With regard to this thread, which I find very interesting and
well-considered, it is interesting to note developments in the
American Museum of Natural History. As an interested outsider, I have
watched who speaks for new exhibits recently implemented or in
development. A paleontologist headed the exhibit team for the Fossil
Vertebrate exhibits (dinosaurs and extinct mammal halls), or at least
is publicly recognized and identified as the person responsible for
the exhibit (though the exhibit designer Ralph Applebaum also has
been very visible in this regard). An anthropologist (Ian Tattersal I
think his name is) led the exhibit team for the Hall of Human
Evolution. Niles Eldridge, the famous advocate of the punctuated
equilibrium theory of evolution (and I believe an invertebrate
specialist ?), is leading the exhibition team for the biodiversity
exhibit that will open over the next couple of years.
This arrangement has had its pro's and con's. Witness the cladistics
diagram layout of the fossil halls (does anyone but the curator get
that?)
However, curators leading exhibit teams is a separate question from
the relative allocation of resources between collections management
and preservation vs. public programs. This is a contested issue in
any collecting museum. My only contribution to that is: if a museum
successfully fulfills its public mission (education and exhibition, as
well as a slew of other factors), then it is more likely to generate
the revenue necessary for its other functions, such as collections
management.
This, I believe, is a core issue behind the disarray at
the New York Historical Society, which entirely neglected its
relationship to the public, and found itself without the bare minimum
of funds necessary to preserve its collections. That seems to be the
analysis of the problem being addressed by the current management, led
by Betsy Gotbaum, who is working to regain public interest in the
institution, and somewhat controversially, focusing its collections
policy through deaccessioning.
It is an illuminating contrast to compare the New York Historical
Society with The Museum of The City of New York (sorry to be so
parochial here, but these are the institutions that I know about...).
The latter, with extraordinary and important collections in a building
that has needed considerable capital investment, has worked to develop
compelling public exhibitions. The interest generated by these
exhibitions has made it possible to undertake the kind of capital
program required to preserve the building and its collections.
So, simply to assert the primacy of collections seems to me to avoid
the reality of running a museum (as I see it from below), which is to
make the institution compelling to a broad constituency of funders,
community groups, special interest groups, visitors, and government
officials (not necessarily in that order). This constituency will, in
turn, help make it possible to preserve collections for later
generations' enjoyment, edification, aesthetic charge, controversy, or
utter neglect.
Finally, once again, I would not worry too much about the historical
role of museums as agents of cultural preservation. That is simply
too new a role for these institutions, and if it changes, it will not
be the end of civilization, but rather an adaptation of a 100-year old
practice to new concerns.
Eric Siegel
[log in to unmask]
The New York Botanical Garden
and (newly)
Chairman
The Museums Council of New York City
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