Abstract

The development of any exhibition brings together two things, researching the historical contexts and available readings of its theme and devising and constructing the tropes and visual organisation of its final display. This produces an argument between the prescribed position and intentions of the curator and the experience and reception of the exhibition by its audience. Using Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of ‘resonance and wonder’ in relation to museum display the paper explores this problem in relation to a specific ‘museum interjection’ by Peter Seddon and Barry Barker; the exhibition, ‘Tête-à-Tête’ at the Musée des Beaux Arts, Nîmes, Nov-Feb 2007/8. In doing this it ‘lifts the lid’ on a continuing historiographic ‘rumble’ of symbolic, political turbulence, memory and its representations in France and England.