War museums face the challenge of representing the violence and trauma of conflict through its material remains. This thesis analyses the ways in which the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London has used its extensive and varied collections to represent warfare, from its foundation up to and including its latest redevelopment. It identifies four phases in the museum's display history. In its first decades the IWM authorities presented the museum's objects as commemorative 'relics'; tangible markers of the First World War and all those who had participated in it. Following the Second World War, the institution revised its remit to include the new conflict and in doing so placed greater value on the informative capacity of its collections. The 1960s saw another fundamental change of purpose as a new Director made historical scholarship central to the institution's displays. In more recent decades a variety of interpretive values have been applied to the museums' collections; with exhibits being represented as sculptural pieces, historical evidence, symbolic markers and 'witnesses to war'. By following the developments in the public exhibitions at the IWM this thesis reveals that, whilst the IWM has reinterpreted its collections multiple times since 1917, these 'reinventions' have been frequently contested. Furthermore, the history of the IWM is marked by notable absences and silences; fissures in an interpretive strategy considered incapable of containing some of the most traumatic associations of the collections. This provides insight into the nature of the material culture of conflict. The history of the IWM shows the meanings of the physical remains of war to be fluid; capable of repeated change according to the priorities and practices of this responsible for them. However, such remains are also powerful signifiers of conflict, and as such are subject to the divisions and controversies associated with war itself.

This thesis explores the key permanent and temporary First World War exhibitions held at the Imperial War Museum in London over a fifty year period. In so doing, it examines the theoretical, political and intellectual considerations that inform exhibition-making. It thus illuminates the possibilities, challenges and difficulties, of displaying the 'War to End All Wars'. Furthermore, by situating these displays within their respective social, economic and cultural contexts, this produces a critical analysis of past and present practices of display. A study of these public presentations of the First World War enables discussion of the Museum’s primary agendas, and its role as a national public institution. In considering this with the broader effect of generational shifts and the ever-changing impact of the War’s cultural memory on this institution, the thesis investigates how the Imperial War Museum has consistently reinvented itself to produce engaging portrayals of the conflict for changing audiences.