Museums and Communities - Week 4

Learning Community: Lessons in Co-Creating the Civic Museum (Thelan, 2001)

• some see civic engagement as the way to preserve the health of cultural institutions
• civics as a way to build social capital
• "The civic issue is power, not trust" (2)
• watchword of civic engagement becomes co-creation, not dialogue
• participants share their skills and resources in the creation of agents for solving problems
• question for museums of whether to extend out or work from within
• follow U. of Minnesota's example of imbuing civic engagement into every aspect of the institution
• don't 'do' civic engagement; be civically engaged
• problems of how to collaborate with groups, deal with controversial subjects, and imagine the future of museums
• problems with partnerships sometimes lie in (perceived?) unequal levels of authority between the museum professionals and the community members
• how to work together with community (Warhol article)
• claim that Americans trust museums, but disagreement on that source of trust
• Is it their objective display? Is it the ability to engage with objects directly?
• article seems to claim that objects in a museum aren't mediated, at least not as much as history books or similar items
• Thelen claims that the significance of the Museums and Community is immense, but does not really explain why

Online Activity and Offline Community: Cultural Institutions and New Media Art (Cook, 2007)

• place as based on social habitats, not geography
• museums have difficulty in engaging in Net-based art: how to present it? how to let viewers ('normally passive') interact with it?
• new media art demands collaboration
• technology can be utilized in the creation, production, and/or dissemination of the art
• Internet: not a medium, but rather a location for this art to be created
• questionability of the materiality of this space--it can have material effects in the physical world
• created by and for on- and offline communities
• by its very nature, it is participatory/socially-engaged work
• Net art in the museum
• how to produce/distribute?
• how to reconcile the passive viewing experience in an art museum with the interactivity of net art?
• concept of curating "emerging art": creativity emerging through new forms of media
• FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool)
• web used to bring about communication and create culture in an offline community
• similarity between new media and multiculturalism and public art: extends space beyond the frame (of the artwork) to the rest of the world
• Net-based art: all about engaging with the net, with the communities created by it or drawn to it, rather than the net itself (not about the object, but about the engagement)

Museums and Community Involvement: A Case Study of Community Collaborative Initiatives - National Museums of Kenya (Mhando Nyangila, 2006)

• "Museums are about people and created by the people themselves"
• community defined by ethnic bond, sharing a common cultural identity (racial origins, religion, nationality, or tribal affiliation)
• later defines community by a shared geographic region as well as common interests, values, customs,  and beliefs
• museum community: visitors, people who live and work in its vicinity, stakeholders, donators (funding or collection items)
• community engagement: community members participating directly in decision making in museum programs and activities
• benefits of community involvement: trust, understanding, sense of identity, and creating a museum more relevant to the community
• roles of museum: custodians of cultural heritage, with added responsibility to "assist national and civic governments as well as the civil society in responding to community and societal problems and developmental needs"
• different ways of involving community in custodian work: bringing them to the museum, or bringing the museum skills to them
• advantages
• participatory approach
• sustainability purposes
• ownership
• capacity building
• increased awareness of importance/value of their culture
• claim that museums can contribute to society by eradicating poverty and empowering communities economically
• employment in museums or museum-related fields
• share teaching styles with other institutions, promoting interactivity for increased learning, sharing educational tools
• travelling library
• conserving built heritage
• preserving indigenous/folk culture
• biodiversity conservation
• conservation of cultural landscapes, bottle gour diversity
• development of butterfly farm: museum helping a community create a business which other museums are interested in 
• Ecotourism project: help communities explore alternate economic livelihoods that don't endanger the sacred forests 
• where do communities and museums interact? outward of the museum space or from within?
• activities involving communities beyond the traditional museum space in activities of understanding and preserving culture with other social/economic benefits
• special events and free admission to attract people to the museum and introduce the general public to its activities
• museum has a role to address the community, not act as a 'foreign' institution
• in article, it seems that the duty of preserving both natural and cultural heritage falls to the national museum

The Warhol: Museum as Artist: Creative, Dialogic, and Civic Practice (Gogan)

• museum as answer to question: What does it mean to be a human being? (Postman)
• "The art museum experience becomes less about looking at art, and more about making sense of the world" (12)
• museum as site of collection AND education
• museum taking on role of church: becoming source of civic pride in America
• community as created through shared practice; community engagement is museum's community of practice engaging with another
• Warhol: believed in museum as a site for art production, considered the role of the curator creative
• museum as artist
• creative role as interpretor, provocateur, and catalyst
• focus on engaging in "the work of art," imbuing the museum with "creative agency"
• museums and artists as bodies able to borrow skills from one another
• Warhol museum: mission to be a forum
• The Without Sanctuary Project
• focus on lynching in America; museum wanted to be a forum for contemporary race issues; while not necessarily encouraging it, they also tried to keep opportunities for dialogue about other forms of oppression (particularly against gays) open
• photographs and postcards, historical timeline, opportunities for dialogue/informal visitor feedback
• made public privatized responses to the exhibit 
• found ways to connect people to the museum and what they had experienced through visitor-created material after the exhibit ended (personal postcards)
• people participated more heavily in the informal dialogues as opposed to the formal facilitated dialogues
• process of "public looking" within a museum
• difficulty in framing/contextualizing such a tough, emotional issue within an art museum
• some did feel that the exhibit was verging on being too 'art museum as history museum'
• provided information on "next steps" visitors could take, ways to take action
• collaborated with schools and community groups for special activities/events
• some teachers questioned how necessary the images of the exhibit were to teach lessons of tolerance to students
• others felt pictures were what led people to feel they understood "the truth of history"
• museum saw images as a "table for conversation"--difference responses to the universality or specificity of those images/how they were presented
• "When we gather to talk around an image, we all start from the same place"
• "mutability" of contexts within the exhibit
• issue of having this exhibit curated by an all-white staff; brought in African-Americans from the community
• avoidance of essentializing the themes of the discussions
• image, context, and response were considered equally
• exhibit as catalyst of discussion beyond walls of museum
• focus on curating TOGETHER with audiences
• museums and community members sharing their own "expert knowledge" with each other
• problem: how to retain voice/experience/skills as curator while opening up your work to the general public?
• engaged an experienced outside local facilitator in the process of the conceptualization and creation of the exhibit
• use of "key workers" from outside museum
• follow-up/aftermath
• educational tools for regional schools
• community art projects
• surge of good will expressed toward museums
• community members seeing museum as a resource
• Andy Warhol's Electric Chairs: Reflecting on Capital Punishment in America
• problem of portraying controversial issue of death penalty
• how to balance wants and needs of two different sponsors/involved parties: Amnesty International and District Attorneys association
• how to act as the mediator between the two
• how to present a "neutral" stance on the issue, or at least to appear not to be favoring one over the other
• how to keep these organizations wanting to be involved in the project/exhibit
• how to deal with the issue that the museum/staff are all on one side of the issue
• featured contextual information from wide variety of people/opinions
• engaged public in creating zines for people to take home with them which featured fact and opinions from both sides of the issue
• does the art museum have a role for advocacy?
• intended effect: make audience "think" without forcing them to choose one side in particular (different from Without Sanctuary)
• goal to be dialogic, not "do dialogue"
• "We attempt to make meaning of art and society together with our audiences" (32)

Questions/Comments

• How can Thelan claim the museum as some unmediated space?  What is the relationship between the objects and the way they are presented within a museum?
• Using new media art within an art museum seems to be one possible way to increase interactivity because it's inherent in the nature of the art itself.  However, how are the networks of the art defined in this context?
• Must there really be this difference between the "passive" viewers and the "interactive" ones?  Are there different ways to interact with the art? With something/someone else?  What does it mean to be interacting? What value does it hold?
• How can new media be harnessed to strengthen already existing offline communities?
• If we consider museums to be a trusted force within a community, how can they expand their duties/activities beyond their custodian work?  Considering the Kenyan example, how can they reach out and fulfill community needs in perhaps unexpected ways?
• Would it be possible to implement the Kenyan model of the museum's work in America?  In what places would this type of work be effective and successful?
• process as just as/more important than the product
• look into how Without Sanctuary exhibit was treated when it travelled to different venues (New York Historical Society, somewhere in Atlanta)
• How does the timing and location of an exhibit affect its contextualization and the responses to it?
• How does the staff differ from the institution?
• Do museums have an advocacy role? Can they?

Additional Reading:

Abungu, G. (1998). Museums without walls. International Museum Conference 23rd to 28th August 1998.

Alpha Oumar Konare--supporter of concent of community involvement