Dear L Dewey,
there is no doubt in the European museological theory that acquisition,
scientific research, care of objects, object explanation and exhibitions
have to be the duty of trained museum staff. This very often gives
underpaid people a certain power. In order to do this, they have to
respect certain rules, alws and ethics and defend them against intrusion
from the outside (by politicians, sponsors etc.).
One of their main goals is objectivism. In order to avoid "problems",
some museum staff disregard this goal and retreat to positive data. They
are not explaining anything, they just mention author, working title,
year of production, measurements, material and techniques. Half of it is
mostly obvious. Also interpreters find this way easy and speak about the
"open ojects" disregarding the fact that a given objects always had a
certain meaning to the author and its social cluster. This meaning can
be reconstructed by scientific research. But these interpreters are
mixing "meaning" and "sense" - anybody is free to see in an object any
sense. Here the question arises which objects are loaded with sense (and
which not) and which can help us to solve the problems of the present
and future (and which not).
Let us come back to the useful integration if input of "outside" people.
The careful object documentarist will always make notes on remarks of
former object owners, people from the same cultural background etc. -
but with distance. Because not always these "original" oral sources are
right. If proven as right, this outside information can be integrated in
object cards.
Some museums also go a step further and integrate input from the
community, tribes, friends of the museums etc. into their planning. Why
not? This is an act of normal marketing. It is done to raise the visitor
numbers and to find out what people are interested in. This is also a
good medicamentation against the desease of lonesome "green table" ideas
within the museum. But then museum staff has to return to their normal
duties.
The question discussed here was: What will happen when museum personnel
leaves objects description totally up to visitors. I posted this
question to the German museum list and most of the answers were: it must
be a joke. One said: the remarks of four patients do not make a good
doctor. And I may add: What are vistors expecting in museum object
descriptions, because museum personnel has to objective? Truth, or
something very near to it. Not proposals, not educated guesses, not
personal impressions or "stories". Even if this goal is not easy to
reach, we have to attempt it. The museum personnel is in charge for the
public, not the visitor. Responsable are always certain official persons
of the museum, nobody else.
Best regards
Christian
"L Dewey" <[log in to unmask]> schrieb:
Both Dr. Müller-Straten and Jeremy's comparisons of the Wikipedia to
Encyclopaedia Britannica raise what is a parallel question in the
museological discussion, namely, is the point of inclusion simply to
involve 'others' or 'outsiders' in the museum (as Lola Young has
phrased it, 'to be more like us')?
Or should the objective be to redefine the parameters of collecting and
narratives told by the museum? (The parallel being, can a collaborative
encyclopedia like wikipedia only go as far as to recapitulate the
Encyclopedia Britannica, or can it go farther?)
Or are 'community curators' just a gimmick to get some interesting,
sometimes quirky, display labels?
-L.D.
On Mar 4, 2006, at 4:50 AM, Dr. Christian Müller-Straten wrote:
> well well well, nothing is ironic, only men are. You may have
> something against the word "educated", but other mails of this thread
> say exactly what I wrote: that the content of Wiki is not the result
> of the knowledge of "anyone" but of educated people (the better is
> become, the more). Of course, also these people may be wrong, but
> probably not much more than in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. But this
> is only a comparative figure - the question are:
> - what and how much is missing
> - do the writers name the sources. In Wikipaedia I am missing the
> sources and very often content. As others said, it might be a start -
> but you better return to other media and sources four sound work.
>
> Getting back to the original question and matter, there was the
> museological question "Is the Wiki model also a model for museums?".
> As I said, as long as museum curators do not give up their ICOM
> duties, there might be a lot of collaboration with people outside the
> museum to produce exhibitions and exhibition labels.
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