Read “
What is the Object of this Exercise? A Meandering Exploration of the Many Meanings of Objects in Museums
Actions
” by Elaine Heumann Gurian, Daedalus, Vol. 128, No. 3, America’s Museums (Summer, 1999) and “
How Objects Speak
Actions
” by Peter N. Miller, The Chronicle of Higher Education Chronicle Review, August 11, 2014 and write a 4- page essay which compares and contrasts the authors’ respective views. Conclude your essay by applying the argument(s) to your experience(s) during your most memorable visit(s) to a museum exhibition.
What Is the Object of This Exercise? A Meandering Exploration of the Many Meanings of
Objects in Museums
Author(s): Elaine Heumann Gurian
Source: Daedalus, Vol. 128, No. 3, America’s Museums (Summer, 1999), pp. 163-183
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences
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Elaine Heumann Gurian
What is the Object of this Exercise?
A Meandering Exploration of the
Many Meanings of Objects in
Museums
CC^^T^Thy
did the serbs and Croats shell each other’s historic
\ \ /
sites when they had so little ammunition and these
W were not military targets?” I routinely ask my
mu
seum-studies graduate students this question when I lecture.
“To break their spirit,” is always the instantaneous answer.
Museums, historic sites, and other institutions of memory, I
would contend, are the tangible evidence of the spirit of a
civilized society. And while the proponents of museums have
long asserted that museums add to the quality of life, they have
not understood (as the graduate students did when confronted
by the example of war) how profound and even central that
“quality” was.
Similar examples reveal the relationship between museums
and “spirit” in sharp detail. Why did the Russians proclaim,
one day after the Russian r?volution had succeeded, that all
historic monuments were to be protected even though they
most often represented the hated czar and the church? Why did
Hitler and Stalin establish lists of acceptable and unacceptable
art and then install shows in museums to proclaim them while
sending the formerly acclaimed, now forbidden, art to storage?
Why did the Nazis stockpile Jewish material and force interned
Elaine Heumann Gurian is acting director of the Cranbrook Institute of Science in
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
163
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164 Elaine Heumann Gurian
curators to catalog and accession it, intending to create a
museum to the eradicated Jews? Why, when I was in the rural
mountains of the Philippines, was I taken to hidden closets that
served as museums, curated by tribal members, holding the
material of the tribe’s immediate past, secreted from the dealers
who were offering great sums for the same material?
In adversity it is understood, by antagonists and protagonists
alike, that the evidence of history has something central to do
with the spirit, will, pride, identity, and civility of people, and
that destroying such material may lead to forgetting, broken
spirits, and docility. This same understanding is what motivates
cultural and ethnic communities to create their own museums in
order to tell their stories, in their own way, to themselves and
to others.
Yet neither the museum profession nor its sibling workers in
the other storehouses of collective memory (archives, libraries,
concert halls, and so forth), makes (nor, I would contend,
understands) the case clearly about its institution’s connected
ness to the soul of civic life. In cities under duress you can hear
the case being made better by mayors and governors. Dennis
Archer, the mayor of Detroit, said recently while being inter
viewed on the radio, “Detroit, in order to be a great city, needs
to protect its great art museum, the Detroit Institute of Art.” It
was Archer and his predecessor, Coleman Young, who cham
pioned and underwrote the latest incarnation of Detroit’s Mu
seum of African American History. And it was Teddy Kolik, the
fabled former mayor of Jerusalem, who was the chief propo
nent of the creation of the Israel Museum (and who placed one
of his two offices within the building). Mayors know why
museums are important. Citizens, implicitly, do too. A recent
survey in Detroit asked people to rate the importance of insti
tutions to their city and then tell which they had visited. The
Museum of African American History was listed very high on
the important list and much lower on the “I have visited” list.
People do not have to use the museum in order to assert its
importance or feel that their tax dollars are being well spent in
its support.
The people who work in museums have collectively struggled
over the proper definition and role of their institutions. Their
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The Many Meanings of Objects in Museums 165
struggle has been, in part, to differentiate
museums from other
near relatives?the other storehouses of collective memory.
The resulting definitions have often centered on things?on
objects and their permissible uses. I believe the debate has
missed the essential meaning (the soul, if you will) of the insti
tution that is the museum.
OBJECTS ARE NOT THE HEART OF THE MUSEUM
The following discussion will attempt to capture that soul by
throwing light on the shifting role of museum objects over time.
It will show how elusive objects are, even as they remain the
central element embedded within all definitions of museums.
This essay will also postulate that the definition of a “museum
object” and the associated practices of acquisition, preserva
tion, care, display, study, and interpretation have always been
fluid and have become more so recently. Objects did not pro
vide the definitional bedrock in the past, although museum
staffs thought they did. I will show that museums may not need
them any longer to justify their work.
But if the essence of a museum is not to be found in its objects,
then where? I propose that the answer is in being a place that
stores memories and presents and organizes meaning in some
sensory form. It is both the physicality of a place and the
memories and stories told therein that are important. Further,
I propose that these two essential ingredients?place and re
membrances?are not exclusive to museums. And, finally, I
contend that the blurring of the distinctions between these
institutions of memory and other seemingly separate institu
tions (like shopping malls and attractions) is a positive, rather
than negative, development.
Not meaning to denigrate the immense importance of mu
seum objects and their care, I am postulating that they, like
props in a brilliant play, are necessary but alone are not suffi
cient. This essay points out something that we have always
known intuitively: that the larger issues revolve around the
stories museums tell and the way they tell them. When parsed
carefully, the objects, in their tangibility, provide a variety of
stakeholders with an opportunity to debate the meaning and
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166 Elaine Heumann Gurian
control of their memories. It is the ownership of the story,
rather than the object itself, that the dispute has been all about.
This essay suggests what museums are not (or not exactly)
and, therefore, continues the dialogue about what museums are
and what makes them important, so important that people in
extremis fight over them.
WHAT IS AN OBJECT?
“Ah, but we have the real thing,” museum professionals used to
say when touting the uniqueness of their occupation. When I
began in museum work, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the
definition of museums always contained reference to the object
as the pivot around which we justified our other activities.1
Although there were always other parts of the definition, our
security nonetheless lay in owning objects. With it came our
privileged responsibility for the attendant acquisition, its pres
ervation, safety, display, study, and interpretation. We were
like priests and the museums our reliquaries.
The definition of objects was easy. They were the real stuff.
Words were used like “unique,” “authentic,” “original,” “genu
ine,” “actual.” The things that were collected had significance
and were within the natural, cultural, or aesthetic history of the
known world.
Of course, real had more than one meaning. It often meant
“one of a kind,” but it also meant “an example of.” Thus,
artworks were one-of-a-kind, but eighteenth-century farm imple
ments may have been examples. Things made by hand were
unique, but manufactured items became examples. In the natu
ral history world, almost all specimens were examples but had
specificity as to location found. Yet some could also be unique?
the last passenger pigeon or the last dodo bird. Objects from
both categories, unique and example, were accessioned into the
collections. Museums owned the objects and took on the re
sponsibility of preserving, studying, and displaying them.
Yet even within these seemingly easy categories there were
variations. In asserting uniqueness (as in made-by-hand), spe
cific authorship was associated with some objects, such as
paintings, but not with others, most especially utilitarian works
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The Many Meanings of Objects in Museums 167
whose makers were often unknown. Some unique works were
thought of as “art” and some as “craft”; with some notable
exceptions, art was individualized as to maker but craft was
not. This practice, which is now changing, made it possible to
do research and mount shows of the work of particular artists
in some, but not all, cultures.
WHAT ARE COLLECTIONS?
In the early 1970s the American Association of Museums (AAM)
established an Accreditation Commission. As its members de
liberated, they discussed whether groups of living things could
be called collections and whether institutions that so “col
lected” should be classified as museums. Heretofore, “muse
ums” were conserving things that had never been, or now were
no longer, alive. The field debated if the living things in botani
cal gardens, fish in aquaria, or animals in zoos were “collec
tions”; if so, were those institutions, de facto, museums? It was
decided that, yes, at least for funding and accreditation pur
poses, they were museums, and the living things they cared for
were likewise to be regarded as collections, and hence objects.2
Yet there were other institutional repositories that cared for,
protected, preserved, and taught about “objects” but were not
called museums nor necessarily treated by museums as siblings.
Archives and libraries, especially rare-book collections, were
considered related but not siblings even though some museum
collections contain the identical materials. There were also
commercial galleries and private and corporate collections that
were considered by museum professionals to be different and
outside the field, separated supposedly by an underlying pur
pose. A legal distinction of “not-for-profit”
was considered an
essential part of the definition of a museum. It was clear that
while objects formed the necessary foundation upon which the
definition of a museum might rest, they were not sufficient in
themselves.
CAN NONCOLLECTING INSTITUTIONS BE MUSEUMS?
The Accreditation Commission of the AAM next sought to
determine if places that resembled collections-based museums
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168 Elaine Heumann Gurian
but did not hold collections (i.e., places like not-for-profit gal
leries and cultural centers) were, for purposes of accreditation,
also museums. In 1978, they decided that, in some instances,
galleries could be considered museums because, like museums,
they cared for, displayed, and preserved objects even though
they did not own them. Ownership, therefore, in some in
stances, no longer defined museums.
There was also the conundrum brought to the profession by
science centers and children’s museums, mostly of the mid
twentieth century. Earlier in the century, these places had
collected and displayed objects, but by mid-century children’s
museums and science centers were proliferating and creating
new public experiences, using exhibition material that was built
specifically for the purpose and omitting collections objects
altogether. How were these “purpose-built” objects to be con
sidered? They were three-dimensional, often unique, many times
extremely well made, but they had no cognates in the outside
world. Much of this exhibit material was built to demonstrate
the activity and function of the “real” (and now inactive)
machinery sitting beside it.
The Adler Planetarium, applying to the AAM for accredita
tion, also caused the AAM to reconsider the definition of a
museum. The planetarium’s object was a machine that pro
jected stars onto a ceiling. If institutions relied on such “ob
jects,” were these places museums? Had the profession inad
vertently crafted a definition of objects that was restricted to
those things that were created elsewhere and were then trans
ported to museums? That was not the case in art museums that
commissioned site-specific work. Certainly the murals of the
depression period applied directly to museum walls were
accessionable works of art?an easy call! Portability, then, did
not define objects.
In 1978, the Accreditation Commission of the AAM, citing
these three different types of noncolkctions-based institutions
(art centers, science and technology centers, and plan?tariums),
wrote specific language for each type of museum and, by amending
its definition of collections for each group, declared these types
of organizations to be
. . . museums! They elaborated: “The
existence of collections and supporting exhibitions is considered
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The Many Meanings of Objects in Museums 169
desirable, but their absence is not disabling.
. . .”3 In response,
many museums set about creating more than one set of rules?
one for accessioned objects, and another for exhibitions mate
rial?and began to understand that the handkable material
they used in their classes (their teaching collections) should be
governed by a different set of criteria as well.
Nevertheless, there were often no easy distinctions between
the handkablity of teaching collections’ objects and those oth
ers deserving preservation. The Boston Children’s Museum
loan boxes, for example, created in the 1960s, contained easy
to-obtain material about Northeast Native Americans. But by
the 1980s, the remaining material was retired from the loan
boxes and accessioned into the collections because it was no
longer obtainable and had become rare and valuable.
Even purpose-built “environments” have, in cases such as the
synagogue models in the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv,
become so intriguing or are of such craftsmanship that they,
decades later, become collections’ objects themselves. So, too,
have the exhibitions created by distinguished artists, such as
parts of Charles and Ray Eames’s exhibit Mathematical A
World of Numbers and Beyond.
Dioramas were often built for a museum exhibition hall in
order to put objects (mostly animals) in context. These display
techniques, which were considered a craft at the time they were
created, were occasionally of such beauty, and displayed artis
tic conventions of realism (and seeming realism) so special, that
today the original dioramas themselves have become “objects,”
and many are subject to preservation, accession, and special
display. The definition of objects suitable for collections has,
therefore, expanded to include, in special cases, material built
for the museum itself.
WHAT IS REAL? IS THE EXPERIENCE THE OBJECT?
In the nineteenth century, some museums had and displayed
sculptural plaster castings and studies. The Louvre and other
museums had rooms devoted to copies of famous sculptures
that the museum did not own. The originals either remained in
situ or were held by others. People came to see, study, and paint
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170 Elaine Heumann Gurian
these reproductions. They were treated with the respect ac
corded the real thing. For a long time, museums and their
publics have felt that though there were differences between
the “original” and reproductions, both had a place within their
walls.
Similarly, reconstructed skeletons of dinosaurs have long
appeared in museums. They usually are
a combination of the
bones of the species owned by the museums plus the casting of
the missing bones from the same species owned by someone
else. Sometimes museums point out which part is real and
which is cast, but often they do not. “Real,” therefore, takes on
new meaning. Curators recognize that the experience of seeing
the whole skeleton is more “real,” and certainly more informa
tive, than seeing only the authentic, unattached bones that do
not add up to a complete or understandable image.
Likewise, multiples or limited editions were always consid
ered “real” as long as the intention of the artist was respected.
Thus, the fact that Rodin and many others authorized the
multiple production of some pieces did not seem
to make each
one any less real or less unique. The creation of additional,
though still limited, copies, using the same etching plates, but
after the death of the artist, caused more problems. But often,
while acknowledging the facts of the edition, such works also
hung in museums and, if the quality was good, were accessioned
into their collections.
IS THE IMAGE THE OBJECT?
The twentieth century’s invention of new technologies has made
multiples the norm and made determining what is real and what
that means much more difficult. While original prints of movies,
for example, exist, it is the moving image that the public thinks
of as the object rather than the master print of film. Questions
of authenticity revolve around subsequent manipulation of the
image (e.g., colorization, cutting, or cropping) rather than the
contents of any particular canister.
Printed editions with identical multiples are considered origi
nals, and become more valuable, if signed; unsigned editions
are considered less “real” and certainly less valuable. In such
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The Many Meanings of Objects in Museums 171
cases one could say that the signature, rather than the image,
becomes the object. Photographs printed by the photographer
may be considered more real than those using the same nega
tive but printed by someone else. With the invention of digital
technology, many identical images can be reproduced at will
without recourse to any negative at all. So the notion of authen
ticity (meaning singularity or uniqueness) becomes problematic
as images indistinguishable from those in museums are easily
available outside the museum. It is the artist’s sensibility that
produced the image. It is the image itself, therefore, that is the
object.
IS THE STORY THE OBJECT?
Of the utilitarian objects of the twentieth century, most are
manufactured in huge quantities and therefore could be termed
“examples.” Which of these objects to collect often then de
pends not upon the object itself but on an associated story that
may render one of them unique or important.
The objects present in the death camps of the Holocaust
were, in the main, created for use elsewhere. There is nothing
unique in the physicality of a bowl that comes from Auschwitz
Birkenau. These bowls could have been purchased in shops that
sold cheap tableware all over Germany at the time. However,
when the visitor reads the label that says the bowl comes from
Auschwitz, the viewer, knowing something about the Holo
caust, transfers meaning to the object. Since there is nothing
aside from the label that makes the bowl distinctive, it is not the
bowl itself but its associated history that forms importance for
the visitor.
DOES THE CULTURAL CONTEXT MAKE THE OBJECT?
As Foucault and many others have written, objects lose their
meaning without the viewer’s knowledge and acceptance of
underlying aesthetic or cultural values. Without such knowl
edge, an object’s reification even within its own society cannot
be understood. Often the discomfort of novice visitors to art
museums has to do with their lack of understanding of the
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172 Elaine Heumann Gurian
cultural aesthetics that the art on display either challenges or
affirms.
By accessioning or displaying objects, the creators of mu
seum exhibitions are creating or enhancing these objects’ value.
Further, society’s acceptance of the value of museums them
selves likewise transfers value to their objects. When museums
receive gifts or bequests from a major donor’s holdings, they
are inheriting?and then passing on?a set of value judgments
from someone who is essentially hidden from the visitor’s view.
A particular aesthetic pervades such museums because of the
collections they house and the collectors who gave the objects
in the first place.
This issue of values determining choice comes into sharper
focus when museums begin acquiring or presenting collections
from cultures whose aesthetic might be different. When install
ing a show of African material in an American art museum,
should the curator show pieces based on the values inherent in
the producing culture (i.e., focusing on the objects that attain
special aesthetic value within that culture), or should the cura
tor pick objects that appeal more to the aesthetic of his or her
own culture? This question, the source of much debate, arises
when museums attempt to diversify their holdings to include
works created by a foreign (or even an assimilated) culture
quite different from that which produced the majority of their
holdings. For example, the selection of which African or Latino
art to accession or show has to do not with authenticity but
with quality. The notion of quality has been sharply debated
between the scholar within the museum and the peoples repre
senting the culture of the maker. So the question becomes: who
selects the objects and by what criteria?
In material created by indigenous artists, the native commu
nity itself sometimes disagrees internally as to whether the
material is native or belongs to a modern tradition that crosses
cultural boundary lines. Some within the native population also
argue about the birthright of the artist; blood quantum, tradi
tional upbringing, and knowledge of the language sometimes
have considerable bearing on whether artists and their cre
ations are considered native. In such cases, the decision about
what is quality work that should be housed in a museum may
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The Many Meanings of Objects in Museums 173
have little to do with the object itself and more to do with the
genealogy of the producer.
WHAT IF YOUR STORY HAS NO OBJECTS OR DOES NOT NEED
THEM? IS THE ABSENCE OF OBJECTS THE OBJECT?
Most collections were created by wealthy people who acquired
things of interest and value to themselves. The everyday objects
of nonvalued or subjugated peoples were usually not collected.
Often the people in the lowest economic strata could hardly
wait to exchange their objects for those that were more valued,
giving no thought, at the time, to the preservation of the dis
carded material. So it goes for most peoples during their most
impoverished historical periods. Accordingly, their museums
must choose among a narrow band of choices?do not tell that
part of their history, recreate the artifacts and environments, or
use interpretative techniques that do not rely on material evi
dence.
The Museum of the Diaspora in Israel, struggling with this
issue more than twenty-five years ago, decided to tell the
complete story of five thousand years of Jewish migration
without using a single authentic artifact. It elected to create
tableaux that reproduced physical surroundings in an illustra
tive manner based on scholarly research into pictorial and
written documentation of all kinds. The museum did so because
its collection could not accurately or comprehensively tell the
story, and a presentation of settings that appeared “like new”
honored the history of Jewish migration more than an assort
ment of haphazard authentic artifacts showing their age and
wear. The experience, wholly fabricated but three-dimensional,
became the object. It presented a good public experience, many
argued, but still did not qualify as a “museum.” Ultimately, this
total re-creation was accepted as a highly distinguished mu
seum. The Museum of the Diaspora also presented movies,
photos, and recordings in a publicly accessible form, arguing
that a comprehensive presentation required material that was
non-artifactual.
The U.S. African-American and Native American communi
ties have suggested, in the same vein, that their primary cul
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174 Elaine Heumann Gurian
tural transmission is accomplished through oral language, dance,
and song?vehicles that are ephemeral. Their central artifacts,
or objects, if you will, are not dimensional at all, and museums
that wish to transmit the accuracy of such cultures, or display
historical periods for which material evidence is not available,
must learn to employ more diverse material. It may be the
performance that is the object, for example. And the perfor
mance space might need to be indistinguishable from the exhibit
hall. As museums struggle to do this, one begins to see videos
of ceremonies and hear audio chanting. Such techniques, for
merly thought of as augmentation rather than core interpreta
tion, have increasingly taken on the role and function previ
ously played by collection objects.
Even in museums like Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame or the soon-to-be-opened Experience Music Project, it is
the sound and performance of the artists that is the artifact
much more than the stationary guitar that, say, Jimi Hendrix
once used. Indeed, musical instrument archives at the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts and other places have long struggled with
the proper presentation of their “artifacts.” “Silent musical
instruments” approaches
an oxymoron.
HOW IS THE OBJECT TO BE PRESERVED?
IS THE OBJECT TO BE USED?
The museum, in accepting an object for its collection, takes on
the responsibility for its care. In doing so, collections managers
follow rules organized for the safety and long-term preserva
tion of the objects. Climate control, access restrictions, and
security systems are all issues of concern to those who care for
objects. Institutions devoted to music or performance transform
the notion of collections and certainly the notion of preserva
tion, because while it is true that most things are preserved
better when left alone, some musical instruments are not among
them. They are preserved better if played, and so, for example
at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History, they are.
Likewise, many native people have successfully argued that
accessioned material should be used in the continuance of cer
emony and tradition. Artifacts, rather than being relinquished
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The Many Meanings of Objects in Museums 175
to isolated preservation (and losing their usefulness), are stored
in trust waiting for the time when they must again be used. In
the 1980s, when native people from a specific clan or group
asked for an object to be loaned for a short-term use, this was
a radical notion for most natural history museums. That re
quest now is more common and often accommodated. For ex
ample, at the end of the 1980s, the Dog Soldiers of the Northern
Cheyenne requested their pipe, which the Smithsonian’s Na
tional Museum of Natural History holds, and used it in their
ceremonies, after which it was returned to the museum.
Now, native museums and, less commonly, some general
museums that hold native material accept objects into their
collections with the express understanding that they will be
loaned out and used when needed. The notion of a museum as
a storehouse in perpetuity has, in these instances, evolved into
the museum as a revolving loan warehouse. A long-standing
and easily understood example predates this relatively new
development. The Crown Jewels of the British monarchy, which
are displayed in the Tower of London, are worn by the monarch
when he or she is crowned. And so it has been for many
centuries.
WHOSE RULES ARE USED FOR OBJECT CARE?
There are other fundamental rules of collections care that are
successfully being challenged worldwide by native people’s
involvement. Collections care has been predicated on the basic
notion that objects are inanimate. Though some objects were
once alive, they now are no longer, and most had never been
alive. Thus, collections-care policies proceeded from the as
sumption that objects should be preserved in the best manner
possible, avoiding decay from elements, exposure, and use.
Protective coverings and storage cases were designed to do just
that. Extremes in the exposure to light and temperature, and all
manner of pest infestation, were to be avoided. But when the
museum was recognized to be neither the only nor the absolute
arbiter of its material holdings, accommodation to the beliefs of
the producers of the materials or their descendants became
necessary.
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176 Elaine Heumann Gurian
These beliefs often included a lack of distinction between
animate and inanimate. Thus, spirits, “mana,” fields of power,
and life sources could live within an object regardless of the
material from which it was made. And that being so, the care
for these living things, it was argued, is, and should be, quite
different from the care of dead or never alive things. So, for
example, bubble wrap, while an excellent protector of objects,
does not allow for breathing or “singing and dancing at night.”
Those working with native populations in good faith have come
to respect native understanding of their own objects and now
provide for the appropriate life of the object. Some objects need
to be fed, some need to be protected from their enemies, some
need to be isolated from menstruating women. Collections are
no longer under the absolute province of the professional
caregivers. Storage facilities that accommodate the native un
derstanding of their objects require new architectural designs
that allow for ceremony for some and isolation from the curious
for others.
WHO OWNS THE COLLECTIONS?
This change in collections use and care alters the notion of the
museum as owner of its collections and opens the door to
multiple definitions of ownership. These new definitions have
far-reaching implications. If tribal communities can determine
the use, presentation, and care of objects “owned” by muse
ums, can the descendants of an artist? Can the victims or
perpetrators of a war event? In the recent Smithsonian Na
tional Museum of Air and Space Enola Gay exhibition contro
versy, it was the veterans who flew the plane and their World
War II associates who ultimately controlled the access to,
presentation of, and interpretation of the object. Ownership or
legal title to an object does not convey the simple,
more abso
lute meaning it did when I began in the museum field.
The notion that if you buy something from a person who
controlled it in the past, then it is yours to do with as you wish
is clearly under redefinition in a number of fields. What consti
tutes clear title? Under what rules does stolen material need to
be returned? What is stolen, in any case? Do the Holocaust
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The Many Meanings of Objects in Museums 177
victims’ paintings and the Elgin Marbles have anything in com
mon? The issue is so complex and varied that countries forge
treaties to try to determine which items of their patrimony
should be returned. Similarly, museums in countries like New
Zealand, Canada, and Australia have developed accords that,
in some cases, give dual ownership to collections. Museums and
the native populations then jointly control the presentation,
care, and even return of the objects, or museums give owner
ship to the native populations, who, in turn, allow the museum
to hold the objects in trust. Ownership has developed a complex
meaning.
IF I OWN IT CAN I HAVE IT BACK, PLEASE?
Some of this blurring of ownership began with native people
maintaining that some items should not be in the hands of
museums regardless of their history. That this would be claimed
for human remains held in collections was easy to understand.
Almost all cultures do something ceremonial and intentional
with the remains of their people, which, in almost all instances,
does not include leaving bodies for study in boxes on shelves. So
when native people started to call for the return of their ances
tors’ remains, there was an intuitive understanding of the prob
lem in most circles. This, however, did not make it any easier
for the paleontologists and forensic curators whose life work
had centered on the access to these bones, nor for the museum
goer whose favorite museum memories had to do with shrunken
heads, mummies, or prehistoric human remains. The arguments
that emanated from both sides were understandable and diffi
cult to reconcile. It was a clear clash of world views and belief
systems. To the curators it seemed that removal of human
remains within museum collections would result in the unwar
ranted triumph of cultural tradition and emotionalism over
scientific objectivity and the advancement of knowledge.
As it turned out, the Native American Grave Protection and
Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)4 made clear that Native Ameri
can tribes had rights to the return of their sacred material and
to their ancestors’ remains and associated grave goods, regard
less of the method by which museums had acquired the mate
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178 Elaine Heumann Gurian
rial. However, the emptying of collections into native commu
nities, as predicted by the most fearful, did not happen. Rather,
museums and native communities, working together in good
faith, moved into an easier and more coll?gial relationship, as
between equals. In most cases, the objects returned are care
fully chosen and returned with due solemnity. Some tribes have
chosen to allow some forensic samples to be saved, or studied
prior to reburial, and some have reinterred their ancestors in
ways that could allow for future study should the native com
munity wish it.
NAGPRA struck a new balance between the world view of
most museums and their staff (which endorsed a rational and
scientific model of discourse and allowed for access to as much
information as could be gathered) and the spiritual interests of
traditional native peoples. A variety of museum practices were
broadened, and visitors began to see the interpretation of exhi
bitions changed to include multiple side-by-side explanations of
the same objects. For example, Wolves, an exhibition created
by the Science Museum of Minnesota, presented scientific data,
native stories, conservation and hunting controversies, and
physiological information together in an evenhanded way. An
argument for multiple interpretations began to be heard in
natural history museums whose comfort level in the past had
not permitted the inclusion of spiritual information in formats
other than anthropological myth.
HOW OLD IS AN OBJECT?
The scientific dating of artifacts used in religious practices
often holds little relevance to the believers. When an object
such as the Shroud of Turin, for example, is carbon dated and
shown to be insufficiently? old, the problem of writing its mu
seum label becomes complex. An object held in TePapa, the
Museum of New Zealand, was returned to an iwi (tribe) that
requested it, with all the solemnity and ceremony appropriate.
So too went records of its age and material composition, at
variance with beliefs held by the Maori people. But if, as the
Maori believe, spirit or mana migrates from one piece to it’s
replacement (rendering the successor indistinguishable from its
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The Many Meanings of Objects in Museums 179
more ancient equivalent), then what relevance is the fact that
dates or materials are at variance? The object’s cultural es
sence is as old as they say.
Similarly, when restoration of landmarks includes the re
placement of their elements (as is routinely the case in Japanese
shrines), the landmark is said to be dated from its inception
even though no material part of it remains from that time. That
does not upset us. So even something so seemingly rational and
historical as dating is up for interpretation.
THE OBJECT IS OFF-LIMITS. IT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS
Museums, even in their earliest incarnations as cabinets of
curiosities, were available to all interested eyes or at least to
those allowed to have access by the owners of the cabinets. In
fact, part and parcel of conquest and subjugation was the
access to interesting bits of the subjugated. This assumption
that everything was fair game held currency for a long time.
Though the notion of secret and sacred was also understood
(for example, no one but the faithful could enter Mecca), this
concept did not attach to museums nor to the holdings thereof.
If a museum owned it, the visitors could see it if the curator/
staff wished them to.
So it came as a surprise to some curators that contemporary
native peoples began to make demands on museums to return
not only human remains but material that was sacred and once
secret. Accommodations negotiated between the museums and
the native people sometimes led to agreements to leave the
material in the museum but to limit viewing access. The notion
that one people, the museum curators, would voluntarily limit
their own and others’ access to material owned by museums
came initially as a shock to the museum system. But under the
leadership of sympathetic museum and native people and, fur
ther, under the force of NAGPRA, museums began to under
stand that all material was not to be made available to all
interested parties.
It was the beginning of the “It is none of your business”
concept of museum objects. It held that the people most inti
mately concerned with and related to the material could deter
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180 Elaine Heumann Gurian
mine the access to that material. In many cultures sacred cer
emonies are open to all, and the objects in use are available for
view in museum settings, but that too may change. For ex
ample, in Jewish tradition, Torahs once desecrated are sup
posed to be disposed of by burial in a prescribed manner. Yet
some of these are available for view, most notably at the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum. There may come a time
when such artifacts are petitioned to be removed for burial
even though the statement they make is powerful.
WHO SAYS ALL OBJECTS NEED TO BE PRESERVED?
Ownership is not always an issue; sometimes it is the preserva
tion of the object itself that needs examination. Museums have
felt their most fundamental responsibility extended to the pres
ervation of the object, yet in returning human remains to the
earth, artifacts are being intentionally destroyed. That was
difficult to reconcile for those trained in preservation. Even
more difficult was the belief that not all things made by hand
were intended to be preserved; perhaps some should be allowed
to be destroyed. The Zuni war gods preserved by museums
were returned to the Zuni tribe when it was successfully proven
that these could only have been stolen from grave sites. But
even more difficult was the Zuni’s assertion that these objects
were created to accompany the dead, and that preservation of
them was therefore anathema. The war gods were returned to
the Zuni, who watched over the gradual decay of these objects
as they returned to the earth. In effect, the Zuni were entitled
to destroy the objects that the museums had so carefully preserved.
The notion of preservation has, therefore, also been blurred.
Museum personnel began to wrestle with the notion that all
people do not hold preservation of all objects as a universal
good. The Tibetan Lamas who create exquisite sand paintings
only to destroy them later would certainly understand this.
THE OBJECT SPEAKS
I would be remiss if I did not also acknowledge the power of
some objects to speak directly to the visitor, for example, in the
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The Many Meanings of Objects in Museums 181
sensual pleasure brought about by viewing unique original
objects of spectacular beauty. But the notion that objects, per
se, can communicate directly and meaningfully is under much
scrutiny. The academicians of material culture, anthropology,
history, and other fields are engaged in parsing the ways in
which humans decode objects in order to figure out what infor
mation is intrinsic to the object itself, what requires associated
knowledge gleaned from another source, and what is embedded
in cultural tradition.
In some ways, it is because of this parallel contemporary
inquiry into the “vocabulary” of objects that I can inquire into
the object’s changing role in the definition of museums.
WHAT ARE MUSEUMS IF THEY ARE LESS OBJECT-BASED?
Museum staff intuitively understand that museums are impor
tant?an understanding that the public shares. However, espe
cially for the public, this understanding does not always revolve
around the objects, though objects are, like props, essential to
most museums’ purposes: making an implicit thesis visible and
tangible. The nature of the thesis can range from explanation of
the past to advocacy for a contemporary viewpoint to indica
tion of possible future directions?in each case through a me
dium that presents a story in sensory form.
Museums will remain responsible for the care of the objects
they house and collect, but the notion of responsibility will be,
and has already been, broadened to include shared ownership,
appropriate use, and, potentially, removal and return.
The foundational definition of museums will, in the long run,
I believe, arise not from objects, but from “place” and
“storytelling in tangible sensory form,” where citizenry can
congregate in a spirit of cross-generational inclusivity and in
quiry into the memory of our past, a forum for our present, and
aspirations for our future.
Coming back to definitions, the current definition of muse
ums used by the Accreditation Program of the AAM encom
passes all museums and no longer separates them by categories.
Museums, in this definition, “… present regularly scheduled
programs and exhibits that use and interpret objects for the
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182 Elaine Heumann Gurian
public according to accepted standards; have a formal and
appropriate program of documentation, care, and use of collec
tions and/or tangible objects.
. . .”5
For the visitor, it is the experience of simultaneously being in
a social and often celebratory space while focusing on a multi
sensory experience that makes a museum effective. Virtual
experiences in the privacy of one’s home may be enlightening
but, I think, are not part of the civilizing experience that muse
ums provide. It is the very materiality of the building, the
importance of the architecture, and the prominence that cities
give to museum location that together make for the august
place that museums hold. Congregant space will, I believe,
remain a necessary ingredient of the museum’s work.
The objects that today’s museums responsibly care for, pro
tect, and cherish will remain central to their presentations. But
the definition of “objectness” will be broad and allow for every
possible method of storymaking. These more broadly defined
objects range from hard evidence to mere props and ephemera.
I hope I have shown that objects
are certainly not exclusively
real nor even necessarily “tangible” (even though the AAM
uses that word). For it is the story told, the message given, and
the ability of social groups to experience it together that pro
vide the essential ingredients of making a museum important.
Museums are social-service providers (not always by doing
direct social-service work, though many do that), because they
are spaces belonging to the citizenry at large, expounding on
ideas that inform and stir the population to contemplate and
occasionally to act.
Museums are not unique in their work. Rather, they share a
common purpose with a host of other institutions. We need
museums and their siblings because we need collective history
set in congregant locations in order to remain civilized. Societ
ies build these institutions because they authenticate the social
contract. They are collective evidence that we
were here.
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The Many Meanings of Objects in Museums 183
ENDNOTES
luFor the purposes of the accreditation program of the AAM, a museum is de
fined as an organized and permanent non-profit institution, essentially educa
tional or aesthetic in purpose, with professional staff, which
owns and utilizes
tangible objects,
cares for them, and exhibits them to the public
on some regu
lar schedule.” American Association of Museums, Museum Accreditation:
Professional Standards (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Muse
ums, 1973), 8.
2″. . .owns and utilizes tangible things animate and inanimate.” Ibid., 9.
3An art center “utilizes borrowed art objects, cares for them and maintains re
sponsibility to their
owners . . . [its] primary function is to plan and carry out
exhibitions.” Ibid., 12. A science and technology center “… maintains and
utilizes exhibits and/or objects for the presentation and interpretation of sci
entific and technological knowledge.
.. . These serve primarily
as tools for
communicating what is known of the subject matter. …” Ibid., 12. A
planetarium’s “… principal function is
to provide educational information
on astronomy and related sciences through lectures and demonstrations.”
Ibid., 11.
4Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (25 U.S.C. 3002).
5American Association of Museums, A Higher Standard: The Museum Accredi
tation Handbook (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums,
1997), 20.
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- Article Contents
- Issue Table of Contents
p. 163
p. 164
p. 165
p. 166
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p. 168
p. 169
p. 170
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p. 181
p. 182
p. 183
Daedalus, Vol. 128, No. 3, America’s Museums (Summer, 1999), pp. I-XIV, 1-338
Front Matter
Preface to the Issue “America’s Museums” [pp. V-XIV]
Muses, Museums, and Memories [pp. 1-31]
The Divided House of the American Art Museum [pp. 33-56]
On Museum Row: Aesthetics and the Politics of Exhibition [pp. 57-81]
Museum Exhibitions and the Dynamics of Dialogue [pp. 83-107]
An Agenda for American Museums in the Twenty-First Century [pp. 109-128]
Museums of the Future: The Impact of Technology on Museum Practices [pp. 129-162]
What Is the Object of This Exercise? A Meandering Exploration of the Many Meanings of Objects in Museums [pp. 163-183]
Museums as Centers of Controversy [pp. 185-228]
From Being about Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum [pp. 229-258]
Museums as Institutions for Personal Learning [pp. 259-275]
In Search of Relevance: Science Centers as Innovators in the Evolution of Museums [pp. 277-296]
Formed and Forming: Contemporary Museum Architecture [pp. 297-320]
Is “The Idea of a Museum” Possible Today? [pp. 321-326]
Museums: An Alternate Typology [pp. 327-332]
On the Museum of the Twenty-First Century: An Homage to Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” [pp. 333-337]
Back Matter