Visitors of a certain age coo over our 7" vinyl records, 'Dandy' comics and Dungeons and Dragons games (or is that just me?). Does anyone else have dreams of entering a room filled orange and brown wallpaper to the sound of Mud's 'Tiger Feet' whilst wearing polyester slacks? Perhaps that is my equivalent of a near death experience of heaven. Sadly as my previous blog on religious observance confirmed there is a special place of torment waiting for me.
"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, museum managers and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Revelations 21:8 ish)
Anyway, will the next generation of children coo over a Spotify screenshot, an RSS feed url and a cyberspace fantasy avatar? It is getting to the stage when the present is increasingly object free, increasingly globalised, increasingly generic. We are gradually freeing ourselves from material culture. Our social culture is becoming increasingly 'immaterial' in the many senses that that word conveys.
What will the role be of the local history museum in Britain now that we drive Japanese or German cars, eat in American fast food 'restaurants' and the rest of the things that define our existence are made in China and those which aren't are so niche they cannot be legitimately collected for their universality.
How do we depict the call centre service industry that employs 25% of the working population of Unreason? Even the Unreason football team which plies its trade in the Midland Olympian League Division Three has a Swedish manager called Sven and has had a recent influx of players from Syria who coincidentally appeared the day after my annual lorry delivery of cheap booze from Calais.
Two thirds of our ground floor space is given over to storing our collections at the moment, in the future will all I need is an iPad?
In 2000 the philosopher Hilde Hein wrote,
"Like most contemporary institutions, museums have descended from the heaven of authoritative certainty to inhabit the flatlands of doubt. That move could have inspired venturesome individuality and explorative novelty; in most instances, however, doubt has led to cautious self-censorship and timid understatement. It has brought progressively more uniformity as museums hedge their bets by covering all possibilities. The more they celebrate diversity, the more indiscernible museums have grown from one another and from other public institutions; the more emphasis they place on professionalism, the more standardized their practice becomes."
"Has the drive to increase audiences led museums to become the cultural equivalent of a Big Mac and fries?”
What is the answer? If the headlong charge towards diversity and professionalism has led to uniformity and standardisation. Must I repeat my message of proactive inactivity that I proposed in my Museums Association Conference keynote speech (see blog posting 'Impassioned Plea' from Feb 2013), or revise my manifesto towards virtual activity.
If I make a start by coming into work less and just having a picture of the museum in my head where I work, that might help. But a revision of the museum's collecting policy is needed.
For any donation the first question must be, 'is it local?' - preferably said in as threatening a League of Gentlemen way as possible.
Reject
- Anything created outside of Earth (no meteorites, no religious artefacts)
- Anything made outside of Europe (China may reach the GDP per head of the USA within the next 300 years, that is a blink of an eye in museum terms - it is not a museum's job to help them get there any quicker)
- Anything made outside UK (anything relating to democracy, theatre, the rule of law etc. - all nasty foreign imports)
- Anything made outside of the Unreason hinterland (the hinterland is defined as a circle of 400 yards around the post box)
- Anything touchable (If it is real reject it on the grounds of limited space, if it exists as a sequence of computer code accept it without question)
- Everything else
Accept
- money
- free help
- sympathy
In fact I'm thinking of revising the museum website headline to;
Don't touch the things, this is a local museum for local people, there's nothing for you here.
Don't touch the things, this is a local museum for local people, there's nothing for you here.
No comments:
Post a Comment