Cultural appropriation: less gatekeepers, more critical thinkers

"La Japonaise" by Claude Monet, Museum of Fine Arts Boston (image taken from http://japaneseamericaninboston.blogspot.com)

For Nandia

My first contact with the concept of cultural appropriation happened in July 2015 because of “Kimono Wednesdays” at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MFA). On the occasion of the display of Claude Monet’s “La Japonaise” (a painting of the artist’s wife, surrounded by fans, wearing a blond wig and a bright red kimono), visitors were invited to put on a kimono similar to the one shown on the painting and share their photos on social media. According to the museum, this was a way of engaging with the painting. For some people, though, the activity lacked any context regarding the garment, becoming just “fun”; others criticized it for reinforcing stereotypes and exoticizing Asian Americans; for others, it was blatant racism; (read Seph Rodney’s article). 

“Lindonéia, the suburb’s Gioconda”: my first visit to the Pinacoteca of São Paulo

"Lindonéia, the suburb's Gioconda", Rubens Gerchman, Pinacoteca de São Paulo  (Photo: Maria Vlachou)

“Na frente do espelho
Sem que ninguém a visse
Miss
Linda,feia
Lindonéia desaparecida
Despedaçados, atropelados
Cachorros mortos nas ruas
Policiais vigiando
O sol batendo nas frutas
Sangrando
Ai, meu amor
A solidão vai me matar de dor (...)”

Caetano Veloso, “Lindonéia”

One thing I noticed right from my first visits to the museums of São Paulo (Brazil) was that long introductory texts are greatly appreciated. The exhibition "Brazilian Vanguard of the 1960s – the Roger Wright Collection", at the Pinacoteca of São Paulo, was no exception.

Recent past

Exhibition "Return - Traces of Memory", Lisbon

A few weeks ago I read Lily Hyde’s text Living Memory II, questioning the construction of narratives out of recent historical events. In this case, the armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine and specifically in the town of Slavyansk. A bit more than a year before, Hyde had talked to the Slavyansk Museum director, Lilya Zander, who was already collecting Trophies from an incomprehensible war. At that time, the museum director had said that “Our job is to tell the history of our region”, adding that “the museum is not trying to show ‘for’ and ‘against’. We’re trying to show the facts.”

Something is happening in Evora

The banner hanging on the façade of the Forum Eugénio de Almeida (FEA) in Évora made me smile ... "What museum do you dream of?" is a kind of promise or invitation to reflect and to dialogue.

It looks like that's just what the FEA and curator Filipa Oliveira seek: "(...) the beginning of a new path and the first moment of a new relationship between the FEA, the city of Évora and Portugal; (...) a programmatic reflection around the dilemma of how to articulate the singularity and specificity of its local context with the challenges posed by international contemporary artistic creation and the currents of thought associated to it."

What's in a title?

Choosing the title of an exhibition, activity or event is not something easy. Not when one wants it to convey something about the content and to be curious or funny enough in order to attract people’s attention – and also, to be efficient when applied on promotional materials. What one usually finds when opening a cultural agenda are titles that either claim the obvious (for instance, the name of an artist we might or might not know) or attempt to describe the content in a rather dry, dull, repetitive way – words like “place”, “memory”, “look”, “treasures” are words museums are very fond of. Another case we should consider is that of contemporary plays and performances, whose titles may be 2-3-lines-long, only to be abbreviated  for “everyday use” by the artistic team itself and by the audience, leading to what should have probably been the title in the first place....

I tried to remember titles that worked well for me, and two came immediately to mind:

Wien Museum (Photo: Maria Vlachou)

“Unter 10 – Wertvolles en Miniature” (Under 10 – Treasures in miniature), at the Vienna Museum, was a 2013 exhibition that presented objects from the museum’s collection based on the strict rule that no item could be more than 10cm in width, height, depth or diametre. From objects that aimed to simply respond to the challenge of miniaturisation to baby utensils, smelling bottles or illegal political leaflets, this exhibition made us look (also with the help of magnifying glasses..), and look better, differently, into the collection. The museum was not on my visit list, but I couldn’t resist the title.

Entrance of the exhibition "Disobedient Objects", V&A (Photo: Maria Vlachou)

More recently, “Disobedient Objects” was another exhibition title that caught my attention. It first came up in my news feed last summer, among dozens of different news titles. I stopped scrolling down and opened the piece. Quoting from the Victoria & Albert Museum website, “From Suffragette teapots to protest robots, this exhibition was the first to examine the powerful role of objects in movements for social change. It demonstrated how political activism drives a wealth of design ingenuity and collective creativity that defy standard definitions of art and design.” I was able to visit the exhibition last November and it lived up to my expectations. The object that touched me the most was a defaced lybian banknote (the scribbled face being Gaddafi). It reminded me of a Lybian man being interviewed right after seeing Gaddafi’s corpse and saying: “We had always thought he was a big man. He is small, he is so small.”

Defaced lybian banknote from the exhibition "Disobedient Objects", V&A (Photo: Maria Vlachou)

It is also worth talking about some refreshing examples that have recently come up in Portugal.

“Vivinha a saltar!” (Alive and jumping!) is an exhibition at the Bordalo Pinheiro Museum about two symbols of the city of Lisbon: the “varinas”, the women selling fish in the streets, a  popular figure in the work of Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro; and the sardine, which has developed into an icon of the city and a source of inspiration for contemporary artists. The name of the exhibition, “Vivinha a saltar!”, was one of the varinas’s most famous cries when promoting their merchandise and had been the title of a chronicle about portuguese politics and society published by the newspaper “A Paródia”, founded by Bordalo Pinheiro.

Last week, the Municipal Museum of Penafiel, in the north of Portugal, celebrated World Poetry Day on 21 March with “Dois garfos de conversa” (the literal translation being “Two forks of talking”), a conference about the town’s poets, followed by a dinner at the museum. The museum director explianed to me that both title and poster were created by the museum team.

On that same day, the youth collective Faz 15-25 celebrated its first year of existence at the Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva Museum with films, poetry, talks, workshops and food, inspired by the museum’s temporary exhibition “Sonnabend | Paris – New York” and addressed to youth audiences. The title of the initiative: “Faz-Tá POP!”.

Finally, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation surprised us last December with an invitation “P’ra Rir” (To Laugh), a cinema series (now in its second edition) which gives people the opportunity to watch cinema in a big room, the Foundation’s recently renovated Grand Auditorium. According the João Mário Grilo, responsible for the programming, the laugh seemed to be an appropriate inaugural gesture. “And it would be wrong to think that this is a (yet another) “comedy series”, because in cinema, as in life, one laughs in different ways, even with dramas.”

In both big and small cultural institutions, the process of choosing a title may involve different people and departments: curators, directors, publicists, education and communications staff. Recently, the Gulbenkian Foundation decided to involve the public in the choice of the title of a 2016 exhibition at the Gulbenkian Museum. As mentioned in the beginning of the post, the objective when choosing a title it to come up with something that is able to convey the content, to attract people’s attention, to be efficient when applied on promotional material (in this case, good graphic design is a definite plus). One last piece of advice, from our colleagues from the Australian Museum: “Make sure staff at reception/front-of-house are comfortable saying the name aloud as they'll often be the ones selling the exhibition to visitors.” They’re right!

With thanks to: Elisabete Caramelo, Isabel Aguilar, Maria José Santos, Rui Belo, Sara Pais

More readings:

Ann Landi, Title fights: how museums name their shows

Jonathan Jones, Dissecting the exploding whale: why do modern art shows have odd names?

Australian Museum, What’s in a name? Evaluation of exhibition titles

Susan Mumford, Exhibition titles: love or hate them, we must create them

Philippe de Montebello revealed

I´ll say it right in the beginning to get it over with: yes, I got upset reading Philippe de Montebello's two statements regarding the issue of restitution in the book “Rendez-vous with art” (p. 54 and p. 208). Having said that, the rest of the book is absolutely charming! A beautiful, inspiring, surprising series of conversations between Montebello and art critic Martin Gayford, revealing the man behind the art historian and long-time director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Following these conversations, we feel an urge to look and to look better, even if it is only a photo in a book – hoping, of course, to be in front of the original one day... As Montebello himself puts it: “(...) nothing can replace the experience, the very physical sensation of being surrounded and engulfed in the actual space.” (p. 51)

Probably one of the most touching moments comes right in the beginning of the book, where Montebello answers Gayford’s question about that single moment, that single experience that may have led him to a life in the arts. Montebello shares with us that very special moment, when he was 15, and his father took home André Malraux’s “Les Voix du Silence”. And suddenly, there was Uta...

“She was Marchioness Uta in Naumburg Cathedral and I loved her as a woman (...) with her wonderful high collar and her puffed eyelids, as though after a night of lovemaking” (p.10; image taken from Wikipedia)

I was left thinking: would he have ever put this on a museum label? How many people would have looked, looked better, looked more, should they had read something like this about a statue?

Montebello goes on to admit something we rarely hear from curators, but which is true about most museum visitors: “I have found that when I have forced myself – often with the help of curators – to look at things about which I was indifferent or that even repelled me, I discovered that, with a little knoweldge, what had been hidden from me became manifest.” (p. 59)

What kind of knowledge is needed for this ‘epiphany’ to occur, one might ask. Not facts about the artist’s life, not a detailed and dry description of stylistic elements; not in the first place, not for the non-specialist visitor (the majority, that is, of museum visitors). One seems to find all the answers in Freeman Tilden’s “Interpreting our Heritage”: “What lies behind what the eye sees is far greater than that which is visible” (p.20); (...) “the  purpose of interpretation is to stimulate the reader or hearer toward a desire to widen his horizon of interests and knowledge and to gain an understanding of the greater truths that lie behind any statement of fact” (p. 59); (...) “Not with the names of things, but by exposing the soul of things – those truths that lie behind what you are showing your visitor. Nor yet by sermonizing; nor yet by lecturing; not by instruction, but by provocation” (p.67).

Another couple of examples from Montebello’s book might illustrate these points:

“(...) it’s utterly delighftul. The shoe flying off into the air, heading for the statue of Cupid at the side, that enchanting tree so frothy and unlike a real tree: it’s all like a décor de théâtre, a theatre set. This is a gorgeous painting about having a good time and about which one doesn’t have to think very hard, just abandon onself to the sheer pleasure it provides: a picture I’d have no trouble at all living with.” (p. 81, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, 1767; image taken from www.thebingbanglife.com)

“(...) I then focused on the deep burn marks at the bottom of the frame, obviously made by votive candles, confirming that this was indeed a devotional picture. Just a few additional details resuted from close examination, not the least of which was that the picture was in impeccable condition, a rare thing when it comes to Trecento gold-ground pictures, as most works have suffered greatly over time, mostly I’m afraid at the hands of restorers.” (p.65, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Madonna and Child, c.1290-1300; image taken from www.theopenacademy.com)

“But I am happy just to enjoy the expression on Adam’s face, so sweet, and the way he is holding the apple branch – it is not a fig leaf – with two fingers, as well as the foliage required to cover his nakedness. Dürer has so engagingly endowed his classically inspired figures with tender sensuality; and I love Eve, Venus-like with her pretty Nürnberg fräulein’s face. You see: no art history, just my own very personal response.” (p124, Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve, 1507; image taken from www.pictify.com)

I don’t believe most people visit museums looking for an art history lesson on their panels and labels – or physics or music or any other discipline for that matter (some do, of course, and their needs are equally legitimate, but museums usually cater for them with various other means). People do not visit museums looking for someone to tell them what they should feel or think either, as defended by Alain de Botton in Art is Therapy (Rijksmuseum), where one finds labels such as this: "You suffer from fragility, guilt, a split personality, self disgust. You are probably a bit like this picture" (regarding Jan Steen's painting The Feast of Saint Nicholas). I think that most of us are first of all looking for something that can be meaningful to us, something that may delight us, surprise us, make us feel good or richer or more conscious of ourselves and of the world. Many of us are looking for stories, stories of other people, human beings we can connect to - either those depicted or those wishing to share their knowledge with us.

Deciding which story to tell is not an easy choice for a museum; writing it in a clear and concise way is equally difficult. But it is not impossible, as Montebello shows us in his book, where he abandons his ‘institutional self’ and manages to share his enormous knowledge as an art historian in a simple and human way that is meaningful and relevant for many more people. It is not impossible, as Paula Moura Pinheiro shows us every week in her TV programme “Visita Guiada” (Guided Tour), where we discover that curators and art experts in Portugal are fascinating people, able to share with us much more than the facts usually presented on labels and make us wish to know more, to visit the museum, to be able to see the object - or to go back and see it again, after what has been revealed to us).

It is possible. It is a question of choice and skill. It doesn’t lack scientific content and it communicates.

“I’m not sure I would be thrilled because I am so focused, so absorbed and captivated by the perfection of what is there; that my pleasure – and it is intense pleasure – is marvelling at what my eye sees, not some abstraction that, in a more art historical mode, I might conjure up. It’s like a book that you love and you simply don’t want to see the movie. You’ve already imagined the hero or the heroine in a certain way. In truth, with the yellow jasper lips, I have never really tried to imagine the missing parts.” (p.8, Fragment of a Queen’s Face, New Kingdom Period, c. 1353-1336 BC, Egypt; image taken from the Metropolitan Museum website)

More on this blog

What lies beyond

Curiosity killed the visitor

Show me the people

More readings

Philippe de Montebello and Martin Gayford (2014), Rendez-vous with Art. Thames and Hudson

Maria Isabel Roque, Título, autor e data: o que diz uma tabela?

Maria Isabel Roque, Tanto esplendor e glória para tão pouco contar

Adrian Searle, Art is Therapy review – de Botton as doorstepping self-help evangelist

Sahil Chinoy, Off the beat: Art apathy, museum misery

Video: An acquiring mind: Philippe de Montebello and the Metropolitan Museum of Art

To take 'no' for an answer

The Acropolis Museum (Photo: Maria Vlachou)

When I was last at the Acropolis Museum and while taking some photos in the sculptures gallery, I was approached by a guard who kindly informed me that I couldn´t take photos in that room and also quickly informed me of the  areas where I could take photos. No explanation was given to me as to why that distinction was made. When a bit later I took a photo of a label (not an exhibit, a label), another guard saw me and made sure to inform her colleagues that I should be watched. She also followed my every step...

All this being very uncomfortable for me – and, I am sure, for the guards too -, I took the opportunity of questioning an archaeologist who was in the room in order to answer visitors’ questions. She explained to me that some of the statues preserve their original colours, that flash could be harmful, and that, as it’s not possible for the guards to control the use of flash, the museum thought better to totally prohibit photography. I thought that I took her by surprise when I asked why the museum doesn’t actually assume its educational role and explain to visitors why flash mustn’t be used, instead of totally prohibiting photography in certain rooms (most digital cameras don’t need flash) and creating such an ambiguous policy regarding photography in the museum.

It was not something I invented at that moment. It occurred to me that, a couple of years ago, in the Workt by Hand exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum – composed of extremely fragile quilts, made in the last two centuries - the museum had chosen not to show the objects behind glass or surrounded by rope and at a distance. So, when entering the room, the visitor was asked to 

Brooklyn Museum (Photo: Maria Vlachou)

Some people might be thinking that this is a different culture, a more respectful one, but it is not the case. The Brooklyn Museum opens its doors to all sorts of visitors, with and without the habit of visiting museums, with and without specific knowledge regarding the objects and their preservation. It assumes its educational role, though, and doesn´t simply expect visitors to take ‘no’ for an answer, just because the museum said so, without further explanation.

Little after my visit to the Acropolis Museum, I read an article in the Guardian about the fundamental role of ushers in theatres, especially regarding disruptive audiences. In the article, we are given the example of Stratford East Theatre, where ushers and front-of-house staff are trained to deal with such situations. And more: at a theatre which has “a particularly high number of first-time theatregoers, who sometimes need to be helped to understand what effect their behaviour is having, not just on other audience members but also on ushers and cast members”, the management chooses to invite them back “for backstage and front-of-house tours and maybe even to meet staff and casts, so that they can understand more about how a theatre works and how their behaviour impacts others”.

I believe it is part of the educational role of cultural institutions to help people better understand the details of the work that is being undertaken, but also their own role – the spectators’ and visitors’ role – so that it may be carried out in appropriate conditions for everyone involved. I believe it can be much more effective than simply saying ‘no’ to a certain behaviour or asking people to leave and it can also make them feel co-owners of and co-responsible for that work.


More on this blog:

Say click!
Please define danger

So that they may live happily ever after

I remember feeling a bit surprised when I read the news about the collaboration of the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (MNAA) and the agency Everything is New in the production of the Prado exhibition in Portugal. Little after the Joana Vasconcelos exhibition at the Palácio Nacional da Ajuda and despite the issues this first partnership had raised (perhaps not publicly and formally, but certainly among colleagues), here’s another partnership of the Portuguese Government (and of a national museum) with the same partner. From what I read in the newspapers, Everything is New funded the production of the exhibition with €380.000. The income from tickets and other sales up to this amount will be 100% for Everything is New; above that, it will be divided equally between the agency and the MNAA.

I do believe in these public-private partnerships and I think they will become more and more frequent. Apart from that, in the specific case of Everything is New, a particularly liked reading the statement of the director, Álvaro Covões, last November, about the results of the Eurobarometer regarding the cultural participation of the Portuguese. At a time when the majority of the reactions in the sector blamed the Portuguese for their ignorance, lack of interest and culture, Covões said that the results of the study did not scare him and that they were, on the contrary, an opportunity and a social responsibility. I also think the same.

When last week I entered the MNAA, one of the first things I saw was an acrylic stand with leaflets: of the temporary exhibition of Prado in Portugal; of the Beyonce concert; and of the Cirque du Soleil show “Dralion”. Thus, I understood that this was Everything is New´s publicity stand. This mixed offer made me smile. To put side by side Rubens´, Brueghel´s, Lorrain´s nordic landscapes and Beyonce, at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, may be a way of challenging our prejudices regarding “high” and “low” culture, of acknowledging that one who likes the former may also enjoy the latter and that cultural participation varies and does not only occur within moulds pre-defined by the professionals of the sector. I know that their coexistence on the acrylic stand was simply the result of benefits given to Everything is New in return for their investment and not a conscious attempt to challenge our notions of “culture” and “art”. Even though, it’s a collateral result of this partnership, a positive one, in my opinion.

Nevertheless, after the initial smile, I started having doubts. And this is because, the more I look at the details of the communication of this partnership, the more I feel that I did not visit MNAA’s new exhibition, but rather Everything is New´s exhibition at the MNAA. Details? Maybe yes, maybe not.

The exhibition leaflet is a neutral leaflet. ‘Neutral’ in the sense that it does not identify, as it should, the promoter, the organization that presents the exhibition and invites us to visit (this usually happens with the inclusion of its logo at a visible spot). In the case of the MNAA and the rest of the national museums, this is nothing new. These organizations have been condemned to discretion, they may not appear as the big promoters of their own initiatives, their logo being placed in the footer of the promotional materials, mandatorily preceded by those (two in this case) of their tutelage and at the same level as the logos of the supporters. In the promotional materials, the reference to national museums is first of all a reference to the venue – just the venue – of an exhibition. What’s new in the leaflet of this exhibition at the MNAA is that the museum is actually identified as “the venue”. It’s not just an interpretation of the way the information is referred, but there is the actual designation “Location” and not “Address”, as one would expect. Details? Maybe yes, maybe not.

The discreet position of the MNAA within this partnership is also confirmed online. When clicking on the image of this temporary exhibition on the museum website, we are taken to a page with just three links: 1. Press release + info (where we find information just for the press); Promotional video (on the MNAA You Tube channel and with the title “Nordic Landscape from the Museo del Prado” and not “Rubens, Brueghel, Lorrain”, which is the formal title of the exhibition – rather deceiving, but for a good cause, I suppose, since these names are attractive, although not that dominant in the exhibition, as the title suggests); 3. Tickets and information (we are taken to the exhibition’s specific website – Why does this exhibition have a specific website? Why can´t we find all relevant information on MNAA’s website?). Details? Maybe yes, maybe not.

Image taken from the website Portugal Confidential

What am I trying to say? One of the things I’ve learned, and learned well, in this profession is that everything, ‘everything’, communicates: what we say and what we don’t say; and we do and what we don’t do. What is being communicated to me, when looking at some promotional materials and when reading the news, is that Everything is New is the agent that made this exhibition possible and that, for this reason, it may benefit (or even demand?) from special conditions in its presentation and representation.

“But what is really bothering you?”, a friend insisted.

What bothers me really is that partnerships like this one are, in fact, seen as some kind of favour on behalf of those who have got the money and not as true partnerships, counting with the contribution of both sides (more than two, in this case). Everythings is New invested in this exhibition, and before in the Joana Vasconcelos exhibition, a significant amount of money which undoubtedly made it possible for the project to go ahead. It invested not because it felt sorry for the limited conditions national museums are operating in, but because it could gain from it, both in financial terms, but also in terms of prestige, in this field that is not - yet – its own. This is why it did not invest in any exhibition, but in an exhibition that resulted from the partnership between the MNAA and the Prado. On the other hand, the MNAA did not just receive. It also contributed in the production of this exhibition. It contributed with its space, it contributed with the whole infrastructure, it contributed with its expertise and it contributed with its prestige. This exhibition wouldn’t have been the same thing if this museum was not involved. Further more, how much did the insurance of the paintings cost, for example, totally supported by Lusitânia? Or the edition of the catalogue, offered by the Casa de Imprensa? This is a true partnership and it should be seen as a win-win situation and not as a risk generously and unilaterally taken by Everything is New. This exhibition wouldn’t have happened just with the €380.000 the agency invested, isn’t it true?

Image taken from the site Museus de Portugal

But even before that, what bothers me really, and mainly, is that the government went ahead with this new partnership with Everything is New without discussing, clarifying and evaluating the issues raised by the Joana Vasconcelos exhibition at the Palácio da Ajuda. Issues related to the handing over of the space to the partner / funder; with the impact on the Palace´s own collection and the building itself, due to decisions / impositions that disregarded the advice given by the museum staff; with the conditions of hiring and preparing the exhibition staff. I am not able to say if these issues were right to be raised; I also haven’t got concrete information on the conditions of the partnership, although I searched for them.

The Government has got responsibilties and the obligation to be transparent when entering this kind of partnerships. We, the professionals of the sector, have also got responsiblities and the obligation to demand transparency and to intervene decisevely, which is something more than talking among colleagues and commenting on Facebook. Public-private partnerships are fundamental. What is also fundamental, though, is that the conditions of these partnerships are known to the public, so that we are not left with that uncomfortable feeling – by interpreting signs, conversations, rumours and the news in the newspapers – that the national museums are handed over to external agents and used simply as stages. Details? Certainly not.    

'Just' a museum, 'just' an artist?

Artist Ahlam Shibli at Jeu de Paume (Photo: LP/ Philippe de Poulpiquet, taken from the newspaper Le Parisien)

I had written here before about my experience twenty years ago visiting a history museum in the town of Halifax (UK). I was totally shocked when, in one of the photos on display, I saw Cypriot resistance fighters against British rule being identified as “terrorists”. At the same time, I suppose I realised at that moment – I was 23 then – that there existed people who told that same story in a totally different way. The men on the photo coudl have killed their loved ones, who had been sent there by their country to defend a legitimate, in their view, authority.

Anyway, no matter how shocked I was, I didn´t threaten to put a bomb in the museum, I didn´t even start a petition to close the exhibition. Which is exactly what has been happening in Paris in these last weeks as a response to certain photos on display which form part of the exhibition Phantom Home, at Jeu de Paume, by Palestinian artist Ahlam Shibli. Why? Because certain people feel that exhibiting photos of Palestinian suicide bombers, and referring to them as ‘martyrs’, is a way of glorifying terrorism. Needless to say, I find the reactions and threats of the pro-Israeli groups totally unacceptable. But I must also say that they don´t come as a surprise, do they? The topic is sensitive, it is controversial, and those who claim to be surprised by the fierce reactions of certain circles or who are warning us about the return of censorship (read Emmanuel Alloa´s article La censure est de retour) are naive, to say the least, or simply not honest with themselves and with others. There´s nothing new or surprising in these attempts of censorship, they happened before and they´ll happen again in the future. But this is not what I wish to talk about.

I praise museums that have the courage to tackle difficult and controversial subjects. Museums should be doing exactly that: challenge our ‘stories’, present the ‘other side’, provoke debate, make space for it. Frankly, I am not sure if this was Jeu de Paume´s aim.

One reads on the museum website regarding the exhibition: “Death, Ahlam Shibli´s latest series, especially conceived for this retrospective, shows how the palestinian society preserves the presence of ‘martyrs’, according to the term used by the artist. This series witnesses a vaste representation of those absent through photos, posters, panels and graffitis exhibited as a form of resistance.” The museum seems to be perfectly aware that the use of the term “martyr” might be controversial and attributes it to the artist herself. On the other hand, the artist is being quoted in Emmanuel Alloa´s previously mentioned article as claiming that “My work is to show, neither to denounce nor to judge.”

Exhibitions, in my opinion, don´t ‘just’ show. Artists don´t do that either. Exhibitions and artists make statements. The French Minister of Culture seemed much more affirmative to me in her public statement and didn´t seem to run away from what was really the issue: “This claimed neutrality may be shocking in itself”, she said, “and give rise to bad interpretations, since it doesn´t explain the context of the photos, which is not just that of loss, but also that of terrorism.” (read the full press release here).

Death nr. 37, by Ahlam Shibli (Photo taken from the blog Lunettes Rouges)

The Ministry asked the museum to complete the information made available to the visitors in order to, on the one hand, clarify and better explain the purpose of the artist and, on the other, to distinguish the artist´s proposal from that of the institution. The Minister was under attack from all sides. Personally, I don´t see why a museum should set itself apart from its choices in the way the French Ministry seems to be suggesting. What should be really clear is why it chooses to present its audience with exhibition A or B, how it fits in its mission and programme, what it aims to communicate, what kind of thinking and discussion it aims to promote.

I can´t say it´s clear for me what Jeu de Paume really aimed to do through this exhibition or why it has chosen to present an artist who ´just wants to show´. I checked again and again on the museum website, looking for a parallel programme that would complement the exhibition with talks and debates. Nothing. Finally, a debate was announced, organized by the Museum and L´Observatoire de la Liberté de Création, “in reaction to the controversy caused by the exhibition”, that would discuss issues such as the freedom of artistic representation, the responsibility of the institution that exhibits works that cause a controversy, the freedom of the visitor to have access to the works and the the freedom of expression in all its components (read here).

This is all great. This is exactly what should have been planned beforehand and not as a reaction to a controversy. And it should have gone even further than a general discussion of freedom to create, freedom to exhibit, freedom to visit. This exhibition raises other important and very specific issues.

I would expect Jeu de Paume not to pretend that it had not expected a huge controversy when Palestinian suicide bombers are referred as martyrs. I would expect the artist to wish not “just to show”, as if she was ‘just’ a reporter, as if she didn´t take and exhibit these photos with the purpose to make a statement. I would expect both the museum and the artist to truly wish to provoke a debate, to push the boundaries, to create the space to discucss what is history, identity, conflict, justice, resistance, a terorist act or a terrorist state. This is about the palestinian issue and there´s nothing ‘just’ about it.

More on this blog

The stories we tell ourselves

Silent and apolitical?

The long distance between California and Jerusalem

More readings

Marie-José Mondzain, Artiste palestinienne : liberté pour l'art au Jeu de Paume (Le Monde, 21.6.2013)

Chez soi : la photographe palestinienne Ahlam Shibli au Jeu de Paume (on the blog Lunettes Rouges, 7.6.2013)

G.W. Goldnadel, France/Jeu de Paume: double honte (Israël Flash, 21.6.2013)

Marta Gili: Je refuserai toujours la censure au Jeu de Paume. Interview of the Director of Jeu de Paume (Le Figaro, 24.6.2013)

Says who?

Giselle Ciulla, 'curator' of Giselle´s Remix. (Photo taken from the website of Clark Art Institute)

uCurate is an initiative by Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, USA. It is a digital application that allows people to design imaginary exhibitions made up with objects from the museum collection. Proposals enter a competition and the winner gets to set up a real exhibition with the museum´s help. In this first edition, and after evaluating almost 1000 proposals, the winner was an 11-yaer-old girl, Giselle Ciulla, who´s inviting us now to visit Giselle´s Remix (more here).

It´s so good to see Giselle´s happy face and we can almost feel how proud she is of her exhibition. This is also the role of museums in society, a role that allows for involvement, active participation, which recognizes that there are more than one versions of the ‘truth’ and creates a place for them to be shared, even if this is about 11-year-old children. The objects´ labels were written by Giselle herself. They convey simplicity and freshness, they demonstrate sensitivity. A few years ago I had seen lables written by visitors at the Tate Britain and I had also liked them a lot. For me, they were, for me, as interesting as the others, the ‘official’ ones. At the time (it was in 2004) Maev Kennedy of the Guardian had found the initiative dubious. On the otehr hand, Tate Britain´s director at the time, Stephen Deuchar, was saying that he would be particularly interested in the contributions of visitors who might know much more on a painting than the museum experts or the artists themselves (read here).

On 12^th to 14^th of November I was at the conference In the name of the arts or in the name of the audiences, organized by Culturgest in collaboration with the programme Descobrir of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. One of the main concerns of those present seemed to be the issue of ‘authority’ regarding the interpretation of a work of art. When I did my master´s, we were ‘warned’ that people acknowledged authority in museums, they considered the information they found in them as a ‘validated truth’. But even at that time, and it´s been almost 20 years, we were questioning ourselves regarding the possibility (and the obligation) to create the space for more than one story to be told.

Well, there is still a concern and lots of thinking about it. The concept of participatory museum (so well substantiated in theory and in practice by Nina Simon) is being widely accepted. An interesting case, among others, at the above mentioned conference was that of the dTOURS at the contemporary art exhibition dOCUMENTA. These were (paid) guided tours given by people of various ages and backgrounds, the majority residing in Kassel, the city that hosts the exhibition. The dTOURS had taken place for the first time in the previous edition, dOCUMENTA 12, and they had resulted in a number of complaints from the audience. Although the organizers had informed that the tours would be given by non-specialists, participants still felt ‘cheated’, their expectations had been different. Nevertheless, and despite the not so positive evaluation, dOCUMENTA 13 repeted the tours.

A number of issues are raised here: Why repeat an initiative, in exactly the same way, if it was not positively evaluated? Are we ignoring – in the name of experimentation, of exploration, of a wish to do more and better – people´s basic needs, such as listen to what a specialist has to say on a specific subject, such as in a ‘normal’ guided tour, such as in a ‘normal’ label? Are we walking towards an opposite extreme, where “visitors know best” (even “more than the artists themselves”, to quote again the Tate Britain´s former director)?

Clay Shirky´s book Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators  tells us about the pro-am (professional – amateur) movement and how new technologies allow us today to use people´s enormous cognitive surplus. People are eager to contribute with their knowledge (without being paid for it, just because it makes them feel good, useful, involved) towards all sorts of projects, social causes, etc. Wikipedia is such an example. Ian David Moss argued in his blog Createquity that the model of Wikipedia may be applied to culture, in programming or in distributing funds (read here).

People continue looking for information in museums. In an article by Stephen Weil entitled “The Museum and the Public” (included in the book Museums and their communities, edited by Sheila Watson), I read that, after the era of ‘celebratory’ and assertive museums, there was a new trend, that of admitting that what´s being said is not a closed issue, it could be open to different interpretations or the subject of ongoing research. It´s worth mentioning that it was a natural history museum (the American Museum of Natural History) one of the first to present labels which said “what we know so far”, “but we might be wrong, it´s happened before, there is an ongoing reserach”, etc. Maybe because scientists are more at ease than other specialists with testing and error and with admitting that they had been wrong. 

Specialists don´t know everything, but they know a lot, more than we do in their specific areas. We may find them in and out of museums, they may be professionals or amateurs, and together they may contribute in the development of our knowledge. I, as a visitor, still look for their opinion, for their ‘version', not because I wish to accept it as if it was the Bible, but because with it I can build my own opinion, my own knowledge. At the same time, going beyond information, and considering that a museum visit is also feelings, surprises, emotions, sharing, previous knowledge and experiences, memories, the specialist – when also a good mediator or facilitator (or...) – will know how to create that space where everyone can contribute with their ideas, their experiences, their interpretations, their reactions. That space where there are no specialists and non-specialists, right or wrong. Thus, the participatory museum for me is not the museum  which, in the name of cultural democracy, passes the responsibility for one of its main functions over to the visitor. The participatory museum is that which gives ‘Giselle’ (each one of us) the tools to build and admit without fear her tastes, opinions, sensitivities and which creates the space for them to be hosted and shared with everyone.


This text is based on my short intervention during the closing of the conference In the name of the arts or in the name of the audiences, on November 14.

More readings
Museu2.0: a arte de ouvir o público, in the newspaper O Globo (27.11.2012)
Selling a product vs building a movement, by Nina Simon
When painting labels do their job, by Hrag Vartanian in Hyperallergic
Stories from the field: The Walters Art Museum, by Dallas Shelby
"GO", a group show at the Brooklyn Museum, by Martha Schwendener 
The power of non-experts, by Desi Gonzalez

Still on this blog
We are for people. Or… are we?
La crise oblige? (ii) Programming challenges
Building a family: lessons from the social sector
Free to visit an art museum
Museums: new churches?

What - or who - is the barrier?

Mertola Castle (Photo: Fátima Alves)

A family arrives at the foot of Mertola Castle. They have four children. The mobility of one of them, a 10/11-year-old boy, is quite conditioned. One of his brothers picks up the stroller and runs to the top of the steps that lead to the entrance of the castle. The mother supports her son from the arm and they slowly start going up. Half-way, she suggests they took a rest. The boy prefers to continue. He´s making an enormous effort to place his foot on the next step; he´s tired and his foot is trembling. I don´t want to overtake them; I follow them, I go along with their rhythm. Once at the top of the steps, the boy finally takes a rest. His mother moves on a bit, trying to evaluate the difficulty of the rest of the way.

I witnessed this ‘ascend to the castle’ at the end of a week where I attended two meetings on museums and accessibility: the annual seminar of GAM –Group for Access to Museums, entitled Programming for Diversity, and the 1st Crossborder Encounter of Museum Professionals in Alcoutim.  A few days before GAM´s seminar, I had met with a Polish colleague who asked me: “What do you expect of these meetings?”.

Among museum professionals, accessibility is more and more of an issue. And the concept of ‘accessibility’ constantly grows and widens. It´s not only about being concerned and also obliged to attend to the needs of people with disabilities (physical and cognitive), but to a wide spectrum of intellectual, social and cultural needs of all citizens. It´s also about managing and being able to take advantage of people´s growing wish and need to be involved in the process of decision-making, so that they may feel represented in the final products museums propose to their audiences (my presentation on this subject in Alcoutim is available on the right-hand column).

I am writing this text approximately one week after and I realize that the issues that marked me the most in these two meetings and which made me think more were all related to mentality, our mentality, that of museum professionals.

Fernando António Baptista Pereira, a professor at the School of Fine Arts and curator of a number of exhibitions presented in Portugal and abroad, was the keynote speaker at GAM´s annual seminar. When asked which was his best and worst exhibition, he didn´t hesitate to admit that his worst exhibitions, although extremely beautiful, were those he had done for his peers, those which were not done with the general public in mind. Hearing this from someone who has curated and will curate in the future exhibitions which attract large numbers of visitors is a sign of hope. And just like Fernando António Baptista Pereira, there are surely more professionals in this field (curators and museum directors) who, even though they don´t say it, they know it is so. So, one wonders when we can expect to see in portuguese museums, especially national (public) museums, exhibitions which may be understood by the non-specialists who visit them and form the majority of visitors. When can we expect to see exhibitions which may be a source of new knowledge, true pleasure and discovery, instead of being a means of communication and dialogue among the ‘initiated’ few, while a source of frustration for the rest?

In Alcoutim, we had the opportunity to hear Maribel Rodriguez Achutégui talking about “Writing exhibition texts for all audiences”, which reminded us that it is possible, yes, to write for all, without making it sound childish, without vulgarizing, without compromising the scientific accuracy of the information we present. And to some of us, this brought back memories of GAM´s first annual seminar, back in 2006, “Do you know how to write for all? The accessibility of written communication in museums”, which was marked by two very special speakers: the late Helen Coxall (a museum language consultant – yes, the specialization exists, just like there exists extensive bibliography on this issue, part of it available on GAM´s website) and Julia Cassim (a designer associated to the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Inclusive Design). Later in that same year, Helen Coxall did a memorable workshop, Am I Communicating? Writing effective museum texts, organized by GAM at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. What has been the impact of these initiatives in Portugal? Those working in education services frequently complain that it is very difficult to convince museum directors and curators of the need to write texts in a more accessible language (not just exhibition texts, but texts for all sorts of supporting materials museums produce in order to communicate with people) – I can think of some exceptions, though, like the texts of the exhibition on automobiles at the Transport and Communications Museum in Porto or those at the Batalha Community Museum, to mention just two. One wonders, why is it so difficult to convince them? Have they never heard their visitors´s complaints? Or they don´t mind about them?

Another brilliant and very ‘educational’ presentation was that of graphic designer Filipe Trigo, who brought to us a number of examples we have all encountered during our visits to museums and exhibitions: books on the wall, small font size, labels which are hidden or placed too low or too high, constrasts that make reading impossible, a total anarchy in the presentation of contents (placed wherever it might be more convenient, without any logic), inadequate lighting. This presentation deserves to be seen by curators and museum directors, as well as graphic designers, as there doesn´t seem to exist consensus as to who imposes solutions on whom. There is distrust, though, and maybe also a somehow vague definition of the role of each one and, between the two, that of the museologist and/or education and communications staff. Woudln´t it make sense that each one was heard in the area of his/her speciality, with the final aim of offering visitors a better service?

Today I would be able to give a better answer to my Polish colleague´s question “What do you expect of these encounters?”. I expect that next time there is a meeting to discuss accessibility (any kind of accessibility) there are more museum directors, curators, architects and designers in the audience. This does not concern just the education staff. I would even say that it concerns more and more those who make the final decisions. What is the point of raising awareness among and giving technical preparation in museum studies courses to future museum professionals, who only in 20-30 years from now will be in a position to make decisions, if in the next 20-30 years they will be encountering the greatest barrier of all inside museums themselves? If these meetings go on being an opportunity for those already aware to get together and agree between themselves, their impact will continue being limited, almost inexistant. There is a need to make commitments and not just politically correct statements. There is also an obligation to abide by the law. And it has to be now, not in 20/30-years time. It doesn´t cost anything (and it doesn´t cost more...).

Videos

Joaquina Bobes, Textos expositivos y visitantes: ¿hablamos el mismo idioma? (with english translation from minute 14´35´´)

Julia Cassim, Inclusive design