I’ve just finished reading the study authored by the redoubtable Sir David Cannadine entitled ‘Why collect?’ commissioned by Art Fund and the Wolfson Foundation. With the focus primarily on art museums, the impetus was to consider why it is, given the large amounts of money given through, for example, the Heritage Lottery Fund, museums are nevertheless pretty generally floundering.
In a brief article in the recent online edition of Apollo, Robert Hewison distills Cannadine’s study into the following abstract- museums have abandoned their traditional core mission of acquisition and curatorial scholarship in favor of education, outreach, and inclusivity. Modern notions of political correctness, for both authors, are not much of a consideration, as they lay the blame for museum malaise at the feet of the pervasive influence of postmodernists like the late Michel Foucault, for whom museums in their traditional guise functioned as no more than institutional excrescences whose primary objective was to enhance the political, social, and economic hegemony of northern Europe.
While I suppose reinvention, even if that reinvention results in a throwback to an earlier day, might arguably work to instill some vigour, what both authors mention obliquely is, to my mind, nearer the mark. Specifically, for some (read ‘very many’) museums, their day is done.
Certainly in this country in the late 19th and most notably the first half of the 20th centuries, a source of local pride was the building of a grand edifice to house art treasures- mostly European- aping as it did both in its collections and its building European imperial glory of past centuries. Local grandees in places like Des Moines, St Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Detroit considered an art museum on a grand scale to be an essential feature of urbanity, marking not just the prosperity which made the building and the stuffing of it with art treasures, but serving as an emblem of sophistication and optimism for a future that would be grander than the past.
Well- it hasn’t been, the future I mean, not entirely, anyhow. Everyone knows about the so-called ‘grand bargain’ that saved the Detroit Institute of Arts from selling off its collections to pay the city’s debts and even more prominently the venerable Metropolitan Museum of Art is having a severe financial struggle. While museum attendance numbers dwindle overall, and costs of basic maintenance, to say nothing of the not just politically correct but oftentimes mandated education and outreach programs, these efforts at modernity have generally not paid off. Not so long ago, a local art museum person told me how a recent exhibition of the decorative arts of Southeast Asia had been successfully supported by the local Hmong community. My rejoinder was it was natural for the Hmong to turn out- what would have been impressive was to see it supported by all the other ethnicities comprising the local community.
By in large, though, I am at one with Foucault- the survey art museum continues to be very largely the province of the social and political elite of northern European heritage, with education and outreaches of inclusivity an add-on to comply with current notions of political correctness, to say nothing of government, grant, and accreditation requirements. Would though a return to an earlier day, with a renewed primary focus on acquisitions and curatorship ameliorate any run off in attendance?
In some instances, perhaps. In his article, Hewison begins by citing the full day closure of the National Portrait Gallery in preparation for the use of its facility for a fashion show. While the fashion show was a money-spinning venue hire, Hewison said the closure was at the expense of turning away 5,000 visitors. No question, the NPG is a viable institution, whose mission to stay open free of charge must needs then field fundraising activities to continue to make it accessible. Bear in mind, the fashion show was held on site, bringing not only those attendees but presumably a few deep pocketed grandees who might not otherwise have darkened the threshold. Whether or not the NPG, to continue, would benefit from additional acquisitions is an open question. For myself, I never tire of making my way to the top floor to see the Tudor portraits, even if only to see for the umpteenth time the full length Holbein cartoon of Henry VIII. New acquisitions, though? As the name and function imply, the museum continuously adds images of the great and the good, and even exhibits its holdings at ‘out station’ branches- the National Trust properties Montacute in the West Country, and Beningbrough Hall in North Yorkshire. To my mind, this is a well-functioning institution, where acquisitions though their effects cannot be measured, must certainly be considered as part of its viability.
I contrast this with the fate of our local art museum, just finished with its annual fundraising bash held not at the museum but offsite. Presumably, museum management and governance must have assumed no one locally would be particularly interested in attending anything at the museum, but the party was what intrigued donors. While again the function is to raise money to keep the museum open and affordable, its typical attendance is so light it can only justify unlocking the front door 4 days out of the week. Where the NPG might have 5,000 attendees in a day, the local institution wouldn’t have that many in two months. The question then in this case is clearly begged- for whom is the museum operating? And the larger question certainly being asked in the trustees’ meetings- why stay open at all?
So, then, any public museum, large or small, big city, formerly big city, and small city in this day and age must constantly be faced with similar questions and I don’t mean the ‘Why collect?’ posed by Cannadine and Hewison. I would initially add a subsidiary question ‘For whom are you collecting?’ If this question cannot be answered by way of robust visitor numbers, then the more basic question must always be on the mind of those in the museum world- ‘why stay open at all?’