The Presentation of History in a Museum and Its Collections - Essay Example

"They traded on comfortable and conveniently reassuring images of the past, thereby suppressing both its variety and its negative aspects." Write an analysis of the presentation of history in a museum and its collections in the light of this statement. If everything new is just well-forgotten old, than museums might serve people both as a source of cultural heritage conservation and a powerful tool that allows us to rediscover the potentials left unopened. Exhibits of historical museums are the brightest reminder of how things were and how things have changed.1 A reconsideration of outstanding achievements from the past within the framework of future challenges makes such exhibits an incomplete narrative of the prospects of human development. The collections of historical museums not only inspire with a vague feeling of nostalgia being yet another construct of the past, but tell us more about the essence of our society at large. Fact is always stranger than fiction, but the way it is perceived at times can be the biggest source of wonder and become a storm center of a controversy. The collection of the British Museum, for instance, includes more than 8 million objects (from antiquities and natural history specimens to printed books and photos) encompassing the history of humankind gleaned from all over the world.2 It is one of the oldest and largest historical museums of the world that gives us an opportunity to reconstruct cultural archetypes and evoke the way of life of people down to the Stone Age. The question that has to be answered is whether the display of artifacts ripped out of the historical context help us grasp the spirit of time and better understand the particular context. It surely gives us a certain idea of the way people of different epochs used to look at things, but denies the opportunity to interact with the past as it is gone. We can only interpret the facts bearing in mind that interpretation accuracy might be quite controversial. Thus, the collections of the British Museum, as well as any other museum across the world, might probably tell us more about the people who categorised the exhibits and put them on display, than about those who actually created the artifacts. Entering the British Museum one can see a variety of objects on display; each has a well-written label attached to it telling something about an artifact that draws visitors attention. The labels become an intermediary between visitors and artifacts. Hence, the exhibit team of the museum appears as a narrator in a way that inevitably passes a certain connotation to the exhibits. Contemplating a problem of narrative codes in literature Roland Barthes once noted: As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins.3 To a certain extent those who organise museum exhibitions and visitors of such exhibitions become narrators of the imagined past. Both of them attempt to build bridges to other times through the artifacts symbolising different epochs. Each symbol can be interpreted in a different way. As a matter of fact, a museum exhibition of any kind might just as well be perceived as a three-sided act of communication between the exhibit team, museum visitors and artifacts generated by the past.4 Everything serves its own purpose. The British Museum can boast a rich collection of classical sculptures, various archeological material, more than 71 thousand of printed books, a huge number of manuscripts, rare ethnographic artefacts brought together under the same roof from different countries of the world. For the convenience of visitors all objects are organised within some historical or geographical context in different galleries and departments that bear specific names like Prehistory and Europe or Ancient Egypt and Sudan, for instance.5 Obviously, it is up to the exhibition team of the museum what items to put on display and what to exclude. Thus, many important things related to some cultural or historical periods end up being omitted or left unsaid, which, in turn, may unintentionally shift focus of visitors. The collections management creates a certain presentational style that influences the perception of the exhibition.6 Quite often the exhibits aimed at representing certain events, cultural practices or traditions within the context of a historical period or ethnicity, for instance, may not be the most important for the subject matter in focus. According to Baxandall, exhibiting intentions may have many preconditions and can serve different cultural, social, political or any other purpose.7 As to the way an exposition may be constructed Baxandall stated the following: To select and put forward any item for display, as something worth looking at, as interesting, is a statement not only about the object but about the culture it comes from. To put three objects in a vitrine involves additional implications of relation. There is no exhibition without construction and therefore - in an extended sense - appropriation.8 All in all, any exhibition has cultural implications. Every museum artifact put on display represents some culture, symbolizes some values and answers a certain purpose it was initially created for. At the same time every exhibition serves some purpose. On top of that, each and every visitor of a museum has ones own cultural background, outlook and convictions. Thus, each exhibit might be a collision of cultures, generations and other possible factors that might not be evident at the first glance, even to a skillful cultural anthropologist, historian or psychologist. This brings us to the aforementioned three-sided act of communication once again. Moreover, in the course of time an artifact, which ends up as an object of a museum exhibition, may acquire new meaning as compared to the initial purpose it was created for. Every exhibit is contextually determined. For example, a ceramic plate found at the settlement land of some ancient tribe might mean nothing but convenience for that particular tribe. Quite possible that for the next generations of the tribe a ceramic plate could have symbolised prosperity and higher social status. On the other hand, a visitor of a museum might just perceive that plate as an object of art, while for an exhibit team putting the plate on display serves to emphasise the pace of progress within the context of a certain ethnic group during some historical period. According to Bal, the interplay between subjectivity and the cultural basis of understanding makes intersubjectivity an important aspect of any narrative, including that of a museum exhibition.9 Every museum collection is a yet another attempt to put together objects generated by the past within a certain discursive mode or historical context in order to connect the dots and build a complete picture.10 The order that exhibits are put in contributes to the construction of a discursive mode as well. It helps to link the things together within the framework of a certain narrative, where language meets the space by designating similarities and differences between the objects.11 Likewise, the exhibit team of the British Museum pays much attention to the way exhibits are put together, the use of the museums space and exhibition design. Everything makes sense within the framework of an exhibition narrative: colour and light of an exhibition gallery, its size and the way exhibits are placed in space.12 A conceptual design of an exhibition helps to avoid confusing messages and organize an exhibition within the context of its subject matter. A design of an exhibition is more important than it may seem. According to Serrell, the way exhibits are arranged in space helps to present content and actually creates it.13 In fact, exhibitors and exhibition visitors often exist within a framework a separate meaning-making process related to artifacts of exhibitions, especially if they do not share the same kind of knowledge about the subject matter in question. Exhibits, in turn, can be both active and passive. According to Pearce, meaning can be an interactive process between and exhibit and a museum visitor.14 And it actually does not matter whether a viewer and an object share common cultural codes. In other words, according to Corbett, sometimes it is not important what meaning a viewer attaches to an exhibit, if the latter is able to reinforce viewers memories by providing the illusion of a direct, tangible link with the past.15 Some exhibitions in the British Museum may evoke a sense of nostalgia for certain historical periods or events that an older visitor could have a witness or participant of. At the same time, the exhibitions of photobooks that touch upon dramatic events of the World War II, for instance, as well as photobooks from the post-war period in Great Britain, can cause tails of bitter memories in older people. The British Museum takes on a responsibility to let its visitors know that some exhibitions contain disruptive image and other material alike. This may mean that visitors of certain age categories are not allowed to view certain exhibition content and enter some exhibition galleries; likewise, some categories of visitors based on religious or other beliefs are recommended to withdraw in favour of another exhibition. According to Goldstein and Kintigh, ethical issues should primarily be understood as conflicts in cultural values.16 Some museums choose to exclude certain exhibition content or put those exhibits on display that allow avoiding any potential controversies based on different cultural values. Such measures might often change the discursive mode completely. On the other hand, ethical standards may change from generation to generation even with one society or ethnic group. Such challenges place in a following dilemma: whether museums should filter their exhibition content according to ethical requirements or informing visitors about potentially disruptive exhibition content might be fairly enough. Some museums tend to resolve this burning issue by informing visitors about the exhibition content and putting all exhibits on display with no restrictions of any kind, others exclude some exhibits to avoid possible tensions. Concerning the aforementioned ethical dilemma Dean stated that accuracy relates to up-to-date information, while honesty rather touches upon the approach endorsed in presenting that information to the public.17 Human remains as a part of exhibition content are yet another burning problem within the context of ethical issues. According to Simpson, human remains of Native Americans or Maori have been the subject of tensions and heated debates in North America and Australia for many years.18 As a result, the United Kingdom, Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand passed the laws that urged museums in these countries to remove such exhibits from display due to ethical reasons.19 In 2004 nine museums in the United Kingdom made deaccession of human remains from their collections. On the other hand, Kilmister notes that ancient human remains, in particular, are a unique attraction, and many people expect to find them in museums.20Other researchers state that putting human remains, such as Egyptian mummies or Maori shrunken heads, on display may serve educational purposes as well and the deaccession of such exhibits from a number of museums is a huge mistake.21 Ultimately, the exhibition content and presentation of history differs from museum to museum. Some museums filter their collections to avoid tensions related to ethical issues, others have no restrictions when it comes to putting historical content on display. Bibliography S. Alberti, and Bienkowoski, P., Chapman, M. J. and Drew, R., Should We Display the Dead?, Museum and Society 7(3) (2009), 133–149 The British Museum, The Museums Story (The British Museum, n.d.) [accessed 31 December 2014] Bal, Mieke, Telling Objects: A Narrative Perspective on Collecting, in The Cultures of Collecting, ed. by John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, (London: Reaktion, 1994), 97-115 Barthes, Roland, Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 224 Baxandall, Michael, Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects, in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1991), 33-41 Corbett, Katharine T., How Exhibits Mean: Memory, History and the 1904 Worlds Fair, Exhibitionist, 18 (2) (2009) < http://name-aam.org/uploads/downloadables/EXH.fall_99/EXH_fall_99_How%20Exhibits%20Mean%20Memory%20History%20and%20the%201904%20Worlds%20Fair_Corbett.pdf> [accessed 31 December 2014] Dean, David K., Ethics and Museum Exhibitions, in Museum Ethics, ed. by Gary Edson (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 218-224 Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Tavistock Publications Limited, 1966), 399 Gazi, Andromache, Exhibition Ethics - An Overview of Major Issues, Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies, 12 (1) (2014) < http://www.jcms-journal.com/article/view/jcms.1021213/87> [accessed 31 December 2014] Goldstein, Lynne, and Keith Kintigh, Ethics and the Reburial Controversy, American Antiquity, 55 (3) (1990), 585-591 Hugh Kilmister, Visitor Perceptions of Ancient Egyptian Human Remains in Three United Kingdom Museums, Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 14 (2003) < http://www.pia-journal.co.uk/article/viewFile/pia.202/276> [accessed 31 December 2014]. McManamon, F., Policy and Practice in the Treatment of Archaeological Human Remains in North American Museum and Public Agency Collections, in Human Remains and Museum Practice, ed. by J. Lohman and K. Goodnow (London: UNESCO and Museum of London, 2006), pp. 48–59 Pearce, Susan M., Objects as Meaning; or Narrating the Past, in Interpreting Objects and Collections, ed. by Susan M. Pearce (London: Routledge, 1994), 19-29 Pearce, Susan M., Museums, Objects and Collections (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), 296 Serrell, Beverly, Judging Exhibitions: A Framework for Assessing Excellence (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2006), 187 Shaw, Christopher, The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989) Simpson, Moira G., Making Representations: Museums in the Post-Colonial Era, (London: Routledge, 2002), 336 Swain, Hedley, An Introduction to Museum Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 392 Read More