Imperial Story-lands: Architecture and display at the Imperial and Commonwealth Institutes

This article uses two buildings in London - the Imperial Institute in South Kensington, and the Commonwealth Institute in Holland Park - to examine an apparent parallelism in British architecture, in the history of museums, and in the political movement from empire to commonwealth in twentieth-century Britain. The Imperial Institute was created at the crest of imperial confidence and its galleries displayed a global circuit of commodities (an 'index collection') intended to improve trade and help develop resources within the empire. In the 1920s this approach was re-routed in favour of the telling of an exhibitionary narrative (an 'empire story-land'). In the 1950s the Imperial Institute was demolished, in part due to a perceived loss of function, in part to a disillusionment with its architecture. The latter, it is contended, also affected site planning in the museums area of South Kensington. Replacing the Imperial Institute and moving its collections to a new site, the Commonwealth Institute was designed with the belief that architectural form and urban space might be reconceived so as to signify post-imperialism. The article argues that whilst the Imperial Institute manifests a conflict between the roles of empire builder and empire spectator, the Commonwealth Institute presents a seeming image of multi- culturalism - a display of equals - whilst constructing the visitor as a 'British' subject, outside the field of visuality. © Association of Art Historians 1999.