Britain Can Make It

Britain Can Make It, an exhibition of industrial and product design, was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1946. This show had the civic ambition of signaling a postwar return to normality and hope in the future. There are two sets of photos on display in Passer-by: the “behind the scenes” views, which resemble an installation of contemporary art, with mannequins lying around in confusion; and the final staging of the exhibition, polished and perfect. By showing both, two different mind-sets in terms of aesthetic taste are presented. Britain Can Make It has particular resonance in Moscow because it is similar to analogous Soviet exhibitions, where products were not actually for sale but were components in a propagandistic facade used to mask the impoverished state of the country from its citizens and the onlooking world. As at the World’s Fairs, the provinces of art, technology, education, consumerism, and nationalism are tightly interwoven into a dream space which is deliberately ambiguous.