Category: Reading Reflections

For things he deems so important to contemporary American culture, Luke certainly doesn’t seem to find many strong points in the museums he cites as examples in this book. I have no trouble agreeing with his basic premises of the book that he reinforces in his conclusion–essentially, that museums are educational (and re-educational) tools that depict biased or politically influenced narratives of history, culture, etc. I do, however, have some issues with the hyperbolic criticisms that he inflicts on the museums he has chosen to examine.

I do not believe that the purpose of the Holocaust Museum, as Luke defines it, is to stand “forthrightly against all of the far-right or neofascist attempts to deny that the Holocaust even happened.” I think the museum’s purpose is simply to educate the public regarding the facts of what happened, and I don’t think there are truly enough Holocaust deniers in the world to warrant that statement. I also do not agree that the museum is too entertaining; it is shockingly compelling, but not over the top in its efforts to inform. Luke’s criticism of the images displayed there as being too horrific and shown too often so as to make them taken for granted contrasts with his previous criticism of the detractors of the Enola Gay/American West exhibits who wanted the exhibits to be overly politically correct. Luke neglects to suggest what type of balance he believes should be instated for museums exhibiting controversial subjects such as these.

On the other hand, his depictions of how the Museum of Natural History and the Missouri Botanical Garden define discourse and cultural realities seems quite exaggerated. I have no doubt that, upon its establishment, the Museum of Natural History provided an unprecedented and influential glimpse into “the disorder of beings, ordinarily known as ‘life.'” (Make it stop!) However, his implication that “people probably learn much more about art, culture, history, nature, and science from museums” than they do elsewhere is entirely unfounded.

Finally, I found it hard to understand why Luke seemed to be able to accept the Missouri Botanical Garden’s “florapower” narrative while rejecting that of the Sonora Desert Museum. Surely the Botanical Garden must not be completely accurate in its representations either. However, since it seems that Foucault would have absolutely loved the Missouri Botanical Garden, I guess his self-appointed apotheosizer is obligated to do so as well.

After reading “Southwestern Environments as Hyperreality: The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum” by Timothy Luke there are a lot of contradictions and unresolved issues I would love for him to explain.  I agreed that the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum romanticized the desert landscape of Arizona perpetuating a cultural landscape myth of exotic mystery emanating from the dirt, rock formations, and cacti.  The danger of having visitors or residents in Arizona believe in this hyperreality of an engineered landscape attracts more people to this fragile environment and encourages residential over-development.  Bringing more residential and commercial development to the area starkly contrasts with the museum’s desire to promote conservation and environmentalist policies.

Luke seems to be affronted by the museum for Nature itself (or herself).   He claims, “if [the] tourists went elsewhere, and if the developers closed out their many construction projects, the Sonoran Desert might well thrive as it did during the four millenia prior to the Arizona territory’s acquisition by the United States of America (162).”  This particular quotation sums up many of the issues I had with this chapter.  I will try to ignore Luke’s oversight in assuming that only white Americans have ever had any influence on the environment of Arizona, but he even seems to classify humans as non-human nature in this chapter.  Luke also fails to offer any solutions on how this unique environment could be interpreted for a wider audience who don’t have the stamina to wander around the desert and fend of snakes for days at a time.  Luke made some interesting points about how the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum struggles to live up to its environmental and conservationists aims and the dangers posed by presenting a hyperreality to the public.  However, he fails to offer a viable solution (other than shutting down the museum completely) that would help this museum defend the environment it is trying to portray.

A theme in all the readings included, the ways in which a museum is to display and inform the public while being historically accurate as well as sensitive to a variety of groups.  A museum wants people to come to the museum, because it requires patrons and donations or earnings to keep the museum going.  However, after completing the reading it seems impossible to meet everyone’s expectations.  For example, at the Air and Space Museum there was a great deal of arguing as to the display of the B-29 bomber the Enola Gay.  Its pilot, Brigadier General Tibbets was angry that the Enola Gay was being displayed in parts, and was not fully restored.  Also, when deciding the script that would accompany the display, there was some debate as to the discussion on the use of the atomic bombs as well as photos of women and children’s’ burned bodies after the bombings.  Some images or displays some may believe to be too graphic or shocking.  However, as a museum it should be able to display images that are relevant to the history of the artifacts.

How are historians and museums able to dial down the horrors of war and other tragic events, and be historically accurate? In my opinion, they can’t, tragic events in history can’t be dialed down to better suit the public.  In the text there is the mention of the Holocaust Museum as a horror tour.  For example, the museum has a display in which the process of arriving and then being processed to the gas chambers.  It is a display based on actual events, so it is educational not a horror tour.  There is not a way to make the Holocaust Museum less graphic or shocking to some because it is teaching about the slaughter and genocide of 6 million Jews.  In contrast, the Fred Harvey Museum displays Native American art, however does not include the information including; death marches, reservation systems, and any information about Native American culture.  The focus is only on the artwork.

I love museums, and as an art history minor, I was required to read several institutional critiques similar to Luke’s. While I have never felt personally assaulted by this wave of political overture during any visit to any museum, I am aware that these political threads do indeed run deep. When you start to pick apart the pieces of any institution, such as the Heard Museum in Phoenix, we can begin to understand the subtle nature of the normalization, discursive persuasion, and commodification of cultural heritage.

Strange that as Mrs. Heard and Mr. Harvey were busy gathering “authentic” native artifacts, which were supposed to represent an authentic past, they were also requiring that these artifacts accommodate a new end, the tourists of the American Southwest. These objects, then, no longer represent their previous utility, yet they continue to define the “authentic” works produced by Native Americans.

It makes me think, how should I represent the history that I want to tell? Are there any political ‘land mines’ that I should be aware of? Will my representation neutralize, expand, or explain any particular perspective over another? Should it?

Timothy Luke’s book, Museum Politics, intellectually pushed me this week. Despite having a love for museums and attending them across the US and Europe, I never thought or viewed them through a political ideological lens. While Luke’s stylistic approach was rather combative, he brings up relevant questions and issues in regards to museums, culture representation and history.

The two readings that resonated with me were chapter one, “Politics at the Exhibition” and chapter two, “Nuclear Reactions.” These chapters prompted me to ponder how one could successfully balance a national narrative of celebration with a new social history methodology that brings forth untold or formerly unwanted stories. Luke provided ample examples of where exhibitions were unsuccessful at this bridging, but I wonder if there are instances where this was successfully done. And if so, what were their strategies or techniques? More than anything these readings encouraged me to think about what kind of methods have previously been employed and what can be learned from them. It seems more than anything both sides of the cultural spectrum need to be open to opposing interpretations, and energy should be put forth toward solving the problem, not running farther to the left or the right.

A side thought of mine this week was about history in our public school education. Chapters one and two made think about whether or not our education system is facilitating a variety of historical perspectives, e.g. Japanese WWII perspective. Surely introduction of historical diversity would foster the ability to cognitively understand the importance of coupling celebrative and realist perspectives. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

 

The theme I found interesting for this week’s reading was that museums are places that perpetuate political and ideological agendas of particular people and institutions. According to Luke, their exhibits, and sometimes their entire collection, portray one set  of values. This came as a surprise to me, since I figured museums were objective, and picked exhibits that would appeal to the widest audience.

The other part of this reading that I found interesting was about the exhibit that explored the West and the various ways that it has been romanticized. The dichotomy of the real western frontier and the hollywood version are concepts that I have come across before, but that helped me read this book because I understood better how the museum was criticizing the inherent view of the West. It also reminded me of the West as a place, and as a concept. That’s where the Virginian comes in comparison to this reading, where an Eastern writer portrays “western” values and the epitome of a man, and how that gets perpetuated through time. I honestly want to keep my inherited visions of the West, while at the same time understanding the truth and how the preconception I have was started.

In addition, I am very interested on the role museums play to create the “ideal” citizen by what they display and the values that the artifact/artwork perpetuates. The concept of museums as  places that sterilize and purify the versions of history or values they want to portray intrigued me. This is just a side note, and not a fully developed concept in my mind that I can express eloquently. I have come across schools as places that create the “ideal” citizen, so I am intrigued how both work together since school children visit museums (or did at one time) to tag team the creation of responsible citizens.

I agree with LauriAnn that Luke (what a wonderful name!!) somewhat overstates the case for the importance of museums. Rather than being “venues where many key cultural realities are first defined,” museums seem to reflect cultural realities that have long since been defined and integrated into the dominant forms of power. Instead of being an engine at the forefront of cultural reality definition museums could be better understood as the cultural caboose.

This is seen in both of the controversial exhibits Luke provides as evidence. The revisionist interpretations in both “The West as America,” and the proposed Hiroshima exhibit had long been created and defined by such popular discourses as Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and by social history in our own profession. The reason for the controversy associated with these exhibits was that each side had substantial power behind it-the conservatives so just happened to be running congress at the time of the Hiroshima exhibit.

Luke also appears wide of the mark on the nature of entertainmentality and its relationship to museums. Entertainmentality-which Luke defines as practices that keep us held in some mutually prespecified manners- likely is much different in a democratic and free market society-where institutions must compete for people’s time, votes, or money, than it is described by Luke. The voluntary and competitive nature of American entertainmentality is anything but confinement/containment/occupation. Because of the democratic-in the political sphere-and the competitive-in the economic and temporal spheres-museums have to provide historical narratives and cultural artifacts that reflect the ways patrons want to spend their time, votes, and money. Museums have to be both democratic and competitive to succeed in a politically and economically free society.

On a final note: The usefulness of Foucault needs to be reexamined by academics in the humanities and social sciences. I realize he can help us justify our social value when confronted by the natural sciences-discourse anyone-but otherwise using Foucault seems little more than profoundly self-serving.

I struggled to accept the original premise of this book that Americans’ derive their understanding of history from museums.  Most of the examples given about controversial museum exhibits seemed to predate the rise of easy access to information via the internet.  I love history and I cannot remember the last time I went to a museum.  I feel like most Americans derive their understandings of history from high school or college experiences, political versions of history, and television/internet.

I found the chapter about the Fred Harvey Museum fascinating.  It seemed to encompass the problem that faces public history of all kinds.  History must be marketed, commodified, and sold to a general audience in order to justify funding it.  In the case of the Harvey Museum, Native Americans of the Southwest had their diverse cultures condensed into one compelling story of turquoise jewelery, pottery, and kachinas that favors the traditions and material culture of some tribes over others.  The controversial exhibit of “The West as America” shows that a “wrong” interpretation of history can be just as bad as trying to tell a more nuanced and diverse story of the Southwest.  The stories behind why we need these narratives of rugged western artists and mysterious Indian basket weavers can be as compelling as the truth.  I would be interested to see a positive example of a museum exhibit that was able to convey a more accurate or reflective version of history that appealed to the public; Timothy Luke did not really give any examples in the chapters we looked at.

This book/work/project/treatise by Luke so enriched my “thinking process” regarding the importance of “museums” to culture–and, indeed, “culture” to museums. While (perhaps) the most practical use I obtained from the selected chapters was the implication that (we as) public historians should not write in Luke’s “style” if we wish our work to appeal to a broad/public demographic/audience-ness, the book does make some important points amidst all of its Andersonian jargon.

I must admit that I have never given much thought to the symbiotic relationship between culture and museums, despite my enthusiastic belief in the importance of museums. This book was valuable to me because Luke articulates (if you can call it that) exactly why they are important and how our cultural and political identities are formed by our museum experiences–and vice versa.

It seems like an impossible task to reconcile what museums feel they need to impart with the differing political views and agendas of the public. I can’t help but think that museums should attempt to remain as neutral as possible in their portrayals of the past. Though it is noble to want to foster an aura of intellectualism among museum-goers (“But I want them to think!” the Smithsonian curator implied during the debate over the Enola Gay exhibit), a simple, balanced presentation may in fact do that better than any number of controversial interpretations which just serve to “induce rage,” as Luke states.

Like it or not, the existence of museums depends on their patrons, and thus they must cater to what the public wants (such as commodified Native American material culture), or doesn’t want (such as reminders of their country’s historical imperfections). As Luke notes, the artifacts themselves are “cenotaphs” of the past; the only way to avoid conflict is to allow the public to interpret the contents themselves. Blatantly advocating certain interpretations of the past–no matter how accurate they may be–seems only to endanger museum attendance (and tax dollars). In the end–though perhaps I am being naive–the public is more likely to be inspired to learn and think critically about an exhibit if the information is presented impartially. Is it possible to create a completely impartial exhibit? Perhaps the cyborgs of the future will be able to do a better job of it than human curators…