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