In which I look at a photograph

Another museum podcast has inspired an entry. It has brought up some issues we have discussed a few times in class, ideas which I think are important to review for museum studies and public history students. The first issue is everyone's favourite, money, and the second is the museum's effect on perceptions of objects of culture.

This podcast came from the Met, and it featured retired director Philippe de Montebello discussing a photograph, Onesipe Aguado's "Women Seen from the Back", with his curator of photography. The photograph was part of the Howard Gilman collection, a large acquisition made in 2005. Gilman had been collecting photographs from the first one hundred years of photography, and had amassed a large collection in over twenty years. He has been an executive of a paper company, and had his own private curator (!).

The Met had long ago expressed interest in his collection, since they were lacking in this area, and in fact the museum had worked closely with Gilman. Their acquisitions were made with the knowledge of what Gilman had, and he did the same. The museum had long hoped, "with fervent expectation", that Gilman would make a gift or bequest of the collection to the Met upon his death.

They were disappointed (though I think their sentiments were much stronger than what can be mentioned in a podcast) to find that in Gilman's will, there was no mention at all about donating the collection. It then took seven years, rallying support from the Trustees, to fund the major purchase. As Montebello explains in a sidenote, unfortunately, right when they were negotiating the price, there was a "reversal of fortune" for Gilman's paper company, meaning they were no longer in a position to just donate the collection. That doesn't change the fact that Gilman had not made any bequest in his will.

This illustrates many of the financial woes that museums face. After working so long with Gilman, it would have only seemed natural to donate the collection to the Met. Perhaps he believed the Met to be large, and rich enough, despite its being a not-for-profit cultural institution, to support the purchase? What if he had been working with a smaller museum, one that could never afford a large acquisition such as this? Would he still have refused to donate the collection? Economic downturn or no, the real losers in this situation are the public, the visitors to all museums. It's a clear reminder that museums depend on donations to survive, and even large institutions like the Met can have difficulty when prices are put on artifacts. Of course, buying and selling is a normal practice in the art world, and the Met is an art museum. But who sets the price?

Which brings us to the second point brought up in the podcast - the museum's ability to place value, both cultural and financial, on an object, by displaying it, or collecting it in the first place. All museum activities are interpretive: "merely by collecting or choosing to place an object on view, museum staffs were interpreting the object, attributing importance to it within the museum's subject matter, and anticipating the expectations of visitors viewing the artifact or artwork." [1].

This particular photo, "Woman Seen from the Back", had been relatively unknown until the Met placed the picture on the front of the catalogue for the first major exposition of the Gilman photographs. "Did we not create its celebrity?" Montebello asks. He points out a museum's incredible responsibility, and their effect on perceptions of works of art, especially large institutions like the Met. The curator believed it to be their mission to shine a spotlight on these lesser-known works, and not to rely solely on famous artists and their works. I believe the Met is right in their way of thinking. While it can't be forgotten that most of the public perceives museums, especially art museums, as upper-class, more temple than forum, the Met should be lauded in attempting to introduce something new to the public, a work that has power, and beauty, but may have been ignored because it didn't have a famous name attached to it.

Museums must also be careful, however, and must remember that "Museums make judgements and... ascribe meaning (and power) to the objects and the very institutions that contain them." [2]. It is their responsibility to showcase a wide range of artworks, from ancient times to 2009, from different artists with different messages. The authority of a museum is highly valuable, Montebello explains, since the photograph is now in the canon of photographic works. But it must not turn to authoritarianism. Museums must use this power to explore new messages, new artists, and make sure different viewpoints are represented.



[1] Edward P. Alexander and Mary Alexander. Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008, 257.

[2] Ibid, 258.

In which I think of new forms of exhibits

This week in museology we've been reading about exhibits - who is listening and looking (students? the upper class? the 'public'?), who is talking (curators? designers? educators?), the problems with interpretation, the concerns with 'blockbusters', the ethical questions that need to be thought through. "Museums are not museums without exhibitions", writes Kathleen McLean, and they are "the soul of a museum experience". I thought I would share with you, readers, a very interesting exhibit I saw recently: the Met's The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions.

This was a very strange exhibit for me, especially as a public history student. Traditionally exhibits are thought of as visually appealing, 3-D versions of an academic paper, in the way that there is a thesis, and objects are used to illustrate this idea. We are used to exhibits talking about one historical subject, perhaps two; but this exhibit was very different.

Philippe de Montebello was the director of the Met until his recent retirement. His 30+ year influence, as well as the respect given to him by his colleagues, is obvious. The show really is a celebration of his time at the museum, and it was well-advertised; the Met's Special Exhibition podcast had been doing shows about the objects featured in the exhibit for months.

This exhibit was not on one historical topic, nor did it centre on one historical era or country, and it didn't talk about a certain art movement. Th exhibit featured the Met's most important acquisitions over the past thirty years, most important being defined in this case as the most transformative to its collections. As the exhibit website describes, it is a celebration of the diversity of the museum's collection. Three hundred objects were placed in the gallery's largest exhibition space, and in it was created "an explosive kaleidoscope of works in various materials representing artistic traditions that range across the globe and across time".

The show was organized in a completely different way than a usual art gallery. The objects were organized solely by acquisition date, meaning that a visitor moved from an 18th century French dress, to a 4th century BC Egyptian figure, to a 14th century Burgundian deck of cards, to a 5th century Indian Buddha, to a Sienese medieval painting, to a picture of Marilyn Monroe. The artifacts spanned thousands of years, hundreds of countries (even Easter Island), and included everything from famous painters (Rembrandt, Picasso, van Gogh) to little-known 19th century photography, from clothing to quilts, from pistols to armour.

Walking through the exhibit was slightly overwhelming. I'd never seen an exhibit that literally centred around acquisitions and ignored any sort of thematic organization. But I, as well as my father who was with me, both agreed it was a new and wonderful way to see the objects. There was no attempt to relate the objects to one another; the accompanying text panels spoke only of the individual artifact. The exhibit let the visitors make their own connections between the objects, between styles, between countries, between eras. It also did a great job at illustrating the sheer size of a world-class art museum like the Met, whose collections mandate must be very long indeed.

While it might seem counterintuitive for curators to put together a large exhibit without a historical (or artistic) theme and which had no prescribed learned message for visitors, this sort of exhibit still worked. It let visitors see objects that had never been displayed together in the same room, allowing for new meanings to come out of the objects. It broke traditional museum rules and moved some of the interpretation from the curators to the visitors. Overall it celebrated the efforts of a single man, who helped the Met become one of the most important art museums in the world.