Inside the "Black Museum": A Quest for Life-Changing Museums

Inside the “Black Museum”: A Quest for Life-Changing Museums

This article was published in Museum News September/October 2005.

By Andrew E. Masich

Deep in the bowels of London’s Scotland Yard, a wizened jailer with a large ring of skeleton keys leads the way up a winding stone stairway that is definitely not ADA-compliant. Creaking open an iron-reinforced oaken door, he introduces a curious curator to the mysteries of the infamous Black Museum.

Hung on the walls—illuminated by bare incandescent bulbs, which have only recently replaced torches in wrought-iron sconces—are all types of horrors related to London’s criminal past. The bloody undergarments of Jack the Ripper’s victims. Weapons, crafted from everyday objects, used in prison escape attempts. Grisly crime scene photos of the slaughter of the Queen’s Horse Guards by an IRA bomb blast, complete with vials of dried blood evidence scraped from the cobbled streets. The curator feels light-headed and then a bit queasy as he walks from case to case and room to room. Finally he asks, “What is this place? Why is it here?”

The old policeman turns with sympathy to his visitor. “Each year Scotland Yard recruits many aspiring cadets and constables from the rural parts of Great Britain,” he says. “Many are youths from communities of only a few hundred people. Most have no comprehension of man’s inhumanity to man. They are ill-prepared for the horrific scenes that are part and parcel of a London police officer’s life.”

Before new recruits are accepted they must run the gauntlet of the Black Museum. Some make it only halfway through the chamber before becoming physically ill. After the tour, some candidates decide that the life of a big-city bobby is not for them, while others are hardened in their resolve to become police officers.

This tale has stayed with me for nearly 20 years.

I heard it from a colleague who had somehow “purloined” a pass to the mysterious Black Museum. “Wow,” I thought to myself after first hearing this story, “now that’s a museum—a museum that can change your life.” Few museums in the world have such a well-defined mission and audience. And few can equal the Black Museum’s life-changing impact.

Recently, the Pittsburgh-based McCune Foundation awarded me a grant to travel the world, looking for museums with the power to changes lives—or at least change the way one sees the world for a time (a minute, a week, a year). This has become my definition of a great museum. Art museums and natural history, even historic sites, all qualified under my criteria. The life-changing experience might be triggered by an exhibit, a program, an object, or the totality of the experience. But there had to be some sort of “ah-ha!” moment, an epiphany that would significantly change my thinking—perhaps change the course of my life—even if only for a while.

A life-changing moment is a hard thing to put your finger on. Often it takes time to sink in and merge with other experiences before the learning light bulb switches on. Though the challenge ahead of me was daunting, I was delighted with the opportunity to travel and determined to find the institutions that elicit these life-changing reactions—but, where to begin?

Of course, I thought first of the “Black Museum,” which has modernized its name (Crime Museum at Scotland Yard) and offerings (including a first-class website) but not its entry requirements. “No non-police personnel,” I was informed, would be granted admittance. Trying several diplomatic angles, I thought surely they might make an exception, but no dice. On a visit to London—to see the British Museum, the venerable Victoria and Albert, Tate Modern, and Tate Britain—I walked over to New Scotland Yard thinking that if I could only explain how important this was to me, surely the officials would relax their rules. But standing in the rain across the street from the austere building, I saw the guard at the front door. He was armed with an assault rifle and a look of grim determination that would have stopped the Ripper himself dead in his tracks. Perhaps it would be best to continue my quest through proper channels. I applied formally for entry privileges and continued on my journey.

The London trip revealed an unexpected treasure. The Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms are located in a well-disguised bunker near 10 Downing St. Established as the Prime Minister’s blitz-proof command center during World War II, the War Rooms were padlocked at the end of the war and remained unopened for more than 30 years. The cramped quarters are almost like a time capsule, preserved exactly as they were during those dark days of the war. In a very personal way, the museum examines Churchill and a handful of dedicated staff as they stiffened Britain’s upper lip in the face of the seemingly unstoppable Nazi juggernaut.

One room contains Winston’s little bed and personal items. The maps on the map room walls are so covered with pinholes, from marking the position of enemy and allied forces, they appeared to have been riddled with a blast of bird shot. The original red “hot-line” phone to FDR in Washington was still in its place and, nearby, an envelope containing rationed lumps of sugar (discovered in a drawer when the War Rooms were re-opened). The map room’s commanding officer had saved the dear sugar intending to have it with his tea during the enervating strategy sessions that often ran for days without end. “Holy smokes,” I thought, “those little lumps of sugar have been sitting there since 1945, along with ashes from Churchill’s cigar.” This handful of people—who had to eat, sleep, and go to the loo, just like us—controlled the fate of a free world. I shuddered just thinking about the difference a lump of sugar might have made at a critical moment. In the high-tech Churchill Museum adjoining the bunker, Winston’s “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few” speech took on new meaning. The sacrifices of these “few” men and women measured up to those of the now-famous airmen of the Battle of Britain.

London is also home to the Imperial War Museum. Visitors are greeted by a pair of 18-inch-caliber naval guns (imagine redwoods painted battleship gray flanked by shells weighing as much as taxicabs). Inside, the expected tanks and planes are complemented by well-thought-out exhibits including “Great Escapes” and “The Children’s War” (WWII from a child’s point of view). But there is a less-expected display. A Holocaust exhibit features an enormous white model of a death camp juxtaposed with rusting cans of Zyklon-B. Videotaped interviews follow concentration camp survivors from the days before the first pogroms to internment to freedom. It is as gripping and powerful as the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and in some ways, even more personal. When asked how she could continue her pre-war friendships with German schoolmates, one survivor explained that friendship did not mean forgiveness: “How can you forgive the unforgivable?” Forgive the unforgivable. The words stuck in my brain. I could never forgive or forget such a horror, but on some level, perhaps, I could renew friendships after feeling betrayed. We alter our perceptions, control our anger, and rationalize to survive. People are amazing, complex creatures. This exhibit offered me an insight into the human soul, and that surely is life-changing.

Continuing on my quest to find life-changing institutions, I headed down under to New Zealand’s Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, one of the world’s newest national museums, with its unique bi-cultural mission. Understanding the importance of tolerance and understanding on an island nation occupied by Maori natives and Pakeha (European) newcomers, the government set out to build a museum in two parts. Everything is dual, including exhibits and labels; there are even two directors, one Maori and one Pakeha. In the middle of a dramatic museum building, which is shaped like a ship, the two stories of the two peoples come together. Anger and frustration are expressed by videotaped actors while many voices and perspectives are heard in a forest of sound posts. In some ways it is a separate-but-equal museum, but there is a tone of mutual respect that pervades everything. This museum is still evolving, but already it sparks debate and understanding in ways that could not happen in other forums. Te Papa’s programs are timely, relevant, and serve to bridge a rift between two cultures that try to coexist as one. It is a remarkable place.

Still awaiting word from the “Black Museum,” I turned my attention closer to home. Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum began as a teaching collection at the College of Physicians, founded in 1787 by Dr. Benjamin Rush, who learned early on the efficacy of collecting useful information and specimens to promote medical science. In 1858 Surgeon Thomas Dent Mütter presented the college with more than 2,000 specimens—items with an extremely high “eeeewww!” factor—the body-parts-in-formaldehyde genre of artifact. Imagine Grover Cleveland’s cancerous jaw tumor in a mason jar; a gigantic 7’6” human skeleton standing casually in an oak-trimmed glass case next to a 3’6” dwarf; plaster casts of the famous 19th-century Siamese twins, Chang and Eng; and birth defects preserved in plaster, wax, or alcohol. As weird and ghoulish as this museum seems at first glance, its displays are presented with scientific dispassion. Soon the jaw-dropping, creep-show aspect of the place gives way to wide-eyed fascination. Teenagers giggle as they think about how Rush taught Meriwether Lewis to treat his Corps of Discovery for sexually transmitted diseases, with which the men were invariably infected. But the sight of perfect wax replicas of diseased organs sealed in alcohol-filled bell jars puts a stop to the laughter and imprints indelibly on the young minds the virtues of safe sex, or at least that seems to be the intent.

When I asked the Mütter Museum’s director whether his institution changes lives, he recounted several anecdotes of visitors, mostly students, who had decided on medical careers or specialties as a result of a museum visit. He also knew of at least one visitor who determined that medicine was absolutely not in her future, thank you—certainly a life-changing moment.

By this point in my search, colleagues around the country were e-mailing and calling with suggestions of life-changing museums to visit. I narrowed the list to a top-50 of must-see places, hoping to leave room for targets of opportunity in between. Some museums were among the “usual suspects,” many of which I had visited previously but was drawn back to, while others had not even been on my radar.

An evening of singing, praying, and storytelling with Cheyenne elders in a sweat lodge on the Northern Cheyenne Reservations (not far from Custer’s Little Big Horn battlefield near Lame Deer, Mont.) taught me much and changed the way I view the world and its people. Though the lodge of bent willow poles covered with tarps was not a museum in the traditional sense, for the Cheyennes it served the same purpose—a place to tell stories and better understand our world. It’s also a trial by fire. Red hot rocks turn a gourdful of water into super-heated steam in an instant. Inhibitions vanish as those in the lodge share an experience that pushes the limits of human endurance. In the end we realize we are all one people; the differences are insignificant.

The death mask of murdered Mormon leader Joseph Smith, found at the Latter Day Saints Museum in Salt Lake City, helped reveal this historical figure’s humanity. The grungy wall paper of New York’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum rekindled thoughts of courage, perseverance, and the strength of family and community. In Washington, D.C., I kept my nose glued to a glass vitrine at the National Park Service’s Ford’s Theater, looking at the contents of Lincoln’s pockets on display. I spent some time thinking about the president fingering the worn Confederate bill and other everyday objects as John Wilkes Booth’s bullet ended his life.

This exhibit flashed me back to my earliest museum memory—the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, N.Y. In my mind’s eye I could see my small, seven-year-old hands moving over the well-worn bronze casts of Lincoln’s large veined hands. As a boy, I had been able to touch the past. I had almost forgotten that moment. I think it changed my life.

When I returned home to Pittsburgh, a senior commander of the City Bureau of Police informed me that he had spoken to his counterparts at Scotland Yard and had found a way to get me into the Black Museum. I had only to join the force as an active officer, quite an unlikely career change. Though disappointed, my spirits were lifted when I learned that the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada had agreed to loan our History Center a very special object for an exhibition we were mounting for the 250th anniversary of the French and Indian War—the global conflict that Winston Churchill called “the first world war” and that morphed into the American Revolution.

Ambitious, 22-year-old George Washington, leading his first command, had opened fire on Ensign Jumonville’s party of French soldiers just south of present-day Pittsburgh and then retreated to his hastily built Fort Necessity. Surrounded by a large French force, his powder dampened by incessant rain, and a third of his men dead or wounded, the drenched and dejected Washington signed a surrender agreement that he could not read—though he examined it closely by sputtering candle light, he spoke not a word of French—to save himself and his men from certain death. The document he signed contained more than articles of capitulation. It was a confession that Washington had assassinated Jumonville and, as an agent of the British King, had in effect declared war—a war that would ultimately cost a million lives and re-align the globe.

The rain-spattered document had not been in Western Pennsylvania for 250 years, and the hair on the back of my neck bristled when I held the paper with gloved hands. Historian David McCullough stood beside me as we looked at Washington’s neatly penned signature, and no words were necessary to communicate the awe we both felt as we looked at the date, July 4, 1754. This time, the life-changing moment happened in my own backyard.

In thinking back on my travels to date, different museums stand out for different reasons. Museums of conscience with moral teachings shook me to my foundation and forced me to examine my own cracks and flaws. The Vatican Museum and Michelangelo’s Pieta in St. Peter’s had a unique power to touch both the heart and brain. The Ulster-American Folk Park in Omagh, in Northern Ireland; the “Cheyenne Dog Soldiers” exhibit at the Colorado Historical Society; and the Field Museum’s “Life Over Time” exhibit all take the visitor on a journey—emigration, pursuit, time travel—each in its own compelling way.

My quest for great museums has not ended. The McCune Foundation has allowed me to take my sabbatical in bits and pieces so that I can keep working. I will continue my search for museums that can change lives or, at least, the way we see the world for a time. There are so many museums yet to explore. I am eager to see the prehistoric cave paintings in Lascaux, France, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Qin Terra Cotta Army Museum in China, and South Africa’s District Six Museum. Some day I will see the Black Museum.

These great museums are our museums. We in the museum profession are learning, and, in our own ways, making a difference. Of course, my list of great museums is most likely going to be different from anybody else’s list. So many factors influence whether we will hit pay dirt as we mine museums for treasure. The state of our lives, our training, even our moods influence our receptivity for life-changing experiences. Our roles as parents, friends, lovers, mentors, or novices all influence whether we will have a “Eureka!” experience on a museum visit.

But all museums have the power to change people. Exhibits that both inform and elicit an emotional response reach us in a personal way that can inspire. Museums that take us on a journey seem to capture our imaginations in a special way. Almost any museum can change your life—if you let it.

Andy Masich is President and CEO of the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, an author of books on American history, Emmy Award-winning producer of short subject documentaries, and a member of the AAM Accreditation Commission. He is eager to learn from colleagues of life-changing museums around the world. Contact him at aemasich@hswp.org.

Author Andrew Masich’s working list of museums that, to his mind, “change the way one sees the world for a time (a minute, a week, a year).”

The U.S. Army Ordnance Museum, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.
National Museum of the United States Air Force, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
American Museum of Natural History, New York
Sovereign Hill, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
Bodie Museum, Bridgeport, Calif.
Royal B.C. Museum, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, London
Canadian Museum of Civilization, Quebec
Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, N.Y.
Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Lame Deer, Mont.
Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, Va.
Conner Prairie, Fishers, Ind.
American Dime Museum, Baltimore
District Six Museum, Cape Town, South Africa
Experience Music Project, Seattle
The Field Museum, Chicago
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg, Pa.
Graceland, Memphis, Tenn.
The High Desert Museum, Bend, Oreg.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, N.Y.
Imperial War Museum, London
Les Invalides monument and museum, Paris
The Cave of Lascaux, Lascaux, France
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Musée du Louvre, Paris
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Va.
Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago
Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, Calif.
National Air & Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy
National History Museum, Castillo de Chapultepec, Mexico City
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
National Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo, Egypt
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
National Prisoner of War Museum, Andersonville, Ga.
The National Portrait Gallery, London
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland
Ohio Historical Society, Columbus
Pompeii and Herculaneum, Italy
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia
Robben Island Museum, Cape Town, South Africa
Rorke’s Drift Museum, Rorke’s Drift, South Africa
Russell Cave North Monument, Bridgeport, Ala.
Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, England
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle
Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Pleasant Hill, Ky.
International Spy Museum, Washington D.C.
Strong Museum: National Museum of Play, Rochester, N.Y.
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
Stirling Castle, Scotland
Sun Records museum, Memphis, Tenn.
Tate Britain, London
Tate Modern, London
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand
Lower East Side Tenement Museum, New York
Museum of History & Industry, Seattle
West Point Museum, West Point, N.Y.
Museum of the American West, Los Angeles
Vatican Museums, Rome
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
And, of course: The “Black Museum,” Scotland Yard, London