We are what we collect: we collect what we are
In her introduction to Understanding the Future: Museums and 21st Century Life, Estelle Morris notes how many of the newer museums established in Britain have been constructed around the narrative of the decline in industrial life.
Whereas in the past, the story of, for example, life as a miner would have been passed from generation to generation orally, communities disrupted and demoralised by pit closures are less likely to be able to fulfil this function. Instead of attempting to revive an oral tradition, ‘people turned to museums to ensure that their story would continue to be told.’ (16)
All communities have the right to expect that their histories will be validated whether that is through history texts, through the objects on display in museums, or through the recognition of intangible and material cultures.
Simply presenting diversity in a haphazard way is not enough: a great deal of thought and planning needs to go into putting together appropriate exhibitions. About five years ago I was asked by an exhibition organiser in a large museum why it had been so difficult to find people of African Caribbean descent to participate in a project.
The museum concerned had wanted to display images of individuals and required the participant to submit samples of DNA for analysis and display alongside their photographs. First of all, it emerged that the curator concerned had only realised at a late stage that the selection of people for the exhibit only included white people.
Thus the lack of time available to find an appropriate black person meant there was urgency to the matter which might well have been off-putting for a potential participant. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, this request for DNA took place in the context of difficult relations between the police and black communities in the wake of the McPherson enquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence and its identification of extensive institutional racism in the police service.
Although for many white people, the collection of DNA related to the burgeoning interest in family histories, at that time, that application of the science of human identity had a different set of negative resonances, particularly for continually criminalised young black men. I cite this example to illustrate how experiences may vary so much that it is difficult to anticipate the impact of even one relatively small element of an exhibition that does not appear at first sight to be controversial.
This is due in part to the curator becoming perhaps over-familiar with certain aspects of her or his collection and the colleagues with whom they work on a day-to-day basis. Fresh insight from very different perspectives may enliven considerably some objects.
Working with children or older people or artists in a participatory way – not just at the level of asking their endorsement of the choice of object and its existing captions – may produce new descriptions and labels for the exhibits, as well as new meanings and resonances. The issue is not one of undermining the integrity of a collection by pretending it is something it is not in order to appeal to a particular community. Neither is it a matter of feeling lumbered with an obsolete set of objects.
The forthcoming commemorative events and activities being planned for 2007 offer an opportunity to make connections between the past and the present and to reappraise existing collections. I will illustrate how this might work by quoting an account of a project set up in 1991 that involved a North American artist, Fred Wilson, working with an existing collection of artworks in Maryland, USA.
'…Wilson was given unlimited access to the Maryland Historical Society’s collection. He used what he found (or didn’t find) to create an installation/exhibition called Mining the Museum…'
'In the collection Wilson found three busts of people who had a great impact on Maryland – Napoleon, Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson. None of these people were from Maryland. He exhibited these next to three empty pedestals labelled Harriet Tubman, Benjamin Banneker and Frederick Douglass – three important 19th century African Americans from Maryland. There was almost nothing in the collection about them.'
'Wilson also exhibited paintings and renamed them. The museum had entitled the painting of a wealthy plantation picnic, Country Life. Wilson added his own label to the other side of this painting' – Frederick serving fruit.
'In Metalwork 1793 – 1880, Wilson exhibited silver pitchers and goblets alongside some slave shackles he found deep within an acquisition book of the Historical Society. The shackles were a poignant reminder of the workers who helped create the wealth that paid for the silver.' (17)
There are a number of collections that could benefit from this sort of intervention. Within the London museum hub, a good place to start could be with the Geffrye Museum. Already working with writer and academic Michael MacMillan on a major project to display a ‘West Indian Living Room’ amongst its interiors, it could re-examine its descriptions of the rooms on display on the website. For example, a room setting may currently be described as a traditional, (white) middle class English interior from the 18th or 19th century.
By locating that scene in an historical context that recognises the significance of the provenance of the mahogany or ebony of which the furniture is made, or acknowledges those servants and craftspeople that populated the infrastructure supporting the family’s lifestyle gives a richer, more holistic account of the constituent parts of the lived experience of the family and the society as a whole. There is a real opportunity to problematise and interrogate the notion of ‘quintessentially English’ by pointing to what has come from overseas – coffee and tea-making, china, the imitation of Chinese and Japanese styles, the wood used in the furniture, and so on.
It is also possible to explore how the servant/working classes fit into this picture of cosy middle class English domesticity, as well as the contemporary – and historical – settings and lifestyles that are a world away from the norm of heterosexual domesticity suggested by most of the displays. What constitutes contemporary middle-class life and how is the diversity manifested in domestic interiors? The re-labelling of furniture is an interesting illustration of how captions can give a different range of impressions that undermines popular misapprehensions.
When objects are decontextualised, there is, for many visitors, a gap in the understanding of the object and its place in history. Museums are perfectly placed to give a sense of the connection between past and the present realities.
If visitors and inhabitants of London are unable to locate rounded descriptions and analyses of the city’s past in its museums, then where are they to find the knowledge and information that will help them to understand London – and Britain – today? If there are few references made to the significance of colonialism, or the everyday experiences of gay men and lesbians are left unexplored, or if the historically shifting visibility of disability is left unrecorded, then how are we to make sense of contemporary predicaments?
The sense of marginality, invisibility and powerlessness for those under-represented and under-served in this picture is compounded and the ignorance which fuels misconceptions and hate-crimes is insufficiently challenged.
See essay pages: