The Role of Museums of Sport in the UK

1
The Role of Museums of Sport in the UK Kevin
Moore Museum Director, National Football
Museum 11/9/07
2
The role of museums of sport in the UK

• 1. How have sports museums developed?
• 2. How valuable and effective are sports museums?
• 3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
  museums?
• 4. Academic critiques Case Study National
  Football Museum
• 5. How should sports museums develop in future?

3
1. How have sports museums developed?

• Parameters
• Museums, not heritage
• Museums, not archives and libraries
• UK, not global
• Concentrate on national, rather than local/club
  specific

4
1. How have sports museums developed?

• Mapping Studies of Sport Museums
• Global
• Danilov, 1997 and 2005
• International Sports Heritage Association
  Directory (online)
• www.musee-online.org
• UK Sports Heritage Network, 2005 (Annie Hood)
• BSSH Sports History Bibliographical Service
• Directory of Sports Museums
• Richard Cox
• disconnected due to plagiarism of the data

5
1. How have sports museums developed?

• Development of sports museums worldwide
• History of development not written, sketched by
  Danilov (2005)
• 580 sports halls of fame and museums, in 46
  countries
• (Which are museums? Criteria for inclusion?)
• Includes checkers, frisbee, horseshoe pitching!
• North American lead
• More than 400 of these in US
• Canada - second - 39
• UK - third 23 (SHN survey 45)

6
1. How have sports museums developed?

• Development of sports museums worldwide
• 1874 National Mountaineering Museum, Turin (?)
• (1864 Lords?)
• 1910s onwards development in Europe
• e.g. Olympic Museum, Lausanne, 1915
• 1930s development in USA
• e.g. 1936 Cooperstown
• 1950s onwards Eastern Europe
• History remains to be written

7
1. How have sports museums developed?

• Types of Sports Museums
• Museum
• Hall of Fame
• Museum and Hall of Fame
• Hall of Fame and Museum
• Individual Sport
• Multi-sport/all sports
• Local
• College/University
• National
• International/Global

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1. How have sports museums developed?

• Sports museums in UK
• Sports Heritage Network (SHN) Survey
• 45 sports specific museums
• But registered/accredited ?
• Plus 12 museums with large sporting collections
• A great deal of material in non-sport museums
  (contrary to Vamplew, 1998, p.269)

9
1. How have sports museums developed?

• Sports museums in UK
• For top 11 sports (as defined by SHN survey)
• National museums for 8 (in some cases more than
  one, totalling 11)
• Athletics no
• Boxing no
• Cricket yes
• Football yes, England and Scotland
• Golf yes
• Horseracing yes
• Motor sports yes, three
• Rowing yes
• Rugby Union yes
• Rugby League no
• Tennis - yes

10
1. How have sports museums developed?

• Sports museums in UK
• Reasons for gaps
• Lack of public interest in athletics?
• Boxing - not pc and working class?
• Rugby League - working class and northern?
• Welsh Football Collection, but not Northern
  Ireland (sustainability)
• Angling?
• Do the gaps matter?

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1. How have sports museums developed?

• Sports museums in UK
• When established
• MCC 1953
• Scottish Football Museum 2000
• National Football Museum 2001
• British Golf Museum 1990
• National Horseracing Museum 1983
• Motor Sports
• Donington 1973
• Brooklands
• National Motorcycle Museum 1984 (not just
  sport)
• River and Rowing Museum 1998
• Rugby Union 1996
• Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum 1977
• US Soccer Hall of Fame 1979
• Sport traditionally not valued in museum terms in
  UK
• - as with/as part of popular culture (Moore, 1997)

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1. How have sports museums developed?

• Sports museums in UK
• 7 registered museums with Museums, Libraries and
  Archives Council (MLA), 4 not
• 4 independent charitable trusts
• 4 run by governing bodies
• 3 private (motor sports)

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2. How valuable and effective are sports museums?

• If Museums have value
• If sport is important part of culture
• Then sports museums potentially have value
• But how does this relate to the value of e.g.
  museums of the arts or railways?

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2. How valuable and effective are sports museums?

• Functional value and effectiveness
• Collections
• Measured by registration/ accreditation
• Research
• Highly restricted by funding
• Partnerships vital, e.g. IFI
• Interpretation and education
• Measured by accreditation, public response,
  review and awards etc.
• Purpose and values
• Only the 7 registered museums have publicly
  available mission statements

15
2. How valuable and effective are sports museums?

• Valuable and effective to whom?
• Public
• Around 700,000 visitors p.a. in total
• (but 250,000 of these are at National Motorcycle
  Museum)
• Outreach users?
• Website users?
• Research users?
• Visitors at other locations?
• Education users?
• Social inclusion impact?

16
2. How valuable and effective are sports museums?

• Government
• Sports museums receive 100,000 pa. from DCMS
  (NFM)
• Sports governing bodies
• Only 4 run and fund museums
• Museums community
• Undervalued by - hence need for Sports Heritage
  Network (SHN)
• Academics
• Cultural policy
• Current debate on measuring impact of museums
  (Holden, 2006).

17
3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?

• From 1980s Reviews of individual museums
• Vamplew, 1998, 2004
• Moore, 1997, 2003a, 2003b, 2004
• Johnes and Mason, 2003
• Forslund, 2006
• Brabazon, 2006a, 2006b
• Brabazon and Mallinder, 2006

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3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?

• 3.1 Sports museums create an uncritical,
  celebratory history
• Nostalgia, celebration, winners not losers
• sports museums cater to the nostalgia market and
  have, almost without exception,
  institutionalised the concept of a golden
  age in virtually every sport.
• Vamplew, 1998, 270.

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3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?
3.1 Sports museums create an uncritical,
celebratory history

• Errors of fact and interpretation persist and
  myths are perpetuated despite historical research
  to the contrary.
• Jingoism at national and club triumphs abounds
• Vamplew, 1998, 270, 272.
• Few make connections between sport and the
  social setting in which it operated.
• Johnes and Mason, 2003, 120.

20

3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?

• 3.2 Museums collections are not of value to
  academics for research
• unlike libraries and archives
• little value in artefacts, film, photographs etc.

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3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?

• 3.3 Exhibition is not a valid form of serious
  history- a limited form of history
• - even if done well
• - 250 words maximum per topic!
• - quality of history limited by audience needs
  lowest common denominator
• the presentation of information is too
  simplistic and fails to demonstrate the
  subtleties of historical argument
• Vamplew, 1998, 271.

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3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?

• 3.1 Sports museums create an uncritical,
  celebratory history
• Response
• Sometimes, yes.
• Why, if so?
• 1. PR vehicles for governing bodies/clubs/sponsors
  censorship or self censorship
• A major difficulty is the formal and informal
  pressure that sponsoring bodies can exert on
  nominally independent institutions.
• (Vamplew, 2004, 187).
• 2. Bums on seats giving the public what they
  want for commercial reasons
• fans of the sport might be upset by the
  intervention of real history into the fantasy
  world of nostalgia
• Vamplew, 1998, 275.
• Fortunately some museums have gone beyond the
  conventional boundaries of their sport
• Vamplew, 1998, 272.
• And many more since 1998?

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3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?

• Public and nostalgia
• .. must the attracting of visitors necessarily
  involve resorting to the traditional heroic
  narratives of sport?
• Hill, 2007
• Do fans really prefer the happy ending? This is
  questionable
• Vamplew, 1998, 275.
• most sports fans prefer positive memories of
  their sport
• Vamplew, 2004, 186.
• Very definitely not the experience of the
  National Football Museum in terms of what
  visitors say they want and in terms of our
  approach.
• Popular culture, because of its ephemeral
  nature, is a delicate source in museum discourse
  because it encourages nostalgia but requires
  curatorial work to bring the critique and
  questioning into the visitors vista.
• Brabazon and Mallinder, 2006, 97-8.

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3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?

• Nostalgia
• A yearning for the return of past circumstances,
  events, etc.
• The evocation of this emotion, as in a book, film
  etc.
• Longing for home or family homesickness
• Nothing intrinsically wrong with museums creating
  feelings of nostalgia museums should be places
  of emotion as well as thought
• as long as they do not foster myths and untruths

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3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?

• 3.2 Museums collections are not of value to
  academics for research
• Response
• Material culture, defined as artefacts, film,
  images, photography, oral recordings, is a
  potentially immensely valuable source for
  academic research
• Most academic sports historians generally prefer
  text few make adequate, if any, use of
  artefacts and the like
• Vamplew, 1998, 276.

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3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?
3.3 Exhibition is not a valid form of serious
history

• Response
• 3.3.1 Public history not academic history
• museums do not exist for that minority of the
  population called sports historians
• Vamplew, 1998, 276.
• We should not dismiss too readily the
  entertainment aspects of sports museums, for this
  is surely also a function of sport
• Vamplew, 1998, 274.

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3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?
3.3 Exhibition is not a valid form of serious
history

• Response
• 3.3.2 Popular exhibitions can be based on very
  thorough curatorial research drawing on the
  work of academics
• is there any reason why sports history
  exhibitions cannot be good history?
• Vamplew, 1998, 278.

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3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?

• 3.3 Exhibition is not a valid form of serious
  history
• Response
• 3.3.2 Popular exhibitions can be based on very
  thorough curatorial research drawing on the
  work of academics
• museums are in many ways an ideal space within
  which to reflect on the wider picture of football
  and its social significance. Museums if done
  well are particularly suited to provide a more
  critical historical perspective that will
  encourage visitors to make links between the
  past, present, and future
• Johnes and Mason, 2003, 120.
• We only noted one factual error in the text
• Johnes and Mason, 2003, 126, reviewing the
  National Football Museum

29
3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?
3.3 Exhibition is not a valid form of serious
history

• Response
• 3.3.3 Multimedia approach can achieve things
  academic history cannot
• Museums can engage sight, sound, smell, touch,
  even taste and a range of emotions
• Sports museums are the best places to replicate
  the performance, drama, romance, passion and
  emotion of sport, something many sports
  historians fail to do when they move from
  reality to the record
• Vamplew, 1998, 279.
• Museums provide a multisensory context through
  the combination of material culture, sound,
  film, photography, oral testimonies and stories
  told through special arrangements
• Johnes and Mason, 2003, 120.

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3. How valid are academic critiques of sports
museums?

• 3.3 Exhibition is not a valid form of serious
  history
• Response
• 3.3.4 Museums have the advantage of being social
  spaces
• the real distinctiveness of museums is that
  they are physical, and crucially, communal spaces
  which people inhabit together during their visit.
  The social nature of museum visiting is important
  because it entails exchanges and interactions
  between visitors.
• The interaction between museum visitors as they
  respond, not just to the displays but to each
  others interpretation of those displays, results
  in an important exchange of memories and
  histories between individuals museum visiting
  is as much about negotiating and cementing
  relationships between visitors as it is about
  seeing material culture.
• Johnes and Mason, 2003, 120-1.

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4. Academic critiques Case Study National
Football Museum

• The NFM is thus taking forward the games public
  history and helping it develop a more reflective
  and informed character that extends beyond
  nostalgia and an obsession with records and
  statistics
• The NFM encourages fans to feel some ownership
  over the games past and that can only encourage
  them to feel the same over its future too.
• Johnes and Mason, 2003, 130-1.

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4. Academic critiques Case Study National
Football Museum

• a brilliant, evocative, interactive
  celebration of football
• Brabazon, 2006b, 285.
• a remarkable museum
• Brabazon and Mallinder, 2006, 107.
• It is flawlessly constructed, innovative in
  method and considered in its selection of items
• Brabazon, 2006a, 71.

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4. Academic critiques Case Study National
Football Museum

• 4.1 Not conveying the experience of live football
• goals on a small television screen no more
  capture the atmosphere and feeling of live
  football than Sky television is a substitute for
  being there . A heritage site (as opposed to a
  museum) might have tried to recreate the
  atmosphere of the terraces using technology to
  simulate the smells, noises and overcrowding.
• Johnes and Mason, 2003, 128.
• Bigger screens and a real terrace to stand on?!

34
4. Academic critiques Case Study National
Football Museum

• 4.2 Objects not in context
• Object displays in the first half
• This is perhaps where the exhibition feels less
  coherent since there is only limited explanation
  of the objects on show and visitors are left to
  make their own links with the narrative on the
  other wall.
• Johnes and Mason, 2003, 127.
• Collect objects in sets
• Display objects in sets
• (see Moore, 1997)

35
4. Academic critiques Case Study National
Football Museum

• 4.3 Not addressing football and identity
• there is nothing explicit on exactly what
  football has contributed to English national
  identity, or civic and other localised
  identities
• Johnes and Mason, 2003, 129.

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4. Academic critiques Case Study National
Football Museum

• 4.4 Not addressing the Why of football
• Nor is the question asked why football inspires
  such loyalty and devotion
• Johnes and Mason, 2003, 129.

37
4. Academic critiques Case Study National
Football Museum

• 4.5 Weakness of Location (while recognising
  strengths)
• I spent five hours, dazed by all the wonders,
  and cant wait to go again. Its brilliant I
  honestly, sincerely think it is amazing
• If its so brilliant, as I maintain, and if
  football is so successful, rich and popular with
  millions, why have people not being queuing all
  the way along the M6?
• Football-wise, as all football historians know,
  being in Preston is justified, but perhaps not
  otherwise. Who wants to go there? Ive had
  specific reasons for four visits in 40-odd years,
  but wouldnt have gone otherwise
• Hunter Davies, quoted in Brabazon and Mallinder,
  2006, 105.

38
4. Academic critiques Case Study National
Football Museum

• Perhaps the real problem is the football psyche.
  Becks has not been there, not any present-day
  national football star, but Bobby Charlton and
  all the 1966 team have. Todays players think
  only of today, not where they and their football
  have come from.
• Most football fans, especially new ones, are the
  same. It takes time for them to realise that
  there is a past. Its great that our National
  Football Museum exists but, like Martin Peters,
  it could well be ten years ahead of itself.
• Hunter Davies, New Statesman, 23 September 2002.
• Museums should not just be (and been seen as)
  about the past. But also the present, and the
  future.

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5. How should sports museums develop in future?

• 1. Greater independence from sports governing
  bodies and private bodies?
• No more realistic than independence of
  sponsorship and admissions income!
• 2. Greater public funding?
• Would only be given to registered museums
• 3. Greater recognition by Government and museums
  community?
• Has to be earned/lobbied for SHN

40
5. How should sports museums develop in future?

• 4. Greater engagement with academics?
• Yes, but sports museums have very limited budgets
  for research
• Has to be a partnership, has to be two-way
• (Vamplew, 1998, 268).

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5. How should sports museums develop in future?
4. Greater engagement with academics?

• Only a few sports historians) enliven their
  teaching and enlighten their students by
  encouraging them to examine sporting artefacts
  and/or attend exhibitions
• (Vamplew, 1998, 268).

42
5. How should sports museums develop in future?

• 5. More challenging displays?
• Yes
• 6. More sports museums?
• No - sustainability
• 7. National Sports Museum?
• As in USA

43
References

• Brabazon, T. , 2006a, Playing on the Periphery
  Sport, Identity and Memory, Routledge.
• Brabazon, T 2006b,'Museums and Popular Culture
  Revisited Kevin Moore and the Politics of Pop',
  Museum Management and Curatorship, 21, 283-301.
• Brabazon, T., and Mallinder, S., 2006,'Popping
  the museum the Cases of Sheffield and Preston',
  Museum and Society July 4(2), 96-112.
• Danilov, V., 1997, Hall of Fame Museums a
  Reference Guide, Greenwood Press, Westport,
  Connecticut.
• Danilov, V., 2005,Sports Museums and Halls of
  Fame Worldwide, Macfarland and Company,
  Jefferson, North Carolina, and London.
• Forslund, P., 2006, ' "Football is Forever". The
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  Studies, Göteborg University.
• Hill, J, 2007, 'Sport, history and heritage,
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• Holden, J., 2006, Cultural Value and the Crisis
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• Hood, A., 2005, Sports Heritage Network Mapping
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• Johnes, M., Mason, R., 2003, 'Soccer, public
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• Moore, K., 2003b The Peoples Museum of the
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• Vamplew, W., 2004, 'Taking a Gamble or a Racing
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• Wood, J., 2005, 'Olympic opportunity realising
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