Thomas P. Campbell to me

Some time ago, I watched a presentation by young social media expert Jasper Visser entitled The future of museums is about attitude, not technology.  Even before watching it, the title stroke a chord with me. Indeed, what impact can technology alone have if one doesn´t know how to use it, if one doesn´t understand or is not interested in exploring the possibilities it offers and use them with vision and imagination? This requires attitude, indeed; or rather, it requires the ‘right’ attitude.

A couple of weeks go I received an email from Thomas P. Campbell, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He wished to inform me about a new project, called 82nd and 5th, a series of new videos, where a Met curator talks about a specific work of art in the museum collection which has inspired him/her or changed his/her life or way of thinking. Thomas P. Campbell informed me that I could subscribe in order to receive all new videos by email and suggested I informed my friends about it.

It´s not the videos I wish to talk about (the quality and interest of which you can easily verify on the museum website), it´s the details in communicating this new initiative. As you can imagine, the email I received was not from Thomas P. Campbell himself and I received it because I´ve subscribed the museum´s mailing list. The Met could have easily done what most museums do: send an email to all those on the mailing list from its general email address. Instead of this impersonal way of communicating, they created a specific email address, the museum director being identified as the sender. He´s the one addressing us and presenting this new intiative, asking us to use it, embrace it and help the museum promote it. And this small detail makes a whole lot of a difference. It shows attitude.

Indhu Rubasingham, Tricycle Theatre artistic director (Photo: Alastair Muir for The Guardian)

I had another special encounter with a cultural organization´s director a few months before. When I called the Tricycle Thearte in London in order to reserve tickets for a play, the phone rang, but before getting through to the box office, I listened to an automatic answer. It was a message from the theatre´s artistic director, Indhu Rubasingham, who thanked me for getting in touch in order to buy tickets and asked me to consider paying an extra pound per ticket in order to support the theatre in its work. It was a simple, direct, friendly message, that made it impossible to resist. I supported a theatre I had never been before, which is something I haven´t done for those theatres I´ve been attending for some time now. Maybe because nobody ever asked. Indhu Rubasingham and the Tricycle Theatre have got attitude.

None of the examples given above required a huge investement. Actually, they didn´t require any investment at all. Lack of money or fancy means cannot be an excuse for lack of attitude. Furthermore, a lack of attitude when having the means, but not using them to their full potential, also indicates a lack of vision.

One of the most common concerns of culture professionals when I give training in cultural communication around the country is the inability to use the technology and the means available autonomously in order to promote their venues, work and activities. I especifically refer to organizations belonging to local authorities or private foundations which are not allowed to have their own websites (they´re usually an item on a sub-sub-menu) or manage their own facebook pages. Information is managed centrally and not by those who have the best knowledge on the subject matter and are more interested than anyone else in promoting it. And who would do it better than anyone, if they had proper training.

Let´s be the client for a moment. Are you interested in finding out if the Electricity Museum in Lisbon organizes birthday parties? Well, you start by searching for the museum on Google, like I did. The first links refers you to EDP (Portugal Electricity) Foundation website, where the museum is an item in the menu. Reaching that page, it seems like you´ve arrived on a portal presenting boxed news. Each box is a link to pages with a desciption of the current exhibition; the permanent exhibition; the latest statistics or other news. The museum itself has got no menu. 

(URL: www.fundacaoedp.pt/museu-da-electricidade)

 

Do you wish to visit the Museum of Ceramics in Sacavém? A search on Google will refer you to (by order of appearance): a reference regarding the museum building on the website of the now extinct Institute of Museums and Conservation; the Greater Lisbon Tourism; Wikipedia; Lifecooler; a number of other websites... If, by intuition, we decide to search for Municipality of Loures, we will find a link leading us to a page with a general description of the museum under Municipality of Loures / Getting to know / Tourism, Culture, Leisure / Museums. 

(URL: http://www.cm-loures.pt/Ligacao.aspx?DisplayId=2#topo)

I chose the examples of two museums I like. Because this makes me think of how much different and better, given the tools available, my online and at a distance relationship could be (not to mention their relationship with those who don´t really know them and might be interested).  There are may more examples of this sort. How can a museum or a cultural venue ever establish a relationship with current and potential visitors/users when it´s so well hidden (starting from their URLs)? Or when the information it can actually give is so static (and boring and incomplete)? When there´s no open, direct, constant, informal dialogue?

A communications professional like me totally understands the need for coherence and I believe this is the main concern of local authorities or foundations which manage a number of venues and projects. Nevertheless, the solution is not to control them to the point of struggling them. People develop relationships with the organizations they visit, with the projects they love, not with the entities that manage them. No central communications office in a municipality will ever chat with people on Facebook on the day-to day life of a municipal museum, the items in its collections, the activities it has to offer the way a person who works in that museum would. There is, undoubtedly, a need for guidelines, for training, for orientation. But people are eager to receive them and be able to put them to good use in order to better promote what they´re doing and get to the people they wish to communicate with. It´s not a good idea to leave this to those who know less, who are – inevitably – less passionate, who have no real involvement in it – as is the case with Wikipedia, the tourism office or Lifecooler. This shows lack of vision which eventually condemns to a lack of attitude. And there´s no future there.

Every time I think of all those frustrated professionals whose only wish is to communicate (and I think of them a lot), I´ve got Sting´s song at the back of my head:

When you love somebody

Set them free…

Free… free….

Set them free…

Guest post: "Nepal challenging itself and the world", by Sangeeta Thapa (Nepal)

Sangeeta Thapa is my colleague at the Kennedy Center Fellowship. In the summer of 2011 I had the chance to have a long talk with her about the first Kathmandu International Art Festival, Sangeeta being the driving force behind it. I saw the catalogue, I learned about some of the artists, one story was always bringing another. At the time, Sangeeta was already talking about the next edition of the Festival, that would be dedicated to environmental issues. It took place last November and the photos shared on Facebook were absolutely stunning. Sangeeta shares with us this amazing experience which brought together artists from 31 countries and which involved the whole country.This post was written together with Sharareh Bajracharya (Festival Coordinator)and Nischal Oli (KIAF Media Coordinator). mv 

"We may end up in the same boat", by Michelle Spalding (Photo: KIAF)

The Kathmandu International Art Festival (KIAF) is a non commercial contemporary arts festival which is organized every three years with the aim to “to firmly place Nepal on the global map as a venue for the contemporary arts, allow for artistic collaboration and exchange among international and local artists, and use art as a platform for critical reflection and the sensitization of society”. Each edition of the Festival focuses on a specific theme, which is of critical concern both locally and globally. 

In November 2012 the Siddhartha Arts Foundation hosted the 2nd edition of KIAF, which was centered on the theme of the environment, ecology, climate change and the human relationship to nature. Even though Nepal is not a global polluter, we are a vulnerable nation. Climate change is a topic of great importance to us, as the Himalayan ranges house the greatest water towers in the world. Global warming would result in a vertical tsunami that could inundate 33 nations. 

The management of the Festival involved a coming together of many different institutions and individuals in the arts community, and the Festival was seen as a platform to support a strong and emerging generation of contemporary artists in the country. One of the Festival's pervasive motives has been to promote contemporary arts of Nepal, so it was able to bring together an assortment of individual and collective energies, which attracted an even bigger audience to create a larger impact. KIAF fostered a platform for inter-disciplinary exchange on issues raised by the Festival's theme and goals. This exchange, through all the dimensions of the Festival, was created between institutions, artists, media, traditional communities, and educational institutions. There is a general agreement that the Festival was a collaborative effort and that people went outside the line of duty to make it happen. In this way, there is a collective sense of ownership.

Driven by our mission to make contemporary arts accessible to and in conversation with a wide public, the KIAF team placed the artworks in multiple venues across the city. The artworks were brought to people’s doorsteps. This meant that a larger audience visited the exhibitions and allowed us to take the discussions about global warming out of the realm of academia into the world of creative arts and to the public. The wide representation and variety of art forms allowed for the works to appeal to diverse audiences and left an impressive monumental impression. 

People from all over the country were witness to a contemporary arts exhibition and experienced an interpretive artwork about the mythical serpent, the ‘Naga’, stories around which most people in Nepal are deeply familiar. There is no guarantee that people fully understood the intention of the artist in creating the recycled plastic work from Cambodia, but it made every individual who entered the space, stop, look, wonder, and question. In general, in each of the exhibits, people read the labels and wanted to know more. Artists were able to go to each new venue, see new possibilities in terms of spaces to exhibit, ways to exhibit, and seeing a reason to do their work. 

"Naag", by Leang Seckon, at the Central Zoo (Photo: KIAF)

Guided tours were held for different age groups. The outreach work around guided tours has created a confidence and realization in the arts community of the necessity to involve schools, school children, families, in addition to a wider range of development institutions in their works. Horlicks (Glaxo Smith and Kline) sponsored and organized three art competitions in three cities, encouraging children to collect materials around them to create three dimensional installations, collages, or mixed media/paintings. Their paintings were displayed in the British Council atrium as an integral part of KIAF. 

Over 400,000 people visited or saw parts of the KIAF 2012 exhibitions, events, performances, outreach activities. Out of this figure, 100,000 visitors were recorded in the exhibition spaces. People felt a sense of excitement, joy, and wonder at the diverse forms of artworks, the places where people were coming from, and the issues that the artists were bringing up. Deep connections were made to Nepal by the visitors. The community responses from Patan were strong. A group of elder people got on to the Nevitrade bus because they were excited about the ride. They ended up seeing all the venues and appreciated the tour. One of the old men, when reaching Metropark, walked in wonder and stated: “It is because of you people I am getting to see this side of the city and being able to see artworks I have never seen or thought of before!”. 

The Nevitrade bus (battery-run bus) received great publicity and many calls for events after KIAF 2012. (Photo: Sangeeta Thapa)

The Festival attempted to reduce its carbon footprints as much as possible within its resources. One of the major ways we did so was by encouraging clean energy activities - the staff using bicycles and public transportation, and working alongside the cycling community. In collaboration with Nevitrade, we were able to operate a clean energy vehicle-bus that allowed people to reach the various venues. The Festival also looked into reducing carbon emissions by accommodating artists near their workspaces. Recycled flex bags were created from flex banners used by various organizations around the city. After the Festival, our banners were collected and made into bags and folders. 

In what concerns funding and fundraising, working with the government has been the largest anticipated challenge. The Secretary of Culture changed six times and each time their commitment needed to be reviewed. In terms of government budgets, only government workers’ salaries and basic requirements to run the institutions were released. Any amount they had promised could not be actualized. There was a similar problem with the Nepal Tourism Board. With the generous contribution of the Prince Claus Fund, the Brazillian Embassy, WWF, Hariyo Ban, USAID and others, the scale of the festival has expanded exponentially, resulting in the need to mobilize local business houses, banks, embassies, individuals and art foundations with affiliations to Nepal. It has been a challenge, to say the least. It has been extremely difficult to keep some of the funders accountable to their commitments. Embassies paid their sponsorship amount after the festival was over, and most of the money that was locally pledged still needs to come in. We will most likely be able to clear our outstanding payments only in the first week of March.

KIAF 2012 has created a path for the Siddhartha Arts Foundation to do more works that bring different organizations and institutions together to promote the contemporary arts in Nepal and to create an international platform for its growth. Regarding KIAF 2015, we will need to think it through carefully to ensure the scale and quality of the works continues. While preparing, the Foundation plans to continue to bring international artists to exhibit in Kathmandu, create community art projects to encourage public participation, work with local museums and create structures where children and the general public are provided opportunities to interact and reflect on the artworks. 

Sangeeta Thapa is the Founder Director of the Siddhartha Art Gallery which was established in 1987 in Kathmandu. She has organized 400 exhibitions over the last 25 years and has conducted several community art projects which brought together artists, poets, writers, musicians, theatre artists, dancers and people from disparate social groups. She has also conducted two International Art Festivals, the last one in 2012, in which artists from 31 countries were represented. In 2010 she co-founded with Celia Washington the Kathmandu Contemporary Art Centre (KCAC), located in Patan Museum, which hosts The Washington Library and serves as a residency space, where international and national artists share studios. In 2011 she registered the Siddhartha Arts Foundation which hosted the second edition of the Kathmandu International Art Festival. Sangeeta remains deeply committed to mentoring artists and arts managers who will be involved in promoting the contemporary arts movement locally. She is on the board of Patan Museum Development Committee and is the author the book “In the Eye of the Storm – The Drawings of Manuj Babu Mishra”. She works closely with the Australian Himalayan Foundation Art Awards program, which endows two Nepalese artists each year with a bursary, and in a similar vein with KCAC.

Discussing values, from Brazil to Lebanon

Image taken from www.cultura.gov.br

In June 2011 I was writing about a law proposal of the brazilian government that would create the Vale Cultura, a culture stipend that would allow for a subsidy of R$50 (approximately €22) for workers earning up to five times the minimum salary, in order to facilitate access to products and services in the areas of visual arts, performing arts, audiovisual, litetrature, music and cultural heritage.

I had been very critical at the time. Not because I didn´t believe that thousands of people would benefit, but, mainly, because of the objectives it was announced it was going to achieve. In its proposal, the government presented this initiative as a way “to allow for access and fruition of cultural products and services; to stimulate the visitation of establishments that provide the integration of science, education and culture; and to encourage access to cultural and artistic events and performances”. On the other hand, Roberto Baungartner, in his article Democratização do Acesso à Cultura (Democratizing access to culture), seemed convinced, that, apart from benefiting culture itself, the stipend would create more jobs and income, it would reduce violence, it would increment, on the side of the demand, the production chains involved and it would make brazilian companies more competitive at an international level.

Today, Vale Cultura is a reality. From the US (here and here) to Lebanon (here), it has been received as a great source of inspiration. And it´s a good thing it has, because there is no other such initiative (at least, I don´t know of any) and thus, it is important to follow and evaluate it based on the objectives it aims to reach. Nevertheless, the reports and opinions I ´ve read so far only consider the logistics: who pays what, how, etc. Thus, my 2011 doubts and criticism remain.

What would it mean to a Brazilian (or Portuguese or Greek or Lebanese) to receive a stipend to spend on ‘culture’ when where he/she lives, or in the proximities, there´s no cinema, no theatre, no museum, no bookshop? What are they supposed to do with it? And, on the other hand, which was the study that revealed that, in places where these venues exist, the majority of people that didn´t go to them didn´t have the money to do it?

I don´t mean to say that there are no people who enjoy or have a pre-disposition to participate in cultural activities, but who are not able to have access to them due to financial limitations. Especially now. Nevertheless, I consider the existing mental and psychological barriers between people and cultural institutions and certain forms of art, in any part of the world, to be bigger and more determinating than the financial barrier, especially in the case of all those who haven´t got the habit of participating. Who among us is willing to invest – not only money, time even – on something that doesn´t seem interesting or relevant or comprehensible in the first place? Or on something that seems distant or or something that doesn’t even exist?

It is worth listening to and analyzing the details of the interviews with some brazilian workers on a TV programme, where the Secretary of Cultural Policies of the Ministry of Culture, Sérgio Mamberti, was also interviewed: a lady says that she had never even had the courage to get close to the Municipal Theatre and ask how much it was, considering that, being so beautiful and big, it would also be very expensive; a gentleman says that he doesn´t have the habit of attending, but that he would like to have an incentive to do so; and another gentleman states: “As we are a country with great miscegenation, we´ve got lots to give to the world. I believe that we take little advantage of this, because people haven´t got access not only to enjoy culture but also to the person that makes culture. So, I believe that this incentive, apart from incentivating people to go to the theatre, to go to the cinema, it will incentivate them to study theatre, to study cinema. They´ll get to know things they didn´t know and many people will get interested in these subjects and will become part of the other side, not only the side of the spectator”. [sic]

The interviews with the workers reveal, in my opinion, the prejudices, the misunderstandings, the mutual lack of understanding between the two sides, the lack of habits, in other words, the lack of access related, first of all, to intellectual and psychological barriers. Thus, I believe that those who study, develop and implement cultural policies should first look at these barriers, while at the same time trying to facilitate access on a financial point of view. To start backwards, insisting in considering money to be the principal factor of inhibition in this relationship, is to insist hiding one´s head in the sand or taking the easy way forward.

In the meantime, while news about Vale Cultura are spreading around the world, another piece of news, also coming from Brazil, has had a more discreet circulation, at least for someone living away from that country. According to those news (read here), in the municipality of Santo André, in the brazilian state of São Paulo, a cultural movement – that brings together the so-called Points of Culture (local associations promoting cultural activities), students, teachers, writers, social movements and other members of the local population – demanded and was successful in booking a hearing with the state´s Secretary of Culture. They wanted to know what were the plans of the Secretariat of Culture and demanded public participation in the management. They didn´t make things easy for the Secretary, they didn´t take generalities and promises for an answer, they insisted with questions and criticism, they got irritated, they lost their patience, they weren´t touched by the Secretary´s demonsatration of humility – when he stated that he had lots to learn from them – and protested about his lack of preparation for the job. How did this happen in Santo André? What does it take for this to happen? How does this feeling of belonging, of a sense of what constitutes a civic right and an obligation  towards the affairs of culture, come about? This is news, yes, probably greated news than the creation of Vale Cultura and thus, it is worth paying greater attention to it and following the situation closely. Santo André should be a case study.

Also on this blog
The difference between 'more' and 'diverse'

More readings

Ian David Moss (2009), Free tickets? How about income-sensitive tickets?
McCarthy, K.F. and Jinnett, K. (2007). A new framework for building participation in the arts.

Ostrower, F (2005). Motivations matter: findings and practical implications of a national survey of cultural participation.

Walker, C., Scott-Melnyk, S. and Sherwood, K. (2002) From Reggae to Rachmaninoff, How and why people participate in arts and culture.

Wallace Foundation, The (2009). Engaging audiences.

Guest post: "A small step for a man, a giant leap for a museum", by Ania Danilewicz (Poland)

I met Ania Danilewicz last October. She was in Portugal for a few months and she wanted to know more about museums and in particular about GAM – Group for Access to Museums. Two more meetings followed after that, long conversations, and in both of them Ania striked me with her energy, her eagerness to learn, her critical spirit, her wish to intervene and to do more. In this post she shares, with great sense of humour, her thoughts and feelings about going back to her country, full of ideas that would seem to be of no use in an environment quite resistant to change, only to realize that good things do happen everywhere, even at her own museum, even if at a smaller scale. It´s not impossible, but it´s one step at a time. The lucky ones meet three old ladies in the way... mv

Adam Malysz, Polish olympic champion in ski jumping (Photo: Associated Press/East News)

Some time ago, three really old ladies were visiting our exhibition. This is a quite modern presentation (interactive too), but they preferred the old-fashioned style of touring: just looking, not touching, going around in silence, keeping a distance from all exhibits. However, they were satisfied, because the exhibition was showing the town at the time of their youth. Close to the exit one of the guides approached them:

“-Have you already tried our new listening station?”

“-For God’s sake, no! It’s not for us… let’s give space to the youngsters…”

“-But you can find original songs there, from the time of your youth!”, insisted the guide. “You see, this is an original phone from the 30s. If you choose the odd numbers, you can listen to all these hits!”

And the three old ladies did it. They picked up the phone, which is a listening station, and they all moved closer to the handset. Closer, but still carefully. Some time later they started... to sing softly, giggling like little girls. They tried also even numbers, which contain the same songs, but in a contemporary remix. And they enjoyed it so much!

Why am I writing about this story? Because it saved me from the post-Portuguese slump! Here are some of the symptomes of my recent sickness (if you recognise any of them, look for three old ladies as soon as possible!).

I returned recently from a longer visit to Portugal, where one of my permanent occupations was visiting museums and meeting with people from the sector. During my stay, I discovered, with pleasure and amazement, great museum attractions, such as a special touring route in the Tile Museum (Museu do Azulejo) composed of the replicas of azulejos panels  especially made for the blind – to be touched and to recognize a structure, shape, surface and colours -, but received with interest by other visitors too. I was enormously delighted with my visit to the Batalha Community Museum (Museu da Communidade Concelha da Batalha), admiring all amenities that make this small institution so special for the local community and so important for the  worldwide network of museum professionals. And I’ve appreciated a lot all my conversations with Maria Vlachou in the context of accessibility and the GAM - Group for Access to Museums (Grupo para a Accessibilidade nos Museos).

I have also realized, of course, that marvellous examples are the exceptions that confirm the rule. And the rule is the same like everywhere – that the majority of museums are not so modern, open and ready for new trends. But anyway, I found enough good examples to feel inspired and motivated for new projects in my museum.

I work for The Army Museum in Bialystok, a mid-sized institution, without any special distinction. It’s modern enough (the entire permanent exhibition was changed in the last three years, the first time in… 38 years) to offer visitors nice tours and programmes. But it’s also quite underfunded and old-fashioned, in need of further development. So my return meant two things: the confrontation of the inspiring ideas I was bringing with me with the museum reality; and the obligation to write this post for Maria about the museum sector in my city and country.

And this was the genesis of my sickness. I was searching like crazy for something good and impressive enough to be worth showing on this international blog. “What can possibly stand next to the Louvre or National Museums in Liverpool!?”, I though to myself.  A friend of mine asked the simplest question: “Why not your museum?”. At first, I burst out laughing, but soon after I met the three ladies I mentioned and that experience convinced me, in fact, of how easy and simple the use and implementation of ideas like accessibility, openness, participation could be, even if results are not so spectacular as in some other cases (Liverpool, Portugal, Louvre).

The three ladies showed me that creating an accessible and friendly environment could simply mean giving appropriate information and being ready to adapt existing conditions to the needs of different visitors. If we had proposed the ladies to listen to modern remixes of old sings, they would have refused for sure, like they did when I proposed to them to try the ‘listening station’. ‘Remix’ and ‘listening station’ are not words from their world. But an invitation to answer the phone, that plays the role of the listening station, seams to be a good way to convince them to interact with the display, as well as introduce them to modern music. Ipso facto, they jumped from the level of “individual consumes content” to “individual interaction” (presented by Nina Simon in her blog, one of diagrams about social participation) without any special action or programme from us. If it is so easy, why don’t we try that more often? Creating that display, we had also planned an audio description for blind people and an audio guide for all visitors. Not having enough money to buy two sets of mobile devices, we decided to record one narration, attractive to any visitor, regardless of disabilities or abilities. And just then we realized that this is an example of universal thinking and designing, which is one of the most important challenges for museums now. Wow, we can do that too!

I could also mention another example from my first days in the museum. It was March 2011 and the best Polish ski jumper, a national hero for all Poles, Adam Małysz was ending his professional career. Many people took part in the spontaneous action “The whole of Poland wears a moustache” (Adam Małysz has a very characteristic moustache...), where everyone put on a fake moustache (some even grew it especially for the occasion!). And we did it too! At a time when the museum was mostly seen as an old-style, conservative place, we glued colourful paper moustaches to all our soldiers in the exhibition. And that was it! That simple action changed our image radically, showing us and other people that we could take a step back and look at ourselves with a sense of humour and, despite the so serious historical plots in our displays, we could also be funny, people-oriented. It was just one day, but it gave the team an incredible power to start thinking about actions from a totally different perspective, overcoming set templates.

Photo: The Army Museum in Bialystok

Maybe these examples are not big, significant or impressive enough to be presented between notes about National Museums Liverpool ot the Louvre. But they do show that big change often begins with small steps. It is easy to say that we cannot change anything, due to lack of money or people. It is much more challenging and important to start with the question: what can I change or improve in my surrounding right now? These small steps may sometimes have a wider influence than a big action. They prepare us to transform and adapt because of a need, not just due to special, sporadic occasions.

I am almost recovering from my post-Portugal depression. Almost, because deep inside I still have that strong need to implement and develop all possible new elements in our programme. But now I know how to do that – step by step.

Anna Danilewicz is a cultural animator and manager, Head of the Department of Education and Organization of Exhibitions in the Army Museum in Bialystok. She previously worked for the Drama Theatre in Białystok and was a juornalist for the biggest newspaper in Podlasie region, Gazeta Wspolczesna. She has cooperated with many associations and some independent projects, such as Street Culture Enthusiasts Association ENGRAM, Borderland Summer School, Foundation of the University of Białystok, Marcel Hicter Foundation in Brussels. She got the European Diploma for Cultural Projects Management in 2012 and attended the International Seminar for Cultural Operators, organized by the National Centre for Culture and the Foundation Marcel Hicter. She graduated from Bialystok University in 2005.

Don´t shush me!

Photo taken from Culture 24 (© Courtesy Wallace Collection)

Back in 2003, the Royal Academy hosted an exhibition on the Aztecs. River, a two-year-old child, exclaimed “Monster! Monster!” when he saw the statue of the Eagle Man. The guard immediately asked the family to leave, considering that the child was misbehaving.  The mother, Dea Birkett, was a journalist and a few days later she was writing in the Guardian an article entitled Travelling with kids, questioning: “If we curtail their unfiltered attraction to art as a toddler, how can we demand they appreciate it aged 20? I hope my children don't misbehave. But shrieking with joy at a statue doesn't seem, to me, something to frown upon. I would have been much more disturbed if he'd shown no response at all. But perhaps you were at the Aztecs, too, and glad when that loud child left. Perhaps I've spent too long surrounded by shouting kids to appreciate how irritating they can be? What do you think? Should River stay or should he go...?”. The incident was widely discussed at the time and Dea Birkett founded Kids in Museums, a charity dedicated to making museums more child and family frienldy. Kids in Museums has just celebrated its 10^th anniversary at... the Royal Academy! The museum´s Head of Learning, Beth Schneider, siezed the opportunity and wrote a long article for the Guardian describing all the steps taken in the last ten years to make the museum more welcoming for families and especially for younger visitors.

Tate Modern came under fire for not putting an end to the BP sponsorship after the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 (read here and here). Initiatives like Liberate Tate, Art not Oil and Platform have not let the matter die out, not only in relation to the Tate, but to all british cultural institutions accepting sponsorship from the oil company, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Opera House and the British Museum. Last year, these institutions renewed their sponsorship agreements, considering that the support of BP to culture and the arts has been consistent and substantial and there´s no reason to renounce it because of one major incident. Nevertheless, the British Museum demonstrated total openess to criticism and gave it space on its own premises. Last November a theatre flashmob, organized by the Reclaim Shakespeare Company, took place in the museum´s Great Court, protesting against BP sponsorship of the Shakespeare exhibition, showing at the museum. A museum press officer reaffirmed the institution´s gratitude for BP´s continuous commitment and, at the same time, recognized Reclaim Shakespeare Company´s right to protest, claiming that there were no ill feelings (read here).

When Woolly Mammoth theatre announced an encore run of Mike Daisey´s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, it was heavily criticised by many. The monologue dealt with and denounced the corporate practices of Apple and Foxconn, Apple's supplier in China, but some time after it premiered, Mike Daisey was accused of fabricating some facts. He admitted it, publicly apologised and removed all contested material. Woolly Mammoth Theater remained firm in its decision for a take 2 of the performance and its long-standing collaboration with Mike Daisey. Instead of avoiding the controversy, it actually used it to promote the show, announcing it as “the most notorious and controversial play of the decade”. It promoted a very healthy dialogue with both supporters and critics on its facebook page, and actually posted negative reviews, feeding the conversation. On the last day of the show, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniac, who hadn´t escaped Mike Daisey´s criticism in the play, was at the theathe for an after-show talk with the playwright and the audience.

Mike Daisey in The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (Photo: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

What´s the common thread in these three stories? That the cultural institutions involved didn´t bury their heads in the ground, didn´t pretend they didn´t notice, didn´t ignore people´s voices. People were heard. Not in the sense “the client is always right”. Actually, in two of the three cases here presented there was no change in the decision. But there was an understanding that there is another side, people with convictions, expectations and needs. They are not there to unconditionally adore us – ‘us’, cultural institutions. They´re there to question, to criticise, to demand, and also to guide us. Because they care. And because we care too, we don´t hide away. We engage in the dialogue, we promote it, we feed it. We invite them to get involved in what we are doing. We become part of their lives. And we get their support.

Suggested reading:

Kids in Museums 10th anniversary manifesto

Guest post: "The political museum", by David Fleming (UK)

David Fleming is a museum professional I greatly admire and respect and he has deeply influenced my thinking on the role of museums. Some years ago, Josie Appleton criticised his option of coming into museums because this was his way of trying to change the world by saying “An admirable aim, of course, but maybe Fleming should have become a politician or a social worker rather than a museum director.” [in Watson, E. (ed), Museums and their Communities, p116]. I, personally, am glad David came into museums and actually became a museum director. And it is with great pleasure that we publish in this blog a shortened version of his speech The Political Museum, given at the INTERCOM Conference in Sydney last November. The complete version may be found at the end of this text.  mv 

Photo taken from the website of National Museums Liverpool

1.   Introduction – the myth of neutrality

It is a tradition in museums that we are, or should be, apolitical, by which I mean that museums should not involve ourselves in the power relationships that characterise society. It’s not our job to get embroiled in the world of real people, real events, controversy and opinion. What we ought to do is use our knowledge and expertise to assemble and care for our collections, and to present them in a neutral fashion for public benefit, floating on a cloud of scholarly virtue, hovering well above the mundane realities of human life. In fact, to keep doing what many museums have attempted to do for most of the time since they were set up.

It is, of course, the height of hypocrisy, and, indeed, is utterly vacuous, to claim that museums have ever been ‘neutral’ about anything. All the basic tasks that we undertake - researching, collecting, presenting, interpreting – are loaded with meaning and bias, and always have been; these tasks are the museum’s methods of serving up to the public what the people running the museum wish the public to see. Museums are social constructs, and politics is a cornerstone of social activity – you can’t have one without the other. No matter what type of museum, no matter what it contains, decisions have been made by someone about what to research, what to preserve, what to collect, what to present, how to interpret; and decisions have been made about what not to do, what not to research, what not to preserve, what not to collect, what not to present, what not to interpret.

I’m not altogether certain why some museum people, and others, have seen such value in portraying ourselves as disinterestedly pursuing knowledge, as though by doing so we avoid the risk of becoming political. The issue isn’t “is it right or wrong for museums to be political?” but “all museums are political, why do some pretend that they’re not?”.

2. The political museum in action

a) Old Model

After their conquest of Greece in the 2^nd century BC, the Romans used triumphal display of objects to show the superiority of Roman to Greek culture. This was a technique continued throughout the ages, by the Christian Church, by Charlemagne, by the Venetian Republic, by Napoleon, by the Nazis, and by many others – in all these instances any aesthetic appreciation of the objects displayed was probably subservient to the political power message. Some of the great museums of Western Europe are particularly good examples of the Old Model Political Museum, with their displays of imperial plunder and their casual assumption of European superiority over other peoples. The political nature of such museums has been revealed in the justifications for the existence of “universal” museums, a concept which came to renewed prominence in 2003 with the Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums by the directors of a self-selected group of big European and US museums. The Old Model Political Museum is best characterised by its stealth. It is political, but it pretends it isn’t – it pretends that it is merely orthodox and truthful. It is a museum that would thrive in George Orwell’s Oceania.

b) New Model

Photo taken from the website of Tuol Sleng Memorial Museum.

Today, the New Model Political Museum is overt and campaigning, in particular in the fields of human rights and national identity: The National Museum of Australia (Canberra), The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongawera (Wellington, New Zealand), District Six Museum (Cape Town, South Africa), Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (Phnom Penh, Cambodia), Museum of Genocide Victims (Vilnius, Lithuania), Museum of the Occupation of Latvi (Riga, Latvia), The Museum of the Romanian Peasant (Bucharest, Romania), The Vietnam War Remnants Museum (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), DDR Museum (Berlin, Germany), to mention a few. There are lots more museums of the type that seeks actively to redress a situation where power politics have left some people disadvantaged at best, oppressed and victimised at worst.

A couple of weeks ago I received this email from the Director of the Memorial Resistance Museum in Santo Domingo: “I just created a new petition and I hope you can sign. It's called: We are fighting for the right to the truth and justice for the victims of the dictatorship of Trujillo.”

I went to the website and found the following: “We ask the General Attorney of the Dominican Republic, Mr. Francisco Dominguez Brito, to enforce the laws and the international treaties on human rights, defend the rights of young people and Dominican children to truth, defend the right to justice for the more than 50 thousand victims of the dictatorship of Trujillo, the survivors and the relatives of the victims. We demand the fulfilment of the decision of the Dominican courts, that protect us from the vindication of the regime and the figure of the dictator, and for a Commission of Truth.”

This is the political museum in full flow.

In conclusion, there is a gap between the active, campaigning museums that we have been looking at, and those that go about their political business more discreetly, but the gap is superficial. I would argue that most museums are political, and it is naïve or dishonest to pretend otherwise. We shouldn’t regret this, as though there is a better, neutral state somewhere to which we should aspire – it is human nature to be political, and thank goodness it is.

David Fleming´s full keynote speech may be found here. The Museum of Liverpool, one of the museums under David´s direction, was awarded last month the Council of Europe Museum Prize for 2013 by the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). PACE said “The Museum of Liverpool provides an exemplary recognition of human rights in museum practice." (read here)

Further readings

The political museum professional, by Suse Cairns

Places of encounter, by Maria Vlachou

Silent and apolitical?, by Maria Vlachou

Check also:

International Coalition of Sites of Conscience

David Fleming became Director of National Museums Liverpool in 2001. He has overseen a radical change management process that has resulted in Liverpool audiences rising from around 700,000 per year to 3.5 million, at the same time increasing markedly in diversity. He has advised a number of governments, museums and municipal authorities, both nationally and internationally, on national museum strategy, project management, exhibition design and museum governance. He has published extensively on museums and lectured on museum management and leadership, social inclusion, city history museums and human rights museums in more than 30 countries. He is Founding President of the Federation of International Human Rights Museums (FIHRM), Vice-Chair of the European Museum Forum, and Chairman of ICOM’s Finance and Resources Committee. He is a past President of the UK Museums Association and has served on several UK Government committees and task forces.

Liverpool-Lens-Metz-Foz Coa and back

Image taken from the Louvre-Lens Facebook page

When one thinks about the role of culture in urban regeneration the case of Liverpool comes immediately to mind, as well as the work of J. Pedro Lorente in analyzing this and other case studies of cities which attempted a revival, more or less successfully, through culture and the arts. In the introduction of the working paper The role of museums and the arts in the urban regeneration of Liverpool (1996), Lorente writes: “... any derelict area in the heart of a prosperous city is bound to be revitalized by urban developers anyway. However, the prospects of redevelopment are less likely when dereliction lays in the middle of a declining city facing economic recession, unemployment, depopulation, social/ethnic unrest and physical decay. (...) Liverpool is such a case: in the last decades, everything seems to have gone wrong there, except the arts (...)”.

In a way, Lens seems to be such a case too. It is a former mining town of 35.000 people in the north of France, proud of its football team and hit hardly by the crisis. Lens is also, since December 4, home to the new Louvre-Lens, presenting objects from the parisian museum´s collection, including highlights such as Delacroix´s Liberty leading the People. In his speech at the inauguration ceremony, French President François Hollande used words such as “regional development”, “cultural decentralization”, “cultural democracy” and seemed confident that visitors will be coming from the whole region, the whole of France, the whole of Europe and maybe the whole world (the annual target at this moment is 500.000 visitors; 100.000 visited the museum in less than three weeks after its opening). On the other hand, Louvre President Henri Loyrette explained in an interview for the newspaper El País: “[when deciding on the location] what interested me was that it could have a social character, not [to be] a city with culture. This is an industrial zone, very much affected by unemployment and which suffered in all wars. It is a kind of reparation.”

We are quite used to listening to politically correct statements, for which almost noone is ever held accountable for in the years that follow, but a museum that aims to compensate a region for its hardships is a new concept for me. I read numerous articles and reports regarding this new museum, some of which may be found at the end of this text, but I would like to highlight three of them, which, in my opinion, raised some important questions.

On the french blog Option Culture, Jean-Michel Tobelem analyses the three challenges the museum is asked to face – attendance, territorial impact and democratisation – and argues: 1. although access is good and exhibitions are of high quality, the building will not be enough to attract the large number of visitors those wishing for a “Bilbao effect” are dreaming of; 2. even if visitors come in great numbers, he doubts there will be an opportunity for wealth creation if there is no infrastructure (hotels, restaurants, commerce, etc.) that would respond to those visitors´ needs and make them want to stay longer and spend more; 3. he also doubts that the chronological approach adopted in the Gallery of Time, the educational activities proposed and open storage would actually be able to attract what we generally call “new” visitors. Bernard Hasquenoph also criticised official references to cultural democracy and decentralisation by making a point in his article Louvre-Lens: la culture comme alibi that the region where Lens is situated could harldy be considered a “victim” in terms of cultural offer and quoted the Louvre´s President who actually said that Lens is a town in a “... region with a reputation for its exceptional cultural dynamism and the density of its museum network”. Finally, Jonathan Jones of The Guardian warns that The Louvre risks losing its magic with Lens move and calls the move “political correcteness gone mad”. He urges british museums not to make the same mistake and to continue forging links and promote loans between the capital and the regions.

These three texts resume my views on this subject. Lens is an hour away from Paris by train. Does it really make sense (in the name of “cultural decentralisation and democracy” or as a means of making amends...) to break up a world famous collection, visited by millions of people living in France and also coming from abroad, in order to take it closer to people that could easily have access to it? And if this is not the case for all (which probably isn´t), wouldn´t it make more sense to make transport to Paris more accessible to all those interested in visiting the museum? Furthermore, in a region that seems to have already got a rich cultural offer, wouldn´t it make more sense to support existing structures and their links to the capital? Or, if it was actually considered that it was the right time and place to create a new cultural venue, wouldn´t it be more appropriate, in competitive terms as well, to create something unique and distinctive of that region? Finally, if decisions were made in the name of regional development, is the museum expected to perform a miracle on its own, when basic, complementary infastructures are still not in place?

Image taken from the Pompidou-Metz  Facebook page.

The case of Pompidou-Metz, which opened in 2010 with quite similar objectives announced by the then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, also comes to mind: a town that didn´t form part of the usual touristic tracks, a bit more than an hour away from Paris by train; a town with a rich cultural offer; a museum that was set up in an area  previously given to industry, as part of a plan to boost tourism; a number of highways that opened in the meantime in order to facilitate access. Still, less than three years later, the museum failed to reach its objective of 600.000 visitors for 2012 (read here). Has something gone wrong? Is there an explanation for this? Is anyone evaluating this case at a time when a new museum opens apparently set to serve a similar vision?

And with all this, I feel compelled to ask: what about Foz Côa? This is one of my favourite places in Portugal. I visited the prehistoric engravings sites in 1999 and 2000. In 2011 I went back, this time to visit the museum too, which had opened the year before. Although the whole project was seen as a major factor in the region´s development (and it probably does attract more people to it), the truth is that the only novelty I encountered was the museum itself, where, on a Sunday afternoon of November, I was the only visitor. The museum café was closed and I had to go back to town and face the almost impossible task of finding something to eat at a place that looked deserted and which still hasn´t got e decent hotel (or restaurant, for that matter) that would make people consider spending the night there. Moreover, considering the touristic traffic in river Douro, the plans to create a connection to the boats have still not materialized, that is, there is still not a quay and a cable car that would allow those visitors to get to the museum and visit the prehistoric sites.

Photo: José Paulo Ruas (taken from the Museu do Côa Facebook page)

I am not an expert in urban regeneration, so I can only express an opinion based on some readings and on my experience as a visitor as well. And it seems to me that, just like a swallow does not make a spring, it takes more than a museum to guarantee the sustainable development of a town, a city, a region. There is a lot to learn from the cities that were able to manage this successfully. It took more than culture. And it took more than politically correct statements. There is a need, above all, for a strong political commitment and for the joining of public and private forces towards a clear common goal. Arts was not the only thing that didn´t go wrong in Liverpool...

More readings

Louvre-Lens: helping a mining town shed its image, by Oliver Wainwright (The Guardian, 5 December 2012)

The Louvre comes to town, by Edwin Heathcote (The Financial Times, 7 December 2012)

L´ouverture du Louvre-Lens, par Didier Rykner (La Tribune de l´Art, 4 Décembre 2012)

Louvre-Lens: lanaissance d´ un musée (Le Monde, 5 Décembre 2012)

Le Louvre-Lens ouvre ses portes au public (Le Figaro, 12 Décembre 2012)
Le Louve Lens, le succès en dépit des grincheux (Lunettes Rouges, 11 Janvier 2013) 

Les musées se remettent en scène, para Valérie Duponchelle (Le Figaro, 7 Décembre 2012)

What's the big idea behind the Pompidou-Metz?, Jonathan Glancey, (The Guardian, 6 April 2010)

Centre Pompidou: Metz gears up for its moment, Natasha Edwards (Telegraph, 8 May 2010)

Museu do Côa, por António Martinho Baptista (Informação ICOM.PT, Nº 16, Mar-Maio 2012)

Amigos do Parque e Museu do Côa, por José Manuel Costa Ribeiro (Côavisão – Cultura e Ciência, Nº 12, 2010)

World-leading urban regeneration expert: “Liverpool has assets most cities would die for”, Liverpool Daily Post 9 Nov 2012

We built way too many cultural institutions during the good years, by Emiy Badger (The Atlantic Cities, 5 July 2012)
Philharmonie de Paris: a grand design turned £300m 'bottomless pit', by Angelique Chrisafis (The Guardian, 30 December 2012)
Mais e novos museus, por Joana Sousa Monteiro (Mouseion, 7 Janeiro 2012)

Videos

Inauguration du musée Louvre-Lens

Louvre-Lens: La Gallerie du Temps

Le Journal du Temps: Lens, le Havre et une seule cause (André Malraux inaugure le premier musée – Maison de la Culture en 1961)