Over the last couple of days the participants in this conference
defined ‘metamorphosis’ over and again: even without explicitly etymologising,
they were performing their own understandings of the concept and its
relationship to museums. Looking over the blog again, it seems to me as though
Museum Metamorphosis covered five main categories of understanding: forms of
metamorphosis; the role of the museum; theoretical models of the museum and
change; tools of analysis; and actual examples of change.
The subtleties of these conceptions are hard to represent in
clumsy words: I would like, at this point, to apologise for any errors or
unsubtle renderings I may have committed in the last couple of days, and also
for the fact that, in this summary, which can only be short, I may commit a few
more.
Forms of Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis is a versatile concept of relevance to many
aspects of existence and experience. In the opening comments, Suzanne Macleod,
Sheila Watson and Richard Sandell all presented their different perspectives on
the idea. To put it broadly, they together represented how metamorphosis can be
physical, conceptual, social and personal: these are perhaps the main forms of
transformation on which many of the other conference papers rested.
Macleod’s main interest is in architecture and the social
qualities of the built environment. Her PhD considered the changes in architecture
throughout the history of the Walker Gallery in Liverpool. In her opening
paper, she used this example, amongst others, to present the thesis that
architecture can be physically changed as a result of social circumstances, but
can also be altered socially, through use and interpretation, and that it can
itself be a driver of social transformation.
For Watson, the museum is a space with the potential for
emotional transformation: not just of its visitors, but also itself, in a reconceptualization
of the museum as something not dispassionate, but something vital, affective
and affected, framing that which it presents through its own lens of
subjectivity. Once the myth of the dispassionate museum is recognised and
dispelled, she argued, the adoption of emotion could make for powerful
displays, and a rich, nuanced pedagogic model.
Sandell also conceives of the museum as a socially relevant
space: the movement towards an inclusive museum is, for him, a fundamental part
of social justice. The projects he has worked on, both with Nottingham City
Council and the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries show how the
Disability Rights Movement has impacted on museums over the last decades, and
how museums have, and might yet still become, more intimately involved with the
production of shared experience, through the change of physical space,
programming, and plain old institutional acceptance.
So, here are our forms of metamorphosis: physical,
conceptual, institutional, social and personal. The papers presented at Museum
Metamorphosis discussed all of these in multiplicitous ways, and focussed on
many of their finely grained niceties. They showed metamorphosis to be so many
different things, yet all so much alike.
The Role of the Museum
The role of the museum was of course a central concern,
particularly for papers given by Sharon Heal, Matthew Constantine and the
workshop run by Nick Winterbotham. Museums have, certainly, changed throughout
their history, and it is probably true to say that most people present at this
conference have never really conceived of the Museum as an ultimately static
space. It has seen large shifts throughout its history, however, one of which
being the widespread adoption of the idea of the museum as a place not for
things, but for people. For Heal, museums are public services, sites of
cultural learning and with a distinct social responsibility. Constantine’s
discussion of New Walk the day following Heal’s presentation asked a related,
but more directed question: who is New Walk Museum for? In Winterbotham’s
workshop, particpants were forced to consider the value of ideas a drivers for
impact and social good, and to wonder at the ability of the museum to affect
significant and lasting societal improvement.
What has, and does, this kind of change, meant and mean for
the museum and its inhabitants – the objects and staff who populate it? Change,
of course, is often frightening: Heal herself noted this, speaking of the
changes in the publishing industry with the growth of digital and the perceived
demise of print media. It believe it is important to note that change does not
always equate with improvement, and that the appearance of change for change’s
sake should always be dealt with cautiously. The conference delegates often
called for change; but maybe I can play devils advocate, and suggest that, at
times, standing up for the status quo might be equally socially responsible.
Theoretical Models of the Changing Museum
The presentations also offered a number of models for the
museum which might be used to understand it and its relationship to alteration.
At the more oblique end of the scale, Baggerson and Fleming offered us tools
from literature – the heterotopia and the heteroglossia. Baggerson suggested a
shift from the museum as accretive heterotopia, propounded by Foucault and
others since, to the museum as liquid and chaotic heterotopia, a festival fully
in time. Fleming’s use of Bakhtin’s heteroglossia sits well with this: the
museum as a concatenation of sounds and voices, cries and whispers, from all
corners of history and space.
More grounded, but no less scholarly, we the models
suggested by Nielsen and Finn. Jane Nielsen dealt with the transformations of
the museum in postmodernity, suggesting the time is ripe for a rethinking of
the notion of the post-museum. As an alternative – or perhaps a development –
she offers us the ‘transformative’ museum, an idea adapted from Slaughter. This
model explicitly recognises the phases which change has to go through, and how
it can sometimes feed back into itself. The transformative museum, then, is a
place which is constantly rethinking itself, and going through processes of
sustained and structured reflection.
Finn offers us a series of contemporary and historical
models for the behaviour of museums in regard to collaboration. Though not all
agreed with her designations – certainly the idea of the Pitt Rivers as a
non-collaborative, ‘arbitrary’ displayer of aboriginal art came as a shock to
many – her definitions of arbitrary, intermediary and collaborative
institutions are worth considering when any museum undertakes the
responsibility of representing another time, place or culture.
I suspect that, as a result of Museum Metamorphosis, we
might come up with more models productive of and evidence for, change: and
indeed a subtler understanding of its processes and consequences.
Tools of Analysis
Something which I found particularly interesting at Museum
Metamorphosis were the tools for the analysis of museums and change offered by
its presenters. I have spoken already here of literature, so I shall first of
all speak briefly about Ariane Karbe’s workshop, Electric Elephants: an intriguing experience in which I was able to
consider, and observe from my colleagues around me, the way in which narrative
and narratology, from books or films, is under and misunderstood in the
museological world.
Other disciplinary models we gained during the conference
were Fashion Studies and Future Studies, coming to life during the
presentations of Rikke Baggerson and Jane Nielsen respectively. Future Studies
forces its user not to predict, but to expect and acknowledge possibilities: in
that way, a museum can become fully aware of its actions and consequences. I
loved the subtlety with which Baggerson employed the model of fashion and the
heterotopia, and the complex and intricate series of relationships she drew
between the realms of museums and fashion: change, here, becomes something
affected by many forces, something no single agent can control.
Museum forms were also offered as potential models and case
studies for affecting change and understanding its results. I found
particularly interesting Judith Dehail’s discussion of musical instrument
museums, and Baily’s description of migration museums: both of these types of
institutions can present and highlight specific issues and ways of addressing
them, and this use of a ‘genre’ museum to influence the practice of the wider
community has, for me, distinct potential.
So much for all this abstraction. Museum Metamorphosis also gifted
its participants with a plethora of realised examples: attempts and successes at
instituting change.
Examples of Change
The examples offered by Museum Metamorphosis fall once again
into five categories: there were those which presented physical change; those
which presented changing objects; changes in programming; external changes
which had an impact on the activities and character of museums; and
organisational and social change. For the sake of convenience, I will here
treat the virtual world as a physical form of expression.
Rachel Souhami presented us with an analysis of two physical
remodellings of display space, and how one, but not the other, failed to break
convention and redefine the Museum it inhabited as a changed space. Later in
the conference, Melissa Forstrum would remind us of this: visual alteration
does not necessarily come hand in hand with conceptual improvement:
institutional prejudices, she noted, however unknown, can still be clearly
seen.
This is partly the case, too, with the Pacific Hall at the
Bishop Museum. Alice Christophe noted that, whilst it has made many
improvements in its re-representation of the complexity of the Blue Continent
of Oceania, Western names and tropes still occasionally appear. The remodelling
of the space as a whole has, however, been highly praised by the people it
represents, as a space for them,
rather than simply of them.
Ioanna Zouli would take the analysis of physical
representation into the virtual world, in her paper discussing the changes to
architecture and strategies of engagement offered by the online work of TATE. She
charted the shift from magazine like, transmissive website to multiplatform, socially
engaged network: a shift reflecting that of the New Museology of the 1980s and
90s.
The representation and perception of objects is also a
physical thing. Two papers in particular were indicative of the power of the
changing object. In Stephanie Bowry’s paper, we were introduced to the object
as metamorphe, something with multiple identities, things themselves and
symbols of themselves. We were also introduced to the metamorphosis of the
cabinet – from container to cultural curiosity, and reminded of the fact that
in a few or a hundred years time, our own museological models might too be
behind glass.
A historical consideration of the changing use of objects in
was offered by Mario Schulze, in his exploration of two German museums: The
Historical Museum of Frankfurt and the Museum of Everyday Life, Berlin. It was
interesting to see a reflection of this process in a more contemporary setting:
Laura Weikop’s Exhibition Lab, hosted
at the Design Museum, Copenhagen, a daring attempt to change institutional perception
in regard to the way objects can be displayed and understood.
Perception of objects and places is, of course, affected by
programming. In her discussion of Kitchen Conversations at the Tenement Museum
of the Lower East Side, Emily Pinkowitz reflected how the changing of
timetabling, staff and space has altered the way in which the public engaged
with the Kitchen Conversations Project, thereby, hopefully, gaining a better understanding
of the lives of migrants and the importance of contemporary tolerance.
For Punshon, however, it was the understanding of the Darwin
Centre itself which needed improvement and change. The series of artistic and
performance projects that she oversaw during the course of a year led to an
exponential rise in visitor numbers and a distinct improvement in the
perception of the Darwin Centre, its work, and the character of the scientists
there. Unfortunately, due to financial constraints and other issues, it may not
be that those activities can continue.
This brings us to another important theme of Museum Metamorphosis
– how external and internal circumstances, politics and characters can affect
and change the museum and its representative strategies. In ‘Monad to Man’,
Pandora Syperek charted how changing personalities and theological-scientific
relationships and situation changed the Natural History Museum, London, during
the earliest production and operation. The next day, Lefteris Spyrou would how a similar
process, fuelled this time by contradictory passions for nationhood and European
identity would transform the National Gallery of Athens into the museum it is
today, and how they will continue to influence it in the future – particularly in
this time of Greek difficulties.
I was particularly interested, however, to note how subsequent
political regimes can adopt the objects, and even the institutions, of previous,
often diametrically opposed governments to forward their own political ends.
The case of Croat Yugoslavia, as presented to us by Joel Palhegyi, is one of myth-making
and ideology: a potentially explosive mix in a febrile nation.
Where change seems really significant, however, is in the
alteration of institutional structures which deny expression to, or
marginalise, a significant proportion of people. The attempt to promote
tolerance is visible in the works of many of the speakers at Museum
Metamorphosis, including Richard Sandell, and, particularly, the discussion of
migration museums and their promotion of cohesion – as well as difference –
conducted by Eureka Heinrich. However, it was Erin Baily whom I found
particularly affecting; a brave person promoting LGBTQI identity in an
institution unused to such notions, in a nation in which those identities are
very often hidden and decried.
Some closing thoughts
Here ends my reflection on the Museum Metamorphosis. I don’t
want to give any final conclusion: that would almost deny the point of the idea
of change. Perhaps the only thing I would say is that the assumption that
change improves is to live in a teleology: and I hope that we are beyond the
myth of progress by now. Perhaps our knowledge will increase – it may still be
used for good or ill. Perhaps the major leap museums need to make is to leave
behind the desire for apotheosis, and to embrace metamorphosis for precisely
what it is: a change in form.
