Book Review: The Return of Curiosity: What museums are good for in the 21st century
/[written 2016, reproduced on the blog 2020]
An article entitled ‘Revitalised University Museums Still Face Big Challenges’ caught my eye. The content was very relevant to the day job and linked to a funding application we were submitting. However, in the article, the author called university museums “object laboratories” and referred to collections as an “original expression of big data” really piqued my interest, what a great turn of phrase! The blurb at the end shared the author Nicholas Thomas had recently published a book, I had to seek out more about these phrases and the ideas behind them.
An approachable book with three chapters and a conclusion it was an enjoyable time getting through it. Thomas is not shy at coming forward with practical thinking of collections, history of museums and their recent ascendency. On the topic of repatriation, his argument is pragmatic encouraging all parties to talk and collaborate for the desired outcome. Stopping short of using the analogy of two boys playing with a ball and when the one who owns the ball is beaten, he threatens to leave and take his ball home! The suggested solution is dialogue and collaboration so all parties get more from it. Whether it means returning the objects now or later there is much to be gained by having open conversations to learn more, share the knowledge with the museum’s visitors and add to the provenance and richness of the object. Not collaborating results in years, decades or centuries of research and knowledge lost and possible animosity.
The theme of the book is about addressing questions which museology texts have yet to tackle, like what do museums contain - collections, and how they have contributed to the growth of museums.
An audience - in definition a passive group for listening - isn’t a fair use for the museum visitor. For one thing, there are far more engagement opportunities than someone attending a play; guided tours, self-selecting objects to look at, label reading at will, etc. Similarly, someone reading a novel is controlled throughout by the author in the layout of the story, not so with museum visits offering as many different of journeys as there are visitors. Finally settling on the metaphor of museums being encyclopaedias for the visitor allowing them to dip in wherever and for however long they wish the passage resonated to me as a museum worker and an avid visitor.
Not surprisingly for a professor of material culture, Thomas selects collections as the main topic for the meaty middle chapter ‘Museum as Method’ and doesn’t resist reminding the reader even books can be categorised as material culture in their binding, design, etc. He investigates the tension between an object in terms of what it was and what it is now, a book on display as an object being the perfect example. To me, that tension is experienced every day I handle objects, however, I agree that it may not be made is explicit for ‘the visitor’.
Large museum collections have millions of objects and smaller venues less so, however according to Thomas objects are all loaded with relations not yet discovered. Relations may be the obvious chronological relations, for example in a painting documenting an artist’s development. Of more interest are the less obvious connections. In reading, I likened this to objects having a conversation at a dinner party or conference and trying to find common ground with which to share a conversation and the author’s analogy was to a person’s distant cousin where a connection is obvious, just never investigated more fully. My question: does that mean if museums had more staff to investigate these relations there would be more outputs for exhibitions and displays to attract a wider range of people?
Not being someone who loves objects the book has left me with a better understanding of curators and how they can spend their time with collections and I imagine them searching for these relationships and facilitating the discussions between the objects shelved in different areas of the store.
The author views collections more than historical resources “…it is something that we work with prospectively, a technology that enables the creation of new things.” Considering the phrase in the original article of collections being big data this idea of creating new things from collections is exciting in an age of hackathons, start-ups and funded innovations. Having an ability to seek new relations and hopefully be rewarded with the odd serendipitous pairing must keep curators and those working with material culture interested - I totally agree, as long as they can recognise the potential when they see it.
The conclusion places the arguments and value of collections as where museums should be focussed. Investing in curators, researchers in collections and getting the message out that museums “should be themselves”. After explaining why he thinks collections are the reason museums have reached their current popularity the author seems to be asking them to be returned to how they used to be in staffing and the collections lauded by experts. A mention of curiosity and sociality which can occur in museums and the value of arts and museums contributing to better citizens appears in the conclusion.
I agree there is great excitement to be had from collections, they are the foundation for any museum narrative, however, the lack of two-way conversation in the model expressed in the book is harking back to the age where knowledge was valued because to find the answer took trained curators expertise and time. Now, most answers are seconds from the question, in fact, sometimes it is more than one nuanced answer which results. It would be great to have more curators and research on collections because more stories and relations would appear and be of interest to the visitors. However until there is an appetite to pay for the research/knowledge, museums have to struggle to meet their costs through different services.
Have you ever seen the YouTube show The Brain Scoop? It’s a look at The Field Museum in Chicago’s collections and their recent video on the Man-Eating Lions of Tsavo illustrates the value of collections in less than 10 minutes.
