The Art of Collecting

I was thinking of writing about the new Mayan exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum, which I got to see last night. I found myself much more interested, however, in writing about two smaller exhibits I saw in the past few days, which gave interesting glimpses into museum collections.

I went to the ROM earlier in the day yesterday to see The Art of Collecting, a small temporary exhibit from the European department. Taking up only one room (but fitting in over one hundred artefacts), the exhibit highlights recent acquisitions from the past fifteen years in stand-alone glass cases. I wandered past a Tiffany lamp, Georg Jenson silver teasets, Royal Worcester porcelain figures, 19th century bouquet holders, and early 20th century rocking chairs, among other things.

Unlike most exhibits I've seen that highlight objects in this way, the text panels on the wall went beyond explaining why the museum focuses on certain areas of collection. They first explained why the department was set up in the first place - to collect masterpiece decorative art objects that students could learn from and observe. The panels then explained how the museum acquires its artefacts - fortunately mostly by donation with some purchases. It then explained how they got the money for purchases - through deaccessioning other objects. Surprisingly, it then explained the rules for deaccessioning objects that museums follow. It even finished with a paragraph about the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board!

I loved the transparency of it all - museums aren't exactly secretive but most people probably don't think about how and why certain objects turn up in museum collections. I understand what the ROM is doing, of course - explaining clearly to collectors that they can get tax receipts for donating objects to museums instead of keeping or selling them, and reassuring the public that their tax money, for the most part, is not being spent to buy these lovely objects. But it's also a great lesson about how museums build collections - something a little different from the usual decorative arts history lesson/timeline.

The Art Gallery of Ontario too has a small, temporary highlight exhibition. It's called Shift, and also encompasses a small space - one and a half rooms on the first floor. It features highlights from the Modern collection and despite its small size, it's quickly becoming a favourite - among my fellow employees, anyway. It definitely packs a punch - Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, Chuck Close and Andy Warhol (among others) are all featured.

These highlight exhibits can serve different purposes - an older post of mine also talks about this. They can allow museums and galleries to show off new objects without the time and effort to re-do permanent displays (or while waiting for funding to do so!) or without organizing a larger, more comprehensive exhibition. For the ROM, most of their decorative arts collection is in furnished period rooms, with very few objects received post-1990s on display. It can also show the breadth of a museum's collection. For the ROM, the European department collects pieces from the medieval period to the 20th century, obviously a huge timeframe. As for the AGO, most visitors know about the Thompson collections (Group of Seven, European art, etc) but may not know that the gallery does hold some interesting modern pieces. It's also fun to see objects out of a linear context - viewers can see each independently or find connections between different objects. These objects are meant to be seen, and anything that gets them out of storage is fine with me.

Recent Visit: Lower East Side Tenement Museum

I finally had a chance to see the Lower East Side Tenement Museum when I was in New York last month. I had heard of the museum a few years back, and was looking forward to taking a tour with one of their volunteer docents.

The price was a little steep - 20$ for an adult - but I hope it doesn't stop people from visiting because the museum gives glimpses into a part of New York's history that isn't unknown, but probably doesn't get the attention it deserves from most tourists. In a city like New York it's easy to spend the majority of your time at the big tourist destinations, and ignore the smaller museums. I find it hard sometimes just to leave mid-town Manhattan! But this museum, which focuses on the immigrant experience over multiple decades, is definitely worth a visit.

Visitors must take guided tours, which last roughly an hour, so first there was some waiting around in their gift shop/visitor centre. Luckily their gift shop is full of interesting books on New York and immigrant history. There is also a short film that visitors can watch.

Our docent met us in the shop and then we were led across the street to 97 Orchard, a five-floor tenement building built in the 1860s. The building had been closed down in the 1930s (the landlord couldn't afford to pay for some renovations) and basically shut for the next fifty years. The storefront was in use, but the apartments above stood empty up until the 1980s, when the museum founders were looking for a space for their museum. The museum consists of restored apartments based on specific families, and there is a wide variety - the Irish, Russians, Germans and Italians are all represented. Our tour was "Getting By", which talked about how immigrants lived, worked, and what happened if they hit hard times. It focused on two apartments and families - The Gumpertz family, German Jews in the 1870s, and the Baldizzi family, Italian Catholics in the 1930s.

The docent used a variety of interpretive tools, including artifacts (furniture, textiles, photographs) in the apartments, photocopies of census lists, oral histories, even a court transcript to talk about the families and the Lower East Side in general. To give us the feel for the period she would describe what language we would have heard on the street, where people may have worked, what shops would have been nearby. But the real star was the building itself.

The museum would have lost a lot of its impact if it hadn't been housed in that tenement building. Immediately walking in you were transported back 100 years. The hallway was tiny, the walls dingy. The cramped air felt worse once the docent described how dark it would have been, how many families lived in the building, coming and going at all hours. The public toilets weren't installed until 1901, gas lighting not until 1905, electricity not until the 1920s.

The apartments themselves were tiny - how did a family with several children live in a three-room apartment with one window? The Gumpertz family used outhouses in the backyard, and had no running water. The Baldizzi family had only three rooms as well, and an air shaft between their apartment and their neighbour's left little privacy. It was amazing to listen to how Mr. Gumpertz had left for work one day and never came back - no one ever found out what happened to him - and to stand in the apartment where his widow and children learned to live without him. We listened to Josephine Baldizzi speak about living at 97 Orchard as a small child - remembering how her family played checkers at the kitchen table and what brand of soap her mother kept above the sink. The docent made good attempts at getting us to comment on what we saw, asking us lots of questions - "What would it have been like?" - and though we weren't the chattiest group, the message came across.

The tour included a quick look at some unrestored apartments, where the shopkeepers stored their goods and used the walls to do inventory lists while the building was closed. The building isn't in the best condition, and I hope the museum has the funds to keep their programmes going while making sure the building survives well into the 21st century.

The museum's website is really well done, with big, clear text and graphics. It is easy to navigate and lets visitors know how they put the museum together. I especially like their use of crime scene photos to look at furnishings - "Note the Decor. Ignore the Body". I would definitely recommend a visit if you're in New York. It's easy to get swept up in the grandeur of Fifth Ave but history is definitely alive in the Lower East Side.

In which I consider audiences

I was in Washington, D.C. for part of my Christmas vacation and, as usual, visits to the Smithsonian museums were our chosen activity. Washington excels at featuring interesting, important (and FREE!) museums set in beautiful, public spaces - I would suggest a visit to anyone interested. My father and I first visited the National Portrait Gallery, which we hadn't visited before. One large permanent exhibit they have is America's Presidents, and as we wandered, the text panel for a portrait of George Washington caught my eye:

"As the general who led us to victory in the American Revolution and as our first president, George Washington was often painted and sculpted. Everyone, it seemed, wanted the hero's portrait. But it is this portrait that stands for all time as the image that best represents what Washington meant to us when we were a new nation and continues to mean to us in the twenty-first century... This was the man who told us what this new kind of leader-an elected president-could be and whose maturity and resolve gave us confidence in our future. " [from the NPG website] There was also extensive use of 'we' - "We can see.." "We can say.." "We are lucky..."

I pointed this out to my father, who retorted, "Well, what do you expect? It's the US. Of course they're self-centred."

But it began to bug me. I couldn't remember being in a museum or gallery where the text panel used such familiar language, where it assumed that the person reading it would not only be American but would believe in such glowing praise of one historical figure - and in such poetic language! It really got me thinking - should text panels contain an omniscient, third person narrative or speak to an intended audience? How does a visitor, or tourist, relate then to the historical information when it is presented so one-dimensionally? Who decides who this intended audience should be?

A city like Washington, D.C. is visited by many non-American tourists - such as myself - and despite the fact I was in a National Gallery in the national capital, I was still surprised that the writers would focus solely on a receptive, national audience. I am not naive enough to believe that a text panel can ever be truly opinion-free - there is historical interpretation at all levels - but should it speak so personally, instead of trying to give facts? The website claims that "this exhibition lies at the heart of the Portrait Gallery’s mission to tell the American story through the individuals who have shaped it." But tell the story to whom?

In contrast, we also visited the National Museum of the American Indian, whose website states its goals : "To protect and foster their cultures by reaffirming traditions and beliefs, encouraging contemporary artistic expression, and empowering the Indian voice." The intended audience, for the most part, seemed to be non-Native people. Being a large, national institution situated in downtown Washington, this doesn't seem surprising. Even the website statement says "their cultures", showing that many of the people (not all, of course) behind the project were non-Native. Is this just because Native populations are in the minority? In that case, is the Portrait Gallery correct in writing with a majority audience in mind? What about the rest of us?

Do different museums have different audiences? To me, museums seem like one of the largest tourist draws in large cities, so narrowing to an intended audience seems detrimental. Even if a certain gallery has a narrow focus, such as American Presidents, is it right to lose the third-person, impersonal narrative that academic historians thrive on? Does it lose credibility? Or is it just a product of public history, trying to personally and emotionally interact with visitors and perhaps pluck a heartstring or two? But isn't part of public history gaining the interest of a wide audience, no matter the subject?

I am aware that many museums do have in mind the goal of educating a certain audience, for example when Native populations use the money gained from casinos on their land to finance an educational museum, mostly for their own people. Various national museums come to mind as well, which is why I was not surprised the National Portrait Gallery would be so glowing in their text panels re: important American figures. I believe, however, that the best way to portray their historical information would be in a less personal manner so as to include all possible audiences. Museums are there to educate as many as possible, not to make people feel excluded because they are not part of that group, nation, etc. I feel non-Americans looking for a more in-depth, more scholarly, and less personal history will be disappointed.

Interpreting History for the Public

I have been thinking of the readings we have done for class, and one idea has stuck with me into this week, and that is historians as interpreters. This is an idea originally brought up by Manan Ahmed, who wrote about historians needing to interpret between the past and the present. He also mentioned the need for interdepartmental interpreting. Both very important ideas for public historians, since we tend to work more with other programmes (fields such as environmental science, new skills such as IT, art & design) to bring our ideas to the public, while trying to teach them that history can be extremely relevant to the present.

In this week's readings, the idea has taken on a different form, one I am more familiar with, and that is interpreting the past, as academics, for the public. One of the biggest worries re: digital and accessible history is the danger in losing our status as interpreters. Once Google and various other corporations get all primary sources, or all books ever written, online and available to anyone with a computer and internet access, will there still be a need for librarians, archivists, and historians? The answer seem to be that we'll still be needed (sigh of relief) to help them find the information, help them sort through the thousands of articles, and teach them the research skills that will be essential in surfing through all the available information.

What I am most concerned about is engaging people with the past - and it should be one of our most important goals. This seems to translate as the need for more interactive exhibits (both in museums and online). While volunteering at the ROM, my official position was called 'Gallery Interpreter', one of the reasons the term stuck with me through this week. Our job was to engage adults and children with the artifacts on display, and we did this two ways. First, we carried a hand-held artifact (or copy) in our hands, and let our audience touch or play with it. Then, we used a pseudo-Socratic method of questions and answers to engage them in conversation, while relating to the hand-held artifact as well as a larger immovable artifact on display. We weren't there to lecture - standing and listening to someone talk can be as boring as just passing by artifacts and reading labels to many people. We weren't even answering their questions most of the time, they were answering OURS (Is it heavy? What do you think its made out of? What do you think it was used for?).

If someone is engaged in conversation, or in an interactive activity, as opposed to passively listening or reading, their interest will last that much longer. Isn't that why history students have to join tutorials and engage in seminar discussions? This idea is important for getting across to those who aren't interested in history. We have seen in our public history reading that many people feel much more passionately about their personal history, such as keeping photo albums or creating a family tree, than visiting museums or sitting through a history class. Our job is to get them interested in what we as historians are interested in. Public historians, because of that, have to try that much harder.