Museion concept, museum and knowledge politics
Does a university museum have to be elitist?
In one of his last blog posts Thomas argued that university museums are basically elitist institutions.
Thomas argues that the basic success criterion for museums is the popularity of their exhibitions and number of visitors where on the other side the success criterion for a university museum is the quality and originality of their research. Of course I can’t speak on behalf of all the museums out there but I could easily imagine that many museum professionals could be offended by that statement. Actually I’m quite certain that a lot of great research is done by curators who are not employed by a university museum.
Anyways, as to quality and originality I totally agree. That is a worthy goal but something still troubles me. Especially the following sentence:
In other words, in contrast to museums in general, which are institutions with a broad, popular appeal, ’university museums’ are basically elitist institutions.
What does that actually mean and what happened to the idea of research to the benefit of the people? Was that just a crazy idea that some students back in the sixties and seventies used as a slogan?
When I hear the word elitist it triggers some very unfortunate associations. Who is the elite? What notions of power are we operating with here?
At the Medical Museion we have some fantastic collections. Don’t we have a duty to open them up for the general public in a way that could be understood also by people who are not college educated? There is a democratic principle in this that I fear might be lost if we chose to communicate in a way that only the elite can understand.
Also I really don’t buy the following sentence:
Better provide original solutions to small but fundamental display problems than build big and popular exhibitions.
There is absolutely no reason why these two should be in opposition to each other. Let’s make innovative and popular exhibitions. Access to the medical cultural inheritance should be as democratic as possible and not just something that is withheld for the elite.
06 Nov 2009 Jonas Paludan
Bravo, Jonas!
Shifting between hot and cold exibitions is what Louisiana has been doing explicitly and successfully for decades.
Well spoken, Jonas. I agree with your fundamental position, i.e. that research should be for everyone, and certainly we should strive to do both popular and innovative work. Getting the ressources necessary for living up to that ambition, however, will require that we first and foremost have a sharply defined research profile, an internation reputation with our peers, and the ability to attract manpower and funds. If we do not work tirelessly to maintain that position, there is a real chance that we will fade into the obscurity from which we spent 10 years clawing our way out of. It is a matter of Realpolitik, me thinks. It is our intellectual reputation that will ultimately attract the necessary ressources to do larger, more accessible projects.
One of the ways in which I believe we should go about disseminating our research, is by stipulating that anyone holding an academic position with us should be required to actively work to spread his or her work (and the name and research that we all do) through writing in the press/more popular publications, by doing seminars, teaching as much as possible, being available for lectures for all audiences, and so on.
Again, this is not a matter of not doing exhibitions or hiding away our lovely collections. But it is a matter of prioritising, of focusing on that which is most likely to keep us in the mix with those that have deep pockets.
Skill to pay the bills, as they say.