Museums
[ March 8, 2002 4:10 PM ]

My only real credentials regarding meseums is that I've exhibited my work in several and I've visited quite a few. When I have had some of my work exhibited in Museums the experience was ofen far from satisfactory. I don't think I've ever really learnt that much for any museum (not that I remember anyway). But, I have been very much inspired and influenced by some things I have experienced in museums, both as an adult and a child.

What is wrong with museums today? Museums are undergoing major upheavals all over the world – trying to reinvent themselves for the 21st century. Science and technology have never been more popular and more accessible than they are today. Most of the museums I know are still trying to come to grips with the fact that their heritage and institution comes from a 19th Centaury English ideal that isn't really valid any more. Yes, it was great to collect, take, buy, pillage and steal all those objects back then, but the problem is the world isn't so object based any more, and it is now well known that the way some museums procured much of the collection was through less than ethical or moral means.

There is also a heightened awareness of the 'sacred' nature of many museum objects to their owners (postmodernism at work again), which were often collected with disrespect or just wanton abandon for the cultural or spiritual consequences. A confronting economic issue is that these days, museums have to compete alongside so many other attractions for the inappropriately named 'leisure dollar'. Most museums respond to this by doing one of two things:

• Try to re-establish the sanctity of the collection through the objects themselves, either through scale ("World's biggest collection of Coelacanths"), re-purposed pop-cultural theme ("Meet the dinosaurs"), or by cooperative relationship to corporate interests ("Shell presents: the history of oil exploration")
• Make the museum experience more like the things they are trying to compete against, e.g. a themepark. Blockbuster shows tour nationally and internationally; trying to recoup funds spent on shear spectacle ("Here come the insects!"). These approaches may have had some success – the blockbuster, themepark nature of the spectacle appeals to the youth audience, while the parents vindicate the choice of museum because of their belief that it confers some form of authority or educational value, by the nature of it's institutional and 'classical' heritage.

Museums also have one particular honour, in that they seem to be one of the most prominent examples of a public institution that has been ruined by the short, but very intense interest in "multimedia". Shortly before the closure of the Museum of Victoria in 1996 I took a stroll around the old building – so many touch screens, so many out-of-order signs.

When I travel I try to make a point of going to museums to see if my faith can be restored. Maybe I've just been unlucky in my destinations, but I'm left with little that inspires. Most of the time I wonder if people who design museum exhibits ever spend any time watching people go through them. The typical scenario is children racing around from one display to another, desperate to hit, touch, pull, twist bend, etc. anything that presents itself as interactive (either mechanical or virtual). Most of the time they don't wait around to see the response, particularly if it takes longer than about 100 milliseconds.

Behind the children are the parents, some trying to do their best to guide their children through a meaningful educative experience, others just happy to become mentally insolvent for a couple of hours. Occasionally they brush shoulders with the 'interested adult' visitor, who takes the time (at first) to read all the text, give each object more than a causerie glance, yet all the time looking more and more disenfranchised by the whole experience.

So, what's wrong with museums? The museums' biggest problem is its heritage. Museums arose at a time when most people could only read about certain parts of the world, that were either inaccessible for spatial or temporal reasons, or had already been destroyed by industrial civilisation. Museum collections represented the only way to "see" exotica, natural and unnatural: lost civilisations; lost species; the solar system; moon rocks and giant alligator jaws. These days, our tele-visual culture is flooded with these things, predominantly through television and cinema. The big problem is that, unlike the museum, television and cinema are not constrained by any obligation to be factual, realistic, or even sensible. Space with gooey aliens, hell bent on destroying the human race within the next 120 minutes will always be more interesting than space with just, well...space.

While there are always attempts to circumvent this problem ("Truth: stranger than fiction"), it is clear that it can't last. Museums are also principally concerned with the past. This can be a headache. The implicit didactic in this is that only by learning through history can we avoid the mistakes of the past. Few museums address exhibits about the future (I don't consider the ecological exhibits that predict things like global warming to be real evidence of this).

How could museums offer a more interesting and different experience for the visitor?

• Stop trying to compete with theme-parks, cinema, television, concerts, etc. for public revenue share.
• Recognise that museums have a responsibility, alongside schools, universities, etc. to foster an interest in the natural and physical sciences; to inspire people to think more deeply about the world around them; to question the nature of nature and the nature of history.
• While museums seem to know a lot about objects, they seem to display very little understanding of the "poetics of objects" – looking beyond the physical object itself to reveal a deeper and more sublime meaning. It is my opinion that it is possible to create a unique "museum experience" that is both popular and inspirational, yet is unlike any other form of popular culture.

[created: August 2, 1997 11:58 AM, last modified: March 8, 2002 4:10 PM ]