Métodos, Técnicas e Instrumentos de Recolección de Datos

In this chapter, the nature and roles of museums are discussed. What functions do they fulfill, and what are the important statistics relating to them: numbers, visitors, and expenditure? The purposes of holding collections, and the roles played by different museum professionals, are reviewed. Finally, the nature of conservation in museums itself is explored.

2.1. MUSEUMS

2.1.1 Purposes

The roles of art museums are inventoried by Weil in his compilation of essays, Beauty and the beasts (1983 (1 ), 32): they are for recreation; temples of contemplation; education; connoisseurship in the sense that they portray the highest standards; symbols of power; centres of scholarship; embodiments of bureaucracy, because of the need for continuity; agents of social change; representatives of the artists whose work is displayed; patrons; and caretakers of public patrimony.

These lofty roles are not, however, admired by all. Hewison in his much-quoted book The heritage industry (1987) claims that excessive public interest in the

"heritage" promotes conservative politics and national stagnation (p. 32); encourages "a respect for privacy and private ownership, and a disinclination to question the privileges of class" (p.66). According to Merriman, the hidden agenda of museums is to legitimise affluence by promoting an appropriate lifestyle:

encouraging people to acquire "cultural capital" (Merriman, 1989). Sir David Wilson, however, that strong defender of free museums as Director of the British Museum, cites the public support for the British Museum from the diversity of its visitors: from London taxi-drivers through to Inuit hunters (Wilson, 1989, 9).

Merriman (1991,18) takes issue with the pessimistic viewpoint of Hewison, and identifies a "much more positive and potentially liberating role for museums and similar bodies". He rejects the view that they represent a Marxist "dominant ideology" which defines and confines the attitudes and social position of the

mass of society, because, he says, the majority of their visitors are in fact from the dominant classes, not those who should potentially be dominated. Merriman calls for "the exciting possibility that museums and other similar institutions promoting a non-commercial representation of the past based on the positive values of

stewardship and scholarship, might have a vital role to play in providing materials for people to creatively construct the past."

2 .1 .2 Numbers of museums

Rapid growth is a dominant characteristic of museums and their

operations since the late nineteenth century, and particularly in the last two decades. As surveys and reports have established (Prince & Higgins-McLoughlin, 1987), there are about 2,000 museums in the U.K.. The growth in museums has been phenomenal: in 1987 a new one was opening about every two weeks, and the total number is almost double that in 1971 ; in 1887 there were but 217. In the present recession, a proportion of these newly arrived museums is closing.

2.1 .3 The size of collections

The growth in museum collections has parallelled their increased numbers. Sir David Wilson (1989, 25) points to collecting as one of the mainsprings of a museum: "A museum which does not collect is a dead museum". Even in the second half of the nineteenth century, one of the British Museum's famous curators, Franks, enlarged the collections of the British and Medieval

Antiquities Department from 154 feet of cases in 1851 to 2250 cases in 1896. The growth of collections has been especially marked in what are termed social history museums. The Museum of London is quite typical of these. Its collections have grown exponentially since its inception as the London Museum in the early 1900's (Fig. 2.1). As it extended its activities by adding new curatorial departments these began avidly to collect, either to correct imbalances in its collections (twentieth century collections scarcely existed until the creation of the Modern Department in the '60 's) or to rescue the remains of disappearing industries and communities, as in the case of the Docklands collections, originally assembled for a semi-independent Museum in Docklands. The recently published survey of industrial and technological museums in Yorkshire and Humberside (Kenyon, 1992) provides more evidence of collections growth and its consequences.

Chapter 2: Museums and collections

Museum collections now are often very large numerically, and include a great diversity of objects. The Museum of London holds about one million objects; the British Museum about six million; even quite modest local museums often have hundreds of thousands of individual objects, especially if they include paper-based collections such as photographs (numerically, about half the Museum of London collections are paper-based objects).

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Fig. 2 .7. The growth o f the collections of the Museum of London.

Even providing storage for these large collections is a considerable function of museums. The area of storage used by the Museum of London totalled in

1992 over 17,000 sq m (Museum of London, 1992, Table 6A). Accounting for, organising, recording, storing, and preserving these assemblages requires an increasingly professional and strategic approach.

2.1.4 Museum economics and finances

Expenditure on publicly funded museums in the U.K. is quite substantial: about £406m annually in total. In 1991-92, central government funding, nearly

all for the national museums, was about £259m; local authority funding about £128m; and expenditure on other non-national museums about £42m (Museums and Galleries Commission, 1992 (1)).

Though their cost is not large in macro-economic terms, museums do have some significance economically. A large number of visits is made annually to

museums and galleries: about 57m in 1977; 72m in 1989; 80m in 1991

(sources: Merriman, 1991, 10; Museums and Galleries Commission, 1992 (2)). The British Museum and the National Gallery are among the top five most visited attractions in Britain, with 5.4m and 4.2m visits respectively in 1991

(Comptroller and Auditor General, forthcoming). Merriman (1991, 10) cites figures from English Tourist Board research, and from Myerscough's survey of The economic importance o f the arts in Britain {}988): in 1987 tourism was one of the most important industries in the country, and a considerable generator of income from abroad, supporting about 1.4m jobs and bringing about £ 14 billion into the economy. Museums are an important component of the U.K.'s attraction to tourists. Nearly a third of all museum visits, and 44 per cent, in London, were by overseas tourists (Myerscough, 1988).

2.2 UiHHT ARE COLLECTIONS FOR?

The organisation of conservation and preservation in many museums today is based on a variety of assumptions and views, some overtly expressed and

acknowledged, some barely recognised. Yet all the activities which these

organisations undertake are based on their collections; hence, the preservation function is fundamental to all other museum activities (Weil, 1983 (1), and acknowledged for example in the Statement of Purpose and Values of the Museum of London (1990)).

2.2.1 Collections and museum missions

The greatest influence on the degree and manner in which collections are preserved is the purpose of the institution itself. The preservation, or

Chapter 2: Museums and collections

predicated on the purpose of the institution holding them. But do museums have a single purpose?

Two major functions are always cited in the statutes or other instruments establishing museums: on the one hand, to preserve and care for collections; and on the other, to display them and use them in other ways to entertain, educate, and enlighten (International Council of Museums, 1990). These functions are conflicting, since for most types of object it is almost impossible to establish optimum conditions for preservation during display or use. Every museum

therefore has to strike its own balance. The point at which this balance is struck will have profound effects on the museum's preservation function. There is, too, a wide spectrum of types of museum, from art galleries where the aesthetic is all, to farm or industrial museums where the ethic is to preserve and demonstrate the function of the object as well as simply to use it as a passive source of information.

2.2 .2 Paradigms for museums

An important role of the national museums in Britain is to act as centres of excellence and sources of expert advice; to show other museums what they should be aiming at. In a sense, they are paradigms which set the standards and limits of museumship. Three of them strike one as being as different as they could possibly be. These are the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the National Gallery. If they are indeed paradigms, then a closer examination of their roles may shed light on some of the contradictions to be found in other less specialised

museums.

The Science Museum is used as the example for museums of industry and machinery (e.g. Patrick Greene, 1990, Museums in great cities, internal Museum of London seminar), where public enlightenment through the active demonstration of how objects function is the paramount objective.

The National Gallery is the picture museum par excellence. Here, art and the aesthetic experience reign; the object must speak for itself (Wright, 1989) and it must be in such condition that nothing will interfere with the viewer's experience.

The Natural History Museum stands as an exemplar for museum collections of natural objects. In spite of its truly enormous holdings of objects, many of its displays use not objects but graphics, or three dimensional constructions

and interactive computer screens, along with other interactive devices to put across concepts. But it is a great research institution as well as a museum, and its

activities go far beyond and have a deeper significance than its public displays (Radford, 1990).

What are the differences that make these three institutions stand out from each other, and from the other national museums? One fundamental difference is the size of their collections. The Natural History Museum holds about 65 million

objects, the Science Museum 250,000, and the National Gallery some 2,200. There is naturally an inverse ratio between the size of the collections and the

proportion on display, with the National Gallery having all its pictures on display, the Science Museum about 10 per cent, and the Natural History Museum less than 0.1 per cent, of its objects in its public galleries. (Information: personal knowledge or the press offices of the museums).

Does the differing nature of the collections determine their use - do the