In which I consider the musee imaginaire

I was listening to one of my favourite podcasts, from the National Gallery (UK), when an interesting concept was discussed, that of Andre Malraux's musee imaginaire.

Sophie Howeth, director of the English School of Life, describes the idea as a "museum without walls". Malraux's original idea had to do with the ever increasing number of art reproductions available in the 20th (and now 21st) centuries, and art's subsequent ability to reach out beyond hallowed halls to influence everyone and everyday life. The National Gallery used this idea to answer the age-old question: how is culture (Shakespeare, Caravaggio, Stravinsky) revelant to us now? Or, as asked by high school students everywhere: What's the point?

Sophie Howeth's answer, luckily for us public historians, is a resounding affirmation of the importance of culture, even in our daily lives. She explains that while visiting a gallery, for instance, we aren't blank slates. Our families, our jobs, whatever happened in our day - we are still carrying these things around with us. When we leave the gallery, we want to take a piece of it, a part of that sanctuary, back with us.

We all have a musee imaginaire in our heads, or we bring it to life with scrapbooks, or postcards on the fridge, or even blogs. It is our way of collecting those pieces of art, or music, or writing, that really inspire us, mean something to us, and speak to us on a different level. Whether we realize it or not, we all have this going on in our heads - we've all got our own museum without walls.

So how do we engage with this personal cultural collection? In the same way we usually feel a personal connection with a piece of art - when it is working on answering the same questions we are asking. Howeth explains how we turn to art when we feel the need to know someone else is battling with the same important, enduring questions we are - art can help solve the universal feeling of not being alone. Artists put into words, music, paint strokes, whatever, the different emotions we feel.

I felt this podcast was quite timely, as one of the big museum news stories in the past few weeks was the closing of the Rose Art Gallery at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. The university trustees' decision to sell the collection to pay for school administrative costs had art museum directors raising their voices in anger. Art collections shouldn't be seen as expendable income, they should be held in the public trust for educative purposes, not sold in our failing economy to pay for the university's deficit. Not to mention that selling collections goes against the code of ethics of most museum organizations unless the proper deaccessioning rules are followed and the money is put back into the collection.

So this question, of the relevance and societal importance of culture, is increasingly being asked and pondered over, especially in our current economic climate. I have a feeling that Brandeis university is not the only institution battling financial problems, and starting to see their art or artifact collections as assets, instead of a rich cultural collection with the ability to teach and inspire. Unfortunately culture, heritage and the arts is often forgotten in budgets, or the first to be cut out of them.

Maybe we should all sit back and think about our own musee imaginaires, stroll through an art gallery, pick up that classic book we've always meant to read, or go walk through a new museum, and remember the role culture can play in our personal lives.