ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 begins by considering the way in which the Museum’s architecture, as well as the design and layout of the permanent galleries, conditioned the Museum’s interpretation as it was when it opened in 1976, and how visitors may have engaged with it. It then moves on to discuss interpretive themes that coalesced around a teleological story of London’s development from pre-history to the early twentieth century. Contrary to other museums at this time, in which imperial allusions were relegated from museums’ displays, empire was central to the Museum of London’s interpretation of London in 1976, resembling an old-fashioned linear story of unfolding success with empire as its apogee. Though the degree and nature of colonial links were partially disguised through euphemistic language and divorced from notions of consumption and production, the ‘Imperial London’ gallery was particularly explicit about the benefits that overseas expansion and trade brought to London.
