I was at Hendon last week; a pilgrimage of sorts. Most excitingly, a gas cylinder exploded on the roof of the construction site opposite whilst I was there. I felt the shockwave in my chest, though the sound wasn’t actually that loud. I thought it was part of the soundtrack until I stepped outside and saw the police cordon and fire engines.
As a museum I was impressed and apathetic in equal measure. For one thing it was very enjoyable to see so many types in the flesh. The Bomber hall was overwhelming however. In other circumstances a Lancaster, Vulcan or Liberator would be the focal point of an indoor static display, but when you cram them all into one space a sort of fatigue set in. The lighting didn’t help really, being an odd mix of bright-yet-directional lights and gloomy murk. I’m not sure if this is a conservation tactic or simply the result of various half-baked upgrades to the lighting? I’ve been to other museums with low lighting, but none where a Vulcan bomber can be reduced to a virtual silhouette. Impressive that they fitted it in, but other than getting to walk under the nose the thing is virtually nothing more than a canopy blocking out even more light.
I visited a few museums in London, and overall Hendon was the one with the least impressive interpretation or sense purpose. The Battle of Britain hall was better, and the milestones section was also interesting If a little scatty, but the bomber hall and the bit next to it didn’t work. I personally think they could make much better use of he collection they have, or possibly cull it down. You are presented with either a Top Trumps list of aircraft attributes, endless walls of text or a thinly veiled ‘Tally Ho, we smashed the Huns!’ narrative. You could argue that it is hard to tell the story of aviation concisely, but the British Museum do a better job with several millennia’s worth of disparate artefacts. Perhaps a better solution would be to talk about the specific aircraft themselves? To what degree have they been rebuilt, restored or replaced? Some aircraft had this, but not all. Another idea would be to break the fourth wall and talk about what actually goes into restoring an aircraft, and what the museum have to do to keep them in their current state? Perhaps even discuss the history of aircraft preservation in the UK? The Natural History Museum do this, because they realise that rooms full of stuffed animals aren’t sufficient. Hendon, in the main, provides a museum for the anally retentive rivet-counters who just want to see ‘one of everything’.
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