Challenging Legacies: The Kingdom of Iraq and Gertrude Bell exhibition with Bell’s trunk as the centrepiece
Gertrude Bell was a British archaeologist and political officer who travelled widely in the Middle East, writing on archaeology. She later joined the Arab Bureau intelligence group during the First World War, eventually becoming involved in the creation of the kingdom of Iraq in 1921 and in the establishment of the Iraq Museum in 1926. She remains an ambiguous figure, apparently simultaneously supporting British influence and Iraqi independence.
As the archivist responsible for our own small (but significant!) collection of Gertrude Bell’s letters to David George Hogarth (See P452/REL/1 and my blog post on Gertrude Bell at Magdalen), I was intrigued to see the exhibition and the ways in which Bell would be presented to a modern-day audience given her role in the history of the Middle East. Newcastle have been notable in their intention of involving Iraqi perspectives in their work on the Bell archive. In an introduction by project archivist Valentina Flex, we were told that the exhibition was deliberately arranged to tell the stories of both Iraq and Gertrude Bell as separate but interlinked strands, leaving the viewer to interpret the relationship between them. As well as a display of archive material from the Bell collection, the exhibition includes information on the history of Iraq, with prominence given to the views of modern Iraqis on Bell and her legacy.
The centrepiece of the exhibit is Bell’s own hefty travelling trunk, which held her archive after her death. Despite being familiar with the medieval chests in our beautiful Muniment Room at Magdalen, there was something monumental and haunting about the box which had held all of Bell’s literary remains. The worn text on the trunk reads: “This box containing the letters of Gertrude Bell is entrusted to the care of the Principal of Armstrong College for the time being. It is to be held at the disposal of Elsa, Lady Richmond, and is not to be opened except by her until after the 1st January 1945”.
Amongst the exhibits, I found an interesting connection to Magdalen. This was a pottery fragment from the site of ancient Nimrud donated by Hormuzd Rassam (1826-1910), an archaeologist from Mesopotamia and member of Magdalen in the nineteenth century, who recently featured in our own exhibition, “Marginalised Histories”. Rassam had given the fragment to the British explorer, Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894), whose collection is held at Newcastle.
Bell’s photographs were another highlight, with the exhibition giving visitors the opportunity to scroll through digitised versions of her albums from her many travels.
I’d like to thank Newcastle for the chance to see this great exhibition!
“Challenging Legacies: The Kingdom of Iraq and Gertrude Bell” can be seen now at The Great North Museum: Hancock on Newcastle University’s campus until Sunday 5th March 2023.