Museums, professionalism and democracy

摘要

Three recent reports - Valuing Museums (2004), Capturing Cultural Value (2004) and The McMaster Review (2008) - argue that there is confusion about the role of museums in society, largely due to government instrumentalism. Capturing Cultural Value maintains that museums can overcome the dichotomy between intrinsic and instrumentalist value by focusing on public value and learning from other disciplines to articulate a more rounded view of their role. Valuing Museums protests the range of non-traditional roles imposed on museums by government. The McMaster Review argues that external measurement should be replaced by professional judgement. For all three, history begins in 1979 so that the account of the “traditional” lacks depth. The missing history is summarized, recalling the reformist origins of many museums and their later retreat from social engagement. This reflects the development of what Perkin calls the “professional society”, in which technical experts dominated virtually unchallenged in the century before the advent of Thatcherism - in 1979. The lack of a unitary traditional museum role is revealed through a case study - the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art in the V&A. This reveals internal disagreement about the relative authority of visitor and the curators. The failure to act on the extensive visitor studies carried out during the gallery development leads to a significant reduction in the value produced for the public - there is no attempt to represent how the objects were seen from within the cultures which created them, thus excluding a wide range of human meanings. For museums to realize their potential role in society they need to embrace the dual task of revealing the meanings of the objects in their care, and of doing do so in ways that contribute to the continuing process of democratization. The alternative is that they continue to support increasing inequality.