A couple of days ago, my RSS feeds tracking museum news came up with a lot of uproar regarding a statement that Te Papa museum in Wellington had made regarding pregnant/menstruating women accessing collections. Naturally it has been misunderstood and blown out of proportion - so i'd like to talk a little bit about what it all means. Apologies if it gets a bit cumbersome, but I just want to get this out and I don't really have time to fine tune it right now.
This AFP article is pretty representative of a lot of the other news around, so i'm going to quote from it (but you can read more here, here & here, for a variety of samples).
To begin with, the AFP's article lead is extremely misleading:
New Zealand's national museum on Tuesday warned pregnant or menstruating women to stay away from some of its exhibits or risk an encounter with angry Maori spirits.
I guess it's a bit sensational with the "angry Maori spirits" part, and definitely just wrong when it says people had been warned away from exhibits. It sets people up to be angry and misinformed from the get-go. If they do read on, they'd at least see the following:
Te Papa spokeswoman Jane Keig said the policy was not an outright ban, rather it was strong advice designed to protect pregnant and menstruating woman from exhibits which Maori, New Zealand's indigenous people, believed could hurt them.
"Pregnant women are sacred and the policy is in place to protect women from these objects," she said.
Regardless, most people see this as "pregnant or menstruating women are not wanted at this museum because of Maori cultural beliefs". One quote the AFP article uses shows how knee-jerk the reactions can be:
"I don't understand why a secular institution, funded by public money in a secular state, is imposing religious and cultural values on people," she told the New Zealand Herald newspaper.
Miscommunication leads to this sort of thing - it's not necessarily the museum's fault, nor those reacting, but it is the fault of those misrepresenting the issue (ie. much of the media). When you look at what Te Papa actually have to say on the nature of the issue it becomes clear this is not about imposing rules or banning any member of the public from visiting the museum.
Statement regarding guidelines of access to Māori collections at Te Papa clarifies a lot of what was misrepresented and caused so much trouble. Firstly, the areas that were to be visited were collection areas, never accessible to the general public, and definitely not 'exhibits'. It may come as a surprise to many people, but the material on display in public galleries is usually a small percentage of any museum's collection.
Next of all is the "cultural imposition" - which is actually just a consideration, sort of a formality. If you will read these quotes from the statement:
One of these cultural considerations is that hapu (pregnant) or menstruating women (mate wahine) should consider entering the taonga Māori collection stores at another time...
‘While we inform visitors to the collection stores of cultural considerations, no visitor would be stopped from continuing the tour if they wished to.’
Again, this is in regard to collection areas and no general display in the museum itself. Secondly, this is a cultural consideration and it's not a blanket rule that because the items are Māori then everyone must take on Māori cultural rules when visiting the museum. This is called cultural relativism (or sensitivity, I suppose) - taking a step back from your own cultural norms and perceptions to understand that everyone's life and the objects within them can have different meaning and prescribe different behaviour. Even if you don't identify with that culture, you can still take a step back and see what might be respectful even if you don't share the belief. There is no reason to see this as that culture "imposing their beliefs" on you at all.
‘Te Papa, as the kaitiaki (caretaker) of taonga Māori and a bicultural museum, embraces Māori tikanga and kawa when caring for those collections’, Ms Hippolite said.
I wanted to end with this quote as representative of Te Papa's policy and action - although the statement goes into it further and is worth reading, too. Te Papa, more than any museum I know of and have visited, has gone out of their way from the beginning to have a strong contribution from Māori communities when it comes to caring for collections, and displaying those collections, amongst everything else that Te Papa care for and exhibit. It's a mark of a responsible and forward curation and management team to see a museum do this. When you see so many museums throughout history and now have imposed their cultural beliefs and norms, it's nice to get the balance back a little.
I have worked in museums that have 'sensitive' areas of the collection which have been limited in who can access and care for them because of cultural respect and relativism - as my personal choice I didn't buck that trend, and let others who fit the bill interact with those particular items. There is no one truth, there is no one culture that deserves to be respected more than another, and there is always balance in what is appropriate for you and what is appropriate when accessing and viewing things that are important to other cultures. This is what Te Papa try to do, not to prescribe importance over Māori culture more than anyone else's.
People need to step back from their privilege and see that Te Papa's policies are reasonable and responsible, and appreciate them for all they do not just for Māori communities, but New Zealand's communities as a whole.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Cultural Relativism, Ethnocentrism and Museum Collections: Te Papa Controversy
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Deaccessioning in museums - a link that inspired a ramble
I update this blog so sporadically now that it's almost a farce. But today is International Museums Day, so i've been kickstarted. I also found this link i'd been meaning to write about for, ooh, months now: What should museums throw out?
The link itself goes to a small gallery highlighting some items that were on display in an exhibition at University College London called "Disposal" - one I would've really loved to have checked out. None of the images themselves are particularly striking, but the little slideshow gives a bit of fodder for thought and discussion.
The process of accessioning objects into a museum collection is not that difficult - it comes in, you document it, you store it, you give it a place where it should belong. It is part of the order-making that I love so much about collection management. Deaccessioning, on the other hand, is a much trickier process.
At the surface of it all is the question, how? How can someone (or even a group of someones) decide what stays and what goes from any collection, big or small? Someone had to make the decision to take the object on in the first place - in many museums this was a decision made long ago by a person who no longer works for the same museum (or who has passed away long ago, if your museum's collection goes back far enough - which many do!).
This is where museum collecting rides along the fine lines of fetishism and hoarding. Everything seemed like a good idea when it was brought into the collection - and indeed much of it is a great idea to have in there - but how does a curator or museum board weigh up one object's usefulness as part of a museum collection over another?
One object may have amazing research potential, the other may be not necessarily unique but an excellent piece to display. One object could be kept "just in case" it's needed for either, its potential being the key. Some objects may indeed still be part of museum collections simply due to the fact that some important person many years ago felt that it should be. Why have a box full of pottery sherds when one as a representative sample is enough? Who needs 30 different tapas cloths when one can illustrate the type of textile that it is?
Every object has a story. In and of themselves, and then a story as a museum object. While two boomerangs may look superficially alike, when you look at their histories you may find that both are equally relevant to have in your museum collection.
To say, "yes, that piece is something we need for our museum collections and/or displays" is easy. To say no is usually very hard. There's a reason why policy on this from museum to museum is tricky in its wording. There's a reason why deaccessioning happens so very rarely. Saying no is hard to do.
Friday, January 05, 2007
A slight frivolity..
Thieves beware: museum curators are after you
LONDON. Faced with the prospect of dissolution, the Art and Antiques Unit of the Metropolitan Police has come up with a new idea—to recruit curators and art historians as special constables. The scheme, dubbed Art Beat, is set to start in April. This is the first time the police has attempted to recruit such specialist volunteers.
Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley told The Art Newspaper that the scheme was devised after the Art squad was told by the Metropolitan Police Authority that it could be disbanded if it did not become 50% self-financing by 2008.
Art Beat Special Constables are being recruited from museums such as the Victoria & Albert and the British Museum, universities, insurance companies and other cultural organisations. After four weeks training in police procedure as well as specialist art squad techniques, volunteers will be sponsored by their employers to work as Special Constables for 200 hours a year or one day a fortnight. They will be uniformed and will have full police powers.
“The aim is to build bridges between the police and the art world and maintain a high visibility presence in areas with a high level of art sales,” said DS Rapley. “This could include patrolling antiques markets like Bermondsey or areas with clusters of art dealers like Kensington Church Street, Bond Street or Camden Passage, or undercover intelligence work.”
The Art and Antiquities Unit currently consists of only four full time officers. “At the moment we are not receiving as much information as we would like from the art trade,” said DS Rapley. “We have tried to recruit from areas with the kind of specialist knowledge that will benefit from our work.” So far the police have recruited archaeology and antiquities experts, and hope to have 14 constables trained by April.
Well, I will be looking for work in London later in the year... But seriously, i'd much rather be some kind of superhero-esque type, striving for vigilante justice in the blackmarket artefact trade world. There would be capes! I could be Super Curator! Really.
*primps her resume*
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Article repost and comment - Museums find an unlikely ally: The cellphone
Museums find an unlikely ally: The cellphone By Dan Goodin, The Associated Press.
Article and comment after the jump...
SAN FRANCISCO — Art lovers, history buffs and science devotees, take note: To get the most out of your next museum visit, make sure you have your cellphone with you.
By Paul Sakuma, AP / http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2006-03-19-cell-museum-tours_x.htm?POE=TECISVA
Not to gab on, of course, but to listen to audio tours that weave music, narration and recordings from historical archives designed to bring more context to the exhibitions. For many visitors, it comes as a welcome alternative to the decades-old system of museums renting out expensive handheld devices.
Museums across the country, once averse to noisy cellphones, are suddenly encouraging their use. In the past year, about a dozen art institutions — including museums in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Calif., Tacoma, Wash., Minneapolis and Greenwich, Conn. — have begun offering cellphone tours, mostly for free. Dozens more are in the process of implementing the service.
One reason for the surge is the emergence of companies such as Guide by Cell of San Francisco, Ashburn, Va.-based Spatial Adventures and Minneapolis-based Museum411, which run computer servers and phone systems so museums don't have to.
"I generally don't buy the audio tours when I go to a museum unless it's a Monet or somebody really impressive," said Chris Mengarelli, 53, who recently used her phone to tour the exhibit Visual Politics: The Art of Engagement, at the San Jose Museum of Art.
"It was much more convenient than having to rent a head set and worrying about what kind of germs are being transmitted."
Museums have been making audio tours available over cellphones since at least 2002, when Southern Utah University opened an exhibit of historical photos documenting 100 years of local theater. Matt Nickerson, a professor of library science, wrote the script and taped old actors recalling their performances in Shakespearean plays. He recruited an actor and engineer to record and mix the audio tour at a radio station.
"It turned out to be much simpler than I thought," he said.
Using the museum services is as easy as dialing a number and selecting the code that corresponds to the artwork a visitor is viewing. While each museum's system is different, visitors generally can stay on the same call throughout the tour and switch from one exhibit to the next by entering different numbers into their phones, similar to the way callers navigate a voice mail system.
At least one tour, offered at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, responded to voice commands, but museum officials there discontinued the feature because chatter and ambient noise often interfered.
Companies such as Spatial Adventures plan to offer text, pictures and video in the next year or so to take advantage of new capabilities being offered by cellphone carriers such as Verizon and Sprint.
For now, most museums offer cellphone audio for free, although users must deduct the time spent listening from their monthly allotment of minutes. They also must pay any roaming charges or other costs that may apply to their cellphone plan. Those costs differ widely depending on the carrier.
Many museums are able to give away the service because companies such as Guide by Cell, living off investor financing, offer free pilots of the service as they try to jump-start the trend. About half of Guide by Cell's customers are paying for the service, while all of Museum411's clients pay.
"When we have to pay, or someone has to pay, we may have to change things," said Suzanne Isken, director of education at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which started using Guide by Cell audio for one of its exhibits in January.
The chief benefit of cellphones is their ubiquity. With almost 204 million Americans carrying a cellphone, according to wireless industry group CTIA, museums no longer have to maintain fleets of handheld devices.
Isken recently decided to not to offer an audio tour using the dedicated devices for an upcoming exhibit on the work of artist Robert Rauschenberg. She estimates that her museum would have spent $20,000 just to pay the staff that checks out, cleans and recharges the dedicated devices, which are provided by a company called Antenna Audio.
"We were concerned that we wouldn't be able to make back our investment," Isken said, explaining that under financial arrangements with Antenna, 20,000 visitors would need to buy the $6 service for the museum to break even.
cellphones also make it easy for visitors who have decided to skip the audio tour to spontaneously change their minds.
"You don't have to go back to the desk and rent something," said Robin Dowden, director of new media initiatives at the Walker Art Center.
Not all museums are embracing the trend. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is studying cellphone audio tours but has decided to hold off for now. Instead, it offers audio files that visitors can download from the museum website and play on their iPods or other portable music players while viewing exhibits.
"Just because you have a phone in your hand and can call up a message about every piece in a gallery doesn't mean those messages are going to be engaging," said Peter Samis, associate curator of education at the museum.
"Museums themselves are relative novices at this and don't have any experience producing this type of content in-house," he said. "There's a steeper learning curve than many proselytizers of the technology are willing to acknowledge."
Mengarelli, who toured "Visual Politics," confessed to finding some portions of the audio tour "distracting." She also complained that her arm got tired holding a cellphone to her ear for 30 minutes.
Still, the San Jose Museum of Art's experiment with cellphone audio has already changed the way some visitors take in art.
Ben Patel, a 29-year-old hotel worker who arrived just before closing time one day last week, quickly snapped pictures of the images on his digital camera, so he could view them later on his computer while listening to the narration on his phone.
"It's a good idea," he said. "I'm short on time and the museum will be shut before I can view all of them."
When I was in Wellington at Te Papa, I tried out the PDA virtual "tour guide" for the "Made in New Zealand Exhibit" - it wasn't perfect, but it was an interesting concept that went a little further than a generic audio tour. I really like the idea of making audio guides more accessible to visitors though, because they (if done well) can really enhance the experience in a particular exhibition. I think a lot of museums are put off by the huge costs involved in creating/providing/maintaining audio tours, however, and it's pretty rare to see them. This proposed service would be a lot more accessible for visitors, and sounds to be a lower cost than hand-held units; overall a terrific idea and it's something i'd love to see happen in Australian museums. A while back I heard about MOMA's audio tours, which come in multiple formats (hand-held and downloadable, mainly) and I think it's the perfect way to approach it. Podcasts appeal to me particularly, because I think it's something that could be done (reasonably) easily and low-cost in-house in museums. I'd like to work to put something together for one of the permanent displays here at the Queensland Museum, most likely the "Discover Queensland" display - it's a broad, all-encompassing display that presents the state well but could be enhanced with an audio tour with some more background and history. Once the school holidays are over, i'll talk to my manager (who was one of the main people involved) and possibly our "new media" person and see if it's something they'd be interested in.
Article repost and comment - British Museum returns aboriginal ashes to Tasmania
British Museum returns aboriginal ashes to Tasmania.
British Museum returns aboriginal ashes to Tasmania
The British Museum says it will repatriate two bundles of aboriginal human remains back to Australia after they were taken more than 160 years ago.
"It will be a very joyous occasion when we've got two stolen remains back to Tasmania,” said Trudy Maluga of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. "These two bundles are the only two known to exist today so it's very special to us."
Maluga said aboriginal representatives will travel to Britain soon to arrange for the return of the remains. She wasn't sure exactly when that would be.
She declared the move a “historic victory” after battling for 20 years to get the ashes back. She said new laws passed last year in Britain allowed public museums to return ancestral remains.
"We do know that one other public museum over in Britain has Tasmanian remains and so we've started the process to try and get those remains back to our country,” noted Maluga.
She said another eight British institutions, including the British Natural History Museum, have aboriginal items that interest her centre.
Museum officials said the bundles were taken from Australia in 1838 by George Augustus Robinson, the chief protector of aborigines in the Port Phillip district of Tasmania.
The ashes, wrapped in animal skin, had been used as talismans to ward off sickness.
“Robinson took these from sick aborigines when they were close to death. They were effectively stolen,” Maluga told The Age newspaper in Australia.
Maluga said the bundles were to be buried with their owners and so, by taking the items, Robinson interrupted the process of the two people being laid to rest.
The London museum, which acquired the remains in 1882 from the Royal College of Surgeons, said on Friday that the aborigines’ claim “outweighed any other public benefit.”
“The museum looks forward to continuing to work with indigenous Australian communities in furthering the worldwide public understanding of Australian aboriginal culture, both past and present,” said Helena Kennedy, a British Museum trustee.
The museum is creating an Australian and Pacific Gallery slated to open in 2008.
It's good to hear that the BM have made the positive move toward repatriating human remains, especially considering it's difficult for Tasmanian descendants to pull together much material regarding their history on the island. I wonder if they'll make the effort for any more (non-Tasmanian stuff) they hold in their collections? It's a pitfall of so many Ethnographic museum collections that their histories are peppered with less-than honest acquisition methods. While a lot of collecting done for Australian museums was slightly dubious, and often paid for in trade goods, there's little (that I know of) of this outright stealing, especially of such sacred stuff. It'd be interesting to know what policies the BM and other museums in the UK have for repatriation to colonies, and whether it's limited to human remains - considering their reluctance to allow the Dja Dja to retain the bark paintings loaned to Museum Victoria in 2004. And, y'know, there's their whole Elgin Marbles problem. I suppose when you have a museum with so much history it tends to manifest as authority - and while museums are definitely keeping places and stewards of cultural heritage, there's a point where they have to consider those cultures and their wants and needs.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Article repost - Museums in legal bind as terror victims sue
Museums in legal bind as terror victims sue - article and comment after jump:
By Ron Grossman
Published March 13, 2006
From: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0603130157mar13,1,3559584.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
A Rhode Island lawyer has pioneered a new legal front in the war on terrorism, turning to the collections of major American museums to seek compensation for victims of Middle East suicide bombers.
Among the museums and institutions being pursued by David Strachman is the University of Chicago. He wants the university to surrender a treasure trove of ancient Persian artifacts to survivors of an attack staged by Hamas, the militant group that won the recent Palestinian elections.
The request was recently sustained by a federal magistrate in Chicago.
The reasoning was as straightforward as the implications are far-reaching: Supporters of terrorism should be punished. Hamas is partially financed by Iran. Therefore, Hamas' victims should be compensated by confiscating Iranian property, making Persian artifacts in American museums, such as the U. of C.'s Oriental Institute, fair game for federal marshals and a moving truck.
Should that logic hold up on appeal, it would further complicate life for an American museum world already under pressure to acknowledge that some artworks and artifacts got to their collections via shady circumstances. Floodgates could be opened for myriad similar lawsuits, said Joe Brennan, general counsel and vice president of Chicago's Field Museum, where the Persian collection is also at risk in the lawsuit.
"If you can impose modern standards on acquisition methods of a hundred years ago," he said, "I'm going to be in the business of litigating permanently."
The University of Chicago has several lines of defense before having to turn over its Persian artifacts.
Several institutions threatened
But behind the courtroom maneuvers lies a tangled tale, and the maneuver has put several American cultural institutions under a legal gun: the U. of C., the Field Museum, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
U. of C. officials and their attorneys have declined to comment on the case--Jenny Rubin, et al vs. The Islamic Republic of Iran, et al--except to express their confidence in prevailing.
"We are sympathetic with the victims of the terrorists, but the law does not allow recovery under these circumstances," said Beth Harris, the U. of C.'s vice president and general counsel.
In making that argument, the university has been put into the position of defending Iran's legal rights, pleading poverty for the country's fundamentalist rulers, who aren't contesting the case. In its court papers, the U. of C. states, "Iran faces numerous `practical barriers' to [the] suit in the form of extensive defense costs."
The next round of U. of C.'s legal entanglement is scheduled for a federal court in Chicago this week.
Attack that launched suit
The suit's origins date to Sept. 4, 1997, when three suicide bombers set off explosives studded with nails, screws and broken glass at the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall in Jerusalem, a popular tourist destination. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed five bystanders and wounded 192.
Several survivors, Americans visiting Israel at the time, filed a federal suit against Iran and Iranian officials in the District of Columbia. When the defendants didn't show up in court, the plaintiffs won by default.
Judge Ricardo Urbina ruled that the victims and their relatives were due $423.5 million in damages.
In his opinion, Urbina noted that Iran has a ministry for terrorism that "spends between $50 million and $100 million a year sponsoring terrorist activities of various organizations such as Hamas."
The decision was a victory for Strachman, the plaintiffs' lawyer.
"This case is about inflicting economic damage and punishment on the terrorists," he said after winning a similar suit.
Strachman declined to comment on the current proceedings, and Daniel Miller said he and other plaintiffs have been counseled not to speak about the matter while litigation is in process. But the judge found that the bombing left Miller, who had just graduated from high school, with glass in his eye, with bolts and nuts in his ankles and unable to walk for more than short periods.
Like other winners of damage suits, Strachman set out to collect his clients' awards from among the losers' assets.
Strachman saw deep pockets in museums housing Iranian objects, among them U. of C.'s. Its archeologists excavated Persepolis, the fabled capital of ancient Persia, between the two World Wars. Among the collections of the university's Oriental Institute are thousands of clay fragments with cuneiform writing, priceless records of a vanished civilization.
When a process server showed up at the U. of C., university officials didn't deny having Iranian property.
U. of C. invokes principle
"These antiquities are undeniably owned by Iran," U. of C. said in court papers. But the university's lawyers invoked a legal principle known as sovereign immunity, which holds that governments can't be hauled into court like the rest of us.
Though Iran hadn't asserted that right, the university wanted to do so for the government.
"You can sue the sovereign nation, you can get a judgment, but you can't collect it against any of their property unless they agree, right?"
Magistrate Martin Ashman asked during a hearing last November at the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago.
He answered his own question by rejecting the university's argument in a decision rendered in December. It is under appeal.
The United States has sided with the museums, although it insists it is not "defending Iran's behavior."
Strachman's case against Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is working its way through another federal court.
Officials at those institutions declined to comment, except to express sympathy for the terrorists' victims.
In parallel proceedings against the Field Museum, both sides have exhibited fancier legal footwork.
The museum has ancient Persian artifacts, known as the Herzfeld Collection because they were purchased in 1945 from Ernst Herzfeld, the U. of C. archeologist who excavated Persepolis.
Strachman alleges Herzfeld doubled as a dealer in stolen and smuggled antiquities.
If the museum's artifacts were among his loot, then they really belong to Iran--and thus his clients have a claim to them, Strachman argues.
Thomas Cunningham, the Field Museum's lawyer, dismisses that theory.
Against U. of C., Strachman argued that someone else can't argue Iran's rights in court, but in the case of the Field Museum, he has done just that
"We take the position that the plaintiffs don't have standing to bring a claim of Iran's right to the property," Cunningham said. "Only Iran can."
Like others involved, he predicts that the story has many chapters to come.
"There'll be a lot more technical stuff before we get to the meat of it," Cunningham said. "The juicy part, the public loves."
Just a couple of thoughts on the issues this article brings up - it's very interesting, and obviously very touchy stuff. This is my initial reaction to it.
This is a case that's going to be very tricky, and i'll be interested to see what the outcome is. What the tricky thing is, is that much of the cultural material has been acquired by less-than-honest means at a time when it was commonplace for visiting scholars in other countries to bring items home with them to donate/sell to museum collections. Some museums are starting repatriation processes which is kinda cool - and I guess it can only really work with things that have decent documentation of their provenance, and have a cultural institution to be kept in in their country of origin. The majority of material will stay where it is, as property of the Museums they've been taken in by.
Legally, this means they can only be deaccessioned by museum management/museum boards. Lawyers can not walk in on behalf of their clients and take cultural material from museum collections as means of compensation. It just doesn't work that way. It makes me boggle a little that anyone could think this could happen. While the pieces have originated from the Middle East, they are owned by museums, and the museums have the control over what happens to them. The circumstances here are not that the American museums are "keeping places" for cultural material, they aren't custodians for what they have. By whatever means, they've come to own the material - so I figure it's out of reach for victims wanting compensation.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Article repost - Theme parks with old stuff
Theme parks with old stuff
Leigh Dayton
22feb06
From http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,18226303,00.html (Higher Education)
HERE'S a quick question. What appears in your mind's eye when you recall a childhood visit to a natural history museum? Dinosaurs, an Egyptian mummy? Maybe a moon rock or a case filled with creepy crawlies?
For me, as a southern California kid, it's sabre-toothed tiger skulls at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. They're quickly followed by visions of dusty dioramas at the LA Natural History Museum which displayed stuffed animals alongside spear and basket-wielding Indians.
Dated? Yes. Tacky? Unquestionably. Effective? You bet. When it comes to grabbing the attention of children, there's nothing like the real thing. That holds true even in today's world of interactive experiences. There's something compelling about an honest-to-goodness object that can never be replaced by hi-tech gimmicks.
Of course, yesterday's displays need rethinking. What's new, scientifically? How can the significance of this fossil or that ancient tool be better presented? Can old objects stir new meaning? Can collections and expertise shine light on debates, public or scientific?
Still, rejuvenation isn't an excuse to lock away objects in the 21st century equivalent of a 19th century cabinet of curiosities. After all, that's what museums are, collections of curiosities, objects that are studied and displayed. Museums show us our world and help us consider our place in it.
Even those ageing cabinets and antiquated presentations are part of the story. Look at the Victorian cabinets and galleries of the country's first natural history museum, Sydney's Australian Museum. They reflect a 19th century passion for collection and observation that culminated when Charles Darwin boarded the Beagle.
And speaking of Darwin, old exhibits can sometimes tell a new story. The AM, for instance, recently dismantled its evolution exhibit, Tracks Through Time. The plan is to make way for a new dinosaur exhibit. Nothing wrong with dinos. Nothing wrong with spring-cleaning. But look at the timing.
The long-running exhibit, widely used a teaching aid, was ditched just as American-style creationism in the guise of intelligent design is gaining ground in Australia.
Surely, the exhibit could have been rejigged to good effect. After all, last year even then federal education minister Brendan Nelson muddled scientific theory and religious belief, deliberately or otherwise.
"Students can be taught and should be taught the basic science in terms of the evolution of man," he said. "But if schools also want to present students with intelligent design, I don't have any difficulty with that. It's about choice, reasonable choice."
Choice? The mind boggles. The point here is that the out-with-the-old attitude can be a tempting siren to new administrators, anxious to make their mark. It also fits neatly with another plague on our houses of science: bottom-line leadership. You know the buzz words: benchmarking, accountability, external funding.
It's the type of thinking that turns museums into products, ones that must compete for the entertainment dollar. Long gone are the days when a museum visit was a public good, paid for from the public purse, and knowledge had inherent value.
Frankly, I'm weary of politicians whose penny-pinching ways are forcing museums to become razzle-dazzle fun houses, places where cash and customers are separated at the ticket wicket, gift shop and in-house cafe; where visitors are encouraged to make donations and take out memberships; where galleries are hired out for functions, catering included. Where's the wonder? Where's the science? For that matter, where are the scientists? Right now, the AM and the University of Sydney's antiquities and natural history museums are getting a shake-up that leaves researchers at other institutions wondering if they're next. The cause of the anxiety is a well-meaning, but misguided exercise in managerial best practice.
For instance, new brooms at the university museums are sweeping staff out the door, while AM bigwigs are squeezing research scientists into administrative pigeonholes, regardless of their expertise and reputation. If, say, your work on trilobites doesn't contribute to museum-wide goals, it - and possibly you - won't be supported.
Surely, this kind of thinking is back-to-front. We're talking creative institutions here, places where people are as much a treasure as are collections of skeletons, beetles and bronze figurines. Scientists, as with collections, may have been acquired in an ad hoc manner, but if they're good so what? A museum isn't a theme park. It's a place of ideas and inquiry. It's a cultural institution. It's part of an international web where quality counts. Back the best and you'll reap rewards. It's obvious.
Or is it? In January, Dennis Tourish wrote a piece for the HES headlined Management Bent On Worst Practice. Although he was writing about Australian university management, it could easily have been a piece about the new crop of museum bureaucrats.
Tourish's point was that managerialism - defined as "the wholly unreasonable conviction that those at the top always know better than those they manage" - is creating problems, not solving them. How true.
That's why leading universities - and museums - build organisational structures to serve their people, not vice versa.
Case in point: the La Brea Tar Pits. The haphazard display of my childhood is gone. Visitors now enjoy sophisticated exhibits, a gift shop, gardens, theatres, the lot.
But best of all, scientists are still pulling sabre-toothed tigers out of grubby pits of oozing tar. It's fantastic and it's free.
Article repost- Museums: Why Should We Care?
Museums: Why Should We Care?
For the study and understanding of mankind.
BY PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO
Wednesday, June 1, 2005 12:01 a.m.
From: http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110006760
NEW YORK--We all know art and art museums are important. But when it comes to articulating our reasons for this belief, we find it very difficult. We'd love to simply say, like our children, "Just because." When we try to be more specific, we end up with something rather abstract, such as: They are the repositories of precious objects and relics, the places where they are preserved, studied and displayed, which means that museums can be defined quite literally and succinctly, as the memory of mankind.
Yet the fact is, through your reaction to two recent events, you, the public, have already demonstrated that you understand why the tangible vestiges of our artistic past are so important. Recall the world's reaction to the Taliban's destruction of the monumental Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001. So many who had never even heard of these monuments expressed their outrage at this act of iconoclastic vandalism. Then came the looting of the museum in Baghdad in the spring of 2003. Again, even among people with only the vaguest notion of Ancient Mesopotamia, Akkad, Sumer, Assyria, there was still a sense of outrage and loss.
What the world was telling us is that on some level people realized that the cylinder seals and statuary taken from the museum were not just mute bits of matter that they would never miss, but the vital testimonies of the people who had made them thousands of years ago. As such, they were integral parts of mankind's history--our history.
The fact is, in the rooms of our museums are preserved things that are far more than just pretty pictures. These works of art, embodying and expressing with graphic force the deepest aspirations of a time and place, are direct, primary evidence for the study and understanding of mankind.
For the study and understanding of mankind. These are key words that explain a critical function of the art museum. It is the place where curators--the experts--sort out our artistic past. For if we find our identity through works of art, then we have to identify them correctly, and works of art are not easy to decipher. They don't come with installation kits, lists of ingredients, and certificates of origin. In order to determine the time and place of their genesis, we have to ask of them: Who made them, where, when and why?
The answers to these questions are anything but obvious, because very few artistic traditions are pure--that is, uninflected by outside influences. So, confronted with a work of art, we must be sure of its origin. And even when that is clear, since so much art is the result of interconnections, then the inclination of most of us to believe that our own culture is the true and dominant one is shown time and again to be arrogant and misguided. The art museum then plays a key and beneficial role in teaching us humility, in making us recognize that other, very different yet totally valid civilizations have existed and do exist right alongside our own.
Let me give you an example. In the museum we have a pyxis that was once a container for the Eucharist and stored in a church treasury. Yet it was made under the Ummayad dynasty, the Muslim rulers of North Africa and Granada until the late 15th century. It is decorated with birds and various animals set against a lush pattern of arabesques--intricate patterns of interlaced lines. Although this is a typical Islamic motif, it traces its origins to the vine and acanthus scroll ornament of the late antique classical world, and the pattern itself refers back on the other hand to early Syrian textiles.
What objects such as this give you is an idea of the degree to which the world's cultures, diverse as they are, reveal astonishing and often unexpected similarities due to interconnections that are often the result of the movement of peoples and artifacts across great spans of the globe.
Another reason art museums matter is that, unlike historical facts and events, works of art exist not only in the present, but also in the past, the past that transmitted them to us. Events, on the other hand, can be retraced but they have no presence; we can't experience them. Archives and documents refer to events but are not they. However, the work of art, as Bernard Berenson put it, is the event.
So we can read about a historical event in, say, 15th-century Mantua, but we cannot experience it. On the other hand, we can experience its art and thus in a very real way enter into Renaissance Mantua by looking at a painting by Andrea Mantegna, court painter to the Gonzagas, the rulers of Mantua; the very painting that their eyes actually rested upon.
But in attempting to answer the question "why should we care?" I'd like to suggest a final, more broadly significant lesson. It is mankind's awe-inspiring ability, time and again, to surpass itself. What this means is that no matter how bleak the times we may live in, we cannot wholly despair of the human condition.
Let me illustrate this by citing just a few of the museum's masterpieces from around the world: An astonishing Egyptian portrait of a royal figure, dating to the second millennium B.C.; an idealized portrait in ivory, from the court of Benin in 16th-century Nigeria; the exquisite Madonna and Child by the great Sienese master Duccio that we recently acquired; a splendid portrait of an ecclesiastic by Jean Fouquet, one of the finest 15th-century drawings in America; the 17th-century portrait of Juan de Pareja, by Velázquez, one the most convincing physical presences in all of painting; and Jackson Pollock's "Autumn Rhythm" of 1950, a work both brutal and elegant.
My question is: Who made these things? The answer: We did, our species did. Isn't that reason enough to maintain our faith in humankind? Especially when you consider that wars, massacres and nature's indiscriminate destructive forces have occurred throughout recorded history, and always will, and that through it all, men and women of genius have managed to give us their vision of the moment, at the highest level of inspiration. What we learn is that no matter the degree of chaos and adversity surrounding him, man has shown his capability to excel, to surpass. That is the ultimate assurance of renewal and survival. And it is one of the great lessons of the art museum.
Mr. de Montebello is director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is adapted by the editors from a lecture he gave at the museum in April, for which he relied on scholarship from many sources.