ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the creation of the First World War Galleries at Imperial War Museum London, which opened in July 2014. It explores the part that the senses played in their conception and design and how the senses of visitors are engaged in them. In May 2010 the author became a member of the team tasked with creating new permanent First World War Galleries for Imperial War Museum London. Their mission was to create something ground-breaking in terms of museum design and both 'courageous' and 'authoritative' in the way it explained the war. Since the research for the existing gallery had been conducted during the 1980s the historiography of the First World War had undergone as a 'fundamental reorientation'. For all the impact of design and audio-visual content, the author contends that the successful creation of a First World War sense-scape is based upon the presence of authentic artefacts.
