Week Six Outing: Foundling Museum

This week's outing was to the Foundling Museum- a museum focused on the work of Thomas Coram and the creation of the Foundling Hospital several centuries ago as a home for babies who could not be taken care of by their mothers.

There was an extensive exhibit on the Foundling Hospital that included many poignant displays of information and narratives, but I found that the temporary exhibition that focused on England's pleasure gardens was more relatable to our class discussions.

The exhibition was entitled "The Triumph of Pleasure- Vauxhall Gardens- 1729-1786." Pleasure gardens were something I was minimally aware of, and I was very curious as to what the history of them was in the context of our class discussions mostly in terms of the use of public and private spaces.

These gardens were open to the public in the late 1600s and they were extremely popular among Londoners seeking to escape the chaos and clamor of city life. They were places of pleasure and entertainment, and not typical gardens of flowers and plants that I had originally pictured. The goal was to create a feeling of a whole other world for visitors- a paradise that was totally unique from London life, and an oasis from reality.

This goal was achieved through creating a dramatic experience for the visitor- entering the gardens through dark tunnels and then emerging into a well-lit, energetic, bustling garden full of entertainers, musicians, dramatic architecture and trees, where everyone was dressed in costume. Musicians and bands would be playing from an outdoor bandstand, and it all truly led the visitors to feel as if they were in a whole new world.

We commented during the tour of the exhibition that this concept is strikingly similar to popular teen stores in malls such as Hollister or Abercrombie. These stores keep the lights very dim, the music very loud, and the smell of their popular cologne wafts outside and carries far beyond the shop's entrance. The entrance is usually adorned with pictures of scantily-clad models, or even mannequins or employees that are very rarely fully clothed. Shopping there isn't like a regular shopping trip- it's meant to feel like a unique, dramatic experience and like you are being transported to a whole other world beyond the rest of the mall.

These places are public (or at least semi-public) spaces, yet their function and purpose is one that is slightly dangerous and definitely controversial. They aren't spaces that families could attend with young children, or places where the elderly would feel safe and at peace. They're dramatic, they're scandalous, and they focus on pleasure all while in a relatively public space.

These pleasure gardens tended to get out of hand at night, with tempers flaring perhaps as a result of alcohol, music increasing in volume, etc. Perhaps the way people acted late at night in these pleasure gardens determined the present-day closings of gardens and squares and parks at nightfall, to keep trouble down and keep society behaving well even in the dark. I would say that it seems a logical conclusion to draw. Pleasure gardens might not still be around today in the same way that they were several hundred years ago, but public spaces that are a place of tranquility and serenity in the middle of a bustling city still are. They live on in the squares and parks that are so frequent among London, and they live on in a much more subdued and less dramatic and thrilling manner, as much more open spaces to all of the public equally and freely.