Museums in the Twenty-first Century: Still Looking for Signs of Difference

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Acknowledgements

This article was written as a lecture for Moderna Museet's Past, Present, Future symposium, held in Stockholm on 17–18 October 2008 (a week after the Emily exhibition closed in Canberra). The author would like thank Moderna Museet for inviting and sponsoring her participation in the symposium. She is especially grateful to Martin Sundberg and Anna Tellgren. Thanks are also offered to Claire Farago and Howard Morphy for insightful conversations that have helped develop her thinking on this topic.

Notes

1. Howard Morphy, Becoming Art: Exploring Cross-Cultural Categories, Berg, Oxford, 2008, p. 188.

2. Akira Tatehata, »The Impossible modernist«, in Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, exh. cat., ed. Margo Neale, National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra, 2008, pp. 31–36.

3. The need for the art historical canon (and indeed, for museums of all types) to become more receptive to the changes that are occurring around them has been recognized as pressing, with Kobena Mercer recently claiming: »The long-standing methodological tension between formalist and contextualist approaches in the historiography of the visual arts has tended to pre-empt the development of interactionist models capable of relating aesthetic innovation and socio-political conditions without reducing one to the other«. The point was taken up at the 32nd International Congress of Art History held in Melbourne in 2008, where Terry Smith evoked the need for the Western art canon to become increasingly responsive to what he called the »widespread and growing sense that many significant – perhaps even epochal – changes are occurring in the world today«. He reiterated the need for wider recognition of contemporary art that is connected with and attuned to increasingly receptive or dialogical models. Responding to questions about the place of art in contemporary culture, Nikos Papastergiadis also asks: »How can the question of the context of art be posed in a way that tracks the interaction of the local with the global? Do the examples drawn from these hybrid art practices offer any insight into the broader social changes in everyday life?« Kobena Mercer, »Introduction«, in Exiles, Diasporas and Strangers (Annotating Art's Histories), ed. Kobena Mercer, Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) and the MIT Press, London, 2008, p. 20; Nikos Papastergiadis, »Hybridity and Ambivalence: Places and Flows in Contemporary Art and Culture«, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 2. No 4, 2005, p. 46.

4. Morphy, 2008, p. 174.

5. Akira Tatehata, »The impossible modernist: an ‘outsider’ view«, paper presented at the Emily: »Why do those fellas paint like me ...?« symposium, National Museum of Australia, 22–23 August 2008.

6. Margo Neale, »Introduction«, in Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, exh. cat., ed Margo Neale, National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra, 2008, p. 13.

7. My summary of Emily's life and art closely follows the account provided by Margo Neale at http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/utopia_the_genius_of_emily_kame_kngwarreye/

8. Ian McLean, »Aboriginal Modernism? Two Histories, One Painter«, in Neale, 2008, p. 23. The mythological angle was prevalent throughout Australian media reports of the exhibition, see Peter Alford, »Emily finally gets a stage as big as her paintings«, Australian, 1 March 2008.

9. Reviews and commentary about Magiciens de la terre include Johanne Lamoureux, »From Form to Platform: The Politics of Representation and the Representation …«, Art Journal, Vol 64 , No 1, 2005, pp. 64–73; Thomas McEvilley, »Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief« Artforum, November 1984, pp. 54–62; Magiciens de la terre (special issue), Third Text, Vol 3, No 6, 1989; Marianna Torgovnick, »Making Primitive Art High Art«, Poetics Today, Vol 10, No 2, 1989, pp. 299–328; Michael Brenson, »Review/Art: Juxtaposing the new from all over«, New York Times, 20 May 1989.

10. Peter Vergo (ed.), The New Museology, Reaktion, London, 1989. Publication of The New Museology signaled mainstream acceptance of an ideological shift in the ways that cultural institutions produce meaning and relate to governments, audiences and constituents. Centralizing community consultation and collaboration, new museology is usually associated with the post-Second World War development of ecomuseums that escalated around the mid-1970s in line with the civil rights and »history from below« movements. See Hugues de Varine, »Editorial: The word and beyond«, Museum, Vol 148, No 4, 1985, pp. 184–185; Georges Henri Rivière, »The ecomuseum – an evolutive definition«, Museum, Vol 148, No 4, 1985, pp. 182–183; René Rivard, »Redéfinir la museology«, Continuité, No 23, Spring 1984, p. 21; »Muséologie (Nouvelle)«, Encyclopaedia universalis, supplément (2 vols), Paris, 1984–1985, Vol 2, p. 958; Pierre Mayrand, »The new museology proclaimed«, Museum, Vol 148, No 4, 1985, pp. 200–201. For a more recent analysis, see also Kylie Message, New Museums and the Making of Culture, Berg, Oxford, 2006.

11. McLean, 2008, p. 29, fn 11.

12. MoMA's Primitivism exhibition was criticized for ignoring the intended functions and meanings of the Indigenous pieces, and for designating them as simply offering a formal precedence for modernism. According to the exhibition's chief curator, William Rubin, it presented so-called »primitive« art in decontextualized displays that exemplified Western aesthetic values and concepts of otherness, and promoted the view that this was a category of art that was produced by modernism, legitimized by the Western art historical canon, and given currency through connoisseurship and the art market. In a review of the exhibition, James Clifford argued »in this object system a tribal piece is detached from one milieu in order to circulate freely in another, a world of art – of museums, markets and connoisseurship«. The exhibition was typically accused of projecting the timelessness of non-Western artefacts and by relegating »otherness« to a mythical, bygone era. No contemporary non-Western works were included in the show. In comparison, Magiciens de la terre, shown in 1989 at the Centre Georges Pompidou and La Halle de la Villette, sought to challenge the aesthetic–anthropological system of the West, the narrow confines of the art world delineated by competing art/national capitals and the imperial and hegemonic effects of an international biennale system functioning as an extension and product of what Rasheed Araeen has more recently called the »multicultural global purview of the benevolent West«. The exhibition's curator, Jean-Hubert Martin, assembled works of 100 artists from some 40 countries – mostly countries and regions that have been largely overlooked by the mainstream art establishment. In an astute response to the exhibition, Sally Butler notes that »Martin applies the category of contemporary art in order to signify a distinctive break from modernism. [However] One might argue that Martin's mode of globalism was largely an act of nominalism because it provided no account of how the category of contemporary art was shared between different cultures.« See William Rubin, »Modernist Primitivism: An Introduction«, in »Primitivism” in 20 ^th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, exh. cat., ed. William Rubin, Vol. 1, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1984, p. 5; James Clifford, »Histories of the Tribal and the Modern«, in Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, eds Donald Preziosi and Clare Farago, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2004, p. 643; Rasheed Araeen, »A Very Special British Issue? Modernity, Art History and the Crisis of Art Today«, Third Text, Vol 22, No 2, 2008, p. 125; Sally Butler, »Multiple Views: Pluralism as Curatorial Perspective’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, Vol 4, No 1, 2003, p. 18.

13. Tatehata, 2008, pp. 31–36.

14. Margo Neale, »Works: Body lines«, in Neale, 2008, p. 150.

15. Neale, »Introduction«, pp. 13–14.

16. Howard Morphy and Morgan Perkins (eds), The Anthropology of Art: A Reader, Blackwell, Oxford, 2006, pp. 21–22.

17. Message, 2006, pp. 167–196.

18. NMAI Editions, Vision, Space, Desire: Global Perspectives and Cultural Hybridity, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC, 2006.

19. Notable exhibitions of traditional and contemporary Indigenous art at these venues in 2007–2008 included Culture Warriors (National Indigenous Art Triennial 07) at the National Gallery of Australia, 2007–08, Papunya painting: Out of the desert at the National Museum of Australia, 2007–08, and Remix: New Modernities in a Post-Indian World at the National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center, New York, 2008. Although it is true that the Musée du Quai Branly commissioned artwork by contemporary Aboriginal artists, the resulting work is located on the ceilings of the administration and shop facilities and hence at a remove from the museum's exhibition spaces and largely inaccessible to the public.

20. Néstor García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, trans. C. L. Chiappari and S. L. López, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2005, p. xxxv.

21. Papastergiadis, 2005, p. 40, p. 57.

22. Gail Anderson (ed.), Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, Basilisken Press, Marburg an der Lahn, 2004.

23. Chirac has asserted the political role, if not condition, of museums on numerous occasions. In addition to his speech to celebrate the opening of Quai Branly, see Jacques Chirac, »Introduction«, in Sculptures: Afrique, Asie, Océanie, Amériques, eds Jean Paul Barbier et al, Réunion des musées nationaux; Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, 2000, p. 7. See also Susan Collard, »The Architecture of Power: François Mitterrand's Grands Travaux Revisited«, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol 14, No 2, pp. 195–208.

24. Indeed, Jean Nouvel's winning proposal was heralded by Le Monde newspaper for responding to both urban concerns and the requirements of the collections in a design that will »evoke other worlds«. Le Monde, 10 December, 1999, p. 31. For information on the international context, see also Kylie Message, »New directions for civil renewal in Britain: Social capital and culture for all?«, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol 12, No 3, 2009, pp. 257–278.

25. Sally Price, Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 2007, p. 151.

26. Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, Routledge, London, 1995.

27. Papastergiadis, 2005, p. 55.

28. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett argues that such alterations in terminology »preserve the notion of cultural hierarchy while effecting a terminological reshuffling of the order«. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, »World Heritage and Cultural Economics«, in Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations, eds Ivan Karp, Corinne A. Kratz, Lynn Szwaja, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto et al, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2006, p. 166.

29. Martin quoted in James Clifford, »Quai Branly in Process«, October, 120, Spring 2007, p. 22.

30. For a critique of »lifestyle multiculturalism« see Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1998. Uncertainty about how to talk about cultural diversity is apparent in many statements on the museum. In one instance, Chirac refers to Quai Branly as a »melting-pot of diversity« but on the next line says that it »sets the moral standard of looking at other civilisations«. This language reasserts rather than challenges traditional concepts of difference and objectification. Chirac, Jacques, »Introduction«, Musée du Quai Branly guide book, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, n.p.

31. Clifford, 2007, p. 12

32. Krens quoted in Rosalind Krauss, »Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum«, October, Vol 54, Fall 1990, p. 3.

33. Krauss, 1990, p. 7.

34. Krauss, 1990, p. 3.

35. Krauss, 1990, p. 4.

36. Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, Thames & Hudson, London, 2004, p. 617.

37. In 1990 well over 150 (some say it was 300) prominent writers, art historians, public intellectuals, politicians and museum professionals endorsed a manifesto written by a group including the prominent museum consultant, connoisseur and collector of primitive arts, Jacques Kerchache. Published in the newspaper Libération, the manifesto – Pour que les chefs-d'oevre du monde entier naissent libres et égaux – called for the creation of a dedicated department at the Louvre for ethnic cultures and the subsequent end to the exclusion of ethnic artworks from France's leading national museums. The request was granted by the opening of the Pavillon des Sessions in 2000, at which time Chirac also announced the creation of the Musée du Quai Branly. Raymond Corbey, »Arts premiers in the Louvre«, Anthropology Today, Vol 16, No 4, 2000, p. 3.

38. Clifford, 2007, p. 5.

39. Samuel Huntington, »The Clash of Civilizations?«, Foreign Affairs, Vol 72, No 3, 1993, pp. 22–49; Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon, New York, 1996.

40. Price, 2007, p. 126.

41. The »original« Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York was a signatory of the Universal Museum declaration that was also signed by others, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Louvre. See the »Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums«, (2002) in Ivan Karp, Corinne A. Kratz, Lynn Szwaja, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto et.al., Museum Frictions: Public Cultures / Global Transformations, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2006, pp. 247–250.

42. Clifford, 2007, p. 18.

43. Chirac quoted in Clifford, »Quai Branly in Process«, p. 18.

44. Krauss, 1990, p. 4.

45. Krauss, 1990, p. 17.

46. Krauss, 1990, p. 17.

47. Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, »The Museum of Modern Art as Late Capitalist Ritual: An Iconographic Analysis«, in Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, eds Donald Preziosi and Clare Farago, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2004, p. 485.

48. Clifford, 2007, p. 3.

49. Clifford, 2007, p. 5.

50. Clifford, 2007, p. 14.

51. Clifford, 2007, p. 14. In an early critique of the museum, anthropologists Jean Bazin and Alban Bensa also argue that the new museum »must not be an alignment of closed boxes«. Jean Bazin and Alban Bensa, »A propos d'un musée flou«, Le Monde, 19 April 2000, p. 31.

52. Ruth Phillips, »Re-placing Objects: Historical Practices for the Second Museum Age«, Canadian Historical Review, Vol 86, No 1, 2005, pp. 83–110.

53. This criticism combines with reports that the Quai Branly's form-driven curatorial approach is most inspired by the Centre Pompidou. It may indicate Quai Branly's interest in creating what Sally Price has called »attractive civilized settings for the contemplation of (ex-) primitives and their cultural products«. See Sally Price, »Art and the Civilizing Mission«, Anthropology and Humanism, Vol 30, No 2, 2005, p. 133. Other reviews and responses to Quai Branly include: Sarah Amato, »Quai Branly museum: Representing France after Empire«, Race & Class, Vol 47, No 4, pp. 46–65; Peter Naumann (ed.), »Making a Museum: ‘it is making theatre, not writing theory’: An interview with Stéphane Martin, Président-directeur général, Musée du quai Branly«, Museum Anthropology, Vol 29, No 2, 2006, pp. 118–27; Michael Kimmelman, »Heart of Darkness in the City of Light«, New York Times, 2 July 2006; Catherine Field, »Spoils of the Colonies«, New Zealand Herald, 24 June 2006; Angelique Chrisafis, »Chirac leaves controversial legacy monument to African and Asian culture«, Guardian, 7 April 2006; Nélia Dias, »Esquisse ethnographique d'un projet: Le Musée Du Quai Branly«, French Politics, Culture and Society, Vol 19, No 2, 2001, pp. 81–101.