Museum Studies Midterm

Museums as "Contact Zones" by James Clifford

"Contact Zone": a space where different cultures come into contact and conflict, where dialogue is created, aka a space of colonial encounters Clifford rethinks the idea of museums role in relation to other cultures Challenges the idea that museums are one-sided in imperialist appropriation Argues that museums become a place in which it benefits the culture and its artifacts

Exhibition as a "field of play" Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects by Michael Baxandall

-"field of play" 1. Intention of the maker/producer 2. Intention of the exhibitor and the way things are displayed 3. Sight of Visitor This ultimately encompasses how museums create meaning Because, the arrangement/interplay if these 3 categories creates the final product, the exhibit experience. However, what we must pay attention to is not only what is to be represented, but also who controls the means of representing.

World's Fair

-An international exhibition of the industrial, scientific, technological, and artistic achievements of the participating nations -the crystal palace, displayed commodities but also entertainment -rise of industrial capitalism -the birth of a museum...FREE ENTERTAINMENT AND ELEVATION OF KNOWLEDGE -"commodity capitalism -art history is a way of separating museums from this phenomenon

The "museum effect" The Museum as a Way of Seeing- Svetlana Alpers

The Museum Effect: transformation of ALL objects (no matter what they are and where they're from) into works of art This happens when the object is isolated from its original context, denied its original use, and displayed in a new context She argues that rather than overcoming it, we must embrace this The problem with her argument... she suggests that we solely focus on visual encounter, and that viewers should be fine to engage. She also places more attention to installation.

Phenomenon of the mega-museum/Mega Museums Museums and Globalization 1. Museum Expansion in the 21st Century: Abu Dhabi by Andrew Mcclean 2. Museums and Globalization by Saloni Mathur

-Government of Abu Dhabi has built 4 world-class museums and a performing art center, a new culture-leisure tourism complex on Saadiyat Island -The Purpose: The political, economic motives, historical context behind these projects -art museums as signature ornaments of any self-respecting city -economic growth via tourism -Why are they doing this? Institutionalize new global perspectives making them an object of curiosity -IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION and ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY -They want to portray Islam in a better light -use of immigrant workers living like indentured servants...VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS -"Bilbao Effect" from a sleepy Basque town to a global art pilgrimage site THE McGUGGENHEIM EFFECT -museums and their practices began to be interwoven with a corporate model -"blockbuster exhibition" museums becoming more COMMERCIALIZED -they are behaving more like multinational corporations -Thomas Krens: Museum director of the Guggenheim, created the Bilbao Effect (cultural, economic regeneration

New Museology 1. The New Museology by Peter Vergo

-MUSEOLOGY: the study of museums, their history and underlying philosophy, the various ways in which they have, in the course of time, been established and developed, their avowed or unspoken aims and policies, their educative or political or social role -It is a relatively new discipline -Ptolemaic mouseion at Alexandria, first and foremost a study collection with library attached, a repository of knowledge, a place of scholars and philosophers and historians -Obligation that museums should not merely display their treasures and make their collections accessible, but also engage in mass education. -arrangement of objects/works of art, within a museum display means placing a certain construction upon history (1. history of the distant/more recent past, 2. our own culture or someone else's, 3. mankind in general or a particular aspect of human endeavor -NEW MUSEOLOGY: a state of widespread dissatisfaction with the 'old' museology, both within and outside the museum profession. what is wrong with the 'old' Museology is that it is too much about MUSEUM METHODS, and too little about the PURPOSE OF MUSEUMS

History of Museums 1. Museums and Politics: the Louvre, Paris by Elizabeth Rodini

-The word "museum" comes from the nine Muses, the classical Greek goddesses of inspiration -there were earlier collections of objects and sites of display, including the public squares or fora of ancient Rome (war booty were exhibited), medieval church treasuries, and traditional Japanese shrines -The Enlightenment is when we begin to see specialized collections, including museums devoted only to art—the Capitoline (Rome, 1734), the Louvre (Paris, 1793), and the Alte Pinakothek (Munich, 1836) -Similarly, dedicated collections of plants (botanical gardens), animals (zoological gardens), and eventually natural history and ethnographic objects emerged. -One key thing these collections shared was a scheme of linear, didactic layouts dedicated to narratives of development or progress.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology, LA 1. Beyond Belief: The Museum as a Metaphor by Ralph Rugoff

-Very seductive! because there is more than meets the eye -blurs the lines between fact and fiction, fluency between factual and metaphorical -Cameroonian Stink Ant is a parable of an consuming obsession=museum visitors who are confused become "infected" and "infect" others -"stoned thinking": instead on suspending belief, we are lead beyond belief -history isn't definitive, but museum's authority remains unquestioned -museums and their "institutional facade"...are they truly objective? -an exhibit is open to negotiation, museums do not just preserve culture, it's constantly being rewritten

Debates over repatriation Enlightenment Museums: Universal or Merely Global? by Mark O'Neill The New Acropolis Museum by Michael Wise

-a museum can be invaluable in a world full of conflict and misunderstanding, but are they fulfilling this potential? -Museums can confirm prejudice and promote tolerance, they are not mutually exclusive -THE SOLUTION: an ACTUAL universal museum that is (1. Open about conflicted histories, 2. Acknowledges historical context, 3. Explores violent and peaceful encounters, 4. Talks about the "Imperial" and "Enlightenment") Repatriation: symbolizes the problems of inter-cultural communication and enduring legacies of the past (historical injustices) The Challenge: identifying universal museums that are not projections of western cultural values The hope: museums communicate universal perspectives outside of western cultures, this would be an Invaluable contribution to global society. Museums relate the present to the past as universal institutions Imperialism, Elitism, all entrenched within the history of museums The basis of "ownership-on-behalf-of-humanity" is BULL ITS BULLSHIT. There are good AND different ways to organizing teh world A universal museum: create displays which addresses the realities of power relations, past and present -It's AIM: to preserve remnants of acropolis structures and convince British government to return Athenian artworks to their place of origin -Britain doubts that the Greeks could be trusted with their own artifacts... which is ridiculous -they never give it back

Wunderkammer/Cabinet of Curiosities 1. Museums and Politics: the Louvre, Paris by Elizabeth Rodini

-a private place, available to the elite -lack of organization, classification, and theme, very quirky! -Some were literal cabinets, fitted with cupboards and drawers; others were rooms stuffed with animal, mineral, vegetal, and artistic treasures -intended to deepen people's knowledge through the presentation of things -Wunderkammern were seen as "microcosms" of God's creation: the cosmos, Greek for "universe," was encapsulated in one, miniaturized reflection of its literal awesomeness. This was an age of rising scientific interest, but this interest was still thickly wrapped in religious covers.

The Universal Survey Museum 1. The Universal Survey Museum by Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach

-ceremonial architecture, spiritualize the museum, ascending corridors and grand, open spaces create a "TRIUMPHAL DISPLAY" -"Secular Temples", secular ritual to feel elevated as we encounter art/knowledge -This architecture is designed and studied to make an impact in our perception and change our behaviour as just in temples, churches, palaces and places of worship. -PRIMARY FUNCTION: fostering national identity, they communicate a set of values of a state, there is a single narrative -Museums exemplify the idea of state by following the roman architectural style to symbolize authority. -The contents are not displayed randomly, the structure of how things are organized, layout of the rooms and works related to each region are super imposed, making the viewer independently of age, education or class to walk as if in a ritual. they are displayed chronologically=the evolution of its history. -UNIVERSAL SURVEY MUSEUMS: present a wider variety of art history, meant to impress visitors and royalties that come from anywhere else in the world.

ICOM Statement on Universal Museums Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums

-illegal traffic in archaeological, artistic, and ethnic objects must be firmly discouraged -objects acquired in earlier times??? that's different of course -because apparently, objects acquired under those conditions are not comparable to current conditions -dISpLAcEMENT? no! museums provide valid and valuable context for those objects -if it not for them, no one would realize the importance of those objects -EXAMPLE: Greek Sculpture -museums "serve" the people of every nation...BULLSHIT -the mission: to foster knowledge by a process of reinterpretation because less diverse objects would be a disservice to the public

Museums and Language 1. Speaking about museums: A meditation of Language by Stephen Weil

-language is commonly used to speak about museums, not only when those of us who work in them speak among ourselves but also when we speak to those various outside constituencies who constitute our public. -Language is the raw material out of which we construct stories, all the different kinds of stories that we tell in museums, stories about our collections, stories about our buildings, stories about our community and institutional histories. -To the extent that we rely on museum objects to communicate for themselves, we risk excluding, even alienating, those members of the public for whom they do not speak. -Just as one culture is necessarily distorted when seen through the lens of another - there is a good optical metaphor - so is the past distorted when seen through the lens of the present. -Finally, we must understand more about the stories we tell, about what they leave out, and about what they modify. -The solution, again, is not to stop telling stories but to recognize them for what they are: a version, our version, but by no means the only version nor necessarily a wholly true version. The notion that there could even be a wholly true version of anything may itselfbe a metaphor. Simple statements may be true or false, but something as complex as a story can never be, in that traditional legal formulation, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Museums and Architecture

-neo-classical facade and its assoc. with the temple, cathedrals -in the 1980s- I.M. Pei designed the Louvre and EXPERIMENTATION with architecture -LACMA's urban lights, parallels ancient columns

The notion of the "white cube"

-neutral backdrop- minimalist -linkage to Modernism -Like some kind of a sacred space, the white cube removes the artwork from any aesthetic or historical context. -And, since the work of art becomes sacred due to its context, it is the context that becomes the work in late modernism. -minimize distraction, the white walls were also thought to act as a frame, rather like the borders of a photograph.

The Carters at the Louvre 1. Can Beyonce and Jay-Z's Louvre Video Perceptions of Who Belongs in Museums? by Lise Ragbir 2. Beyonce and Jay-Z help museum break visitor record in 2018 by The Guardian

-people of color rarely have the opportunity to claim such spaces -However, while the Carters' accomplishment underscores the egregious lack of representation and audiences of people of color in art spaces, it also perpetuates the damaging notion that art is a luxury -To be clear, the main issue here is not luxury — which is a complex and subjective problem — but that the "Apeshit" music video encourages us to consider the ways in which luxury factors into the idea of who belongs in cultural spaces -important comment on the representation of power in art, and on race and colonialism -It led the museum to create a special visitor guide based on the video

Contemporary Dance in the Museum

-the dancing in "APESHIT" is unsanctioned, unsanctioned in that it is not "traditional" western dance -museum as a stage, exhibition as a show -the passing of bodily knowledge TINO SEHGAL, Selling Out (2002) -ethics...who has the power? Neither? The performer? Who is being EXPLOITED? -The museum is a safe and sanitized space -commentary of the commodified nature of art How do you acquire a performance? -borrowed, work lives on by performance, retention of bodily knowledge -with dance, no material exists permanently -rules for behavior? how do objects objects and people behave?

The British Museum, London

BENIN BRONZES: -these artifacts were acquired on a "punitive" expedition -they wanted to punish, kill off African tribes, looting and raiding -this is a document of British Imperialism as well as a documentation of the accomplishments of the Benin people ROHINOOR DIAMOND: -complex biography -1851, British seize the diamond and displays this became a part of the crown jewels of Britain -Where is it's rightful home? ELGIN MARBLES: -ancient sculptural friezes made of marble -from the Parthenon, Lord Elgin looted these -The British museum was reluctant to give it back since they believed that it was the heart of the museum and the heart of British identity -this is some major emotional baggage... they want this connection to classical ideals

Primitivism and/in museums 1. Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief: Primitivism in the 20th Century at the MoMA by Thomas McEvilley

PRIMITIVISM: aesthetic idealization that either emulates or aspires to recreate "primitive" experience. In Western art, primitivism typically has borrowed from non-Western or prehistoric people perceived to be "primitive", romanticizing non-western art. It is a desire to be closer to nature. -Tribal Art was displayed without labels of explanatory wall text, alongside pieces to show its influence upon the modernist movement -in doing so, they did not take primitive art seriously -they refused to understand how artifacts were understood by their creators -basically AFFIRMED THE SUPERIORITY OF WESTERN ART -calling tribal artifacts "art" was wrong- since it wasn't their intention -further perpetuates western egotism -pretends to confront Third World while really using it to consolidate western notions of superiority

Louvre, Paris 1. "Musuems and Politics: the Louvre, Paris" by Elizabeth Rodini

The first public museum in Paris in 1793 during the French Revolution allowing access to the royal collections for people of any status. - important in the world and holds the most prestigious works of art. -This has revolutionized the experience of viewing art in museums through history by its open doors to the public. -Anybody from any class or background can visit a museum and take as much from its intellectual wealth. Museums became as sites for educating the masses in taste and refinement until our days. HISTORY: - Louvre was a palace and the seat of the French monarchy - a container for art.monarchs use collecting and display to proclaim their wealth, power, and accomplishments -art production was often controlled by the state -Members of the Academy met at the Louvre to debate what types of art were officially acceptable, and select members of the public were invited there to see state-sanctioned art (aka Salons) -During the French revolution, it was remade into a public museums. the monarchy is dead, its fortress breached, and its material possessions are the property of the people. -it was also a statement about civilization, democracy, and education, a triumvirate we know as the Enlightenment -A visitor who followed this path participated in what has been described as a "ritual of citizenship," tracing a hierarchy in which France was represented as the rightful heir to these earlier traditions, the apex of aesthetic progress—and of civilization itself. -it was deciding what was "art." considered cultural traditions outside Europe to be of lesser quality, value, and importance -Those who control art—its form, placement, availability, and definition—control a significant part of the cultural narrative that defines who we are and our relationship with the past

Quai Branly, Paris The Heart of Darkness in the City of Light by Michael Kimmelman Return to the Quai Branly by Sally Price

The issue with this museum is that religious, ceremonial and practical objects, never intended as art in the modern, Western sense, are showcased with no context. -HOW IT LOOKS: like a spooky jungle, red and black and murky, the objects in it chosen and arranged with hardly any discernible logic. It implies French condescension. -How would Quai Branly overcome the obstacle of its own design? -Western-style aesthetic appreciation is another form of colonialism, obscuring history and ethnography -But context is necessary at places like Quai Branly, but this is not offered at all. -Some of the labels weren't finished yet, but the ones there were hard to find, obscure or comically vague -As a result, everything about the place gradually discouraged the desire to find out more. -Jean-Pierre Mohen, the director of collections, is like the jungle, to slowly reveal its logic, symbolizing the complexity of non-European societies that are closer to nature than we are...the old noble-savage argument -The critic Walter Benjamin: "there is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism" -Its sad because nothing was memorable about the exhibit was a blur. A policy for free admission was adopted but not free to the to the people whose cultures were meant to be celebrated within the museum Presidential visions are politically powerful starting points for museum projects, opening doors and providing resources that would be hard (or impossible) to come by without their support. But a museum project that systematically fails to question or complicate such a vision carries serious potential dangers as well, especially if it centers on the theme of cultural difference