Objects and All: The 21st Century Museum

“It’s an audio guide, sweetheart, not a remote.”

This week's guest post is by one of this year's mentees. Amanda Guzmán is completing her Ph.D in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She's been a graduate fellow at the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian.  She's studied and worked around the world, with a MA degree from the University of Leiden and fieldwork in places ranging from Massachusetts to Peru.  As you can tell from this piece, she and I have had wide-ranging conversations about the future of museums and of objects in museums.  Share your thoughts below in the comments! 

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole […]. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or that kid that was your partner in line last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way – I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.

                                  -Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)

When I first read this passage in high school, my native New Yorker sensibilities were struck by the detailed descriptions which nearly perfectly mapped onto my countless school trips throughout the dioramas environments of unmoving, staged human and animal bodies positioned in realistically textured and finely painted backdrops at the American Museum of Natural History. As I have lived away from New York City for nearly a decade to pursue undergraduate and graduate education, I must confess to sharing Holden’s fond observation of reconciling the consistency of certain museum spaces with one’s ever-shifting bodily orientations.

And yet, nostalgia aside, museums have done a fair degree of their own shifting in respects to visitor engagement and I have thinking a lot recently about the how museums have and will continue to define their roles in the 21st century. Particularly given my training as an anthropological archaeologist, I gravitate towards thinking about and with things.

Indeed, the historical trajectories of the discipline of anthropology and the emergence of museums are intertwined. Throughout the history of museum institutions in their various private and public forms (video), objects have stood as the focal point of the visitor experience, as the tangible source of engagement with the ‘cultural’ and ‘natural’ diversity of the world.

Objects, I would argue, still matter. Objects preserve our genetic histories in response to environmental concerns ranging from wildlife conservation and climate change to drug development and national security. Objects represent uncomfortable histories of unequal, intercultural relationships of power whose legacies remain salient and open to debate today.

Museums’ handling of objects though increasingly extends beyond the interpretation and display of existing historical collections through exhibitions in institutional spaces.

Museums are not only available to be traversed online through street views of its galleries but the world’s history is being depicted through chronological, thematic intersections of digital nodes that index specific museum objects.

In the age of Google, objects in collections around the world are being compiled and arranged into thematic galleries. With a few drags and clicks, you can create your own galleries. How can we understand this type of online visual-oriented experience with objects? Does it privilege certain kinds of material collections over others? What does it mean to have the ability to construct your own galleries and to disseminate them among your social networks?

3-D computer modeling has allowed for online mediated experiences with the ability of not just reading about the cultural contexts of objects but also of defining your interaction (e.g. moving and editing the object with the flick of a cursor) in a manner not typically permitted in traditional museum spaces. What does the addition of this digital engagement add to and/or take away from an individual’s understanding of and practical experience with objects (in contrast to say, drawing or photography)? Beyond material composition, what is the difference between a 3-D model and a reconstruction? Moreover, 3-D technology introduces complex questions of authorship and ownership. Who has or should have the capacity to construct 3D prints of museum objects (and who decides this)? Should all objects, regardless of origin, be available to be subject to such treatment?

At this point, I have more questions and answers to the issue of what role do objects play in the 21st century museum and its growing employment of the digital. I do think however a crucial element of any answer is a continued call for a genuine consideration of the museum’s application to the interests and needs of its public(s) and larger events in the contemporary world.

So, contrary to Holden’s assertion, we as visitors change alongside museums. Time will tell what that change will look like.

Bradford Galt: “I'll be at the Cathcart galleries absorbing culture. I don't want to die ignorant.”
Policemen in galleries: “That is ‘aht.”
The Dark Corner (1946)

Why Can't Local History Be More Like Local Food?

I live in the northwest Catskills of New York State.  It's rural, really rural (see above). Like so many rural counties all over it has suffered a long economic decline and a steep decline in agriculture, once the mainstay of its economy (Delaware County's butter once won prizes at 19th century Worlds' Fairs). But recently, here, like so many places, there's a lot more going on in terms of our understanding of food and place. A few examples: a school friend of my daughter's, in her twenties, is creating a hard cider start-up;  local creameries, producing milk, butter, cheese and ice-cream band together for this upcoming week's Milky Way tour;  at local farmers' markets I see families who have lived on land here for generations selling products side by side with retirees taking up a farming career as a sort of hobby; and Brooklyn expats have headed here to open restaurants featuring local products.  A particularly exciting part to me is the decision many talented young people are making about staying in or coming to the area to try and make their way.

As I thought about it, I realized that local museums in rural communities have a great deal to learn from this local food movement (and from farmers in general, I'll say).  Here's a couple lessons I think we should be taking to heart:

• Tradition and new ideas can co-exist.  Anyone who farms has to learn from those who farmed before them.  But at the same time, combining that traditional knowledge with new ideas can creatively combust into something new.  Local history museums are too tied to the idea that tradition--that whatever works--or doesn't work-- is the only approach.  Above, Shannon Mason and her mother Gail Danforth of  Danforth family farm come from a tradition that not only won their family an award at the Chicago World's Fair, but also now have adapted and also produce yogurt and kefir.
• Young people have ideas and are willing to work hard to make them happen. This seems almost silly to state, but I can think of so many historical societies who are reluctant to engage with young people in substantive ways.  And, for those rural museums looking for staff, it's not about the money.  No one becomes a farmer for the money, they become farmers because they like the work and can make a difference.  If you're on a museum search committee, seek out those young people (with or without master's degrees) who have a passion--and make the commitment to let them work hard, make change and make a difference. 

• Spread independent decision-making.  As far as I can tell, farmers make independent decisions all day long, every day.  Does every decision at your museum have to be made by committee? It's not only a time-suck but also an energy and enthusiasm sucker.  Museums need to rethink how we connect with--not just audiences--but how we begin to connect with those young people that are shaping our communities now and in the future,  Sharing decisions is a big part of that.
• But network.  There's strength in numbers.  Whether it's farm tours or connecting with New York City chefs, farmers of all sizes and types know that connections and working together can only benefit them. Stop being territorial, museums!
• Direct interaction matters.  Whether you're from a large dairy farm speaking to New York City school groups or a small purveyor of pickles chatting with me at farmers' market, you know that direct, enthusiastic interactions make a difference.  I've wondered why my local history museum isn't out every week at farmers market for instance, meeting and greeting.
• Consider your organizational and personal values.  I've written about values before but continue to believe it's something that museums and historical organizations don't spend enough time on.  We talk one kind of values but sometimes practice another;  or we're reluctant to surface long-held values in the service of change and new ideas. There are values embedded in every strawberry, green bean or even burdock root I buy at a farmers' market--and often those values are stated clearly.  Can you think of a museum's whose values are stated up front?  (I suspect there are some, but none come immediately to mind).
• And, duh, stories matter  I put this post up earlier today, after noodling on it for a day or so in my head, sent it out into the world, and this evening, Diana Limbach Lempel, a friend and colleague who thinks intensively about placemaking, reminded me in a tweet of something I should have of course, included.  She tweeted, "I'd say that buy local/local food often is doing local history's work to tell place-based stories meaningfully."  She's absolutely right.  Just take a look at some of my local farm stories at Catskill Family Creameries,  Spring Lake Farm and many others at Pure Catskills.   And then consider how boring another spinning demonstration is.

I don't mean to romanticize the new farmers in my county;  or to neglect those longer-standing family farms whose work continues to feed us all.  There will be failed farming experiments out of the ones I've mentioned, I have no doubt;  but those failures are all part of a creative learning process.  But I do want to encourage rural museums and historical societies to consider what they can learn from their local farmers to change the ways in which we work.

Top photo:  Treadwell, NY view;  Center:  Danforth family from Cowbella; Farmers' market haul, 2014; Bottom, Michelle Gagner's family on the farm, circa 1910, via Delaware County NY History and Genealogy.