On         Sun, 12 Feb 1995 Lisa Roberte <[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>All of this talk about the importance of the "real object" has me a bit
>uneasy.  This is one of museums' most sacred bits of lore, but it may not
>hold the importance (to visitors) that it once did.  Especially since so
many
>museum people assume that what is incredible and fascinating to them will
>also be so to visitors. [...]
 
On         Sun, 12 Feb 1995 Lisa Roberte <[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>All of this talk about the importance of the "real object" has me a bit
>uneasy.  This is one of museums' most sacred bits of lore, but it may not
>hold the importance (to visitors) that it once did.  Especially since so
many
>museum people assume that what is incredible and fascinating to them will
>also be so to visitors. [...]
 
Now that it would seem that funding for the arts is down the tubes and IBM
has announced that it is going to sell its art collection, it would seem to
be near the time for the "virtual" to proclaim its triumph over the "real."
 Is it significant that IBM is in the middle of a deacquisition process?
Have they realized before the rest of us that the cult of the unique is
dead and that, indeed, the simulacrum is equivalent to or superior to the
original?  This is their turf; after all, the triumph of the computer is
tantamount to the triumph of virtuality.  In this day of the mass market,
it is the reproduceable that has true value.  The auction house business,
alternately booming and busting, a final vestige of the celebration of the
real, may signal the end of our ancient and waning tradition.
 
The sacrament of the exhibit, that fanfare to the ephemeral and
insubstantial -- Bill Gates' legendary preference for the virtual image
over the corporeal one -- current trends in scholarship that have devalued
the role of connoisseurship and exalted the significance of the image as
both symbol of, and evidence of trends, preferences and predispositions,
all may be telling reactions to this same phenomenon:  The box has become
more important than that contained within.  The reliquary does not embrace
the relic as much as it creates it.  The object label must not communicate
content -- its style and form casts its pallor (or spell) over the object
to which it is fused.  In a way, the Enola Gay Exhibit would have marked
the emergent triumph of the label as exhibit.
 
In the world of the virtual, there is disdain for uniqueness and value.  As
a herald, they cut the print of the Night Fishermen (or was it The Hundred
Guilder Print) into a thousand little pieces, and sold off each square
share as if it were the curtain of the Metropolitan Opera, the Berlin Wall,
square feet of Alaskan turf or names for unnamed stars.  The whole is
contained within each part; the idea -- nonsubstantial, triumphs over the
material -- using the object as its vehicle.  In this war the individual
and his claim to property is the loser, the forces of the market, the
winner.  We no longer borrow or consult books at the free library; rather,
we pay for the right to access them.  We don't own the images in our slide
(visual resources) collection; we license them.  There is no legacy to pass
to posterity, for our holdings are merely warrants and they will certainly
soon expire.  There is no ethic for permanence that is stronger that the
force of the market.
 
The market has taught us much here: to accept the counterfeit for the
original, to award the salesmen of sizzle and to exalt the emperors of
escalating expectations, to assess ourselves, not by our accomplishments
but by the symbols we adopt.  Gombrich tells us of the metaphor that
requires the force of belief, the child's system of inserting himself into
a world of fantasy.  In today's world of adult fantasy, as told to us
without end, the shoe makes the man, the beer gets the girl.
 
>Umberto Eco has a wonderful passage in his essay "Hyperrealities" talking
>about why simulated reality can be preferable to actual (if you will)
>reality:
 
Simulated reality is reality free to be whatever it must be; free to assume
the meaning it is told to mean.  In 1984 whatshisname was employed
rewriting history.  In 2004 will the reality police confiscate our private
collections of watercolors and canvasses and replace them with a gatesian
matrix of luminescent transistors?  A laptop in every home.
 
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the central issue that affected
the dissemination of information focussed around a similar transformation
of media.  Will it be by manuscript or by printed edition they asked.
There, too, the mass market won out, much to the woes of the scriptoria.
But as the book trade grew, and as books almost became disposable (it took
a while), the manuscript tradition did not die.  Instead it transformed
itself into a luxury trade.  If anyone could own a book, very few could own
a manuscript.  If, by and large, books were undecorated, manuscripts began
to receive lavish embellishments.  Today books are lavish, our digital
media are comparatively spare.  We buy books to own, not to read.
 
It might be argued that you can write a history of art from the standpoint
of the evolution of communication media.  The object of art, as a thing of
value and worth, seems to develop in opposition to its displacement as the
prime medium of information exchange.  The esoterica seen in arts from the
Renaissance to Modern days may be a natural consequence of its replacement
by print and reproductive media.  The craze for "virtual" reality -- a
misnomer, really, for what is meant is "replacement" reality -- may be the
harbinger of a new communications metaphor.  In that case, our
wordprocessors and desktop publishing applications are like the
"blockbooks" of yesteryear: using current technology to reproduce the
products of the past.
 
The world of museums, unlike the commercial world, is placed directly in
the center of this maelstrom.  Now the issue is, which side are you on, for
there are sides to take.  Will you root for the demise of the "objective"
and embrace the triumph of the image?  (Remember the surrealist manifesto:
"destroy the museums.") Will you attempt to hold onto the objects of the
past and fight against the insurgence of the image makers?  Or will you sit
back and document, assess and understand the forces at play in this arena.
Are the forces that define the "virtual" and the "real" forces of Good and
Bad, of Right and Wrong, or are they merely symptoms of interests beyond
our control?
______________________________________
Robert A. Baron
Museum Computer Consultant
P.O. Box 93, Larchmont, NY 10538
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