National Army Museum Chelsea

With the lockdown easing we have been visiting a few attractions/museums to take advantage of the lack of crowds and allow a more relaxed look at places.

I thought I'd take the short trip to the National Army Museum in Chelsea on a quiet Friday afternoon where I almost had the place to myself.

A B.E.2 WW1 plane:

A Universal Carrier from around the D-Day period:

The evolution of British cavalry from the ECW to the Napoleonic Wars:

The same for the Infantry:

A bearskin from a Napoleonic French Imperial Guard uniform:

Wellington and Napoleon, featuring Wellington's cloak and hat and Napoleon's horse:

The battle of Waterloo model made by Colonel Siborne:

King Cetshwayo's walking stick, a Zulu shield, Assegai and Knobkerry plus a British Martini-Henry rifle:

The battle of Islandlwana:

Half a Churchill tank:

Items related to tank warfare, must admit I had not realised how big those anti-tank rifles were:

A poster for the Waterloo movie:

Another poster, this one hand made by a child in WW2 to encourage people to grow their own food:

Laurence of Arabia's robes:

A Bengal Lancer unifrom:

I've been visiting the NAM for many years since the 80's. For a long time it was crammed full of "things" arranged in many dimly lit glass cabinets by conflict and numerous oil paintings of various battles and generals.

In 2014 it had a three year revamp opening again in 2017 and I think I'd only visited once since the reopening.

It has certainly changed to what seems to be the 'modern' way of presenting museums. The galleries are now organised by themes such as 'Soldier', 'Army', 'Society' and 'Battle'. Each of these themes brings together items from various periods and is accompanied by (literally!) walls of text together with some more interesting audio recordings.

I must admit I think I preferred the old-fashioned system, while it is easy to access text and information through books and/or the internet actually seeing some of the items from the periods involved is much harder and the museum must now display a very small fraction of the items it has.

I'd think there must be a happier medium between museums such as the revamped NAM and very old-fashioned ones like the Belgian army museum which displays vast numbers of "things" with absolutely no explanation about them at all!