trying things on together

What does a collection of objects tell us? As an expression of social identity during the enlightenment era, the private collection of "curiosities" communicated a then in-vogue worldliness. Individual objects within collections were seen by the 17th century historian, Emanuele Tesauro, as metaphors. Tesauro contended that a large collection of objects, curated from around the world, was itself a metaphor for the world. It is not surprising that Tesauro thought of collections in this way, given that collecting was part and parcel with the 17th century Western European voracious consumption of recently discovered people, places and things from around the world.

No longer under the  purview of one gentleman's gallery, contemporary ethnographic collections tend to reside in public museums which are charged with their care and interpretation. Recognized during the Post-Modern era as an expression of empire, the interpretive discourse presented by museums and their collections became contested - a debate that is not yet resolved and is perhaps unresolvable.

Despite this ongoing dispute regarding making meaning within the museum, it can be argued that even without a clear resolution (the desire for which is itself a hangover from the Modern era), there are some museums that succeed in their expression of collection interpretation and meaning.

Three museums, the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, the museum at Cambridge University's Scott Polar Research Institute and the Oxford University Pitt-Rivers Museum, have each engaged, in their own way, in the successful interpretation of their permanent collections. These museums succeed, not because they have found the final answer for what to communicate to the public, or even how to communicate (the messages and methods of each are quite different); they succeed because they have a clarity of purpose which is clearly and consistently communicated; and their interpretation is transparent, adroitly including the public as participants in a dialogue about their collections, rather than as passive outside recipients of an academic transmission of knowledge.

Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts

For the Sainsbury Centre, clarity of purpose means hewing to Sir Robert and Lisa Sainsbury's view of ethnographic objects as equivalent to Modernist and Contemporary artworks in their collection, with a focus on object aesthetics. This is a view that is consistently communicated implicitly throughout the Sainsbury Centre, from the architectural space to the manner of display and method of interpretation. Built by Norman Foster, an architect who pioneered integrated and open concept design for commercial and public spaces, the Sainsbury Centre's building conveys Sir Robert and Lisa Sainsbury's modernist aesthetic vision, with its sleek, flexible and light filled space. Norman Foster remarked how the architecture of the Sainsbury Centre is "inseparable from the enlightenment" of the Sainsbury's.

Their vision continues as a clear through-line from the architecture to the display of objects, which are presented on equal footing alongside modernist and contemporary works. Spare label text continues this through-line by encouraging visitors to see the objects as fine art and find their own interpretation - inviting them to see the art as the Sainsbury's saw it, as exceptional works of form, line and feeling.

Because it is referred to as a "living area," the gallery metaphorically places viewers in the Sainsbury's home where they lived daily with the objects in their collection. In this way the visitor to the Sainsbury Centre can see themselves living with the objects, standing shoulder to shoulder with Sir Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, sharing in their experience of the objects' aesthetic effects.

There is, of course, a point of contention about ethnographic objects and whether this treatment renders them mute or if they require anthropological interpretation so that visitors gain a greater understanding of their context, creation, use and meaning. Some suggest that anthropological interpretation reduces the objects' status from "art" to artifacts (Price 1989: 86-87, Clifford 1988: 222-223). The Sainsbury Centre straddles both sides of this conflict by providing interpretive text in the Sainsbury Collection printed catalog, should visitors want more information. The initial and foremost experience of objects at the Sainsbury Centre, however, is gained from standing in the presence of objects as works of art, just as the Sainsbury's did.

Scott Polar Museum

A counterpoint to Sainsbury Centre's unmediated and responsive dialogue with objects is the other side of the coin in art versus artifacts debates; the museum at Cambridge University's Scott Polar Research Institute embraces tutorial interpretation and contextualization of their permanent collection, presenting objects as historical artifacts and cultural objects.

The Scott Polar Museum succeeds in its communication with visitors, however, because like the Sainsbury Centre, it has clarity of purpose and a transparency of interpretation that is consistently communicated in its architectural space and manner of display. Redeveloped and reopened in 2010, the Scott Polar Museum has a stated goal of communicating with a broad audience and stimulating that audience to engage in further investigation about the Polar region. In recognizing the diversity of their audience - students, researchers, the public and other institutions - the Polar Museum has created a museum space that was redeveloped specifically for the expression of polyvocal narratives in service to communication with that audience and to active inquiry.

Founded as a national memorial to Robert F. Scott and his expedition crew who lost their lives on return from the South Pole, the Polar museum certainly engages in a heroic polar exploration narrative, but this is only one narrative of several found there. A small entrance hall orients visitors to the general geography and landscape of the polar regions and then, upon entering the museum proper, the narrative focus begins with the indigenous people who live in the Artic region and their cultural artifacts.

Detailing the differing indigenous groups that currently live in the Arctic and displaying both past and contemporary cultural objects, this narrative includes interpretative labels written not just about native Arctic people and their material culture, but labels that are written by them. This gives indigenous people of the Arctic region interpretive control over their objects and an active, dynamic sense of contemporary presence to the indigenous groups that continue to live in the Arctic region.

By foregrounding indigenous Arctic peoples in the placement and voice of this display, indigenous groups are not metaphorically re-colonized in a museum about their land, which suffered from the colonizing effects of Arctic exploration. What follows behind the native peoples display area are exhibits on Scott, Shackleton, polar expeditions and their artifacts, current polar science research and polar politics, ending with a temporary exhibit space for changing exhibitions related to the polar regions.

The redeveloped permanent display area extends the Polar Museum's polyvocal approach by offering flexible, differing methods of display and points of access which speaks to another of the museum's stated goals - that of stimulating interest in and further investigation of the Polar regions.

Standard display cases, rather than presenting objects and information at adult height, instead present material at varied heights and often extends display to the floor, providing access to people of all sizes. The display is not linear. Although the space feels clean, open and contemporary, display cases - some of which can be seen through - are arranged to create smaller, more intimate viewing areas that create both permission for extended, private viewing and interest in what might be around the corner.  

Interpretive labels contain text that is graduated in size, from large to small - from main point to details - so that readers may take in more, or less information, as they choose. Video, photographs, period artwork, touch screens and storage drawers that can be opened for further investigation enhance the interpretation and make the permanent display an interactive space, allowing and encouraging visitors to become active researchers rather than passive recipients and placing them in dialogue with the museum collections.

Through its physical arrangement and open, extensive interpretation, the permanent collection display space articulates the Polar Museum's stated intention of reaching broad audiences and spurring visitor continued engagement with the materials.

Pitt Rivers Museum

Adherence to clearly stated intentions adds Oxford University's Pitt Rivers Museum to this list of museums with successful permanent collection display and interpretation.

Arrangement of objects by type, rather than region or chronology, makes clear what the Pitt Rivers Museum will not do, which is behave like other ethnographic museums. Retaining General Pitt Rivers' quixotic typological organization, the museum acknowledges the limitations of such an approach and nevertheless embraces it as an illustration of human life on earth.

The museum space retains the feeling of its original 19th century configuration. Storage drawers, like those at the Polar Museum, encourage investigation. Display cases chock full of objects show original interpretative labels alongside new. The mix of old and new labels cue visitors to the inside act of human object interpretation, revealing not just what is interpreted, but the ambiguous nature of interpretation and how it can change over time.

Inclusion of western objects with non-western artifacts in some of the cases removes visitors from a position that resides outside of the drama of human life on view and places them in the interior of the Pitt Rivers display, thus changing their perspective from that of viewer to one of participant; from an audience positioned at a remove from the ethnographic collection, to one of an ethnic group under study in the collection.

Like the Sainsbury Centre and the Polar Museum, the space and manner of permanent collection display at Pitt Rivers succeeds in physically articulating the museum's stated purpose and in placing visitors on the inside of interpretation and in dialogue with objects.

 Anthropologist Alex Golub writes about open access anthropology and "doing anthropology in public" (Golub 2017). Extended to the work of museums, doing museology in public suggests that rather than handing a finished product to the public, museums should be offering interpretive processes by way of demonstration and inclusion, rather than authoritative assertion. This also goes to the heart of Latourian thinking about anthropology and "learning more:

"We certainly do not want to denounce the crafting of the particular kind of relation, the value of which would be to make it possible to 'find more' about others. But this crafting cannot claim any privilege compared to the crafting of relations creating reciprocity or the possibility of learning together with." (Debaise 2015: 167, from Latour 2016: 106, original emphasis)

The three museums discussed, the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, the museum at Cambridge University's Scott Polar Research Institute and the Oxford University Pitt-Rivers Museum, have each succeeded in communicating respective interpretations of their permanent collections. As Tesauro suggested, these museums and their ethnographic collections can be viewed as metaphors. Illustrations in this case not for the world, but for a new museology that values the specificity of local experience over global dictums. They have succeeded because the specific rationale for their existence is not only clearly stated, but clearly exercised in their display and further articulated by visitors' experience in the gallery space, an experience that prioritizes "learning together with" the museum.

Sources

Clifford, James. (1988) The Predicament of Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Debaise, Didier. Pablo Jensen, M. Pierre Montebello, Nicolas Prignot, Isabelle Stengers, and Aline Waime (2015). "Reinstituting Nature: A Latourian Workshop" in Environmental Humanities, vol. 6, 2015, pp. 167-174. 

Golub, Alex. (2017) "Savage Minds: Notes on Anthropology." Online blog https://savageminds.org/about/ Accessed 16 May 2017. 

Latour, Bruno, and Christophe Leclercq, eds. 2016. Reset MODERNITY! Cambridge MA, London: ZKM Center for Art and Media. 

Price, Sally. (1989) Primitive Art in Civilized Places. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.