Gailearaí Gailearaí Náisiúnta Náisiúnta na héireann na héireann National National Gallery Gallery of Ireland of Ireland The Challenges Facing The Challenges Facing Museums on-site and Museums on-site and online in the 21st Century online in the 21st Century and and Future Forecasting: Future Forecasting: The Challenges The Challenges Facing Museums and Facing Museums and Cultural Institutions Cultural Institutions Proceedings of the Roundtable and Symposium Proceedings of the Roundtable and Symposium Series No 9 & 10 Series No 9 & 10
Published in 2012 by The National Gallery of Ireland Merrion Square West Dublin 2 Text Copyright the contributors and the National Gallery of Ireland, 2012 isbn 978-1-904288-45-9 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduces, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the National Gallery of Ireland. Series No 1 The Role of Education in Museums 1999 Series No 2 The Nature of the Education Service 2000 Series No 3 The Museum Visit: Virtual Reality and the Gallery 2001 Series No 4 Learning in Museums 2003 Series No 5 Effective Presentation and Interpretation in Museums 2004 Series No 6 Museums, Galleries and Young People 2005 Series No 7 Museums Galleries and Lifelong Learning 2007 Series No 8 Audience Development in Museums and Cultural Sites in Difficult Times 2009 Series No 9 Future Forecasting: The Challenges Facing Museums and Cultural Institutions 2011 Series No 10 The Challenges Facing Museums On-Site and Online in the 21 st Century 2012 Editor: Marie Bourke Printed in Ireland by: McBrinns Print Solutions Cover: Taking Measurements: the Artist copying a Cast in the Hall of The National Gallery of Ireland 1887, Richard T. Moynan (1856-1906). Photo National Gallery of Ireland
The Challenges Facing Museums On-Site and Online in the 21st Century 2012 Contents 4 Foreword Jimmy Deenihan TD, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht 5 Foreword Ruairí Quinn TD, Minister for Education and Skills 6 Preface Sean Rainbird, Director, The National Gallery of Ireland 8 Introducing the Learning Museum Network Project Margherita Sani, Istituto Beni Culturali, Italy, LEM Project Co-ordinator 12 Key Trends in Museums of the Future Dr. Marie Bourke, Keeper, Head of Education National Gallery of Ireland 19 What will the Museum of the Future be like? David Anderson, Director General Amgueddfa Cymru National Museum Wales 26 Innovative public programming of the future Peggy Fogelman Frederick P. and Sandra P. Rose Chairman of Education The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York roundtable 33 Museums as cultural institutions in the context of audience and enterprise Sarah Glennie, Director, Irish Film Institute Incoming Director, Irish Museum of Modern Art 40 The Growing Impact of Online Platforms at the National Gallery of Ireland Brina Casey, Education Officer: Community Engagement and Outreach, Claire Crowley and Catherine Ryan, Digital Media Assistants, National Gallery of Ireland 43 Agenda 2026 Siebe Wiede, Max Meijer and Marieke Krabshuis, Netherlands Museums Association 112 Roundtable Chair and LEM Forum Chair 112 Acknowledgements 115 Photographic credits
Foreword roundtable 4 Jimmy Deenihan TD Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht It is a pleasure to introduce this joint volume of proceedings produced by the National Gallery of Ireland. The volume is a record of the proceedings of the Symposium, Future Forecasting: The Challenges Facing Museums and Cultural Institutions, held in 2011, and the Roundtable, The Challenges Facing Museums On-site and Online in the 21st Century, held in 2012, as a response to some of the issues raised at the symposium. These are challenging times for all institutions, including museums and cultural institutions. The National Gallery is to be commended for having provided these opportunities for everyone, delegates from Ireland and Europe, especially younger people working in museums, to express their views, both in the lecture theatre and online. The range of speakers from across Europe and the United States is very impressive and their contributions will provide much food for thought for museum practitioners. I was particularly encouraged by the use of online resources, which I hope will become a more frequent feature of the cultural landscape in Ireland. It is a particular pleasure to acknowledge the assistance of LEM, the Learning Museum Network Project, in supporting this event. The Learning Museum Network Project involves museums from over twenty countries, including Ireland, in a range of projects exploring issues such as the ageing population, audience development, intercultural dialogue and new trends in 21st-century museums. Once again, I would like to express my appreciation to the National Gallery for organising the Symposium and Roundtable. Museums and galleries are an integral part of Ireland s cultural landscape, and I am sure that this record will provide a useful and thought-provoking tool for all of those involved in the development of these important cultural institutions in the future.
Ruairí Quinn TD Minister for Education and Skills I am very pleased that the Department of Education and Skills is involved in these joint proceedings dealing with the challenges facing museums in the 21st century. As museums cater for all ages, it is important to be aware that there is over 34% of the Irish population under age 24. It is essential, therefore, that any discussion about future forecasting in museums takes into account creating provisions and opportunities for young people to gain access to culture from the earliest age. The Department of Education and Skills supports a fully rounded education, which involves not just the key curriculum subjects but also sports, physical education, arts in education and access to culture. In addition to the collections of the National Cultural Institutions, there is a widespread network of regional and local museums and galleries, art centres and exhibition venues, providing access to culture through displays, rotating exhibitions, tours, lectures, practical workshops, film screenings and other activities. As a result of the speed of online developments and iphones/pads, children, students and adult lifelong learners have amazing opportunities to access information and images of the collections from the websites of major museums and galleries. Online learning, formal and informal education are new opportunities in a world where museums have the chance to provide access to culture and encourage people of all ages to learn even more. I would like to encourage schools to become more involved in the collections of our museums, libraries, historic houses etc, through activities and events and online learning facilities. An application on these websites that would allow artworks to be downloaded and annotated would help young students. It would also help teachers to identify images before a visit, encourage students to devise their own exhibitions, and to be used as a way to test them. In this way, young people could devise online exhibitions and send them to their friends. I hope that the discussion in these proceedings continues, so that museums will explore and develop further opportunities to encourage young audiences and lifelong learners to engage with the collections. There has never been such an opportune moment to access culture in 21st century Ireland. roundtable 5
Preface roundtable Sean Rainbird Director, National Gallery of Ireland When the National Gallery of Ireland addressed the issue of the challenges facing museums and cultural institutions online and on-site in the 21 st century, in the course of a double-act symposium and roundtable, it was because this subject has assumed a new importance in the current economic climate. The discussions that took place during these events, in the Gallery and online, confirmed the most significant issue currently facing museums as being the severity of the universal economic downturn, the length of time that it is taking to recover, with few signs of improvement so far, and the reality of the impact being just as serious world-wide as it is in Ireland. As Declan McGonagle notes, this is a time of resetting and not just of recession. It was enlightening, therefore, to see the range of participants of all ages, who listened to, considered and discussed the range of potential present-and-future impacts on our museums, in association with the panel of cultural, heritage and business experts. The papers in this joint volume of symposium-roundtable proceedings (issue 9 & 10) are different to previous issues because of the critical nature of the contents. It is most impressive to look through the chapters of this volume and see themes that impact on the very core of the museum, including the value of culture; the challenges facing new curators and what will the museum of the future be like; the nature of future public programming; and the question of whether museums are maximizing the potential of online platforms. Of equal importance in relation to our public is the area of the changing demographics of 21st-century audiences. The business case outlined in creating profitable, efficient services and revenue streams online and at points of sale is also encapsulated in the chapter dealing with museums as cultural institutions in the context of audience and enterprise. 6 I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to all the participants in the volume. This difficult and painful process of identifying the wide range of new and challenging issues is essential if our museums are going to locate themselves within a newly defined world that will emerge following the current crisis. Their voices are a valuable record that will serve to help everyone seeking to address the future, in cultural heritage institutions and in small, regional and national museums. For the first time, both symposium and roundtable were live streamed with significant effect. To continue the process of optimising the potential of online platforms, the National Gallery will make the series of proceedings available on the website for virtual audiences.
On the occasion of the publication of these proceedings, I would like to express my gratitude to Jimmy Deenihan TD, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and to Ruairí Quinn TD, Minister for Education and Skills, for their contribution. The support of the Learning Museum Network Project and LEM Co-ordinator Margherita Sani, is noted with appreciation as being critical to these events. The National Gallery of Ireland is a partner in LEM, leading the working group New trends in museums of the 21 st century. This very active group have been developing the LEM future trends project since 2011 and its members are all listed in the acknowledgements. The symposium and roundtable was held under the auspices of, the International Council of Museums (ICOM), International Committee for Education and Cultural Action (CECA). The roundtable was held in association with the IMA, the Irish Museums Association, and NEMO, the Network of European Museum Organizations. My thanks to all of the speakers who travelled from near and afar, for their invaluable contribution to the symposium, roundtable and proceedings. In this context, I would like to express appreciation to the symposium panel participants and to our symposium guest presenter, John Kelly. It is important to recognize the vital role of the chairpersons in these events, which was so ably carried out by Kathleen James Chakraborty, Sofia Tsildou, Ciarán Benson, Theo Dorgan and Declan McGonagle. My final words are extended to the Gallery team who worked so hard to ensure theses events were a success, all of whom are gratefully listed in the acknowledgements. To each and every one of you I extend sincere thanks. roundtable 7
Introducing the Learning Museum Network Project roundtable Margherita Sani Istituto Beni Culturali, Italy, LEM Project Co-ordinator LEM The Learning Museum is a EU-funded project which aims to create a permanent network of museums and cultural heritage organisations, to ensure that they can exploit their potential as learning places and play an active role with regard to lifelong learning in a knowledge-based Europe. The project is funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme Grundtvig for the period 2010-2013 and can be regarded as the arrival point of a number of previous EU projects carried out between 2007-2010, which dealt with lifelong learning in museums (LLML and MuMAE), intercultural dialogue (MAP for ID) and volunteering (VoCH), all of which are documented in the LEM website. LEM not only draws from the materials collected, the lessons learned and the contacts established by its forerunners, but moves one step further in the direction of establishing a permanent space for museum professionals and adult educators to meet, exchange experiences and good practices, learn from each other, therefore contributing to the creation of a European community of professionals interested in heritage education and lifelong learning in museums. The network started with 23 partners from 17 European countries, plus one partner from the United States of America, the Museum of Anthropology of the University of Denver, taking advantage of the possibility opened in 2010 for the first time by the Lifelong Learning Programme, to involve third country organisations. 8 As a network, LEM aims in the first place to grow and acquire new associate members, which, in May 2013, had already outnumbered the founding institutions. A wide range of museums, heritage organisations, academies, institutes for learning and universities are now part of the network, in representation of 23 countries. There are Ministries, Museum Associations and other umbrella organisations, individual museums, small and large, institutions active in the education field, all working on an equal level and engaged in sharing information, making it available to a wider public and learning from one another. The philosophy of LEM indeed is that of considering museums not only as learning places, where educational activities are delivered, but as learning organisations themselves, learning from the public, the local community, other agencies and, of course, from other museums. The idea of peer learning is core to LEM and, in order to fully support it, work has been based around working groups, each led by a LEM partner. The research subjects have been chosen by the working groups themselves:
Activities in museums, courtesy of Glasgow Museums Kick off meeting of the LEM Project in Bologna, Dec 2010 Training session, courtesy of The Finnish Museum Association LEM Project partner meeting in Tampere, Oct 2011 roundtable 9 LEM Project conference in Tampere, worshop session, Oct 2011 LEM Project conference in Tampere, worshop session, Oct 2011
roundtable 10 New trends in the museums in the 21st century Museums and the ageing population Museums and Intercultural dialogue Audience research, learning styles and visitor relation management Museums as learning places - learning spaces in museums In addition to collecting materials, sharing them on the website and eventually producing a report on the theme researched, working groups undertake study visits to each other s or to third institutions, to come in contact with working practices of other colleagues throughout Europe. This idea of learning by being directly exposed to other people s practices and experiencing different work environments represents an important added value to the project, not only with regard to the members of the working groups, but more widely, through the LEM mobility scheme which is open to partners and associate partners and allows for the possibility of spending some time working in another institution. In fact some of the project partners, initially five, but increasingly more, have offered placements to other LEM members, for periods lasting from a few days to two weeks to three months. This results not only in the strengthening of ties within the network at personal, professional and institutional levels, but allows individuals to learn by being exposed to different working situations Dissemination is another important aspect of LEM. International conferences, seminars and roundtables are being organised regularly and attract a wide European audience. They are occasions for intensive networking and learning, offer plenty of social events and are combined with visits to local institutions to meet stakeholders. Where possible, they are also live-streamed to reach an even wider public worldwide. A number of smaller dissemination events are also organised at local or national level. Finally, the website is the digital platform where all the knowledge acquired by the project is kept and made available. It is a dynamic and interactive forum, first of all to receive and exchange materials about the subject area museums and lifelong learning and secondly to provide information about the project. It is a virtual learning environment providing information on existing literature, projects and actors and is kept updated through continuous research, data analysis and provision of new information by an international editorial team and by the project partners. Everyone is invited to send materials to be published on the LEM website, and participation is favoured through the use of web 2.0 tools. At the beginning of each month an electronic newsletter is sent out to all subscribers. The website therefore functions as a community-building tool for all those who are interested in the topics addressed by LEM. Through the networking activities of its partners and associates, the website and the dissemination events, LEM expects to reach the whole museum and heritage community and a large part of the adult education sector.
The LEM Partners: IBACN Institute of Cultural Heritage Regione Emilia Romagna (IT) (project leader) OO Landesmuseen (AT) Gallo Roman Museum (BE) DMB - German Museum Association (DE) ODM Danish Museum Association (DK) Ministry of Culture Greece Directorate of Museums (EL) SML Finnish Museum Association (FI) Ministry of Culture Spain Directorate of State Museums (ES) Cap Sciences (FR) National Gallery of Ireland (IE) Chester Beatty Library (IE) Città di Torino (IT) Amitié (IT) Rumsiskes Museum (LT) National Gallery of Latvia (LV) European Museum Academy (NL) Sverresborg Folkemuseum (NO) Romanian Museum Network (RO) Nordic Centre for Heritage Learning (SE) Glasgow Museums Glasgow Life (UK) Manchester Museum (UK) NIACE National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (UK) University of Denver Museum of Anthropology (USA) roundtable See: www.lemproject.eu 11
Future Forecasting and the Challenges Facing Museums roundtable 12 Dr. Marie Bourke, Keeper, Head of Education, National Gallery of Ireland Abstract Ireland is a small nation with a distinctive identity on the western periphery of Europe. When it became an Irish Free State in 1922, the country was partitioned and the North remained part of the United Kingdom. The total population of the island of Ireland is approx. 6.4 million. All nations need national institutions to help them reflect on their past, understand the present, and make informed and enlightened decisions about their future. Thus, Irish museums, which evolved from late 18th century cabinets of curiosities, through to the mid-19th century development of national museums, progressed in the later 20th and early 21st century into a flowering of Irish cultural institutions. Following a period of sustained growth, an economic downturn impacted on Europe in the new millennium and its effect was felt on Irish museums. Trends world-wide reflected similar experiences to Europe, as the current economic uncertainty forced many museums to reassess, re-evaluate and in some cases reinvent themselves. It is estimated that In Europe there are at least 38,000 museums with probably over 500 million visitors a year, (over 50% of which did not exist before World War 11). 1 This impressive statistic that reflects a European-wide desire to create access to culture is difficult to sustain. The problems facing all museums in the current environment are many. Keywords: museums, innovation, creativity, learning, communities, participation. Symposium & Roundtable The reason for holding the symposium: Future Forecasting: The Challenges Facing Museums and Cultural Institutions (2011) was to bring together a range of practitioners to discuss the future of museums. The symposium was supported by the Learning Museum Network Project, 2 whose members came from Italy, Norway, Greece and Sweden, augmented by an attendance of 143 people. Online participants included 322 people from Europe, Scandinavia, Japan and the USA. The Roundtable that followed: The Challenges Facing Museums On-Site and Online in the 21 st Century (2012), was addressed by keynote speakers from the USA, Ireland, Wales and Italy, who advanced the dialogue, keeping it open and inclusive. 3 It was attended by 135 delegates, LEM members came from Romania, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and Greece, with a virtual presence of 1,408 participants from Europe, South Africa, Russia, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Republic of Korea, Canada, the USA (see the chapter The Growing Impact of Online Platforms ). Trial Survey Findings A pilot survey, Key Trends in Museums of the Future, discussed at the roundtable, had been iniatiated by the LEM working group New Trends in Museums of the 21st Century in 2011, to ascertain the response of museums to: (1) what activities were declining; 4 (2) what events
The fun and enjoyment of ageing creatively Volunteering in the museum were ongoing; (3) what were the new trends in museums. It confirmed the impact of the economic downturn. 5 A summary of the findings: 1. The declining areas were identified as audio guides; museums had problems funding and installing the technology to run the guides, they were unable to employ people to manage them, and they could not afford to give them away free as many museums do. The same issue applied to evening hours, where there was no funding to employ attendant staff or to cover the cost of keeping the museum open. 2. While conducted tours fitted the category of a declining activity, due to the inability of some museums to pay guides, other museums mentioned these tours as an ongoing activity that would outlive audio guides to be used alongside new technologies, because visitors liked the personal interaction with a tour guide. roundtable 13 3. Three trends were identified as essential to engage the public in the museum: (a) exhibitions; (b) social media; (c) educational-cultural events. (a) The survey noted that museums needed temporary exhibitions and infocus shows to bring in new audiences, just as regular and repeat visitors wanted the permanent collection rotated. While this is to the advantage of the museum, it has to be resourced; without staff it is not possible to mount shows and without a budget it is not possible to advertise and promote the displays that entice the public to visit. (b) Emphasis was placed on the use of new technology, e.g. digital media and social networking, that increased awareness and interest in museums. The survey noted that the potential of this area is still unchartered. However, online resources, such as websites, require significant funds and staff to establish, maintain and develop them.
roundtable 14 Young artist: museums are for all ages Arts-in-education at the Gallery (c) Educational and cultural activities were identified as critical in helping the public to engage and interact with the collections in the museum. A number of museums had reduced services to the minimum due to budget cuts, resulting in a loss of visitors. Symposium and Roundtable Outcomes The findings accorded with the outcome of the symposium and roundable; the dominant issue facing museums was the severity of the universal economic downturn, the length of time that it was taking to recover (with few signs of improvement) and the reality of the impact being just as serious overseas as it was in Ireland. Speakers noted that the range of cuts of varying degrees is so severe that some museums have closed, museums have reduced opening hours, there are room closures, a number have stopped evening openings, while others have closed an extra day a week. The next casualty of these cuts is staff, with reductions in the number of people working in museums, full-time, part-time, temporary and seasonal. In effect, staff numbers have been reduced through cuts or a jobs embargo with fewer people doing more jobs and increasing amounts of work. Some museums reported a sharp decline in visitor numbers due to reduced opening hours, while others noted an increase due to free admission, more displays and events. Retail outlets, an important source of revenue, have lost income through a lack of visitors. The result is an inability to maintain the quality service that museums have worked so hard to build. Museums, therefore, needed to be creative with existing resources, and to build sustainable sources of revenue from retail and catering, publications and online sources, special events and fellowships. A summary of key Roundable points: What does the public want from museums - ask visitors, find out and deliver. Opportunities exist if museums are creative and inventive in their thinking. Museums must be well managed and clever with their existing resources. Adopt fresh innovative approaches to generating income. Maximise the potential of online resources and social networking.
Consult colleagues outside the sector who might provide training, advice, opportunities and role models. Help staff by augmenting existing resources with volunteers, internships and work placements. A motivated volunteer force with a range of skills and experience can help the museum to communicate the collections, maintain a standard of service and create a good experience for museum visitors. Broadening the Debate The world-wide crises has resulted in questions being raised about the role, function and future of museums. 6 Conferences are exploring the traditional purpose of the museum to collect, care for, display, interpret and promote collections, comprising objects and works of art of tangible and intangible heritage (see ICOM definition 7 ). Good governance and management is increasingly important, together with the need to source directors who are trained managers and leaders, capable of organizing the pan-institutional planning necessary to run the museum operation, and forming inter-disciplinary teams of staff to work together on museum projects. Although collections, historic and contemporary, are the raison d être of museums, they are under scrutiny, due to dwindling acquisition funds and the question of disposals, as more emphasis is placed on their management, eg the care, conservation, storage and security of collections. The desire to create access to culture, including getting more collections online and on show, is part of the same drive wishing to see visitors engage more fully with the collections. The new emphasis on the public role of the museum is seeing museums moving away from being about something, as Stephen Weil has noted, to being for somebody. 8 This places the spotlight firmly on the needs of the visitor, what it is they are seeking from the museum (using surveys and focus group discussions), and moving swiftly to respond to these needs. Encouraging visitors to participate in the museum will involve rotating temporary exhibitions and displays and increasing the range of events, due to the new awareness by curators, educators and visitor services of access, engagement and outreach. Inter-disciplinary teams, including curators, educators, conservators, research services, press, marketing and visitor services, will work together to create exhibitions and publications on-site and online. Education will be essential to this process, providing cultural educational activities and lifelong learning programmes Collection Highlight: Frederic William Burton s The Meeting on the Turret Stairs, 1864 roundtable 15
roundtable 16 that create enjoyable experiences. The increasing importance of the collections will result in a stronger requirement to convey their meaning and significance in more creative and engaging ways, thereby becoming part of an ongoing audience development programme. The American museologist Elaine Heumann Gurian has asked why museums do not engage more closely with their community, because a museum that is linked to and engaged with its community will have a community that will want to help, protect and defend its museum. 9 She describes the important physical assets of the museum as a safe civic space, with objects that are useful for tangible three-dimensional learning, which can be incorporated into relevant programs that reach all levels of the community. As these services could be rated by many people as essential to their needs and their aspirations for their children, it seems sensible that museums and communities would work together as an integral part of the community. Creating access to information, together with the formal and the informal education system, forms part of this discussion due to the nature of employment and the way people live requiring new sets of life skills. As the education system adapts to train young people in new core skills, museums can expand their learning facilities and devise innovative programmes that assist learners to develop critical thinking, absorb information, experiment with potential solutions and think creatively. 10 Museums can ensure their objects and works of art are accessible physically and virtually by devising a range of innovative online learning programmes and activities, together with providing practical classes in studios and resource rooms. 11 Information access is essential as museums grapple with the need for applications enabling the visitor to plan their visit, such as the My Met Gallery on the Metropolitan Museum website. 12 To plan a visit, visitors need to be able to find their interests on the website, what works they wish to see (where they are located) and print a map of the selected artworks with a floor plan of the museum. Accessing information in this way, e.g. the websites Contemporary artists such as Pauline Bewick engage with our collections Drawing in the Gallery
of the Getty; Tate Modern; Tate Britain; and the Musée d Orsay, gives the visitor a sense of control over their trip, which the visit should succeed in fulfilling. 13 If the artworks could be annotated with comments this would encourage teachers to select specific works prior to a visit, ask students to create their own exhibitions and help them with guidelines. It would be another way of testing them. In addition, audiences could create their own online collections and exhibitions to email to family and friends, such as the websites of the Virtual Museum of Canada and ArtsConnected. 14 Informal lifelong education and online learning are fresh options in a world where museums have the chance to inspire people of all ages to learn more. Conclusion The answer to whether museums can demonstrate creative thinking, fresh energy and new ideas is a resounding yes because of the critical imperatives of survival. Ireland is an example of a small country in which the economic situation is inhibiting development at just the time that the country needs to grow. Illustrating this is the Irish Census, which noted that while 12% of the population is age 65 and over (4.6 million population in the Republic), 34% is aged 24 and under. Ireland has a high birth rate, having developed the fastest growth rate in the European Union between 1996-2006, with over 365,000 children born between 2006 and 2011. 15 While an aging population is a world-wide trend, it comes from a generation that reshaped lifestyles and the consumer landscape, and who could be potential lifelong learners and volunteers in museums. The impact of a younger generation means that Irish cultural institutions, including the museums that house much of the history and heritage of this island, must be protected and developed for future generations. When Declan Kiberd asked the question, What would a Museum of the Future look like? He may have wondered how young people would gain an understanding of history. It would be exactly like current museums of the past. For that past was once somebody else s future, and it is also the most conclusive evidence we have that a future still exists. 16 The priority is placed on the value of museums to human lives. One of the reasons why museums will be important for the younger generation is because, if young people lose a sense of the past, they will lose something even more precious: a sense of their own future. Any discussion about the challenges facing museums, starts with acknowledging the value of museums to the quality of people s lives and progresses by taking meaningful action in the present in order to move forward into the future. roundtable 17 Bibliography Agenda 2026 A Study on the Dutch Museum Sector, Netherlands Museums Association. See www.museumvereniging.nl. M. Bourke. The Story of Irish Museums 1790-2000 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2011, reprint 2012). Census 2011, Central Statistics Office Ireland. See www.cso.ie. International Council of Museums, Code of Ethics for Museums (ICOM), 2006. S. Kratz, and E. Merritt, Museums and the future of education, On the Horizon, 2011,
roundtable 18 Vol. 19 Iss: 3, pp.188 195. See www.emeraldinsight.com. Museums, Libraries, and 21 st Century Skills. Institute of Museum and Library Services (Washington, DC, IMLS, 2009). Museums & Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures, Centre for the Future of Museums, American Association of Museums. See www.futureofmuseums.org. NEMO News, Network of European Museum Organisations. See www.ne-mo.org. A. Nicholls, M. Pereira, M. Sani (Eds). The Virtual Museum, Report 1, LEM Project, (Bologna: Istituto per I Beni Artistici Culturali e Naturali Regione Emilia Romagna, 2012). Understanding the Future: Museums and 21 st Century Life the Value of Museums, Museums Association, London. See www.museumsassociation.org. S. Weil, Making Museums Matter (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2002). 1 Negri, M., Museums as Catalysts for Creativity and Innovation, NEMO News, 2, 2009. p.1. 2 The Learning Museum Network Project /LEM involves over 20 museums, see www.lemproject.eu. 3 A LEM forum took place after the roundtable continuing the discussion on the future of museums. 4 The NGI is a partner in LEM. New trends group members are listed in the acknowledgements. 5 Noted also by the author at conferences in Wales, Croatia, Latvia, Portugal, and Lithuania. The main survey was circulated in 2012. 6 See Agenda 2026 A Study on the Dutch Museum Sector, the Netherlands Museums Association; Understanding the Future: Museums and 21 st Century Life the Value of Museums, Museums Association (UK); Museums & Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures, Centre for the Future of Museums, American Association of Museums. 7 A museum is a non-profit-making permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, the tangible and intangible evidence of people and their environment. International Council of Museums, Code of Ethics for Museums (ICOM), 2006), p.14. 8 Weil, S., Making Museums Matter (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002), pp.28-52. 9 Irish Museums Association Conference 2009. Elaine Heumann Gurian website www.egurian.com, on which she includes Omnium Gatherum: Occasional Papers, see also Curator, 53, 4, October 2010. 10 Kratz, S, and E. Merritt, Museums and the future of education, On the Horizon, 2011, Vol. 19 Iss: 3, pp.188 195. www.emeraldinsight.com. See National Gallery of Ireland site: www.nationalgallery.ie. 11 Museums, Libraries, and 21st Century Skills. Institute of Museum and Library Services (Washington, DC, IMLS, 2009). 12 www.metmuseum.org/mymet/sign-up. S. F. Frantoni, Understanding personalization in museums in Nicholls, A., M. Pereira and M. Sani (Eds). The Virtual Museum, LEM Project, pp. 40-51. 13 www.getty.edu/mygetty/; www.tate.org.uk/modern/ explore/; www.tate.org.uk/britain/explore/etb.jsp; www.musee-orsay.fr/en/tools/my-selection/myalbum.html. 14 Online learning tool of the Walker Art Centre and Minneapolis Art Institute www.museevirtuelvirtualmuseum.ca/myexhibits.do;lang=en; www. aartsconnected.org. 15 Census 2011. Bourke, M., Ageing Creatively in Ireland, NEMO News, 1, 2012, p.4. 16 Kiberd. D. Foreword. M. Bourke, The Story of Irish Museums 1790-2000, pp. xix-xxiii at xxiii.
What will the Museum of the Future be like? David Anderson Director General, Amgueddfa Cymru National Museum Wales Across much of the world, but certainly in the United Kingdom and perhaps in Ireland? we see a growing gap between rich and poor, with the obscene wealth of a few contrasting with the obscene poverty and insecurity of a growing portion of the wider working population. We see a relative concentration of power and resource in capitals, and the abandonment of peripheries. We see a loss of faith in the democratic process. There are also positives, such as the growing membership of charities and non-governmental organisations committed to social and environmental change, and human rights. Digital connectivity can be used for good or ill, but one benefit is to expose oppressive governments to closer scrutiny. Another is the emergence of stronger national and regional identities within and across existing states; the devolution of power from England to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is a case in point. There is growing recognition that funding in the hands of museums in London is no substitute for funding and control that is directly in the hands of nations, regions and local communities. The work of the dead I believe in the past. Used right, it can be a guide to the future. So we should not allow the dead to rest in their graves. They still have work to do. One great thinker who should not be allowed to rest is Patrick Geddes, the Scottish biologist, sociologist, town planner, and campaigner for social and environmental justice. Geddes was committed to community empowerment and the active involvement of local people in the restoration and improvement of their own physical and social environment. He was a powerful advocate of regionalism and of drawing on intrinsic urban and rural cultures. As Geddes said of his proposals for the development of Dunfermline in his book, Cities in Evolution, it was a plan and plea for conserving and developing the amenities of a small provincial city. He said his approach was concerned with a civic renaissance and the larger possibilities of civic life. roundtable 19 Another of the dead whose words and ideas remain relevant today is John Ruskin. In The Two Paths, Being Lectures on Art, he said, Art must always be produced by the subtlest of all machines, which is the human hand. No machine yet contrived, or hereafter yet contrivable, will ever equal the fine machinery of human fingers. Thoroughly perfect art is that which proceeds from the heart, which involves all the noble emotions, associates these with the head, yet as inferior to the heart; and the hand, yet inferior to the heart and the head; and thus brings out the whole man. For art, let us read museums and galleries. St Fagans: National History Museum As it happens, Amgueddfa Cymru National Museum Wales is embarked on the transformation of St Fagans Museum of Welsh Life, our open air museum, to become the National Museum of History for Wales. So far as we are able, we are trying to create a
roundtable Testing activities for the Activity Plan Sharing skills with young people from the Keep You in School scheme 20 museum to help shape the future of the people of Wales. St Fagans was established originally in 1948, with a modernist building added a couple of decades later to provide a reception point and exhibits on rural social history. If it ever was fit for purpose, with its inaccessible public spaces and narrow galleries, it is not useable today. The main reception building for the site will, we propose, be completely remodelled, with ugly later additions removed, and new education facilities and improved gallery spaces added. Agricultural machinery will get much less prominence, and archaeology and industrial social history will be given their proper place. For the first time, the museum will offer a panoramic analysis of key themes and episodes in the history of Wales. This will challenge comfortable myths and foster critical thinking and debate. It will show that in the interpretation of the past there cannot be one history; there should not, then, be one voice that of the museum but many from the past as well as the present. A new building will also be constructed at the centre of this large site. It will be situated in woodland, and will explore the theme of humanity s relationship with the environment and
our creative use of the natural resources of Wales, over time. If the main building with its exhibits is a place principally of the head, and the open air site with its traditional homes a place principally of the heart, the new building will above all be a place of the hand. A new initiative on the site will be the development of an experimental archaeology zone in the woodland. Here groups of students, volunteers and apprentices will reconstruct the great hall at Llys Rhosyr, from Anglesea, one of the medieval courts of the Llewelyns, the 13 th century princes of Gwynedd, and the nearest Wales came to having rulers of a unified country before English colonial power finally took a grip on the nation. In developing these plans, Amgueddfa Cymru has involved over 230 community groups and other stakeholders in consultation sessions that have directly influenced the architecture of the Museum, plans for the exhibitions, and the activities that will take place within it. We have never before undertaken such a process, and for the Museum it is the beginning of a new journey that will continue into the future. A question of purpose Randolph Churchill is said to have told the following story about himself. As he was walking down the street one day, he passed a mother with her young daughter, and distinctly heard the little girl say, Mummy, what s that man for? Are we confident we really know what each museum is for? Neil Postman, at the ICOM Triennial General Conference at the Hague in 1989, said a museum of any kind is an answer to a fundamental question, What does it mean to be roundtable Y Gweithdy (new building) exterior 21
roundtable 22 Artist s reconstruction of Llys Rhosyr Medieval Court, to be recreated at St Fagans human? He acknowledged that, at different times, different cultures need to know, remember, contemplate and revere different ideas in the interest of survival or sanity. To what fundamental question is your chosen museum the answer, for its own culture and time? If you had the power and resources, what museum would you create, and where, to meet these needs? And what is culture? An intrinsic property of objects? An active process, that works through people? Something that will cease to exist as a characteristic of objects without human engagement? According to the late John Blacking, Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, culture exists only in performance. Here the word performance should be understood in the broadest sense of the word. According to a worker in Stockholm in 2000, who worked on the streets of the city in public service (but not in museums or the cultural sector), many people think that culture is only for special persons. They don t realise that culture must be a part of ordinary life. Culture has to do with social morals, deals with human values in society. It is hard to imagine many of us working in museums developing a more thoughtful definition. We should also remember that cultures, like the museums that attempt to represent them, are geographically located. Jeremy Seabrook, in Consuming Cultures: Globalisation and Local Lives (2004) reminds us, Cultures are bound up with place; more often than not, rooted in a particular space, in a particular environment. Cultures are the consequences of geography as well as of history, perhaps primordially so. For decades, if not centuries, there have been two significant and contrasting philosophies of museums. The first is object-centred. It says that the most useful knowledge for museums
and their audiences is knowledge of artefacts and works of art; most object knowledge is in here, created by museum experts; the public responsibility of the museum is to transfer this knowledge from staff to visitors; the role of the public in museums is to learn the information; and if people do not use the museum, this is primarily their own responsibility. The second philosophy is society-centred. In this, knowledge is common property, created by many different people; useful knowledge includes the experiences and memories of people who are not professional historians, art historians or scientists; useful knowledge is tacit as well as explicit; the role of the public in museums is active and creative; everyone has expertise in something, including their own lives; and the museum is a catalyst, an agent for cultural change. Of course, truth does not lie wholly with one or other of these philosophies. But traditionally, museums have favoured the object-centred philosophy, sometimes to the exclusion of the other, and still do so. The balance we need, in our culture and place, is often lacking. Museums in future will need to redress this. Moral creativity It was by chance that, nearly a decade ago, I came across the work of Howard E. Gruber. Sadly, it was through his obituary. Gruber pointed out that it is possible for an artist to be moral as an individual, but to lack moral creativity the ability to incorporate their reaction to moral dilemmas in waves of art in ways that (like Picasso s Guernica) communicate profoundly with viewers. It is possible for someone who is highly creative in (for example) science or music to have a low level of moral creativity. roundtable The same principles may apply to museums, as well as to individual artists. The uses made of works of art by others including museums on behalf of the public themselves have a social and moral dimension. For a museum to claim that art (or any cultural activity) can exist in a morality-free zone, or that to place its work in the context of wider public responsibility is somehow to force it to bend to instrumental rather than intrinsic purposes, is a denial of moral responsibility, a failure of moral creativity. 23 Mark Runco has written in the Creativity Research Journal in 1993 that creativity is a dimension of every domain of intelligence, from mathematical intelligence to moral intelligence. Moral need not mean traditional, dogmatic and conventional. There are many examples of individuals from Mohammed to Ghandi who demonstrate unconventional morality of the highest order. Museums, then, have four important responsibilities in relation to moral creativity: to help visitors to engage with works of art that explore moral issues in creative ways; to develop exhibitions that are themselves works of moral creativity; to act as an interpreter with audiences of society s values; and, as an institution, itself to uphold moral and professional standards.
roundtable Some organisations have consciously made moral decisions in relation to creative endeavours. The New England Journal of Medicine refused to publish research on hypothermia conducted under the Nazis, stating, Knowledge, although important, may be less important to a decent society than the way it was obtained. Not all museums are so sensitive to moral issues. The Bowers Museums, Santa Ana, California, displayed the exhibition, Tibet: Treasures from the Roof of the World, curated by the (Chinese controlled) Bureau of Cultural Relics in Tibet. A protestor said, We are not telling people not to go and see the exhibition. But it is damaging if the average person sees it with no mention of the problems. For Henry Shue, one of the foremost theorists of human rights, such rights should represent the moral minimum. He proposes that for rights (including cultural rights) to be effective, they must include meaningful participation by people in decisions that affect their lives. Such participation, he suggests, must be effective and include influence over fundamental choices as they affect oneself; must affect the outcomes; and must have the power to influence public and private organisations. (The latter include, we must assume, museums). Edward Said, in his article, The public role of writers and intellectuals, in Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004) identified three areas of public action amenable to public intervention to protect against and forestall the disappearance of the past, which would reduce it to a content of Jihad v McWorld, to construct fields of co-existence rather than fields of battle; and to have the courage to say that what we have before us can be overlapping yet irreconcilable experiences (for example, in the struggle over Palestine). Again, we may see museums as having a comparable responsibility, as institutional public intellectuals. 24 The Museum building is just a shell In 1995, in a programme he presented on television, Ben Okri described the consequences that can follow from the removal of artefacts from their cultural context. He wrote: In order to talk about the spiritual significance of works of art like Benin s bronzes [seized by British Armed Forces in the late nineteenth century in a punitive raid on the kingdom of Benin], it is important to appreciate (that) they were a collective manifestation through the artist of the way in which the people of that land think and dream and remember and project. When that s lost, removed from the land, the works of art are in permanent exile, which is to say, one half of them dies. The second thing that happens is that the people themselves are in a sort of exile. They are in exile from the repository of their dreams One of the most effective ways of destroying a people s spirit is to, as it were, destroy the validity of their works of art. Many visitors experience a kind of disadvantage that the philosopher Miranda Fricker defines as epistemic injustice, in which someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower