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Fostering empathy through museums
Article in Museum Management and Curatorship · May 2017
DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2017.1326450
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Museum Management and Curatorship
ISSN: 0964-7775 (Print) 1872-9185 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmmc20
Fostering empathy through museums
Gary Campbell & Laurajane Smith
To cite this article: Gary Campbell & Laurajane Smith (2017) Fostering empathy
through museums, Museum Management and Curatorship, 32:3, 298-300, DOI:
10.1080/09647775.2017.1326450
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2017.1326450
Published online: 15 May 2017.
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Download by: [Australian National University]
Date: 16 August 2017, At: 16:35
MUSEUM MANAGEMENT AND CURATORSHIP, 2017
VOL. 32, NO. 3, 298–300
BOOK REVIEW
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Fostering empathy through museums, edited by Elif M. Gokcigdem, Lanham,
Boulder, New York and London, Rowman and Littlefield, 2016, 296 pages, $45.00 USD,
ISBN 9781442263574 (pbk)
Empathy is a hot topic in museology and heritage studies. Indeed, the debate is polarised about
the utility of what some define as an emotion and others a skill. Some dismiss empathy
altogether as offering anything to the educational rationality of museums (see for example,
Lowenthal 2009), while others argue that it promotes superficial feel good moments that
allow a visitor’s sense of privilege and indifference to remain unscathed and unchallenged
(see Pedwell 2013 for an overview). In the opposing camp are those who argue that
empathy is crucial to the development of a progressive politics and central to the meaningful
transmission of social memory (see for example Landsberg 2004; Keightley and Pickering 2012;
Clohesy 2013). For the reviewers, who have singularly and together, argued that empathy is
one of the important visitor ‘Registers of Engagement’ at museums and heritage sites,
empathy can and does run the gamut from the banal feelings of sadness that apparently
and paradoxically maintain indifference, to sincere and imaginative depths that can result in
new visitor insights (Smith 2016; Smith and Campbell 2016).
While we don’t have time to do this, Fostering Empathy Through Museums and more specifically Elif Gokcigdem’s introduction, could be jointly reviewed with Paul Bloom’s recent confrontational book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (2016), to exemplify the array
of sometimes contrary positions on empathy. Both authors have something to say, both have
substantial holes in their approaches, and the contrast between their frailties is illuminating. We
would like to briefly explore our concern about this approach before discussing the many fascinating projects discussed in Gokcigdem’s edited collection.
Before we go any further, however, we would like to compliment Gokcigdem, the editor of
Fostering Empathy Through Museums for her clever idea of putting this volume together. It is
very interesting and inspiring, and we will return to that. However, we find the framing introductory discussion to be very off-putting. We are comfortable with her urging museums not to
fall into the ‘trap of bias by evoking or utilising empathy only toward a part of the Whole, it is
critical for museums to develop a community of practice around this concept that could help
form a ‘shared vision,’ cross-disciplinary partnerships, terminology standards, best practices,
and evaluation mechanisms’ (xxvi). We are less comfortable with the rather evangelical tone
and belief that through empathy we can ‘gain a perspective-altering lens that awakens our
sense of connectedness, respect, compassion, presence, and purpose’, and forestall ‘our lack
of caring actions toward the well-being of the Whole’ (xxiii). The ‘Whole’ gets a few mentions,
as do ‘spiritual’ traditions, and this conceptual vagueness, we believe, draws attention away
from some of the rather pointed political issues that many of the chapters in this book address.
Bloom takes an opposing view, arguing against a sentimentalising of ‘empathy’, and states
that: ‘the act of feeling what you think others are feeling – whatever one chooses to call this – is
different from being compassionate, from being kind, and most of all, from being good. From a
moral standpoint, we’re better off without it’ (2016, 4). We won’t explore his argument further
here, but would like to stress that it is congruent with a strand of thinking starting with Kant that
empathy is a weak emotion that can as readily lead to empty gestures as to true compassion
and doing something to address perceived injustices. Bloom’s stress on ‘reason’ is perhaps a
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MUSEUM MANAGEMENT AND CURATORSHIP
299
bit of a caricature, almost an invocation of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, as he does not entertain the
idea, widespread in the literature, that emotions are both evaluative and an essential part of
reasoning. The point of this for Gokcigdem’s framing of the volume is that she does not
explore vigorous positions that are suspicious of empathy, and her over-enthusiasm for
empathy without sufficient qualification allows Bloom, and other sceptics, too much traction
for their criticisms.
There is a lot written about ‘empathy’ and how it relates to politics and moral philosophy,
and a growing literature in the heritage and museums sector on emotions. Unfortunately this
introduction does not frame the volume with any great recognition of the more critical
approaches available to go beyond empathy to talk about concrete politics. However, the
volume does have a very interesting range of projects in its fifteen chapters. It would be
useful if the chapters were arranged in some thematic order, but some of the themes that
stand out (individual papers often explore several of these themes) are the use of art and storytelling to invoke empathy, empathy as a skill and its educational role in museums, concrete
examples of attempts to explore empathy in museum contexts, conceptual discussions of
empathy, and several case studies of empathy in high profile social history museums that
deal with extremely complex political and social issues.
The chapter by Ivcevic, Maliakkal and the Botin Foundation, is particularly innovative. They
draw on the influential work of Mayer and Salovey on emotional intelligence as a skill, which
can be taught, in this case using art. Apropos of our critical comments above though, and as
much as we find Mayer and Salovey’s work useful, it is important to note that a skill or capacity,
once developed, does not have to be exercised, as an individual can choose, or choose not to,
use it. Empathy can be offered – or withheld – and these are choices that are individual, social
in nature and often political and ideological. In other chapters, Potash discusses the responsibility of museums to structure themselves to create opportunities for people to choose activities that help them develop empathy. He draws on occupational therapy and ‘response art’ as
potential resources museums can draw on to help people reflect on exhibitions with difficult
content – in this case on mental illness. Mackay also discusses art as a way of developing
empathy between children and adults, and stresses the role of play in developing agency
and emotional insight for children. Wide offers some balanced observations on how
empathy emerged as a technique in a ‘story-based’ exhibition that attempted to challenge
stereotypes about Afghanistan and connect US visitors with Afghanistan. Rather than an
object-based exhibition, the Smithsonian gallery mounting the exhibition developed a narrative exhibition to develop ‘understanding with feeling’ (166).
The chapter by Zimmern, Bryant, Bostick and Hanchett is one of several that focusses on
race relations in the US. They discuss the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte,
South Carolina, and the series of dialogic events they mounted dealing with the city’s
history of race relations. They discuss a decade of challenging and very successful exhibitions
that stress storytelling and bringing people together for facilitated dialogue. The testimony of
museum staff suggests the utility of fostering empathy for community building and reconciliation among communities with a history of tension, in an area undergoing rapid change. Anderson’s chapter on the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute stresses its commitment to engaging
emotions to deal with the same issue of race relations and the Civil Rights Movement as in
South Carolina. Not organised as a didactic museum but as a place to explore the emotional
intensities of fraught issues, the responses of visitors to the Institute suggest that an empathetic engagement with the material helps visitors to explore their feelings.
Nilsen and Bader reflect on the well-known Tenement Museum in New York’s experience
with using empathy and perspective-taking to inform their exhibition design and staff engagement with visitors. They suggest that there is a very useful literature in social psychology
300
BOOK REVIEW
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addressing empathy and perspective that is extremely useful for museologists, and highlight
seven techniques used at the museum to promote empathy and perspective taking.
While all the chapters address specific case studies, one of the core strengths of the collection is that each chapter provides thoughtful and critical discussion of the different ways in
which empathy is expressed, felt and used by staff, visitors and associated communities at
the museums in question. Conceptual debates are offered that are explicitly linked to considered and reflective practices. This collection, which draws on so many engaging and innovative projects, will be an inspiration for anyone interested in how emotions, particularly
empathy, work. The collection also documents and reflects upon an array of techniques to activate and facilitate visitor emotions that are then used to enable and deepen engagement with
exhibitions. It will be especially interesting for anyone working on socially complex or fraught
issues, and who are looking for ideas and techniques to engage their visitors.
Notes on contributors
Gary Campbell is an independent researcher based in Canberra, Australia and is affiliated with the
Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University. He has previously
edited (with Laurajane Smith and Paul A. Shackel) Heritage, Labour and the Working Classes (2011,
Routledge) and has published papers in the heritage field on emotion and affect, de-industrialization
and working class identity. He was active in the establishment of the Association of Critical Heritage
Studies, having co-written their Manifesto.
Laurajane Smith is professor and director of the Centre of Heritage and Museum Studies, School of
Archaeology and Anthropology, the Australian National University. She was previously a Reader in heritage studies at the University of York, UK and has held positions at the University of New South Wales
and Charles Sturt University. She has been editor of the International Journal of Heritage Studies since
2009 and is co-general editor, with William Logan, of Routledge’s Key Issues in Cultural Heritage.
References
Bloom, Paul. 2016. Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, London: Penguin.
Clohesy, Anthony M. 2013. Politics of Empathy: Ethics, Solidarity, Recognition. London: Routledge.
Keightley, Emily, and Michael Pickering. 2012. The Mnemonic Imagination: Remembering as Creative Practice.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Landsberg, Alison. 2004. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass
Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lowenthal, David. 2009. “Patrons, Populists, Apologists: Crises in Museum Stewardship.” In Valuing Historic
Environments, edited by L. Gibson and J. Pendleburry, 19–31, Farnham: Ashgate.
Pedwell, Carolyn. 2013. “Affect at the Margins: Alternative Empathies in A Small Place.” Emotion, Space and Society
8: 18–26.
Smith, Laurajane. 2016. “Changing Views? Emotional Intelligence, Registers of Engagement and the Museum
Visit.” In Museums as Sites of Historical Consciousness: Perspectives on Museum Theory and Practice in Canada,
edited by V. Gosselin and P. Livingstone, 101–121. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Smith, Laurajane, and Gary Campbell. 2016. “The Elephant in the Room: Heritage, Affect and Emotion.” In A Companion
to Heritage Studies, edited by W. Logan, M. Nic Craith, and U. Kockel, 443–460. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Gary Campbell and Laurajane Smith
Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Sir Roland
Wilson Building, 120, Rm 3.34, McCoy Circuit, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT
2601, Australia
laurajane.smith@anu.edu.a
© 2017 Laurajane Smith
https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2017.1326450
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