..or collecting for communication and development
The modern state is driven to a state of ruthless tax-man financing the corporations who otherwise would not give to citizens the minimal care in what were once public institutions and services. The weak state is the end of non-profit sector able and willing to care for the common good. Corporations cannot and will not finance the non-profit initiatives of organised citizens. When doing so, their money is Troyan horse meant for destruction of the purpose. When the European model of de-etatization of museums turns curators more to the users, the museum teams will be those organised citizens.
If museums are to suffer the privatization and weakening state, there will rest no curator brave or wise enough to chase the vanity out of his or her museum, no matter in what disguise it may be hidden in storage rooms and galleries. The interests other than scientifically supported solutions to the vanishing Quality of life would prevail. National myths, political manipulation, greed, stupidity, and unscrupulous ignorance for whatever is happening around would govern the institution of collective memory. The beauty and values would then be shown as dead fossils, not meant to feed the everyday reality of the population with their beneficial effects.
The possession of past, like that of might (the former is part of the later, isn't it?) makes the political Right and the right to power so much more the possibility. Using our collections for that is a manipulation clad in the prestige of the never achieved profession. The bursting storages need to be emptied and the lies and manipulation purged to conform with facts and feelings we have. Globalized world is using museums again against internationalism. The rightist fragmentation finds its expression in museums. Instead of building the solidary mankind of equals, be it in chances or the value of their cultures and identities, museums become false bastions of local or national identity: exclusive and segregationist. This corrupted mind is then naturally turned into the hands of Corporative masters. Collecting, always regarded as the basic function of museums (and heritage institutions) needs to be questioned and re-defined.
Vanity
Popes, prelats, emperors, dukes, princes, barrons (the usual and the robber ones), rich eccentrics in the scientific disguise, all of them created collections as the extension of their ego. They wanted to augment their importance, real or fake, and insisted that the collections bear their names and become protected by the authority of state and its official institutions. Thus their ego was incrusted in the collective ego and memory and secured for them a tombstone in most cases the very same state erected in the physicality of a museum to house their collections. A good deal before death ar after death assuring the life in the collective memory. Thus the museums washed their biographies stained with blood and sweat of others (who, as taxpayers paid for the edifices of their museums. Rare and precious exceptions were those who denied their name to be used or those who even donated means to build the premises for the collections. Many others, little known to us as their sin of vanity was smaller and who had less money and power repented by turning their vanity into the public good and shared their wealth at least when they were gone.
Many a collection is more a portrait of the collectioner or its social and ideological context than of some scientific picture of the world and its facets. Most of the collections or agglomerations of collections as found in some museums are entirely haphazardous. The resulting museums were museums of collections. Therefore, when a museum curator today says that his task is to present a collection, in most cases it is exactly the contrary of of the job to be done. A regional museum should simply tell the story of the identity of the region and contribute in all possible ways to self knowing, sel-esteem of the community. The collection of such a museum can just be a picture of the institutional circumstances, indeed a collection of fragments that never fit to offer any usable picture let alone a story of the local identity.
To believe that only physical substance can convey knowledge and ideas is little away from Swift's Grand Academy of Lagado where people are taught to "speak" only by showing objects for words . The empty shells, almost corpses of some bursting reality of past are a sad memento but not the memory itself: Museums must conceptualize: one obvious way is information technology and the other is that they become the houses of ideas and not of objects. The object is not a sin, it maybe a fetish, but at best it is means to an aim beyond.
Knowledge
or, is the Knowledge society still the ideal? It may be the state we live in, but only self-concerned intellectuals claim that. Judged as whole we should have more right to claim that we live in Era of Greed, the non-ideological society of unipolar world, a global suparmarket or the new collonialism, or even the The Dictature of corporations. So the knowledge society is trying to say that some intelectuals believed shortightedly that the mere quantity of information composed into the masses of knowledge will save us.
The change…
The humanist cybernetics may clearly suggest that entire heritage sector is a part of regulative, steering mechanisms of processes in the society, a sort of guiding sub-system . Culture is some sort of conscience of science . If it does not assume the role of adaptive and corrective mechanism we shall end up barbarization. Excessive consumerism and commodification of the world will reduce culture to sets of patterns that can be manipulated (like faces on the computer screen) to suit the changing needs of the market. Therefore, the collections should be formed and used the way they can help us to accomplish our mission.
Any system of guidance should invent the best possible answers to the challenges that change imposes. We must have the answers as otherwise we shall become the part of the problem instead of solution.
Needless to say, the relevance is either obtained by manipulation or fear (when about the usurped Owners of the world) or by respect. Those who give consolation and offer solutions, uninterested by selfish motives, mission- driven not the profit driven, will have the influence and importance. That is the best receipt for the well visited museum. It is surely not only the sensational collection, let alone the sensational exhibition. The numbers they achieve are not quality supported.
Change has imposed itself as the driving force of the contemporary society. Its reckless, ever increasing speed is the monster to which we have to sacrifice more and more of our dear privileges of Quality life. The living culture is being challenged as useless and unpracticall. In general terms, it is offered the role of a court jester or the cultural purveyor of by appointment to the Corporations: cultural or visitor attractions, cultural and heritage industry, and alike are the forerunners of the new era in which culture will be a decoration and package for the ruthless world of the uncontrolled Change. The Change is just another name for drama of it. Nobody dares to call it Progress any more. But, all seem to claim that the Change has got but a increasing speed and no brakes. I like to believe that, having been created by men it might have all we can decide upon it. The dictate of Change is the myth defended by Fear: if you oppose it you will lose the job and will not be able to pay your debts, your kids will not be able to attend the private school and will be deprived of luxury goods suggested as the must by the media Big Brother.
Modern theory of heritage should offer answers in the sense of managing the Change so that the profession(s) should be able to adjust to it and to produce its own response in the name of the users.
….and the culture
Living culture being "somewhat a conscience of science" means that it is essential for survival. Yet, the post-modern sensibility helped to create a false conviction of "anything goes" which was, maybe, a most serious attack upon system of positive values as inherited from the traditions. To make this possible, The Society of Change created museums as a place to put culture in and then create it the way preferred. So, if all is possible and legitimate why bother to defend anything? Of course, one should be against "paseotropism" in concepts and in institutions, but culture was always set of rules and criteria. Even the betrayal depended upon knowing and respecting the importance of the criteria. The relativisation of moral, aesthetic and societal values is most dangerous process. If anything, museums are there to collect, document, research, care and communicate the patrimony of values sometimes for the sake of awareness and sometimes for the sake of direct continuation. Any of these starts with collecting.
We often hear a syntagm of "Cultural society". Is it a proclaimed goal, wishful thinking or a reminder? We can only see the barbarisation of the worl through the excessive uglification. This is done by the commodification in which process Culture is seen as the only remaining continent to be conquered (there still one, but I would rather keep silent about it). Anyhow, the Greed is there to transform the culture into goods. Any good is standardized, packaged, "refined" in the process of branding and can be transferred, manipulated, changed, adjusted or simply thrown away. Like any other disposable goods. To be ideally manipulable, the culture is first anesthesied and then euthanized. Most of the conventional museums take part in that process. I believe unconsciously. And I believe I know why, at that.
Some may feel that the traditional values fall but culture is still there. The value system is the very heart of a culture, so when economy and politics (has there ever been any difference between the two?) attack the value system, the culture becomes a ghost: an empty shell, a stuffed tiger in museum, an empty wire mannequin with traditional national costume on it. Of course, we cannot live like our fathers, but our development can stem from their positive values. The sensibility and awarness for whatever there is as the distinctive value system, must be known, estimated and shared.
A living culture cannot destroy its environment and claim it is living and post-historical. We are apt to have learned all from the tradition and the mistakes committed. Only culture can protect us from the destructive effects of the forces of change. It is there to moderate change, to control it, correct it and contribute to the balanced, harmonious development. The sustainable one, the one we can handle without becoming its slaves or victims. Museums are one of the most effective cultural means to guide and steer any society.
Re-definitions of collectioning
Ever since "The cost of collecting" was published, the discussion about the innocence of collecting of which the responsibility was impenetrable in the sphere of science . The limits of physical growth and financial limits of the resources came too close. Therefore, the redefinition again had some more arguments to be undertaken. Yet, it goes slowly in the profession that is still in formation .
We can redefine the notion of collection socially, as collections should not be conceived to reflect the value system solely of to the higher classes. It is redefined The political redefinition is done as collectioning becomes the tool with democratic implications.
We re-define collectioning by its form as it may be physical or virtual, and we do not see it solely connected to the institutional world of museums. A collection can exist concentrated or dispersed as long as it is regarded as a whole. And also, a collection is hardly ever a value in itself, but a means and medium for goals outside its own physical existence.
Re-defined conceptually, a collection may strive towards product or process; it may prefer object or concept beyond it. The process of conceptualisation is omnipresent, as a tendency of denying the primacy to the physical substance, be it in financial transactions or heritage protection and care. Collectioning may rely upon different understanding of what past, history or heritage is. It may comprise that past is distant or, as St. Augustin would understand it, anything that happened the very moment ago. It may suffer from "linearist" and causal understanding of history and try to appropriate structure that would illustrate this understanding.
The notion of ownership is also changing as curators are now less convinced when saying "my collection". The fact of any public collection surpasses any individual commitment and significance: persons and organisational forms dealing with collections may change, hopefully only to support the effective use of collections as the public good.
The documentary value of the collection entity now has to shift into the informatic sphere. There you can easily, cheply and briskly unite any whole you wish: the one that existed and the one that might have existed. We are still slaves to the former in our working environment whereas the tasks we are supposed to perform are defined but the world different to the one mirrored ny the character of the collection. It is hardly ever that we will present the collection for the sake of it. We may though. But, most of the others are there for the reasons beyond it or even above it: I mean beyond its immediate meaning and above its materiality.
With rising education and wealth, at least in the prosperous West, there happens a certain "deprofessionalisation" of collecting. If public wealth in collections is estimated by the potential of network that can be established and that includes private collectors, the collecting acquires a new dimension. Imagine a quantity of agreements with private collectioners who would consent to lend their objects for any museum exhibition. In fact the huge system would consist of scattered quantity of small and not so small storages. Organised in such a way, this network would enable economies and would help the quality of potential for exhibiting. Many collections would be able to stay in situ, where they play certain importan local role. Therefore, a certain cultural action from the part of museums and other similar heritage institutions should be aimed at promoting collectioning and securing this resource.
The idea of science as the underlying basis of any collection is stable but constantly coloured by the changing society and the changing museums. Science is understood as inevitable part of procedure in making or maintaining the collection, but is the means not objective of the collection.
It would, maybe, serve good purpose (at least by provocation) to say that the best collection possible is the living one, in situ, - the one still used.
Is collectioning a creative act?
It was not considered as such. In transforming the reality of past into the reality of a museum the process of collecting seemed to the most exact one. It was the case until museum was perceived as communicational business. When scientific interest was the decisive illustrating the encyclopaedia by collected items was the way to perfection. Second to this was collecting as much as possible to reduce the risk. It is the fact of collections reaching the limits of physical growth and the suspicious auditors of the impoverished state, which create additional the pressure for change. When space and money are scarce, even pragmatists listen to "museological" advice. The solution is not very simple, but leads to redefinition of collecting: selection in function of the mission envisaged, plus solidarity of institutions, building of profession and education of the users.
Collectioning is a creative act and therefore implies responsibility and ethical choice. Maybe we shall have to go back to primary inspiration and see where we made mistakes. Maybe the museums who never buy but receive gifts from their community are the ones that have retained this inspiration alive?
The reformed museum, in which the two processes of musealisation and communication are equally important, should be understood as the creative business. We are in constant effort of shaping the collective memory to suit our needs. It works similarly to our individual brain. No decission or action is created before our past experiences are scanned: the lag is the space of our "collection" being inspected and checked. As still human beings, we create it according to our intellectual , emotional, social capacities and personal experiences. In some cases, the artistic or even geniously creative outcome in some sensitive individuals only demonstrates the state of us all. The only way a museum or heritage institution can wrap up its entire performance (the scientific responsibility understood) is by treating it as creative, para-artistic communication.
Science and technology will always create change and will insist upon their aloof lack of interest in anything concerning application. What we have to demonstrate be it in our collectioning or in communication with our users is ethics of taking their side and aim to contribute to ennobling of the human nature. "Combative museum" may seem rather idealistic project, but if we fight for Quality or survival of Culture t
any idealism is justified. The "cybernetic museum", the one able and willing to take part in guiding the society is the one after harmony, homeostasis or simply, after responsible development. Any other solution is too easy to be credible and advisable.
Without living, productive culture, human society will soon enjoy the surrogate of canned and mass produced culture whose only aim cannot be but Manipulation. Only rare, suffering individuals in the future Brave New World are tortured by the loss of their human state.
The conventional museum institution made almost any other collecting trivial. Many take it that art lives in museums and probably belongs there. The "superlativism" in collecting made it a privilge of rich among institutions and individuals. The collectioning has to be matter of any individual, poor or rich, in qualities and extents respective of the circumstances. All objects are created equal, not only people. The societal project has the dimension of care for the collective memory. In the ideal society, love for quality, understanding of material and the craft must result in the urge for preservation and care. So the museum project is about values recognised, cherished and retained symbolically by keeping objectst that embody this awareness. The possession of knowledge and taste, and the ability of refering to the "world of forms" make collectioners possible. Any collection formed out of this "poesis" of collective memory is a work of art: the best if it stays in situ where its potential makes most sense.
The societal project
Museums are part of it. I believe museums will not be the only to say what has to be retained and what do we take with us in our uncertain travel through the space and time. A whole lot of specialists or, still better, thinkers of specialisations (they stem from it but are not limited by it) will know better what memory and to what end do we need. As society as a whole tries to use its economic, political and other powers to project and secure the future, this process is usually done to serve some particular short term benefit whereas the quality societal project should strive to turn it into a vision of prosperous and ennobled life. Humanist visions were pushed by these very forces into the utopian daydreaming and were further compromised with the so called communist and socialist dictatures. The deregulated capitalism of today has demonstrated much more sophistication and subtlety in betrayal of societal ideals. The power of corrupted minds and souls could have taken any name but the substance was always the same: the loss of freedom and dignity to the ideals of obscene, massive richness and power concentrated in the hands of a few. Their rethorics is basically the same. Their art is the same: in one, the Committee on Culture in the Polit-bureau decided what art is, and in the other the Tacit Business consortium composed of the collectioneurs, publishers, art gallerists, media moguls, and, of course, museum directors and curators. Artists are jugllers of the information taken either from Party's bulletin or from glossy art magazines. Having lived both experiences, of course I see that the later are more sophisticated and smart. Their violence is more subtle.
Most of the museums, many among them contemporary art museums stemming from this awkward nature of the world are rather a poor sight when envisaged as means to assist, resist or simply moderate the change. If museums are part of the improvement process of human state, then collections should be conceived so as to serve this set of ambitions the best.
Unlike most of the schools, museums should be able to offer attractive educational opportunities for any target group in their community. It concerns mostly the basic, popular museum, say a regional or city museum,but also some specialist museums. What should they offer? Educational cultural action able to forge daily expertise for the consumer, new understanding for the mass voter in politics or feeling for the quality wherever it may be. When one appears in the market as a consumer or in politics as voter, he or she is only a pray to profit making: illiterate and deprived of common sense by manipulation, this individual is crushed and frustrated to become still a more ready prey to the same organised power. The plot against Quality is there, be it apples (sprayed with pesticides 15 times and coated in preservative poisonous wax to prevent dehydration), your furniture (to be throwed away next time you move) or your new microwave owen or democracy you live in…. Democracy is a mere plot if sources of information are manipulated. Are there any other available? Could museums be a different one with such a huge human experience amassed in its vaults? The way the collection are composed, they have a limited capacity to be usable and credible, but they rarely try. Why? Because, museum professionals still form an occupation and not a profession, and because they would be prevented to intervene as their stakeholders would not like it. It would harm their insterests.
If museums do not take active part in societal project of open, civil society of organised interests, - it will become obsolete and hoplessly empty. The empty museums will be closed.
Re-distribution
The "distribution" happened haphazardly and as the consequence of specific circumstances, often arbitrary and casual in their nature. The re-distribution should be a process wit full awareness of motives and implications. It should be done by museum occupation when it is ripe enough to induce the changes on its own self: to enhance the performance and to conquer decisive coherence of the (future) profession.
The first circle: heritage system as network
Collections, if not private, are the common property. Museums are state or community owned and as such present only a part of common wealth. Therefore, the museum network in the sense of unity in common task, is in fact a one distributed, spread museum institution . Most of their collections suffer from all sorts of inadequacies and defects of content and quality, specially in comparison to the tasks to be performed by them. The collectioning policies are often bad or inadequate or simply impossible to realize. As the example of SAMDOK demonstrates, much can be ameliorated if museums start to function in pools within the well organised network. This changed conscience of professional unity and solidarity actually deserves to be the way of dealing with many problems of collectioning. Ridiculous examples of one altar being in two or three museums and none of them being able to expose it as the only true entity or of many other things belonging together are notorious. In brief, museums should enter a long process of re-distribution of their collections. Some, of course, will stay the way they are. But, before one starts to doubt, we could start the re-distribution of what we have in storages: the mainly dead substance of some former reality. Imagine it to be turning many museums in interesting places worth of visiting at no harm for the donors.
The second circle: giving on loan
The second circle would be reaching the other public institutions. I have been lucky to see many museum storages and my feeling was that of sorrow. Imagine schools, institutes, public offices, administrative public premises etc., getting sculptures, graphics and paintings that can add creative and esthetic atmosphere to those often dull and cheap places. Of course, life is dangerous, but I am inclined to say that banality and aesthetic poverty encourage vandalism still more. Whatever is important is thus hidden from us in well protected museums suggesting that we are irresponsible and unworthy. Life risks were always the destiny of art as well as of people.
The third circle: giving back
The third circle would be giving objects back where they belong, where they make sense, where they can inspire and where people truly understand them. Some of it is happening as forced pressure from ethnic groups like Indians, some happens as repatriation motivated by some legal issues and some should happen as the consequence of the new understanding of what a museum is: a benefactor, a starting point of a generous giving and sharing a proof of suppressed morality and ethical responsibility, - of cultured spirit that belongs to noble humans. A gesture of the sort would harm some banal expectations of tourist attractions but would establish museums as places of relevance and moral strength. Beauty would not be there incarcerated and hidden but would approach life, work with it and for its values. With this approach, one museums would become possible, - the return of heritage matter where it was taken from would have far reaching consequences.
An example of a practice of the sort, not so radical though, can be found in Zagreb. A group consisting of a few curators and an architect, started , some twelve years ago "return" of the objects from their collections, in form of perfect copies though, but to the very place of their find. So Zagreb is now being dotted with Roman portrait head that found a niche in the façade of the building where it was excavated, Jurrasic whales' bones are in the lobby of Theatre of Drama (and the café was spontaneously nicknamed The Whale's), the Roman Stella is now in a village near Zagreb where a local people made a feast to celebrate its return…..Instead of only taking away, the museum started to give back and share. People love it (or should one really admit it?)
The loan services as they exist show another possibility of distribution. Anybody with some will and money can borrow a painting otherwise too expensive to be bought. Living with art is what is raison d'etre of it. This can be done if museums offer the service, if users are educated and have the developed ethetic needs and if the service is not expensive, i.e. if it is non-profit. What about the poor? Well they can become the member of the Friends of the museum and acquire the right without paying.
Conclusion
The issuing quality would be a true marvel. Utopian? Isn't love such? Isn't honesty such? Maybe the world has gone beyond belief that Christianity or this sort of utopian sense of sharing, was ever truly meant. Priests certainly have forgotten it, but I am afraid curators never learned it at all. They were the result of the esthetized greed, when beauty and truth became the privilege of those with the past. The form of this never learned wisdom of giving was a rationalist scientifism.
Many would argue that care for collections becomes impossible with re-distribution. Well, no library would lend their collection of rare and no museum should expose the irreplaceable treasure to any unnecessary risk. We should talk about the remaining 70 or 90 % of the collection. Or maybe 10% in some cases. Any good gesture will find its supporters: sponsor might like the opportunity to make part of this charming story and support it technically.
The fabulous IT makes the registrars' task easier and the growing administration of a fluctuating collection is not a nightmare as it would have been some time ago. And, yes, the other risks: there is no profit without them. Art, to take one example, was always at risk and what we have inherited is what stays after the risks took away what they did. People die, so might some objects. But risks make profits possible and it would be always the professional decision how should they be balanced. Quality is working for us the best, when being part of the life itself. No religion is good enough if practised in the Temples only.
There has been a rising discussion about the ways to deal with the excess of objects and lack of money in museums. It is a long and delicate subject that can be largely avoided if all the energy is channelled into the re-distribution. De-accessioning that ends up in sale, has to be the last and exceptional measure. The only way heritage can be useful and make sense is that institutions stay consequently non-profit in the sense of non-commercial and avoiding the temptations that the market can attractively propose. Whatever the benefit may be, in the long run it would be the end of the entire endeavour. The institution that clashes in the ideals will lose.
The Wisdom
It is said that collections are in the "centre of debate about the role of museums at the start of 21st century" . They might well be. I would say rather that the big questions we have to answer comprise new understanding of collections and collectioning within the context of . Therefore, I would like to remind us of, obviously, some of these big questions.
What business are we in? What is our product? In which way are we to deal with the changing world around us? Are we part of the change or the control mechanism of it? Do we solve problems or we may be considered part of them? Are we ready to deal with the challenges we face? Who are "WE"? Do we understand the the basics of our situation? Have we moved too far away from the primary motives that are embedded in the very existence of collective memory?
The possible conclusion might be, coming back to collections, - that answers to these questions suggest a new understanding of collections. I believe those answers may do exactly that.
Well, taken as simple and part of the ongoing discussion, the of "role of collections today" is continuously re-examined but rarely thoroughly. The impression to the declared pragmatists who hate the sound of "theorizing" is that we actually talk about the changing fashions. having grasped that, they simply wave their hand upon the pleads for the reform in heritage institutions. Back to object and collections is their dear hide from thundering armies of other professions passing by their doors.
We live in the time in which we shall either sink into a quasi-professional mannerism or build a a new, grand profession of heritage care and communication. Marketing, correctly understood, was a last reminder that we have to define ourselves in terms of what business are we in, and what is our product . The rest is a mere management technique. Without answering the first two, marketing marvel becomes still another nightmare of a slowly ripening profession. So, heritage sector can partly musealize (where it became cultural value in itself) or can turn in three directions: scientia, euphoria, sapientia. The science orientation is what we have experienced; it was insufficient and brought us here. Euphoria, stands for the entertainment as created in heritage industry. That is not us, but the end of the story.
Sapientia (Wisdom) is the difficult task of a heritage used for the common and individual good, like any sane memory. Wisdom is knowledge with dimensions of responsibility and ethics. Heritage for development is probably the chance of survival. Only through heritage (culture) can we (re-)introduce need and feeling for balance, as the central idea of any usable future. Wisdom is affective category as it has necessarily a set of quality objectives. Like love it is regarded non-scientific term but it is the transfer of wisdom that we should talk about when trying to understand the role of heritage. The way of expressing it possesses an artistic quality. A developed heritage communication reaches sort of para-artistic quality, - it becomes a certain new applied art , an expansion of performing arts. When compared to Art it demonstrates the same source of inspiration which is identity it tstems from, ot talks about and it cherishes. With art it shares the same capacity of creativeness as without is it lacks communicational potency. It uses interpretation as the same method and shares the same complex objective of communication. A collection policy that has this similarity in mind will have to be very "artistic" and would result in a collection bearing resemblance to a theatre, though a very special one.
The new trends in museum and heritage communication show clearly the rising input of creative artists. Art itself expands from its narrow confines back to life and tries to serve its practical circumstances. The future of heritage communication will again belong to "shamans" if art will assume its forgotten role. If we envisage the decisive role of art and artists (applied to the specific matter of cultural transfer) their influence will be strongly felt in collectioning as well. Maybe, indeed, the future collection will be rightfully called "interpretive inventory", comprising, of course, the usual collections but going much future than that. An ideal exhibition designer working with the curator will look much like say Robert Le Page, the famous theatre director from Canada.
Wisdom is necessary to build the set of values that one recognises as universal and own, in their specific forms taking the shape and meaning of particular identity. The total understanding of these values is the only usable starting point of any collection policy. Scientific framework in the meaning of knowledge, methodology and responsibility is self understandable condition. The problem is universal and as long as the world: Cum parva sapientia regitur mundus! (How little wisdom is used to govern the world!). Knowledge proved to be just another tool in which we were told to seek for solution: tools never offer it, as no computer made us more intelligent.
2004
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