What Colour was the Cold War?

Douthwaite, Jessica

What Colour was the Cold War?

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Abstract

Creator (person)

Douthwaite, Jessica

ORCID

Abstract

In interviews with museum professionals about museology I asked each participant if they associated any colour with the Cold War. I intended to use colour as a lens on curatorial perceptions, as well as preconceptions, of an historical era. By leading with associations, rather than empirical data, all interviewees had an opportunity to answer impulsively and creatively, thus accessing their dominant, unedited, mental images of the Cold War. Every participant answered without doubting the validity of the question, showing us that the era is unquestionably imagined, remembered, and visualised in colour. Some responded with colours popularly linked to the Cold War, such as red, closely associated with the Communist hammer and sickle symbol and the four-minute warning. Others suggested colours rooted in their specialisms, such as modernist design and the bright popping colours of mass-produced domestic plastics. The act and process of being asked to call a colour to mind that represented the past was an important indicator of how the Cold War has been envisaged in museums by professionals already - infused by pop culture references, nostalgia, highly specialised knowledge, and sometimes personal memories. In this paper, I consider how the colourway acquired by this ethnographic research can assist and improve our interpretations of what the Cold War is and can be within the museum - with or without objects. Beyond the colour of material environments, products, technologies and battlegrounds, many interviewees indicated that ideologies, politics, and experiences can acquire colour. This insight offers an important tool in communicating the immaterial, intangible, yet crucial aspects of the Cold War to public audiences. Where the public space of a museum must, to an extent, use colour, this paper asks whether we can improve visitor impressions and understandings of a complex history by taking the tint of the past.