Harry Potter

The exhibition

review by Ann Curthoys

When reCollections asked me to review this exhibition, I was pleased to be able to say yes. I enjoyed the Harry Potter novels, so much so that I wrote about them in an essay on Harry Potter and historical consciousness for History Australia.[1] In that essay I argued that the Harry Potter series is interesting for historians, not only in the historical allusions — medieval, Victorian, Nazi period, and much else — but also in the attention paid to the necessity of understanding the past in order to act in the present. Again and again, the structure of the narrative takes the characters back into the past that they may understand better their enemies, and their friends. When I went to this exhibition at the Powerhouse museum, I did not realise how much it was about the movies rather than the books. I wanted to keep my mind completely open, so didn't read up much beforehand. In fact, I quite like the movies, but I much prefer the novels, as more complex in their characterisation, fantasy world, moral dilemmas, and multiple allusions. To my mind, the secret of the appeal of the books is that they communicate on several levels: to children of various ages, and to adults, whereas the films communicate mainly to children and, especially, teenagers.

The exhibition at the Powerhouse has been enormously popular. You book tickets ahead for strictly prescribed times. I booked for 6.30 pm on 30 December, and had to arrive at 6, and then shuffle forward in the queue from 6 to 6.30. The crowd was interesting: very mixed, predominantly young adults between about 18 and 30, but also plenty of families with young children plus a sprinkling of older people like me; people were also from varied ethnic backgrounds. When finally allowed into the inner waiting area, you could get your photograph taken (to be picked up later for $19.95, or $39.95 with leather frame). The next room was really for the children, where several could sit on a chair and be sorted by the Sorting Hat into Hogwarts school houses. (They all, unsurprisingly, said they would like to be in Gryffindor, Harry Potter's house, and in each case, as if by magic, the Sorting Hat obliged.) The children came from all over the place, from Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney, partly a result of it being school holidays. But perhaps the exhibition itself, which will not appear elsewhere in Australia, had been part of Sydney's attraction. Next was a room full of illuminated movie posters and then, finally, the exhibition proper.

What a disappointment it was. The exhibition was based purely on movie costumes and props. Its organisation was hard to discern. There was no attention to the narrative structure of the books, nor was it organised by theme or character. There were displays, each with an eclectic mix of objects, ranging from wands to school uniforms. There was a section focused on quidditch, the aerial ballgame that features in the novels and films, but that was as close to thematic organisation as I could see. At first I used the audio guide, but soon abandoned it as useless, mainly comprising interviews with those involved in the production of the films about how they made particular costumes or props, like the Marauders' Map. I was interested in the newspaper notices seeking information on Harry Potter as an outlaw, and the forms put out by the Muggle Born Registration Commission, as these had featured in my own thinking about the historical allusions in Harry Potter, but the exhibition did nothing to interpret or illuminate or contextualise them.