Friday, April 30, 2010

Introduction

MUSEUMS AND THE PLACE OF THE MUSE: Stories and Cultural Tensions

This paper was presented by Ray Norman at a Museums Australia conference in Hobart, April 2009. It aims to tease out some of the tensions to be found in contemporary museums and current museum practice. It discusses and touches upon:
Introducing the Wundekammer and Kunstkammer to the 21st C and the World Wide Web
Identifying museums’ Communities of Ownership & Interest – their Cognitive Owners
The question of whose stories they hold and who might have the authority to access and tell them
How museums might build ‘Social Capital’ in their communities and ways they might develop meaningful and ongoing interfaces with their audiences
Museums as ‘Ideas Factories’ in a 21st C context
The issue of authenticity, purity and truths relevant to 'cognitive ownership' in a 21st C context

CONTENTS: Click on a heading
CONTEXT
INTRODUCING THE WUNDERKAMMER & KUNSTKAMMER TO THE 21ST C & THE WORLD WIDE WEB
CULTURAL PROPERTY AND LAYERS OF OWNERSHIP
IDENTIFYING A MUSEUM’S COMMUNITIES OF OWNERSHIP & INTEREST – Their Cognitive Owners

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

The ABC Muses Upon Museums – Future Tense

A SERENDIPITOUS DISCOVERY: The ABC is on the money yet again! This program is excellent and should be required viewing for ALL museum staff on the public payroll. It gives some excellent pointers as to how they can raise their game but sadly the public is likely to hear an avalanche of platitudinous reasons as to why these things cannot happen – or even begin to happen– in a museum near you any time soon.
Nonetheless 5 STARS ABC for running a stick along their cage.
Let's see if anyone is awake and listening!
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE PROGRAM_ PART 1
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE PROGRAM _ PART 2

Let's start talking to our museums!

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

CONTEXT

Museums are extraordinary places in our cultural imagination. They are places where we might discover the extraordinary in the ordinary. They are places that cause us to wonder. We construct them and fill them with objects and ideas in order that we might make more sense of the world we share with each other. With “Collectors” now on our TV every Friday night we have been alerted to the fact almost everyone collects something – somewhere in everyone’s life there is a collection somewhere. What might this be telling us?

Douglas Adams in the “Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy” told us about “Deep Thought” the supercomputer built to calculate the answer to the "ultimate question of life”. Deep Thought eventually revealed the answer to the meaning of life –the universe and everything else– to be 42. That Adams died without revealing the equation Deep Thought used to arrive at 42 is liberating for some and perplexing to many. However we can thank Adams for a ready answer to every big question when all other explanations fail us. In respect to Douglas Adams it might be a good idea if museums had the number 42 emblazed on their thresholds.

Typically, museums and collectors build their collections as a means of articulating stories, rather sets of imaginings, linked to objects. In this context we might consider museums to be ‘places of contemplation’ and the muse – thinking spaces and places where our kinaesthetic experience might meet abstract ideas. With this in mind, if we think of museums as cultural enterprises where might that lead us?

Taking the risk of being a tad too provocative, we have perhaps reached the time for a paradigm shift. We may well need to rip out the turnstiles at the entry points to the “Ivory Tower” and possibly we need to exchange the gatekeepers – if they are there – for facilitators – if they are available.

Museums have something to say. The better ones have something important to say via their collections. And the very best alert us to something new or bring us to new understandings.

If the impetus that drives much of the activity related to ‘collecting’ can be explained in part as being to do with a need to understand the world we live in, or to do with helping us make sense of that world, what is this telling us?

Museums have more often than not been to some extent elitist. If their audiences think of them as being somewhat isolated and insulated from the cultural realities they experience, this is problematic in the 21st C. Elitism is hardly the basis for a business plan that shows much promise of success in the 21st Century.

However the news is not all bad. Museums are ‘Collecting Places’. Collecting is a cultural practice that arguably is primarily to do with attempting to classify and claim the narratives that objects carry. Every object carries cultural cargo – even that 50 cent plastic bowl you might buy at a garage sale. Current museum practices are increasingly engaging with active research methodologies.

Museums are beginning to connect with their audiences and encouraging them to read the sometimes unlikely stories objects and collections may carry – and from the reader’s own perspective. Rather than attempting to set down a hard and fast analysis some museums are looking for new ways to engage their audiences in an open conversation.

A conversation is always more productive than a debate and it certainly offers more to all involved than pronouncements of perceived truths – that usually leads to debate and unproductive ‘it is – it isn’t’ debates. That museums are beginning to do this represents a significant shift in the museum paradigm and something quite different to the one that many once operated within.

An example of this is the “KEEPING CULTURE: Aboriginal Tasmania” book and the companion exhibit in The National Museum of Australia in Canberra. This book was researched in collaboration with the palawa community and they were directly involved in the research. This research uncovered quite a bit about palawa culture that many would regard as unlikely. Hence what is included and excluded is significant. It is unsurprising that the palawa community, and others with them, might feel a sense of ownership for the exhibit and the stories contained within both the book and the exhibit – stories now shared.

The most important thing about “KEEPING CULTURE: Aboriginal Tasmania” is that palawa people were present in the interpretation of their cultural experience. This is in stark contrast to what can be found in 19th C museums where the visions of ‘the outsider’ was, and largely still is, privileged. For various reasons distortions are inevitable when this happens. It is so albeit that there may be something that passes for empirical evidence ‘authenticating’ the vision informing these problematic imaginings.

Museums are contentious places. In the best ones they are places where the tensions between divergent ideas are teased out. Long may that be so!

CONTENTS: Click on a heading
CONTEXT
INTRODUCING THE WUNDERKAMMER & KUNSTKAMMER TO THE 21ST C & THE WORLD WIDE WEB
CULTURAL PROPERTY AND LAYERS OF OWNERSHIP
IDENTIFYING A MUSEUM’S COMMUNITIES OF OWNERSHIP & INTEREST – Their Cognitive Owners

INTRODUCING THE WUNDERKAMMER & KUNSTKAMMER TO THE 21ST C & THE WORLD WIDE WEB

By and large, museums of today in the Western world evolved out of the Renaissance Wunderkammer cum Kunstkammer (Cabinet of Curiosity) – a vocabulary of ideas, a microcosm cum theatre of the world. Intended to be encyclopedic looking back we now know that they were something of a well intentioned folly. However, after they had fulfilled, and underlined their patron’s power, we might then understand them as the breeding ground of new ideas – the sciences among them. Interestingly their patrons used them as a kind of playground where they might play God – albeit indoors and in microscopic ways. After all Nobility was a divine right assigned to these Wunderkammerists by God.

Nonetheless, museums in the 21st Century carry much of the Wunderkammer’s cultural cargo. It is so given that they take on board much of their original imagining as ‘a tradition’. However, over time they have changed and adapted to the contemporaneous sensibilities of their time. Arguably, in 21st Century this is yet to really happen. The age of the information explosion is upon us and the World Wide Web is yet to be really exploited by most museums. Yes a great many have Websites but most score less than 5 on the zingSCALE of 11.

The democratisation of information is an idea yet to be embraced by a great many museums. Albeit a while ago, a museum manager has been reported as saying “we are waiting until we get it right before we do anything online.”

A great many managers faced with the demand for more information have given similar responses to the challenges and possibilities of the WWW. We might understand this as resistance to change but it is something that we have all felt at some time or other. The 20th Century has imposed change upon us all and at breakneck speed. The truth is, getting it right – whatever is meant by that – is out of everyone’s reach all the time – and it’s out of the question.

We all need to get used to that idea – “getting it right” is all too often code for the status quo.

CONTENTS: Click on a heading
CONTEXT
INTRODUCING THE WUNDERKAMMER & KUNSTKAMMER TO THE 21ST C & THE WORLD WIDE WEB
CULTURAL PROPERTY AND LAYERS OF OWNERSHIP
IDENTIFYING A MUSEUM’S COMMUNITIES OF OWNERSHIP & INTEREST – Their Cognitive Owners

CULTURAL PROPERTY AND LAYERS OF OWNERSHIP

In the 1970s it was fashionable to start to consider “stakeholders” in planning and management processes. Back then it was intended to be an inclusive notion but very quickly some of these stakeholders began to assert precedence over others – they demanded ranking and privileges to match. Very quickly their concerns were accommodated and as a consequence before anyone could be considered a stakeholder they needed to demonstrate a ‘legitimate interest’ – a pecuniary interest, an ownership, a potential loss of something, whatever. Stakeholdership quite quickly became at once an elastic concept and then an idea in retreat – more often than not, one that was intended to served some more than others.

Rarely does the idea of ‘obligation’ come into the stakeholder equation but ‘rights’ are regularly asserted – albeit so often self defined. Stakeholdership is an untidy and contentious idea to say the least! It is especially so if you are left out of the loop.

However there is another way, and more inclusive way, to think about all this. If we think about museums as having Communities of Ownership and Interestlayers of cognitive owners including stakeholders – we might then begin an interesting conversation with each other with ‘The Museum’ as the facilitator.

We do not need to invent and then market this idea as if it were some new idea as clearly museums have an extraordinary Communities of Ownership and Interest (COI). All that really needs to be done is identify the COI, acknowledge its presence and begin the conversation! That might seem to be a job for a consultant but not really. It isn’t rocket science! It is simply about making a list and being prepared to continually add to it and act upon it.

Acknowledging a COI is a cultural mindset. It is not a bureaucratic process – rather it is a participatory process. Mapping the ‘ownerships’ shared in museum enriches them rather than diluting or downgrading them. Nonetheless the tensions between Intellectual Property, Cultural Property and the Public Domain will not dissolve but they may be managed in more productive ways when these ‘owners’ are acknowledged in the cognitive ownership layering.

Do museums shape culture or do our cultural realities shape our museums?

The cognitive ownership model demonstrates the richness of places – museums here – as an alternative to the poverty of perspective embedded in adversarial bureaucratic planning processes.

An audit of cognitive ownership would reveal the confluences and conflicts in ownership claims. If we abandon the notion that there can be a hierarchical structure to the ownership of place, – museums here again – it is possible that managers of cultural property can begin:
To work towards accommodating claims in the context of coexistent cognitive ownerships;
To resolve conflicts and tensions over usage and access; and
To establish appropriate marketing plans and management systems.

Who are these cognitive owners? The simple answer is almost everyone but a list of those that come immediately to mind is useful just so long as it is an ‘open list’:
Curators and others who have worked within the museum
Citizens and ratepayers of the place it is located
Enthusiasts of all kinds, local community historians and other historians
Researchers and academics
Tourism operators and a range of entrepreneurs
Government –L ocals State & Federal
Ethicists, auditors, sponsors
People almost anywhere

Alert to the listing process, and with its purpose in mind, the list is ever likely to grow over time.

It is worth remembering that in Australia most museums depend upon ‘the public purse’ for their existence. Self-generated income, as important as it is, is at best the icing on the cake. Nonetheless, this income by and large comes from ‘the public’ loyal to the institution – taxpayers. After that there are the benefactors – private and corporate – with ‘cultural capital’ invested in a museum and its collections. In the end, one way or another, it is the public who pays the salaries, builds the infrastructure, acquires the objects in their collections, pays for the conservation and so on.

Given that museums do not exist to generate cash surpluses the public might well ask, were is our social dividend? If they are not engaging with the organization, what might this be telling us? Museums are simultaneously like banks and mines. Museums store and accumulate the wealth then others take it away and use it in a multitude of ways. Mostly, any interest and royalties that might be due have been paid for in advance.

Museums operate under a social licence. Yet there are some museums that imagine themselves as being somehow independent of or isolated and insulated from all of this – and on the odd occasion, as some kind of fiefdom. This is possibly something handed down from the 16th Century when the Wunderkammer catalogued nobility’s precedence and power gifted by God as a divine right.
CONTENTS: Click on a heading
CONTEXT
INTRODUCING THE WUNDERKAMMER & KUNSTKAMMER TO THE 21ST C & THE WORLD WIDE WEB
CULTURAL PROPERTY AND LAYERS OF OWNERSHIP
IDENTIFYING A MUSEUM’S COMMUNITIES OF OWNERSHIP & INTEREST – Their Cognitive Owners

IDENTIFYING A MUSEUM’S COMMUNITIES OF OWNERSHIP & INTEREST – Their Cognitive Owners

Identifying cognitive owners is not necessarily anything that needs to be done from outside. Ideally it is something that should be done from the inside and in a participatory way. Generally it isn’t anything that is best done by some outside consultant.

However where there is some change management to be done there might be some benefit in some form of independent facilitation – but not by necessity nor always.

One of the important things to acknowledge is that an individual may well have several layers of ownership and interest. For instance, if we move outside the museum paradigm and say look at a public park an individual might identify with it in multi-layered ways:
They may eat lunch there from time to time
Choose to meet people there
Kick a ball around there and even walk their dog there
Gather there to protest or celebrate something
Practice a musical instrument or exercise there
Photograph plants there or use it as a backdrop … whatever.
Ask this person to separate and rank any of these things and then tell them that one thing has to be more important than another. How could anyone have the same ready answer on two different days?

The ownerships are multi-layered rather than singular and one layer need not, indeed aught not, be ranked over or be subsumed by another. Certainly there will be coexistent confluences and conflicts that need to be navigated along with the rights and obligations that need to be met.

If a museum is a ‘centre of ownerships’ what it mostly needs to do is celebrate the diversity and divergence of interests – the diversity of ownerships. Attempting to blend these ownerships in the hope of finding some common denominator is an unprofitable exercise – homogenising ownerships is more to do with blanding than blending.

So when it comes to collecting and telling stories and in ways that are understandable to an identified CIO, a CIO audit is a useful thing to have in the toolbox. This tool might already be there in some form or other but for some reason it may be covered with layers of bureaucratic dust and rust.
CONTENTS: Click on a heading
CONTEXT
INTRODUCING THE WUNDERKAMMER & KUNSTKAMMER TO THE 21ST C & THE WORLD WIDE WEB
CULTURAL PROPERTY AND LAYERS OF OWNERSHIP
IDENTIFYING A MUSEUM’S COMMUNITIES OF OWNERSHIP & INTEREST – Their Cognitive Owners

THE MUSEUM’S ROLE IN BUILDING SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CAPITAL

Museums have an important role to play in building social and cultural capital. Aside from anything else communities have their cultural capital invested in museums. For instance, when a family clears up the family estate they come across a box of old photographs of people they barely remember, an old piece of jewellery, a collection of paintings, and other odds and ends with stories. They have a couple of choices. They could keep them and leave the decision of what to do with them to their descendants. They might sell them off to the highest bidder. Alternatively, they might give it all to their local museum – or some other museum.

This is but one way museums in collaboration with communities build cultural capital. More importantly the museum as an institution is given value by their audiences and the things their audiences give to them and tell them.

With cultural capital comes social connection. In the 21st Century, when these things come together in a museum it has every chance of being an ‘ideas factory’ capable of delivering a social dividend. However, the dividend needs to be delivered – and it is not an automatic process. The cultural capital needs to be put to work.

How might museums build social capital in their communities and develop meaningful and ongoing interfaces with their audiences in the 21st Century? The sharpest tool in the shed is clearly the Internet. It will not do every job the way it needs to be done but if it is used in concert with all the others available, audiences can be expected to grow exponentially.

As the utopian author and historian H G Wells once said, “adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.” – H. G. Wells (1866 – 1946)

If we imagine museums as Ideas Factories, purity and truth are ideas that are ever likely to be contested. If we imagine museums to be the home of comfortable ideas we fool ourselves. If museums facilitate conversations within their communities of interest and ownership, new ownerships will form and old ideas will be tested.

Museums are extraordinary places in our cultural imagination. They are places where we might discover the extraordinary in the ordinary. Museums are the homes of the muse – they are filled with stories and overflowing with stories full of cultural tension.
CONTENTS: Click on a heading
CONTEXT
INTRODUCING THE WUNDERKAMMER & KUNSTKAMMER TO THE 21ST C & THE WORLD WIDE WEB
CULTURAL PROPERTY AND LAYERS OF OWNERSHIP
IDENTIFYING A MUSEUM’S COMMUNITIES OF OWNERSHIP & INTEREST – Their Cognitive Owners