the matter. Mr Charlton goes on: -
‘Something, perhaps successful visits to other exhibitions, encouraged a return. I am glad that I did: I was
prepared to investigate the copious information that was available. Processing, synthesizing that information
then and since has lead to my main conclusion: education is more than information, it is ideology, what each
of us believe and how that is transmitted, taught, disputed.
‘…closer, serendipitous, reading of the information on Lindow Man made clear it was different to that advertised: there has been change since the 2 previous ‘87 and ‘91 exhibitions, in archeological techniques and therefore what can be inferred but also to attitudes to such remains: ie the mystery has changed. Which, for myself, was and is more than enough justification for this further exhibition. Couldn’t, shouldn’t it have been advertised along those lines?’
We have noticed a number of people revisit the exhibition after being disappointed initially. They come to appreciate it as they get to know it better.
I don’t have a problem with setting up any of our speakers on the same level as one another. After all they all talking about the same person, Lindow Man, and their different perspectives are stimulating each in their own way. They are on an equal footing. I don’t think we can claim that some sort of hierarchy should be observed in the commentaries. That seems to be going back to an old way of doing things.
The exhibition’s starting point is that science hasn’t been able to tell us what we really want to know. The trimmed hairs of Lindow Man’s moustache are fascinating in their way but where does that get us? We still can only speculate on the motives for killing him.
Filed under: Criticism, Lindow Man Exhibition | Tags: Lindow Man comment card
“This whole exhibition makes a mockery of itself. All emphasis has been put on the ethics of seeing a dead body despite the mummys upstairs. Why not allow patrons to choose for themselves whether to see it and produce a historical exhibition?”
S.C.
This comment was placed on our comments board by a visitor.
