A Museum Cannot Be Defined
Can it be in this day and age?
I write this piece as news of a second lockdown have been resonating around the world with some countries or regions already back to where things were in February, or quite. This time around, it seems that a sinister deja-vu feeling has made things easier to absorb and adjust and museums are once again adjusting to a new normal that will probably be intermittently the case for months to come. In the meantime, the Network of European Museums Organisations has just launched its second survey taking stock of circumstances that museums are facing. An American Alliance of Museums survey published today suggests that more than half of American Museums have laid off or furloughed staff and that loss of budgeted income for 2020 stands at 35%.
This month’s museum conferences have presented a picture of relative resilience in the face of such adversities. Experimentation has been increasing the case, risks are being taken and to err on the side of caution seems to be a less pursued option. The impact of all this might be early to gauge and I do look forward to what this might be leading to. Indeed, what will the museum idea look become and what will the instituton be in a post-COVID19 world?
Understanding change is a good point of departure.
Yes, sure, let’s go for that.
I find the work of Heather E McGowan, a champion for humans in the learning-centric future of work as most telling in this respect. One of the arguments which struck me, amongst many others, is about the velocity of change and life expectancy increasing close to the centenary mark. As people live longer, societies become increasingly subject to a more frequent cycle of paradigm shifts as generation after generation brings in new modes of thinking. A generation that would be dealing with two, best three paradigm shifts, would now have much more to deal with and the cycle of change much more complex to deal with, embrace and endorse. McGowen says so
We are living longer while adapting and experiencing the greatest velocity of change in human history. Where we once had multiple generations to absorb a paradigm-shifting change like the advent of the steam engine, we will now live through multiple paradigm-shifting changes within a single generation.
McGowan goes on — the success measures of our society have much more to do with learning, agility, adaptability and agency fuelled by purpose. When considering that 65% of the jobs of the future, and the skill-sets that will be sought after, do not exist yet. When considersing that a good percentage of jobs on the market, close to half, will be automated, it is indeed risky to pick a future self and work towards that.
Then comes the COVID-19 pandemic.
McGowan takes her argument further. The rate of technology-driven invention and innovation has been exponentially on the increase in ways and means never before experienced, and this has been happening over the past two centuries. By comparison, human adaptation has been linear and much more constant.
When all is said and done, the COVID-19 pandemic has only accellerated the rate of change, ambitiously striving to be in parallel with the exponential technology-driven rate of change, albeit still far, far away.
My first provocation is simple. Given the huge unprecedented change that we’ve already been living in pre-COVID19 times, now accellerating thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, how can we define such a liquid state we’re in to navigate such an unforseable future? With this in mind what type of institutions in general would contemporary societies need?
But what do museums organisations have to do with that?
Yes, they do.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been the wrecking ball hitting the museum landscape hard and at short notice. Museums were, by and large, caught unawares and unprepared. None could see it coming, very few could have been prepared for it.
Museums around the globe were faced with the inevitable paradox of functioning from a physical space without the relevance of their publics. Remote working become a necessity almost overnight and museum core-business became dependent much more on the virtual than ever before.
I think the extent of change that the museum landscape can be subject to can be understood through the lens of Gareth Morgan’s 1986 seminal publication Images of Organisation. Morgan successfully reads organisation and management theories through images or metaphors, a methodology that can be easily adapted for museums aspiring for change. This graphic version is a good synthesis of Morgan’s metaphors.
I choose to reproduce here the eight metaphors of organisation as proposed by Gareth Morgan summarised in point form, with each suggesting a particular institutional model or metaphor.
Morgan suggests that an organisation can be
- A Machine: an organization is a series of connected parts arranged in a logical order in order to produce a repeatable output
- An Organism: an organization is a collective response to its environment and, to survive, must adapt as the environment changes
- A Brain: an organization is a set of functions designed to process information and learn over time
- A Cultural System: an organization is a mini-society, with its own culture and subcultures defined by their values, norms, beliefs, and rituals
- A Political System: an organization is a game of gaining, influencing, and coordinating power
- A Psychic Prison: an organization is a collection of myths and stories that restrict people’s thoughts, ideas, and actions
- An Instrument of Domination: an organization is a means to impose one’s will on others and exploit resources for personal gains
- An Organization in Flux and Transformation: an organization is an ever-changing system indivisible from its environment
The journey that most museums worldwide seek to undertake might be broadly described as a transition from being a political or culture system, hopefully less of a political system, a psychic prison or an instrument of domination, to become a brain, an organism to hopefully aspire to become an organization in constant flux and transformation.
My second provocation might come across as a given. Given the circumstances, Which type of museum organisation are we trying to define?
Mirror, mirror on the wall who are we (museums)?
Actually there is no straight answer.
The debate is still open and certainly far from over as controversy, sharp reactions and counter-proposals keep surfacing all over social media, online journals and other platforms. Indeed, the challenge may well concern the way the sector defines itself as aptly stated on RK&A web platform
Fast forward to today, and I come to recognize the bigger issue behind the discussion of the old, bland definition and ICOM’s inability to confirm a new definition. We as a museum profession do not agree with what a museum is. While there is some agreement on what a museum does — collect, preserve, educate — there is no consensus on the museum’s purpose.
Actually it’s even more complex than. As the museum sector struggles to find a much desired common-ground, the general public understands the museum as being something else, perhaps more traditional to all intents and purposes.
For the man in the street, institutional definitions count much less than what Google suggests. True, this may also be informed by complex algorithms which underpin the user’s personal perceptions and expectations. Nevertheless, the one featured here — a screenshot of my search — might be the better version provided by google to a person who remains very active in the museum world.
For Google, a museum is still the traditional institution storing and exhibiting objects of interest.
My third and final provocation beckons — With all these variables and differences, with all the fluidity and uncertainty that goes with it exponentially on the increase thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, is there a museum definition that can capture all this succinctly and in a concise, easy to grasp format?
Will there be one?
