Subject: Objects or people
>One response to this thread insisted on the primacy of objects, "Are you an
>objects person?" he or she was asked and continued to ask of museum staff.
This was my anecdote, and in fairness to Edward P. Alexander, who was the
questioner (to me), what he meant was, did I have an interest in objects, as
opposed to the traditional historian's exclusive interest in manuscript or
primary sources. He never implied objects versus people.
The reason I dragged that anecdote into the discussion was not to say that
museums should make a choice between objects and people--this is,
logically, not necessarily an either/or choice. I was trying to say that
museums--at least among art and history ones--used to seek "objects
people"--staff and trustees both--because the role of collecting and
collections stewardship was considered the unique, distinguishing
characteristic among museums. It was understood that part and parcel of
maintaining a collection was visitors coming to museums to experience real
things with their significance explained. (I wonder at the studies that
surface saying the authenticity of artefacts is not a priority among
visitors, at least to history museums.) Nevertheless, the view that the
collection is a public trust, to be maintained as a inviolable corpus for
its own sake, is still maintained. The fights still waged in the US over
what de-accessioning funds can be used for imply that maintaining a
collection as a corpus-not-to-be-liquidated is still a primary concept. One
cannot liquidate collections to cover operating costs, even if those are the
expenditures that allow various kinds of access to the collections by the
public. The underlying thought is that while "museum visitors" are
certainly people we care about, they are a subset of overall society as
well, including those yet unborn, who are supposed to get a broad benefit
from having such collections preserved. The implication is, that if it
means access is limited for some types of visitors today in order to
preserve the collection for the people of tomorrow, that's what happens.
I think in recent years this view of "museums as a collections stewards for
the benefit of society as a whole, present and future," is getting lost. If
we decide, as a profession, that this is an obsolete notion, that's one
thing. Generally, we have not done that. But what we do, more and more, is
justify our existence, at least in the US, based on visitor numbers alone.
Museum expansion and other projects are sold on the basis of their
visitation's economic impact. In some cases, where there is no intent to
collect, visitation is certainly all there is. And I've done my share of
pointing out the benefits that museums bestow on communities that are not
inherent in mission, such as functioning as downtown anchors and catalysts
for re-development. It's a dangerous game. The two-edged sword is that such
marketing of museums puts us in competition with a lot of other
attendance-driven and quasi-educational operations, for profit or
non-profit. Many of these can outspend us and have lower overhead. And if
we fail to deliver the numbers we promise, we lose credability. If we, as
museum professionals, accept that at least some museums maintain collections
with a societal value that extends past this and next year's visitation
figures, we have to be concerned about whether we adequately explain this
part of our mission. I think it should be explained better, because given
the competition for audience and/or support from schools, libraries*, public
television, films, the Internet, or theme parks, we need to be able to
emphasize what unique, irreplaceable contribution museums make. Collecting,
research, and collections stewardship as well as interpretation is what
makes many museums unique. Given what collecting and maintaining objects
costs, we need to be concerned about justifying it on the basis of something
in addition to attracting visitors. If collecting and collections matter,
than it is disturbing that numbers of museum trustees think the collection
is the merely the source of the props that we must put out to attract the
necessary number of visitors to make the museum a successful "attraction."
This despite the fact that when trustees periodically recast mission
statements the credo is routinely repeated that we collect, preserve,
research, AND interpret. We are either failing to attract the right
trustees, or we are failing to orient them properly about what we do, and
why. We can do better.
>How can you possibly be an 'objects' person without being a 'visitor', or
at least a 'people' person?
>The whole point, surely, of a museum is that we preserve, conserve,
display,
>explain, enhance, contextualise objects FOR PEOPLE. We recognize the work
>of people of the past, we communicate with people of the present, we
>preserve for people of the future. Moreover we museum professionals are
>also people (well, some of us are, I know a few I've got my doubts about) -
>and also the most constant of visitors. We are not supposed to sit on our
>hoards like dragons! (and if we don't get through to our visitors NOW, we
>won't even be there to hand on the results of our 'stewardship' to the
>future).
I think, Heleanor, that you're setting up something of a straw man here. I
don't think anything in the discussion implies that being an "objects"
person precludes an interest in people. In the present and future tenses,
it is a matter of who we perceive our audience to be, and how our audience
perceives us that we need to think about, not to mention what we say we are
in return for the support we seek.
"You better decide what you want, 'cause that's exactly what you're going
to get."
*Public libraries, like San Francisco's, seem to be having their own
conflicts about the value of their collections--are they bound to maintain
little-used collections of scholarly present and future import, or should
they ruthlessly pare back collections to save money and concentrate on
promoting a wider amount of service delivering basic information in a cost
effective way?
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