MUSEUMS: OXYMORONS?

Some words mean two contradictory things: for instance, “cleave” means both cut apart and stick together. In addition, I would claim, there are CONCEPTS that mean opposites, for instance, “museum,” which on the one hand connotes that which is old, unimportant, socked away, dirty, outmoded, and not worth attention -- but on the other hand means cutting edge, valuable, indicating identity and culture, worth saving, and an important source of thought.

Many of the articles I save from the Internet are about this collision of concepts and how they are interpreted. I’ve noted in earlier blogs how museums, on the entrance of a new curator, suddenly define a major part of the holdings as valueless and sold them to buy a new category of holdings which later curators in turn announced were valueless and, in turn, dumped. (This is quite apart from curators and directors who steadily drain collections for their private income and aggrandizement.) In Great Falls last weekend I was told that the current director of the Montana Historical Society is allowing the tearing out of exhibits and parts of exhibits in order to replace them with new versions by contemporary (and possibly lesser) artists who are more favored by well-heeled patrons, possibly high dollar contributors to the institution who privately hold investments in these artists that are improved by the connection. This is presented as “modernizing.”

The Historical Society museum and many others are bulging with constant acquisitions from citizens who think of that institution as a sort of giant state closet or vault where things will be kept safely, all the things that families believed for years were important bits of history. But those same contributors are not willing to authorize enough tax money for the giant warehouses and battalions of staff who would be able to cope with the avalanche. When people go to reclaim objects they thought they were “on loan,” they “can’t be found” which is, of course, understood to mean that they are missing -- possibly stolen or given away.

The basic issue of who is qualified to curate collections or direct museums is becoming more intense as one generation retires and another becomes impatient to make changes. This is particularly sharp in the case of art museums, where what art “is” and which styles are “real” and “valuable” have been the subjects of contention for a century, pitting abstract Manhattan sophistication against accessible and beloved representational work. Must directors have college degrees? Years of experience? Art experience doing painting or sculpture themselves?

Another troubled issue is simply that of money. If the roof is falling in, can part of the collection be sold to pay for repairs? Outrage whichever way you go! And yet raising funds for the ordinary needs of museums is hard work that few are interested in tackling. Raising taxes for museums is -- well, forget it.

Museums since the days of the Pope’s closet collection of exquisite tributes have been markers of status. Most people love to see themselves on lists of donors -- maybe have a room or building named for them -- and fund-raisers spend time trying to think of categories to publish that will flatter donors. The highest dollar donors are generally described in terms of “perpetual” or “lifetime” as though the people themselves were being granted immortality. The bottom category is usually “friends.” They get free admission. Maybe a newsletter.

One way of raising money through status has been renting the premises of the museum (this only works if the museum is relatively attractive) for social events: not just major civic celebrations but private weddings or soirees. One Montana curator lost her job when she objected to the inevitable damage to the “treasures,” like smoke from cigarettes, spilled drinks and food, or bad behavior. Another of those contradictions: being “in” means using the place as if it were your home, which is a sign of high status because of the value of the exhibits -- but in the process diminishing the value.

Another problem arises over the tension between display and interpretation. The more there are explanations and re-organizations of the materials to conform to new thought, the more the people who come back as to a familiar and commemorative site are going to be upset, especially if in the process their own ancestors have to take a step down. Thus, the main displays at the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning are never changed, except to loan out pieces. But in the process of shuffling materials around, they get worn or lost. A local church minister announced that she wanted to remove all the cluttery old commemorative objects like benches, mozaics, and drinking fountains, so as to increase the “dignity” and attractiveness of the building. The next year she was assigned a different church.

Right now the construction industry is geared up beyond the flow of business coming in. Architects itch to strut their stuff. They are not particularly interested in building useful libraries and archive storage: they want the big gesture that will illustrate what they can do. So we end up with the equivalent of a reservation schoolhouse that is all basketball court and no classrooms, which forces the future into ostentation rather than scholarship, which few people really can do and not everyone reads -- but isn’t that the real “business” of a historical society?

These trends and dilemmas are not unique to Montana or even to the United States. The articles I’m collecting come from the entire planet. Some of the most anguished are about the consequences of the war in Iraq to museums and objects, no less than the destruction of the locus of Adam and Eve and the roots of our own civilization. A few zealots would probably consider them even more precious and irreplaceable than the lives lost at the World Trade Center in the attack the war was supposed to avenge, but an additional and unconsidered loss to ourselves rather than to our enemies.

We need to do some hard thinking about what we value, what we are prepared to do to preserve both objects and systems of thought, and how we are going to provide the funding for such things. Not every city has a dedicated Ad Club that pours money into the local scene.

The first idea I would like to establish is that a museum that succeeds is not a static preservation system, but a process of finding meaning through collection and analysis. How to keep that from degenerating into a way of directing the flow in the front door and out the back loading platform needs to be preserved in safeguards reached through consensus -- not by erudite scholars, though their input is important, but by the citizens themselves since the ultimate safeguard is always a checkbook. The second safeguard is education, which is a function of the museum itself.