Web Utopia and Museum Utopia's Converging Paths
In the final delegate paper of the day, Cristiano Agostino from the University of Edinburgh notes the impending collision of two Utopias - that of the Web, and that of the Museum, particularly in regard to the media strategies deployed by museums and related institutions, particularly art organizations, which have developed their own ideals of utopia, to do with the rarefied, auratic status of the art object.
A new utopian drive, as we saw earlier in Miranda's paper, to invite subversion and institutional critique in the museum began to arise over the course of the late 20th century. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the concept of Relational Aesthetics also began to arise, and the paradigm for art, for its display, and indeed, for the notion of the art museum itself, began to change. Bourriard, indeed, wrote about the microtopia - a small, contingent utopia of the moment which creates a temporary, rather than universal, ideal of the moment. Does this leave anything tangible, and does it lead to a real utopian experience? This is the crux of the amelioration paradigm - in this freedom, can we still create meaningful and useful experiences?
Such microtopias, contingent environments, might well be related to the World Wide Web. Since 2002, the Social Web has harbored great potential for opening up large spaces in which miniscule, temporary, 'guerrilla' microtopias can be created. From its beginning thought of as an open and dialogic arena, the Web's ameliorative possibilities have, for equally as long, been queried and criticized. How free, I wonder, are we in the virtual, online world? Is the strive towards perfection, as Helen suggested, always a frustrated one - and indeed, is that eschatological urge towards the future reductive, suggestive of a grand, predefined narrative and heavily philosophically problematic.
Neither are Web audiences as open, as active, or as present as those who propound the virtues of the virtual might like to think. On average, around 90% of those who go through an interactive website will leave no tangible place of their passage. 9% will contribute and interact sporadically, and only 1% will actively, regularly, engage.
So how do museums and art institutions, which themselves suffer from similar problems, negotiate these digital issues? Cristiano's work suggests that there are specific kind of media strategies which they employ - and many of the principles which underly this have heavily utopian content. But these principles, and ideas, are dependent upon the newest, shiniest things which we have to hand - dependent upon technologies which are constantly changing, developing and arising. Is the approach of museums and institutions to the social media - and, indeed, the idealized manifesto of social media itself - something rather more akin to wishful thinking than practical reality?
This is a rather difficult, sad note to end on. So I wonder if there is anything we can do? Perhaps this is a time of development, a time of changing technology but also changing attitudes in which we cannot risk romanticizing the possibilities we are presented with - celebrating their strengths, of course, but also recognizing their limitations.
This session has indeed seriously questioned the nature of the profession, its history and its actions. We always need, it seems, to question the motivations which we, as academics and practitioners have in our work, and our utopian seekings. It remains important, too, that we question the tools we use, considering not just their present impact, but their future possibilities, connotations and flaws.
We're heading towards another, last, break now, before our Keynote. Those of you reading only online might be expecting Bernadette Lynch will be sad to know that, due to illness, she is unable to attend. However, our own Janet Marstine is bravely stepping into the breach - so sign back in soon, after getting yourselves a cup of tea, for a mysterious journey into another, unexpected, utopia.
Showing posts with label unrealisedutopias. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unrealisedutopias. Show all posts
28 March 2012
A Seventeenth Sounding: What We Know About Our Audiences
Utopian or Cynical Behaviour?
Visitor studies seems critical for museums - but their usefulness, validity as scientific collections of data, and their influence can be questioned. It is this that Gloria Romanello seeks to investigate. Using a qualitative method allows her to add a level of theory, of insight and understanding - albeit subjectively. She selected and interviewed members of staff at three contemporary art museums who were directly involved with community and visitor engagement. It is not, in this case the scientific validity of the survey which is questioned, but the motivations and biases which lie behind them.
Counter to what we tend to think, the reasons that visitor studies are instigated do not seem to be to do with increased democratization or the public knowledge, but the personal identity of the staff conducting and instigating them, and their desire not just improve, but to validate their own performance. It is worth questioning who precisely are the instigators of the investigation and who, indeed, are those who perform the action. Whether they are internal or external, 'superstar evaluator' or front of house staff, is certainly related to what, and why, their motivations might be, and perhaps, how cynical we should be about them.
Concrete and objective data is also used as a justification to, and for, the upper levels, turning visitor studies into an instrument at the service of the organization, measuring and validating what they, and the individuals within them, do. It is also used to develop interior, interdepartmental working, once again focussed not upon the outside world, but upon the inner existence of the museum concerned. In practicing visitor surveying, museums can justify themselves to exterior bodies - official or commercial - and can use the data collected to maximize their marketing potential. We can hardly deny, for instance, that when a survey asks for demographic data such as name, age, gender, race, that there is a possibility that these results might be used, more cynically, for marketing purposes.
Is this hypocritical behavior? Is the overstatement of the value of visitor studies as developing democratic, educational and social services counter to that more interior drive which Gloria found in her interviews? I'm not sure that the two need be, or even are, mutually exclusive. What I would suggest is a more interesting question to interrogate is the enhancement of the visitor-museum divide, and the emphasis which is once more placed upon the authority of the "Museum Institution".
Is the situation as sinisterly Orwellian as this? I think that we should, indeed, question the motivations which lie behind taking actions such as visitor studies - there may, of course, always be ulterior motives for some, but whether this negates the value of the other, less cynical and more visitor-focused ideals is a debatable point. But we should also harbor some sense of hope - I imagine that there are many out there for whom the museum visitor survey or study remains a task designed to seek, and make a better exhibition, a better institution - and perhaps, a better world.
Visitor studies seems critical for museums - but their usefulness, validity as scientific collections of data, and their influence can be questioned. It is this that Gloria Romanello seeks to investigate. Using a qualitative method allows her to add a level of theory, of insight and understanding - albeit subjectively. She selected and interviewed members of staff at three contemporary art museums who were directly involved with community and visitor engagement. It is not, in this case the scientific validity of the survey which is questioned, but the motivations and biases which lie behind them.
Counter to what we tend to think, the reasons that visitor studies are instigated do not seem to be to do with increased democratization or the public knowledge, but the personal identity of the staff conducting and instigating them, and their desire not just improve, but to validate their own performance. It is worth questioning who precisely are the instigators of the investigation and who, indeed, are those who perform the action. Whether they are internal or external, 'superstar evaluator' or front of house staff, is certainly related to what, and why, their motivations might be, and perhaps, how cynical we should be about them.
Concrete and objective data is also used as a justification to, and for, the upper levels, turning visitor studies into an instrument at the service of the organization, measuring and validating what they, and the individuals within them, do. It is also used to develop interior, interdepartmental working, once again focussed not upon the outside world, but upon the inner existence of the museum concerned. In practicing visitor surveying, museums can justify themselves to exterior bodies - official or commercial - and can use the data collected to maximize their marketing potential. We can hardly deny, for instance, that when a survey asks for demographic data such as name, age, gender, race, that there is a possibility that these results might be used, more cynically, for marketing purposes.
Is this hypocritical behavior? Is the overstatement of the value of visitor studies as developing democratic, educational and social services counter to that more interior drive which Gloria found in her interviews? I'm not sure that the two need be, or even are, mutually exclusive. What I would suggest is a more interesting question to interrogate is the enhancement of the visitor-museum divide, and the emphasis which is once more placed upon the authority of the "Museum Institution".
Is the situation as sinisterly Orwellian as this? I think that we should, indeed, question the motivations which lie behind taking actions such as visitor studies - there may, of course, always be ulterior motives for some, but whether this negates the value of the other, less cynical and more visitor-focused ideals is a debatable point. But we should also harbor some sense of hope - I imagine that there are many out there for whom the museum visitor survey or study remains a task designed to seek, and make a better exhibition, a better institution - and perhaps, a better world.
A Sixteenth Sounding: The Best as the Enemy of the Good
Utopian Approaches to Professional Practice in UK Museums
Our own Helen Wilkinson worked at the documentation department at the V&A in the 1990s, where she first encountered the phrase 'The Best as the Enemy of the Good' - that perfectionism can be damaging, as well as idealistic. Whilst Helen was working there, a new state of the art cataloging system was being implemented.
But no one wanted it to use it - neither the senior nor junior curators. Why had this solution, which was to complex and too perfect, been implemented? In the 1980s, the care of collections at National museums had been audited, in the government's scrutiny of the use of public money. It was a particularly horrible period for all concerned; collections care was considered to be in a terrible state.
This fear of repeating the mistakes and negligence of the past - indeed, clearing it up - has significantly impacted upon professional practice. Helen has much experience in this - a practitioner herself for many years, she is now here studying the history of curatorial practice for her thesis. Looking currently at documentation in which museum practitioners reflect on their own practice, she can trace a common theme from the post war period - the strive towards perfection, planning, and forward movement. The dark days of the past are often referred to, and one generation's utopia becomes the dystopia of the next.
In the immediate post war period New Walk was home to very important people and activities in the development of professional practice, and in the Special Collections here at Leicester, we can find much of the literature which they published - and which is really telling. In 1955, too the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery published a document which showcases how the turn from collecting to public display in that period was considered a search towards a perfectible ideal. A large scale redevelopment of Paisley Museum in 1970 resulted in a document which also shows how attitudes towards the staff needed - specialists, not hobbyists, with technical professional, particularly museological skills. Constantly, it seems, the rejection of the past recurrs.
The decades following World War Two were periods of public reconstruction. Even in the 1960s, many museums were still repairing the damage done by the bombs, and many new municipal museums were opened as towns tried to imagine themselves as parts of this sleek new modernity. Codes of Ethics and minimum standards for practice and training were established, new specialist groups, and protests against a lack of the professions recognition were also prominent, and the professionalization of the museum increased exponentially.
In the 1960s, too, University level courses in Museum Studies and practice were developed - first here at Leicester, and then slightly later at Manchester. Again, this is perhaps evidence for that strive towards to ideal - in the perfected, rarefied atmosphere of the University, however, the constraints of practice were not always realized.
Why has this drive towards perfection been so powerful? As Liisi's discussion yesterday showed, given time, objects and space, anyone can create a museum. perhaps the professionalism drive, Helen suggests, is in part an attempt to distance between the professional practitioner, and the amateur - a rather longstanding issue, and one which Helen has yet to think through.
In the 1950s and 1960s, a whole series of reports and investigations, including some funded by the Carnegie Foundation, suggested that museums should concentrate on the local, rather than the universal collections of the past. But there are hints that, with localism and standardized, scientific displays and contents, the drive towards professionalism leads towards dullness, leads towards a lack of engagement with the visitor and, perhaps, a loss of poetry.
Perhaps a better focus for the Utopian drive should be focused not upon the profession's development, but upon the engagement with and desires of, the public.
I myself worry about standards. The risk, for me, is that in driving towards the ideal, we risk a number of hegemonic errors. Not only do we reduce the nature of museums to measurable elements, we also flatten them, give them identical rules which lead to their increasing similitude. Particularly of concern too is the loss of the past - we should think, perhaps, of what we loose when we change and standardise our practice. We need to give room to the idiosyncratic and the strange. Each individual museum should be recognized - celebrated - for the bizarre, peculiar, curious thing it is - and this, perhaps, is the closest we can get to utopia.
Our own Helen Wilkinson worked at the documentation department at the V&A in the 1990s, where she first encountered the phrase 'The Best as the Enemy of the Good' - that perfectionism can be damaging, as well as idealistic. Whilst Helen was working there, a new state of the art cataloging system was being implemented.
But no one wanted it to use it - neither the senior nor junior curators. Why had this solution, which was to complex and too perfect, been implemented? In the 1980s, the care of collections at National museums had been audited, in the government's scrutiny of the use of public money. It was a particularly horrible period for all concerned; collections care was considered to be in a terrible state.
This fear of repeating the mistakes and negligence of the past - indeed, clearing it up - has significantly impacted upon professional practice. Helen has much experience in this - a practitioner herself for many years, she is now here studying the history of curatorial practice for her thesis. Looking currently at documentation in which museum practitioners reflect on their own practice, she can trace a common theme from the post war period - the strive towards perfection, planning, and forward movement. The dark days of the past are often referred to, and one generation's utopia becomes the dystopia of the next.
In the immediate post war period New Walk was home to very important people and activities in the development of professional practice, and in the Special Collections here at Leicester, we can find much of the literature which they published - and which is really telling. In 1955, too the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery published a document which showcases how the turn from collecting to public display in that period was considered a search towards a perfectible ideal. A large scale redevelopment of Paisley Museum in 1970 resulted in a document which also shows how attitudes towards the staff needed - specialists, not hobbyists, with technical professional, particularly museological skills. Constantly, it seems, the rejection of the past recurrs.
The decades following World War Two were periods of public reconstruction. Even in the 1960s, many museums were still repairing the damage done by the bombs, and many new municipal museums were opened as towns tried to imagine themselves as parts of this sleek new modernity. Codes of Ethics and minimum standards for practice and training were established, new specialist groups, and protests against a lack of the professions recognition were also prominent, and the professionalization of the museum increased exponentially.
In the 1960s, too, University level courses in Museum Studies and practice were developed - first here at Leicester, and then slightly later at Manchester. Again, this is perhaps evidence for that strive towards to ideal - in the perfected, rarefied atmosphere of the University, however, the constraints of practice were not always realized.
Why has this drive towards perfection been so powerful? As Liisi's discussion yesterday showed, given time, objects and space, anyone can create a museum. perhaps the professionalism drive, Helen suggests, is in part an attempt to distance between the professional practitioner, and the amateur - a rather longstanding issue, and one which Helen has yet to think through.
In the 1950s and 1960s, a whole series of reports and investigations, including some funded by the Carnegie Foundation, suggested that museums should concentrate on the local, rather than the universal collections of the past. But there are hints that, with localism and standardized, scientific displays and contents, the drive towards professionalism leads towards dullness, leads towards a lack of engagement with the visitor and, perhaps, a loss of poetry.
Perhaps a better focus for the Utopian drive should be focused not upon the profession's development, but upon the engagement with and desires of, the public.
I myself worry about standards. The risk, for me, is that in driving towards the ideal, we risk a number of hegemonic errors. Not only do we reduce the nature of museums to measurable elements, we also flatten them, give them identical rules which lead to their increasing similitude. Particularly of concern too is the loss of the past - we should think, perhaps, of what we loose when we change and standardise our practice. We need to give room to the idiosyncratic and the strange. Each individual museum should be recognized - celebrated - for the bizarre, peculiar, curious thing it is - and this, perhaps, is the closest we can get to utopia.
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