‘Orphans and Rich People’: A Discourse Analysis of the ‘Children's Lives’ Exhibition in Birmingham,UK

In 2012, an art gallery in Birmingham, England presented an exhibition of ‘Children's Lives’. Through its curation of photography, fine art, objects, video and text, ‘Children's Lives’ claimed to ‘let childhood through the ages speak for itself’ and to contribute ‘to a debate over what it means to be a child’. In this article, we offer a critical analysis of the exhibition, examining the relationship between the exhibition as discourse and the ‘external’ discourses around childhood that are reinforced, negotiated and in some cases challenged by the assemblage of image, text and the spatial ‘narrative’ of the gallery.