Showing papers in "museum and society in 2010"

'Man's inhumanity to man' and other platitudes of avoidance and misrecognition: an analysis of visitor responses to exhibitions marking the 1807 bicentenary

Abstract: 2007 marked the bicentenary of Britain’s abolition of its slave trade. This paper outlines the findings of interviews undertaken with 1498 visitors to eight museum exhibitions marking the bicentenary. One of the major findings of the research was the degree to which visitors from different self-identified ethnic groups responded to the both the exhibitions and the bicentenary itself. This paper focuses on the white British response, a response dominated by emotional avoidance and disengagement with exhibition content. The role of the authorised heritage discourse (AHD) in this response is discussed, and a number of self-sufficient arguments utilised in emotionally insulating visitors from exhibition content are identified.

‘Community Voices, Curatorial Choices’: Community Consultation for the 1807 Exhibitions

Abstract: This paper argues that community consultation is not always a democratic process as power often resides with museum staff members who decide which community views to accept and which to ignore. Drawing upon a series of semi structured interviews with community members, community officers, curators and other museum staff as part of the 1807 Commemorated project, I attest that consultative group members often experienced frustration, anger, and disappointment during and after the development of the 1807 exhibitions. These emotions were primarily driven by the communities’ unmet needs and expectations as well as by a clash between object-centric curatorial choices and people oriented community voices; members of the African-Caribbean community viewed their participation in the consultation meetings both as a means of empowerment of their communities and as a gesture of acknowledgement, social justice and recognition. Thus, it is imperative that community consultation is replaced by active negotiation and engagement that is aimed at shared power and ownership.

Heritage, local communities and the safeguarding of ‘Spirit of Place’ in Taiwan

Abstract: After brief reviews of the theoretical concepts relating to place and ecomuseological processes this paper traces the changing relationships between people and place in Taiwan. Research carried out by the authors with local communities on Matsu (a group of Taiwanese islands off the coast of mainland China), and case study material collected from local cultural workshops in southern Taiwan provides a focus for the discussion. Both sets of data demonstrate the growing awareness of heritage by local communities in Taiwan; they recognize that heritage is significant because it reflects and builds local identities, aids community sustainability and provides a sense of place. An account is given about how these inclusive processes are applied and how they appear to benefit the heritage sector in Taiwan. By encouraging community-centred approaches, consultation, involvement and democratization, significant improvements to safeguarding natural resources, the cultural environment and intangible cultural heritage might be possible. However, striking a balance between the aspirations of local heritage activists and the wider community is difficult to achieve.

Humiliated silence: multiculturalism, blame and the trope of ‘moving on’

Abstract: The issue of slavery has received wide media attention in response to the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. Simultaneously, issues of multiculturalism and social exclusion have also been subject to tense debate. This paper aims to examine the rhetorical resources drawn upon at the juncture of these two areas of debate, particularly in terms of how the ‘slave trade’ and its abolition is understood, constructed and remembered. In order to examine how these issues are manifest, the paper utilizes critical discursive methodologies, which are applied to institutional and ‘official’ responses to the bicentenary of 1807. This data will be examined in terms of the discursive strategies drawn upon to actively absolve current generations from challenging the latent issues of power operative within modern British society.

Rethinking 1807: museums, knowledge and expertise

Abstract: Examining the museological shaping of the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade provides a means by which the role of museums in society can be reassessed. Through theories of governmentality this paper will study this relationship between institutions and the groups and communities they serve. The extent to which museums inculcate the dominant values of society into visitors and the way in which minority and dissenting voices are incorporated and ‘managed’ will be the particular focus of this paper. What will be argued is that museums as specific locales of knowledge and expertise operated in 2007 to perpetuate a particular ‘vision’ of the past, whilst dissenting histories did emerge, this ‘vision’ acted to obscure or assume alternative sources of information.

Lines of resistance: evoking and configuring the theme of resistance in museum displays in Britain around the bicentenary of 1807

Abstract: On the basis of an extensive survey of museum displays and exhibitions dealing with slavery and abolition, put on at the time of the 2007 Bicentenary of the Act of Abolition, this article explores, and suggests ways of analysing, the ways in which museums in Britain presented, evoked and interpreted the theme of resistance or rebellion by the enslaved. By recognising the importance of resistance, museums aimed to affirm the agency of the enslaved and to counterbalance the celebratory tendencies of abolitionist historiography; they were also, in some cases, seeking to position themselves less as authoritative purveyors of knowledge than as arenas for the articulation of competing narratives and the negotiation of social and cultural identities. Yet museums’ efforts to foreground the theme of resistance were often limited in character: the importance of the theme was announced, but treatments of it were brief and schematic, dependent on a limited range of materials, and not always convincingly woven into the larger narratives of the exhibition. The article explores some of the reasons for this, before analysing in more detail the presentational strategies of a number of exhibitions which did develop a larger or more complex handling of the theme of resistance. Here the analysis uses a distinction between ‘gestural’ and ‘expository’ presentational emphases to map similarities and differences between these displays, and in particular between the strategies two new and major permanent exhibits opened in 2007: the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and the re-designed Wilberforce House Museum in Hull.

The Case of the disappearing object: narratives and artefacts in homes and a museum exhibition from Pakistani heritage families in South Yorkshire

Abstract: This article describes a small-scale research project focused on a small group of families of Pakistani heritage who were interviewed about their possessions and the stories associated with those objects, in order to create an exhibition of intergenerational home objects. It looks at what happens when home objects are placed in a museum exhibition context. In particular, the article considers the phenomenon by which intergenerational objects that have crossed continents are sometimes lost, and discusses whether this requires special attention in the context of studies of post-colonialist identities and objects. An interesting dissonance appears in the representation of the exhibition when objects are lost and then replaced in exhibitions. An artefact from the museum collection can be substituted for the lost object in an exhibition, but there is still an issue of the ‘original’ object not being found. This article considers the context of these objects and stories and how these can be related to the literature on British Asian post-colonial identities.

The V&A: empire to multiculturalism?

Abstract: The paper considers the influence of Empire at the Victoria and Albert Museum, with particular reference to the display of collections from the Indian Sub-Continent in the late 20th century. It offers an analysis of the discursive practices of the Museum drawing on postcolonial theoretical positions, in particular Said’s concept of ‘Orientalism’. Questions are posed regarding the extent to which the Museum has adequately addressed and reflected Britain’s transformation from an imperial power to a post-colonial, multicultural society, and the need to articulate shared histories and strategies of inclusion.

Objects of utility: cultural responses to industrial collections in municipal museums 1845-1914

Abstract: Between 1845 and 1914 several municipal museums in Great Britain established an industrial collection of objects relevant to local manufacture. The origins of these collections are found in the 1830s and the reform of design education. Industrial collections assigned an economic function to museums and were contested by critics who maintained that museums should be concerned primarily with fine rather than applied art. It is argued that curatorial decisions on the adoption of industrial collections can be evaluated with reference to contemporary debates on art, design education and the relative values of liberal and applied knowledge. Through case studies of the municipal museums of Birmingham and Preston, this paper assesses contrasting curatorial responses to industrial collections. Adopting Matthew Arnold’s categories of Hebraism and Hellenism as an exploratory framework, it concludes that industrial collections represented materialistic values associated with Hebraism that were directly opposed to the spiritual values associated with Hellenism.

Museums and the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade

Abstract: This issue of Museum & Society reports on some of the findings of the 1807 Commemorated Project. Four of the papers (by Cubitt, Wilson, Fouseki and Smith) are by members of the project team; the opening paper by Waterton, based on her own researches in a closely related field, provides an important context in which to view the museum activities that the project studied. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as a Knowledge Transfer Fellowship, the 1807 Commemorated Project aimed to map and to promote reflection on the ways in which the Bicentenary of the 1807 Act of Parliament abolishing British participation in the slave trade was marked in museums in Britain. (It should be noted that the 1807 Act did not abolish slavery itself: the emancipation of those held as slaves in the British Caribbean would come only in the 1830s.) Hailed by the then Minister of Culture, David Lammy, as ‘an opportunity to celebrate, educate and inform’, the Bicentenary was interpreted by many in government and in the media as an occasion to celebrate the achievements of abolitionists like William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. This ‘Wilberfestian’ mood was challenged, however, by a range of commentators and community and political groups. The response to the Bicentenary of museums and galleries around Britain was to attempt to provide a holistic account of enslavement, resistance, abolition and the consequences of the slave trade for Africa, the Caribbean and Britain. This was perceived by many in the museum sector as a particularly important task in furthering social debate about the legacies of the trade, whose significance in British society is often regarded as a ‘hidden’ history (Oldfield 2007; Dresser 2009; Paton 2009). The purpose of the 1807 Commemorated Project aimed to analyse exhibitions dealing with slavery, abolition and related themes that opened in the Bicentenary year, and to examine their impact on visitors and their contribution towards shaping public awareness of the histories and contemporary legacies of slavery and abolition. The project, based at the University of York, and supported by the University’s Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past and the Departments of Archaeology and History, was co-directed by Laurajane Smith and Geoffrey Cubitt who, with post-doctoral research assistants Ross Wilson and Kalliopi Fouseki, worked with seven partner museums during 2007-9. The official partner institutions of this project were the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, Bristol; the British Museum; the International Slavery Museum, Liverpool; the Museum of London Docklands; the National Maritime Museum; and Wilberforce House Museum, Hull. The project team worked intensively with these institutions, conducting interviews with a variety of museum staff and community representatives involved in the planning process of exhibitions marking 1807. In addition, exit interviews with visitors to exhibitions during 2007 were undertaken at each of these museums as well as at Harewood House, Yorkshire, which had mounted a temporary exhibition to commemorate 1807. To gain a broader perspective, members of the project team also visited about fifty further exhibitions, compiling a detailed textual and visual record of many of these, and interviewing some of the staff involved. Less comprehensive information was gathered for about 120 additional exhibitions. The materials gathered constitute a substantial archive and database documenting the varieties of museum practice during the bicentenary, the experiences of practitioners, and the responses of visitors. The results of the project team’s work have been discussed and disseminated at a conference held in 2008 at the University of York and at sixteen workshops held during 20082009. Eight of these workshops were undertaken with staff from partner museums, and another eight with museum staff and community representatives from regional centres across England. Seven of these latter workshops were sponsored by the Museum, Libraries and Archives

Between histories and memories: Torgau’s Memorial Museum for Germany’s short twentieth century

Abstract: Germany offers numerous examples of memorial museums, although beyond Berlin they are poorly represented in recent studies of the phenomenon. In studying the development of the Torgau Documentation and Information Centre in provincial Saxony, the article seeks to promote a more complex understanding of institutionalized remembrance in contemporary Germany. It argues for a closer look at the agency of East and West Germans and at the relationship between the Nazi and communist pasts. In particular, it considers dilemmas posed by depicting the history of Soviet internment camps in postwar eastern Germany, where former Nazi officials and bystanders and opponents of communist rule all became victims of Soviet mistreatment. The article raises key issues for the practice and study of memorial museums. It considers the difficulties of addressing multiple, interconnected histories within a single institution and the near impossibility of satisfying diverse and divided communities of memory. It also explores problems associated with the combination of historical documentation and morally grounded commemoration of victims that constitutes memorial museums’ defining characteristic. It suggests that curators, administrators and scholars need to reflect upon, and weigh up the competing demands of moral certainty and historical complexity.

The Empty gallery? Issues of subjects, objects and spaces.

Abstract: Stephen Conn, Do Museums Still Need Objects?, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010, hardback, £26.00, pp. 296. Charlotte Klonk, Spaces of Experience: Art Gallery Interiors from 1800 to 2000, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009, hardback, £45.00, pp. x +305. Christopher Whitehead, Museums and the Construction of Disciplines: Art and Archaeology in Nineteenth Century Britain, London: Duckworth, 2009, paperback, £12.99 pp. 160.

Instructions between the field and the lab: collecting blood for the ‘Serological Museum’ in the 1950s

Abstract: In a Science article published in 1953, Alan Boyden, a zoologist from Rutgers University and a pioneer in systematic serology, gave precise instructions on how to sample animal blood for the tissue collection that he housed in the Serological Museum. His instructions can be read as a ‘prospective account’ indicating the decisive shift in the history of the biological sciences towards the molecular level. It will be argued that Boyden’s narrative points to some of the ambiguities that marked the changing relations between the field and the lab at the time. They were connected to the kind of actors involved in collecting, the objects that were assembled, the collecting practices and the role of the museum itself. It becomes clear that the Museum was to serve as a significance converter, opening novel avenues that contributed to turning the field into a resource for the laboratory as well as helping to ease the distance between the two.

Guest editorial : museums and the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade

Abstract: This issue of Museum & Society reports on some of the findings of the 1807 Commemorated Project. Four of the papers (by Cubitt, Wilson, Fouseki and Smith) are by members of the project team; the opening paper by Waterton, based on her own researches in a closely related field, provides an important context in which to view the museum activities that the project studied. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as a Knowledge Transfer Fellowship, the 1807 Commemorated Project aimed to map and to promote reflection on the ways in which the Bicentenary of the 1807 Act of Parliament abolishing British participation in the slave trade was marked in museums in Britain. (It should be noted that the 1807 Act did not abolish slavery itself: the emancipation of those held as slaves in the British Caribbean would come only in the 1830s.) Hailed by the then Minister of Culture, David Lammy, as ‘an opportunity to celebrate, educate and inform’, the Bicentenary was interpreted by many in government and in the media as an occasion to celebrate the achievements of abolitionists like William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. This ‘Wilberfestian’ mood was challenged, however, by a range of commentators and community and political groups. The response to the Bicentenary of museums and galleries around Britain was to attempt to provide a holistic account of enslavement, resistance, abolition and the consequences of the slave trade for Africa, the Caribbean and Britain. This was perceived by many in the museum sector as a particularly important task in furthering social debate about the legacies of the trade, whose significance in British society is often regarded as a ‘hidden’ history (Oldfield 2007; Dresser 2009; Paton 2009). The purpose of the 1807 Commemorated Project aimed to analyse exhibitions dealing with slavery, abolition and related themes that opened in the Bicentenary year, and to examine their impact on visitors and their contribution towards shaping public awareness of the histories and contemporary legacies of slavery and abolition. The project, based at the University of York, and supported by the University’s Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past and the Departments of Archaeology and History, was co-directed by Laurajane Smith and Geoffrey Cubitt who, with post-doctoral research assistants Ross Wilson and Kalliopi Fouseki, worked with seven partner museums during 2007-9. The official partner institutions of this project were the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, Bristol; the British Museum; the International Slavery Museum, Liverpool; the Museum of London Docklands; the National Maritime Museum; and Wilberforce House Museum, Hull. The project team worked intensively with these institutions, conducting interviews with a variety of museum staff and community representatives involved in the planning process of exhibitions marking 1807. In addition, exit interviews with visitors to exhibitions during 2007 were undertaken at each of these museums as well as at Harewood House, Yorkshire, which had mounted a temporary exhibition to commemorate 1807. To gain a broader perspective, members of the project team also visited about fifty further exhibitions, compiling a detailed textual and visual record of many of these, and interviewing some of the staff involved. Less comprehensive information was gathered for about 120 additional exhibitions. The materials gathered constitute a substantial archive and database documenting the varieties of museum practice during the bicentenary, the experiences of practitioners, and the responses of visitors. The results of the project team’s work have been discussed and disseminated at a conference held in 2008 at the University of York and at sixteen workshops held during 20082009. Eight of these workshops were undertaken with staff from partner museums, and another eight with museum staff and community representatives from regional centres across England. Seven of these latter workshops were sponsored by the Museum, Libraries and Archives