Texto Unificado de Legislación Ambiental Secundaria (TULAS)

This chapter outlines the historical development of museums internationally, with particular emphasis on their evolving conception of what it means to be a public institution. It provides both an explanatory and evaluative context for considering developments in New Zealand art galleries in the 1970s.

The very notion of a public art gallery in 1970s New Zealand had to come from somewhere. In provincial cities there may have been no direct linkage with developments overseas, the four metropolitan art galleries providing instead the dominant conceptual model of an art gallery, but this in turn ultimately came from overseas (principally Britain), even if the influence was delayed by distance.

Tracing influences is often difficult and frequently there are no direct paths, developments occurring in a parallel fashion in response to shared social and cultural environments. This is where information on evolutionary patterns in overseas museums provides an evaluative context, for it allows one to ask if New Zealand art galleries responded in similar ways and moved in similar directions to those in Europe and North America.

By means of an historical narrative this chapter also expands on the suggested dimensions of an art museum in the Introduction by considering the tension between elitism and democracy that has developed in museums over the last 200 or more years. This legacy has meant that so long as our art galleries were considered to sit within the traditions of the museum there was the potential to move in one of two ways – to be a temple of high art or a democratic and publicly oriented facility.1

1 _{Though some question the very concept of an enduring entity known as the museum. Following} Foucault, Hooper-Greenhill says that while museum histories tend to take the museum form as it is and trace it back to find its first occurrence there is in fact “no essential identity for museums” (Hooper- Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge, pp. 7–8, 191). However, this challenging notion seems less applicable to the shorter time spans mostly covered by this thesis than those considered by Hooper-Greenhill.

The idea of the public museum

Western art, argues Einreinhofer, is not by nature democratic.2 It has often been created for those of refined taste amongst the wealthy, powerful, and well-educated by individuals of acute sensibility and high intelligence. In addition, such art has been based primarily on the artist’s personal vision and the expression of that vision. In modern times the artist has been highly trained and educated and their intention has correspondingly “been to communicate on this level, not necessarily to enlighten the masses”.

A place to house such art is inherently designed for an elite. Certainly this was the case with early art museums. The gallerias of Italian merchant princes of the Renaissance, such as the Medicis, are one example, the palaces of northern European royalty another. In each case these were displays intended to impress, to speak of wealth, power, and what could not be bought but only inherited, the taste and sensibility of what Pierre Bourdeiu has called “cultural capital”.

However, the notion of what it means to be a public museum, of who the public are, and how they should be served, has progressively broadened over the two and a half centuries since royal and other private museums in Europe first cautiously admitted "the public".

Public art museums in Europe were formed from the collections of the church and nobility as power shifted away from these traditional authorities to elected assemblies. Prestige remained with their collections however, and now accrued to the new owners. The new museums could serve as symbols of democratisation and/or expressions of national or civic pride, places to “celebrate and make manifest…that what had once belonged to the King now belonged to the people”.3 The Louvre is the archetypal example. By drawing the collections of Europe into one museum Napoleon could equally state to the world both the glory of his empire and the democratic truths of the Revolution.

These early public museums defined "the public" very narrowly, typically restricting access to the upper classes. The Hermitage, for example, required male visitors to wear either regimental uniform or a coat and tails and gaining entry to the British Museum from first opening in 1759 until 1810 was an involved process, requiring a written application, vetting of the applicant, and issuing a ticket for a visit the following day. The whole process took at least two weeks and two to three prior visits. But such restrictions are less surprising when one considers the gulf which then existed between social classes, Hudson considering that when the vast majority were illiterate it “would

2 _{Einreinhofer, The American Art Museum: Elitism and Democracy, p. 32.} 3

have been absurd to expect educated and uneducated to mingle easily or happily in the same room”.4

By the mid-nineteenth century attitudes towards the “rabble” had changed somewhat. Social problems spawned by the Industrial Revolution created a strong education movement in Europe. Social improvement and developing technical knowledge for advancing industry were its aims. Self-help educational organisations such as mechanics institutes were formed which were often the catalyst in turn for the creation of museums as educational facilities. Related pressures developed for public libraries and free education, and the state (in Europe) increasingly took on moral responsibilities and educative roles for the population as a whole. In the UK the 1845 Museums Act allowed local authorities to allocate rates to museums. The intention of the act was to promote “the instruction and entertainment” of the public, and Lewis notes that it had an easy passage through parliament because “museums were seen as a moral benefit to society and…a means of contributing to better industrial design”.5

From the middle of the nineteenth century, world fairs were held on both sides of the Atlantic. In displaying the material products of progress with showmanship they demonstrated a growing belief that the arts and sciences were the proper concern of the whole community, not just the specialists.

The South Kensington Museum (which grew out of the first world’s fair, the 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition) was an example of both the educational and world fair influence, becoming a leader in worker education in the arts and crafts. As part of its self-perceived role in public education it circulated exhibitions, lent books and lecture materials, and provided for public comfort with a restaurant. Henry Cole, the primary force behind the museum, believed that it had a powerful role to play in reforming and improving society, stating that “The museum will certainly lead [the working man] to wisdom and gentleness, and to heaven, whilst the [public house and gin palace] will lead him to brutality and perdition”.6

American museums were more publicly oriented than those of Europe from the beginning, following the typically American belief in democratic ideals and the value of education for human advancement. Some of the first originated in historical societies, lycea (mechanics institutes), and art institutes, as well as privately owned, commercially operated museums such as those owned by Peale (founded 1768) and Barnum (1841– 68). It was not completely one-sided however, and Orosz outlines a swinging back and forth between egalitarianism and exclusivity amongst American museums from the earliest times, until a reconciliation he calls the “American compromise” was reached in the late 19th century in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the

4 _{Hudson, A Social History of Museums, p. 26.}

5 _{Lewis, “Collections, Collectors and Museums in Britain to 1920”, p. 29.} 6 _{Alexander, Museum Masters, p. 163.}

Boston Museum of Fine Arts.7 An “elitist/democratic paradox” is what Einreinhofer less positively calls it, pointing out how the founders of these two museums borrowed the Medici principle.8 As men of great wealth, the founders and donors were able to install brilliant collections in these museums and be rewarded by the status this brought, not only to themselves but also to their cities, and ultimately to the nation. This created a tension between promoting the prestige values of high art and exclusivity on the one hand and encouraging public access on the other, for the latter was required in order to gain additional public funding and for such museums to be widely acclaimed in a democratic culture (in this respect the Louvre stood as a model too). However much, then, American museums espoused the Enlightenment ideals of the nation’s founding, they were also driven by the needs of donors for accrued prestige.

As in England, there were also attempts by American museums to “improve the masses”. American society was less affected by the Industrial Revolution than Europe, but the flood of immigration in the late 19th century had an almost equal impact. Some came to see museums as social agencies that could improve the attitudes, standards and tastes of the working classes. John Cotton Dana, director of Newark Museum 1909– 1929, was a notable leader in this field, dismissing traditional museums as "awesome to a few, tiresome to many, and helpful to almost none".9 Dana’s approach was to organise temporary exhibitions (such as Inexpensive Articles of Good Design and New Jersey Clay Products) to attract adult visitors inside the museum where they would find conducted tours, lectures and plentiful explanatory text material. For children there were also group tours, instructors who visited schools, and a lending department making as many as 9,000 shipments a year of museum exhibits to schools.10

Carol Duncan considers that there was a hidden agenda behind efforts to improve the working classes, believing that the new museums (she is thinking of the large northern art museums such as the Met) were an element in a “larger agenda to make American cities more civilised, sanitary, moral and peaceful”, the philanthropic desire to educate and Americanise the immigrants being born as much of fear as of goodwill and the art museums, intentionally or not, structured to advance the cause of WASP supremacy.11 The museums marked the gulf between “Americans of education” and foreign immigrants, yet at the same time strove to “appear inclusive and democratic in order to effectively symbolise community and define national identity”. They catered to the elite, because they needed their money and their art, but they also had to appear, “at least to the middle class and their press, as credible public spaces, above politics and class interests and accessible to all.”12

7 _{Orosz, Curators and Culture.}

8 _{The American Art Museum: Elitism and Democracy, pp. 1–12.} 9 _{Weil, Rethinking the Museum and other Meditations, p. 53.} 10 _{Alexander, Museum Masters, p. 397.}

11 _{Duncan, Civilizing Rituals, pp. 48–71.} 12

With some degree of social homogenisation achieved, the focus of American museums towards mid-century was directed to the well-educated middle classes. Theodore L. Low wrote in his Museums as a Social Instrument that museums should make education their primary goal, superior to but including acquisitions, preservation, and scholarly study. He urged that they vigorously seek to serve “an intellectual middle class”.13 American museums began to hold more temporary, thematic, and contemporary exhibitions, increased their gallery spaces at the expense of storage, and expanded programmes of events at about this time.14 The difficulty the general public had with abstract modernist art also encouraged art museums to become more education oriented and people-friendly, according to Einreinhofer.15 New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) took the lead and became the inspiration for many other art museums by setting itself up in downtown New York and including such comforts as good toilets, cloakrooms, shops, and a restaurant.

New developments in consumer capitalism in the 1920s also became an influence, as advertising began to drive product development. In a parallel manner, according to Harris, museums shifted out of a “producer culture” stage of passively displaying objects to more actively designing exhibits to audience needs or wants as they began to use the new marketing and social research technique of surveying.16 The first crude museum visitor studies were carried out in the 1920s and caused museums to begin to change the way they looked at their audience.17 Surveying was seriously under way by the 1960s, particularly in the USA, but also to an extent in the UK.18 According to Harris this was associated in the US both with a huge growth in art museum formation19 and with massive federal funding available from the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts, founded 1965). NEA funding was linked to ideals of service and broad constituencies. Surveys were a powerful form of evidence in funding applications that museums were serving the whole community. Demands from civil rights groups, feminists and other consciousness raising movements for better representation in decision making and audiences also stimulated surveying in order to make visible the social composition of visitors. Other requirements for audience information came from potential private and civic funders as well as further potential income sources such as

13 _{Alexander, Museums in Motion, p. 221.} 14 _{Tonelli, “The Art Museum”, p. 86.} 15 _{The American Art Museum, p. 86.} 16 _{Neil Harris, “Polling for Opinions”.}

17 _{Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, p. 8; Harris, “Polling for Opinions”;} Hooper-Greenhill, “Museums and Communication: An Introductory Essay”,pp. 3–5.

18 _{Hooper-Greenhill, “Museums and Communication”, p. 3–5.}

19 _{Since WWII there has been a fervour of museum building in general. Weil notes that more than half the} museums in the USA by about 1980 were founded after 1950 (Rethinking the Museum, p. 3). Between 1950 and 1980 there were 2,500 new museums built, an equivalent of more than one a week. In the UK the growth rate was one per fortnight in the 1970s (ibid), a time of particularly strong museum growth there according to Bricknell (Sandra Bricknell, “Here to Help: Evaluation and Effectiveness,”

museum shops and membership drives that also required market research. As in other areas of the economy it was no longer sufficient simply to have a good product: now “investors” (i.e. funders, private or public) wanted to know who the museum would appeal to and what the public response was.

A New Museology

Moving into the 1970s, pleas for museums to be more public seemed to become especially insistent, reflecting the social upheavals and revolutionary talk of the 1960s. This can be seen in the museological journals, where writings shifted from subject specialisms (“how to do it”) to museology (museum philosophy) from around 1970. This heightened concern for audience and reflective practice was a particular context for a movement towards greater public participation in New Zealand galleries. While admittedly few New Zealand art gallery directors may have read such writings, the thinking behind them was nevertheless reflected here.20

Earlier reformist talk concerning museums and the public tended to focus on education. And indeed some museums had well established educational services from an early point: in addition to the South Kensington Museum already mentioned, Liverpool, Sheffield and Manchester museums were operating education services for schools pre- 1900. Education boomed in museums this century, Weil noting that only 15% of American museums had formally established education departments in 1931, while by 1971 over 80% possessed them.21

But education tended to be in the sense of an additional service, an add-on, rather than as an active engagement with casual visitors and other users on all fronts. Low made this point in the 1940s when he said that since most museums were organised on a departmental structure long before education became a strong interest, when education did arrive it was often placed in a similar category, a department amongst other departments, rather than as an attitude permeating all museum activities.22 He went on to say that such a department has tended to be placed in a moral quarantine by the rest of the staff and that directors have continued to favour the attitudes of curators, from whose ranks they themselves are drawn.

20 _{Though in our own museums journal, AGMANZ News, a bare three articles were published in the 1970s} that called for increased public responsiveness by museums: two by Rodney Wilson and one by Luit Bieringa. (And Bieringa’s article was essentially an admonishment of readers for their lack of response to Wilson’s exhortations.) It is perhaps significant that both these directors had spent time in the Netherlands, where programmes to bring museums to the community were widespread. (Bieringa, “Some Reasons for Existence”, pp. 3–4; Wilson, “Modern Art Museums and their Public in the Netherlands”, pp. 25–29; Wilson, “Some Thoughts on Programmed Information Provision”, pp. 2–7.) 21 _{Weil, Beauty and the Beasts, p. 20.}

By the 1970s, however, a weight of opinion developed that saw public interaction as more than simply structured education services. Singleton, for example, claimed that "More curators are taking time off from poring over their collections in order to peer at the visitors to the museum and at those who are still only potential users of the museum, and to consider their needs… [suggesting a change in attitude in which] museums have become outward-looking as well as inward-looking and have become more concerned with people than with things".23 His examples in Britain included art galleries that showed work by living artists, had exhibitions by local organisations, lent out their collection, and included music, drama and poetry readings amongst their exhibitions so as to “prevent the segregation of art from other forms of everyday pleasure and experience".24

Talk of a “new museology” emerged in the 1970s according to Harrison, especially in England and Europe where there already was a stronger sense of museological theory.25 The rationale for this new term was that community needs as well as social subjects and concerns generally were replacing objects as a focus in museums. The growing numbers of museums (eco-museums) not necessarily confined to a building was another reason for thinking museum practice had changed.

Added to an interest and involvement with “the community”, rather than just visitors, was an expectation that museums could be agents for social change. This interest in community was left-wing inspired, quite different from the previous mid-century humanist oriented wish to gradually improve society by education. Weil writes of the “bitterness and rage of the war [Vietnam] years” in this light and how artists invaded the American Association of Museums (AAM) meeting in 1970, and insisted that museums become dedicated to wiping out racism, sexism, war and repression.26 Little short of a revolution was demanded, for when asked how museums could achieve the above the artists replied with a slogan of the times: “the time for talking is past, the time for action is now”.