By speaking of the museum in terms of its historicity, rather than history or historical context, this imparts the quality of being a part of recorded history, rather than as part of an ahistorical myth or prehistory. This is appropriate since museums are still undergoing change and development that is related to, not disparate from the past. As with other media, the museum has endured several transformative periods before arriving at its modern incarnation. Beginning in classical antiquity with the ‘mouseion,’ four other distinct phases follow whose etymology and cultural developments will be addressed, but with the understanding that the reader has some familiarity with the political and economic context of each period addressed. These include: the museum as ‘cabinets of curiosity,’ and private collections which flourished during the Renaissance; the museum as an establishment, which emerged during the Age of Enlightenment; the public museums that first appeared during Victorian times; and finally, the ‘new’ modern-day entrepreneurial institutions and cultural centers, characterized by their provision of public services and multidisciplinary experiences. Guiding the evolution of the ‘mouseion’ to the ‘new museum’ are a series of “chance confluences of individuals’ interests and ever-widening social demands” (Macdonald, 2011: 132) described in brief, below.
In its earliest form, the museum was a place for the private display of objects acquired during conquest. Records show that in Alexandria, pieces selected were usually objects of art or science, and used in a ‘mouseion,’ or community of scholars. (Greenhill, 1995: 41) These ‘muses’ of arts and science were intended to be sources of inspiration and studied, contributing to public knowledge and understanding. In the ensuing centuries, collections began to comprise objects of value and were amassed at incredible rates, and stored in palaces, churches, and noble residencies. Their purpose became less philosophical and more related to spectacle. Such ‘cabinets of curiosity,’ as they came to be called in the 15th century, captured the imaginations of patrons, amateurs and scholars. As Baudrillard suggests, “The logic of collection is metonymical – we have only a succession of objects which can always be increased incrementally. You ‘add’ to a collection, the single object never suffices.” (Kellner, 1994: 34) Thus, the activity of collection is a “kind of promiscuity of possession and it is always pursued passionately by the collector.” (Kellner, 1994: 34) Aristides added to this by suggesting that “collection [is] ‘an obsession organized’…. The pure collector’s interest is not bounded by the intrinsic worth of the objects of his desire; at whatever cost, he must have them.” (Greehill, 1995: 16) It was due to these comprehensive and expansive collections, that individuals and institutions began placing more emphasis on the collection and display of art, as separate and distinct from the collection and display of artifacts.
Whatever the motivations of these collectors, such collections played an important role in the creation of value, for by positioning objects against one another, we begin to see art emanating from non-art objects and cultural artifact distinguished from mundane objects. (Greenhill, 1995: 19) Subsequently, a material culture emerged, which collectively became worth preserving and sharing with others. As Delibasic said, the museum object established meaning based upon the individual and collective experience, “as well as the relationship with other objects and with the space where the object is placed.” (Greenhill, 1995: 25) So as the physical structure and display of the museum changed, so too did the visitors’ experience of the objects within. Once in the museum, the object is thrust into the context of other objects of fine art or high culture, and thus mediates a new reality to be experienced and enjoyed. As the meaning of these objects became more important over time, the museum was made a space for cultural heritage, or display of tangible traces of the past.
With growth in scientific knowledge, commercial expansion and redefinition of borders, society was forever changed and the museum began to take its modern form. During this time, emerging nation-states, led by powerful ruling class and ideologies, used the objects and images in their possession to shape their identity and representation. (Greenhill, 1995: 41) As Susan Pearce points out, “objects…constitute ways in which we construct ourselves, both as societies and as individual social animals…like all other human manifestations they are only significant in groups or sets to which meaning can be attached.” (Greenhill, 1995: 15) This helps to explain the importance the museum assumed in shaping the identity of those who own it and experience it. It was not the museum as a vessel that was largely influential in determining culture, rather, it was what the vessel contained and how that information was shared. Thus, the museum message became “a means by which the museum communicates the information contained in its collective resources and stimulates the production of new information within the museological context.” (Greenhill, 1995: 25) In other words, the authentic experience is one in which the message is received directly from the objects, and is mediated by the context within which the objects are placed. Understood in the exhibition context, the object became a tool for interpretation and nevermore a material expression in its own right.
This process falls under the purview of Bennett’s ‘exhibitionary complex,’ which comprised mechanisms aimed at persuading the public. According to Bennett, the ‘exhibitionary complex,’ is a “force regulated and channeled by society’s ruling groups but for the good of all.” (Macdonald, 2011: 136) Foucault originally positioned this phenomenon as a “response to the problem of order, but one which worked differently in seeking to transform that problem into one of culture-a question of winning hearts and minds as well as the disciplining and training of bodies.” (Bennett, 1995: 62) In other words, governments who held controlling interest in museums, which at this time were institutions, were recognized as tool with which the population could be constructed and molded in such a way as to inspire order, civility and unity—characteristics of ‘civil society,’ in a Gramscian sense, which are crucial to nation building.
At this point in time, the public were a ‘citizenry’ subject to an institution’s power to arrange objects for display in a way that compelled the citizenry, or public ‘en masse,’ to become the “subjects rather than the objects of knowledge.” (Bennett, 1995: 63) According to Foucault, these subjects were self-regulating, and heir apparent to the public museums utilizing techniques and rhetoric of display characteristic of the ‘disciplinary society.’ (Bennett, 1995: 65) Thus through the exhibitionary complex, a new public was formed and prescribed a new relationship to objects of display. Most importantly, this shift represented a break with two principles shared by all previous iterations of the museum: “that of private ownership and restricted access.” (Bennett, 1995: 73) In short, the private was made public. And under the administration of the state, the museum served to benefit the public rather than advance aristocratic power, reputation and careers.
While the first ‘public’ art museums were founded in the 17th century, beginning with Basel’s Kunstmuseum in 1661, and the Ashmolean Museum, founded in 1683, (Beall-Fontana, 2007: 3) these institutions remained highly exclusive and hardly accessible to the general public. The actual transition from private to public became widespread only after 1793, during the French revolution, when the Louvre Palace’s Grand Gallery was opened to the public to become the first truly public art museum in the world. As a representation of the French people’s claims to political sovereignty and national patrimony, the Louvre emerged as a source of national pride, symbol of civic identity, and agent of social unity. (Macdonald, 2011: 115) As such, it became the envy of other nations who began to emulate this institution. For instance, the Louvre motivated the British to establish the National Portrait Gallery in London. Others quickly followed suit.
Fig 1.0 – The Louvre’= Grand Gallery as it appeared in the 19th century
The period after World War II witnessed rapid expansion, during which time approximately 90 percent of the world’s museums were established. (Macdonald, 2011: 39) Additionally, the 20th century saw processes of globalization facilitate the movement of people, objects and ideas. With that, the imagined community known as a nation-state began to erode, and the use of museums for display of cultural patrimony and collective identity met with scrutiny. (Greenhill, 1995: 42) This came to a head during the ‘cultural turn’ of the 20th century, when emphasis was placed on meaning and culture, In lieu of politics and economics. As Jameson, who brought the ‘turn’ to term said:
The very sphere of culture itself has expanded, becoming coterminous with market society in such a way that the cultural is no longer limited to its earlier, traditional or experimental forms, but it is consumed throughout daily life itself, in shopping, in professional activities, in the various often televisual forms of leisure, in production for the market and in the consumption of those market products, indeed in the most secret folds and corners of the quotidian. Social space is now completely saturated with the image of culture. (Jameson, 1998: 111)
In the wake of this new post-modern outlook it was decreed: “the medium is the message.” (McLuhan,1964) This famous phrase, first published in 1964 represents a paradigm shift in the way that we viewed the role of media and culture. Suddenly the form of the medium and the message it contained represented a symbiotic relationship in which each influenced how the other is perceived. Put another way, the symbolic meaning was dependent on its material container.
While McLuhan was mainly referencing technologies of mass communication such as the television, it could also be acknowledged that the museum, a quintessential institution, had evolved into a vessel for selected objects and specimens which delivered specific messages through museums programs and activities such as curated exhibitions, education and catalogues. The collection alone no longer stood alone as the museum’s ‘product,’ but was joined by other services developed for the public. Exhibitions (a Western invention) became a typical museum medium for “expressing the museum message.” (Greenhill, 1995: 30) It is in this form of communication with the visitor we find a relationship developing between museum objects and the ‘museality’ which they carry within them. Greenhill defines museality as enabling “the objects to express and convey various messages.” Simultaneously, “the new meanings of museality are stated through the relationship between the object and the space, with the active assistance of the audience.” (Greenhill, 1995: 30) Thus, museality exists in multiple touchpoints, or points of communication between the visitor and the object. In an exhibition, new relationships are established between the visitor, the museum and the object, especially due to the transient nature of the exhibit, which only exists in a certain time and space. So it is understandable that politicians began to take more of an interest in the exhibitions created and displayed in national museums.
The politics of identity that progressed out of this period saw a change in focus from the “bounded selves of universal citizenship” to “the plurality and flux of identities.” (Macdonald, 2011: 39) Americans in particular were finding a sense of identity in the leisure activities with which they occupied themselves, and importance was placed on art and culture for education and moral growth. So we find that society’s values, norms and ways of doing things—the stuff that makes up its culture. The social implications of this were extraordinary, with cascading effects that transformed the role of the art museum once more.
The resulting new museum culture provided a museality that was attractive to the general public, who, according to Rosemary Flanders, were curious about “these new centers of learning.” (Greehill, 1995:72) Spreading the message of cultural expansion were newspapers, journal and radio coverage. Exhibitions became ‘events’ and were reported on with excitement. Subsequently, the museum was made central to debate about culture and its relationship with the public. It was at this peak of general public influence, and the acceleration of globalization, that the internationalization of museums began to occur. Museums turned an eye to exhibition programming, exchanges of collections, there was increased movement of curators and directors. (Macdonald, 2011: 381) Then came the ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions, beginning with ‘The Treasures of Tutankhamun’ in 1972. This marked a pivotal moment for the contemporary museum by establishing the use of international mass marketing and product merchandising, mobilizing enthusiasm toward national culture (or treasures), validating the museum’s mandate to democratize and reach out to new audiences, and aspirition to serve as both a source of entertainment and enlightenment. (Macdonald, 2011: 381) The museum was transformed into a commercial enterprise and endowed with “an organizational character.” (Macdonald, 2011: 40)
In the 1990s, declines in public funding left museums receptive to new strategies for success. So when governments encouraged museums to begin thinking of the museum network as an industry, and to acknowledge the economic role that museums played in social life, the institutions paid heed. (Greenhill, 1995: 2) Marketing officers were appointed to museum staff, and the lexicon utilized in communications teams and membership teams changed from the ‘visitor’ to the ‘audience,’ the former being those who come to the museum, and the later encompassing all those who might consider coming to the museum. (Greenhill, 1995: 2) At the same time, management standards increased and museums began to be operated like a business. In addition to gauging visitor satisfaction, it became important to manage customer relationships.
The perception of the museum continues to be based on services provided, which “have tended to be object-based activities (exhibitions, public programs based on collections, catalogues)” (Greenhill, 1995: 83) and such activities involving curatorial judgment of the ‘value’ and significance of objects collected and displayed, hold control of the information disseminated to the public. However, Ames suggested this approach ‘dis-empowers’ the visitor and leaves him or her as “passive receivers of curatorial wisdom, rather than positively interacting with the museum environment.” (Greenhill, 1995: 83) Furthermore, it places undesired emphasis on the object and role of the curator as gatekeepers of cultural capital.
When one calls into question the primacy of the object, and instead places emphasis on its signification, or the information related to it, we discover the impulse to emphasize the information through a variety of mediums, which works to illustrate the object’s importance and thus justify its membership in the collection, which constitutes the museum’s value. This shift in thinking causes one to ponder alternative methods of display and leaves the door open for uses of multi-media to create new relationships and interactions between objects, and between their viewership. Simply put, embracing digital technologies provides public access to information that was previously exclusive. The availability of additional information works to take the artwork or object outside of the frame of the museum and recontextualize it via other media. For example, viewing an image of the Mona Lisa on the Louvre website, and then discovering images of the school of artists who studied under Leonardo de Vinci, may have simultaneous effects: on the one hand it diminishes the ‘aura’ through reproduction, as Walter Benjamin would observe, but on the other, its context and reproduction contribute to its authenticity and leave it open for new interpretations, a practice encouraged today.
