Shades of Kurelek 2

In the painting Harvest of Our Mere Humanism Years (currently on display at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s William Kurelek: The Messenger exhibition), the artist weaves several dystopian motifs current at the time of his working (1972) into a composition that is truly fantastical.

The giant hollow grasshopper, pile of books dressed in professorial garb, and green dish containing chocolate replicas of university buildings in the middle distance of this picture express Kurelek’s fear that higher education, though valued so highly by millions of Canadian parents, in fact did not aid their children’s search for individuality and significance. Here are echoes (albeit unconscious) of Ivan Illich’s trenchant criticism of institutional education in Deschooling Society (1971); and a premonition, perhaps, of Neil Postman’s The End of Education (1995), in which the author argues for the necessity of a sustaining narrative to endue education with meaning. The papers and television sets that people are glued to as they wander around the landscape, entirely oblivious to the danger represented by the chasm that has opened up in the ground, reference another motif, important to Kurelek, that was later taken up by Neil Postman in his Amusing Ourselves To Death (1985).

The people queuing around Toronto City Hall, their crowding becoming greater and their burdens heavier the longer they wait, and their waiting simply ending in death, comprise a strong statement of what Kurelek, a faithful Roman Catholic, saw as the futile ‘harvest’ of modern secularism – a restatement, perhaps, of the theme he had taken up in Behold Man Without God (1955). For Kurelek, as we noted last month, the ultimate symbol of this futility was the atomic bomb, here depicted hanging by a thread over City Hall, unnoticed by all bar one person in the throng.

Particularly in its critique of educational institutions, Harvest of Our Mere Humanism Years is reminiscent – to those of a certain age – to the animation sequences of Gerald Scarfe that were incorporated into the 1982 film Pink Floyd – The Wall, and from there into the music video for Another Brick in the Wall, in which teachers are memorably depicted as hammers marching in serried ranks, and school either as a meat-grinder into which students are pushed, or simply as a high, all-encompassing wall. With due respect to the work of Illich and Postman, Scarfe’s imagery has probably had a wider impact upon the thinking of a generation than any text of educational sociology. Kurelek was aware of the power of pop-art, and this is the idiom in which he chose to communicate his message.

Bethlem Sunfayre: History, Art and Plenty of Sun!

Well, the weather turned out beautiful for the Sunfayre last Saturday, 10 July. So, on a wet and dreary Tuesday morning, let us transport you back to the gloriously sunny weekend, where those who came on our historic tours of the site needed parasols rather than umbrellas! A big thank you to everyone who visited the museum and archives, and participated in our talks and tours in the education room. We had nearly 300 visitors in total, a remarkable number given the small physical size! Most of the visitors were local, and many had strong connections to the site: we met former Bethlem employees who were fascinated by the history, or those who had been previously treated or visited relatives under treatment here. Others found the event, particularly the guided tours, reassuring, remembering previous concerns in the local press but never having been to the site before.

As well as viewing an exhibition of Louis Wain’s anthropomorphised cat paintings in the museum, huge numbers of visitors attended talks on the history of the hospital: ‘Meet a Victorian Patient’, and ‘Bethlem Patients in the 1850s’. The studio portraits of patients on the walls of the education room fascinated many. Photographed by Henry Hering, a well-known society photographer, in the 1850s, many of the images come in pairs to show a patient during their illness and following recovery. The education officer explained that this was perhaps an attempt to understand insanity through the comparison of facial expressions and posture. The talk was followed by a guided tour of the site, led by the head of the Archives & Museum. The tour offered a rare opportunity to visit the Hospital’s historic boardroom, as well as taking in Dower House, built as a home for the superintendent in the days when he was resident at the Hospital: the remains of one of the Hospital’s air raid shelters can also be seen in the garden. Juxtaposing the old and the new, we passed River House, a state of the art medium-secure unit, opened in 2008, ending at the recently refurbished Walled Garden, an important part of the Hospital’s occupational therapy unit.

One visitor’s experience was not uncommon: “I’ve lived locally for years, and drive past the site all the time, but I never realised it was such a fascinating place with so much history. There should be more days bringing the community in!”

Until next year’s Sunfayre, you can still visit the museum every weekday, from 9:30am – 4:30pm while, from August, we aim to open one Saturday a month (in conjunction with Bethlem Gallery opening): watch this space for more details! You can also arrange group visits to enjoy talks and activities, including those around the Hering photos. For more information, or to book a visit, go to: www.bethlemheritage.org.uk (no booking necessary for individual visitors to the museum or gallery).

Understanding Mental Health: Education at Bethlem Archives and Museum

We welcome visits from both primary and secondary schools and whenever possible take the opportunity to talk to teachers about what we can offer and what they feel would be most helpful. That’s why our Education officer was at Kingston University yesterday to speak to students on initial teacher training courses. Museums, archives and galleries can be important resouces for learning outside the classroom and we want to make our collection as accessible as possible.

Mental wellbeing is important to everyone but it can be a difficult subject to raise in the classroom. Yesterday’s session highlighted resources from the museum and archives which had been successfully used with primary aged pupils, encouraging them to discuss emotional wellbeing, identify potential stressful situations and develop coping strategies.

For more information on Education at the Archives and Museum, including booking a visit, go to our website.