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| Nicholas Penny, National Gallery director (photo taken from the Guardian) |
Two museum directors in
London announced this month that they will be stepping down as soon as their
successors are appointed: first, Sandy Nairne from the National Portrait
Gallery and then Nicholas Penny from the National Gallery. Two museum directors
who are thought to have been very successful in this job.
Although neither has
specified some special professional reason for stepping down (at least, my
Google search hasn´t brought something up), Guardian´s Jonathan Jones believes
the reason might be the increasing pressure on London museum directors due to
populist expectations, a media assumption that every exhibition must be a hit
and a political belief that galleries should provide not just well-run
collections, but entertainment and education for everyone. And he states:
“(…) Are we about to see a
new technocrat generation of museum bosses who keep their heads down, put PR
first and do all they can to meet goals defined by politicians and the press?
(…) That kind of pressure doesn't exactly leave much room to experiment.
Museums cannot just be machines for
entertaining us. They should have a quieter side where the art comes first, the
crowds second and a scholarly side that reveres someone like Penny. This looks
depressingly like the end of individuality in the museum world.” (read the article)
It´s getting harder and
harder for me to understand why museums are still and constantly faced with
dichotomies: objects or people; scholars or technocrats; quietness and
reverence or publicity and accessibility. Does it have to be like that? Isn´t
it possible to strike a balance? Can´t they be ‘AND’?
When reading Elaine Heumann
Gurian´s ”Civilizing the museum” a couple of years ago, I remember experiencing
a great sense of relief when reaching the chapter “The importance of ‘and’”.
She was commenting on the American Association of Museums report Excellence and Equity (a report that was distributed to each and
every museum studies student in 1993 at UCL, where I was studying). One reads:
“(...) This report made a
concerted attempt to accept the two major ideas proposed by factions within the
field – equity and excellence – as equal and without priority.” Further down:
“(...) for the museum field to go forward, we must do more than make political
peace by linking words. We must believe in what we have written, namely that
complex organizations must and should espouse the coexistance of more than one
primary mission.” And also: “It has occurred to me that perhaps my whole career
was metaphorically about ‘and’.”
We must believe in what we
have written, that´s one point. And the other point is probably that we must go
ahead and do what we write or talk about. Because it´s not impossible to do it.
Who´s the best person for the job? Can it be one person only? Would teams which
involve professionals with different sensibilities manage to reach multiple
objectives in a more balanced way? Are we trying to set up this kind of teams?
Is everyone heard equally?
“Publicity and accessibility
are everything”, Jonathan Jones writes in a negatively critical tone in his
article. Publicity might not be everything, but accessibility certainly is.
Museums are for anyone who might be interested in them, but not all people
approach their contents with the same level of knowledge or interest and with
the same kind of needs. It´s a hard job, indeed, but, should museums wish to
fulfill their mission, they need to have a quieter side and they need to have a
celebration side. They need to please those who know and they need to enchant
those who don´t know as much or who know nothing. It was as early as 1853 that
British naturalist Edward Forbes wrote: “Curators may be prodigies of learning
and yet unfit for their posts if they don´t know anything about pedagogy, if
they are not equipped to teach people who know nothing.” Those people matter
too. Those people might matter even more.
As I write about these
dichotomies, one more need emerges for me as a professional, but as a citizen
too. I would like to hear the voices of those responsible for managing our
museums (and cultural organizations in general) regarding these issues. I would
like to hear clear statements, I woud like to feel there is a vision behind
them. I would like to know on what kind of plan I may base my criticism.
Jonathan Jones is concerned about technocrats who keep their heads down, I am
concerned about directors (museum, theatre, orchestra, library directors) who
keep their mouths shut. I was in a debate some time ago where someone said
“Fortunately, I was never asked to take up positions of directorship and that
means I have always been able to say what I think.” Is this fortunate? Isn´t it
profoundly worrying?
There is no doubt that there
is a great difficulty in dealing with managers or directors with an opinion. In
this kind of democracy of ours, someone who takes a certain position is
expected to show a kind of ‘loyalty’ that stops him/her from publicly sharing
their views (especially when contrary to a government´s positions). I am not
defending that each and every issue, each and every disagreement, should be
dealt with in public. Nevertheless, there are issues that concern us all. When the State appoints certain people to
certain positions, I would like to know what´s expected of them. Once those
certain people accept the job, I would like to know what they aim to do and how
they plan to go about reaching the objectives. And if they feel that they are
not given the conditions to do their job well or if they don´t feel they are up to what´s expected
of them, I wish to know about that too. When two museum directors (in London or
elsewhere) announce within two weeks from each other that they are leaving, I
would like to understand why. When other museum directors (in London or
elswhere), keep on staying despite the state of the affairs, I would also like
to understand what´s keeping them.
