Dumbing down museums? Salon 256 debate
Salong 256 from the Society of Antiquities reports:
'Museums 6: further contributions to our museums debate
That is an argument that our Fellow Catherine Johns would support. Catherine takes issue with Fellow Nick Merriman’s comments on museum display in the last issue of Salon ‘because of the implicit accusation that those of us who are not wholly enchanted by some of the current trends in labelling DO NOT “wish to engage a wider public with museums”. This is not true. Like Nick, we all went into museum work because we wanted to increase and to share our knowledge and enthusiasm, and to enable people to learn more about the past and how to enjoy and appreciate it. In order to achieve that aim, it is important to make museums into places where the public can not only see the actual material remains, but can learn more about them than they could discover simply by looking at a book, or these days, by googling a Wikipedia entry.’
Nick also referred to the importance of working as part of a team, to which Catherine responds by saying: ‘All curators work with designers, conservators, scientists, editors and others, and always have done in the larger institutions. There’s nothing new in this. What is new, and dangerous, is trying to exclude curators from the team.’ Neither is the use of modern media along with traditional labelling a problem: ‘My concern rests with what the labels say and how they say it, whether the medium happens to be parchment inscribed with a quill pen, an iPad, or anything in between. I want the information to be reliable, up to date, full, not copied down from Wikipedia, and expressed in clear adult English that does not patronise museum visitors by assuming that they cannot understand words of more than one syllable. Museum displays and information specifically aimed at primary-school children are another matter entirely. My objection is to treating the adult visitor as though he/she were six years old.’
Another response to the points made by Fellow Nick Merriman in Salon 255 comes from Fellow Stephanie Dalley, who says: ‘of course we all agree that the intellectual background underpinning museum interpretation is a vital component of museum display — this is true regardless of how many objects are on display. But I must take issue over the displays at the new Ashmolean, because, contrary to Nick’s impression, several galleries have around one-third as many objects on display as they had formerly, and some posts at Assistant Keeper level have either been abolished or reduced from being permanent to short-term (three years). The reduction of such posts inevitably affects knowledgeable intellectual input. The thinking behind the latter is perhaps that the education department and the exhibition / display specialists (who are hired only for a particular job) can fill the void, but this is much mistaken. Some of the information panels in the new displays are evidence of this.'
'Museums 6: further contributions to our museums debate
That is an argument that our Fellow Catherine Johns would support. Catherine takes issue with Fellow Nick Merriman’s comments on museum display in the last issue of Salon ‘because of the implicit accusation that those of us who are not wholly enchanted by some of the current trends in labelling DO NOT “wish to engage a wider public with museums”. This is not true. Like Nick, we all went into museum work because we wanted to increase and to share our knowledge and enthusiasm, and to enable people to learn more about the past and how to enjoy and appreciate it. In order to achieve that aim, it is important to make museums into places where the public can not only see the actual material remains, but can learn more about them than they could discover simply by looking at a book, or these days, by googling a Wikipedia entry.’
Nick also referred to the importance of working as part of a team, to which Catherine responds by saying: ‘All curators work with designers, conservators, scientists, editors and others, and always have done in the larger institutions. There’s nothing new in this. What is new, and dangerous, is trying to exclude curators from the team.’ Neither is the use of modern media along with traditional labelling a problem: ‘My concern rests with what the labels say and how they say it, whether the medium happens to be parchment inscribed with a quill pen, an iPad, or anything in between. I want the information to be reliable, up to date, full, not copied down from Wikipedia, and expressed in clear adult English that does not patronise museum visitors by assuming that they cannot understand words of more than one syllable. Museum displays and information specifically aimed at primary-school children are another matter entirely. My objection is to treating the adult visitor as though he/she were six years old.’
Another response to the points made by Fellow Nick Merriman in Salon 255 comes from Fellow Stephanie Dalley, who says: ‘of course we all agree that the intellectual background underpinning museum interpretation is a vital component of museum display — this is true regardless of how many objects are on display. But I must take issue over the displays at the new Ashmolean, because, contrary to Nick’s impression, several galleries have around one-third as many objects on display as they had formerly, and some posts at Assistant Keeper level have either been abolished or reduced from being permanent to short-term (three years). The reduction of such posts inevitably affects knowledgeable intellectual input. The thinking behind the latter is perhaps that the education department and the exhibition / display specialists (who are hired only for a particular job) can fill the void, but this is much mistaken. Some of the information panels in the new displays are evidence of this.'
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