In a more recent edition of Freeman’s book the author identifies the following groups as stakeholders: shareowners, employees, customers, suppliers, lenders and society[3]. According to Freeman: The task of executives is to create as much value as possible for stakeholders without resorting to tradeoffs. Here, Freeman is referring to some form of economic capital; not cultural value. It causes one to think that if the author sees society as a stakeholder and value was maximized without tradeoffs, then perhaps any instances of the latter potentially being an issue were rationalized as nullified once a financial cost was assigned and paid to adversely impacted stakeholders. While stakeholder-based business policy is to some extent minimize economic harm to the community that supports it, there is no guarantee a business won’t contribute to the hardship a segment of society may experience, particularly those without a stake in the business. Understandably, a business must prioritize its own survival over aiding those who might only be weakly connected to its administration, or in Smith’s earlier terminology- and counterpoint to those with perfect rights- those with only imperfect rights. Corporate social responsibility policy might, in today’s language, describe those that only have a moral basis for need, not a contractual right.

Do we really like to think we are gambling with cultural heritage or see it simply as being assigned a monetary value? In the economics-based dimension of the word, the stakeholder obtains value from their stake but with cultural heritage, it is the ‘stakeholder’ that has ‘value’ to offer in the form of knowledge and insight. In cultural heritage, ‘stakeholders’ are sought for their knowledge. I would hope part of a cultural heritage specialist’s job is to find an equitable and respectful way to involve and utilize such people by compensating them for their time, expenses, and insight. Perhaps there is a better word that reinforces the depth and flow of knowledge such a person can offer.

Currently, a ‘stakeholder’ in culture studies might be able to explain some component of the object or site’s context and meaning(s), method of manufacture, ways it might be activated, exhibited, or viewed; and ultimately, how it might be cared for. These are all critical things. The item being researched may be art, a designed object with a particular function or history, it may also be a symbolic object or a piece of immovable heritage such as a building or site that is significant to a particular culture or group of cultures. As individuals our own culture may be shared by only a few or we might find many others with the same background; it may be dispersed or highly localized. The background or qualities that define a specific culture may be inherited or uncertain, by chance or choice, or any number of these intersecting factors. Regardless, each cultural subset is not necessarily homogeneous in their values but nevertheless find a common ground related to having a ‘stake’ in how their shared culture is respected and considered in the present and future. Today, most professionals in the field try, in some way, to reduce or eliminate beforehand any displeasure others may express if a work important to them is disrespected or harmed in any way. However, these interactions, particularly between unfamiliar communities can be improved and perhaps finding a simple and unambiguous word with a singular meaning will help.

Around the same time Stakeholder Theory was introduced in business management the word was used in other contexts. For instance, local government and environmental groups use stakeholder to indicate they have an openness and structure for input from individuals outside their organization on various decisions or policies. It is possible that these benevolent applications come directly from Stakeholder Theory in that, as previously stated above, they may help with Freeman’s explanation where he mentions avoiding tradeoffs and that society should somehow be a beneficiary. Ian Edwards, a writer and environmental advocate, points out that two important ‘stakeholders’ are not being considered: nature and the future[4]. A culture’s ability to adapt is admirable and in some ways healthy, but creating the conditions where this change is needed because of a business plan is unfortunate. The meaning of the word is highly contextual: a person with interests in preservation of a culture or natural habitat might be at odds with someone who is a stakeholder in a business.

I find the ‘winner take all’ mentality of the word’s origins troubling. It suggests an unwillingness to compromise or see another person’s perspective. This might work well for some sports and reality contests but it is unsuitable for building an understanding about culture and art. If there was one clear winner, wouldn’t we want for it to be the culture or work we’re investigating through a more thoroughly understood meaning of what it represents? In nineteenth century America, it would have been plausible to use the word stakeholder in the context of acquiring land originally inhabited by indigenous peoples. In fact, the blogger B. Joseph notes it is one of the nine terms to avoid when communicating with some indigenous peoples[5]. Is it proper then that the field leads a mission of inclusion with a word that some find offensive and whose origin and dominant use runs counter to its mission? Furthermore, I’m concerned that a collective of those who each have something at stake may have chosen the definition of stakeholder that works best for them. This is a particular concern when thinking about arts fundraising from the business sector. It’s possible that the one person or organization who has dedicated a large sum of money for a particular project may appear benevolent but also believe they have a prominent voice and thus entitled to being a decision-maker at some stage of the process.

Collaborators is a word that has been used, but less frequently, to imply the same. Why hasn’t that word been used more often? It’s meaning is rooted in working together; literally glue (Gr. kolla) + labor. Is it the preexisting usage in academics suggesting collaborators can only be colleagues with academic training that dissuades a broader use? If so, who is implying collaborators can only come from academic institutions? Is it not possible for an investigator with a graduate degree to see someone with a depth of experience and knowledge but little or no academic education as a collaborator? Perhaps it is the lesser used reference to working with the enemy, a term used to suggest spying. Or perhaps some very much needed collaborators may be reluctant to engage partly because others involved with the group may have or be perceived to have qualities foreign to them or possess the antithesis of their own values. In collaborating, the onus should be on the one seeking information to understand the origins of these attitudes, document both their own thinking and the efforts made to include a much-needed person or group.

Maybe there’s another phrase we could use, such as ‘Parties’, ‘Agents’ or ‘Experts’ preceded by ‘Interested’, ‘Impactful’, ‘Beneficial’, or ‘Integral’? Of course, there are pros and cons to each permutation but none would bring the original and negative connotation of stakeholder or the potentially charged interpretation of collaborator as being elitist or one interested in counterintelligence. Perhaps there is someone else with a background different from mine that can provide a better word. I fear the word ‘stakeholder’ privileges the appropriated audiences that the object’s creator or their community may not be aware of or whose values they may not agree with but obtain through a financial commitment a more prominent voice. This is a form of enterprise that could be either self-centered, revisionist, commerce based, or even Imperialistic. Currently, there is, at a minimum, a bimodal distribution of ‘stakeholders’ and this is problematic and sends a mixed message. Sticking with it runs the risk of those who choose the definition that best fits their agenda use it as their justification for involvement and try to leverage it to their advantage.

One aspect of the origins of stakeholders that I think could bear some fruit for cultural heritage is the fact that gamblers are willing to enter into a bet because they trust that their stakeholder is unbiased and will be fair. The stakeholder must be trusted by all. That is not a trait that one can assign to oneself and have it be taken seriously. There are multiple forms in which this trust must be well established: not only is it critical that the leader and those consulted trust each other, each participant must be trusted by the community they represent. Otherwise, it runs the risk of appearing like a project with an agenda. Perhaps museum and cultural heritage professionals should be thinking as carefully about building trusting relationships as much as they think about the topics they decide to study. While arbitrators and diplomats may have occasionally used words fraught with confusing or conflicting meanings, they strive to reach terms and write agreements using unambiguous language so that there is clarity on all sides and their trust remains unchallenged. Shouldn’t we, as cultural heritage professionals, strive to use terms that ensure everyone we work with, regardless of background, has a common understanding of the unique roles each of us serve?

If you have any thoughts to share, please head over to my LinkedIn group, Stakeholders: good for culture?

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14097745/

References

(1) Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C.; The Oxford English Dictionary; Oxford University Press, 1991.

(2) Freeman, R. E. Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach; Pitman: Boston, 1984.

(3) Freeman, R. E. Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach; Cambridge University Press, 2010.

(4) Edwards, I. Sustainability’s Missing Stakeholders: Nature and the Future. https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2015/sustainabilitys-missing-stakeholders-nature-and-future/35081 (accessed 2022–06–29).

(5) Joseph, B. 9 Terms to Avoid in Communications with Indigenous Peoples. https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/9-terms-to-avoid-in-communications-with-indigenous-peoples (accessed 2022–06–29).

In 1922, the Moscow-based Latvian-born artist Gustav Klutsis (1895–1938) designed a series of dynamic communication devices for Moscow’s streets and squares. Sparked by the historical coincidence of two events in the early life of the Soviet Union — the fifth anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) — these devices, called “radio orators,” were to display pro-Soviet agitprop slogans and both still and moving images and offer newspapers and journals for sale.

Though never fully realized, we know of Klutsis’s ambitions to imagine a means of revolutionary communication that would activate and agitate the populace thanks to a series of drawings in which he envisioned the details of the radio orator in extraordinarily diverse, intricate, and complex ways. Most of these drawings now reside in the collections of The Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga; the Costakis Collection of the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Greece; and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. In 1979, The Museum of Modern Art acquired a three-dimensional rendering related to the project: a work known as Maquette for Radio-Announcer, dated 1922, and said to have been made by Klutsis (Figure 1, above). The Maquette was purchased from an art dealer in Paris just as it was about to be featured in the landmark exhibition Paris/Moscow 1900–1930 at the Centre Georges Pompidou. Since its acquisition, the Maquette has often been on view at MoMA, typically in galleries devoted to the Soviet avant-garde. It was believed to be the only extant sculpture by Klutsis.

In 2010, Jodi Hauptman, Senior Curator in MoMA’s Department of Drawings and Prints, and Maria Gough, The Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Professor of Modern Art at Harvard University and an authority on Klutsis’s work — her book on the radio orators, How to Make a Revolutionary Object, is due out from Inventory Press next year — began collaborating on an exhibition devoted to Klutsis’s radio orator drawings. Given the opportunity to study a work by Klutsis, and with the idea that the Maquette would play a role in the exhibition, they partnered with members of MoMA’s David Booth Conservation Center and Department to look closely at the object’s making and history. As MoMA’s curatorial/conservation partnerships have been tremendously fruitful, the curators and the Conservation team — Senior Conservator Karl Buchberg, Conservator Lynda Zycherman, and I — were especially excited about what this investigation would yield.

The Scientific Investigation

We began by examining the work together, one observation provoking another, and each of us brought our own expertise to bear. We noted and took stock of the Maquette’s basic materials: paper, wood, string, brads, and white, red, and black paint. As a conservation scientist, I use analytical tools to understand the composition of a work of art and how it is made. Many of these tools have greatly improved in recent years, wholly transforming the field and our approach to works of art. For the Maquette, I examined many components, used a variety of analytic tools, and traveled across the globe to study works by Klutsis. Each step, whether with the object or with other works by Klutsis, and each part of the examination, whether with my own eyes or through the lens of the latest scientific technologies, provided information about the construction of the Maquette.

After the initial visual examination, I began my work by testing the bright white paint that can be seen in one of the speakers, the sound drivers at the base of each speaker’s interior, the antennae, and the wooden structure. X-ray fluorescence detected titanium and X-ray diffraction and Raman spectrometry were used subsequent to this discovery because they are able to differentiate the various crystal structures of titanium dioxide. Through these tests, I found that the pigment used on the Maquette was rutile titanium white, a pigment that was only available after Klutsis’s death in 1938. I wondered if the presence of titanium white indicated a later touch-up or repair, but it appears to be the first application of paint in many areas, a detail that can be seen in the way the paint fills the pores in the oak. The discovery of the titanium pigment and its application raised questions about the Maquette’s authorship and dating, casting doubt on Klutsis’s role in its making. So, even after an embargo on loans from Russia to the US forced the postponement of the planned exhibition, research continued, and I took the lead on investigating the issues raised by the Maquette.

I traveled to Riga, Moscow, and Thessaloniki, where I could study examples of Klutsis’s drawings. Together, these visits enabled me to study the breadth of his artistic career and also concentrate on his radio-announcer works. By traveling with handheld X-ray fluorescence equipment (XRF), I was able to identify the elemental composition of the pigments used in these drawings directly, without having to remove any samples. This was a highly efficient approach that allowed me to analyze his most important drawings in a short time. With those works I was able to confirm that he used zinc white throughout his career, never a titanium-based white.

Further analysis of the sculpture’s elements using microscopes and a variety of spectroscopic tools revealed that the Maquette includes both some materials available during Klutsis’s lifetime and many more available only after his death. Only two parts could possibly date from the early 1920s, when the Maquette was believed to have been made: one speaker and the small box on which it is glued (Figure 2, above). This determination was made by taking small samples of paper fibers from hidden areas and examining them under a microscope. The paper fibers were found to consist primarily of mechanically prepared softwood and some grass fiber, traits indicative of paper made in the 1920s or earlier. Interestingly, no titanium was detected in the white paint of this earlier speaker. The other speaker, however, is unlikely to date from the early 1920s by virtue of the level of softwood bleached kraft-process fiber identified. Likewise, the sculpture’s four antenna “fins” with text and graphics use papers that were most likely produced after 1950, an assessment based on the large amount of hardwood bleached kraft fibers found in two separate samples. Dating of samples from the white oak base using bomb carbon analysis was undertaken, but proved inconclusive.

While the papers used in the two speakers differ in age, both appear to have been glued up at the same time, later than the supposed date of the work. The border between the black-and-white graphic bursts emanating from the sound-driver inside each speaker has a coating of polyvinyl acetate (PVA), a material that was not available in 1922. This was detected using a microscope fitted with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). FTIR is a useful way to classify the organic components of an unknown material, and it works particularly well for polymers like PVA. The purpose of the coating may have been to act as a barrier to prevent paint-bleed as subsequent applications of adhesive and paint were applied to finish the speaker, or it may have helped give a clean edge as the paints were being applied. Regardless, the attachment of both sound-drivers is so strong that paper fibers from the interior of the speaker pulled away in areas that did not have this coating (Figure 3, below). This observation confirms that the coating goes into the deepest recesses of the speaker and was most likely applied when the paper was flat. PVA became available in Germany in the late 1930s and it is unlikely that Klutsis would have had access to this material prior to 1938. All of this suggests that the speakers were assembled some time after Klutsis’s death. Thus, even if some of the elements were made in the 1920s, they could not have existed as a three-dimensional structure at that time. When taking into account the date of the paper used for the construction of the antenna fins, the earliest date the work could have been assembled is 1950.

Comparison with Klutsis’s Drawings

After examining Klutsis’s drawings in Riga, Moscow, and Thessaloniki, I found a number of discrepancies between the approach to construction in the Maquette and the rendering of the drawings. The drawings display Klutsis’s adept handling of pencil and paintbrush. With and without magnification, one can see what his measure was for considering something complete. Ways that certain details in the Maquette are rendered differ from their handling in the drawings. For example, in the uppermost layers of the composition, in some areas of the black-and-white burst pattern of the speakers, and in some markings around the Cyrillic at the top, there are fine pencil lines — observed under magnification — that suggest the fabricator was either not quite finished with the work or wanted to strengthen the underdrawing. Whatever the motive was, this kind of detail is not found in the artist’s drawings.

There is also an inconsistency in the use of language between the Maquette and the drawings, which was brought to my attention by Maria Gough. In the drawings, Klutsis conveys the centrality of radio broadcasting to his devices with the phrase “Lenin’s voice” (Ленина). In the case of the drawing that most resembles the Maquette, from the Tretayakov collection, that phrase is rendered across the topmost fins. The Maquette, in fact, appears to be a three-dimensional realization of this drawing, except for the way the phrase is rendered. On the Maquette, that same phrase is written without the possessive: “Lenin Voice” (Ленин). This may indicate a shift in emphasis, by making an equivalence between Lenin and his voice, or may simply be a grammatical mistake. However, it is striking that among the radio orator drawings the construction with the possessive is consistently deployed.

If Klutsis Didn’t Make the Maquette, Who Did? And Why?

Klutsis had, in fact, created sculptures and designed exhibition architecture, but these three-dimensional works are only known through photographs or drawings. Could Klutsis’s widow, Valentina Kulagina, also an artist, have realized a sculpture based on her husband’s drawings or completed a construction he started? The two had indeed worked closely during their lifetimes, and she lived much longer, until 1987. At this point, however, no connections have been documented between Kulagina and the Maquette. Klutsis was also a teacher at the Moscow art academy VKhUTEMAS. Could one of his students have built the Maquette after the drawings? Another intriguing avenue of exploration is a 1967 exhibition in Poland celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Nowa Sztuka Czasanów Rewolucji Pazdziernikowej, organized by Szymon Bojko at the Gallery Wspolczesna, included radio orator models based on research carried out in Moscow. Bojko remembers his models being much taller than MoMA’s, but no documentation of that exhibition has yet been found and, as the exhibition was shut down by authorities, the models are believed to have been destroyed or confiscated. But could one of them have survived and made its way to Paris as an “original?”

So What’s Next?

Given the scientific and art historical evidence, we no longer believe that the Maquette is a work by Gustav Klutsis. Perhaps the most significant and lasting result of this investigation is the knowledge about Klutsis’s work that has been generated. Until now, no conservator or conservation scientist had used the most advanced technologies to examine a work attributed to Klutsis. Thanks to those tools, deployed hand in hand with rigorous art historical scholarship, much has been learned about his overall approach, his drawing techniques, materials then available and how he used them, and his utopian vision for communication technologies. There are still many questions to be answered about the Maquette’s authorship. In the context of the impending anniversary of the Russian Revolution and a renewed focus on the achievements of the artists of the Soviet avant-garde, we hope one day those answers will come to light.

Acknowledgements

Many MoMA colleagues helped with this research, including Jodi Hauptman, Senior Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints; Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Paintings and Sculpture; Karl Buchberg, Senior Paper Conservator (retired); Lynda Zycherman, Sculpture Conservator; and Jim Coddington, Agnes Gund Chief Conservator. Maria Gough, Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Professor of Modern Art (Harvard, Cambridge) was generous in sharing her knowledge on Klutsis and helped formulate my approach to the technical examination of his drawings. Paulina Pobocha, Assistant Curator, Paintings and Sculpture, assisted with translation and our exploration into the 1967 Warsaw exhibition, and Samantha Friedman, Assistant Curator, Drawings and Prints, assisted with research and documentation. I am grateful to MoMA’s International Council and our Mellon Scholars Fund for Research for financial support of my travel and transport of equipment. Marco Leona, David H. Koch Scientist in Charge, and Tony Frantz, Research Scientist (retired), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, provided help with X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy equipment. Colleagues at other institutions with important works by Klutsis were generous with their time and granted me unrestricted access to their collection. These include Iveta Derkusova, Deputy Director for Administration, The Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga; Maria Tsantsanoglou, Director, Angelica Charistou, Curator, and Olga Fota, Conservator, Costakis Collection and Archive, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki; and Natalia Adaskina, Head of the Graphics Department of Twentieth-Century Art, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

A Critical Look: How Science Cast Doubt on a Sculpture Attributed to Gustav Klutsis was originally published in MoMA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.