“When I read about the nineteen-twenties to-day, I feel I might be reading about butterflies, and that the contemporary critic has turned entomologist. […]
The butterfly never settles on any flower for long.”
-Harold Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete (1948), p. 201
The 1920s, an era bracketed by the devastating events of World War I and World War II, was marked by tumultuous politics and artistic innovation. With the rise of authoritarian regimes in various parts of Europe and the emergence of bold new literary and artistic movements, the decade was characterized by both contradictions and transformation. Frequently immersed in some of the most prominent literary, artistic, and intellectual circles of the time, Harold Acton (1904-1994) and many of his Oxford classmates were deeply embedded in the cultural fabric of the Twenties.
The Harold Acton, Oxford, and the Twenties exhibition begins with Harold’s interests and exploits as a student at Oxford (1922-1926) and then moves through the period of his travels between London, Paris and Florence and ends at the moment just before he decides to go off to China in the early 1930s. Using the Twenties as a lens, the research project focuses on Harold as a young writer finding his literary voice while also contextualizing his life through the company of classmates, friends, and luminaries of the world of art and literature in Europe that will ultimately help to shape both his writing and identity.
While Harold was navigating the social circles of Oxford or travelling between London and Paris, Europe was still picking up the pieces after WWI and becoming increasingly fragmented, and politically turbulent. These tensions would eventually culminate in the Second World War. Leaders like Benito Mussolini in Italy were consolidating their political power and serving as a model for other European leaders like Adolf Hitler. At the same time, great progress in industrial production and technology were rapidly gaining ground. These innovations led to a “golden age of rail travel” that provided travelers with a combination of great luxury at high speed while riding in sumptuously appointed dining cars with panoramic vistas.
Using works of art, photographs, magazines, music, clothing, and books of the time from the Collection, the first room of the exhibit is organized around four central themes –Fashion, Visual Art and Literature, Travel, and Oxford Clubs. From there, the exhibit transitions into Harold’s bedroom as he left it, and focuses on a more intimate view of his personality and precious objects. Later in his life Sir Harold writes: “I suppose this assortment of objects does reflect my personality. Perhaps I am too attached to my possessions. Having lost a houseful of valued objects in Peking during the last world war, I should have reached a spiritual state of non-attachment, but now it is too late.” (Harold Acton, in The Englishman’s Room, 1986, p.9).
This exhibition is an extension of the previous exhibition, Growing Up in the Villa (1904-1920), and a part of an ongoing project that dives into the complex life of Harold Acton.