Museum Materialities, Week One

Over the month of September, we read Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (ed. Sandra Dudley). My apologies for being a little behind--I'm going to break this into two installments to tide us over until we convene again to discuss Csikszentmihalyi and Halton. Here's number one:

September 12: Chapters 1-10

We began with a brief discussion of how this book frames the idea of "materiality," and we concluded that Dudley is largely interested in sensory experiences--particularly those related to touch. Most of the chapters are concerned with physicality of objects as seen through a kind of sensory studies perspective.  Although some authors are practicing artists, the book is largely grounded in theoretical work produced by archaeology, cultural anthropology, and cultural studies. In short, these chapters generally question the how of materiality, rather than the what. 

In response to Witcomb's discussion of artistic representations of Treblinka, Elee commented that ignoring the personal is likely to cost museums their audiences. We all were struck by the idea that abstraction--while perhaps more comfortable for some viewers--is not an appropriate register for talking about trauma with survivors. In the case of something as personal as memory, acknowledging the physicality of an experience is sometimes crucial to representing an event or era in a way that feels "authentic" or "accurate" to those who were actually there.

Image from the Jewish Holocaust Center in Melbourne

Claire pointed out that this idea has broad application, too: often visitors' most powerful connections to artworks are found through interactions, whether with people or objects. We were particularly intrigued by Pheby's chapter on what constitutes the "materials" of contemporary art, largely because most of us have some experience with an artwork by James Turrell, whom she discusses at length. As Claire pointed out, Pheby's chapter is primarily concerned with exploring the boundaries of what constitutes artists' media, but in thinking about the visitor it may be equally important to think about how a body experiences those media. 

The conversation about Turrell reminded me that no human experience lacks embodiment; that is, we do not stop having bodies simply because we experience things (e.g, the internet, or emotional discourse, or philosophical discussion) that may not emphasize physical space or objects. Even in these moments, the relationship between body and mind plays an important role in how we think, especially where memory is concerned. At this point, Elee mentioned the classic example of Proust's madeleines (an episode recounting involuntary memory prompted by bodily experience), and we discussed the idea that materiality exists across boundaries of "mental" and "physical."

Erin referred us to Saunderson, et al as a good chapter for discussing the links between physical and mental experiences, since the authors' work tracks visitors' silent interactions with works of art (and, in some cases, facsimiles of works of art) through eye movements. This prompted an interesting conversation about studying interpretation. While Saunderson, et al were reasonably aware of their participants' backgrounds and expertise and were reasonably certain that participants' eyes moved between an image and its label, it would be impossible to know what, precisely, was happening in each person's head. We found ourselves immediately beset by questions related to hermeneutics, signs, and quantum physics, which is to say it was sort of like this:

Image from The Boca Raton Museum of Art

Or, in other words, "things have to be about multiple things at multiple times" and one cannot separate knowledge from one's own experience. We briefly discussed Bachelard as a useful theorist for thinking about the important links between space and memory. For us, Bachelard's work had direct relevance to Hancock's chapter on Virginia Woolf's home and personal effects. The especially striking moments in the chapter come from the author's encounter with physical remains; Woolf's eyeglasses, in particular, act as both relic and metaphor when one considers their proximity to the human body and their relationship to Woolf's apparent literary anxieties about seeing and being seen. 

We closed the evening with a lighter conversation about our own trips to the City Museum in St. Louis, a space that is very physical yet contains a wealth of cultural references that the visitor must navigate for him or herself. In spaces like these, Elee offered, we are charged with "privileging cultural knowing" and thinking about the human tools for understanding experience--tools that everyone has the capacity to use, even if they probably use them differently.

Beatnik Bob's gallery at the City Museum

For the next discussion, we decided to take on Erin's challenge to "get out of museum people perspectives" for thinking about the second half of the book (as well for thinking more broadly about our own personal practice). Stay tuned for where we went next!

DH

Photographs & History: Emotion and materiality by Elizabeth Edwards

This article breaks down the semiotics of photographs and examines how components could possibly be changed to create responses. Photographs all at once are objects of visual interest, create emotional and intellectual responses, trigger associations with memories or historical time frames and are a physical object. Manipulation of any one component of a photograph for example the subject, the placement of the photograph in a gallery, or its physical condition can create a response in the viewer.

I was talking this week with a photographer about a possible proposal for an up coming project. He specializes in trying to see the human connections. We talked about many of the issues discussed in Edward's article. Specifically the history behind the area, architecture, community, the physical nature of the photographs. The challenge of the piece and many art pieces seems to be is to make that leap from the physical visual artifact to the internal and external discussion of what the the piece is about. How can artifacts better convey the experience of discovery, documentation, and creation that the photographer goes through? And are there any examples?

Letting Go?, Week Two

First, a mea culpa--although I took copious notes from our conversation on Wednesday, I've managed to leave them in another state. Here's what I remember:

We continued our discussion of audience...for museums, for public history, and for this book. In particular, we wondered what about the professional practice of history research and publication warrants so much resistance (apparently) to the idea of "letting go." Alex made the interesting point that the ways in which historians are expected to "let go" involves ceding not only some authority, but some elements of process. In other words, a critical approach means rethinking not only who does history, but how history is done.

Much of our conversation dealt with the challenges of acknowledging commonalities without erasing difference (or, perhaps more to the point, erasing the realities of socioeconomic inequalities). Claire prompted us to consider why and how certain "communities" are targeted, and the politics of distinguishing subsets of museum audiences. Stephanie, meanwhile, contended that it can sometimes be worthwhile to think about drawing specific audience segments (e.g., a particular genre of hobbyists) to museums, but such initiatives are often most fruitful when they are explicit and based on carefully articulated needs and interests. Erin also brought up the importance of approach and delivery--we agreed that although neutrality is probably not possible, it is crucial to create safe spaces within museums if critical approaches are to be successful.

We closed by thinking about the significance of two of the stranger pieces in the book: Mary Teeling's discussion of Dennis Severs' House and Sanford and Sun by Otabenga Jones. While these texts are very different from one another, they both illustrate an important part of letting go--thinking about "truth" as something that may be distinct from "fact." Both function as a kind of playful pastiche, and where one emphasizes the feeling of a space over time, the other bends the very fabric of space-time. Neither a house full of fictional ghosts and superficially lavish furnishings from a mixture of eras nor a "rejected" television script about the meeting of Fred Sanford and Sun Ra tells a history of something that literally occurred. Both texts, however, combine elements of the past in the interest of getting at something even bigger than documentation--something like experience.

We're taking a hiatus for the month of July, but we'll be back in August to discuss Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (Ed. Sandra Dudley). Until then, happy (and critical) reading!

DH

Letting Go? Week One

This week, we started our discussion of Letting Go?: Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World, and rather than talking about each one of a set of authors, we had a fairly free-form conversation that tied together a lot of loose threads. (My notes from Wednesday night involve a great many arrows.)


A high point for all of us was Bill Adair's interview with Matthew Fisher (p.44), who discussed his work on the 21st Century Abe and Franklin Remixed exhibits. In particular, we appreciated Fisher's citing Hein, Duchamp, Freire, and Lindauer in his argument for "a respectful back and forth" between specialists and public contributors.  While Fisher contends that the transformative power of collaborative programming lies in "empowering audiences" (p. 49), he also argues that  experts serve the important need for scaffolding when it comes to complicated content, theory, and context. 


The focus of Fisher's comments is on the positive aspects of translating historical practice to shared online spaces, but we also found this interview a useful springboard to discussing the relationship between expertise and authority. We discussed a lot of disparate ideas throughout the evening, but we kept coming back to the apparent tension between various authors and a generalized cadre of "experts." McLean, for example, refers to the "novice-expert construct" (p. 70), which is indeed akin to what Freire would call "the 'banking' concept of education." To her credit, she also contends that "We need to embrace the contributions of expert knowledge and at the same time expand our definitions of 'expert' and 'expertise' to include broader domains of experience" (p. 71), and other authors throughout the book so far make similar claims. Still, what made Fisher's argument stand out for us was a clear, succinct discussion of this issue with references to his own theoretical lineage--not in service of his own expert authority, but with an eye toward giving context for broader structures of authority and the tools for dismantling them. 


We closed the evening with some discussion of Benjamin Filene and Open House: If These Walls Could Talk. I've decided to save our thoughts on that until we get to the other elements of that section, so I'd encourage everyone to keep thinking about it and explore the website a bit. For next week, we'll finish Letting Go? and discuss our plans for the next few months. Til then, happy (and critical) reading!


DH

Museum Revolutions, Week Two

This week, we talked about the second half of Museum Revolutions, and our focus was on the following chapters:

15-Ecomuseums and sustainability in Italy, Japan and China: concept adaptation through implementation (Davis)

21-Visitors and learning: adult museum visitors' learning identities (Kelly)

23-Critical museum pedagogy and exhibition development: a conceptual first step (Lindauer)

24-Learning at the museum frontiers: democracy, identity and difference (Golding)

25-Moral lessons and reforming agendas: history museums, science museums, contentious topics and contemporary societies (Cameron)

28-Education, postmodernity, and the museum (Hooper-Greenhill)

Since this week's chapters tended toward explicit political projects and strategies for implementing them, much of our discussion consisted of making sense of the densely theoretical. Even in chapters where we examined particular case studies, a recurring sticking point for us was  "But how does it work?" Although our group members hold strong feelings that learning should be empowering and equitable, we spent a large part of the evening  thinking about what rang true for us and what didn't. In response, we also attempted to come up with some real-world examples of exhibits and programs that seemed to work in critically useful ways.

Most of us found that Davis's discussion of ecomuseums forced us to reconsider our stereotypes about what the terms "eco" and "museum" actually mean, although we all generally accept broad definitions of these categories. A key question that came out of this chapter was how to define audience and museum authority when the purported goal is to create sustainable, community-driven spaces and programs. Claire observed that the case studies Davis discusses recall the Yarmouth example we discussed last week--the issue is not only who is telling the story, but also which story to tell. Genny and Erin both helped to untangle the problem of leadership a bit, and they ultimately suggested that ecomuseum initiatives ought to be conceived in terms of what the local community wants, but with fiscal and strategic support from outside organizations and governing bodies.

While we saw other familiar threads in Kelly's work (e.g., Falk on visitor identity), we felt the chapter also worked as a continuation of our conversation about what it means to understand community. Nonetheless, we struggled to think of any exhibit that accomplished all that Kelly said exhibits ought to. The most productive comments came out of Kelly's contention that "visitors could also learn more about the concept of learning as well as their own learning processes and learning identity if they were encouraged to think about their learning image before they engaged with the exhibition" (p. 287). We struggled with this at first, largely because it was so difficult  to think of a way to do this that would be appealing to visitors.

We eventually agreed that one way to think about such encouragement could be to create spaces for reflection, both before and after exhibition content. Because we started by discussing participatory options, I was reminded of Nina Simon's recent post on the LOVE exhibition at The Museum of Art and History, in which the museum used a gallery near the entrance as a space to begin thinking about content. In Simon's words, "We wanted to welcome people in a participatory way, so that hopefully, they would carry that same energy and enthusiasm for active engagement upstairs." Abby also made a compelling case for what we termed the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure layout of the Prohibition-era You Are There exhibit at the Indiana Historical Society. Specifically, she argued that because the "content room" (an area containing photographs, artifacts, and labels with a great deal of historical context)  was explicitly laid out both physically and verbally as something to do before OR after the exhibit's first person experience, the visitor was encouraged to consider which order made more sense for his or her individual needs and learning preferences. Although such a consideration would not necessarily mean that visitors had thought about their "learning identities" in the way Kelly describes, Abby's description of the exhibit certainly squared with my own (and, it appeared, other group members') experience in the space.

We tried to extend the specificity of that conversation to our discussion of Lindauer's work, but we tended to frame our examples in terms of "what if..." rather than "...like this." We unanimously agreed that an especially useful part of this piece was a straight-forward and thorough overview of critical pedagogy's theoretical lineage; we found the specific divergences between constructivism and critical pedagogy to be of particular interest. Still, Erin, Alex, and Claire were somewhat dismayed by the lack of examples of how to implement critical approaches outside the realm of the humanities. How, for instance, should practitioners dismantle structures of oppression in science centers or zoos? As a group, we discussed the possibility of using scientific principles, interactive exhibit components (and, yes, even animals, although we agreed to try not to oppress them, either!) as entry points for thinking about how we know what we know--and how knowledge works in relation to technology, cultural change, and political and economic power. While we struggled with the concept of individualized meaning-making in these contexts, we ultimately agreed that it's the "how" and "why" of knowledge that holds the most promise for creating "transformative intellectual discourse" (see p. 313).

Stephanie also underscored that "the language of hope" (p. 310) is what really distinguishes the goal of such transformations. That is, we want to change things in pursuit of social justice, not simply criticize them. To that end, we spent most of the rest of the evening talking about the other side of authority: obligation. As Elee frequently reminds us, museums themselves do not do things; people who work in museums do things. We found this idea especially important in thinking about Golding's work, which focuses on specific museum projects meant to encourage collaboration and democratic ideals. Although we generally applauded the intention and execution of these projects, we found ourselves wanting more information about why staff members made specific choices about artifacts and course topics.

This led to some discussion of the practical barriers to fostering something as profound as long-term critical consciousness inside the informal, often short-term contexts of museum visits. We agreed, for example, that without the built-in structure of coursework that can (in the right hands, anyway) enable the same group of people to meet regularly and build trust and cooperation over time, the onus of creating comfortable, safe spaces falls squarely on museum staff. With that in mind (and acknowledging the need for long-term commitments to such spaces in museums themselves), we tried to come up with some analogous, if modest, first steps. Of our ideas, the one that held the most traction was--to no one's surprise in a room full of audience research nerds--evaluation at all stages of the museum experience. Just as Golding's chapter emphasized the importance of learner-identified content, we talked about the possibility for democratizing casual museum visits through more visitor input in what museums exhibit and how they do it. Although such a practice is not exactly revolutionary at this point, we agreed that it is one of the most readily available and easily convincing tools for empowering both visitors and museum staff at every level.

In our discussion of Cameron's and Hooper-Greenhill's chapters, we talked about the public impression of museums, both in terms of museums' supposed "apoliticality" (p. 331) and their residual modernist leanings. While Cameron contends (to our admitted chagrin) that "the majority do not want a radical democracy" (p. 340), we again discussed the possibility of the museum as a "safe place" in which staff members may deploy what Erin dubbed "the thermometer of morality." That is, if we cannot exist outside a hegemonic system, can't we, as Lindauer contends, at least "proceed with cautious humility...displacing the locus of authority" (p. 311) instead?

Next week, we'll dive in to Letting Go?: Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World. Since we've got two weeks left, we have decided to leisurely explore the first 155 pages for Wednesday. I'll be back with the highlights next week. 'Til then, happy (and critical) reading!

DH

Museum Revolutions, Week One

This Wednesday, we started  our discussion of Museum Revolutions by thinking about six chapters in the first half of the book:

1--Establishing the paradigmatic museum: Georges Cuvier's Cabinet d'anatomie compareé in Paris (Phiippe Taquet)

2--William Bullock: inventing a visual language of objects (Susan Pearce)

9--Before 'Te Maori': a revolution deconstructed (Conal McCarthy)

10--Museums, social responsibility and the future we desire (Robert R. Janes)

12--History museums, community identities and a sense of place: rewriting histories (Sheila Watson)

13-- Museums and the shaping of cultural identities: visitors' recollections in local museums in Taiwan (Chia-Li Chen)

Elee began our discussion by describing the "4A" Protocol for approaching texts, which asks each reader to consider the following questions:

•     What  Assumptions  does the author of the text hold?
•     What do you Agree with in the  text?
•     What do you want to Argue with in the text?
•     What parts of the text do you want to Aspire to?

Although most of us were definitely ready to Agree and/or Argue, we arrived at some consensus, I think, that probably the most important part of determining the role of and necessity for any kind of "revolution" is understanding and voicing what assumptions condition it. (As exhausted as we all were after a long work day, it's probably the part that we need to work on the most, too.)

While most of us began by questioning what was revolutionary about the cases of  Cuvier and Bullock, Alex said that both made him wonder what had been happening in the world of anatomical and zoological classification before their respective exhibitions. That is, as Abby and Erin asked through some fascinating discussion of extremophiles, what assumptions do we make about the domains of life itself?

Claire, meanwhile, pointed out that Bullock's inclusion of a exhibition book was an important aspect of the visitor experience that could facilitate both the visit and the memory of the visit, not to mention the book's function as  advertisement. This led to some discussion of what information we assume is most important, as well as what we assume visitors want. As McCarthy argues, the history of museums includes a long legacy of dissent and complex postcolonial representations--a legacy which is sometimes overlooked as we think about relating to cultures other than our own. In talking about Te Maori, we discussed how the experience of visiting the Maori Meeting House at the Field Museum had been different for most of us, with particular attention to the juxtapositions of other rotating exhibits and our varying levels of familiarity with Maori cultural history. In other words, what assumptions do visitors make about choices in display, and what feeds those assumptions? Furthermore, what assumptions do museum professionals make about how spaces will be interpreted?

The problem of assumptions was particularly knotty with respect to Janes's chapter. As our discussion began to vortex into a series of specific sticking points, it was with some irony that we began to consider his section entitled "The assault on meaning." What we eventually came to was, as Elee put it, the tension between what "should be" and "the thing that actually happens." Nonetheless, Stephanie noted that this kind of tension is often a productive force. Although many of us took issue with specific statements in the chapter, Janes's call for "thinking about the way things could be, and then taking action" (see p. 141) seemed to strike a chord. At the same time, it became fairly evident that an important first step to any substantive change is considering and interrogating what we believe about the way things are.

We closed the evening by talking about the connections between identity, landscape, and myth in both Watson's work and Chen's. As Genny noted, more familiar connections exist in American historical sites of slavery, where past events might be alternately highlighted, whitewashed, or reimagined depending on the narrator; what goes unsaid is as important as overt messaging. In both chapters, any assumption about "the way things are" must be considered in relation to the emotional and political needs of those telling the story.

We will continue our discussion next week with a focus on the following chapters: 15 (Davis), 21 (Kelly), 23 (Lindauer), 24 (Golding), 25 (Cameron), and 28 (Hooper-Greenhill). Until then, happy (and critical) reading!

DH

Welcome

If you've made it this far, chances are you've got more than a passing interest in the social life of museums. We're glad you're here. The first book we'll be reading is Museum Revolutions: How museums change and are changed, which you can learn more about from the publisher: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415444675/

The plan for now is to read as far as possible by our first meeting on June 6th--let's shoot for about half. Even if you can't read with us this time around, you can still touch base here and join the discussion.

Happy reading!

DH