Exhibitions as Research

Experimental Methods in Museums

Peter Bjerregaard, Peter Bjerregaard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317239031
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Biblioteconomía y ciencia de la información

Exhibitions as Research contends that museums would be more attractive to both researchers and audiences if we consider exhibitions as knowledge-in-the-making rather than platforms for disseminating already-established insights. Analysing the theoretical underpinnings and practical challenges of such an approach, the book questions whether it is possible to exhibit knowledge that is still in the making, whilst also considering which concepts of "knowledge" apply to such a format. The book also considers what the role of audience might be if research is extended into the exhibition itself.

Providing concrete case studies of projects where museum professionals have approached exhibition making as a knowledge-generating process, the book considers tools of application and the challenges that might emerge from pursuing such an approach. Theoretically, the volume analyses the emergence of exhibitions as research as part of recent developments within materiality theories, object-oriented ontology and participatory approaches to exhibition-making.

Exhibitions as Research will be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of museology, material culture, anthropology and archaeology. It will also appeal to museum professionals with an interest in current trends in exhibition-making.

Part I

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

1

Sketches for a methodology on exhibition research¹

Henrik Treimo

Historically, museums have been sites of research, teaching and repositories, alongside their mandates to preserve and display material culture. The development of academic disciplines and scholarly knowledge has in many ways been the outcome of intense efforts to collect, describe, map, classify, store, exchange and exhibit objects (Brenna, 2016). This status has clearly changed over time, as museums have undergone an evolution from their former authoritative role as institutions of enlightenment and education of the public (Bennet, 1996), to increasingly interdisciplinary places where the tradition of keeping of objects and the values associated with connoisseurship and expertise have slowly lost ground to a focus on exhibitions and interpretation (Arnold, 2015). Societal expectations and demands as well as political priorities have also urged the museums to be socially relevant and inclusive (Anderson, 2008). In this process, research has lost ground. Facing a sort of evolutionary crisis, museums are then called upon to respond to the challenge of how to serve their audiences and conduct their public role, while at the same time being able to collect, preserve and research collections and objects.

Especially during the last decade, the question of how to re-invigorate research in the museum has been widely addressed in the literature. It seems beyond question that museums are different from and carry other potentials than universities and research institutes. Due to their organisational structure and multiple mandates and obligations, highly specialised research aimed for scholarly publications is often seen as incompatible with museum work (Cavalli-Björkman and Lindqvist, 2008; Eriksen, 2010). However, museums have the advantage of having objects and collections, as well as expressing new knowledge by engaging with materiality and space. As Steven Conn suggests, museums are “places for ideas – places where knowledge is given shape through the use of objects and exhibitions … uniquely situated at the intersection of objects, ideas, and the public space” (Conn, 2010, pp. 5–6). Still, the question about what research in museums is or should be or what knowledge means in this context has no straightforward answer.

This chapter presents sketches for a methodology on museum specific research through exhibition-making that combines academic and artistic research and means. The proposed research method resembles academic research within the humanities in many ways, particularly with regard to themes, research questions, theoretical perspectives and interpretative methods. On the other hand, it is nourished by the artistic process of unifying ideas with materials into a whole for an aesthetic experience. However, what this method aims for is a third position of collaborative research that unifies the academic approach (that is, reliance on texts) of the museum curator and the more experimental practice involving conceptual art and scenography (spatial thinking) in a practical and inclusive manner that is based on the museum’s own premises or assumptions. The method is object-focused, and the process is organised to integrate the main parts of museum work. As will be demonstrated, the suggested research method, henceforth the LAB-method, is a multi-disciplinary method of gathering, by simultaneously mobilising objects, texts and space and utilising the fact that museums are public arenas with a unique possibility to engage with their audiences.² The common goal of creating an experience of the researched knowledge, insights and perspectives in space – which is obviously different from writing a text – is the glue that holds everything together. The resulting exhibition should ultimately be an amalgam of researched knowledge and aesthetic experience.

The research can, thus, be understood as a process of amalgamation – the unifying of ideas, perspectives, insights and facts that evolves through the multi-disciplinary engagement with objects, texts, space and people – resulting in an exhibition for visitors to experience both intellectually and through their bodily senses. A pertinent question then is, what kind of knowledge is this? As this chapter is mainly concerned with the need for a museum specific research method and demonstration of a potential practice, a full epistemological discussion will not be pursued here. However, the chapter starts with a brief discussion on exhibition research and knowledge within the museum context, to substantiate the need to think through what knowledge is or can be in museum exhibitions. A promising way ahead could be to side with the view that exhibitions, instead of being focused on research knowledge and information, should be concerned with giving their audiences a chance to explore, wonder and reflect in order to reach understanding (Arnold, 2016). Following this, the LAB-method will be thoroughly demonstrated and explained by taking the reader through the concrete case of the making of the exhibition “Grossraum − Organization Todt and forced labour in Norway 1940−45” (which opened in February 2017 at The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology). Multi-disciplinary collaborative practices do not come without challenges, as will be discussed at the end.³

Rethinking research and knowledge in times of an evolutionary crisis

The former director of the British Museum, Robert Anderson, seems to be right in that the pressure from the world around museums reduces their capacity to carry out their independent research (2008).⁴ In times when visitor numbers are increasing, the traditional mandates of the museum – collecting, researching and displaying material culture – seem to disintegrate.

Research, once interconnected with all museum tasks, has now emerged as a “standalone function” (Poulot, 2013, p. 20). For many museums there remain hardly any time and resources to carry out research. The question of how to re-install research in museums has for many years been of concern to museum professionals and cultural politicians, as well as historians, philosophers and museologists. The 2007 symposium at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm was promoted with the motto, “Research generates exhibitions which in turn generate research” (Arrhenius, Cavalli-Björkman and Lindqvist, 2008, p. 9). Contributors to the volume published after the symposium argued for and exemplified the museum’s potential for scholarly research through exhibition work, by utilising the material sources in museums, and through processes that combine academic scholars and museum curators. These and other studies have given us ample insights into the potentials of museum research, in particular as they relate to the epistemic value of objects and exhibitions as generators of knowledge (see, e.g., Macdonald and Basu, 2007; Lehmann-Brauns, Sichau and Trischler, 2010; Thomas, 2010; Dudley et al., 2012; Herle, 2013; Ulrich et al., 2015). Why then, are we still stuck with the question of how to do research in museums?

We still seem not to have a substantial answer to the main question on the agenda in Stockholm: “How can the research of the museum be combined with their public mission?” (Brummer, 2008, p. 215). From a managerial perspective, the problem can be related to the decrease in public funding and the reorganisation of museum policies from collection work towards serving our audiences, followed by a changing role for the curator, as well as a dramatic decline in curator positions (see Anderson, 2008). However, what might be an even bigger problem is that this perspective is based on a certain view on knowledge production in museums that relates research to a standard that may not be compatible with the multiple museum tasks, the epistemic value of collaborative work with objects or the museum’s societal role.

Although it has been argued convincingly that collaborative work with objects leads to new knowledge and thus thematic exhibitions could stand as true scientific publications (see, e.g., Fleming, 2010; Schnalke, 2010), an issue emerges when academic evaluation criteria infiltrate the discussion. Compared with academic standards, museum work and exhibitions have not been assigned the status of researched knowledge (see, e.g., Lehmann-Brauns, Sichau and Trischler, 2010). Within academia, research requires to be peer-reviewed and mainly published as a text (Trischler, 2008, p. 64). The problem with having exhibitions accepted as research relates to the general conceptualisation that research knowledge should be “transferable and communicated unambiguously” (Niedderer, Biggs and Ferris, 2006, p. 4).⁵ Yet, exhibitions cannot communicate knowledge unambiguously without, at the same time, compromising what has been argued to be their most valuable contribution as places for the public to experience, explore, wonder and reach life enhancing insights (Arnold, 2016). Following up on the influential anthologies by the Max Planck Society (Lehmann-Brauns, Sichau and Trischler, 2010) and the Stockholm symposium (Arrhenius, Cavalli-Björkman and Lindqvist, 2008), museums should indeed keep working on bridging the gap with the universities, but they should not do this by pushing their exhibition practice in the direction of texts. As Macdonald and Basu argue, exhibitions can generate and display knowledge that is more open to different readings and interpretations in a wider frame of representations by involving and assembling various “actants”, such as “visitors, curators, objects, technologies, institutional and architectural spaces” (2007, p. 2). Rather than trying to mimic academia, museums should explore ways of tapping their own research potential.

Anita Herle’s reflection on the exhibition “Assembling bodies: Art, Science and Imagination”⁶ is among the very few attempts to explicate the potential of exhibition research as a combination of curatorial, academic and artistic insights and practices “that actively engage with objects and theoretical ideas to generate new understandings” (Herle, 2013, p. 113). Herle demonstrates how research takes place through various encounters between disciplines in collaborative multisensory engagement with objects and space. She shows how it is grounded in theories on the relations between humans and things and a method for working with objects, which builds on the prospect of “discovery” (see also Thomas, 2010, 2016), and the potency of assembling. This technique generates knowledge by fostering new and unexpected relations. The exhibition facilitated the emergence of new understandings and the results were expressed in the gallery through objects, texts and contemporary art in a non-linear and non-didactic way. Knowledge was not communicated unambiguously. The visitors were challenged through bodily, intellectual and emotional experiences to question preconceived ideas. In other words, they took active part in the generation of new insights and understandings.

Assembling various actors in collaborative encounters with objects and spaces is indeed a method that may produce novel outcomes. More specifically, it has been argued that such exhibition experiments may produce visible insights and knowledge, which would otherwise remain invisible: they make tangible something intangible (Macdonald and Basu, 2007, p. 9). Exhibitions thus generate specific knowledge that could not be delivered differently as it is embodied in the exhibition product and constantly negotiated in the encounters with various audiences. Knowledge produced through exhibitions could be compared to artworks.

As pointed out by Julian Klein (2010), artworks often result from an extensive investigative process. However, unlike scholarly publications, they rarely express an authorial interpretation. Instead, they offer what John Dewey has described as aesthetic experience (1980[1934]). Such experiences, which are not exclusively linked to art works, result from the immediate sensory and intellectual experience of things, that links past experiences with the present (ibid.). Hence, one can say that such things and artworks carry “embodied knowledge” that has to be acquired through sensory and emotional perception, resulting from artistic experience, from which they cannot be separated (Klein, 2010). At the same time, if the experimental exhibitions we are talking about here can be read in multiple ways, how do they then differ from just about anything people come across? What kind of knowledge is extracted in these meetings with the audiences? In arguing for the need of a new museum epistemology, Mark O’Neill makes an interesting note on the difference between subjective and individual experiences, which relates to “people’s complex capacity to generate knowledge in order to make meaning of the world” (2006, p. 107). The subjective is deeply experienced within a person, it is the kind of experience that touches upon shared values and cultural beliefs, in opposition to the individual, which denotes experience unique to one person (ibid., p. 109). “One of the capacities of art is to articulate these deep internal experiences to other individuals” (ibid.). The openness towards multiple individual readings along with the subjective experiences that we as visitors can share and talk about might be considered the strength of exhibitions that has incorporated a view on people as profoundly different, and not as passive onlookers, but partners in the process of creating knowledge (ibid.). What follows from this is that the knowledge exhibitions may generate is not just different, it is of another kind.

However...