Museums panel discussion: How can community exhibition promote positive
ethnic relations?
Keynote address: Framing the question
In 1990 Steven Weil wrote that museums had undergone a shift from ‘being about
something to being for somebody’. While we might readily agree with the liberal
politics of this transformation, what does it really mean and how successful is it? This
short paper provided some ideas as a background to frame the question examined by
the museum panelin the forum. As an academic in the field of museum studies, I try to
discuss museum history and theory in a way that critically examines and intersects
with current practice — public culture, ethnicity, representation and heritage —
seeking to open up a dialogue with practitioners who are working in the sector. A
survey of the research certainly finds support for the proposition that community
exhibitions can and do promote postive relations amongst ethnic groups in society
(Karp and Lavine 1992; Hooper-Greenhill 1996; Sandell 2002). Exhibitions can
disseminate information, raise awareness and, perhaps most iumportantly, counter
prejudice through the process of ‘reframing difference’ (Sandell 2006). In the last
twenty years museums worldwide have used collections, exhibitions, and programmes
to engage with their diverse publics, operating more as a forum for debate than a
temple of culture (Cameron in Anderson 2004). How successful have these been?
What are the issues and problems associated with some of these initiatives? Aside
from what Newman calls a ‘feelgood factor’, we don’t really know much in the
absence of more indepth qualitative research about visitor responses, opinions and
identity formation (Newmann 2005). Drawing on the on the work of scholars such as
Merriman, Karp, Sandell, and others, the paper suggested that the discussion needs to
go beyond policy slogans and professional buzzwords such as national identity,
community consultation, multi-culturalism and cultural well-being. We need to
interrogate the ways in which attempts to promote cultural diversity risk maintaining
longstanding power relations through tropes such as the ‘exotic Other’, ‘cultural
colonisation’, and ‘social exclusion’.
Conal McCarthy
Director
Museum & Heritage Studies programme
Victoria University of Wellington
Further reading:
Anderson, Gail, ed. Reinventing the museum: Historical and contemporary
perspectives on the paradigm shift. Walnut Creek, California: Altamira Press,
2004.
Coombes, Annie. "Museums and the formation of national and cultural identities." In
B.M. Carbonell, Bettina Messias, ed. Museum studies: An anthology of
contexts. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004, pp231-51.
Corsane, Gerard, ed. Heritage, museums and galleries: An introductory reader.
London and New York: Routledge, 2005.
Crooke, Elizabeth. "Museums and community." In A companion to museum studies,
edited by Sharon Macdonald, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006, pp171-85.
Carbonell, Bettina Messias, ed. Museum studies: An anthology of contexts. Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 2004.
Kaplan, Flora S., ed. Museums and the making of "ourselves" : the role of objects in
national identity. London ; New York: Leicester University Press, 1996.
Karp, Ivan, and Steven D Lavine, eds. Exhibiting cultures: The poetics and politics of
museum display. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.
Karp, Ivan, Steven D Lavine, and Christine Mullen Kreamer, eds. Museums and
communities: The politics of public culture. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1992.
Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean ed. Cultural diversity: Developing museum audiences in
Britain New York: Leicester University Press, 1996.
Macdonald, Sharon, ed. A companion to museum studies, Blackwell companions in
cultural studies. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
Merriman, Nick. Beyond the glass case: The past, heritage and the public in Britain.
Leicester and London: Leicester University Press, 1991.
Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. "Multiculturalism and museums: Discourse about Others in
the age of globalisation." Theory, culture and society, no. 14.4 (1997): pp12346.
Peers, Laura , and Alison K. Brown, eds. Museums and source communities: A
Routledge reader. London: Routledge, 2003.
Sandell, Richard, and Jocleyn Dodd, eds. Including museums: Perspectives on
museums, galleries and social inclusion. Leicester: Research Centre for
Museums and Galleries, Department of Museum Studies, University of
Leicester, 2001.
Sandell, Richard, ed. Museums, society, inequality, Museum meanings. London &
New York: Routledge, 2002.
Sandell, Richard. Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference. London &
New York: Routledge, 2006.
Sissons, Jeffrey. First peoples: Indigenous cultures and their futures, Focus on
contemporary issues. London: Reaktion, 2005.
Vergo, Peter, ed. The new museology. London: Reaktion Books, 1989.