Welcome by Prof. Susan Pearce iii Editorial v Rebecca Duclos: Postmodern...Postmuseum: New Directions in Contemporary Museological Critique. 1 Jésus-Pedro Lorente: 14 A ‘Post-Modern’ Museological Vogue: The Musée d’Orsay and other galleries featuring 19th century Art. Carol E. Mayer: ‘We have these ways of seeing...’ - A study of objects in differing realities. 31 Paul Martin: The origins and relevance of popular collecting. 42 John Carter: Public History and Heritage Interpretation: Bridging the gap. 46 Andromache Gazi: Archaeological Museums and displays in Greece 1829-1909: A First Approach. 50 Maria Mouliou: The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and their National Self; Projecting identity through Museum Exhibitions. 70 Ibrahim Yahya: Multimedia: A New Exhibit Technique. 89 Museological Review, 1, 1, 1994 Museological Review, 1,1,1994 MUSEOLOGICAL REVIEW A Journal Published Twice a Year by Students of the Department of Museum Studies 1983-1993: A decade of PhD Research in Leicester, Dept.of Museum Studies. 102 Book Reviews 108 News (Conferences, courses, exhibitions, publications) 111 Volume 1 No 1 1994 ~ HAE~ V TI T BANT V A ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ISSN 1354-5825 ● ● ● ● ● ● ● M TAANT ◆ VT VAIB E H Leicester University Museological Review © 1994 Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester All rights reserved. Permission must be obtained from the Editors for reproduction of any material in any form, except limited photocopying for educational, non-profit use. Additional copies can be ordered at a cost of £6.00 per issue(includes p&p), from: The Editors, Museological Review Department of Museum Studies, Leicester University, 105 Princess Road East, Leicester LE1 7LG Design and layout: Jim Roberts, Department of Museum Studies i CONTENTS Welcome by Prof.Susan Pearce ............................................................................ iii Editorial .................................................................................................................... v Rebecca Duclos: ...................................................................................................... 1 Postmodern...Postmuseum: New Directions in Contemporary Museological Critique. Jésus-Pedro Lorente: ............................................................................................. 14 A ‘Post-Modern’ Museological Vogue: The Musée d’Orsay and other galleries featuring 19th century Art. Carol E. Mayer: ...................................................................................................... 31 ‘We have these ways of seeing...’ - A study of objects in differing realities. Paul Martin: ........................................................................................................... 42 The origins and relevance of popular collecting. John Carter: ........................................................................................................... 46 Public History and Heritage Interpretation: Bridging the gap. Andromache Gazi: ................................................................................................. 50 Archaeological Museums and displays in Greece 1829-1909: A First Approach. Maria Mouliou: ...................................................................................................... 70 The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and their National Self; Projecting identity through Museum Exhibitions. Ibrahim Yahya: ....................................................................................................... 89 Multimedia: A New Exhibit Technique. 1983-1993: A decade of PhD Research in Leicester, ........................... 102 Dept.of Museum Studies. Book Reviews ............................................................................................. 108 News (Conferences, courses, exhibitions, publications) .................. 111 ii FOREWORD The appearance of a new journal in the Museum studies field is always a significant event. I am particularly pleased to welcome Museological Review as a new arrival in the ranks of literature in the field, because it is edited by the Higher Degree Students in the Department of Museum Studies at Leicester, and is intended to publish papers produced by them and their colleagues elsewhere. As in any area of study, the work of the higher Degrees students at Leicester is at the cutting edge of advances in the field. It is good to see this innovative work finding its way so swiftly into print, and also to see it published in a journal which belongs to the Higher Degree students themselves, and will be their particular forum. I am sure that Museological Review will rapidly make its mark upon the study of theory and practice in the museum field, and establish itself as an important force for understanding and debate. I wish it every success. Susan Pearce Professor of Museum Studies University of Leicester. iii EDITORIAL Journals such as the one you have before you are sometimes unkindly referred to as ‘obscure’, implying a narrow focus on an esoteric subject. They are also spoken of as ‘learned journals’ which suggests an air of archaic knowledge heavily laden with the dust of ages. We hope that by the time you have finished reading this, the first edition of Museological Review that you will have found it neither ‘obscure’ nor ‘archaic’ in its content. The papers presented herein address subjects as diverse as information technology in museums, popular collecting in Britain, the use and abuse of the image of classical Greek archaeology and the potential for interdisciplinary convergence within museums. The papers are we believe, a valid contribution to contemporary discourse on museum thinking emanating from (though not exclusive to) postgraduate students at Leicester University’s Department of Museum Studies. As such we look forward to a lively correspondence with readers and contributors. With the world in a seemingly constant state of flux, new stories, images and histories are presenting themselves all the time (e.g. South Africa, Central Europe) whilst the received wisdom of the past is being re-evaluated with fresh eyes (e.g. science education). The part that museums play in interpreting and conveying meaning is crucial and the need for new thinking and ideas on their role has perhaps never been as important as now. We hope that Museological Review will play its part by offering a platform for the presentation of new ideas, news and views in the museum world. Our aim is to be relevant to the museum of today and tomorrow, whether dealing with material culture, museum education, oral history or any other area that falls within the provenance of the museum, we wish to be able to address it. Our intention is to make Museological Review as accessible as possible, embracing the full ambit of the museum world. Taking into account the ever widening areas in which museums are becoming involved, we would like to be able to include as wide a range of subjects as possible in future issues so please get in touch! In conclusion we trust that you will find the inaugural edition of Museological Review full of thought provoking ideas with nothing set in tablets of stone or burdened by dust or obscuranta! Paul Martin Maria Mouliou Ibrahim Yahya iv Aims • • • To enable museums studies students and other interested parties to share and exchange information and knowledge. To provide an international medium for museums students and ex-students from around the world to keep in touch with a relevant centre of research. To bring to the attention of the practising and academic museum world innovations and new thinking on museum and related matters. Objectives • • • To provide a platform in the form of a journal to be published twice per annum, for museums students, staff and others to present papers, reviews, opinions and news of a relevant nature from around the world. To widen the constituency of the readership beyond the normal museological boundaries (e.g. to teachers, historians, artists, sociologists, environmentalists and others) in order to emphasise the importance of museums to society as a whole. To promote and advertise the research of contributors to as wide a public as possible via the journal and other means as the committee may from time to time decide. Submission of manuscripts The Editors welcome submission of original material (articles, exhibition or book reviews etc.) being within the aims of the Museological Review from Leicester. words. Articles can be of any length up to 5000 words Contributions should be set as follows: Title; Full name of the author; Main body of the paper; Acknowledgements; References and notes; Appendixes; Tables; Captions for the illustrations; Author’s name and full postal address, professional qualifications, position held. Four copies of the typescript will be required; three copies to the Editors and a copy for you to keep for your own reference. Make sure that all copies carry any late additions or corrections. It will not be possible for us to undertake or arrange for independent proof readings and the obligation for thorough checking rests with the author and the Editors. Once the paper has been accepted for publication, the Editors will appreciate if the contributor can send his/her article on a floppy-disc. We can deal with files prepared on a PC using Microsoft Word 2 or on Macintosh computers, using Microsoft Word 5. v Please type on one side of the paper only, keep to an even number of lines per page, and use standard size paper (A4), double-space throughout, with wide margins and the pages numbered consecutively. Align all text with the left margin, leaving the right edge ragged. The sub-headings should be typed in exactly the same way as the ordinary text, not underlined or in capital letters. Sub-headings should be displayed by leaving extra space above and below them. Do not use any footnotes. All foreign language extracts must be also translated in English. Illustrations Illustrations: Papers can be accompanied by black and white photographs, negatives or line drawings. All illustrations should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are referred to in the text. Contributors are requested to discuss illustrative material with the Editors at an early stage. If there is any requirement for special type (e.g. Arabic, Greek, scientific or mathematical symbols) this should be supplied as art work. Bibliography Bibliography: References must be presented using the Harvard system (author and date given in text, e.g. Connerton 1989; Cook 1991: 533). The bibliography should be at the end of the paper, arranged alphabetically by author, then chronologically if there is more than one work by the same author. Use the inverted format as follows: Connerton, P. (1989). How societies remember. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Cook, B. F. (1991). “The Archaeologist and the Art Market: Policies and Practice.” Antiquity 65: 533. Each contributor will receive one copy of the volume, but not a fee. Articles should be addressed to the Editors, Maria Mouliou, Paul Martin and Yahya Ibrahim, University of Leicester, Dept. of Museum Studies, 105 Princess Road East, Leicester LE1 7LG, UK. Postmodern... Postmuseum 1 Museological Review, 1, 1, 1994: 1-13 Postmodern/Postmuseum: New Directions in Contemporary Museological Critique Rebecca Duclos Of all the terms bandied about in both current cultural theory and contemporary writing on the arts, postmodernism must be the most overand under-defined. It is usually accompanied by a grand flourish of negativized rhetoric: we hear of discontinuity, disruption, dislocation, decentring, indeterminacy, and antitotalization. What all of these words do (precisely by their disavowing prefixes - dis, di, in, anti) is incorporate that which they aim to contest - as does, I suppose, the term postmodernism itself. I point to this simple verbal fact in order to begin ‘theorising’ the cultural enterprise to which we have given such a provocative label. (Hutcheon 1988:1) If, indeed, the addition of disavowing prefixes may allow words to “incorporate that which they aim to contest,” our invented term “post museum” requires a bit of playful unpacking. A post museum culture would be one, we assume, that somehow challenges and goes beyond the boundaries which defined the preceding “museum” culture, a change which is neither a radical departure nor a smooth subsumption of the former. A post museum perspective would require that this culture, and the institution which has so powerfully controlled and disseminated it, become the object of intense and crtitical scrutiny. Accordingly, post museum enterprises and projects would then embody the principles of this new critical attitude and carry forth with the exhibition and explanation of them for a public audience. These projects would be characterised by their paradoxical nature, for while working to subvert the dominant (institutional) discourse, they would at the same time be operating within its very parameters. The post museum museum would, in all its historical and social complexity, become the object of its own study, an artifact in itself - one to be analysed and interpreted within its very own exhibition spaces. To carry on with our description, we might say that engaging in post museum thinking would involve opening oneself up to new paradigms of thought, expanded models of practice and alternative methodologies of research, ones which implicitly challenge previous theoretical and museological traditions. In breaking with these traditions, more experimental and innovative territory might be explored in areas such as exhibition design, interpretative planning and educational programming. To study post museology would be to engage in a progressive and ultimately interdisciplinary examination of those contemporary theories and creative productions which had contributed to the critique of Rebecca Taylor Duclos, c/o Museum Studies Programme, University of Toronto, Robarts Library, Suite 6003, 100 St George Street, Toronto, OntarioM5S 1A1, Canada 2 Postmodern... Postmuseum traditional museum culture. A postmuseologist would be concerned with studying the implications of both our making and our making sense of culture: they would be driven, perhaps, by their desire to question the world through an examination of how this world is presented and interpreted within the museum setting. To be a postmuseologist would mean that one is intrinsically concerned with their own changing disciplinary identity - that they are both reflective and reflexive in their thought and in their work. This, dear readers, is an introduction into the rhetorical “post museum” culture - a culture which is perhaps not so rhetorical at all. In fact, as we will see, contemporary thought in museological circles, along with innovative action in museum spaces, all point to a certain change happening in the museum scene. There has been a tremendous surge, since the early 1980’s, in the area of museological criticism which looks at the “poetics and politics” of both museum practice and museological theory. As the shelves of the museum studies libraries sag under the weight of so many new publications: The New Museology (1989), Exhibiting Cultures (1991), Museums and Communities (1992), Museums and the Shaping of the Knowledge (1992), Museums, Objects, and Collections (1992), and Representation of the Past (1992) - and as our galleries welcome more and more museological installations such as those staged at the Ashmolean Museum, the Baltimore Historical Society, or the Seattle and Indianapolis Museums of Art - it is obvious that something important is occurring within our institutions and in our study of those institutions. This ‘something,’ I would like to suggest, is the confrontation between the museum and that ‘cultural enterprise’ with provocative label: postmodernism. The Presence of the Postmodern As Linda Hutcheon’s quotation initially reminds us, the word “postmodernism” is a very fragile one, indeed. Supporters and detractors from all disciplines and practices threaten to leap out from every corner to set us straight in our knowledge of the term. Cultural anthropologists, architects and novelists alike have wildly differing opinions not only on the meaning of the word, but on its use and deployment in discussion. Take, for example, Rosemary Coombe’s excellent article, “Beyond Modernity’s Meanings: Engaging the Postmodern in Cultural Anthropology” (1991) - even the author’s title implies a certain ambiguity through her use of the word “engaging.” Is the postmodern “engaged” as a movement, a phenomenon, a style, a perspective, a philosophy, an enterprise? In her introductory paragraphs, Coombe shows us that the term is truly chameleonic: the concept of the postmodern challenges the discipline of cultural anthropology; limitations are increasingly evident in the condition of postmodernity: the premises of postmodern scholars and the historical conditions of postmodernity opposes the modern enterprise; the growing discourse on postmodernism enables us to see the limitations of our interpretative practices, etc. As Brian McHale additionally reminds us: Postmodern... Postmuseum 3 ‘Postmodernist’? whatever we may think of the term, however much or little we may be satisfied with it, one thing is certain: the referent of ‘postmodernism,’ the thing to which the term claims to refer, does not exist the thing does not exist precisely in the way that ‘ the renaissance’ or ‘romanticism’ do not exist. There is no postmodernism ‘out there’ in the world any more than there ever was a Renaissance or a romanticism ‘out there.’ these are all literary-historical fictions, discursive artifacts constructed either by contemporary readers and writers or retrospectively by literary historians. And since they are discursive constructs rather than real world objects, it is possible to construct them in a variety of ways. (McHale 1987:4) With this legacy of alternative readings in the periphery, how museologists “engage” or “construct” the postmodern in their own discourse and practice? What paradigms, models, and methodologies offered by postmodern discourse are useful to museological analyses and museum productions? What long-term effect will contemporary theory and artistic practice have upon the institutions - its staff, its scholars, its public? Why is the museum such an interesting object for postmodern analysis and artistic intervention? What is it about the institution which welcomes deliberation, deconstruction and decentring? The “presence of the postmodern” in the museum may be thought to affect numerous aspects of museum work, from the way we critique the institution, to how we operate within its walls, to the manner in which we prepare exhibits for a public audience. these elements are, of course, intrinsically intertwined, for the more we understand history and our historical institutions to be human constructs - selectively structured narratives which impart or assign meaning to only elements of reality- the more we see ourselves to be essential actors in this scheme. As Jim Collins insists, we become sensitive to the discourse-dependent nature of our cultural and historical knowledge: ... what we consider ‘our culture’ has become discourse-sensitive, that how we conceptualize that culture depends upon discourses which construct it in conflicting, often contradictory ways, according to interests and values of those discourses as they struggle to legitimise themselves as privileged forms of representation (Collins 1989: xii). These sentiments are echoed in the introduction to the Smithsonian publication Museum and Communities, a volume of essays which deals specifically with exposing the museum’s uniquely discourse-sensitive “culture.” Any discussion of this culture and the museum’s “privileged forms of representation necessarily involves acknowledging that institution’s powers of representation. Ivan Karp writes: ... the [museum’s] selection of knowledge and the presentation of ideas and images are enacted within a power system. The sources of power are derived from the capacity of cultural institutions to classify and define peoples and societies. This is the power to represent: to reproduce structures of belief and experience through which cultural differences are understood. (Karp, Mullen Kreamer and Lavine 1992:1) 4 Postmodern... Postmuseum It is the nature of this power as it is wielded by our cultural institutions which postmodern questions hope to penetrate. How have these institutions derived their power to represent? How might we interrogate and deconstruct the institution’s structures of belief and experience? To begin answering some of the questions and to identify the museum as what Susan Pearce calls, “one of the characteristic modern metanarratives through which society has been constituted since roughly the middle of the fifteenth century,” we are able to draw upon the insights of a number of people. Fortunately for us, the past two decades, especially, have seen an increasing number of museum academics staking out museological territory in (what were once considered) outside disciplines. This is part of the “new museology” according to Peter Vergo, editor of the book by the same name (Vergo 1989:21) Publications from the Leicester University and Smithsonian Presses, as well as from the “Heritage: Care-Preservation-Management” programme are the primary sources for much of the new museological criticism. (Pearce 1992; Karp and Lavine 1991, 1992; Hooper-Greenhill 1992; Walsh 1992). In their explorations of such areas as cultural theory, literary criticism, dramatic studies, cultural anthropology, and leisure studies, museologists have continued to establish a strong interdisciplinary framework from which to work. Likewise, scholars from these “outside” disciplines have also gained new interest in museological issues - one has only to mention names such as James Clifford, Neil Postman, Pierre Bordieu, Jacques Derrida, or Linda Hutcheon to see that this is the case. Clifford’s inclusion in the Exhibiting Cultures volume and other museological publications, Postman’s work on technology, media, cultural issues and museum, Bourdieu’s consistent mention in museum studies literature concerned with “taste” and the “experience” of art, Derrida’s recent curation of an installation at the Louvre, Memoires d’aveugle: L’autoportrait et aures ruines (1991), and Linda Hutcheon’s continued interest in the activities of the Museum Studies Programme at the University of Toronto - all bode well for future cross-disciplinary activity. In fact, we might even venture to say that Museology is, in many ways, the ultimate “postmodern” discipline. The field in inherently multi-disciplinary and its associated institutions - from history museums to art galleries, science centres to zoos and parks - support an enormous range of cultural activity. Museologists who endeavour to analyse activity in and around these sites need to be familiar with a mélange of theory and practice in everything from anthropology to management studies - from semiotics to art education. As a result, these practitioners are able to forge links between these areas and come up with insightful and original material. In addition, the field of museum studies is engaged in activities which are at once cultural, political, and aesthetically oriented. Museology is perhaps the perfect hybrid site for postmodern interventions of both thought and actions. Postmodern... Postmuseum 5 The politics of Museum Discourse It is, though, the “politics” of the institution which has received the most coverage from museologists. As Marcia Tucker says; we have become increasingly aware, in the late twentieth century, that “... the knowledge museums purport to disseminate is not neutral; knowledge is not discovered, but is socially produced and reflective of the power relations of the society within which it is situated” (Tucker 1992:13). Our acknowledgement that these power relations exist, and our analyses of their effect upon the contemporary museum, have been fuelled by the introduction of new translations of European critical theory, particularly the works of the Frankfurt school, Roland Barthes, Micheal Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Continental feminist theory, and British film theory. Gaby Porter describes how these introductions have affected our reading of the museum: In the new criticism, critics have insisted on a practice of reading which questions expressive realism and the underlying philosophy of humanism. They propose that common sense itself is ideologically and discursively constructed; that the ‘obvious’ and ‘natural’ are not givers of meaning, but are produced within a specific society by the ways in which that society talks and thinks about itself and its experience. These texts which claim most fervently to be beyond authorship, to tell the truth, are no less deserving of attention. (Porter 1991:105). The museum’s texts are singled out by this statement since they are, obviously, ones which claim to be “beyond authorship.” Porter, a curator and a museologist well read in the new criticism, asserts that the museum is one of the more powerful cultural institutions which has, for a very long time, denied the fact that its “obvious” and “natural” interpretations of history are, in fact, steeped in an ideology which is for the most part elitist and male-centred, privileging the majority over the minority, the tangible over the intangible, and the “high” over the “low.” Thus, the museum can only over ever render “partial truths.” Porter and others (Coxall 1991 and Joranova 1989), have expressed the need for museologists and museum staff to examine the institution’s claim to “truth” and authority, and to become increasingly concerned with, and articulate about, the politics of their own discourse, both academic and exhibition-oriented. Museum people need to realize, for example, that they have inherited, and are relying upon, severely biased “discourse” as the basis of their own research (Coxall 1991:92). This means not only written and visual materials in the form of primary and secondary sources are embarrassingly misrepresentative of the social complexity of the past but so is objectival evidence. Indeed, because the accidental and serendipitous nature of many museum collections reveals only “partial truths” museums face interesting challenges when it comes to representing “the everyday” within their galleries. More specifically, the reliance upon a museum’s previously assembled collection creates significant 6 Postmodern... Postmuseum impediments in the wholistic discussion of the lives and work of women, minorities, marginalised ethnic groups, and others whose material culture was not documented, collected or preserved. As Gaby Porter has so eloquently argued, exhibit narratives are implicitly affected by absence in a way which has profound effect upon our conception of our past, present, and future. Museum practices are formed upon the rigid dualism of subject/object, of active culture working upon the passive body of nature. They are formed upon presence rather than absence. Thus the present materiality of artifacts is privileged over absent or immaterial forms, of thought, speech and emotion. The substance of production for exchange is privileged over the absence, through consumption and exhaustion, or production for use (Porter 1991:109) Helen Coxall and Christopher Chadbourne are two other museologists who are looking at “privileging” forces which are at work within the exhibition endeavour. Chadbourne reminds us that, “... what you choose to exhibit, the way you choose to exhibit it, and the story it is meant to describe but one interpretation, one subset of a collection of histories that could be told. And once recorded it will become “the history” (Chadbourne 1991:41). Surely, the museum is one of the more public institutions through which we work to “create” and codify history and, as such, it is a very powerful, and some would say - manipulatory - arbiter of cultural and historical knowledge. It is for this reason, primarily, that the museum should become the object of more critical inspection and intervention by today’s museologists. As Susan Pearce asserts: The history of museums, far from being a recreation for the museological dilettante, plays a vital role in our effort to understand how and why we are as we are. The discussion has started from the assumption that museums and their collections are part of the creation of the philosophy of knowledge, and of its history, in the humanities and the sciences (if, indeed, knowledge can be divided so tidily), and of the ways in which society at large is involved in this creation. We have inherited a complex structure, both theoretical and physical, which is essentially social in character and which has, therefore, done its share towards the construction of social character (Pearce 1992:115-116). Exhibition and the “Construction of Social Character” Because both the conception and installation of museum exhibitions offers direct access to both the museum’s interpretative philosophy and its central framework of operation, it is an area of intense interest in recent museological criticism. In looking at the exhibition phenomenon we are looking directly into the museum’s institutional raison d’être - an argument which Eilean Hooper-Greenhill clearly articulates in her recent history of the development of the modern museum. According to the author, the wunderkammer, as the earliest form of display, was Postmodern... Postmuseum 7 meant to contain and represent its owner’s miniature version of the “universal order” (Hooper-Greenhill 1988:159). This “order,” as the articulation of universal knowledge “... through the possession and identification of objects,” played a crucially important role in the development of the modern museum and its traditional reliance upon didacticism and classification (Walsh 1992:20). Postmodern, “postmuseum” questions attempt to get at the heart of this development; they are questions marked by a distinct concern to unearth the hidden structures which govern (museological) thought and behaviour. As such, they attempt to examine and interrogate the professional, cultural and ideological practices of museums and their associates in an effort to create a more critical framework from which to proceed. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill exemplifies this attitude and approach through her formation of some crucial museological questions: If new taxonomies means new ways of ordering and documenting collections, then do the existing ways in which collections are organised mean that taxonomies are in fact socially constructed rather than ‘true’ or ‘rational?’ Do the existing system of classification enable some ways of knowing, but prevent others? Are the exclusions, inclusions, and priorities that determine whether objects become part of collections, also creating systems of knowledge? Do the rituals and power relationships that allow some objects to be valued and others to be rejected operate to control the parameters of knowledge... ? (Hooper-Greenhill 1991:5) With this interrogation, Hooper-Greenhill brings us directly into a museological exploration shaped by postmodern thought. Her questions are ones influenced by the new critical thinking, ones concerned with exposing the social construction of systems of knowledge. Hooper-Greenhill uses the work of Micheal Foucoult (1974) and his notions of “effective history” in her analysis of museum’s evolution. Her use of Foucault’s set of “tools” for re-reading the past and for describing “the context of knowing” allows the author to interrogate the present-day “givens” of museums in order to find new ways of writing about and understanding their significance to contemporary museum practice (Hooper-Greenhill 1992:21). Foucault, and now Hooper-Greenhill, head directly into the “museumification of truth” via the collection. As the ordering enterprise par excellence, the collection can be analysed as the vehicle through which, and by which, knowledge is legitimated. As an embodiment of “knowledge” formed within specific historical and social contexts, the collection disseminates truths which are relative rather than absolute concepts. Hooper-Greenhill sets out to uncover how it is that the museum’s pretensions to knowledge became the “truths” - the absolute concepts of the day - and how it is that this knowledge can still be described today as “the commodity that museums offer” (Hooper-Greenhill 1992:2) As this author shows us, postmodern theorists - post museum theorists -need to focus a great deal on unpacking the taxonomies, classifications, or systems of 8 Postmodern... Postmuseum documentation and ordering to which the museum so ardently clings. We need to go the next step further to understand how museums have become extensions of ourselves - how we have used them to keep Foucault’s “chaotic proliferation of forms” under control. Indeed, in studying the museum, in understanding how the world can (and has been) divided and organised, we begin to see just how much the “taming” and classifying of the world is an essential part of the human bid for power. To explore the extent of this control means to uncover the parameters of knowledge and the power-through-knowledge which comes from the naming enterprise. As Kevin Walsh says in his book Representation of the past: “This is the power of the gaze, an ability to observe, name and order, and thus control” (Walsh 1992:32) This is a control which Susan Stewart (1984) says is an attempt to confine time and space, a control which “... strives for authenticity and for closure of all space and temporarily within the context at hand”. In elaborating upon this statement, Stewart cites a passage by Eugene Donato: The set of objects the Museum displays is sustained only by the fiction that they somehow constitute a coherent and representational universe. The fiction is that a repeated metonymic displacement of fragment for totality, object to label, series of objects to series of labels, can still produce a representation which is somehow adequate to a non-linguistic universe. Such a fiction the result of an uncritical belief in the notion that ordering and classifying, that is to say, the spatial juxtaposition of fragments, can produce a representational understanding of the world (Stewart 1984:162) The two “movements to the collection’s gesture for the world”, says Stewart, are the metonymic displacement of part for whole, item for context - and the invention of a classification scheme which sets out to order and account for all the separate elements of the world (Stewart 1984:162). Stewart’s extended discussion in this section (“The collection, Paradise of Conception: Context Destroyed”), is important for a number of reasons: first, it identifies the museum’s creation of what is essentially a “fictional” universe and, second, it introduces the notion of “time-space compression” which, as David Harvey, author of The condition of Postmodern world (Harvey 1989:284). The two concepts of the museum fiction and the collapse of time and space are not unrelated, as Stewart describes. The collection is able to compress time and space in such a way that the world is present within its one sweeping gesture: ...the museum of natural history allows nature to exist ‘all at once’ in a way in which it could not otherwise exist” (Stewart 1984:162) Ludmilla Jordanova echoes these sentiments in her discussion of historical reconstructions and the illusion of knowledge which is encouraged by the way these settings are presented. The “fiction” is in the arrangement: “to ‘know’ the past by looking at reconstructions... allows audiences to cultivate a quite unrealistic belief in their own knowledgeability. What they see is highly selective because only those aspects Postmodern... Postmuseum 9 that are easy to visualize are present” (Jordanova 1989:25) Porter, as well, has a deep concern for the way history is presented. Curators, she says, have long engaged in an activity where they “read off” supposedly “embedded” meanings in objects which “transcend” locality, class, race, position, etc. The groups of meaning are classified and become a “system for ordering and knowing material, and at the same time, a map of all there is to know” (Porter 1991:109) The “mapping" of the world through the collecting, ordering, exhibiting insect is receiving much more attention in museological scholarship these days. Susan Vogel is one museum professional who has been very active in looking at both the physical display of African collections as well as exploring more deeply into people’s perceptions of African art. With her exhibit Art/Artifact (1987), Vogel looked at the way our understanding of African objects is shaped by the Western display contexts in which we are accustomed to viewing them. By manipulating African objects within a variety of settings (the “white box”, the curiosity room”, the natural history museum), Vogel was able to demonstrate to visitors the extent to which context affects our appreciation of objects. The “map” which the museum provides by way of exhibit design has certain “routes” already drawn out for us. With Perspectives: Angels on African Art (1987), Vogel focused more on the issue of how we create our own context for understanding of desiring objects. By interviewing ten individuals and asking them to choose among a group of African objects and explain their choices, Vogel explored the more private “mapping” which gives objects meaning, form and desirability. David Harvey, in his chapter on “The Experience of Space and Time” offers a more radical reading of the personal world of collecting which resonates with Stewart’s discussions on “closure” and control. The authors description of the home has a private museum "... to guard against the ravages of time-space compression” gives a work such as Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi’s The meaning of things (1981) a whole new postmodern emphasis. Harvey’s argument, à la Csikzenmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, would be that the personal collection, through metonymy and private classification, exemplifies the desire to fight the postmodern collapse of distance and temporality and “secure moorings” and “longer lasting values” in a constantly shifting world. The home as the museum (as the 20the century wunderkammer), becomes the focus “... of a contemplative memory, and hence a generator of a sense of self that lies outside the sensory overloading of consumerist culture and fashion” (Harvey 1989:292). Perhaps the wunderkammer is a fitting image with which to close our discussions on collections, exhibitions, texts - and the museum itself, as it exists within our postmodern world. The wunderkammer or “cabinet of curiosities”, stands as a tangible image of the collecting instinct, one which has recently been revisited in museological discourse and imaginatively incorporated in museum exhibiting. The collection as “the opus which demonstrates the work of collection and curation, and of the creation of the lattice of references and interrelationships, which requires controlled space for its exposition” (Pearce 1992:139), has been given a new reading in the contemporary museum. One example of this might 10 Postmodern... Postmuseum be Ihor Holubizky’s recent retrospective of the life and work of Avrom Isaacs, the well-known Canadian collector and gallery-owner (Taylor 1992). In the temporary exhibition space at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, a free-standing steel frame wunderkammer (constructed from the same metal stacking shelves which are often used in museum open-storage) was prominently placed near the entryway to the show. Though this image, Holubizky purposefully, indeed ironically, made reference to the 16th century cabinets of curiosities, but reworked the image, transforming it into a purposefully random, nonhierarchical inventory of works and artifacts which had been at one time part of Isaacs’ personal collection and/or gallery holdings. Essentially, Holubizky opened up the image of the closed cabinet or studilo to make his contemporary version a more tangible, fragmentary, and infinitely readable display whose meaning was grounded not in the cosmic plan of some higher authority, but in the viewer’s own very arbitrary and personal interpretative schema. This is in direct contrast to the original cabinet, which Eilean Hooper-Greenhil describes in this manner: The cupboards within the studio were kept closed; the material collection existed in its cosmic order, but was not visible. Kept in a closed, windowless room, in a closed dark cupboards, the objects themselves, although actually present in their materiality, in effect acted as though they were an abstract experience. Their presence, and their meaning, was indicated through the symbolic images painted on the cupboard doors. It is very close to the closed boxes and the painted images of the Memory Theatre of Camillo, where the painted scenes are references to specific concepts that relate to each other within the magical cosmological system (HooperGreenhill 1992:106) It is this “magical, cosmological system”, Holubizky seems to be saying with his modern steel shelving, which no longer exists “outside” each one of us but is, in fact, constituted by us. It is contained within our own universes of memory and perception, Our tastes, our sense of wonder, our individual instincts to discover meaning and truth in a display are allowed to play freely in this “postmodern” cabinet. Avrom Isaacs’, and now the museum’s “cupboards” (thus the allusion to open storage) - were symbolically and physically opened wide for visitors to explore and interpret. As Holubizky says “... the fact that there is no single entry point allows, hopefully, for a primary investigation” (Holubizky 1993:7) What Holubizky did was to give the wunderkammer a new emphasis which highlighted the random, eclectic nature of the items on display, In doing this he dramatically resisted assuming the role of the traditional “keeper” of artifacts, a role which his predecessors had fulfilled with the greatest conviction. In relation to Francesco I, whose 16the century cabinet was the “secret site” in and from which “the prince could position himself symbolically as ruler of the world”, (Hooper-Greenhill 1992:105) Holubizky’s contemporary approach stands diametrically opposed. The “site” where the Isaacs’ material was presented was not “secret”; it was, metaphorically speaking, open for “excavation”. Postmodern... Postmuseum 11 If we examine this material in the manner of an archaeological dig, fragments become clues to re-constitute “time” between what is already known and opens up complex relationship between style and intent, between prescribed and indigenous manifestations of culture. Whether the selection of works constitutes a premediated condition i.e. to support the curator’s premise of the wunderkammer, is ultimately left up to the viewer to explore (Holubizky 1993). And so perhaps the modern wunderkammer shows us where explorations of meaning must ultimately occur with the viewer. To hear such a pronouncement need not, however, cause museum people to throw up their hands in hopeless despair thinking that they can make no legitimate contribution to the understanding of history and culture, Indeed, this is not at all what critics such as Linda Hutcheon would suggest. The postmodern is in no way absolutist; it does not say that ‘it is both impossible and useless to try and establish some hierarchical order, some system of priorities in life’ (Fokkema 1986:82). What it does say is that there are all kinds of orders and systems in our world - and that we create them all. That is their justification and their limitation. They do not exist ‘out there’, fixed, given, universal, external; they are human constructs in history. This does not make them any less necessary or desirable. It does, however, as we have seen, condition their ‘truth’ value. The local, the limited, the temporary, the provisional are what we define postmodern ‘truth’... (Hutcheon 1988:43) So what may we now say defines “postmuseum” truth? We could only hope to offer a response to such a question if we first allow ourselves as museologists and museum professionals to explore and expose our own roles in the creation of orders and systems which govern the museum world. The more we engage in impassioned and reflective analyses of our interpretative positions and strategies, the more we will continue to discover new ways to both present and critique what we show in our museums to be “true”. There is much work to be done in the days ahead but it is obvious that combined energy of museological theory and museum practice is now rising up to meet the challenge. References Bordieu, Pierre (1984). Distinction: A social Critique of the judgement of Taste. trans. by R Nice. Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Chadbourne, Christopher (1991). “A tool for Story Telling”, Museum News , March. April: 39-42. Clifford, James (1988). The predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, Harvard University Press. 12 Postmodern... Postmuseum Collins, Jim (1989). Uncommon Cultures: Popular Culture and Postmodernism. New York, Routledge. Coombe, Rosemary (1991). “Beyond Modernity’s Meanings: Engaging the Postmodern in cultural anthropology”, Culture, XI, 1-2: 111-124. Coxall, Helen (1991) “How language means: An Alternative View of Museums Text”, in Kavanagh,Gaynor, ed., (1991) Museum Languages: Objects and Texts, Leicester, Leicester University Press: 83-100. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1981). The Meaning of Things, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Foucault, Micheal (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge, London, Tavistock Press. Harvey, David (1980). The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Holubizky, Ihor (1992). Small Villages: The Isaac’s Gallery in Toronto, 1956-1991. Art Gallery of Hamilton. (Installation text.) Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean (1988). The Museum: The Socio-Historical Articulations of Knowledge and Things, Unpublished PhD thesis, University of London. Hooper-Greenhill (1991) Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge . London, Routledge. Hutcheon, Linda (1988) A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, theory, Fiction. New York, Routledge, Chapman and Paul. Jordanova, Ludmilla (1989). “Objects of Knowledge: A Historical Perspective on Museums”, in Vergo, Peter ed. (1989). The New Museology, London Reaktion Books: 22-40. Karp, Ivan and Steven, Lavine eds. (1991). Exhibiting Cultures: The poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington DC, Smithsonian Institution Press. Karp, Ivan and Kreamer C M and Lavine, Steven eds. (1992). Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. Washington D C, Smithsonian Institution Press. Kavanagh,Gaynor ed. (1991). Museum Languages: Objects and Texts. Leicester, Leicester University Press. McHale, Brian (1987). Pöstmödernist Fiction. London, Methuen and Co. Postmodern... Postmuseum 13 Pearce, Susan (1992). Museum Objects and collections: A Cultural Study. Leicester, Leicester University Press. Porter, Gaby (1991). “Partial Truths”, in Kavanagh,Gaynor ed. (1991). Museum Languages: Objects and Texts. Leicester, Leicester University Press: 101-107. Stewart, Susan (1984). On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press. Taylor, Kate (1992). “Unpacking the Isaac’s legacy”, Globe and Mail. Saturday, November 7, d2. Tucker, Marcia (1992). “Who’s On First?: Issues of Cultural Equity in Today’s Museums”. Different Voices: A social, Cultural, and Historical Framework for Change in the American Art Museum. Association of Art Museum Directors, New York. Walsh, Kevin (1992). The Representation of the Past: Museums and heritage in the Post-modern World. London, Routledge. Vergo, Peter ed. (1989) The New Museology, London Reaktion Books. Vogel, Susan (1987) Perspectives: Angels on African Art. Centre for African Art and Harry N. Abrahams, Inc., New York. 14 A Post-Modern Museological Vogue Museological Review, 1, 1, 1994: 14-30 A ‘Post-Modern’ Museological Vogue: The Musée d‘Orsay and Other Galleries Featuring 19th Century Art Jesús-Pedro Lorente Lorente Up to the late 1970s most art historians used to dispatch the manifold artistic production of the nineteenth century with a distorted image. They would write about just a few movements -the Romantics, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Impressionists, the Post-Impressionists- and the rest seemed taboo, for it was systematically ignored with the radicalism of a cruel damnatio memoriae. In art museums, mainstream art-works of the 19th and early 20th century were banned from display and exiled to the store rooms. Nobody seemed to care, except perhaps some senior citizens who were hurt by the hostility shown towards their own cultural standards. However, little by little the paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts of the 19th century gradually began to be seen and appreciated in the art market, in art exhibitions and in art-museums. If a banner was needed as a major symbol of that recuperation, this came in 1986 when in Paris a museum for the arts of 1848-1914 was opened at the former train-station of Orsay. Simultaneously, many art historians and museum professionals began to develop a non-distorted new interest of nineteenth century art. It is within this changing museological context that I would like this article to be considered. It is an historic fact that nowadays more and more museums are specially targeting the art of the 19th century, and this phenomenon deserves our attention. Since the Musée d’Orsay opened, numerous studies have emerged about its conversion from a railway station to museum, its impressive architecture and design, its management peculiarities, its famous collections, its popularity. This begs the question; ‘Why not study its Parisian or foreign equivalents?’ It is surprising how scarce the new bibliography is on that subject, either in France or elsewhere. Having said that, I hasten to add that it is not my objective here to promote the creation of more museums for 19th century art. Nowhere in the following pages will it be said or implied, that 19th century art is best appreciated in one of those specialist museums rather than in a general art gallery. The museums’ policy of tomorrow lies beyond the limits of this essay (besides, it is very unlikely that an academic paper may ever have any influence in politics!). I have thus refrained from leaking here my personal ideas on the future, especially regarding some polemic issues -like the proposed division of London’s Tate Gallery into two museums, or the plans to transform the palace of the Ministry of Agriculture in Madrid into a museum devoted to Goya and the art of the 19th century. This is not the moment or the place. Instead, I have striven for a broad assessment, Jesus Pedro Lorente is currently a post doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester A Post-Modern Museological Vogue 15 endeavouring to discuss these initiatives in their historic and international context. All I offer here comes from my doctoral dissertation: Museums for Nineteenth Century Art? A Socio-Historical Study of the Creation of Galleries of Modern Art and their Legacy. Nevertheless, I must confess that in fact things have happened the other way round: my PhD thesis derived from the subject tackled here, which was actually the topic of research I originally proposed when I first registered as postgraduate student at the University of Leicester in 1990. It was only two years later that I decided to centre my research in the origins of the museums of contemporary art. I am much indebted to all those who have helped me with that work and I would like to dedicate this article to all of them, especially to these two persons who have supported me the most: my supervisor, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, and my girlfriend, Armelle Jacquinot. T owards a ‘post-modern’ museum for 19th-century art: the Musée d’Orsay. Although the term ‘Post-Modernism’ has made great progress, it may be utterly misleading. Post-modern art and post-modern theory are not merely a forward movement succeeding Modernism: the very idea of progress is refuted by PostModernism, which is deemed to be a U-turn, not yet again another contribution in the saga of superseding avant-gardes which have succeeded each other within the Modern Movement. ‘Supra-Modernism’ would be perhaps a more appropriate denomination. Another problem when trying to grasp the nature of this recent movement is perhaps its Nietzschean complacency in destructiveness, criticism and irony. Its novelty lies not in the possible newness of the fruits it bears, but in a new posture: ‘Post-Modernism is essentially an attitude [my emphasis] of incredulity’ (Lyotard, 1979: XXIV). This attitude is the only common feature in the post-modern menagerie; there is no such thing as a post-modern philosophical Summa or artistic manifesto, because its practitioners are decided agnostics, unwilling to replace a creed by another set of convictions. Post-modern philosophers have undermined the foundations and beliefs of Marxism and Structuralism, the most sacred modern theoretical buildings, without replacing them with a welldefined new system (Best & Kellner, 1991). Post-modern artists and architects, on the other hand, have abolished the long reign of Abstract painting and the International Style of architecture, but they have not replaced them with one unified new style; their aesthetics seem irreconcileable beyond their common taste for inserting ironical cites and ‘misquotations’ of classic/modern paintings and architectures (Jencks, 1989). Thus at the heart of Post-Modernism lies a sceptical perspective blending humorous revisionism and ironic self-referentialism. This is very obvious in the fields of architecture and the visual arts, but also in post-modernist theory. The 16 A Post-Modern Museological Vogue High Priests of the ‘New French Thought’ often remind literary characters of Franz Kafka magnetised by the appeal of abysses and those of Jorge Luis Borges enchanted by the lure of the labyrinths. Foucault recalls a paradoxical passage of Borges’s Chinese Encyclopedia in the preface of his most influential book, Les mots et les choses [The Order of Things, is the title in English] whose first chapter on the other hand presents a very subjective vision of Las Meninas, showing Foucault’s enthusiasm for the self-referring hints scattered by Velasquez in this picture (Foucault, 1966). Baudrillard’s Kafkaesque obsession for the spiral, has been connected to the impressive story of ‘The Prague Student’ (Gane, 1991: 207) the story of a student who sold his reflected image to the devil. Lyotard’s essay: La condition postmoderne, claims that studying institutions is not unlike studying certain language games (Lyotard, 1979). The corrosive effect of this questioning perspective has spread out from the field of art and philosophy provoking turbulences in other traditionally calmer scientific domains. Scholars in many disciplines have been attracted by the vortices of deconstructionism, especially in the areas lying at the epicentre of the post-modern movement: sociology and semiotics -but also mathematics: the voluminous book by Douglas R. Hofstadter: Göedel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid has been a great best seller in university departments of science ever since its publication in 1979. However, the professionals of the museum world have been more unreceptive to this revisionism (cf. Walsh, 1992), probably because, as has been noted in a ground-breaking contribution -bearing the Borgesian title «In the lair of the monkey: notes towards a post-modernist museography»museums ‘constitute the essential mechanisms of a ministry of truth’ (Shelton, 1990: 96). Significantly, Anthony A. Shelton focuses his essay on the art of settingup museums (museography), since he believes that the main influence of PostModernism in museums is to be found primarily in the installation of interactive displays, whereby the visitors are given a say and the curators release part of their control of the selection/interpretation process, and secondly in some challenging temporary exhibitions organised with a revisionist eye. To the examples he quotes, there could be added the case of a recent show entitled «?Exhibition?» (the profusion of question-marks is itself very post-modern): this temporary display was a timely attempt to present classical antiquity ‘reflexively’ at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (Beard & Henderson & Phillips, 1992; but cf. also the objections raised by Nail, 1993). The idea inferred from the above is that the influence of Post-Modernism applied to the art of setting-up museums consists, above all, in a whole-hearted questioning and re-writing of previous conceptions (Kaufmann, 1989: 151). It is therefore not surprising if the museographical initiative which has emerged as the towering emblem of Post-Modernism is the conversion of an old trainterminal into an art-gallery where the history of 19th-century art has been rewritten. While the museum-symbols of Modernism were modernGesamtkunstwerken like the M.O.M.A., the Guggenheim Museum, or the many later examples housing avant-gardist modern masterpieces in challenging modern-style buildings, no parallel landmark has emerged now combining collections of post-modern art with a post-modern edifice -despite the fact that A Post-Modern Museological Vogue 17 additions and new building for museums have become some of the most celebrated works in the professional curriculum of the architects of the ‘PostPompidou Age’ (Davis, 1990). Without any doubt, the museum embodying the spirit of the new age is the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, opened in 1986: An inclusive architecture and view [my emphasis] of the past and present which accepts contrary values and makes a varied comment on them. Nineteenth-century tastes in art, both academic and Modern, are mirrored by twentieth-century ironies and technology, as well as beautiful lighting and a very rich development of layered space (Jencks, 1989: 56). If there were ever an architecture designed to reconcile contradictions and to substitute spectacle for history, that architecture is posmodernism. Its central stylistic attributes, the appropriation of a historicizing architectural vocabulary and the combination of mutually contradictory styles, create a spectacle of historical references while at the same time dissembling whatever historical meanings those references might possess. This, as we shall see, is an apt description of the “history” put forth by Orsay, where postmodernist architecture and a species of revisionism work hand in glove to reconcile opposites and suppress dissent (Mainardi, 1987: 35). It is highly interesting to emphasize and develop the comprehensive interpretation of Orsay’s post-modernism pointed out only intuitively -his subsequent comments focus on the architecture- by Charles Jencks and in a hypercritical way by Patricia Mainardi. Curiously, what most of the criticism published on Orsay’s museography has described as post-modernist -for better or worse- is only the interior architecture designed by Gae Aulenti (Foucart, 1985). Although the curatorial team revealed that Aulenti’s style was not accidental and that they had chosen her because her design served well their ideas (Laclotte, 1987: 16), few asked themselves how post-modern ideas had -or had not- impregnated the final blueprint for Orsay. Doubly exceptional in this context are thus Patricia Mainardi’s words: ‘Implicit in the Orsay installations is an ambivalence about context that reveals its position on history to be postmodernist’ (Mainardi, 1987: 49; cf. also Mainardi, 1985). But what is Orsay’s position on history? As many others (Dagen, 1986; Le Pichon, 1986), she tries to interpret -in socio-political terms- the ‘left’ and ‘right’ distribution, the ‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’ within the museum, and brings herself into a cul-desac. Mainardi gets angry when her penetrating eyesight fails to detect any clearcut theoretical articulation hidden behind the mannerist jumble of materials, forms, colours and details of distribution: ‘Art historical revisionism may be necessary and welcome, but the least one might expect from its adherents is an articulation of the theory that informs their version of history’ (Mainardi, 1987: 46). Yet, is not the renunciation of any parti-pris, the wish not to become involved in one ideological/aesthetical viewpoint that Post-Modernism is all about? 18 A Post-Modern Museological Vogue It is thus as a result of the self-effacing personality of art-theory in Orsay that the boldness of Aulenti’s visual effects stands out even more. Not surprisingly then, the main bone of contention for its critics has not been Orsay’s eclecticism and egalitarian neutrality, which has found many enthusiasts (Chastel, 1987; Faunce, 1988; Pingeot, 1987; Reff, 1988; Rosemblum, 1987 & 1988; Roux, 1986) and only a few enemies (Alechinsky, 1989; Kirili, 1988; Lewis, 1987); but the self-assertiveness of its design and display, which has raised passionate criticism (Alechinsky, 1989; Arikha, 1988; Beetem, 1989; Buchanan, 1986; Bury, 1987; Gandee, 1987; Lévi-Strauss, 1987; Matthews, 1987; Soulages, 1987), rare defenders (Filler, 1988; Trachtenberg, 1988), and even rarer impartial thorough analysis (Rosen & Zerner, 1987a & b; House, 1987). Plate 1. A view of the Musée d’Orsay Similarly, the chronicle of the ideas which came into play in the long process of the conception of the museum often appears overshadowed by narrative history and -yet again- architectural details in the otherwise fascinating and very well-written book by Jean Jenger: Orsay, de la Gare au Musée. Histoire d’un grand project [also published in English: Orsay, the Metamorphosis of a Monument. From Paris Terminus to National Museum] (Jenger, 1987; cf. also Jenger, 1986 & 1987b and his later booklet: Jenger, 1989). Now that the clamour of the controversies has subsided, it is time for a calm reflection over the scope of the Musée d’Orsay and to give it a place in the history of museums. The Gare d’Orsay was condemned for demolition in 1971, but after the destruction of Les Halles many campaigned to conserve some example of this kind of 19th-century iron architecture in central Paris. Eventually, the campaigners succeeded and the old railway station was classed as a historical monument in 1973, although nobody had a clear idea of what new use could be made for this enormous vaulted nave once would had it been restored to its former splendour (Crosnier, 1986). As usually happens with buildings of troublesome adaptability to daily life, the project of transforming it into a museum then emerged most naturally (Cabanne, 1978; Belves, 1980). It was also natural, considering the date of the station itself and the growing problems of overcrowding and long queues at the nearby Musée de l’Impressionnisme, that the art of the late 19th century was chosen as its speciality by that crusader of Modernism, president Georges Pompidou (Jenger, 1986: 69). A Post-Modern Museological Vogue 19 However, it soon became obvious that Orsay should not merely be an aggrandised version of the Jeu de Paume, whose expurgated vision of art history was, if not contested, at least proved to be incomplete by a historic exhibition at the Grand Palais (Lacambre, 1974). Hence when the Cabinet of president Valéry Giscard D’Estaing launched on October 20th, 1977, the first decisions concerning the creation of the new museum, it showed a resolute interest in bringing back to light academic works as well. Moreover, in a further step towards a more inclusive museum of 19th-century art, it was also decided that the projected institution was to include all the arts of the period: painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, architecture, decorative arts, photography, and cinema (Darblay, 1980; Vaisse, 1985). At the beginning, the Government referred to the project naming it sometimes as ‘Musée d’Orsay’ and sometimes ‘Musée du XIXe siècle’ (Duault, 1981), although always expressing an intention to focus it on the art of the second half of the century -an arguable legacy of the Jeu de Paume. Nevertheless, everybody agreed that the span of the museum had to end a few years after 1900 (Daix, 1983); regarding its starting point, on the other hand, Giscard had his personal ideas. His mind was to push the date as early as possible: Dans mon esprit, je pensais depuis l’origine qu’il était souhaitable de rechercher l’unité de la création française du XIX siècle, comportant à la fois l’influence des grands pionniers tels que David et Ingres, et le déploiement des admirables talents de Courbet, de Corot et de Delacroix. [It had seemed to me from the outset that it would be desirable to seek to portray the overall unity of 19th century French creative work, including both the influence of great pioneers such as David and Ingres and the unfurling of such admirable talents as Courbet, Corot and Delacroix] (introduction by Giscard d’Estaing in Jenger, 1986: p.9) Whichever choice was made in this respect concerned the Louvre (Laclotte, 1986): fixing an earlier starting date for Orsay was, indirectly, deciding to culminate the Louvre’s displays with the works of Delacroix, with those of David, or at the French Revolution. Had the question been faced purely in terms of history or art-history, perhaps the argument for a return of the Louvre to its origins would have been successfully brandished, letting David, Géricault, Corot, Delacroix, Courbet and all the others go for good. But these artists seemed an irrenounceable asset from a sentimental, French, point of view of the Louvre: the galleries featuring their works were virtually the only glamorous shrine to French art in its displays by 1980, as none of its luxurious brand-new Pei’s galleries of French paintings were existing then. The curatorial advice was therefore that the frontier-date between the Louvre and Orsay should be 1863 (the date of Manet’s Olympia, the year of the Salon des Refusés, and of the death of Delacroix). It took Giscard’s most direct intervention to gain the great masterpieces of Courbet for Orsay, and still the first half of the century as a whole was deemed to remain under-represented. 20 A Post-Modern Museological Vogue When François Mitterrand took over in 1981, the Marxist historian Madeleine Rebérioux was appointed as vice-president of the Établissement public du musée d’Orsay. She demanded that the museum’s chronological limitations be politically rather than aesthetically determined: dismissing the proposed date of 1863 as important only for the history of modern painting, she imposed instead historicaly-minded limits for the span of the collections: 1848 (date of the revolution instituting the II Republic) and 1914 (start of World War I). This was very revealing of her new ideas for the museum: it had to be not simply an artmuseum but a musée de l’art et de la civilisation. Some hints like the installation of a locomotive in the middle of the nave (Rosen & Zerner, 1987b) were conveniently filtered to the media like sound-bites... and officially denied once a very deep opposition had been expressed by public opinion. Certain cardinal curatorial decisions have been taken at the outset. The different art-materials should not, in general, be mixed; there would be no attempt to create period interiors. Nor would there be texts of art-history interpretation and historical contextualisation interfering with the display; they would be kept strictly separate -historical/art-historical explanations are offered both in the carnet-parcours available in the library and in the didactic material scattered in information stations or points-clés (Kucerova, 1990). Thus, following Malraux’s ideals, the works of art would be left to speak for themselves to their present-day viewers (Cachin, 1986, 1987a & b; Laclotte, 1987; Rigaud, 1987). It is actually this isolation of the art works and the formalist approach to arthistory deprived of social-historical clues that some American social-art-historians find most disappointing (Brenson, 1988; Nochlin, 1988; Sherman, 1990). In the European tradition, the museums of social history and the museums of art belong in completely separated realms whilst in the U.S.A., on the other hand, many art-collections are displayed in period-rooms. Not surprisingly then, Rebérioux’s attempt seemed a turning-point in the conception of Orsay which produced anxiety in Paris and raised great expectations across the Atlantic (Augulhon, 1987). Eventually, most of her initiatives were neutralized by the art-curators. Social history turned out to be like a foot-note in the museum: not only are historical displays scarce and peripheral as she herself acknowledged (Rebérioux, 1987 a & b), but also repeatedly linked to the toilets -in terms of both physical proximity and design-psychology!. Thus the symbolic battle of the dates was Rebérioux’s first and only triumph. In fact, one is tempted to say, it was just a Pyrrhic victory. Choosing the date of 1848 merely offered a socio-historical disguise, but the issue of why the museum should focus on the second half of the century remained unquestioned. Would it not have made more sense, from the point of view of a historian, to establish the chronological limits of the museum between the French Revolution and World War I? After all, the insurrection of 1848 was only a minor event in comparison to the revolution of 1789, which set in motion in France a period of successive upheavals, namely those of 1830, 1848 and 1871. Ironically enough, the cultural thrust of the French Revolution was also, as Maria Teresa Almeida has pointed A Post-Modern Museological Vogue 21 out (Almeida, 1987: 113), the origin of Orsays’ museographical approach, which tends to present a chronological arrangement of works and schools, separating paintings from sculptures and from decorative arts. This leads us to the question of whether the Orsay Museum is really revisionist or rather, reminiscent of previous galleries (Rosen & Zerner, 1976). To believe the most authoritative voice in this respect, Daniel J. Sherman, author of a PhD thesis on art-galleries in 19th century France (Sherman, 1989), almost everything in Orsay came as a legacy of the Luxembourg and other museums of the last century: the collection itself -excluding photographs and cinema- (cf. also Normand-Roman, 1986), the liberal-minded eclecticism of taste, and the crowded installation (Sherman, 1990). But what strucks him most is actually the spirit of continuity with a conventional approach to art-history as formalist connoisseurship underlining the lack of interpretation on the labels, and especially the texts of the museum guide-book (Mathieu, 1986). Hence he concludes that Orsay is a very traditional kind of museum, not an alternative one (cf. also Vaisse, 1987). Nevertheless perhaps his terms of comparison are misplaced: Orsay was not deemed to be different from the ‘traditional’ artmuseum as conceived since the French Revolution; but simply a departure from the religious fanaticism of Modernism. Orsay rightly rejects the twofold ideals reclaimed for art-museums in the age of Modernism: 1- the prudist ideal of an austere clinically-white museumarchitecture which should be undemanding, permissive and, above all, selfobliterating... 2- the puritan ideal of pious lecturing which ‘modern’ museumcurators used to profess: ‘[...] separating esthetic sheep from goats with an even and unprejudiced hand, leading the uninitiated on a fixed and purposeful path whose meanings are preordained by the tablets of the esthetic law: Thou shalt take Cézanne to thy bosom! Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of the tree of Academicism! You shalt not ask too many unsettling questions and think for thyself because all that is worth thinking has already been thought for thee! [...] This transcendence of sterotype seems to me to be precisely the museum’s [Orsay] most positive quality, allowing it to challenge the visitor as if it were a kind of text -visual, material and spatial- producing multiple, sometimes unintended, meanings and often generating contradictory readings (Nochlin, 1988: p.86). Orsay could be saluted as an influential step towards the end ot the museum perceived by its public as a church (Clair, 1987; Schaer, 1987), despite the parallels of the imposing perspective of its vast nave with the architecture of 19th century pavilions for World Fairs and with the monumental museum-temples of the last century. 22 A Post-Modern Museological Vogue Post-Modernism’s expanding wave: museums of the post-Orsay era. The foundation of the Musée d’Orsay in 1977 and its opening in 1986 were landmarks in the rediscovery of 19th-century art in its entirety: both progressive and academic works, both French and non-French schools. The ‘Orsay effect’ awakened hibernating relatives of this museum in France and abroad, profiting the general recuperation of 19th-century art (Levi-Strauss & Vaisse & Foucart, 1981). The Galerie des Batailles in Versailles -the backbone of the Musée Historique created there by King Louis Philippe in 1837- which was rarely visitable before, has opened daily since then. The 1900 building of the Musée du Petit Palais recovered part of its original architectural decorations and many 19th century century art-works have emerged from the stores. The house-museum of Renan-Scheffer, managed by the City Council of Paris since 1982, was completely refurbished and reopened in 1990 as Musée de la Vie Romantique. A similar museum, called Galerie der Romantik, was installed in the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin and opened in 1987. During those years the Austrian Ministry of Education undertook a complete reorganization of the national museums in Vienna as a result of which the NeueGallerie der Stallburg, created in 1967 to display works by foreign artists, was suppressed in 1986: henceforth the distribution of the national art-collections in the museums of Vienna should not be made according to questions of nationality but to chronology. Thus the Oberes Belvedere became since 1989 a gallery of Austrian and foreign 19th century art. In 1989 the Tate Gallery of London was completely renovated, with a new rehang which brought back on display many 19th century works, and the interior architecture of the building was rendered to its original state. In Italy, contemporarily, similar investments were made for the renovation of the partially closed section of 19th century art at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna of Rome and also in those of Milan and Novara. In 1991 a tycoon of American fast food industry -Mr. Morton A. Fleischeropened the ‘Fleischer Museum of California Impressionism’ at the Perimeter Center, Scottsdale, Arizona. In 1992 the City Council of Genoa opened Villa Grimaldi as a museum devoted to the Frugone Collections of 19th century art. In 1992 the main floor of Bury Art Gallery, in the North of Great Manchester, was restored to its original state for the better showing-off of its 19th-century collections. In 1993 opened a new wing devoted to 19th century European art within the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Other projects are still in the making. In 1991 the Rijkmuseum of Amsterdam started a complete refit of the Drucker extension for 19th-century paintings. Simultaneously, a redistribution is taking place between the collections of the old Nationalgalerie in what used to be East Berlin and the namesake institution in the West: all 20th-century art will be regrouped in the modern Mies van der Rohe building of the latter and the art of the 19th century transferred to the former. Since 1992 plans are being considered in Madrid to transform the building of the Ministry of Agriculture into a section of the Prado devoted to Goya and 19th-century art. In 1993 an American millionaire has offered in the A Post-Modern Museological Vogue 23 Plate 2. The Building of Bury Art Gallery pages of The Times -and subsequently withdrawn- to make a donation for the creation of a national gallery of 19th-century art in London... It seems as though that what seemed outmoded a few years ago might now have re-entered the news with force provoking great excitement. In fact it is not merely the art of the 19th-century which attracts new visitors and investments. In as much as the 20th century boom of art-books and art-editions had approached the art of the last century with a limited regard until the 1970s, the ‘post-Orsay era’ presents a vehement urge to reconstitute in its integrity the memory of that time. Everyone of the museums and projects cited above is not only a vindication of the art of the last century, but also a recovery of general interest in 19th-century taste. Take for example the gallery of Villa Grimaldi in Genoa recently opened on the occasion of the 1992 commemorations of Columbus’ discovery of America. The local council has created this museum in hommage to the brothers Lazzaro G. and Luigi Frugone, two 19th century art-patrons who bequeathed their collections to the city in, respectively, 1935 and 1953. But, ironically, this same municipality still keeps closed the Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna itself, where the 19th-century works of the Frugone collections were only a part of a vast ensemble of works from the same period (Frabetti, 1984, 5-8; Giubilei, 1991, 134-136). More than a special period in the history of art is thus a particular case in the history of 19th-century collecting that is reivindicated there! 24 A Post-Modern Museological Vogue On the other hand, this newly discovered interest in 19th century collecting practises is also connected to a growing passion for antiques and historic interiors. Significantly enough, the project of Orsay consisted first of all, in the preservation of a 19th century monument (Lachenaud & Laclotte, 1979). A group of three architects -R. Bardon, P. Colboc and J.-P. Philippon- refitted the station’s nave and hotel, with its restaurant, foyer and ball-room. Similarly, numerous artgalleries founded in the last century seem to be now proudly rediscovering their original buildings and thus destroying modern false ceilings and partitions in order to restore their 19th-century architecture. The country heading this museographical vogue might be Italy and one of the most remarkable examples there is perhaps the Galleria Giannoni of Novara. After many years of closure, it reopened in 1986 and since then a programme of refurbishment is being carried forward aiming to restore the museum to its old splendour (Mongiat, 1990; 33). In this context, some Victorian and Edwardian museums initially created as galleries of contemporary art, are being rediscovered as ‘historical monuments’ to be preserved as they originally were (Waterfield, 1991). The announced move of the 20th century collections out of Millbank could be a future major case; but there is already a constellation of institutions in Britain and abroad that could be cited as examples of this kind of philological refurbishements. Bury Art Gallery was renovated in 1991 with a scrupulous care to regain its historical decoration, and same could be said today of the Lady Lever Art Gallery of Port-Sunlight, the Sudley Art Gallery of Liverpool, Leighton House in London, and many other Victorian art galleries in Britain. The 19th century ‘period flavour’ of such galleries captures the imagination of visitors: they feel there something like the famous ‘sense of history’ experienced by Michelet while visiting the Musée des Monuments Français. The arguable historical rigour of such re-creations is a favourite subject which usually raises very passionate defenders, especially amongst a notorius lobby of museologists: the ‘antiquarian-museologists’ (cf. Clifford, 1982). Less apparent is perhaps their intrinsic ‘post-modern’ quality, that I have endeavoured to demonstrate with this article. I must make clear now that, in identifying post-modernity with metaphorical ambivalence and detached revisionism, I am assuming here a definition of what is Post-Modernism which is not universally shared. It would not be, I should think, totally acceptable to the very militant mood prevailing among the writers and artists associated with or singled out by October (cf. for example the radical views of Crimp, 1980 and 1987). But I want to avoid as well the partisan view of Post-Modernism as a ‘return to order’ which disavows the kind avant-garde art supported by the Modern Movement. Sadly enough, the collections of 19th-century art featured in most ‘antiquarian’ reconstructions do not offer a well balanced selection: they tend to be overwhelmingly dominated by non-avant-gardist works. It is clear that they can not claim to be useful in getting art-history right: their aim seems rather to be A Post-Modern Museological Vogue 25 getting an historical setting right. As John Murdoch, then assistant-director at the Victoria & Albert Museum, put it: The strength of the V&A collections [of 19th-century paintings] must be seen to lie not, as John Sheepshanks intended, in their former status as a National Gallery of British Art, but as a commentary on the way in which the art of painting was constructed into our culture, both on the domestic level and in the great public spaces which have come down to us from the last century. (Murdoch, Preface to Parkinson, 1990). This perspective can be regarded as a typical aspiration of a time like ours, touched with a craze for ‘archaeological’ musical-performances played with historical instruments and philological re-publications of literary text in the original version (Ragghianti, 1990: 90). With a characteristic post-modern love for self-referentialism, some museologists are thus advocating nowadays the presentation of old-fashioned displays with no change, merely adding marginal explanations -which they compare to the use of footnotes in ‘critical editions’ of literary classics. Such displays are Borgesian monuments of erudition (Borinsky, 1977: 94-101), museums-mirrors whose authors do not claim any merit as auteurs, but as reviewers-anthologists. Conclusion. A number of recent essays have tried to assess how museums are now coming to terms with the spirits of Post-Modernism (cf. for example Walsh, 1992 and the extensive bibliography he provides). To my mind the rediscovery of the art of the nineteenth century in its many-sided integrity leaded by the Musée d’Orsay and, on the other hand, the current philological recovery of nineteenth-century museum-structures and displays are also outstanding examples of the changes Post-Modernism is impinging on the museums world References ALECHINSKY, P., (1989). Notes sur Orsay. Caen. ALMEIDA, M.T. (1987). ‘The display of the permanent collection at the Musée d’Orsay’, Museum, 39 (2), p. 113-119. ARIKHA, A. (1988). Untitled, Art in America, 76 vol. 1 , January, p. 102-104. AUGULHON, M. (1987). ‘Un prof à Orsay’, Le Débat, n. 44, p. 157. BEARD, M & HENDERSON, J. & PHILLIPS, D., (1992). ‘Deconstruction or demolition? The chicken or the egg?’ Museums Journal, vol 92, n. 12, pl 20-21. 26 A Post-Modern Museological Vogue BEETEM, R. N. (1989). ‘Exhibiting modern art in Paris: the Musée d’Orsay and others’, Contemporary French Civilization, 13, 1, p. 91-95. BELVES, P. (1980). ‘La gare d’Orsay, Musée du XIXe siècle’, La Vie du Rail, 30 mars. BEST, S. & KELLNER, D., (1991). Postmodern Theory. Critical Interrogations. London. BORINSKY, A. (1977). ‘Repetition, museum, libraries: Jorge Luis Borges’, in John Hopkins Textual Studies, 2, Baltimore, p. 88-101. BRENSON, M. (1988). ‘When artists get lost in a labyrinth of context’, New York Times, 6 March. BUCHANAN, P. (1986). ‘From toot-toot to Tutankhamon’, Architectural Review, n. 1078, Dec, p. 48. BURI, P., (1987). ‘Les architectes cannibales’, Le Nouvel Observateur, Janvier 1622, p. 99. CABANNE, P., (1978). ‘Le futur musée du XIXe siècle: un cimitière monumental de plus’, Le Matin de Paris, 5 juin. CACHIN, F. (1986). ‘L’oeil souverain’, Le Monde, Nov. 29. CACHIN, F. (1987a). ‘Les réponses de Françoise Cachin’, Le Nouvel Observateur, January 16-22, p. 101. CACHIN, F. (1987b). ‘Orsay tel qu’on le voit’, Le Débat, n. 44, p. 55-74. 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Enquête sur leur mode d’utilisation par les visiteurs. Propositions pour l’amelioration de leur consultation. Unpublished (available at the documentation services of M’ O). LACAMBRE, G., 1974. Le Musée du Luxembourg en 1874: Peintures [Cat. Exp. Grand Palais]. Paris. LACHENAUD J.-P. & LACLOTTE, M., (1979). ‘Un musée dans une gare monument historique’, Revue des monuments historiques, n. 194, septembre. LACLOTTE, M., (1986). ‘Musée d’Orsay. Réflexions sur le programme muséographique’, La revue du Louvre, n. 6, p. 363-372. LACLOTTE, M., (1987). ‘Le projet d’Orsay’, Le Débat, n. 44, p. 4-19. LEVI-STRAUSS, C., (1987). ‘Le cadre et les oeuvres’, Le Débat, n. 44, p. 180. LEVI-STRAUSS, C., & VAISSE, P. & FOUCART, B., (1981). ‘La peinture du XIXe siècle et nous’, Le Débat, n. 10, mars. LEWIS, P., (1987). ‘What’s Doing in Paris’, New York Times, April 19, p. XX10. LYOTARD, J.F., (1979). La condition postmoderne. Paris. 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Looking at the different realities that objects pass through on their way to museums, and investigating how they are perceived and renamed, this personal curatorial journey led me to question why we do what we do and then to contemplate the consequences of how we answer these questions. In the tradition of anthropological enquiry this paper will explore these questions through “the idiosyncrasies of a single case” (Ames 1986:12): one individual’s collection displayed in a single gallery. The focus of the collection is idiosyncratic in that it does not fit easily into the public or academic perception of what is appropriate to be exhibited in a museum of anthropology. It consists of historic ceramics made by cultures not addressed at MOA, the uncomfortably close-to-home “self,” rather than the comfortably distanced “other.” The displaying of objects is the one thing that unifies all museums -- it is how we display them and what we say about them that demonstrates our separateness. By being organised and interpreted according to formalised objectives recognised by the museum as being appropriate and enduring, objects in an anthropology museum help create an artificial reality of a particular past (Cannizzo 1987) - an idealised landscape, constructed because “we see the world the way we do not because that is the way it is but because we have these ways of seeing” (Wittgenstein quoted in McGrane 1989:ix). We may think exhibitions provide correct “‘ways of seeing” but if the visitor chooses to ignore, or does not understand them, then s/he is left with the task of constructing meanings that may or may not run parallel with the “ways of seeing” of the creator of the object, the collector of the object, or the curator of the object. As a curator I have developed a personal “way of seeing” that I have found useful when working with objects. It is based on the concept that objects, studied within an anthropological context, exist in at least three historically and often geographically distinct realities wherein differing criteria’s attach differing meanings and names. In the first reality, that of the maker, the objects are manufactured in response to a set of cultural requirements and are an integral Carol Mayer, Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada 32 ‘We Have These Ways of Seeing...’ part of the physical articulation of cultural processes. The second reality is that of the collector who chooses objects, often by type, and removes them from their intended context, treating them as commodities to be bought, sold, renamed as art or craft and evaluated within the tenets of connoisseurship and the surrounding art market . When the collector, for a number of reasons, transfers his collection to the third reality, the museum, the objects are renamed again according to a constructed classification system which prioritises function . Here they are either stored in a private space or displayed in a public space. At MOA the storage (private) space is public so all the collection, with the exception of physically or spiritually sensitive material, is accessible to the visitor. Obviously, thinking about objects existing in differing realities is not a concrete construct, but is a useful device which has, for me, generated alternative “ways of seeing”. I have always found the fairytale of Sleeping Beauty an interesting analogy when thinking about the lives of objects: when she awoke after one hundred years the world around Sleeping Beauty must have changed considerably, but the fairy tale leaves her in her castle to live happily ever after. Museums reconstruct castles, artificial realities of a particular past, whilst ignoring the objects “sleeping” time when they travelled in the world of their “other” -- where they were reconsidered, re-evaluated and renamed. Why collectors “saved”, “rescued”, “valued” these objects during their second reality, their “sleeping” time”, is seldom questioned and collectors are relegated to the acquisition file or the archives, viewed as stereotypes and left to fade away (Halpin 1990:1). The museum staff decides which aspects of an object’s existence are to be validated and remembered. At the time of planning and research for the new MOA gallery, the ceramics were still in the possession of the collector, Dr. Walter Koerner. This was an extremely unusual situation and offered a rare opportunity to get to know the collection, in its second reality, and the collector, whilst both were unencumbered with museum classification and naming systems. The collection contains around six hundred examples of Southern, Central and Western European ceramics ranging in date from the late fifteenth century to the early nineteenth century. Within this geographic and temporal matrix three main ceramic traditions and technologies are well represented: tin-glaze earthenware, lead-glaze earthenware modelled in high relief, and stoneware. I knew that all the collection was to be displayed, so curatorial editing was not an issue, but how to develop an organising principle which encompassed the museum’s mandate and the collector’s rationale within an accessible “storyline” was the challenge. Koerner’s comments about his collection were couched in the language of the connoisseur: “This is a good piece,” “This is very rare,” “The Metropolitan has one of these,” “There are only two of these in the world.” At first, he seemed to be a typical decorative arts collector: looking for age, rarity, skill, and aesthetic quality in objects that were detached from their functional purpose and organised into collectors categories. This would seem to suggest a straightforward organising principle. However, on closer inspection he seemed to purchase indiscriminately because, alongside wares which conformed to models of connoiseurship, there were pieces he referred to as “crockery.” Some pieces were ‘We Have These Ways of Seeing...’ 33 obviously valuable and others were not, so desirability and price were not necessarily synonymous. The organising principle started to look more complicated. One thing was clear, he constantly singled out some pieces for visual attention and others for gentle handling. First impressions are always important as is the language one uses when trying to record them. During the research phase I noted the language Koerner used when he talked about his collection, I utilised his words as cues when thinking about the development of an organising principle. It is a humbling experience to look back at the language I used to describe the collection once it had been transferred to the museum: “unique wares that were vehicles for the most sophisticated and up-to-the minute artistry; carefully controlled wares that were made according to specific sets of rules; vibrant naive wares dashed off with a sure hand for the popular market - a range seldom found in museum holdings” (italics added two years after original notes). “We have these ways of seeing...” Once Koerner and I adventured beyond descriptive language it became clear that he “curated” his collection within a social historical framework using the sixteenth to eighteenth century Anabaptist wares as a focus from which almost everything else radiated.. These wares were, to him, symbolic of the power of the belief systems of the Anabaptists: once these systems were eroded by the existing religious establishment the rules of manufacture relaxed significantly, the ceramics lost their purity of form and decoration and were renamed folk art. By collecting the earlier ‘purer’ ceramics, at a time when they were virtually ignored by other collectors, Koerner has guaranteed that the power of the Anabaptist beliefs, as they were symbolised, for him, in their ceramics, will not be forgotten. This desire to “rescue” objects made by cultures under pressure to assimilate, had much to do with his own personal history. The question posed for Koerner and I was “should any of this be included in the exhibition?” Even though it was clear that the Anabaptists were the important focus for Koerner, he also had an impressive collection of lead-glazed high relief tiles. There was not a clear connection between his tile collection and the curatorial rationale associated with his tin-glaze wares, but the existence of the tiles labelled him as a multiple collector. He always insisted “I just like them.” When asked why he collected stove tiles (Hafner ware), he responded “I like nice things, they are beautiful and rare...my love for tiles has nothing to do with price. “ In his home he had many of them framed as individual pieces of art, even though the maker’s intent was that they be constituents of a large architectural structure - a stove. The tiles are displayed as art in the new gallery and a stove provides context: Prior to being purchased the stove had been broken apart so that the tiles could be sold as separate pieces of art. Given my penchant for associating objects with their differing realities, it can be said that the museum put these individual tiles, which were being guided towards their second reality (the art market), back into their first reality (a functional stove - as the maker intended) and then presented the reconstruction in a third reality (in its museum interpretation) providing a context for the existing deconstructed tiles already settled in their second reality (as art objects). “We have these ways of seeing.... “ 34 ‘We Have These Ways of Seeing...’ The transition from the second reality to the third was greeted with confusion, opposition and delight. When the collection came to the museum the question posed was ‘what is that stuff doing in a Museum of Anthropology?” (see Mayer 1992). Answered, but not yet with great conviction, by posing another question: “why shouldn’t anthropology museums embrace Europeans and move beyond studying the ‘other’?” This was qualified with the reasoning that anthropologists do claim to study all humankind - so bringing Europeans into the framework could facilitate the beginning of anthropologising “self”. Furthermore, even, “Is this not an opportunity to be more honest, less authoritative, perhaps even confront issues relating to racism and exclusion with action rather than rhetoric?” Or did it have something to do with the relationship of the collector with the MOA? Certainly the museum likes to view and promote itself as a common ground for sharing ideas: there is theoretical agreement with the current tendency which advocates desanctifying works of art and promotion of the role of the contemporary museum as an “instrument to democratise culture.” (Herreman 1989:197) Yet, these theoretical agreements to do with the concept of sharing are not easy for those who still believe museums serve as “dignified repositories for symbols and icons of days gone by. “ (Vonier 1988:27) It would seem that time spent on democratising the museum is being met with some success but perhaps success would be more assured if more time was spent on democratising those who work in museums. At MOA the Koerner collection is displayed in accordance with a philosophy of accessibility: everything is shown. There is no doubt, however, that the display techniques used in the new gallery encourage the visitor to view the collection as art, and the space is grand enough to suggest to some that the ceramics are special, chosen, sanctified. Recent visitor surveys have indicated that most visitors are unaware of any underlying ordering principles, nor do they question the collection’s presence in a museum of anthropology. Working with the Koerner collection in its second reality accentuated, for me, the idea that choices made by those inside a museum, when organising an exhibition, are guided by the collection perimeters determined by seldom understood outside rationales: collectors construct collections out of what remain separate pieces, the pieces are placed into created categories which together form a single entity. Once moved to the museum, this entity could disappear. The question is “should it?” One thing that does disappear once a collection is moved to a museum is the tactile connection between the collector and the collection. Once documented, the collection is seldom touched and never used. The useful arts are rendered “use-less” and as Pomian has so effectively stated: Nobody is slain by the swords, cannons and guns on display in the military museum, and not one single worker or peasant uses the utensils, tools, and costumes assembled in folklore collections or museums. The same is true of everything which ends up in this strange world where the word ‘usefulness’ seems never to have been heard of, for to say that the objects which now await only the gaze of the curious were still of some use would ‘We Have These Ways of Seeing...’ 35 be a gross distortion of the English language; the locks and keys no longer secure any door, the machines produce nothing and the clocks and watches are certainly not expected to give the precise time of day. (Pomian 1990:7) Reading Pomian, I reflected on the writing of Natzler who talks about handling a pot to locate its personal and endearing nature, and Bernard Leach who views the beauty of ceramic form as being both subjective and objective: “It is subjective in that the innate character of the potter, his stock and his tradition live afresh in his work; objective in so far as his selection is drawn from the background of universal human experience. “ (Leach 1976:20) I also viewed the film “Utz,” which told the story of a collector of Meissen porcelain. In one candlelit scene Utz sits surrounded by his collection, he touches and handles a few selected figurines and as his gaze intensifies, so does his passion, and the figures, for him, come to life and dance. In stark contrast I also read the book Utz wherein the collector articulates his feelings about objects in museums: An object in a museum case must suffer the denatured existence of an animal in the. zoo. In any museum the object dies of suffocation and the public gaze -- whereas private ownership confers on the owner the right and need to touch. As a young child will reach out to handle the thing it names, so the passionate collector, his eye in harmony with his hand, restores to the object the life-giving touch of its maker. The collector’s enemy is the museum curator...Ideally, museums should be looted every 50 years, and their collections returned to circulation. (Chatwin Bruce ?) Consideration initially turned towards recognising the collection’s historical value and then its relevance in this time and space: to question where it fits within the current frames of reference. As Tam Irving has pointed out in his introduction to the exhibition “Choosing Clay”: the “roots of ceramic tradition still play a dominant role insofar as the vessel occupies a central position either as functional entity or metaphorical referent”. He goes on to say “These artists are not concerned with innovation but prefer, like classical musicians, to reinterpret established themes” Recontextualising of past philosophies within the framework of contemporary material culture is a phenomenon which can be traced back to the time of the Romans when, in the second century BC, they adopted the classicism of what was Greece by removing and copying the material object which embodied that classicism. The artists of the Renaissance followed suit, as did the Victorians. In the time and space we are currently occupying new objects are being created, unique to their maker, but containing echoes of these differing realities which exist in our “conscious or subconscious selves”. (Ames 1992:141) How can we articulate these connections between historic and contemporary ceramics without marginalising either? Could this be an important role for the Koerner collection? 36 ‘We Have These Ways of Seeing...’ It occurred to me that if the collector’s need to handle and gaze was so intense then perhaps this was something we could make available to the contemporary potter. Perhaps they too could make contact with the historical artist/potter. “In a broad way the difference between the old potters and the new is between unconsciousness within a single culture and individual consciousness of all cultures.” (Leach 1976 :20). These thoughts initially encouraged me to include some contemporary work in the gallery. One hand-built and burnished vessel made in 1990 by a Vancouver artist, Laura Wee Lay Laq, was displayed opposite a wheel thrown and glazed vessel made in c. 1590. They share a simplicity of form yet the technology used to create the newer piece predates the technology of the older piece by hundreds of years. By collapsing time the two pieces could converse with each other in the same space, yet remain strong enough to retain their individuality. Laura Wee Lay Laq refers to herself as an artist and her work has been labelled ‘art’ and has been shown in art galleries. Is it still ‘art’ in an anthropology museum? If being singled out and artfully lit is enough to qualify, then it certainly is displayed as art. The older vessel is utilitarian in form but arguably shares a similar aesthetic and it is displayed exactly the same way as Wee Lay Laq’s piece. One difference lies in the identity of the artist - one known and one unknown another in the naming of the pieces: Wee Lay Laq’s piece is called the Hawk Olla; during its life to date, the older piece has been named in accordance with its known function. Auction catalogues, the bibles of the art market, refer to like pieces as important European pottery” thus avoiding calling them craft or art. By consciously displaying this piece as art, the power of the curator and designer to rename is demonstrated. Elsewhere in the gallery two contemporary weavings by Ruth Jones and May Smith are displayed alongside the ceramics that inspired them: one a flamboyant colourful tapestry woven in the Aubusson tradition and the other a plain unpretentious blue and white weaving. A fourth artist, Gordon Miller, was asked to illustrate the glazing and painting process used on maiolica, and Ulrike Holbrueker recreated the moulding process used to manufacture stove tiles. Their works are also displayed close to the original pieces of inspiration. All these artists live and work in British Columbia. Once the gallery opened a symposium was held which brought together the three realities: makers, collectors and museum curators. However, whereas the collectors and museum curators talked about historic ceramics, the makers were contemporary and creating works for the present and future. What significance, if any, did the Koerner collection have for them? True, there were a few contemporary pieces displayed in the gallery which owed some of their inspiration to the historic ceramics but was this sufficient? Had we made a point without a point being made? During the symposium the cases were opened for the various delegates who wanted to examine individual pieces: it was clear that makers, collectors and curators all shared the need to touch, to contact, to weigh, to articulate their opinions and feelings about the ceramics. Watching this interaction it became apparent that the exhibition could serve as a vehicle of change - perhaps by bringing together in one space and time the three realities normally separated, it could influence/ inspire/inform contemporary artist potters. ‘We Have These Ways of Seeing...’ 37 In 1993 I taught a course “Topics in World Ceramics” to students of the Ceramic Department at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design and used the museum’s collection to examine the social, technical and artistic history of ceramics - but mainly the students “got to touch the real thing. “. I know that the idea of students working directly with collections is not a new one, but it is one that has become lost somewhere in the museum’s control mechanisms that distances objects from the touch of the uninitiated. These students had never touched historic pieces, they were not really enthralled with the literary, academic, ethereal, untouchable world of the arts; they want to contact “their ancestors”. Their final project was to produce a contemporary piece for an exhibition which contained echoes of a technology, form, decorative technique, iconographic message, or whatever, found in the information I shared with them, and their personal and physical contact with the historical pieces. Joining the company of the maker, collector and curator the students touched, held, and examined the works made so long ago but existing in this reality for now. They were asked to consider the question so eloquently posed by Alan Caiger-Smith: “What is it in a tradition that enables such feeling to come to the surface through what are, after all, mere lines and shapes painted on a simple glaze? Why does one piece have an inner content, whereas another, very similar, is only decorative? What is it that men pass down from one to another in a living tradition that makes that tradition more than the sum of its technical process and skills?” (Caiger-Smith 1973 :80). They thought about their own works in the future. How will they interact with works yet to be created? Will they be allowed to? Some students were inspired by earlier technologies: “I decided to stray from the Greek firing method and use an electric kiln which maintains a strict oxidising atmosphere. By doing this I hoped to gain more control over colours and simplify the firing procedure, although this sacrificed the ability to reproduce the rich black of the Greek potters. The designs on the pot are derived from standard designs used on Classic pots.” (Jay MacLennan, 1993). There were occasions when the museum did not have examples of ceramics from a particular time or place. With one student, the image on a poster triggered an idea which, when articulated in clay bore no apparent resemblance to its inspiration: “This horse was inspired by a horse and knight vessel made during the time of the Silla kingdom in Korea (668-935 AD). I have chosen to ignore the original functional aspect and instead have chosen to concentrate on the use of animal imagery. My horse is a functional piece in a different 38 ‘We Have These Ways of Seeing...’ sense. I like to think he makes people smile when they look at him, and that is function. I like to think that people will see him and maybe have a deeper understanding of who I am, and that is a function. It is also my wish to make a piece that looks like a toy that people want to pick up and handle. To give them a connection to the child within them, the naive, playful side of themselves that they may have lost touch with. That is what I hoped to accomplish with my piece” (Dale Mervyn, 1993). Some were interested in specifically recognising the role of the historical ceramic artist in relationship to their own: “During the sixteenth century in Italy, artists painting on maiolica achieved more recognition than ceramic artists of any other time. Istoriato plates depicted not only mythical and biblical stories but also current events of significance to the artist. Using similar technology in clay, glaze and firings I sought to recreate a pope’s hat plate but the decoration has become very much centred in this time. The images on this plate reflect my excitement in pursuing ceramic studies at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design. All the vessels depicted on the rim were made during the last year. In the central well sits the artist painting this plate” (Gillian McMillan, 1993). This piece contains layers of personal iconographic messages which describe the world of the artist at the time of making the plate. Whether these messages will continue to accompany the piece is an unknown factor. Will the intent of the artist be recorded and will it be compatible with the intent of the collector? And, if the piece ends up in a museum will these “intentions” be accessible to the curator? ...and will s/he ignore them or incorporate them as part of the conversation about the piece? Will the piece be renamed by “others”? The students at Emily Carr College were asked to consider these questions when looking at historic pieces and how they are presented inside a museum or gallery - to consider how they felt when their own piece left their hands and became accessible to everybody - to consider how the words in their Artist Statements could act as a bridge between the object and viewer - to consider their piece in an anthropology museum where the “other” is dominant and to consider the relationship between their piece and the “other.” Many potters will agree that their work is firmly rooted in the non-imitative reinterpretation of the history of ceramics. All things new owe some allegiance to the past so it would seem to be incomprehensible that barriers be erected to separate these entities. The experience of working with the Koerner collection, intellectually, physically and emotionally, enabled me to not only think about how objects function in differing realities, but also how past philosophies can be carried forward and be incorporated in contemporary work. The European ceramics were presented within a framework conducive with the museum’s ideology and included some maker’s rationale, some collector’s rationale and ‘We Have These Ways of Seeing...’ 39 some relevance to the contemporary scene. However, it was the contact with the objects initiated by the art school students, two years after installation, that actually raised the possibility of a fourth reality: a reality not contained in a chronological time or space, rather a reality that is a concatenation of the other three - perhaps an attribute of time, space, object which releases, enriches, informs, inspires creative expression whilst rising above the vicissitudes of language. Given this direction, the debate about the relevance of including a European collection of ceramics in a Museum of Anthropology has, in my mind, been relegated to a border skirmish on the edge of the discipline. I would rather argue that this collection is an addition which has initiated a much more important discussion about the consequences of questioning why we do what we do. The work produced by the art school students convinced me that a reality could exist where historically defined distances between “self” and “other” could be bridged and objects could be contacted not necessarily categorised. The first challenge for a museum will be whether or not to accept the possibility of a fourth reality. If accepted, the second challenge will be how to nurture its existence and give people the opportunity to experience moving objects from a state of being distanced, immobilised, contained, to one of being close, mobilised and released. As objects move from being untouchable to touchable, they move from abstract to concrete and are released from the constraints of the third reality the museum. This is not how the world is at this time, but it could be - because “we have these ways of seeing. . . “ Note Paper presented at the Institute for Contemporary Canadian Craft conference: October 22-24th 1993. Carol E. Mayer, UBC Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver. I would like to thank Michael Ames, Marjorie Halpin, Tam Irving and Ken Mayer for their comments on the draft of this paper. Bibliography: Alsop, J., (1978): Rare art traditions: The history of art collecting and its linked phenomena wherever these have appeared. New York. Alsop, J., (1978): “Art History and Art. Art Collection: The Renaissance and Antiquity”, Times Lt. Supp. No.3982 (28 July 1978); No.3983 (4 August 1978). Ames, Michael M. (1986): Museums The Public and Anthropology, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver. 40 ‘We Have These Ways of Seeing...’ Ames, Michael M. (1992): Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes, University of B.C. Press, Vancouver. Caiger-Smith, A., (1973): Tin-Glaze Pottery in Europe and the Islamic World, Faber & Faber, London. Cannizzo, Jeanne, (1987): “How Sweet It Is: Cultural Politics in Barbados” in MUSE, Winter. Canadian Museums Association, 22-27. Chatwin, Bruce, (1989): Utz. Penguin Books. New York.. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly and Eugene Rochberg-Halton (1987): The Meaning of Things Domestic symbols and the self. Cambridge University Press. Duncan, Carol and Alan Wallach, (1980): “ The Universal Survey Museum” in Art History, Vol 3. No.4. 448-473. Hainard, Jacques, (1983): “Collections Passion” in Museum, UNESCO, Paris. Halpin, Marjorie M., (1990): Fragments - Reflections on Collecting. UBC Museum of Anthropology Note No.31. Herreman, Yani, (1989): “A new Canvas for New Creative Talent: Contemporary trends in Museum Architecture” in MUSEUM, Unesco, Paris, Vol.XLI, No.4. 196200. Irving, Tam., (1991): “Introduction” in Choosing Clay, The Canadian Craft Museum Koerner, Walter C., (1988): The Tree May prefer Calm. But The Wind Will Never Subside, Vancouver. Leach, Bernard, (1976): A Potter’s Book. Faber & Faber, London. Mayer, Carol, (1992): “What is That Stuff Doing in a Museum of Anthropology ?” in MUSE. McGrain, Bernard, (1989): Beyond anthropology - Society and the Other. Columbia University Press, New York. Montaner, Josep and Jordi Oliveras. (1986): The Museums of The Last Generation. Academy Editions, St.Martins Press, London. Pomian, Krzysztof. (1990): Collectors and Curiosities - Paris and Venice, 1500-1800. Polity Press, Cambridge. ‘We Have These Ways of Seeing...’ 41 Rice, Prudence M. (1987): Pottery Analysis. - A Sourcebook. University of Chicago Press Sinopoli, Carla M. (1991): Approaches to Archaeological Ceramics. Plenum Press, New York. Wilson, Timothy. (1987): Ceramic Art of The Italian Renaissance British Museum, London. Wittlin, Alma S. (1970): Museums: In Search of a Usable Future. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 42 The Origins and Relevance of Popular Collecting Museological Review, 1, 1, 1994: 42-45 The Origins and Relevance of Popular Collecting Paul Martin The mushrooming of ‘popular collecting’ since the 1980’s is a phenomenon now attracting much critical analysis (e.g. Belk : 1988; 93; Danet & Katriel : 1989; Pomian : 1990; Pearce : 1992; Viner : 1993 ). Items being collected are by and large reflective of popular culture since the late nineteenth century ranging from Victorian seaside souvenirs to beer mats and toy cars. This has been accentuated by an increasing dislocation of the British social and economic infrastructure overseen by successive Conservative administrations since 1979, causing many people to look backwards (as is usual in such circumstances) for an imagined golden age of social stability underpinned by economic buoyancy. In an all too uncertain and unstable world, such touchstones as Meccano sets; Robinson’s Golly brooches; Matchbox cars, etc.. offer a reassuring purchase on a more parochial past (implicit in John Major’s ‘Back To Basics’ sentiments). The British national psyche, despairing of the political reality which many hold responsible for the erosion of long cherished values, dives for cover in a vain and self-indulgent effort to re-capture what is felt to have been lost - social cohesion. The desire for cultural icons of the 1950’s, 60’s and laterly 70’s (from comics to platform boots!) is held to be symptomatic of a cultural dissolution. The increasing use of Blues music and imagery in advertising and elsewhere as a shorthand for authenticity and a metaphor for both consistency and constancy can be interpreted as a desire for greater social certainty. This is the cynical view at least. Collecting in itself does not necessarily indicate anything more than an interest in the subject collected and collectors have a great deal to offer museums both in terms of their collections as resources for museum exhibitions and as fonts of wisdom on the subjects collected. Although private, popular collecting activity has burgeoned over the last decade, its origins seem to be rooted in the late Victorian period. John MacKenzie, in his pioneering work on the influence of imperialist propaganda on popular culture, describes how the advent of photography led to the middle class hobby of collecting ‘cartes de visite’ of royalty; famous statesmen; soldiers and theatrical personalities, yet it was the cheap mass production of the postcard from the 1890’s onwards that achieved the ‘democratization of the visual image’ (MacKenzie 84: 20 -21). Carte de visites are not widely collected today, postcards are. Postcards and cigarette cards were as collectable as novelty items at the time of their original production as they are today as artefacts of popular culture. Other Paul Martin, PhD. student, researching contemporary collecting in Britain Dept. of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. The Origins and Relevance of Popular Collecting 43 less well known items such as Goss crested china (a cheap form of china with coloured transfers of civic armourials and town crests, popular from the 1890’s to 1920’s) has also enjoyed a sustained collecting interest. Between 1900 and 1932 there existed a ‘League of Goss Collectors; Goss postcards and a magazine for collectors, ‘The Goss Record’ (Howell 1974 : 138; Pine 1986:18). What soon becomes clear is that for one hundred years there has existed a popular collecting culture which has until it’s recent explosion remained hidden or considered irrelevant. The ‘glasnost’ of the 1980’s has caused critical re-evaluation of the cultural significance of many objects. This means that definitions of what is valuable based on long cherished bourgeois perceptions of ‘good taste’ have been eclipsed by a wider criteria based on an upsurge of interest in popular culture at all levels. ‘ Tunbridgeware’ (expensive, decorative, wooden objects such as boxes) has always been widely collected by those who could afford it; but Mauchlinware, cheap wooden (sycamore) objects (including boxes) which utilised varnished lithographic transfers of tourist sites and holiday destinations, has been equally collectable with a much wider public. The late nineteenth century saw the rise in popularity of seaside resorts such as Blackpool, Margate, and Southend with working class ‘trippers’, who were able to visit due to the advent of cheap day excursions facilitated by the ever growing railway companies. MacKenzie asserts; There was ... unrivalled opportunities for the leisure and entertainment industry and a veracious new demand for collectible items, which contributed to the taste for bric-a-brac so characteristic of all but the poorest homes. (MacKenzie 1984 : 16) As a result such ‘end of the pier’ souvenirs as Mauchlineware and Goss crested china; imitation jet jewellery and the omnipresent postcard were for the late Victorian and Edwardian working class not just personal souvenirs but also decorative collectables, exhibited on the parlour mantelpiece and a source of aesthetic pleasure as well as gifts for friends. The late Victorian ‘ bric-a-brac ‘ industry is therefore significant because it represents a possible starting point of popular collecting in Britain. In coastal and provincial museums around the country examples of Mauchlineware and crested china are displayed as emblematic of local history but their mode of production, distribution and sale is seldom explored, though, a long time dealer in Goss and crested china, Nicholas Pine, displays his stock ‘the way you would have seen it displayed in an end of the pier Victorian souvenir shop’. Here a purely business enterprise succeeds where the museum, a cultural citadel often fails, by contextualizing the objects they both have in common. Goss and crested china in general was largely inexpensive and appeared on countless working class shelves and mantelpieces and there are currently three separate clubs catering for collectors of crested china which reflects the continuing interest it holds. After the pioneering Walsall ‘People’s Show’ of 1990, social history museums 44 The Origins and Relevance of Popular Collecting up and down the country re-thought their mission statements to include greater involvement of the public (and collectors in particular) in their exhibition policy recent examples of which are Collectomania at the Museum of Science & Industry, Manchester and the Carry On Collecting exhibition at the Museum of London, with some 52 museums around the country due to take part in people’s shows in 1994. Hitherto academic study of private collecting has largely concentrated on the motivations, psychological and semiotic relationships the individual has with their collection. It is my contention that collecting clubs constitute a legitimising structure for collectors, through which their status becomes ‘official’ and it is to the area of the collecting club that my current research pays attention. The purpose being to gauge the extent and diversity of collecting and to what extent this is represented through official collecting clubs and to explore the possibilities and potential for closer collaboration between them and museums. This is especially important given the growing significance of social history in museums. The adoption of improved accessioning practices often leads to the rediscovery of forgotten items in a museums store which then requires further investigation, as the Yorkshire and Humberside Museum Council ‘s 1992 report revealed: .....a great deal of very important cultural and heritage material awaits “discovery” and appreciation in hundreds of provincial museum collections. Ignorance of the possibilities is only reinforced by the lack of sufficient number of detailed analyses of these collection’s and their significance. (Kenyon 1992 : v, iii.vi) This is an area in which collectors as specialists, can be of great assistance and through their clubs offer detailed reference works on many objects unknown to museum professionals. Collectors also often have a great knowledge of social context of the objects which they collect , which can help museums to integrate hitherto overlooked aspects of their collections into a wider field. This can obviously work both ways, not all collectors consider context relevant, whilst others don’t feel ‘equipped’ to explore it. This is an area where museum professionals can be of use to collectors and it also highlights the dangers of treating collectors as a homogeneous block. Increasingly, as the emphasis on such areas as museum outreach work and contemporary collecting becomes greater (see Janes : 1993; Crook : 1993) private collectors will become increasingly important as ‘gatekeepers’ for the museum world. The scenario of museums and collectors clubs working together is not impossible to envisage and would facilitate an important widening of the museums outreach network, enabling museums to gain a comprehensive overview of the sources of temporary loans or permanent acquisitions; establish a mutual knowledge sharing nexus and contribute to the design of the social history pantheon for the next century. The Origins and Relevance of Popular Collecting 45 References Belk, R.W. et. al. (1988) “Collectors And Collecting” Advances In Consumer Research 15 Belk, R.W & Wallendorf, M. (1993) “Of Mice And Men; Gender Identity In Collecting” Ames, K. & Martinez, K. (eds.) Material Culture Of Gender/ Gender of Material Culture Ann Arbour, University of Michigan Press Crook, R. (1993) “Contemporary Collecting” in Flemming, D. et al (eds.), Social History In Museums: A Handbook For Professionals HMSO. Danet, B. & Katriel, T. (1989) “No Two Alike: Play And Aesthetics In Collecting” in Play And Culture 2: Howell, S. (1974) The Seaside MacMillan Janes, D (1993) “Outreach” in Flemming D. et al (eds.), Social History In Museums: A Handbook For Professionals HMSO. Kenyon, J. (1992) Collecting For The 21st Century: A Survey of Social History Collections In The Museums of Yorkshire And Humberside Yorkshire And Humberside Museums Council. Pearce, S. (1992) Museums, Objects And Collections Leicester University Press. Pine, N.J. (1984) Goss And Other Crested China Shire Album No. 120. Polmian, K. (1990) Collectors And Curiosities Polity Press. Viner, D. (1993) “Private Collectors” in Fleming D. et al (eds.), Social History In Museums: A Handbook For Professionals HMSO. 46 Public History and Heritage Interpretation Museological Review, 1, 1, 1994: 46-49 Public History and Heritage Interpretation Bridging the Gap John Carter The discipline of public history originated during the mid 1970’s. It was designed to accommodate existing job market pressures and to equip students with a necessary background that could lead towards careers in the non - academic spheres of employment. The basic objectives of public history are to train and refine a range of skills that can be used in direct vocational application1 and to use the research and analytical techniques and knowledge of the historian in practical ways 2. Public historians can apply such knowledge in the broader community outside of the academic milieu. An emphasis on vocational aspects provides historical training suitable for non teaching jobs in government, industry, commerce and other professions not usually associated with an university degree in history. For many years training in heritage interpretation has been viewed as a vehicle to employment in museums, historic restorations, national parks and other cultural and heritage related institutions. skills of the historian are combined with those of animation and public relations to perfect the heritage interpreter’s craft. While both public history and heritage interpretation find their bases in history, the two disciplines have not necessarily been considered as being compatible. The intent of this article is to investigate common factors and objectives and to suggest a course of action that can draw the two disciplines closer together. If we agree history is an integral part of the humanities, then we can begin to make a connection between public history and heritage interpretation. The National Endowment for the Humanities has pointed out in its Guidelines that: Every historical organisation and museum is an institution that deals fundamentally with the humanities. By continually presenting the intellectual and cultural heritage of human civilization to the public museums, and historical organizations educate - and enhance man’s understanding of himself 3 John C Carter has received degrees in History and Education from the University of Waterloo and the University of Western Ontario. A former teacher and museum curator, he is currently employed as a Museum Advisor for the Ontario Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation. He is currently completing a PhD thesis on museums and education at the University of Leicester Public History and Heritage Interpretation 47 History as a discipline looks for connections, relationships, patterns, ties and concepts. Traditionally historians have relied on two dimensional written evidence to illustrate the depth and scope of human facts and feelings 4. It is not enough however to rely on written sources to gain an understanding of the past. Canadian historian Verschoyle Benson Blake has succinctly underlined this issue: We need something more than archives to tell us how our forefathers lived. To know this, we must preserve buildings, furniture and tools. We must know how these things were made and the way they were, and the uses for which they were intended. To read this in books and picture is a good thing, but it is infinitely better to preserve some of the things themselves. 5 By utilizing three dimensional objects to bring history alive, historians can use heritage interpretation as an important technique in explaining the past. Artifacts can play a special role in teaching humanistic concepts. The use of those concrete examples of our past can offer learning experiences to a world that is otherwise oriented to words and pictures. Observers have commented on the utility of such a connection. Russell B Nye has noted that humanities are becoming more and more aware of how, in their quest for ways to enhance our understanding of ourselves, the museum is not only a useful, but also an indispensable ally6 Professional historians should attempt to share skills, experiences and ethical standards 7 in assisting to develop techniques of heritage interpretation. Through research, analysis and writing, historians can share aspects of their profession in attaining this goal. By cultivating a spirit of partnership among the discipline and approaches in the humanities, we can develop a fuller appreciation for the links between people and their material culture. Finding common ground is the challenge facing both public historians and heritage interpreters. A symbiotic relationship can be created. By using humanities’ themes in presenting museum collections in exhibits, these collections can be made more exciting, intellectually and emotionally stimulating and more meaningful to a wider segment of the public. The broad threads of human experience can bring objects and concepts to life for museum audiences. For historians, three dimensional objects can present relationships that when unravelled give information that goes far beyond the existing evidence of names, dates and places. These facts can be related to one another, placed in a larger perspective, analyzed and then used profitably in heritage interpretation. Such a connection has been implied by Arthur Norberg who has suggested that: The museum setting is a marvellous opportunity for displaying how others in our society and people in other cultural settings express their humanity8 48 Public History and Heritage Interpretation Public history and heritage interpretation can provide unparalleled opportunities for both the historian and the heritage interpreter to work with the public with objects and with cultural institutions. Living history can become an audience developer and attention getter; and interpretive tool and a valid re-enactment of the past. The widespread and growing interest in recreating history is gradually being recognized and accepted by the academic profession 9 Historian Jacques Barzun has provided us with a persuasive reminder of our mandate: The historian who forgets his duty is the one who attempts the treatment of an actual historical question and thinks he has achieved it when he has only rummaged into the past and exhibited his finds...The use of history is not external but internal. Not what you can do with history, but what history does to you is its use. 10 Juxtaposed to this statement, noted museologist, William T Alderson has stressed the importance of good interpretation: It will help visitors understand that the site can reveal about the importance of people or events connected with it, about a way of life or about the cultural tastes of the past 11 It is through these common objectives that the disciplines of public history and heritage interpretation can be drawn closer together. Instead of pursuing interests in divergent ways and remaining separated by disinterest and / or misunderstanding, a partnership between public historians and heritage interpreters can be further developed. 12 With co-operation between those working in the fields of public history and heritage interpretation, a valuable connecting process can be formed linking objects, experiences and observations. This strengthened bond will serve to benefit both professions in an united cause to bring heritage awareness to the forefront. Public history and heritage interpretation can become important tools in the process of bridging the gap between the two professions. The separation which has existed in the past is now gradually being closed. Such positive direction indeed heralds a fresh outlook which will auger well for the common purpose of both disciplines. Public History and Heritage Interpretation 49 1 Peter J Beck “History Goes Public” Times Educational Supplement January 21st 1983 2 Kenneth M McLaughlin “History and Its Publics” Ontario Historical Society Bulletin Autumn 1986 p.1 3 Cited in Russel B Nye “The Humanities and the Museum: Definitions and Connections” Zipporah W Collins (ed.) Museums, Adults And The Humanities Washington 1981 p.7 4 For additional information on the “language of history” and alternate learning styles, see John Myers, History, Toronto 1986 pp 2-3; Barbara Y Newson, “The Museum as an Educator and the Education of Teachers” Teachers College Record February 1978 p.490; Valorie Beer and David D Marsh, “A Non-School Curriculum Model Illustrated In A Museum Setting” Journal Of Curriculum And Supervision Spring 1988 p.235 and John C Carter “Teaching Teachers To Use Museums” Heritage Canada Impact May/June 1993 V.5 #3 p.4 5 Quoted in A. H. Richardson Conservation For The People Toronto 1974 p.101. For more on teaching history by examination and interpretation of artifacts, see Thomas J Schlereth Artifacts And The American Past Nashville, Tenn. 1981; Patrick Norris History By Design Austin Tx., 1985 pp. 39-46 and James Deetz, Small Things Forgotten New York 1977 6 Nye “Humanities” p.13 7 L Rogers “Public History: Personal Responsibility” Cultural Resources Management Bulletin February 1988; p.3 8 Arthur L Norberg “Humanities Themes and a Process Approach to Exhibits” Collins (ed.) Museums; p.45 9 Ken G Pryke “Public History Programmes” Canadian Historical Association Newsletter Summer 1987; p.11 10 Quoted in Freeman Tilden Interpreting Our Heritage Chapel Hill N.C. 1977; p.25 11 William T Alderson and Shirley Payne Low Interpretation Of Historic Sites Nashville, Tenn. 1976; p.26 12 Gregg Finley “The Museum and the Historian: Toward A New Partnership” Canadian Museums Association Gazette. Spring 1978 p.7. For the definitive work on connections between memory, history and relics of the past, see David Lowenthal, The Past is A Foreign Country Cambridge 1988 50 Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 Museological Review, 1, 1, 1994: 50-69 Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece 1829-1909: A First Approach Dr. Andromache Gazi Introduction This article presents the results of a doctoral thesis submitted by the author at the Department of Museum Studies in Leicester (Gazi 1993). The study had a double aim: first, to provide a critical insight into the way the Greek archaeological heritage was presented through Greek museum displays 1 of the period 18291909; and second, to outline the history of Greek archaeological museums during the above period. 1829 was the date of foundation of the first archaeological museum in the country. 1909 was chosen as a time limit because it signals a major change in Greek political affairs (the “Ghoudi revolt”2), and because it marks the beginning of a period of decline in museum development, which followed a decade of rapid expansion in museum building. Interest in this research was stimulated by the following question: What kind of attitudes, official or private, can be discerned towards the archaeological past and its material vestiges in Greece, a country where the distinctive nature of this past, that is its length, its cultural radiance and its international reputation, have given it a symbolic significance? The question becomes more important when one thinks of two further points: the effect that the particular view taken of ancient Greece in Western Europe had in the actual formation of the modern Greek state, and the fact that reminiscences of the Greek antiquity dominated the intellectual and the political life of the new state and imbued, in varying degrees, the consciousness of the modern Greeks. More specifically then, the initial question was reformulated so as to examine concepts of the Greek antiquity and attitudes to the Greek archaeological heritage in nineteenth and early twentieth century Greece, and the ways in which these were promulgated in the country. A complete research of this kind would require examining a broad variety of areas where attitudes to the archaeological heritage are, or may be, manifested; for example, the management of archaeological resources (including archaeological legislation and administration, excavation rationales, protection of sites and monuments, the role of museums, dis[play philosophies and practices), the purpose of archaeology as a field of study, etc. However, museum displays were considered to be an ideal field for this sort of study, because, as Dr. Andromache Gazi, BA, M.Phil. (Cantab.),Ph.D., Lemessou 43, 15669 Athens, Greece Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 51 contemporary museological thinking widely accepts, exhibitions may disclose more about their own time and culture than they do about the past, which they are supposed to represent. Museums belong to what Althusser has termed “ideological state apparatuses”; that is, institutions, like schools and information and communication networks, which represent the dominant ideology and through which state authority is controlled and propagated (Meltzer 1981). In this respect, museums are susceptible to ideological manipulation. What they present about the past or how they tell their “story” is never neutral; rather, it may give us insights into concepts or attitudes towards this past, otherwise invisible. Displays, in particular, are a mode of interpretation which may consciously try to promulgate an ideological message or may implicitly reflect an ideological system, through certain display elements or structures (Meltzer 1981). In this way displays become an entirely new ideological artefact, an ideological statement which requires analysis in its own right (Skramstadt 1978; Leone 1981; see also Pearce 1992: 136-43). In this respect, displays are not a reflection of the past, but of aspects of the present. Therefore, an analysis of display form and content may reveal invisible facets of ideology as well as the kind of “meaning” generated by them. This initially involved discussing the ideological predisposition of the Greeks towards their heritage. The present study focused on the official expressions of ideology to the antiquities, which, as research has shown, is well manifested, and made only slight attempts to account for the public opinion, for which there is a considerable gap of evidence. The analysis centred around two axes: a level of intention, comprising all official expressions of ideology like the state policy and legislation and other authoritative documents; and a level of reality, comprising the application of such ideological concepts, especially in archaeological practices and museum displays, which by being “tangible” may reveal varied facets. The Greeks and their Past A question of crucial importance was whether or not the Western idealisation of the Greek antiquity3 had any impact on the Greeks’ perception of their past4. It has been shown that the reverence of the classical tradition in the Western world has indeed affected the Greeks’ apprehension of their own past, at least in as far as aesthetic appreciation of the antiquities and the approach to display was concerned. However, Greek awareness of the affinity of modern Hellenism with classical Greece was also conditioned by the Greek intellectual tradition, and the recollections of antiquity in folk legends and the oral tradition. Before the 1821 Revolution the notion that modern Greeks were the direct heirs of classical Greek culture, which it was their role to revive, had been advanced by the scholars of the neo-Hellenic Enlightenment 5, to whom the turn to the ancestors was 52 Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 linked with the achievement of independence. At a popular level, the affinity with the Greek past was brought to mind by the presence of the monuments and the oral tradition 6. Antiquities and national self-consciousness When the new Greek state was formed in 1830, for the first time after four centuries 7, the need to establish and pronounce its national identity as quite distinctive from that of other nations emerged as a fundamental political and ideological priority. Let us not forget that the structuring of a distinctive national identity and the subsequent standardisation of a national “tradition” as unique and crystallised is the only way for any new political formation to justify itself. In the Greek case, the legitimation of the existence of modern Greece was its link with classical Greece and the obvious proof of this link were the antiquities. We can thus understand why for the state the monuments were the only “ready” national symbols for use and why, in an effort to validate its raison d’ être, the state promoted as authentic national tradition the tradition inherited from ancient Greece. What is significant is that even when the ideological perception of the Greek past was expanded to incorporate Byzantium and recent Hellenism8, classical antiquity still remained a powerful model and the sense of a national identity continued to be sustained along the notion of affinities with ancient Greece (Gazi 1993: 48-49). This explains why Greek archaeological museums were exclusively oriented towards classical antiquity, not only during the first decades after the formation of the Greek state, but even much later. The dominant attitude to the antiquities, as mainly expressed by the Archaeological Society of Athens, is conveyed through the use of the relevant language. The antiquities are described as: “Memories of the ancestral glory”; “Wonderful works of our forefathers”, “sacred fragments”; “Relics of the ancestral art and glory”; “Distinguished products of the incomparable art of our ancestors”; “Invaluable ancestral treasures”; “Sacred heirlooms of antiquity”; “Sacred relics of the Ancient Art”, etc. (Gazi 1993: 50-51). In other words, the antiquities were conceived as magnificent remnants of a glorious past; they were seen and revered as sacred relics. The persistence of this view throughout the period under study is striking and help us understand the art-historical orientation of Greek archaeological displays. Resuming, central to the Greek ideology was the view of the monuments as paramount symbols of national pride and identity. That the monuments were the very reason for the existence of modern Greece was a view widely held not only among Greeks9, but also by Europeans who have often remarked that Greece was saved in consideration of her past. In this respect, the efforts to protect the monuments were not only a fundamental priority, but also a moral obligation: that is, the duty to prove the modern Greeks worthy of their heritage in the eyes of the world10. Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 53 The development of archaeological museums Within this frame, the Greek museums assumed their paramount role as “trustees” and depositories of the national antiquities (Archaeological Law of 1834). Later developed the idea of the museum as a place from which archaeological knowledge could be diffused and where the public could develop appreciation of the fine arts. It is important to note that throughout the period under study museums were conceived as places accessible to all members of society: they were established to the public benefit. What is more, according to the Archaeological Society, the display of antiquities was legitimate only if they would be accessible to a wide public. The theoretical orientation of the Greek museum was thus tripartite: deposition, education and public benefit. In practice, however, the educational and public mission of museums mainly translated into the provision of extended opening hours, and the publication of catalogues for public use. Yet, although museum legislation covered many of these issues, an overall state policy for museums was never articulated. Museum legislation applied only to the Athenian museums, while provincial museums, apart from being ascribed a merely depository role, functioned without a legal frame. Plate 1.The Temple of Hephaestus, known as the Theseion, was the first state museum in Athens. View from the South, ca. 1850-55 (Benaki Museum, Photographic Archive, no. Within this vaguely defined structure, the main initiative towards developing museums in the country was taken by the Archaeological Society of Athens. The pioneer period “pioneer period” (1829-1874) of museum development was characterised by the effort to collect antiquities and safeguard them in “museums”11. No coherent programme of museum development existed; rather individual solutions were adopted as each particular case permitted. Things improved during the formative period “formative period” (1874-1900) (1874-1900), which saw the organisation of the large Athenian 54 Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 museums, especially the National Archaeological Museum and the Acropolis Museum, and the creation of museums in the provinces (the first museum outside the capital was founded at Sparta in 1874). Yet it was only during what we have expansion period period” (1900-1909) that museum development seemed called the “expansion to be based on a more coherent programme and that a marked improvement in museum practices was observed. This was due not only to the almost exclusive involvement of the Archaeological Society in museum matters, but also to the appointment of permanent museum personnel for the first time. More specifically, by 1909 a total of thirty four archaeological museums had been established around Greece 12. Twenty three out of these museums were funded by the Archaeological Society and only eleven by the state. The biggest concentration of museums (ten) was in Attica, and then followed the Peloponnese with seven museums, Sterea Hellas and the Cyclades with four, the Ionian islands with two, Euboia, Thessaly and Crete with one. Most museums had an urban character, but almost a third of them were site museums. The majority of museums (twenty-three overall) and especially those founded during the period 1900-1909 were housed in purpose-built premises whose construction was funded either by the state or by the Archaeological Society. Where no specific building provisions were made, museums were housed in public premises (Plate 1). The construction of some major museums was funded or co-funded by individuals (e.g., Olympia, Delphoi, Herakleion, Volos). Plate 2. The National Museum, ca. 1900 (Benaki Museum, Photographic Archive, V.51.40). Museum architecture was characteristic for its simplicity. There was a taste for neo-classical architecture (Plates 2, 3 & 4), but nothing here recalls the impressive facades and elaborate interior decoration of many European museums built Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 55 after the ideals of classical Greek architecture (e.g. the British Museum, the Altes Museum in Berlin, the Glyptothek in Munich). Even the more elaborate Greek museums were characterised by plain facades, simple interiors and intelligible floor plans. The same principle of simplicity applied also in interior decoration. Plate 3. The Chalkis Museum, Euboia (Post card, beginning of the 20th century) The lack of museum personnel in the contemporary sense meant that museums were organised by the regional Ephors of Antiquities, who were employed either by the Archaeological Service or the Archaeological Society. The first specific museum post was established in 1877 for the museums of the Archaeological Society, but permanent museum staff was appointed only at the beginning of the twentieth century (Gazi 1993: 119, 295-96). Security provisions are not documented, except for the museum at the Polytechnic School of Athens and the Numismatic Museum (Gazi 1993: 119, 182). It seems that, as a rule, museum keys were kept by the museum guardian, or by some reliable person in the community, who would open the museum upon demand (Gazi 1993: 95, 205, 218 & 221). Displaying archaeology Theoretical perceptions Research showed that a comprehensive theoretical conception of how the Greek archaeological heritage was to be displayed and presented in museums was neve explicitly formulated during the years examined here. Yet museum legislation 56 Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 Plate 4. The Sparta Museum soon after completion, ca. 1876. (Courtesy of N. Gheorghiades, Sparta). and the use of language did attest to the existence of a certain, if implicit, display philosophy. Museum legislation assigned a didactic and aesthetic character to displays. Aesthetic presentation was also favoured in the display terminology of the time, which abounded in expressions such as “tasteful”, “decent”, “appropriate”, “elegant” and the like in reference to displays. If, then, we may talk about a display philosophy, this was limited to a preference for orderly and aesthetically pleasing displays. As for the didactic character of displays this was seen as instructive in an extended sense: displays were seen as having the potential to generate and promote appreciation and taste for the antiquities (Gazi 1993: 69). What remained to be seen was how, if at all, these theoretical concepts materialised; that is, to examine if the actual displays complied with the abovedelineated attitude or not, and what, if any, was the message promulgated through them??. This required a detailed and comparative analysis of the entire corpus of Greek archaeological displays studied here. Display practices and patterns This analysis drew considerably, if loosely, on an amended version of Susan Pearce’s model for artefact study (Pearce 1986), which had already proved to work well in exhibitions’ analysis (Beraha 1988). According to this model each exhibition may be seen as a piece of material culture, the complete understanding of which requires the analysis of its various properties, like history, provenance, material of construction, place in the environment, cultural significance and Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 57 interpretation. For the purposes of this research, display properties were set as follows: display history, spatial layout, organisation, display hardware (that is, the surfaces used for the display of objects), supporting material (that is, any further information on the objects on display), display environment, and overall significance. In terms of spatial layout, early displays were organised according to the availability and convenience of space. Although a rough typological classification was adopted since the very beginning, it seems that a preference for chronological layout of objects gradually took over. The general organisation pattern later crystallised as either chronological / typological (arrangement of exhibits by chronology and within that by typology) or typological / chronological (arrangement by type and within that by chronology). Alternatively, objects were organised by provenance. Once this main pattern was established, exhibits were displayed according to the material of construction, occasionally by thematic order, and generally by size (Plate 5). Usually, the spatial layout of objects was linear (Plate 6). The prevailing tendency was to display as many objects as possible (e.g. the majority of excavation finds) and from the numbers of objects on display, which are known for some museums, we assume that overcrowding was very common. Plate 5. National Museum. Display of reliefs and sculpture in room XVII, 1893. (DAI Athens, N.M. 131) 58 Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 Plate 6. National Museum. Display of funerary vases in room XIII, before 1906. (National Museum, Photographic Archive, unnumbered) The same type of display hardware -simpler in small museums and more sumptuous in large ones- was generally used. This hardware initially comprised simple, “improvised”, surfaces (e.g. wooden shelves and scaffoldings) or surfaces which were already available (e.g. the desks at the museum in the University of Athens). The construction of proper display hardware was initiated by the Archaeological Society for its museum at the Varvakeion Lycaeum. Usual display surfaces comprised stone platforms projecting from the lower part of the walls, stone or marble pedestals and bases, and wooden or plaster wall-shelves for the display of sculpture, architectural members, inscriptions and vases; wall cabinets, display cases and tables for the display of vases, figurines, bronzes, coins, jewellery, etc.; glass cases for the display of sculpture or other objects; and simple cupboards for the display of various objects (Plates 7 & 8). What varied considerably was the amount of information which supported the exhibits. Usually, the only information provided were catalogue numbers. Beyond this, the extent and the quality of informative material depended on the scale and the appeal of each museum. The use of labels is attested only for the National Museum, the Numismatic Museum and the museum at Argostoli, but is uncertain for other museums. Not surprisingly, the most comprehensive displays were found in the National Museum, where documentation included catalogue numbers, labels, case-headings, the names of rooms along with names of artists or donors painted on the walls, and plaster casts. Similarly documented were the displays in the Delphoi Museum. Above average was also the level of information at Olympia, Epidauros, Volos, Herakleion and Argostoli. Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 59 Although textual information was minimal, supplement to the displays was at times provided in the form of casts, which were often displayed instead of the originals (when the latter had been transported to the National Museum); plaster reconstructions of missing pieces of original sculpture; scaled reconstructions of a sculptured group; and painted reconstructions, which were used as a visual supplement to the displays. Plate 7. Thera Museum, Cyclades. Vase room. (Gaertringen and Wilski 1904: fig.21) Display environment was simple and unobtrusive. Walls were usually painted in a monochrome neutral colour. The use of red, for example, is attested for the museums of Acropolis and Olympia, and for the Mycenean Room at the National Museum (Gazi 1993: 152, 208 & 170). At times a second zone was distinguished, as in the Volos Museum. Floors were either cemented or paved with plain blocks of stone according to each museum’s financial resources. A very popular pavement, for example, comprised alternating black and white blocks of stone. Tile mosaics were used in exceptional cases, like in the first Bronze Room at the National Museum, in the central hall of the Olympia Museum (Plate 9) and at the Epidauros Museum. A more ornate wall and floor decoration was adopted only in some of the rooms of the National Museum, such as the Large Mycenaean Hall and the first Vase Room; but even there the decoration did not impose on the displays. Lighting was natural through side windows. The use of a skylight, which was so common in European museums, is attested only once, in the first Bronze Room of the National Museum. Finally, benches and chairs were at times provided for 60 Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 the visitor’s comfort; whereas in the Acropolis, the National and the Olympia museums visitors could rest on leather coaches (Plates 9 & 10). Herakleion Museum, Crete. View of the central hall. (Post card from the 1910s). Display profiles Overall, the analysis has shown that although display profiles varied, the general prerequisites for chronological and typological arrangement of the collections and their “orderly” and “elegant” display were more or less accomplished. Display patterns gradually took a common form as one period succeeded another, but this was not necessarily reflected in the overall display profile. For example, store-like displays are observed even during the so-called expansion period of museum development (1900-1909), whereas well arranged and comprehensive ones were set up from as early as the 1870s. The discrepancies observed were the result of various factors, like space availability and suitability, financial deficiencies, lack of personnel, technical difficulties, etc. Clearly, major museums were granted all the attention and the resources necessary for their decent organisation and maintenance. This is especially true for the Acropolis Museum and the National Museum. Outside the capital, comprehensive displays were usually set up in museums of major importance, like the site museums of Olympia, Epidauros and Delphoi and the museums at Herakleion and Volos, but were also created in smaller museums like the ones at Tegea and Thera. It was further observed that displays which were set up by the Archaeological Society were on the whole better arranged than displays in state museums. Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 61 As a rule, then, the general profile of a museum and its displays depended not so much on theoretical or practical expertise as on other factors, namely: a museum’s general importance and appeal, financial resources, space suitability and personnel in charge. Yet the ultimate responsibility for shaping museum displays rested in the hands of the individual archaeologists. What is striking is that many of the Greek archaeologists who set up museum displays had studied in Western Europe, and some of them were specifically sent to visit museums in Italy at the beginning of this century (Gazi 1993: Appendix 11). Perhaps, then, it would be possible to trace some West-European influences on their work in Greece. Research showed that a European influence on the Greek displays was evident not so much in practical terms as in the general approach to display, and this approach was followed as each individual case permitted. Olympia Museum, Peloponnese. View of the central hall to the North; beginning of the 20th century. (Foto Alinari, Rome, no. 24820). Displays’ significance Displays as form and as aesthetic value At first glance, Greek archaeological displays of the period under study were object-oriented, linear, classificatory, non-informative, and generally aesthetic. Displays were object-oriented in the sense that the objects were the meaning for the display (Velarde 1992: 662). This becomes clearer, if we consider that, in 62 Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 contrast to most their European counterparts, which derived from collections private or other, in Greece museums were the very reason for collecting (Gazi 1993: 62-63). Therefore, it was natural that they would put on show everything they held, in most cases with no selection. This was, anyway, a typical characteristic of the nineteenth century “show-case” museum, where displays were nothing more than simple showings of objects. Related to this is another formal trend of early Greek displays: their strong linear and classificatory character. Peponis and Hedin (1982) have shown that linear and classification schemes of presentation occur at an early phase of museum development, when what is presented to the visitor is everything the expert knows. The concept of interpretation, which allows for more complex systems of spatial layout, may only be introduced when knowledge acquisition is separated from its transmission; that is, when the knowledge of things is separated from the knowledge of how to display things. In this respect, the lack of interpretation in the Greek displays of the period 1829-1909 is historically explained, if one considers the evolution of Greek archaeology as a discipline. The paramount purpose of early Greek archaeology was to collect all scattered antiquities and then secure them in museums. Displays were but one aspect of this concern for protecting the antiquities; therefore, they showed nothing more than what the archaeologists had collected or discovered. More may be said to elucidate the lack of interpretation. Nineteenth-century Greek archaeology was tied to the ideological and political intention of proving the diachronic continuity of Hellenism (Gazi 1993: 46) As Kotsakis (1991: 68) has rightly pointed out, this ethnocentric ideological construct was so powerful and self-sufficient that it legitimised the absence of any theoretical orientation in Greek archaeology. Such a theoretical orientation would have been geared towards a more abstract discussion on the nature of historical processes and would have attempted to link the Greek past with past human activities on a larger geographical scale. What happened in Greece, instead, is that continuity as a focus of research -in archaeology, history and folk-studies- became so evident that it required no justification. For archaeology, it was enough to unearth the very tokens of the Greek past, the antiquities, and then present them to the public. No interpretation was required since the symbolic nature of the antiquities as national emblems was, supposedly, given. Within this frame archaeology was displayed as art-history. Yet this was not unusual: according to the prevailing nineteenth and early twentieth century display philosophy, archaeological material was exhibited as “art” rather than as “archaeology”, with the emphasis on aesthetics rather than on information (Jenkins 1986; Walling 1987). Nowhere was the aesthetic aspect of displays so manifest as in some rooms of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens; for example, the decoration of the Large Mycenaean Hall imitated the interior of a Mycenaean palace and looked more like a treasure-room which induces awe and admiration (cf. Pearce 1992: 202-203). Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 63 Therefore, if a “message” was to be read in the Greek displays this was initially aesthetic, which means that, consciously or not, the actual displays were in accordance with the theoretical scheme for the display of archaeology, as outlined above. Yet beyond aesthetics displays of archaeology had obviously some other connotations. Plate 10. Acropolis Museum, Athens. Room of the “korai’, ca. 1900 (Acropolis Museum, Photographis Archive, unnumbered). D isplays as F unction As we have seen, one of the paramount aims of the Greek society of the time was the protection of the monuments. This was closely related to the purpose of confirming Greece’s kinship to her classical heritage as well as her efficiency in securing this heritage in the eyes of the world. The country’s institutions were, naturally, adapted to this ideological and political purpose. The educational system, for example, favoured the learning of Classics: ancient Greek, Latin, ancient Greek history and philosophy predominated over the teaching of science and practical subjects, and even over recent history and the official language (see Tsoukalas 1987: 550-67). The Archaeological Service and the Archaeological Society were adapted to the same purpose of asserting the national identity through excavation, collection or simple gathering of antiquities, museum foundation and displays set up. Within this frame, displays did not only preserve the antiquities in physical terms, but offered a visual authentication of the ancient heritage. That such an authentication was ideologically and politically necessary, it has already been discussed. To the same end, displays had, implicitly at least, an educational role 64 Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 to fulfil in that they were expected to promote national consciousness -through the exposure of the public to the remains of the country’s cultural heritage- and to diffuse archaeological knowledge (see Gazi 1993: 69 & 71). Archaeological displays were thus adapted to the ideological structure of the new Greek state, which was based on a reverence for the ancient glory of Greece and the attempt to appropriate this glory for modern purposes. D isplays as I deological S tatements At first sight, however, one cannot discern an overt ideological message in this. The displays were set up in such a way so as to conform with principles of decency and order; the presentational mode was externally neutral. What, then, was the possible ideological message that the visitor could read behind the displays? We should here be reminded that displays are, by virtue of their ostensibly neutral character, an area particularly prone to ideological manipulation and thus most influential in the eyes of the public. As Karp (1991: 13) reminds us, museums and their exhibitions are morally neutral only in principle; in practice they always make moral statements. The alleged innate neutrality of exhibitions is the very quality that enables them to become instruments of power as well as instruments of education and experience. Two further points should be reminded here. Let us first recall that antiquities, as artefacts, acquire “meaning” because of their intrinsic historical content. They are “the real thing” and as such exercise an immediate and irresistible appeal to the viewer. Further, because of their genuinely authentic relationship with a past era and a past society, antiquities may be used to validate present ideological and political purposes. Let us also remind that the “meaning” of exhibits is conditioned by what has rightly been described as the “museum effect” (Alpers 1991): the effect that the exhibition surroundings have on our perception of the objects on display. The mode of installation, the exhibition design and arrangement, are all factors which act independently of the exhibits themselves and may either help or impede our appreciation and understanding of them (see also Saumarez Smith 1989: 12). In the light of these observations, we may now attempt to provide an answer to our question. We have often noted that the new Greek state stressed the affinity of modern Greece with her classical ancestors. This, at least, was the standard ideological position during the crucial decades of the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s. One would expect, however, that in the second half of the century, when the ideological vision of the state was enlarged to include Byzantium and recent Hellenism, this change of attitude would be reflected in museums. As research has shown, this was not the case. On the contrary, museums preserved the stereotypical and, apparently, deeply rooted sense of affinity with just one aspect of the Greek civilisation: the classical (cf. Polites 1993). The antiquities were the proof of this affinity and as such had obvious ideological Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 65 and political value. It was their genuine historicity which gave them a symbolic significance. In keeping with the dominant concept which regarded them as “sacred relics”, the antiquities were displayed as cultural treasures, testimonies of a glorious past, witnesses to the ancient heritage of which modern Greece was the recipient. It was against this ideological background that the effort taken in creating “decent” display settings, “appropriate” to the historical and artistic value of the exhibits, is to be understood. Most displays were characterised by an unmistakable aesthetic neutrality which must have resulted in creating feelings of reverence rather than appreciation. The implications of this approach, is that the affinity with the past was thus curtailed rather than enhanced in the eyes of the public. It may further be argued that the neutrality of presentation, the “museum effect”, resulted in creating distance rather than understanding (Gazi 1993: 335). Concluding, the Greek displays of archaeology were not free from ideological connotations. By their ostensibly neutral presentational mode they did, in fact, reinforce and perpetuate the dominant art-historical and idealised view of the Greek antiquities; a view which served the ideological purpose of asserting the Greek national identity through emphasising the affinities of modern Greece to her classical past. In other words, displays did not diverge from the official ideological stance of the Greek state to the Greek archaeological heritage, a stance which emphasised Greece’s classical inheritance. In this respect, and as far as their ideological orientation was concerned, Greek museums remained conservative. Abbreviations DAI Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. Gaertringen and Wilski Gaertringen, von H. and Wilski, P. 1904. Stadtgeschichte von Thera. Berlin, G. von Reimer. PAE Praktika tis en Athinais Archaiologikis Etaireias (Minutes of the Archaeological Society of Athens) Bibliography Alpers, S. 1991. The Museum as a Way of Seeing. In: Karp, I. and Lavine, St. (eds.) Exhibiting Cultures. The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Smithsonian Institution, 25-32. Andreades, Gh. 1989. Antigone’s Children. Memory and Ideology in Modern Greece. (In Greek). Athens, Kastaniotes. 66 Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 Angelomatis-Tsougarakis, H. 1990. The Eve of the Greek Revival. British Travellers’ Perceptions of Early Nineteenth-Century Greece. London, Routledge. Beraha, E. 1988. Exhibitions as Artefacts . MA Thesis. Leicester University, Department of Museum Studies. Clogg, R. 1992. A Concise History of Greece. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Crook, J-M. 1972. The Greek Revival. Neo-classical Attitudes in British Architecture 1760-1870. London, J. Murray. Dakin, D. 1972. The Unification of Greece 1770-1923. London, Ernes Benn Ltd. Demaras, K. 1977. The ideological structure of the new Greek state,, the heritage of the past, the new realities, the new needs. In: Ekdotike Athinon (ed.) History of the Greek Nation, (In Greek), ÉÃ’, 455-84. Gazi, A. 1993. Archaeological Museums in Greece 1829-1909. The Display of Archaeology. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. Leicester University, Department of Museum Studies. Jenkins, I. 1986. Greek and Roman Life at the British Museum. Museums Journal 82 (2), 67-69. Jenkyns, R. 1980. The Victorians and Ancient Greece. Oxford, Blackwell. Karp, I. 1991. Culture and Representation. In: Karp, I. and Lavine, St. (eds.) Exhibiting Cultures. The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Smithsonian Institution, 11-24. Kitromilides, P. 1984. Ideological trends and political aims: perspectives from the Greek 19th century. In: Tsaousis, D. (ed.) Aspects of 19th Century Modern Greek Society. (In Greek). Athens, Hestia, 23-38. Kotsakis, K. 1991. The powerful past: theoretical trends in Greek archaeology. In: Hodder, I. (ed.) Archaeological Theory in Europe. London, Routledge, 65-90. Leone, M. 1981. Archaeology’s Relationship to the Present and the Past. In: Gould, R. and Schiffer, M. (eds.) Modern Material Culture. The Archaeology of Us. New York, Academic Press, 5-13. Lowenthal, D. 1988. Classical antiquities as national and global heritage. Antiquity 62, 726-35. Meltzer, D. 1981. Ideology and Material Culture. In: Gould, R. and Schiffer, M. (eds.) Modern Material Culture. The Archaeology of Us. New York, Academic Press, 113-25. Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 67 Pearce, S. 1986. “Thinking About Things: Approaches to the Study of Artefacts”. Museums Journal 85, 2, 198-201. Pearce, S. 1992. Museums, Objects and Collections: A Cultural Study. Leicester, Leicester University Press. Peponis, J. and Hedin, J. 1982. “The Layout of Theories in the Natural History Museum”, 9H 2, 3, 21-25. Petropoulos, J. 1976. Hellenism and the 1st Greek War of Liberation (1821-1830). Continuity and Change. Thessaloniki, Institute of Balkan Studies, 19-41. Petropoulos, J. 1978. The Modern Greek State and the Greek Past. In: Vryonis, S. (ed.) The “Past” in Medieval and Modern Greek Culture. Malibu, Undena Publications, 163-76. Polites, A. 1993. Romantic Years. Ideologies and Mentalities in Greece 1830-1880. (In Greek). Theory and Studies of History, 14. Athens, Mnemon. Saumarez Smith, Ch. 1989. Museums, Artefacts, and Meanings. In: Vergo, P. (ed.) The New Museology. London, Reaktion Books, 6-21. Skopetea, E. 1988. The “Exemplary Kingdom” and the “Great Idea”. Aspects of the National Problem in Greece (1830-1880). (In Greek). Athens, Polytypo. Skramstadt, H. 1978. Interpreting Material Culture: A view from the other side of the glass. In: Quimby, I. (ed.) Material Culture and the Study of American Life. New York, Norton and Co., 175-200. Tsigakou, F.- M. 1981. The Rediscovery of Greece. Travellers and Painters of the Romantic Era. London, Thames and Hudson. Tsoukalas, K. 1987. Dependence and Reproduction. The Social Role of Educational Mechanisms in Greece. (In Greek). Athens, Themelio. Velarde, G. 1992. Exhibition Design. In: Thompson, M. (ed.) The Manual of Curatorship. London: Butterworths, 660-69. Walling, C. 1987. The Display of Classical Archaeology in Museums: Past, Present, and Future. MA Thesis. Leicester University, Department of Museum Studies. 68 Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 Notes 1 The term “display” being far more general than the term “exhibition” (which usually refers to a series of displays which explore a theme), it was adopted in this study as more appropriate to describe the early presentations of Greek archaeological material (see Gazi 1993: 28). The beginning of the twentieth century in Greece was characterised by mobilisations aiming at curtailing the royal power and reforming the political life of the country. These attempts culminated in the 1909 “Ghoudi revolt”, after which Eleutherios Venizelos, one of the most prominent figures in the history of modern Greece, was recalled from Crete to undertake the reorganisation of the state (Dakin 1972: 183-89). 2 The process of idealisation of ancient Greece began with the revival of classical studies during the Renaissance, was given a new impetus with Antiquarianism and the expansion of European trade throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and reached its peak with the spread of neo-classicism in the eighteenth century. Bibliography on this subject is extremely rich; the reader may find useful the books by Crook (1972), Jenkyns (1980), Tsigakou (1981), and Angelomatis-Tsougarakis (1990). 3 It is often held, for example, that “the awe in which Western world has held the classical tradition has shaped and reshaped Greek apprehension of their own past” (Lowenthal 1988: 733) or that a “sense of the past” was imported in Greece by Western Europe (Clogg 1992: introduction). 4 This was a movement (ca. 1770-1821) advanced by Greek scholars who lived in Western Europe, in the Ionian Islands and in areas of the Ottoman Empire north and east of the line which would later constitute the boundary of the new Greek state. Inspired by intellectual developments and ideals in Europe, especially in France, they sought to employ Western thought (which included the glorification of classical Greece) in addressing the modern Greek condition (Petropoulos 1976: 22-24; 1978: 164). The definitive treatise on the subject is Demaras, K., 1989. Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment (In Greek). 5th edition. Athens, Hermes. 5 The presence of the monuments had always been an important factor in confirming the sense of affinity with the past and exercised a strong influence on the imagination of the Greeks. In the Greek consciousness the monuments were an indispensable element of the landscape. a “garment of the place” (see Andreades 1989: 270) and as such should remain in situ. 6 Nineteenth century folk tradition often sees the monuments as living entities which exercise mysterious powers against anybody attempting to remove them. Ancient relics were also thought of as guards and protectors of the land, whose removal causes catastrophe. For a comprehensive treatise on the subject see Archaeological Museums and Displays in Greece, 1829-1909 69 Kakrides, I. 1989. The Ancient Greeks in Modern Greek Folk Tradition. (In Greek). Athens, MIET. See, also, Kyriakides, St. 1965. Greek Folk Studies. Part A. Monuments of Speech. (In Greek). Athens, Academy of Athens. Archive of Folk Studies, no. 8. After a seven-year Revolution against the Ottoman occupation, Greece was established as an independent state under hereditary monarchy with the Treaty of Adrianoupolis (1829) and the Protocol of London (1830). 7 An intellectual process which had started in the 1840s and 1850s and culminated in the publication of the History of the Greek Nation by K. Paparreghopoulos in 1860-1874. To that date, prevalent theories on the classical inheritance of modern Greece could not but discard Byzantium as an unhappy period. Now the old suspicion would languish and Paparreghopoulos’ work would establish the diachronic continuity of Hellenism: ancient Greek world, mediaeval and modern (see Demaras 1977: 474; Kitromilides 1984: 32-33; Skopetea 1988: 251-71). 8 “Gentlemen, it is to these stones, which thanks to Praxiteles, Pheidias, Ictinus, Agoracritus and Myron, are more precious than agate and diamonds, that we owe our political renaissance” (PAE 1838: 34). With these words I. Rizos-Neroulos, minister of Education and president of the Archaeological Society, addressed the second meeting of the Society, held in the Parthenon in 1838, while the Dean of the University exclaimed in 1868: “It is about time that the national realises that it owes its political existence to archaeology” (Phrearites 1868: 388). 9 “Gentlemen, we who boast about the heritage of our ancient excellence . . . would be considered unworthy of our autonomy . . . if, once included among the civilised nations, would not turn our attention to these sacred fragments” (PAE 1840: 21). And, “We Greeks owe, to a large extent, our autonomy to our glorious name and the immortal monuments of art, which we inherited from our ancient ancestors . . . a sacred duty is imposed on us all to think of and guard the antiquities as sacred relics, if we want to prove to the civilised world that we became an independent State deservedly and that we deserve to be called Greeks” (Circular no. 11538, Guidelines on the applications of the BXMÝ antiquities law, 1899). 10 11 The distinction between “museum” and “collection” in nineteenth century Greece presents various difficulties, if only because of their interchangeable use at the time: the application of the terms “museum” and “collection” was not based on any consistent criteria and this often resulted in the same institution being referred to as both “collection” and “museum”. For the period examined here and for the purposes of this study, the basic requirements for the attribution of the term “museum” were the existence of a collection, some kind of permanent premises, a basic system of registration, some kind of display of the collections and provision for public accessibility (Gazi 1993: 28-29). 12 However, only twenty eight museums were permanent, since the first National Museum at Aegina, the Theseion and the four museums of the Archaeological Society ceased functioning after their collections were transferred to the National Archaeological Museum. 70 The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self Museological Review, 1, 1, 1994: 70-88 The Classical Past, The Modern Greeks and Their National Self; Projecting Identity Through Museum Exhibitions. Maria Mouliou Archaeology, as a social science and as a rhetoric (Shanks & Tilley 1987:68), cannot be an apolitical pastime, the same way the past cannot have an independent existence from the present, as there is a kind of “‘infinite sequence of rememorizations’ of bricolage and debricolage” (Chapman et al 1989:6). To discuss Greek archaeology and museum practice and their place within the Greek social and political milieu and the Western worldsystem, one must first stress the complexity and diversity of that relation. The descriptive, pragmatic, atheoretical, even sometimes monolithic nature of classical Greek archaeology hindered such historical studies which could manifest any type of involvement with the ideologically influential character of the discipline. Greece, a small country founded on a consciousness, ‘domestication’ and ‘cultivation’ of history (terms proposed by Kristiansen 1993:9), was one of the first states of the region to experience a direct connection between archaeological discoveries and national feelings. This special place, that history has been allocated, influences the Plate 1 Exhibition “Dal Mito al Logos” purpose and manner of Greek [From Myth to Logos], Florence 1986, archaeology and archaeological Exhibition Catalogue, front cover. exhibitions. Greek archaeology has been enlisted into the service of the state for the glorification of the past and has taken virtually a distinct patriotic content with nationalistic dimensions. Maria Mouliou, PhD student, Dept of Museum Studies, Leicester University, Scholar of the Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, (University of Leicester, Dept. of Museum Studies, 105 Princess Road, East, Leicester LE1 7LG, U. K.) The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self 71 Although the paradigm of Greek archaeology provides certain particularities and indeed the variation from one country to another in the kinds of problems that archaeologists think as worth searching is widely recognised (Trigger 1984:355)-, it must not be seen as a unique and isolated phenomenon. On the contrary, the archaeology as a locally-based activity throughout the world is related to the general emergence of nation states which has its advent mainly in the 19th century (Shay 1989; Toynbee 1981). Beyond the local idiosyncrasies, dispositions and historical events that define the nature of each country’s archaeological research, there is a main stream model that can help to annotate archaeologies into certain categories and set them in a global context. Thus, the work and communication networks within archaeological museums are shaped largely by the roles that particular nation states play, economically, politically, and culturally, as interdependent parts of the modern world-system. “Every museum exhibition, whatever its overt subject, inevitably draws on the cultural assumptions and resources of the people who make it. Decisions are made to emphasise one element and to downplay others, to assert some truths and to ignore others. The assumptions underpinning these decisions vary accordingly to culture and over time, place and type of museum or exhibit....The very nature of exhibiting makes it a contested terrain”. (Lavine & Karp 1991:1). The same way Karl Popper, the eminent philosopher of science, believes that “[the act of] observation is always selective”, likewise a museum exhibition is in the main choosy as “it needs a chosen object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a problem” (Popper 1963:46). This article is based on the overriding idea that museum exhibitions are largely selective and subjective undertakings, especially as concerns the relation that arises between issues of identity and politics of museum interpretation and writing. This idea will be deployed by two ways: 1) By drawing a parallel, in a form of hypothesis between the actual representation of the Classical Past in the course of Greek travelling exhibitions and the delineation of the Classical Greek culture in Pausanias’ Description of Greece (Periegesis) (2nd century AD), and 2) By briefly reviewing a dozen of case-studies organised by the Greek Ministry of Culture since 1979 and framing their ideological and political agenda according to the values they embody, the messages overt or other they articulate, as well as the political and cultural settings which gave them rise. 72 The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self ATTEMPTED METAPHOR To set in train the first parallel (figure 1), I seek to show that some of Pausanias’ ideological choices as regards the selection and representation of monuments of Classical Greece potentially correlate with the philosophical choices of the classical archaeologists when they have to produce a museum exhibition of Classical archaeological material. The questions that arise are: How far does the journey that the international audience experience in loan Greek exhibitions of Classical antiquities nowadays echo a pilgrimage similar to that proposed by Pausanias for the people of his one times? And in what extent do the “real” current museum exhibitions of the present serve as selective agents to keep the memory of the classical past alive? Yet, it is not my intention to prove how similar or dissimilar is the way archaeologists treat the classical material culture in the course of museum exhibitions nowadays, simply because such a comparison can not be based on the presence of equal socio-political, chronological or even geographical and scientific backgrounds (Greece in the 2nd cent. AD : Greece in the last two decades of the 20th century). Plate 2 Exhibition “Mind and Body” Body”, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, 1990. The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self 73 Feedback for the ideological assumptions about Pausanias’ work socio-political impact comes largely from Elsner’s thought penetrating article “Pausanias: A Greek pilgrim in the Roman World”(1992) and to a lesser extent from Arafat’s paper on “Pausanias’ Attitude to Antiquities”(1992). Few words, then, about Pausanias’ text are wanted in order to put us into the context of the attempted metaphor. Pausanias work reveals how one person saw himself, how he established his identity, personal, collective and cultural in Greece in the 2nd century AD by travelling through mainland Greece and describing the monuments which he found of interest. It is held that he shielded himself from the full implications of being a subject (Greece under the Roman Empire) by using myths of the ancient Greek past (Elsner 1992:3). So, he ignored monuments he must have seen, that in looking to the past for a Greek identity, Pausanias was avoiding the present (Elsner 1992:17-18). It is a striking selective process with final objective to give symbols of community identity. “While [his] narrative is deeply personal, it is also a product of the society into which its author was born and in which he lived” (Arafat 1992:388). Therefore, it is suggested that we should not account Pausanias’ text as an objective one, as he himself has been a product of his time with feelings and preferences which were not always explicit (Arafat 1992:407-408). “Pausanias’ text is evidence for a certain ideology which was designed to provide his readers with a cultural identity, a shared subjectivity out of which to view art”. Pausanias’ imaginary museum serves as an agent to keep the memory of the classical past alive. It houses fetishised monuments which are the mediums for the admiration of the Classical Greek culture, the cultural signifiers of glorified territories. Yet, the simple day-to-day life was tacitly excluded from his narrative because it did not have anything to add to his overall nostalgic attitude which could give rise to issues such as memory, patrimony and identity (Jacob 1986). In similar manner, the Greek museum curators, nowadays (who are in the main archaeologists) perform within the ideological and political context of Greece as a full member of the European cultural community. Plate 3 Exhibition “Ancient Macedonia” Macedonia”, Australia 1988-1989. Welcoming message for the exhibition, reproduced from the newspaper Skepseis 1988:17). 74 The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self They design travelling museum exhibitions which function as a textbook illustrated with authentic artefacts and as a mirror of Greece. Through their archaeological and museum interpretation, they suggest established ways of viewing Greek art, and propose a certain journey around Greece. They proclaim that they, as well as their co-patriots, are heirs of a (many) distinctive past(s), being also part of the European family of cultures. They project a given collective national identity. They are selective by picking particular exhibition themes and artefacts which will illustrate their archaeological writings. The museum curators are even subjective, for they become products of their own times. The displayed museum artefacts of the classical past act as the cultural signifiers of glorified territories. So, the museum exhibitions of classical archaeological material are often organised according to a nostalgic, “mnemotechnical” ideology. They also appear as reactions against cultural isolation, concurrent geopolitical conflicts and antihellenic affiliations initiated from abroad. They address their messages to a certain audience which is also consisted of potential travellers-tourists around Greece. In this way, the displayed artefacts apart from being mediums of archaeological accounts, they are often transformed into trade commodities. P`e under the Roman Empire Pausanias’ textbook as a mirror of Greece : (traditions and stories) Viewing of Greek art Pilgrimage around Greece Heir of a distinctive past Personal / collective cultural and national identity Selectivity on described monuments Fetishised monuments as cultural signifiers of glorified territories Nostalgic Subjective as being a product of his time Disdain towards the stony present - looking at the past : : : : (His readers) : (Possible travellers around Greece) : : : : : : : : Greece in the late 20th cent., as a full member of the European cultural Community/Union Greek travelling exhibitions as a textbook illustrated with authentic artefacts as a mirror of Greece (archaeological and museum interpretation) Viewing of Greek art Journey around Greece Heirs of a (many) distinctive(s) past(s)/ Part of the European “family of cultures” Collective national identity Selectivity on the themes of the exhibitions and on the displayed artefacts Displayed museum artefacts as the cultural signifiers of glorified territories Nostalgic, “mnemotechnical” ideology Subjective as being products of their time Reactions against cultural isolation, concurrent geopolitical conflicts and antihellenic affiliations initiated from abroad looking at the golden past (Their audience, the museum visitors of the hosting institutions of abroad) (Possible travellers around Greece - touristic promotion / trade commodities) Fig. 1 The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self 75 CASE STUDIES The actual case-studies can be devised in three broad categories according to the exhibitions’ destination, and subsequently to the public’s national and cultural self (e.g.: Europe, USA, Canada and so on). DISPLAYS AS SYMBOLS OF EUROPEAN UNITY (Continental exhibitions for the Westerners of Europe) • “Greek Art of the Aegean islands” [Mer Égée, Grèce des îles] (1979; 1979-1980) (Paris, Museum of Louvre 26/4-3/9/1979);; This exhibition was the first of its kind outside Greece after the passing of the new legislation which allowed the export of Greek antiquities for the purposes of temporary exhibitions and cultural exchanges in 1977 (Petrakos 1982:8586). It was, therefore, predicted that it would create a sensation and arouse a turmoil of reactions by the opposing to this cultural policy parties (archaeologists, the general public, the press, e.t.c.). For instance, the people of the islands Crete and Samos counteracted promptly the intentions of the Greek government in incorporating to the travelling exhibition “Greek Art of the Aegean islands” (Paris 1979, New York 1980) antiquities unearthed in their territories and housed in the local archaeological museums. For some authors (Petrakos 1982:86), this debate turned out to be almost a question with political dimensions, while others (Doris 1981:300-303) translated it further as another facet of the constant socio-ideological struggle of the simple peoples against the authoritarian and antipopularist politics of the right wing party which was governing the country from 1974 to 1981. The initiative for the theme of the exhibition was taken by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs (in 11/5/78) and was brought into the Central Archaeological Council’s judgement by the General Inspector of Antiquities (N.Yalouris). The whole archaeological undertaking was put under the auspices of both Presidents of the Greek and French Republics, Mr.Constantinos Tsatsos and Mr.Valéry Giscard d’Estaing respectively. The theme of the exhibition was the Aegean Art from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC down to end of the Classical era (c.323 BC). 1. The official intention of the exhibition was to refresh the memory and cultural consciousness of the younger generations of the westerners about their 76 The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self indebtedness for the Greek civilisation and the legacy of the Greek classical past on the establishment of the European culture. The words of the curator of the Museum of Louvre (Villard 1979:19) in the introduction of the exhibition cataloque are more than revealing: “Si les écoliers de Gréce apprennent encore aujourd’hui ce que n’ignorait pas le monde cultivé et policé des générations précédents, on ne saurait dire que, de nos jours, la masse des touristes qui viennent en Grèce ait toujours clairement conscience du pélerinage qu’elle effectue aux sources de notre civilisation: le grec ancien, l’histoire ancienne ne sont plus guére enseignés et le monde contemporain, coupé de ses racines, s’il s’intéresse d’une maniére générale aux cultures disparues, ne sait plus nécessairement privilégier le passé hellénique, qui lui a pourtant apporté ses concepts fondamentaux en matiére de littérature, de pensée scientifique, philosophique et politique, mais aussi dans le domaine de l’art; il n’est peut-être pas unitile de lui redonner au moins conscience de cette lacune”. [My translation: If the Greek pupils still learn today what the previous generations of the cultivated world would not ignore, nowadays, we could not say that the mass of the tourists who visit Greece are always conscious of this pilgrimage which effected the sources of our civilisation: the ancient Greek language, the ancient history are not anymore taught; the contemporary world, cut from its roots, even if interested in vanished cultures in a general manner, does not necessarily still know how to favour the Hellenic past, which nevertheless provided him with fundamental concepts such as literature, scientific, philosophical and political thinking, as well as art; it is probably not useless to make him again at least aware of this gap]. 2. The second ambivalent and politically value-charged aim of the exhibition was largely associated with the geopolitical, strategically important location of the Aegean islands. One can shape a more clear vista of the political and nationally significant connotations of an archaeological exhibition with a theme as such, when he reviews the bilateral relations of Greece and Turkey and the set of complex issues that defines the dispute of both parties over that region.(Clogg 1993:174; Kourvetaris & Dobratz 1987:105-112). In this manner, archaeology and museum visual representation have been called to strip of their innocence and to make political statements concerning the legitimate appropriation of the region across time. • “Dal Mito al logos” - From Myth to Logos: The Image of Man in Greek Art (8th-6th c. BC)” (Firenze, Palazzo Strozzi 16/9-16/11/1986) (1986; Butteriss 1986; Finzi 1986; Griffo 1986; Innocenti 1986) (Plate 1) The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self 77 • “Greece and the sea” (Amsterdam, De Nieuwe Kerk 29/10-10/12/1987) (1987) • “ Eros Grec, Amour des Dieux et des Hommes” (Paris 1990) (1989-90) The concept of an annual European City of Culture was launched in June 1985 by EC cultural ministers. Thus, Greece was hitherto obliged to join the festivities of other European Cultural Capitals, and to project its identity, its multi-sided cultural profile as well as its European self through cultural exchanges and manifestations as museum exhibitions. In parallel, its individual search for a collective national identity emanates also a pursuit for the cultural constituents that bring out common historical identities with other fellow European nations. Such a cultural awareness enhances mutual understanding, communication and contacts between peoples. Under these perspectives, Greece’s contribution to a series of similar cultural events must be viewed in relation to the question of what constitutes Greekness and also Europeanness, since the project of European integration and unity began. Greece, and the other state-members of the European Community alike, is thus challenged if she is going to preach devotion to national symbols and historical myths, to choose which of her identity’s elements are more likely to testify to a unified European spirit and reactivate shared memories among the members of the European ‘family of cultures’ (Smith 1992). This means that Greek culture is laid in an ideological venture in order to assess whether the timeless values of its ancient self are still intelligible and valid to the rest of the world. Concurrently, we are witnessing established cultures being essentially antithetical to the development of a cosmopolitan culture, fact which poses problems for a pan-European identity, as well as evolutionary undertones of recent interpretations of nationalism. Anthony Smith’s accounts are explicit and unhesitating: “The link with the distinctive pre-modern past serves to dignify the nation as well as to explain its mores and character. More important, it serves to ‘remake the collective personality’ of the nation in each generation. Through rituals and ceremonies, political myths and symbols, the arts and history textbooks -through these links with a community of origin, continually reshaped as popular ‘ethno-history’, are reforged and disseminated. In this respect, national identifications possess distinct advantages over the idea of a unified European identity” (Smith 1992:62). It is within this framework and ideological quandary that one must consider the Greek travelling exhibitions inside the continent. 78 The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self So, as the institution of Cultural Capital of Europe has already fully and widely established itself, it subsequently assigns the cultural exchanges realised within its context with the required amount of legitimacy, endorsed values and ideological eminence. Or to put it in Melina Mercouri’s words (1987:13): “This annual event which focuses our attention on those deep-rooted intellectual and artistic bonds which link the countries of Europe, quite apart from official approval, drew impressive response from the public at large. As long as the human community feels the urge to search for points of reference in a common cultural heritage, there is no doubt that the institution of a yearly ‘Cultural Capital of Europe’ will acquire greater and deeper significance while steadily broadening its horizons”. Within the same ideological spirit is the exhibition “Macedonia from the Mycenaean Period to Great Alexander” (1988) which resulted on the occasion of fraternisation between the cities of Bologna and Thessaloniki. It was presented in Bologna in 1988 as a commemorative ceremony and organised remembering of an ancient friendship within the cultural and politico-economic boundaries of modern Europe. Finally, the exhibition “Mind and Body” (Plate 2) (TzachouAlexandri 1989), was firstly presented in Athens and afterwards in Lausanne and Japan in 1990. Among the other messages which coincided with all the above ideological tokens, also proved unexpectedly how past values were “swallowed up by the ever expanding present” (Lowenthal 1985:xvii). This archaeological museum undertaking preceded the acts of the International Olympic Committee in Japan which had to decide the country-venue for the Golden Olympic Games of 1996. The final decision of the Committee, known world-wide, demonstrated that Greece’s heritage industry was inadequate to deal with strong and powerful multi-national economic agents. It also proved that the post-modern consumer society viewed the ancient past rather as a subject of curiosity and as a valued commodity than as a formulator of social identity. As a valued commodity, the antiquity has to compete with other trade products and face possible commercial downfalls. It is therefore evident that the sense of the past as an emotional construct does not harmonise with the cognitive and technocratic mementoes of the present capitalist spirit. DISPLAYS AS SYMBOLS OF ‘ANCIENT PASSIONS’ DISPLAYS AS TREASURES (Intercontinental exhibitions for the Westerners of Australia and Canada) • “Ancient Macedonia” (Australia 1988-1989) (1988); • “La Civilisation Grecque, Macédoine Royaume d’Alexandre le Grand” (Société du Palais de la Civilisation au Marché Bonsecours: Montréal 1993) The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self 79 late 4 Exhibition entrance from the exhibition “Ancient Macedonia” Macedonia”, Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, 1988-1989, (from the archive of the Museum of Victoria, Melbourne). The testimonial rhetoric of these exhibition-shows in Australia and Canada, as regards both its political and commercial parameters differs to the idiosyncrasies of the European case-studies discussed above. Both events as ‘Exhibitions of ancient passions’ (Bone & Maslen 1988) and as arenas of ambivalent, political and ethnic controversy have been in toto state patronaged in an attempt to confront antihellenic outdoor ventures and to redefine the dynamics of Greek Diaspora (Plate 3). Moreover, they have been exercises in mass communication as their task was largely informative and instructive. Their archaeological claims were about the true essence of Ancient Macedonia as part of a modern ethnic struggle which is daily chronicled not only in Greece but also in Australia and Canada as second homelands of large numbers of Greek omogeneis (Just 1989:86). Thus, the political statements of these exhibitions were also about identity. First, they projected occasionally and subtly the Greekness of the European identity, the Europeaness of the Greek identity and in further the Europeanness 80 The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self of Australian and Canadian cultures which have been embodied by the eternal ideals of Hellenism. Yet, mostly they raised issues on the historicity of a certain cultural and ethnic ancient and modern Macedonian identity, a controversial subject per se . So, their tokens were pervasively political and their overall perspective was an ethnic one, depicting the world of Hellenism as the totality of the nation (Augustinos 1989:27). Within this framework, the displays acted as signs of historical truth and ethnographic maps of the past. In contrast, the Australian and Canadian parties were reluctant to index the success of their host exhibitions on ambivalent ideological tales. As Michel Lambert, Head of the Palais de la Civilisation, put it (Brownstein 1993): “we just steer clear of any current political situation and deal entirely with the past. It’s safer...”. Plate 5 View from the exhibition “La Civilisation Grecque, Macédoine Royaume d’Alexandre le Grand” Société du Palais de la Civilisation au Marché Bonsecours: Montréal 1993). So, they chose to remain devoted to their multicultural policies as both countries’ populations have been based on diverse ethnic backgrounds including both large numbers of Greek and Slavic minorities. They preferred instead, through an organised marketing to assent to a widely popular, politically uncontroversial writing and advertising of the archaeological exhibitions. They stressed by means of spectacular scenographies (Plates 4-5) on the purely commercial values of Greek archaeology and exposed the displayed artefacts as valuable trade commodities and touristic encounters, as unique and The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self 81 shining treasures on silver and gold. The Greek organisers had not been opposed to this type of approach as they also saw that art objects of classical antiquity as the mainstays of national tourism. Besides, “tourism, archaeology and nationalism are historically linked in complex ways. Archaeology has been used by nationalism and popularised by tourism” (Evans-Pritchard 1993:27). The local press coverage of the exhibitions was more than revealing, as regards the marketing predilections of the local curators (cf. The Age 1988; The Gosford Star 1989, The Sun 1989; Messaris 1989, etc.) Macedonia”, Australia 1988-1989. Promotional slogan for the Plate 6 Exhibition “Ancient Macedonia” exhibition in the Australian Museum, Sydney, (reproduced from the Good Weekend Magazine 20/5/1989). “Gold treasures from Greece, days of glory” or “The collection has more gold than the gold of the Pharaohs and combines priceless treasures and glittering history” are indicative (Plate 6). Further, the humorous and witty “Indiana Jones would kill to see this exhibition” (Plate 7) in a way implies that archaeology, and in this case archaeological exhibitions, are about romance, excitement, mystical traditions and objects for their own sake (see also Gowlett 1990:157). Individual artefacts and images form the centrepieces of the exhibitions, with their dominance and fame, and become the symbolic and commercial capitals representing an entire ancient culture (Evans-Prichard 1993:23). In this manner, in the personality of Alexander the Great, in his greatness and sublimity is symbolised and crystallised the creative power and unique virtue of the whole 82 The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self community. Greece is thus projected as a hero-country, with an omnipresent ability to communicate intrinsic and ideologically validated messages world-wide. DISPLAYS AS SIGNS OF MIRACLES (Intercontinental exhibitions for the Westerners of USA) • “Greek Art of the Aegean islands” (Metropolitan. Museum of Art, New York 1980); • “The search for Alexander” (1981-1982) (Yalouris et al 1980); • “Human Figure in Early Greek Art” (1988-1989) (Sweeney et al 1987); • “The The Greek Miracle: Classical sculpture from the dawn of Democracy. The Fifthcentury BC” (1992-1993) (Buitron-Oliver et al 1992); After the end of the Second World War, Greece’s future was determined within the limits of a modern world that has been united in a global scale within an originally Western framework, set by the ideological underpinnings and governmental machinery of USA (Toynbee 1981:270; Tsoukalas 1987). The post-1974 period, Greek foreign policy entered into a pursuit for independence from the pro-American attitudes of the past. In this political context, all the four exhibitions as cultural exchanges between Greece and USA were unavoidable to be seen as highly political acts of dubious motives and repercussions. To paraphrase the American President’s introductory note on the “Greek Plate 7 Exhibition “Ancient Miracle’s” exhibition catalogue, the Macedonia”, Australia 1988-1989. Macedonia” exhibitions signified the “long-standing ties Promotional slogan for the exhibition that exist[ed] between the United States and in the South Australian Museum Greece”, the “alliance, where modern Greece (reproduced from Sunday Mail stand[ed] as a valued partner, that helped to 5/9/1989). defend and to promote human rights around the globe while ensuring the collective security of Europe”. For this main reason, they aroused a turmoil of reactions within the country for the archaeological artefacts have been transformed to pure trade and political commodities, promoters and mediators of national interests through actions of exporting civilisation, legitimised and encouraged by the state. The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self 83 As it happened in the exhibitions of Australia and Canada, these travelling displays have been promoted as supershows, as big budget promotions and Media Events . The “Greek Art of the Aegean Islands” has been the first loan exhibition sent by the Republic of Greece to the USA, after being presented first in the Museum of Louvre (See above). The “Search for Alexander” also a docu-drama series on British and American television, has been a supershow which embraced a variety of motives. From the aesthetic perspective and sheer boxoffice appeal, the exhibition organisers were called to Plate 8 Exhibition “The Human Figure in Early Greek present a real Supershow Art”, USA 1988, Exhibition Catalogue, front cover. based both on Golden treasures of exquisite craft and on a Macedonian historical Superstar, Alexander the Great whose legendary figure captivated the hearts of people throughout time and space. From the ideological viewpoint, the exhibition’s theme, the search for Alexander signifies the search for ourselves, as modern Greeks, as Europeans and altogether westerners. The significance of this search centres on the continuity between ancient and modern Greek culture. Subsequently, the exhibition’s politics were called to answer a question of ethnic identity seen through the general spectrum of the total Greek national identity. The “Human Figure in Early Greek Art” (Plate 8) and the “Greek Miracle” could be seen as an exhibition-show composed of two parts whose overriding message was epitomised on the equation: Birth/discovery of humanism = birth/discovery of rationalism and naturalism = birth/ discovery of democracy = birth/discovery of Western culture = birth/discovery of ourselves (Greek : European : Western : civilised). 84 The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self The latter exhibition as Part II of the same story, covering the following Classical era, the Golden Age of Athens, proved to be one of the most, if not the most, controversial archaeological travelling display abroad. Possible reasons for the largely debatable “greeting” of the exhibition were: 1) as far as archaeology is concerned, the uniqueness of the loan exhibits itself. 2) as concerns the exhibition politics, the selection of the theme (the birth of democracy in ancient Athens). Its ideological interpretation and approach by the Greek organisers reactivated latent foreign oppositions regarding the ever praised supremacy and miracle of the Greeks which has been, according to them, a Victorian sentiment (Morison, P. Financial Times 19/3/1993:13; see also Hughes 1993:49) and marmoreal stereotype. The exhibition’s harsh critics, for instance, claimed that “people [would] get the Greek culture of their schooldays, classicism in the Winckelmann sense” or that the exhibition was marked by an overall historical naiveté at the conceptual level (Wills 1992:47, 48); 3) as concerns the general Greek politics and foreign affairs at the time of the exhibition, these were predominantly concentrated on the state’s position upon the Macedonian question which enlivened in toto a turmoil of varied reactions within and outside the country. As a result, the exhibition’s motives were viewed by some (see Hughes 1993) as an exercise in political propaganda, as an odd political show coloured by the Greek chauvinism. CONCLUSIONS It is, thus, a given that the politics and poetics of museum exhibitions as a whole are complex, equivocal, obscure but also intriguing and potentially revealing as for the ways archaeology is called to serve national, nationalistic, economic and other official aspirations. As Peter van Mensch suggested: “the combination of ‘historical sedimentation’ and forms of ‘musealization’ leads to highly compressed information, often resulting in a disproportionally condensed reality on the one hand, and the reduction of that reality on the other, due to conscious or unconscious selection. The display in a museum adds enormously to this process” (Mensch van 1986:39). Accordingly, although museum exhibitions are in principle morally neutral, in practice they do make moral and political statements. They are privileged arenas for projecting the self, social or national (Karp 1991:14-15). The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self 85 The chosen case-studies exposed current affinities and manners. The totality of the exhibitions’ narrative totalises Greece across time and space and universalises timeless values which were generated in the Greek lands but were afterwards appropriated by the western human universe and became immortal and unjudged. Yet, in our post-modern era, the theoretical positioning and ideological orientations of Classical archaeology and classical ideals are being set under further scrutiny and occasionally open criticism. What will be the museum curators’, the archaeologists’ and Greek officials’ constructive, productive and not plainly defensive response, in terms of future exhibition presentations, remains to be seen. Note This paper was presented at the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference held at Durham, 14 December 1993 and is part of a wider project. BIBLIOGRAPHY (1979): Mer Égée, Grèce des îles, (Catalogue de l’exposition), Musée du Louvre 26 avril-3 septembre 1979. Ministére de la Culture et de la Communication, Éditions de la Réunions des Musées Nationaux. (1979-1980): Greek Art of The Aegean Islands, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1/11/ 1979-10/2/1980 /Exhibition Catalogue). New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. (1986): From Myth to Logos; The human figure in Greek art (8th-6th cent.BC) (Exhibition catalogue), Palazzo Strozzi Florence 16/9-16/11/1986. Greek Ministry of Culture, Direction of Antiquities. (1987): Greece and the Sea (Exhibition catalogue), Amsterdam, De Nieuwe Kerk 29/10-10/12/1987. Greek Ministry of Culture, Benaki Museum, National Foundation de Nieuwe Kerk in honor of Amsterdam. (1988): Ancient Macedonia (Exhibition Catalogue). Greek Ministry of Culture National Hellenic Committee - ICOM, International Cultural Corporation of Australia. (1988): Arte Dei Macedoni, Dall’Etá Micenea ad Alessandro Magno, Museo Civico di Bologna (29/4-17/6/1988) (Exhibition catalogue). 86 The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self (1988): “The Treasures of Macedonia: The Pride of Greece”, The Age. (1989): “Rare chance to view treasures”, The Gosford Star. (1989): “Wealth of ancient culture on display”, The Sun.. (1989-1990): Eros Grec, Amour des Dieux et des Hommes, (Catalogue de l’ exposition), Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, 6/11/89-5/2/90, Paris. Ministére de la Culture de Grèce, Direction des Antiquités, Ministère de la Culture, de la Communication, des Grands Travaux et du Bicentenaire, Réunion des Musées Nationaux. Arafat, K. W. (1992): “Pausanias’attitude to antiquities”, Annual of the British School at Athens 87: 388. Augustinos, G. (1989): “Culture and authenticity in a small state: historiography and national development in Greece”, East European Quarterly XXIII(1): 17. Bone, P., Maslen, G. (1988): “An Exhibition of ancient passion”, The Age 3. Brownstein, B. (1993): “Exhibition on Alexander’s Macedonia is simply great”, The Gazette. 7/5/1993, D1. Buitron-Oliver, D. et al., (ed) (1992): The Greek Miracle, Classical Sculpture from the dawn of Democracy. The Fifth Cengtury BC., National Gallery of Art, Washington 22/11/1992-7/2/1993,The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 11/3-23/ 5/1993., National Gallery of Art, Washington. Butteriss, K. (1986): “Atene a Firenze”, Testata Firenze City Data Settembre 1986. Chapman, M. et al. (1989): “Introduction”, in Tonkin et al 1989:1-21. Clogg, R. (1993): A Concise History of Greece, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Doris, M. (1981): “O Kritikos laos kerdise tin politistiki tou machi [The people of Crete won his cultural fight]”, Politismos kai koinoniki exelixi [Civilization and social progress], Athens, Gnosi. Elsner, J. (1992): “Pausanias: A Greek pilgrim in the Roman world”, Past and Present 135: 3. Evans-Pritchard, D. (1993): “Ancient Art in Modern Context”, Annals of Tourism Research 20: 9. The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self 87 Finzi, C. (1986): “Grecia classica e bizantina a Palazzo Strozzi”, Testata il Tempo Data 26 Settembre 1986. Gowlett, J.A.J., (1990): “Indiana Jones: crusading for archaeology?”, Antiquity 64, 157. Griffo, M. (1986): “Firenze getta un ponte verso Atene”,Testata il Giornale Data 23 Settembre 1986. Hughes, R. (1993): “The Masterpiece Road Show”, Time 48. Innocenti, C. (1986): “Dal mito a logos, a Rinascimento un mai reciso cordone culturale”, Testata il Sole 24 Ore Data 28 Settembre 1986. Jacob, C. (1986): “Voyages dans le musée: itinéraire archéologique dans la culture grecque”, in Davallon, J., (ed) (1986):Claquemurer, pour ainsi dire, tout l’ univers. La mise en expositions. Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou. 23. Just, R. (1989): “Triumph of the Ethnos. History and Ethnicity”, in Tonkin et al 1989:71-88. Karp, I. (1991): “Culture and Representation”, in Karp & Lavine 1991:14-15. Karp, I. and S. D. Lavine, Ed. (1991): Exhibiting Cultures. The politics and Poetics of Museum Display, Association of American Museums. Kourvetaris, Y. A., Dobratz, B. A. (1987): A Profile of Modern Greece in search for identity. Clarendon Press. Kristiansen, K., (1993): “‘The strength of the past and its great might’; an essay on the use of the past”, Journal of European Archaeology, Vol. 1:1, 3-32. Lavine, S. D., Karp, I., (1991): “Introduction: Museums and Multiculturalism”, in Karp & Lavine 1991:1-9 Lowenthal, D. (1985): The Past is a Foreign Country, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Mensch, P. van., (1986): “Museology and the Object as data carrier”, Informatologia Yugoslavica 18 (1-2), 35-43. Mercouri, M. (1987): “Preface” in Greece and the Sea 1987. Messaris, J. (1989): “The gold of Macedonian Hellenism glows at the Australian Museum”, O Kosmos 15. 88 The Classical Past, the Modern Greeks and Their National Self Morison, P. (1993): “Moved by the Greek Miracle”, Financial Times, 19/3/1993. Petrakos, V. (1982): Dokimio gia tin Archaiologiki Nomothesia [An essay on archaeological legislation], Athens, Ipourgeio Politismou kai Epistimon, Ministry of Culture. Popper, K. R. (1963): Conjectures and Refutations, London, Routledge, Kegan Paul. Shanks, M., Tilley, C. (1987): Re-constructing Archaeology, Society of Professional Research Archaeologists. Shay, T. (1989): “Israeli archaeology - ideology and practice”, Antiquity 63: 768. Smith, A. D. (1992): “National identity and the idea of European unity”, International Affairs 68(1): 55. Sweeney, J., Curry, T., Tzedakis, Y., (eds) (1987): The Human Figure in Early Greek Art (Exhibition Catalogue), Greek Ministry of Culture, Athens, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Tonkin, E., McDonald, M. et al., (ed) (1989): History and Ethnicity., London, Routledge. Toynbee, A. (1981): The Greeks and their Heritages, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Trigger, B. G. (1984): “Alternative archaeologies: Nationalist, colonialist, imperialist”, Man (NS) 19(3): 355. Tsoukalas, K., (1987): Kratos, Koinonia, Ergasia sti metapolemiki Ellada [The State, the Society, the Work in post-war Greece], Themelio, 2nd Edition. Tzachou-Alexandri, O., (ed) (1989): Mind and Body: Athletic Contests in Ancient Greece(Exhibition Catalogue). Athens, The Greek Ministry of Culture and the National Hellenic Committee, ICOM. Villard, F. (1979): “Introduction” in Mer Égée, Grèce des îles 1979:19-23. Wills, G. (1992): “Athena’s Magic”, New York Review of Books, 47. Yalouris, N. et al (1980):The Search for Alexander (Exhibition Catalogue) USA. 89 Museological Review, 1, 1, 1994: 89-101 Multimedia: A New Exhibit Technique Ibrahim Yahya Introduction In the age of information revolution, the museum cannot escape from the impact of new technologies. Museums have undergone rapid changes since the industrial revolution. The advents of science museums, science centres and children’s museums have definitely brought in many changes in the meaning and functions of the museums; as a result, all museums irrespective of their type, are thinking to extend their boundary. Museums including art and many other traditional museums are undergoing changes in responding to the impact of new technologies. The fullest expression of this is the recent release of multimedia CD-ROM title - Art Gallery by the Microsoft. Anyone, having a PC with a CDROM player fitted with windows, can buy this for just £45 and many of the artist’s works on display in the National Gallery are at their finger-tips. In this article, I intend to present various meanings of the term multimedia; how this new technology can transform the purposes and philosophy of the museums and their exhibitions; what are the available platforms that make it possible now to exploit the technology in museums; what are some of the museums in the UK and the US that are attempting to take advantage of this technology in exhibition; and how they find this new technology useful in making the visits more successful ones. Multi-media to Multimedia The term multimedia is more often loosely used in the sense of multi-media just to imply the juxtaposition of multiple media. At times the term Multi-Media is used wrongly in place of multi-media as if this is a product. However, the term multimedia, strictly speaking, implies, no doubt, juxtaposition of multiple media but in an integrated fashion using computer computer, often in a single screen screen. Multimedia in the sense of multi-media as such, is not new in museums. The museum itself is multi-media as it juxtaposes multiple media like objects, texts, audio visual aids, and many more. In that sense, a book can be and is sometimes called multimedia package by tossing a cassette in it. Even other medium like TV, Film or Video is also a collation of media as it often juxtaposes sounds, texts and images. These are, strictly speaking, multi-media, but sometimes they are called “traditional multimedia.” Apart from this very basic and literal meaning, Formerly an Assistant Professor of Physics and physicist by training, Ibrahim Yahya entered the museum field as curator of physics in the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum, National Council of Science Museums, Calcutta in 1986. He is studying for his PhD at the University of Leicester; looking at museum learning from the perspective of the Learning Styles. He has published a number of articles on science learning and science centres. 90 museums attempted to bring multi-media shows or presentation into the exhibition space. In it, a story like a history of electronics or of some eminent personality is presented using objects, slide projections and video projections sequentially. This was very popular in the US and India during 60’s and 70’s. After the advent of the videodisc technology, while India remains still in the old multi-media show, the US adapted to new technology as the high cost of this technology was not a limiting factor for the US but is for India. Finally, the multimedia facility - the collation of disparate media from a single representation device, typically on a computer screen - was introduced into exhibition space. Many European and American museums have taken advantage of this technology since 1980s. Hypermedia The term hypermedia is sometimes given to multimedia capabilities of hypertext, emphasising the way in which users can combine, edit and orchestrate sounds, graphics, moving pictures, texts and computer software at a click of the mouse or through a whole gamut of interface devices such as joystick, tracker ball, spaceball, and touchscreen and so on. Therefore hypermedia and multimedia are interchangeably used by ignoring the subtle difference between them. Until late 1970s, before the advent of laser disc, the presentation of a story using many media in a single screen was not possible using computer. After 1985, the advent of CD-ROM made things easier to integrate cheaply with the help of computer. Though the word hypertext was coined by Ted Nelson in 1960 to convey the idea of linking together pieces of text from different articles, this concept has been around for over 40 years. It was first described in Vannever Bush’s seminal article “As we may think” in 1945. He called “memex” and described as “a sort of mechanised private file and library in which an individual stores his books, records and communications, and which is mechanised so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.” (Bush 1945) He foresaw Memex storing information on microfilm. This has led to the term hypermedia, which extends the notion of linking text items (hypertext) to other media (hypermedia) - for example graphics, animation, and or sound - not with the help of micro film as envisaged by Bush but with the micro-computer and many optical memory storage techniques - IVs and CDs. Multimedia Platforms Interactive Videodisc - IV IV is an optical disc with 12" diameter with spiral pits that is read by a laser beam and converted into images and photos. This technology, originally called “LaserVision” by Philips and today generically called “laser disc”, emerged from the laboratories of Philips in the late 1970s. The capacity of this disc is 55,000 frames of information with its own unique electronic address. This will be approximately equal to 2 hours of video. Though this is analogue and old technology, this is nevertheless a powerful tool in multimedia. It is a very robust 91 technology and this is the reason why many museums in the UK are still making use of this platform. The main disadvantage of this is the cost and its analogue nature that needs to be digitised if it has to be processed and controlled by the computer. Compact Disc - Read Only Memory - CD-ROM CD - ROM is something like a very common audio CD that is brought out by the Philips in 1982. In 1985, following further collaboration between Philips and Sony, the first CD-ROM emerged. They are digital and the capacity of them is 650 Mega Bytes, that is, it can hold upto 2,50,000 pages of texts or 76 minutes of stereo music or 150 minutes of monomusic. The diameter of this is 12 cm rather than 12". The term “read only memory” implies that it can only be read and cannot be recorded or written on it by ordinary means. The writing part of it, often called CD pressing or cutting, is done by the very costly machines and only mass production will help reduce the costs to an affordable level. Many CD-ROM titles are now available on many topics. The number of CD-ROM titles in print has risen globally from 94 (in 1986) to 5000 (in 1992). The CD-ROM players installed base has increased globally from 9000 (in 1986) to 5300000 (in 1992). (Udell 1993:132). The CD-ROMs come with many different formats that are dictated by the various computer systems namely - Acorn, Archemedes, MPC, Macintosh and CDTV (Commodore Dynamic Total Vision) and so on. The MPC stands for Multimedia Personal Computer - a standard prescribed by the Microsoft. The CD-ROM format was further extended originally to accommodate video and is called CD-ROM XA - where XA stands for eXtended Architecture. The capacity of this is same as that of CD-ROM. The cost of CD-ROM player is about £200 that will go with any type of computer. Compact Disc- Interactive - CD-I CD-I is nothing but a CD-ROM extension and therefore its capacity and size are same as that of CD-ROM. This was again invented by Philips and released in 1991. CD-I player is a unit like video-player but hiding a computer inside. This is a home product. In that sense it is a closed environment whose borders are firmly delineated by the Greenbook, which tells you everything that goes inside the box including the computer and the operating system. Though the format of CD-I is different from that of CD-ROM, some CD-ROM players can play both formats. This technology is being backed by the world’s three leading consumer electronics companies namely Matshushita, Philips and Sony (Barker and Tucker 1990). Therefore there is no wonder why this technology has emerged to take this form along the line of consumer electronics. There are a number of titles available in this format. Philips invests and encourages many companies to bring out titles in this format. The “British Golf” is commercially available in this format out of the collaboration between the British Golf Museum and the Philips. The CD-I player costs about £400 and does not need a computer but only a TV set. 92 Digital Video Interactive -DVI DVI is also a CD-ROM with another format and therefore its capacity and size are same as that of CD-ROM. This is an open environment in a sense that it allows you to do whatever you like to do, provided that you have a special DVI chip inside your Personal Computer compatible. What the chip basically does is this. It decompresses or compresses as you play or record the things respectively. The computer monitor displays the decompressed images, text and moving video clips. This technology is being backed by the world’s three leading office computer companies namely Intel - who makes chips for PCs, IBM, and Microsoft (Barker J and Tucker R. N 1990). Though the DVI chip can be used to compress the multimedia data into the hard disc (of course you need a huge hard disc enough to accommodate all 650 Mb of the data during the development stage), the CD cutting, i.e. writing into the CD in the DVI format, can however be performed only with the help of very costly machines. Others There are other numerous technologies, namely CDTV - Commodore Dynamic Total Vision, Apple’s hyper cards, Mac multimedia and various other CD formats and players. Kodak released what it calls a Photo CD that can record 100 still photos in a single CD. Audio and video upgrades are to follow. Kodak Photo CD player or some CD-ROM players that are compatible with Kodak photo CD, can play them in a TV or Computer monitor respectively. In the case of computer with CD-ROM player, you may need, in addition, a software called Kodak access that decompresses the images and makes the data readable by the computer. There is another related but a highly sophisticated technology namely Virtual Reality. This technology enables computers to create three dimensional space into which one can enter and manipulate the things there. The computer allows visitors to create his own space and recreates every time sensing the changes in his orientation through some external sensors like helmets or datagloves. Jaron Lanier coined the term Virtual Reality. The concept is also called Cyberspace after William Gibson. There are two types of VRs. They are Immersion type and Desktop type. Immersion type is the one that everyone thinks of immediately when the term VR is heard. In this type, the user wears a helmet with two tiny monitors in front of his two eyes so that he feels as if he is inside a setting and the setting is changed in response to his head movements through head sets or helmets and to his hand movements through datagloves. In the second type, an ordinary or sometimes a very powerful computer is used to display the setting on its monitor and the setting is changed through interfaces like joystick or spaceball. As you turn the spaceball to the left, the right, the top, or the bottom, you see the changing scene virtually realistically on the monitor. Museums mostly prefer the second type VRs as they are less cumbersome, easy for the visitors, and need less maintenance. 93 Electronic Guttenberg Allen (1993) has foreseen the revolution of electronic Guttenberg with the arrival of CD-ROM recorders that can record a CD-R (Compact Disc - Recordable) with the help of the desktop machine. Since the debut of CD-ROM, many folks have viewed electronic publishing with a jaundiced eye - " a CD-ROM would be a great, if only I could get my information on it". Now it is possible with the arrival of CD-R players that costs only £5000 (PCW, 1994a). In other words, for about the price of an office photocopier, you can have a machine that produces CDs in different formats like CD-ROM XA, DVI or CD-I (options available with the player) containing thousands of pages of informations. Multi-media and Multimedia installations in Indian Museums In multi-media show, the mixing of the text, sound and video is being accomplished with the help of separate monitors and screens. It is sometimes called audio-visual show. Even now, many museums, including science museums in India employ this multi-media show presentation. The “history of electronics” in the Electronics gallery of the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum, Calcutta (installed in 1989) and an AV presentation in the Information revolution gallery of National Science Centre, New Delhi (installed in 1990) are to name only a few. There are only a few multimedia projects and one of which is “Raga mala” that is being installed in and by the National Museum in New Delhi in collaboration with the government owned computer consultant company, National Informatics Centre, New Delhi. The raga mala will allow visitors to explore different ragas and their origins. Visitors can listen to or see the painting that corresponds to a particular raga. The hardware is based on an IBM PC with hard disk. Some Multimedia Installations in the British and American Museums Hoffos (1992) presented a very comprehensive account of the multimedia platforms and installations in the British, American and European Museums. Semper and Woolsey (1992) attempted to classify the multimedia installations in the public space into something that fits somewhere in the domain created by the two axes of the nature of interactivity and the contextual relationship. The nature of interactivity ranges from passive presentation, guided experience, interactive browsing and finally direct interaction. The contextual relationship starts from adjunctive resource, mediated experience, exhibit itself and finally take away experience. A multimedia installation can be adjunct resource like the Micro Gallery; it can be a mediated experience like travelling through a Canyon in the “Images: The Tools of Science” or China’s Past and Present in the V&A museum; it can be an exhibit itself like Design a tooth brush; or it can be a take away experience like the print out from the Micro Gallery or the CD-ROM version of the Art Gallery. 94 The following table presents some of the multimedia facilities available in the British and American museums. For more details, readers are referred to Hoffos (1992). MUSEUMS or CENTRES NAME OF THE PROGRAMME TECHNOLOGY OR PLATFORM USED Bank of England Museum, London The Bank Today The delivery system based on Sony VIEW-that combines laser disc player and a computer in one box. Laser disc is a generic name of the Interactive Videodiscs. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham Collectors in the South Pacific. Laser disc British Golf Museum, St. Andrews. Great British Golf Laser disc and CD-I systems. Commercial CD-I title is available. The Design Museum, London. Design a tooth brush. CAD package with laser disc and touch screen. Study collection database. Apple’s Hypertext and Hypercards and Macintosh computer systems National Gallery, London Micro Gallery Software based on Apple’s Hypercard Large image base in Har disks (1.3 Giga bytes), 19" monitor and Touch screen. Tate Gallery, Liverpool. Sculpture Interactive. Laser disc. V & A Museum, London. Images of China’s Past and Present. Laser disc. Natural History Centre, Liverpool Museum, British Garden Birds Laser disc. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Various working of the displaying artefacts. Laser disc. Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. Imaging: The Tools of Science. VR technology. Connecticut Museum of Natural History, An exhibit providing mandala experience. VR technology. Snibston Discovery Park, Coalville, Leicestershire. Virtual Reality exhibit in the University of Leicester show-case Using a commercially available VR software called ‘superscape’ . 95 The Bank of England Museum in London presents a multimedia program - The Bank Today, in a room with the help of interactive terminals. The attracter loop displays the Bank’s famous doors; when this screen is touched, the doors swing open to display a menu of small labelled photographs that represent the nine rooms of information in the interactive presentation. Some of the rooms show what is happening in the main entrance room, court room, the dealing room of the Bank. Some rooms explain about Printing works; Gold vaults; and Money and Monetary policy. The supervisor room includes footage of the Bank of England’s representative visiting other banks, and explains what its employees actually do to keep the UK’s financial institutions on an even keel. Finally, a computer trivia quiz room asks some very basic questions regarding the operation of the Bank. The systems are housed in a small, busy room. The touchscreen terminals are complemented by some larger passive monitors, so that visitors on busy days can at least watch the presentation which someone else controls. Gallery 33 is the newest gallery opened in the Birmingham museum and art gallery. In it, “Collectors in the south pacific” is an interactive laser disc programme that combines information on the history of a collection with insights into its interpretation and provides a database which visitors can explore on their own. The four guides to the south pacific collection are a missionary, a collector, a tourist, and a museum curator. All four are real people and the two historical figures have local connections: the missionary is Ida Wench, a native of Leamington spa, and the collector is the Birmingham-born Arthur Wilkins, who emigrated to Australia but bequeathed his cabinet of curiosities to his native city. Of the two modern characters, the tourist is the American and the curator is from the Solomon Islands’ National Museum. The system uses a touchscreen display with still and moving pictures, archival footings, voice-overs, and captions. Images of the artefacts appear in windows in the middle of the screen, with photos of the four guides in the corners. Visitors touch the screen to select an image and a guide, to hear different information and perspectives. Visitors can select and consider the evidence in any order. The curator will elucidate the cultural significance of native jewellery, and admonish that these objects cannot legally be taken from the islands, while the tourist knows how much they value in American dollars. While the collector relates how he originally acquired and displayed the objects, the curator tells how some foreign museums are now returning artefacts to the island’s own collections. The presentation also asks visitors to adjudge how much collections should be catalogued and displayed, by category or context. The British Golf Museum, St. Andrews, uses eight laser disc and three CD-I systems to support an AV theatre and present interactive programmes. The script was written by the museum’s Director, Peter Lewis. The interactive AV package is controlled so that each terminal displays only material relevant to the adjacent exhibits. There is a commercial CD-I disc that was developed out of the material from the museum. It includes 98 AV clips, a database of facts and statistics, a trivia quiz and a computer quiz. 96 The Design Museum, in London, has two interactive multimedia facilities - one using an IBM-based interactive laser disc system, and the other combining digitised still pictures with text on an apple Macintosh. The first one is called “design a tooth brush”, in which visitors must specify the materials, shape, dimensions and colour of the tooth brush to satisfy the conflicting demands of aesthetics, ergonomics and manufacturing. Those who do not meet the specifications are asked to reconsider their decisions. There is a budget, and a “money clock” on the screen will terminate the unsuccessful designer’s attempts if funds run out before the job is finished. The project was a joint venture between the museum, the Royal College of Art and Sony UK. Sony sponsored in the form of a donation of Sony VIEW delivery system, extra monitors, a camera, and a screen for the museum’s lecture theatre and workshops. There are eight stations set aside for tooth brush design. The second interactive facility is called study collection database. As its name implies, it is a database of the museums’ collections. A computerised hypertext system allows visitors to make free associations through all parts of the database, with the help of a mouse. The database displays digitised still pictures on a standard Apple Mackintosh SE with a monochrome screen. Six menus introduce designers, manufacturers, movements, products, and indexes by country, of all the entries in the system. The Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, London, opened in June 1991, with one of the innovative multimedia facility- the Micro Gallery. The gallery occupies a narrow room just off the new wing’s staircase. It provides access to images and informations on over 2000 items in the gallery’s collections in addition to other world wide art works. The software was developed with a combination of programming in the C language and Apple’s hypercard. The hardware is the powerful Macintosh computers with large hard discs of capacity 1.3 Gigabytes and 19" touchscreen monitor. Access to the imagebase follows four main routes. Using the “Artist”, visitors can select any name in the collection to see a brief biography and a “thumbnail” gallery of miniature reproductions; touching any one retrieves the larger image and catalogue entry. Using the “ Picture types ”, visitors can navigate collections into genres such as still life, landscapes or portraits. Using the “Historical atlas”, that begins with a map, visitors can redefine their search to a specific place and period and to find all the artists and work in the collection that are connected with any one city and era. Using the “General reference”, visitors can approach collections thematically. The quick response times and flexible structure allow visitors to move rapidly from one part of the package to another and to pursue idea freely across the various databases. Many of the workstations include a LaserWriter printer that provides a free print-out of the visitor’s personalised gallery tour on request. A smart card reader, that charges at a rate of £1 per page, allows the visitors to order for printing paintings in black and white and to take home. Sculpture interactive is a multimedia database in the Tate Gallery, Liverpool. The project was based on the work of Henry Moore and his contemporaries. The Gallery collaborated with BBC Milton Keynes, with the sponsorship from the Henry Moore Trust, hardware donations from Apple, UK and Pioneer technology, and support and services from the European Community’s COMETT project, Micrivitecm Bit 32, and Mersey Television. The delivery system has a computer screen for text and digitised stills and a video monitor. The computer 97 screens are uniformly arranged to provide background information for every item - for example, the title and location of each work, or the date and source of each radio interview or TV clip. About 200 individual sculptures are presented. Each item has from 3 to 180 still images. This is further supported by sketches; drawings; paintings; catalogues; books and posters; video clips of sculptors at work; explanations of technical processes such as bronze casting; records of major exhibitions such as Moore in Venice in 1976; and interviews with Moore and his contemporaries from TV and radio archives. A light bulb icon indicates when images of sculptures can be studied in different light conditions. T. T. Tsui gallery of Chinese Art, that opened within Victoria and Albert Museum in 1991, has four interactive terminals and called China’s Past and Present. Text printed in the terminal reads in English as follows along with its mandarin translation: THERE IS NO SOUND; THERE ARE FIVE SILENT FILMS; EACH LASTS TWO MINUTES; YOU CAN INTERRUPT AT ANY POINT. Around the screen, six circles with bilingual labels invite the visitor to TOUCH THIS BUTTON to start or select a presentation. Sensors beneath the touch points control a laser disc player, that presents an appropriate segment of the video. Some of the presentations last as long as four minutes and a thorough tour of all the segments takes 15 minutes. The five silent films are Monuments, A quarter of the world: People 1500-1990, Living off the Land, Making things, and Art under the microscope. Monuments depicts a brief survey of sights including the Great wall, the forbidden city and as a rather surprising finale, the Bank of China building in Hong Kong. A quarter of the world: People 1500-1990 links old photos and prints with recent footage, to juxtapose images of Court ladies with farm machinery, or Peking opera with a modern wedding. Living off the Land uses the film shot in rural china since the 1970s to illustrate scenes of agricultural labour and the country life of towns and villages. Making things depicts history of crafts like modern scenes of basket-weaving and calligraphy in the 1930s. Art under the microscope makes use of four artefacts, namely a porcelain dish, a bronze jug, a silk wedding curtain, and a sedan chair, that can be magnified at powers of x20, x50, x100 and even x200. The highest power reveals the individual fibres in the intricately embroidered curtain, and minute patterns in the organic material of the dish and the jug. Natural History Centre is a discovery room of the Liverpool Museum, Liverpool. This is housed in a room that has many stuffed birds and other natural history objects. The system uses laser disc that is commercially available and made by the British Library. Just above the video terminal, there are a number of specimens of the British birds. There are a few push-buttons - to start, to select video clip of the choice bird. Visitors get an opportunity to see the specimen birds and press the corresponding switch to hear the narration and see the bird in action. The same title is now available in CD-ROM for Macintosh or PC. The cost of this CD is £199. “Mandala experience” is a virtual environment, which uses a video camera to record the movements of the person in front of the screen, and project this image so that the visitor appears to enter the picture and interact with objects there - playing instruments, and bursting bubbles to release flights of doves, all computer - generated. Connecticut Museum of Natural History and many other 98 museums in America are using this mandala experience to create the illusion of putting the visitor literally into the picture. When a visitor approaches the terminal screen of the exhibit, he, after sometime, suddenly finds that he is there dancing with the group, playing the drums and so on. “Imaging: The tools of science” is the newest permanent exhibition in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. This opened in 10 September 1993. Numerous interactive exhibits that fill the halls of 7000 square foot exhibition comprises the following major sections:- Seeing Around, Virtual Reality, Face Net, Thermographic Portal, Planet Sphere, and Be a Brain Surgeon. In “Viral Reality”, one can take a trip through the computer-enhanced world of VR, where a visitor travels through environments of a cityscape and a canyon while other visitors alter his journey by adding sounds, graphics and new images. While in flying over the cityscape, he can weave up and around tall buildings, simultaneously hearing sounds of traffic, sirens and workers. While travelling over the canyon, he can see sun rays, canyon peaks, forest fires and water made of facial images. The environment will be enhanced by tropical sounds, fog and steam. Finally, the visitor comes back to the VR room. Snibston Discovery Park, which I have reviewed elsewhere (Yahya 1994), is a newly opened science museum in Leicestershire. In its “Leicester University showcase” gallery, the University’s Psychology department has recently launched a VR display of immersion type using a headset and a commercially available VR software called “superscape.” Though many museums attempted to use the multimedia techlogy, I have not yet come across any museum in Britain that uses VR technology in exhibition except a few in recreation centres or shopping arcades in London. In that sense, this may be a first attempt in Britain to use the VR technology in museum exhibition. In this exhibit, visitors can sit or stand wearing a headset to explore different virtual, computer-generated graphic, environments using a joystick control. The environments are a virtual kitchen, an underground station, an office, a dodgem car experience and an eerie world overrun by enormous insect-like creatures. In all these environments, visitors can operate the virtual instruments and appliances realistically - for example, the water tap can be opened to see water flowing; the cupboards can opened to see the wine bottles; and so on. Dr Nigel Foreman, head of the Leicester University’s Virtual Reality Research Group, is instrumental in launching this facility and observed that VR in the University of Leicester gallery fits well with the ethos and aims of the Snibston Park, which are to introduce people to science in an exciting way, with lots of hands-on activities in which every visitor can participate. Discussion and Conclusion So far I have presented the available multimedia platforms and some multimedia installations in the British and American Museums. For a more detailed discussion of the available platforms, readers are referred to Barker and Tucker (1990), Feldman (1991), and Hoffos (1992). Though this technology has given a wider publicity in the media and is considered to be a powerful and progressive 99 technology, this is not free from limitations and criticisms. The main criticism against multimedia facility is its mediated experience. Museum is unique because it emphasises real experience as opposed to the mediated experience. Does this mean that the visitor’s experience is not at all mediated in museums? No, says Hupert (1992); mediation occurs in museums to some extent: “I mediate - even in the museums, I am not going to let you look at the 40,000 objects I have stored away; I am going to choose the 206 objects that, I think, are the most important for you to see. That is the first mediation. The second mediation is where that museum is located. I took a museum and put it in the downtown Wall street area and made it free, because I don’t want it to cost you to see an artist’s work. So yes I am mediating all the time.” On the contrary, multimedia is purely a mediated experience and therefore something different from experiencing same situation in reality. Mediated experience therefore makes the people satisfied and gratified with surrogate experiences and unwhets the people’s appetite for active experimentation. Mediation seems to originate from two sources - one of these is the medium itself, that is, it is internal and inherent to the medium; the other is the external mediation that is contributed by external factors such as experts like museum curators or directors, family, friends, even location of the museum, and so on. Though the internal mediation in museums can be reduced to a minimum by using only real objects, the external mediation in museum - selection of objects to be displayed, issues to be addressed, and views to be expressed - cannot be avoided in reality due to the limitation of time, space and various other constraints. Though the external mediation in multimedia facility can be reduced to a minimum by introducing more interactivity, the internal mediation can not at all be avoided as it is, after all, a medium. It therefore seems that they are complimentary and can be combined to take advantage of each of them. Vygotsky (See Greenfield 1984;118) views mediated learning experience as something that helps people to realise the potential development rather than actual development. This, he calls zone of proximal development - the difference between the actual development achieved by the individual alone and the potential development achieved with the help of or in presence of experts, is reached through mediation. The mediation acts as scaffolding to non-experts or beginners. Every expert in one domain is a novice or beginner in another. The mediation by the museum curators is therefore, though, helpful for some visitors, it is traditionally used or sometimes inadvertently leads to express “partial truths” or “old order” as diagnosed by the “postmuseologists” (Duclos 1994). Another important factor within the multimedia technology is interactivity. A highly interactive multimedia package demands a high conceptual intelligence from visitors whereas low interactive package demands only a low level of conceptual intelligence. Too much freedom for the visitors to make choices, can weaken as liberate for some people. As highly interactive programme is not 100 always desirable, low interactive programme will make use of the expertise of somebody who is an expert in the field. How many of us could get the sequence of moments that Spielberg presented in ET if we are to find out on our own by navigating the multimedia database, assuming Spielberg created, instead, an interactive multimedia disc with hundreds of path ways through tens of thousands of images? Not many people would want to miss the great moments of the ET as created by Spielberg let alone even if they could discover on their own. Alan Levy, president and chief executive of the PolyGram Music and Entertain Group, a Philips subsidiary, observes that a good number of people are passive: “Speaking of multimedia, we think it is a word covering vastly different businesses which have little in common at the present time and we also believe inter-activity offers fantastic technological opportunities. But the consumer is extremely passive and will enjoy good quality entertainment on his sofa whether it is interactive or not.”(Cited in Bannister 1994). So, a good number of people may need some sort of mediation in some level. How can we take advantage of the mediation in helping beginners and at the same time allowing others to find on their own? How can we present whole truth rather than partial truth, and alternative orders rather than old orders within available space? How can we make exhibits to reach people who want to passively enjoy and also people who want to actively reach knowledge? Here is an answer for the above questions and that is multimedia. Multimedia allows us to make programmes or exhibits with high and low level interactivity in the same package; it also allows to make huge databases available only by choice, and not transparently available to everybody, so that the visitors are not uniformly bombarded with plethora of disparate information. In the era of electronic Guttenberg, the multimedia technique would become a very effective and efficient exhibition technique to achieve presenting various issues relating to a particular theme, many aspects of the same issue, complete truths, and to accommodate people with different levels of conceptual intelligence, learning styles and so on. This is a medium in which both conflicting presentations are possible and this possibility frees us choosing one rather than other, instead, allows us to choose both and thereby giving visitors a full and complete view. The technology is finally available here to transform the museum into the “postmuseum”. 101 References Allen D, (1993) “CD-ROM: Now is the time.”, Editorial, Byte, February: 12. Bannister N, (1994) “PolyGram takes dim view of multimedia products.”, The Guardian, 1 March 1994: 15. Barker J and Tucker R N (ed.), (1990) The Interactive Learning Revolution. Multimedia in Education and Training. New York, Kogan Page/ Nichols Publishing. Bush V, (1945) “As we may think.” Atlantic Monthly, 176: 101-108. Duclos R, (1994) “Postmodern/Postmuseum: New Directions In Contemporary Museological Critique.” Museological Review, 1, 1. Feldman T, (1991) Multimedia in the 1990s. British National Bibliography Research Fund Report 54. London, The British Library. Greenfield P A, (1984) “A theory of the teacher in the learning activities of everyday life.” in Rogoff B and Lave J (eds.) Everyday cognition: its development in social context. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press: 117-138. Hoffos S, (1992) Multimedia and the interactive display in museums, exhibitions and libraries . Library and Information research Report 87. London, The British Library. Hupert D (1992) “The museum experience.” in Semper R and Woolsey K H, Multimedia in Public Space, Technical Report, Design conference Proceedings. San Francisco, Apple Multimedia Lab and the Exploratorium: 23-30 PCW, (1994a) “CD-R advertisement.” Personal Computer World, April 1994: 497. The cost of the CD-R player (Philips CDD521 Recorder with CeQuadrat software, SCSI cards and cables) is £3999 ex VAT. Marketed by CD revolution Ltd., 21 London Street, Chertsey, Surrey KT16 8AP, Tel: 0932 56200, Fx: 0932 571999. PCW, (1994b) “Microsoft’s Art Gallery.” Personal Computer World, April: 514. Semper R and Woolsey K H, (1992) “Multimedia in Public Space.” in Semper R and Woolsey K H (eds.), Multimedia in Public Space. Technical Report. Design conference Proceedings . San Francisco, Apple Multimedia Lab and the Exploratorium: 5-16 Udell J (1993) “Start the presses.”, Byte, February: 116-134. Yahya I (1994) “Snibston Discovery Park: a review from an Indian perspective.” in Pearce S (ed.) New Research in Museums Studies: An International Series No. 4: Museums and the Appropriation of Culture. London, Athlone Press. 102 1983-1993: A Decade of PhDs Museological Review, 1, 1, 1994: 101-107 1983-1993: A decade of PhD Research in the Dept. of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. Ibrahim Yahya In 1983, the first PhD in museums studies from the University of Leicester came out. Up to the present, about nine PhD theses have been successfully completed in the Department. Three of these (Lynne Teather, 1983; Lee Jolliffe, 1987; and Sonja Tanner, 1989) were supervised by Geoffrey Lewis, though Teather’s was initially supervised by the founding Director of the Department Mr Singleton. Four PhDs (Aviva Barnea, 1989; Maria de Lourdes Parreiras Horta, 1992; Pedro Lorente 1993; and Chuang 1994) were supervised by Dr Eilean HooperGreenhill; one PhD (Francis Yui-tan Chang, 1992) was supervised by Mr Geoff Stansfield; and one PhD was supervised by Dr. Susan Pearnce. What follows are reprints of the abstracts of the first six of the PhD theses; 1) • MUSEOLOGY AND ITS TRADITIONS: THE BRITISH EXPERIENCE, 1845-1945 LYNNE TEATHER; 1983 This investigation addresses the problems of the theoretical conceptualization of museology using the historical evidence of the museum scene in Britain from 1945 to 1945. Part One, the Museological Background, sets the theoretical problem explaining the current stage of museological thought and suggesting a role for history of museums and museology in the epistemological development of museum study. Part Two, The Museological Tradition in Britain, 1845-1045, focuses on the British scene beginning with evidence of museum and museological prototypes in Britain and Europe up to 1945, then examining the numbers, types and growth patterns of museums, legislation and funding levels, post 1945 to 1945. Next, the museum staffs are analyzed in terms of museum jobs, training, status, professionalization and the control of expertise built on a basis of knowledge and skill. The content and underlying problems in the ‘body of knowledge’ of museological thought are identified under three headings: 1) the views of the museum’s role; 2) the experience of the visitor; 3) the experience of the object. Part III, Museological Conclusions sum up using the findings to formulate conclusions for museological theory. The study attempts to rediscover aspects of the long tradition of museum work along with characteristic weaknesses. For the thought base of museum work exists as an experimental belief system which has not yet reached the level of conceptualization necessary for a systematic scientific body of knowledge central to the progress of any field. Explanation for the theoretical weakness, in part, lies in the context of museums in Britain - the limitations of an inadequate 1983-1993: A Decade of PhDs 103 national museum structure, funding, legislation; the faults of the occupational structure, the fragmentation and specialization of the workplace, insufficient preparation for work, the lack of autonomy of museum workers whose expertise is defined by external sources such as lay boards or councils, add to the equation to mitigate against the occupation’s ability to codify and transmit a systematic body of principles to peers pr following generations of workers. This thesis holds that the fundamental problem, however, is the very conceptual base of thought about museums which remains pragmatic, experiential often without factual corroboration exhibiting over-simplified, repeating, contradictory arguments. For example, historical findings of this study challenge a number of axioms of museological belief offering evidence on growth patterns of museums, a series of museum firsts, and the mixed viewpoints of the museum’s role from that of social utility and education, scholarly/scientific, popular entertainment, aesthetic and spiritual renewal. These complex origins form the base of the museum’s broad appeal to a variety of interests and groups but also the resulting confusion of the cultural tradition in the professional ideology of museum work. Results are persistent philosophical oppositions such as the contrasting ideologies of the ‘progressive’ view, the democratic, educational, missionary museum accessible to all, versus the ‘traditional’ or expert view, the scholarly/ scientific museum as the preserve of the cultural and scientific heritage, which weaken the basis of museology by artificially pitting the visitor against the object in the museum process. But the theoretical development of museology will depend on efforts to gain access to the evidence of the cultural tradition and to raise it to a systematic theory based on an organic, holistic view of the museum as a process integrating rather than compartmentalizing, synthesizing rather than opposing, the functions of usage and preservation. The thesis with the examples of museum history in Britain attempts to move from the ambiguity, paradox, and opinion base of museum tradition to a systematic, scientific study of the museum phenomenon. 2) • MUNICIPAL MUSEUM IN CANADA: CONTEMPORARY DIRECTIONS LEE E JOLLIFFE ; 1987 This thesis studies municipal museums in Canada, defined as museums owned and operated under a bylaw or directive of a municipal corporation. The objectives are to examine ideas about these museums, to document their development, to identify their operation within the local government structure, and to analyze their contemporary state. The first part identifies a tradition in which municipal museums have evolved in response to gradual increases in community support. Their organization has been related to local government structures. 104 1983-1993: A Decade of PhDs The middle part documents a national review which identified/ municipal museums and collected information on their establishment, management and operation. A survey and case studies provide statistical and documentary evidence which is presented on a national and regional basis. From these findings it has been possible to define the municipal museum population of some three hundred institutions representing approximately one quarter of all museums, arrangements, outline the role of local government, describe operations, and document the status of policy development. In the final section implications of the findings are examined. Influences on museums in the areas of their role in society, the emergence of standards and patterns of support are outlined. Current developments indicate that these established identity of municipal museums is a factor which will contribute to their continuing evolution and expanded through formal cooperative efforts. By identifying, documenting and analyzing the municipal museum phenomenon in Canada this work clearly establishes that these institutions are a significant and potentially unified group of museums. Supporting appendices list municipal museums by date of foundation, province, survey response and planning studies. Questionnaires, research guidelines and a select bibliography are provided. 3) • COMMON HERITAGE OF ALL MANKIND: A STUDY OF CULTURAL POLICY AND LEGISLATION PERTINENT TO CULTURAL OBJECTS SONJA TANNER-KAPLASH; 1989 Government policy is subject to many influences, which may range from a philosophical position arising from changes in the value systems of a given society, to logistic considerations, such as available methods of implementation and the prevailing economic structure. The value system known as “the common heritage of all mankind” - the longterm global stewardship of natural and man-made resources - is explored in this thesis in the context of cultural policies, specifically those concerning cultural objects. Heritage, linked to the concept of inheritance as a legally protected future interest, is traced in its historical migration from the private sphere to the development of national public assets to an international awareness of global stewardship. Implementing legislation is a salient indicator of cultural policy; the cyclical relationship in which legal precepts internalised by a society from earlier laws become integral to the cycle of policy formulation and application is illustrated, featuring legislation from several States. 1983-1993: A Decade of PhDs 105 While the thesis is cast within a particular philosophical framework, practical economic realities are among the most important logistic considerations for government policy development. Illicit activities have been recognised as a major threat to cultural objects in the modern world, in addition, these objects are frequently “luxury goods” for which historically, regulation and taxation have been the rule rather than the exception; the thesis argues for a practical, domestic and economic approach to the problem of protection. This implies control of cultural objects in some form, including the documentation of significant pieces. The thesis conclusions propose that both the responsibilities and associated costs could be defrayed and shared by governments and the private sector by means of a licensing program. 4) • THE MUSEUM AS A SETTING FOR NEW LEARNING AVIVA BARNEA; 1989 This thesis intends to validate the hypothesis that the museum is a setting for new learning. It seeks to place a long experience in education (1957-1989) in a theoretical framework. Scanning many cultural institutions, that have the ultimate goal of education, the museum was found to be an unexplored source, that is, rich with possibilities to attain this objective: an institution that stimulates new ideas and methods in education. World wide changes have accelerated social processes and the awareness of museums of their responsibilities to society; museums have become accessible to various audiences, including pupils and students. Part one presents a museum that responded to the socio-cultural needs of a society in transition in Israel, through educational programmes, devised by The Centre of Museum Education in Haifa. Part two describes the contemporary museum, including the ecomuseum- a kind of museum that builds its programmes with the community and makes them relevant to them. Part three presents the theory of learning at the museum, a theory that is underpinned by stances from general education. It combines with the unique provisions of the museum, the collections, and environment. Part four validates the assumptions that the museum is a setting for learning by a case study, based on the Museum Education Centre in Haifa. This Centre has developed programmes relevant to the theme of peoples’ culture, which are taught through the humanities approach integrating theory and practice. Such a theme seems particularly appropriate in multi-cultural societies like Israel and England. 106 1983-1993: A Decade of PhDs The work concludes that the key role of museums, as generators of culture is in developing new programmes and new kinds of museum that point to the future, projects of this kind that involve both museums and other institutions, in the spirit of interdisciplinary and collaborative work for the sake of education and culture through the spreading of knowledge. 5) • MUSEUM SEMIOTICS: A NEW APPROACH TO MUSEUM COMMUNICATION MARIA DE LOURDES PARREIRAS HORTA; 1992 The research explores the theoretical possibility of a semiotic approach to the Museum phenomenon, seen as a process of communication and signification, and the consequences on the determination of the social function of museum, in its semantic and pragmatic levels. It proposes a new discipline for the field that of ‘Museum Semiotics’. as a theoretical background and a tool for the understanding of museums as ‘semiotic spaces’, acting in the cultural process through their ‘communicative actions’. Parts I and II propose the basic assumptions and premises for the study of the specific Museum Language, defining its terms and concepts, and considering museum objects as bearing a ‘sign-function’, as ‘signifying units’ used in the construction of messages and ‘discourses’, manifested or hidden in museum exhibitions. The mechanisms of the process of sign production and of sign mechanisms of the process of sign production and of sign interpretation in the Museum context, the concept of ‘museality’, the Museum ‘mythological speech’, the interplay of codes and the interaction between emitters and receivers in the museum communication process, are explored here. Parts III and IV propose and develop a preliminary model of analysis of exhibition ‘texts’ and of their specific ‘rhetorics’ applied in a particular case study, the exhibition on ‘Buddhism, Art and Faith’, held at the British Museum (1985), in order to detect the multiple ways in which the public ‘reads’ a Museum message, and all the elements working in this process. Part V presents the conclusions and insights on Museum Communication, on exhibition production and evaluation, on Museum Education, and on new fields of research opened up through the approach of museum semiotics, proposing a strategy for changing the conditions of communication, through open and aesthetic texts, which may encourage the visitors to recover their freedom of decoding. 6) • THE DEVELOPMENT OF BIOLOGICAL COLLECTION: TAIWAN — AN ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION FRANCIS YUI-TAN CHANG; 1992 In emphasising the international nature of museum, it is easy to forget that they exist in different cultural and social settings. The development of museums, their aims and their sense of priorities are inevitably conditioned by the country in which they emerge. By an appraisal if the development of Taiwan’s biological 1983-1993: A Decade of PhDs 107 collections, this thesis attempts to demonstrate some of the problems facing developing countries in this important field of natural history museums. Due to Taiwan’s unique historical and political background, early biological surveys and collecting were entirely undertaken by European, American and Japanese naturalists. As a result, an enormous number of Taiwan’s biological specimens including the great majority of types and first-record voucher specimens are now deposited in overseas museums. Through an examination and analysis of a substantial volume of historical and taxonomic works, this thesis traces the history of biological activities in Taiwan between 18543 and 1945 and attempts an assessment of the quantity and quality of these collections. By means of a case of Robert Swinhoe (1836-77, FRS), the most distinguished pioneering naturalist in Taiwan’s early natural history, this writer argues the significance of these collections on Taiwan’s current social and scientific context. This research is intended to raise the awareness of biologists and historians in Taiwan and allow them to utilise a rich resource which is mow almost completely neglected or considered to have little potential to biological and historical studies today. The thesis then proceeds to investigate the recent development and the present status of biological collections through an analysis of twenty-one major biological collections in Taiwan, The research findings have revealed an alarming picture. It has exposed a lack of staff, suitable storage facilities, adequate management and effective utilisation. In conclusion, the nature of the problems facing the development of biological collections Taiwan is examined by reference to George Basalla’s three-phase model (pioneering, dependent and independent phase) which examines the spread of Western science from its ‘centre to peripheral regions. The independent phase of the development of Taiwan’s biological collections is sadly identified as a stage yet to be realised. In an attempt to provide solutions to these problems, two sets of recommendations are proposed. The first focuses mainly on the formation of long-term strategies and policies. The second represents ‘working priorities’ which are intended to rectify the obvious deficiencies now existing in Taiwan’s biological collections. 108 Reviews RIPE FRUITS OF MUSEOLOGY LECTURING. A RECENT INTERNATIONAL VINTAGE. Roland SCHAER: L’invention des musées. Paris: Gallimard/R.M.N (col. “Découvertes Gallimard”), 1993; 144 p., ill (80 FF-circa £ 8). Luis Alonso FERNÁNDEZ: Museología. Introducción a la teoría y práctica del museo. Madrid: Ediciones Istmo (col. “Fundamentos Maior”), 1993; 424 p., ill (2500 pts circa £ 12). Roland Schaer was a Philosophy lecturer who in 1985 became the director of the cultural services of the Parisian Musée d’Orsay. At the same time, he is at present one of the most popular lecturers at the École du Louvre, where he is in charge of the course on the History of Museums. Through him, many future curators are developing a growing interest in the past of museums. Therefore it is very good news to know that, thanks to this volume, a broad public may now have access to M. Schaer’s lessons. The collection Découvertes Gallimard, in which his book has been published, is well-known in France for its contribution to the popularisation of scientific knowledge. Thus, the text is quite easy to read and is profussedly and beautifully illustrated. The design, like in a good museum display, has been carefully worked, with an eye to aesthetics and another to didacticism. There are no footnotes at all, and the rhythm of the discourse is suitably conducted by the distribution of frequent sub-headings and the insertion of complementary texts in framed areas. In short, this is a very nice book. It is also a very interesting one. In spite of its being entitled L’invention des musées, this is not yet another specialised disquisition on the remote origins of museums, but a publication surveying the whole history of these institutions, since their invention (chapters I and II) to the present ‘post-modern’ tendencies (chapter V). As this is a book mainly aimed at a French audience, the examples reviewed are predominantly, although not exclusively, French. In fact, the historical role of France as an international leader in the world of museums is a major theme of discussion and criticisism tacked in this essay. Not surprisingly then, the longest chapters of the book are those devoted to the evolution of museums and art galleries at the time of the French Revolution (chapter III) and in 19th century France (chapter IV -entitled ‘The golden age’). Finally, the appendix of documents transcribed at the end is one of the most informative and interesting assets of this publication. Such a well-selected anthology of texts offers a direct insight in the minds of some of the most famous museum masters and museum visitors; from Elias Ashmole, the founder of the Reviews 109 Ashmolean Museum of Oxford, to Michel Laclotte, the present director of the Louvre. These texts undoubtedly provide stimulating material, either for the curiosity of the general public or for the professional and academic interest of researchers in museum studies. Like the above, Museología. Introducción a la teoría y práctica del museo, is also a product of the continuous day-to-day teaching experience. It is now more than ten years that D. Luis Alonso Fernández has been lecturing on Museology at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Universidad Complutense, Madrid. In Spain the university provision for training future museum professionals is still in the process of developing. This means that Dr. Fernández is not a member of a department of specialists in museum studies, but ‘the’ lecturer in charge of a general course combining the history of museums, museological theory, principles of conservation, documentation, display, interpretation... in short: everything. It is therefore no coincidence that his book, as he argues in the preface, is consequentially a vademecum: a hand-book, giving a broad, all-embracing, picture of the diverse areas covered by museologists. This is the book’s main virtue and its main drawback. Such a lengthy treatise is perhaps too dense a reading for strangers to the museum profession, being on the other hand too general to satisfy the particular concerns of some specialists. However, neither of these groups will constitute this book’s more likely customers, for its most problable target audience is a public of young would-be curators: i.e., a number of university students registered for some of the museology courses developing in Spain and, above all, the legion of postgraduates preparing the dreadful oposiciones -public competitions- for any official post of museum curator. To their delight, they will discover that the contents of this hand-book are distributed in seven and a half chapters which, to a certain extent, correspond to the different topics typicaly asked in one of the written examinations of the oposiciones. Chapter I explains what is a ‘museum’ and clarifies the definitions of ‘museology’ and ‘museography; the clearest definitions I have hitherto found. Chapter II surveys the history and evolution of museums up to the 20th century, culminating with an assessment, in chapter III, of the challenges raised by the ‘post-modern’ sensibility of our ‘post-industrial’ society. Chapter IV is a short digression on cultural patrimony as related to museums. Chapter V sets apart various types of museums; an exercise in taxonomy which, as I will argue later, might be a typically Spanish intellectual passion. Chapter VI is a very long essay (116 pages) summarising the main functions of museums and the manifold relevant activities to be performed by museum professionals. Chapter VII mainly concentrates on the questions of museums architecture and design. The epilogue, which might be counted as an extra half chapter, provides an up-dated review of present museological ideas; the author is an active member of ICOM’s ICOFOM Committee. Finally, the books closes with an impressive bibliography list, 44 pages long!. 110 Reviews One of the most striking features of this book is its remarkable comprehensiveness. I do not mean only that the contents embrace a vast range of materials, I also mean that the author has gathered information about museums and museologists from around the world -including Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, Japan, India, China, and so on (cf. esp. pages 72-75 and 162, as well as the many references in a variety of foreign languages scattered in the final bibliography). Sadly, this openness to Europe and the rest of the world is not common in the existing museum studies literature written in English. Therefore, it is somehow to the best effect if this is not a museology handbook written from an Anglo-saxon point of view. Although the author has frequently combined his academic activities with workexperience in the U.S.A., as a guest lecturer and museum curator, he has by no means lost contact with the Spanish standpoint. This could in fact be one of the reasons why this book was such an enlightening discovery for me... As I have been trained in museum studies out of my country of origin, my education has been conveyed within foreign conceptual frameworks. I might have undergone acculturation. I knew Italians to be at the top concerning the exam a process of acculturation of the architecture and aesthetics of art galleries, that Anglo-saxons lead the way in matters of bringing museums to the service of the public, that regarding the conservation of cultural patrimony the French are historically in the vanguard. Now I have learned, to my surprise, that Spaniards have produced a huge amount of museological cogitation regarding the definition and expansion of different museum-types. Incidentally, this happen to be one of my favourite fields of work as a researcher! J. Pedro LORENTE News 111 Museological Review, 1, 1, 1994: 101-107 NEWS SECTION Conferences-Courses • Managing Change in Museums, 3-7/7/1994. The 1994 Museums Management Program at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Details: Victor J. Danilov, Director, Museum Management Program University of Colorado 250 Bristlecone Way, Boulder, CO 80304 Tel.: (303) 443 2946 Fax: (303) 443 8486. • Museums Management Course Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany. Details: Abt. Building Deutsches Museum D-80538 Munich, Germany. Tel.: (49) 89 217 9294 Fax: (1 49) 89 217 9324. • Museums Computer Group The Museums Computer Group promotes sharing of experience in the applications of information technology to museums and heritage related organisations. Fields covered include cataloguing and collections management, multimedia and interactive displays, as well as administrative applications of computing. Membership is free. Contact: Emma Ashley c/o National Museum of Wales, Cathays Park, Cardiff CF1 3NP. • The International Summer School of Museology (ISSOM), 8th session for General Museology, Brno, Czech Republic, 7-29/7/1994. Information: Zbynek Z. Stransky, Director, ISSOM, Masaryk University, Zerotinovo nám. 9, 601 77 Brno, Czech Republic. T.: (42 5) 42 12 82 37. Fax: (42 5) 42 12 82 66. • International Documentation Committee (CIDOC) annual meeting (ICOM) in Washington, DC., USA, 28-31/8/1994. Theme: Cultures Connected-automating museums in the Americas and beyond James R. Blackaby, P.O.Box 211, Cabin John, Maryland 20818, USA or Andrew Roberts, T.: (44 223) 841 181, Fax: (44 223) 842 136. News 112 • Annual Meeting of the International Committee for Museology (ICOFOM) Beijing and Sian, China, 11-22/9/1994. Theme: situation of museums and museology in China, a seminar on “Objectdocument?”, a seminar on museums and the community Martin Schärer, Alimentarium, P.O. Box 13, CH-1800 Vevey, Switzerland T.: (41 21) 924 41 11 Fax: (41 21) 924 45 63. • 15th International Congress of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC) Ottawa, Canada, 12-16/9/1994. Theme: Preventive Conservation, Practice, Theory and Research IIC, 6 Buckingham Street, London WC2N 6BA, UK. Fax: (44 71) 976 1564. • European Association of Archaeologists, Inaugural Meeting Slovenia, Ljubljana, 22-25/9/1994 University of Ljubljana, Dept. of Archaeology The aims of the meeting are the formal inauguration of the Association, the promotion of the objectives of the Association, the recruitment of new members, and a scientific conference aimed at defining the fundamental problems of European Archaeology in the 1990s and beyond. Sessions to be run: The politics of archaeology in contemporary Europe (The concept of Europe, Contemporary myth of the past, traditions in European archaeology, gender studies) Heritage management in Europe (“commercial archaeology”, legislation problems, archaeological landscapes, reconstruction and authenticity) Conceptual and theoretical issues in European archaeology (reuniting archaeology, the role of population movement in creating the multicultural nature of Europe, the “longue durée” in the archaeology of Europe, the interface between archaeology and history) Contemporary research issues in European archaeology European Archaeological Institute - round table Information: P.Novakovic University of Ljubljana, Dept. of Archaeology SI-61001 News 113 • Regional Workshop on the Illicit Traffic of Cultural Property. Organised by ICOM, UNESCO and the Ministry of Culture and Communication of Mali as part of the work of the AFRICOM Programme, Bamako Mali, 12-14/10/1994. Valérie Chieze, ICOM, 1 rue Miollis, 75732 Paris cedex 15. France, T.: (331) 45 68 28 34 Fax: (331) 43 06 78 62. • Annual Meeting of the International Committee for Education and Cultural Action (CECA), Cuenca, Ecuador, 25-29/10/1994. Sra. Lucia Astudillo de Parra, Fundación Equinoccial, FE, Casilla 1554, Cuenca, Ecuador. T: (593 7) 842 333. Fax: (593 7) 831 636. • Restoration-is it Acceptable. A two-day conference to be held at the British Museum in November 1994 to explore the relationship between conservation and restoration. Information: Restoration Conference Dept. of Conservation The British Museum London WC1B 3DG (UK). • Education for Scientific Literacy, 1994 International Conference on the Public Understanding of Science, Science Museum, London, 7-9/11/1994. Speakers include Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, University of Leicester; Mary Alexander, Hillwood Museum, Washington; Loren Behr, Chicago Children’s Museum; David Anderson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Henry Bauer, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Harry Collins, University of Bath; John Durant, Science Museum, London; Sally Goodman, British Association for the Advancement of Science; Roland Jackson, Science Museum, London; Jean-Marc Lévy-Lebond, University of Nice; Jon Miller, Chicago Academy of Sciences; Jorge Wagensberg, Museu da la Ciència, Barcelona. There is an opportunity to present papers. Contact: Suzanne Boothby Education for Scientific Literacy Conference Education Unit Science Museum Exhibition Road London SW7 2DD Tel.: (44) 71 938 8131 Fax: (44) 71 938 8250. • World Archaeological Congress - 3, New Delhi, 4-11/12/1994 Academic Themes: Concept of time; Archaeology as an indicator of trade and contact; language, anthropology and archaeology; ethnoarchaeology; state, city and society; neogene; technological innovations and power; cultural property, conservation and public awareness; relationship between archaeological theory and practice; 114 News changing perspectives in Historical Archaeology; material culture and body; Archaeological manifestations of religious traditions and Institutions on Society and Culture Information to: Prof. V.N.Misra Deccan College Post Graduate & Research Institute Pune-411 006, India. T: (212) 662982, 669795 Fax: (212) 660104. Exhibitions • Painting the Maya Universe: Royal Ceramics of the Classic Period Exhibition Schedule Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (15/4-27/6/1994) Denver Art Museum (15/7-15/9/1994) Los Angeles County Museum of Art (6/10/1994-8/1/1995) Yale University Art Gallery (10/2-23/4/1995) • The Gates of Mystery- Treasures of Orthodoxy from Russia and Greece National Gallery, Athens, Greece (13/4-30/6/1994). • Rediscovering Pompeii, Museum of Ancient Art, Basel-Switzerland (until 26 June 1994). More than 200 exhibits, including everyday objects, marble columns, frescoes, mosaics, bronzes, reliefs, reconstructions of a Pompeian garden and room with the original paintings. • Double reality in Oslo, Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, Norway (16/4-9/10/1994). Exhibits works dating from the 1950s by the group of artists known as “The School of London”. They include well-known figures such as Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and David Hockney. • Kunst und Diktatur (Art and Dictatorship), Kunstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria (Until 15 August 1994). Examines the relationship between totalitarian regimes and art in Europe’s three main dictatorships: Communism, Italian Fascism and National Socialism with 300 paintings and sculpture, magazines, books and documents. • The ‘People’s Show’ is a concept originating from an exhibition held at the Walsall Museum and Art Gallery (England) in 1990 in which the private collections of local people ranging from drum kits to frogs, were given a wider audience by presenting them as a collective exhibition at the museum. The idea was repeated in 1992 using different collections as exhibits and has now spread News 115 throughout Britain. Walsall is staging another People’s Show this summer as are forty seven museums across Britain and Northern Ireland. So if you are in Britain between Summer and Autumn (Fall) and have an interst in popular culture, it would be well worth checking if a museum near you is staging a People’s Show. A full list of those museums hosting a People’s Show can be obtained by writing to: Walsall Museum and Art Gallery Lichfield Street Walsall West Modlands England, U.K. WS1 1TR • Lisbon Cultural Capital of Europe 1994; A meeting point of cultures. According to Simonetta Luz Afonso (Lisbon Cultural Capital of Europe 1994, Official Programme 1994:12-13), the programme for exhibitions in Lisbon, Cultural Capital of Europe 1994, is based upon four central ideas: 1. 2. 3. 4. The City of Lisbon as the first work of art on display; The selection of two of the city’s main extensions, in the shape of a ‘T’. Along this route, the visitor can find a number of museums (e.g. Ethnological Museum, the Archaeological Museum, the Tile Museum, the Museum of Ancient Art) which house respectively a number of various exhibitions; Lisbon as a meeting point of many different cultures; Lisbon as a city of the present and of the future, and not as a city with a glorious past. Let’s present just some of the exhibitions and their contents as mentioned in the Official Programme: “Subterranean Lisbon” (Museu de Arqueologia, 25/2-31/12/1994) 25/2-31/12/1994), presents the city’s great eras of development: Prehistoric; ancient Olissipo visited by Phoenicians; Roman; Visigothic; Moorish; Medieval; Modern. “The Fado” (Museu Nacional de Etnologia, 14/7-31/12/1994) 14/7-31/12/1994), will reveal a complex, scientific work carried out in the areas of Ethnology, Sociology and Anthropology in connection with the historical origins of Fado. Photographs, prints, musical instruments, staves, scores, leaflets and assorted other items will demonstrate the wealth of this special form of music which will be contrasted with other musical forms that appeared simultaneously. “The Classics in Lisbon” (Museu National do Teatro, 21/4-30/9/1994). An exhibition intended to show the history of staging classics in Lisbon. Plays by playwrights such as Molière, Shakespeare, Sophocles and others, will be reviewed in their successive versions. 116 News “The Temptations of Bosch or the Eternal Recurrence” (National Museum of Ancient Art, 19/5-31/8/1994). The exhibition deals with the existence of an imaginary, or “imaginal” heritage that chose neither time nor era to express itself through art. Within this framework, the surrealist movement is prominent, since its philosophy involves a journey through the imaginary. The exhibition’s main point of reference is the Temptations of St. Anthony, painted by Hieronymus Bosch. “The Years of Rupture” Rupture”, A perspective of Portuguese Art during the Sixties (Palácio Galveias, 3/6-7/10/ 1994). It is intended as an analysis of the rupture in the various fields of artistic endeavour, in Portugal during the period under consideration. “Oriental Influence on Portuguese Tiles” (Museu National do Azulejo, Museum of Tiles, 20/6-15/10/1994). It draws attention to the importance of contact with the Orient for Portuguese Art, particularly with regard to the decorative motifs used in Portuguese ceramics. “The Day after Tomorrow” (Centro Cultural de Belém, 20/9-7/12/1994). An exhibition that aims to gather together the most outstanding names of contemporary Portuguese production. In parallel, it will display the work of some of the more interesting international painters. “Mythical Costumes of Portuguese Regional Culture” (Costume Museum, 7/431/12/1994). An important sample from the collection of the Costume Museum correctly staged in its appropriate historical context, from festive apparel to working clothes from every region. Forthcoming Publications • Cleere, Henry and Fowler, Peter: Cultural Resource Management, Training fro Archaeological Conservation, Preservation and Display, Routledge, London. Hb: 0-415-09560-3: £35.00 • Leicester Readers in Museum Studies. Anthologies in six volumes by Prof.S.Pearce, Dr.E.Hooper-Greenhill, Dr.G.Kavanagh, K.Moore, Simon Knell, Anne Fahy, Routledge London ((published on replacement of the Museum Studies courses packs, University of Leicester, Dept. of Museum Studies). News 117 New Staff Members at the Department of Museum Studies Kevin Moore Kevin Moore: specialising in museum management and marketing. Kevin was both an undergraduate and postgraduate at Liverpool University, before taking up a post as lecturer in history at Liverpool Polytechnic. His museum career began in 1985, working on the establishment of Merseyside Museum of Labour History. This was followed by research on a community history project in the dock lands of Merseyside, which was jointly administered by National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside and the University of Liverpool. After graduating from the Department of Museum studies at Leicester, Kevin was Senior Heritage Officer, St. Helens, Merseyside, before taking up his current post in October 1992. Kevin has published widely in the fields of labour history, particularly the labour history of Liverpool, and in museum studies. He is the author of Museum Management in the Leicester Museum Studies Readers series, which will be published by Routledge in October 1994, and a forthcoming book for Leicester University Press, Museums and Popular Culture. Janet Owen Janet Owen: specialising in collection management and archaeology curatorship. She had her M. A. Hons in Archaeology from Cambridge University and M A in museum Studies with special subject as archaeology at the University of Leicester. She has been working as a member of the collection management team of Southampton city museum and as assistant keeper of archaeology in Lincolnshire Council, before taking up the current assignment. She had authored and coauthored a number of articles and edited the Lincolnshire County council Recreational Services Education Newsletter. She has been actively involved in the Society of Museum Archaeologists as a committee member (1993-95) and chair (1994-95). Simon J Knell Simon Knell: specialising in sciences in museums: care of collections, environmental recording, the public understanding of science, site interpretation, science exhibits and science centres. He had his M. A. in museums studies in the University of Leicester. Geologist by training, he had been working in a museum until 1992, when he has taken up the current post. He has coauthored a book Geology and the local museum published by the HMSO in 1989. He has published a number of articles on geological collections in museums.