Museum news#2 – reinventing the wheel…

Looking at the links I’ve collected recently all of them – apart from the stuff about slavery – provide evidence of communication failures within the museums sector in different ways. Either we don’t/can’t communicate with counterparts outside the English-speaking world, or we’re not communicating (enough) to the policy sector, or (in France) we’re sometimes not really communicating at all. And we’re certainly not sharing always sharing best practice…. Is this fair?

Commemoration of slavery

There’s more and more going on to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. The source of information is the 24hour museum. Here are just a couple of examples:

- Sculpture from Haiti tours UK, before it reaches its final destination, the new slavery museum in Liverpool [link]. I think this is great – not least because I think the people in the UK are even less familiar with the Haitian Revolution – than in France. I feel strongly that it should be taught alongside the French and American Revolutions, and in as much detail. The strategy of sending a sculpture or art work on tour as the herald of a new museum is also being deployed by the CNHI [link]. Is an art seen as best adapted to provoking curiosity? To what extent is it a new form of marketing strategy? I’d be interested to know how effective these sorts of communication strategies are too.

Image from 24hour museum, copyright Christian Aid.

- Here’s the programme of events in Bristol [link].

Something new is being announced almost every day.

Controversy in Germany over Tibet exhibition

There are lots of examples in museum studies literature about ‘difficult’ or controversial exhibitons. The vast majority of these come from the English-speaking world, largely I suspect due to the limited language skills of many researchers in this area. I’ve talked before about how I think we’re missing out on a lot, especially in Germany where I think there’s a lot of interesting research going on. H-Museum is always sending me emails in German, most of which I skim and ignore, largely because it takes me too long to decode them. But this story from Der Spiegel about how a new exhibition of treasures from Tibet glosses over Chinese oppression is just the kind of thing that researchers interested in the relationship between museums, power and politics ought to be talking about.

Cultural policy/cultural diplomacy

There’s also a great looking conference on European Cultural Policy coming up in Berlin in June [link - English]. (Surely someone from amongst the host of exciting speakers might want to employ me…? Although in general I’m leaving this sort of thinking until I’ve written a lot more of my thesis…I don’t have the time or energy to devote to it for now).

On which note – cultural policy, not jobs – thanks to Rosy for drawing this Demos publication to my attention. I confess I haven’t really started reading it yet. However, I did notice the following on p.72

A recent Demos report argued for the need to open up the foreign policy-making process to all communities, but especially those who feel alienated by the government’s current foreign policy in certain parts of the world, notably the Middle East and the wider Islamic world. We echo this proposal, and suggest that the FCO and the DCMS should work in partnersihp with the Department for Communities Local Government (DCLG) to create a comprehensive strategy for engagement with minority and diaspora communities through culture.

Not only does this chime very neatly with what Neil MacGregor said at UNESCO last month [link to last post], it also highlights some of the rationale of the CNHI, and the opportunities and challenges for national museums in the post-national context. The report only cites one case study however: the Shamiana project at the V&A. Which is great, but looking at the bibliography there’s not much evidence of awareness of the research that’s been done around minority community engagement since the early 1990s. They would have done well to look at the case studies in ed. Hooper-Greenhill, Cultural diversity: developing museum audiences in Britain [amazon] for example.

Museum guides in France concerned about changes to employment conditions

Following on from the BBC story about how stressed staff at the Louvre are (thanks Amy!) Le Monde and Liberation both had stories about how the RMN’s museum guides are concerned about a change in status that will come into force on July 1st. There’s lots of French bureuacracy to get your head round here but essentially, instead of being employed by a central government agency (the RMN) and therefore NOT ANSWERABLE TO THE INSTITUTIONS IN WHICH THEY WORK in future museums that have the status of an Etablissement public de caractere administratif (EPA) (i.e. the biggest museums such: Louvre, Orsay, Versailles etc.) will employ guides directly. I am personally of the opinion that this reform is essential if these institutions are going to have the autonomy to develop more innovative outreach programmes, and welcome a wider range of visitors. The guides main concern seems to be that they will lose job security. I would suggest that if they want to avoid this they need to enter into negotiations with the museums in question about how they can help meet their strategic objectives i.e. make themselves indispensable. It’s high-time for a bit of creativity in this sector.

Museums for children? Who would have thought it…And as evidence of quite how much needs to be done to make French museums more accessible to the widest possible audience here is an article from Le Monde about activities for children in French museums. The issue here is that a national newspaper thinks that organising these sorts of activities (e.g. a treasure hunt – nothing really radically) is a sufficiently new departure to merit comment.

Tous les parents en ont fait l’expérience : pour les enfants, les visites de musée relèvent de la corvée. Au mieux, ils traînent les pieds, au pire, ils refusent d’y aller. Pour pallier ce handicap et donner au jeune public le goût des arts, de l’histoire ou des sciences, de nombreux musées ont mis en place des ateliers et des visites ludiques destinés aux enfants.

Well I never.

Explore posts in the same categories: Cultural Policy, Cultural diversity and multiculturalism, French politics, Museums