Learning at the Museum Frontiers

Identity, Race and Power

Viv Golding

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754646914
• eBook ISBN: 9781317106654
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

In Learning at the Museum Frontiers, Viv Golding argues that the museum has the potential to function as a frontier - a zone where learning is created, new identities are forged and new connections made between disparate groups and their own histories. She draws on a range of theoretical perspectives including Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, Foucauldian discourse on space and power, and postcolonial and Black feminist theory, as well as her own professional experience in museum education over a ten-year period, applying these ideas to a wide range of museum contexts. The book offers an important theoretical and empirical contribution to the debate on the value of museums and what they can contribute to society. The author reveals the radical potential for museums to tackle injustice and social exclusion, challenge racism, enhance knowledge and promote truth.

1Introduction: The Spatial Politics of the Museum Frontiers

I foreground this book with two powerful Black voices.¹ First let us look at a piece of creative writing taken from the Nobel prize-winning Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, which highlights a subtle but pernicious racism, arising from the lived experience of daily life. Morrison states:

¹ I employ the capital ‘B’ to describe Black people throughout my writing. This marks an act of political allegiance to address historic wrongdoing and denigration of ‘Others’ as not only inferior but less than human in times of slavery.

It had begun with Christmas and the gift of dolls. The big, the special, the loving gift was always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll. … Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs – all the world agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured. “Here,” they said, “this is beautiful, and if you are on this day ‘worthy’ you may have it.” … I could not love it. But I could examine it to see what all the world said was lovable. … It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. The master said, “You are ugly people.” They looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance. “Yes,” they had said you are right. (Morrison 1990: 13, 14, 28) [my emphasis]

Morrison's The Bluest Eye speaks of the awful negative power of racism to adversely impact on the identity of the young Black child. Racism like colonialism objectifies people. It forces the Black ‘other’ to act not as agent but as subject – passively. Racism sees only limited aspects of the other – humanity the whole complex human being in social relationships is reduced to black skin. As Franz Fanon testifies:

I found that I was an object … the glances of the other fixed me there … like a chemical dye. I was indignant, demanding an explication. … Nothing happened. I burst apart. Now the fragments have been put together again by another self. (Fanon 1993: 109) [my emphasis]

Reading Morrison and Fanon from the perspective of the museum,² ethical and existential questions arise. What is the role of the contemporary museum? How can museum professionals act to combat racism and its pernicious effects today? Who will take responsibility and ‘speak truth to power’ when it diminishes our fellows? (Said 1993: 63-75). These questions are focal points for all citizens living in the post-modern world and in my museum career with anthropology collections I have found Black writers offer a productive way forward, which I demonstrate in Learning at the Museum Frontiers: Identity, Race and Power. Overall the book argues that museums can hold up a hope for challenging racist mindsets essentially through respectful dialogical exchange that I term feminist-hermeneutics. My intention is to guide the reader through unfamiliar philosophical terrain that has proved useful to progress learning in the museum as Eilean Hooper-Greenhill and Hugh Genoways have notably shown (Hooper-Greenhill 2006; Genoways 2006). At this early point in the book it is only necessary to point out that I have developed feminist-hermeneutics from the politically mindful Black feminist thought of writers including Patricia Hill-Collins, Audre Lourde and bell hooks with the more abstract philosophical hermeneutics of Hans Georg Gadamer (Hill-Collins 1991; Lorde 1996; hooks 1992, 1994; Gadamer 1980, 1981, 1986). Basically feminist-hermeneutic practice is akin to Fanon's notion of ‘authentic communication’, which urges ‘Why not simply attempt to touch the other, to feel the other, to reveal myself to the other?’ (Fanon 1993: 231). Such communication in the museum is neither an easy task nor one we might simply fix forever like a mathematical equation, but it is worth striving towards and has an enduring value that lies in learning about the other and most importantly about the self – the self who does not remain unchanged.

² ‘Museums’ is a generic term used throughout the book that follows American practice and includes art museums, which are commonly referred to as art galleries in the UK.

In other words, what I want to do in this book is to look at the way in which the meaning of certain pernicious ideas about ‘other’ peoples and their cultures, which appear to be based on obvious factual evidence can change when they are questioned in between locations, at the frontiers of traditional disciplinary boundaries, and beyond the confines of institutional spaces. Specifically I present a view of the museum frontiers – a spatio-temporal site for acting in collaborative effort with other institutions, which provides a creative space of respectful dialogical exchange for promoting critical thought, for questioning taken-for-granted ideas in general and for challenging racist and sexist mindsets in particular. Ultimately I argue that frontier museum work can progress lifelong learning, ‘intercultural understanding’ and what is known in the UK as community cohesion (Golding 2006a, 2006b, 2007). In this I build on the work to further the social role of the museum and progress a more inclusive society undertaken by Richard Sandell, Jocelyn Dodd and David Fleming (Sandell 2007, 2004, 2003; Dodd and Sandell 2001; Fleming 2004). I also refer to the White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue, launched in 2008 by the Council of Europe in Strasborg (<http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/intercultural/Source/White%20Paper_final_revised_EN.pdf> accessed on 28.11.2008).

Whether the museum holds some power to effect change in society is a large claim that may be questioned (Appleton 2001). Yet we certainly see museums increasingly present in the mass media, with stories often sparking intensive campaigns: urging the ‘nation’ to save ‘our’ treasures such as Raphael's ‘Madonna of the Pinks’ for example in the UK and generally to be more ‘family friendly’ – both calls meeting high degrees of success (RCMG 2007; Birkett 2006). Alongside this public attention, the academic literature on museology continues to expand at a rapid pace to serve the increasing demand for places on degree courses in museum related studies, as well as the changing needs of the profession over the last two decades since Peter Vergo called for a ‘radical re-examination of the role of museums’ or a ‘new museology’ (Vergo 1989: 3; Macdonald 2006, 1996: 8).

Learning at the Museum Frontiers: Identity, Race and Power bridges these public professional and academic worlds by joining the academic texts on museology with praxis, that is my own theoretically grounded educational work in the field and at the borderlands beyond the walls of the museum building. I draw on specific examples largely from my 10 year period as Head of Formal Education at the Horniman Museum, in South London, working primarily with the notable and nationally designated anthropology collection of material culture from sub-Saharan Africa. This personal focus highlights vital issues of relevance to museums around the world, such as the contested ownership of cultural property and the representation of indigenous knowledge, which have recently become the subject of much public debate and interest in the professional, academic and general press (Simpson 1996; Kreps 2003).

Thus while the book interrogates significant themes that I have grappled with at a local level and which are evident in the title, it considers these key ideas throughout from international perspectives and aims to show the wider relevance of an audience-focused learning lens beyond the UK. I shall now briefly elucidate the key themes of the book: power, learning, race and ‘frontiers’.

Power. I contend the museum has in part a history of power. Museums have demonstrated the power of wealth and privilege – of the church, the king and the merchant since their inception, which in the Western world can be traced to fifteenth-century Florence, when the Medici family came to prominence and established their Palace (Hooper-Greenhill 1992; Bennett 1995). A new power – of the Nation and the citizen – can be traced to the establishment at the end of the eighteenth century, with the French Revolution and the formation from the princely collection of the Louvre in 1789, to ‘stand for the Republic and its ideal of equality’ (Duncan 1995: 35). The historical power of the museum can be seen not only to confirm conventional social hierarchies, but also to mark the overturning of older orders of control, and this would appear to lie at the heart of the widespread and continuing growth reported by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), at a staggering rate of 90 percent since 1946 (UNESCO 1995: 184).

In today's age of globalisation, museums around the world retain the older powers of treasure house, place of knowledge, sanctuary and shrine, in combination with a newer role as a forum and a vital role in democracy, which it is a central concern to examine in this book. While this democratic exchange can spark bitter controversy, since the museum in the socio-cultural landscape of the twenty-first century can be perceived as an icon of western colonialism in particular contexts, this effect is often in contradistinction to curatorial intentions. For example at the Royal Ontario Museum's exhibition Into the Heart of Africa, where African Canadians protested against the museum as a storehouse of imperial loot, tainted by a colonial past, an anachronism, and at the Smithsonian where the Enola Gay was viewed as of no use or even a hindrance in developing a cohesive community (Philip 1994; Reigel 1996; Schildkrout 1991; Gieryn 1998). Learning at the Museum Frontiers argues the opposite. The museum, as it will show, has the potential to function as a ‘frontier’: a zone where learning is created, new identities are forged; new connections are made between disparate groups and their own histories (Philip 1992). In some cases, collections are shown to have a new and more positive power: to help disadvantaged groups, to raise self-esteem and even to challenge racism by progressing learning.

Learning is a major theme and thread running through the book. Currently in the UK, education in the museum is widely distinguished by a focus on the learner, with the department of museum education often renamed the department of museum learning and the education policy renamed learning policy. This practice mirrors the child-centred or learner-centred approaches to education long pioneered notably by John Dewey and Paulo Freire, which challenged views of education as a ladder with incremental steps of knowledge that must be acquired and measured by testing at various stages (Dewey 1968; Freire 1985, 1996, 1998). Learning for Dewey and Freire emphasises individual potential and takes metaphors from the garden – nourishment, growth, blossoming. This is distinct from the approach adopted by more conservatively minded educators, whose major concern lies with the authority of the professional educator and takes metaphors from the marketplace – the banking system, competition, assessment. I approve the direction towards learning in the museum today, which clearly does not denigrate the vital role of the museum educator. Contrariwise, the educator works hard building bridges that close the knowledge gap between the museum and the museum visitor; addressing the complex issues of diversity and developing theoretically grounded and creative approaches to learning with new audiences.

Furthermore, in the museum recent terminological changes most importantly reflect a whole museum approach to the visitor learning experience. The V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum) is one prime examples of the education department responsible for driving education policy and strategy throughout the whole museum since the early 1990s (<http://www.vam.ac.uk> accessed on 30.11.2008). The V&A operates with a broad definition of learning:

Learning is a process of active engagement with experience; it is what people do when they want to make sense of the world. It may involve the development or deepening of skills, knowledge, understanding, awareness, values, ideas and feelings, or an increase in the capacity to reflect. Effective learning leads to change, development and the desire to learn more. (<http://www.inspiringlearningforall.gov.uk> accessed on 30.11.2008)

This view of learning, in the context of the museum, vitally places the learner at the heart of provision. It recognises that since different people have preferred styles of learning they can be engaged in the learning process in diverse ways with a variety of stimuli throughout their lives – literally from the cradle to the grave (<http://www.inspiringlearningforall.gov.uk> accessed on 30.11.2008).

Race. While it can be argued that the ‘inspiring’ definition does not pay sufficient attention to the socio-political context of learning – the economic poverty and racism in society, which prevents all our children from flourishing and developing their full potential – with its emphasis on lifelong learning it is especially helpful for museum educators concerned with inclusion in general and antiracism in particular, since it prioritises a place for individuals who have not achieved according to the usual timings through the school system. In the UK a disproportionate number of Black children are included in this group as Baroness Catherine Ashton, Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Early Years and Schools Standards notes, in the report of the 2002 conference, Towards a Vision of Excellence: London schools and the Black Child.

We cannot ignore the fact that the education service as a whole is clearly still not meeting the needs of many black children. There has been some recent improvement, but it remains the case that black pupils are more likely than white pupils to be excluded from school, and are half as likely to leave school with five A-C GCSEs as their peers from some of the groups. The position for our black boys is even more worrying. (Ashton 2002: 11)

It is almost 30 years since Rampton first highlighted the ‘under-achievement’ of African Caribbean pupils in UK schools, which in recent government reports is seen to persist today (Rampton 1981; Scarman 1981: 9, 1996; Gillborn and Gipps 1996; Ashton 2002). In Learning at the Museum Frontiers I contend that the museum can help to tackle this problem, by taking the responsibility to examine our ‘policies and methods’ for signs of the ‘institutionalised racism’ such as that which the Macpherson Report uncovered when investigating the racist murder of the teenager Stephen Lawrence in South London (Macpherson 1999: 6.18). Macpherson follows Stokely Carmichael in defining institutional racism as originating ‘in the operation of anti-black attitudes and practice’, which he underlines as playing a role in this failure of society (Macpherson 1999: 6.22). ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Plates
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Section 1 Introduction: The Spatial Politics of the Museum Frontiers
• Section 2 Including New Voices and Forms of Practice
• Section 3 Critical Collaborative Museum Pedagogy
• Bibliography
• Index