Remix: Changing Conversations in Museums of the Americas 9780520960114

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REMIX

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Judy and Bill Timken Endowment Fund in Contemporary Arts of the University of California Press Foundation.

REMIX changing conversations in museums of the americas

Edited by

Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Álvarez

university of california press

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2016 by The Regents of the University of California Artwork © 2014 by Richard Parker. Page xii: Pastel Sticks 188; page 8: Pastel Sticks 189; page 56: Pastel Sticks 186; page 104: Pastel Sticks 187; page 156: Pastel Sticks 42; page 216: Pastel Sticks 184. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Remix : changing conversations in museums of the Americas / edited by Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Álvarez. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. isbn 978-0-520-28452-4 (cloth : alk. paper)—isbn 0-52028452-6 (cloth : alk. paper)—isbn 978-0-520-28453-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)—isbn 0-520-28453-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)—isbn 978-0520-96011-4 (ebook)—isbn 0-520-96011-4 (ebook) 1. Museums—United States. 2. Museums—Latin America. 3. Museums—Canada I. Holo, Selma, editor. II. Álvarez, Mari-Tere, editor. am5.r45 2016 069.097—dc23 2015035764 Manufactured in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30 post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Panarchy and the Museum

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chapter one. Origins Reflecting on Origins

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Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Álvarez, United States

What Legacy Will We Leave on These Walls?

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Óscar Arias Sánchez, Costa Rica

A Project to Create a Peace Museum in Costa Rica: A Nation That Abolished the Army

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Manuel Araya-Incera, Costa Rica

Rethinking the Spirit of a Museum: Atzompa Archaeological Site

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Nelly M. Robles García, Mexico

Lessons Learned in the Principles and Practice of Community Museums

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Cuauhtémoc Camarena and Teresa Morales, Mexico

The Museum of Art of Puerto Rico, or, the Reconstitution of a History of Art

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Héctor Feliciano, Puerto Rico

Peru Does Not Need Museums Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru

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A Mexican National Museum in Chicago: Integrating Cultures

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Carlos Tortolero, United States

The Multinodal Institution: Going Off the Grid

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Lori Starr, United States

The Museum of Oaxaca

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Edward Rothstein, United States

chapter two. Conserving Reflections on Conserving: Conservation and Conservatism

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Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Álvarez, United States

Conservation, Stewardship, and the Future of AMA: Art Museum of the Americas, Part I

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Lydia Bendersky, Chile

Stewardship and the Future of AMA: Art Museum of the Americas, Part II

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Andrés Navia, Colombia

For Whom the Human Remains?

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Ben Garcia, United States

Reimagining an Ethical Approach to Museum Collections

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Stephen E. Nash and Chip Colwell, United States

Small Museums and the “Cultural Revolution” in Venezuela, 2001–2012

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Guillermo Barrios, Venezuela

Repairing a Lost History in Rio de Janeiro: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century

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Piedade Grinberg, Brazil

On and Off the Hill in Los Angeles: Making Connections and Making a Difference

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Clare Kunny, United States

Art and Beyond: Some Contemporary Challenges for Art and Anthropology Museums

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Ivan Gaskell, United States

A Museum Is a Museum Is a Museum Is a Museum: Museums and Networks Vanda Vitali, Canada

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chapter three. Uncertainty Reflecting on Uncertainty and Reform

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Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Álvarez, United States

Freeing Up Art Museums

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Maxwell L. Anderson, United States

The Arts and Citizens in Transition: A Case Study from the Pulitzer

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Kristina Van Dyke, United States

The Contemporary Museum in a New Creative Agenda

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Richard Koshalek and Erica Clark, United States

A New “Place” for Museums in the Digital Age

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Susana Smith Bautista, United States

The Artist in Crisis: The Artist Embracing Society

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Demian Flores, Mexico

Museum Freefall: Excerpts from a Long Conversation at the Getty Museum

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Fred Wilson and David Wilson, United States

A Mountain of Broken Mirrors: Museums with a Social Approach

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Marco Barrera Bassols, Mexico

The Planet’s Flatulence and the Likelihood of Our Extinction

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Alejandro de Ávila B., Mexico

chapter four. Renewal Reflection, Renewal, and Rebirth

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Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Álvarez, United States

A New Vision for a Treasured Canadian Institution and the Opportunities and Challenges We Face along the Way

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James D. Fleck with Nichole Anderson, Canada

What’s the Big Idea? Rethinking the Permanent Collection

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Graham W. J. Beal, United States

Reimagining Access to the Met Thomas P. Campbell, United States

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Rethinking Immigrant Integration in the American South: Can Museums Help Communities Address a Major Social Challenge?

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Tom Hanchett, United States

A Rebirth: The (New) Nevada Museum of Art, a Museum of Ideas

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JoAnne S. Northrup and William Fox, United States

Reenvisioning Children and Families into the Museum: Arts for NexGen, LACMA

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Jane Burrell and Karen Satzman, United States

100 Years Later: The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Reactivated and Reimagined

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Jane G. Pisano, United States

Reinvention: Collector as Custodian

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Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Venezuela

Tales from the Ibero-American Museum Network: Realigning the Power

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Santiago Palomero Plaza, Spain

Realigning Mexican Museums in Today’s World: Some Proposals for Communication, Development, and Evaluation of Our Museum Institutions

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Miguel Fernández Félix, Mexico

Creating Your Own Conversations in a Panarchy of Museums Our Writers: A Pan-American Highway Contributors

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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The International Museum Institute, the research unit of the Fisher Museum of Art at the University of Southern California, has existed in a loose and extended partnership with the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Coyoacán, Mexico, and the Universidad Nacional Autónomo de México (UNAM) in Mexico City for a little over a decade. Known as IMI, this provocative think tank focuses on disrupting the hierarchies and disciplinary demarcations that, even as they offer structure, have also effectively limited our conversations in the museum world. Through a series of intimate workshops, lectures, and conferences held in Mexico and the United States, IMI’s horizons have continued to expand, break down, and build up that world’s normal communications networks. The first book that IMI produced, Beyond the Turnstile: Making the Case for Museums and Sustainable Values (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), presented the results of its search for a set of agreed-upon qualitative and sustainable values for museums that could be shared with a wide swath of museuminterested parties. The sessions leading to our conclusions were lively and surprising, as we discovered that values we had all thought to be universal and self-evident were actually subject to question when debated in an open and international arena. What we agreed upon throughout the process, however, was that our findings were needed in the field in order to provide an alternative—an antidote—to the then generally accepted belief that any museum’s worth could best be demonstrated quantitatively—that is, by the number of admissions it generated. ix

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preface and acknowledgments

Beyond the Turnstile thus evolved into a kind of advocacy handbook, offering a decalogue of qualitative values we did all agree upon. More than that, our readers encountered a broad and international range of interpretations of those values. Beyond the Turnstile was helpful in inspiring more enthusiastic support from our stakeholders. Not only did it help those stakeholders gain a clearer understanding of the indispensability of museums to society, but it also gave them the language to encourage others in their circles to lend their support to the museum enterprise. Of course, Beyond the Turnstile was expressly useful for museum professionals themselves, as it allowed for an expanding consciousness about the world in which they/we work. And, finally, for students of museums, it was, as one reviewer noted in the words of Claude Lévi-Strauss, “good to think with.” From its earliest days, IMI has focused on uncovering the nature of sustainability in museums. Now, in Remix, we are traveling beyond a discussion of sustainable values toward one focused on recognizing museums’ life cycles in order to better guide us in our quest for sustainability. We should add here that although IMI’s scope was initially more broadly international, in recent years it has found itself gravitating toward the Americas. In the western hemisphere we have been encountering a compelling critical mass of elective affinities—along with their attendant challenges and opportunities—that, when gathered together, afford the possibilities of changing conversations. And so, Remix: Changing Conversations in Museums of the Americas, IMI’S second book, delivers to its readers an unexpected web of the visions, voices, and perspectives of museum practitioners, philosophers, statesmen, collectors, artists, practitioners, theorists, and funders—all of them writing from or about the Americas. Because the essays we included are organized under lifecycle themes ranging from origins to renewal, and since they are presented panarchically (that is, neither hierarchically nor by discipline), they direct the reader toward an “open-ended and experimental vision for museums, while at the same time interrogating the broad role of museums in the Americas.” 1. The critic Mark O’Neill, director of policy and research for Glasgow Life, wrote of Beyond the Turnstile that “given that the book is an accurate mirror to the museum sector’s current state, it is, in Lévi-Strauss’s phrase, ‘good to think with.’ ” Beyond the Turnstile: Making the Case for Museums and Sustainable Values was published in 2009 by Rowman and Littlefield in English, and then in 2010 by UNAM/MUAC in Spanish. 2. As per Marjorie Schwartzer of the University of San Francisco in her peer review of this book.

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We are calling this vision a Panarchy, and we will discuss it thoroughly in the introduction to follow. We want to acknowledge the University of Southern California and its USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences for its ongoing support of IMI and the original “Remix” conference that became the basis for this book. Elizabeth Garrett, then provost at USC, now president of Cornell University, and Dr. Beth Meyerowitz of the USC provost’s office have my special gratitude for supporting this book in every way. La Doctora María Isabel Grañén de Porrúa, president of the Alfredo Harp Helú Foundation in Oaxaca, Mexico, was central to the “Remix” conference’s success—as was her generous co-sponsorship of the conference itself. Thanks are also due to Edú Nieto and the vigorous and generous Oaxacan Harp Helú team. Selma Holo’s residency in Santa Fe provided by Bob and Madeleine Bruning provided her—at just the right moment—with the tranquility she needed to push the book toward the finish line. La Maestra Graciela de la Torre, Mexico director of the IMI and coordinator of the Visual Arts Museums at UNAM, including UNAM/MUAC, has wisely and constantly encouraged and sustained IMI’s endeavors. She has been a guide for all of our projects from start to finish—our “super guru.” And Miguel Fernández Félix, director of the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, is our super-friend. We also acknowledge UC Press, and its editors Kari Dahlgren, Karen Levine, and Jack Young. At home at the USC Fisher Museum of Art, our gratitude is extended to Kay Allen and Ralph Gatchalian for their generous involvement in the production of Remix. And, enduringly, we thank Fred Croton, Javier Iribarren, and especially Kiki, for making both of our lives the gifts that they are.

Introduction Panarchy and the Museum

background In 2002, the Canadian ecologist and scholar C. S. Holling led an international group of ecologists, economists, social scientists, and mathematicians through a five-year collaboration that led to the development of a theoretical framework for the better understanding of transformation within natural systems. This group developed what they termed the life loop and the adaptive cycle as principal touchpoints for the interplay, in nature, between “change and persistence, between the predictable and unpredictable.” Holling and Lance H. Gunderson went on to create an overarching, cross-scale, interdisciplinary, dynamic theory that they named Panarchy. Although Holling and Gunderson originated their theory to allow for a better understanding of nature and its systems, it has gone on to inspire scholars in a multitude of disciplines to see their fields through a fresh lens. From the beginning, Holling and Gunderson described Panarchy as a metaphor, and grasped that it would have wide applications. And so, while the life loop and its adaptive cycle were developed with respect to studies of ecosystems, the metaphor from the beginning had relevance and found application for social and socio-environmental systems. 1. Crawford S. Holling, Lance H. Gunderson, and Garry D. Peterson, “Sustainability and Panarchies,” in Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (Washington, DC, and London: Island Press, 2002), 69. 2. Telephone conversation between Lance Gunderson and Selma Holo, March 30, 2014. 3. Crawford S. Holling, Lance H. Gunderson, and Garry D. Peterson, “Sustainability and Panarchies,” 69.

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But, museums are not exactly parallel to the world of nature. Looking at the Americas, the hemisphere where we are locating our conversations, we need to underline that museums do not exist in a great interlocking system, and it would be a grave mistake to assume that they did. However, each single museum does exist within its own system, its own museum space, and it is useful to try to identify where any single museum can be positioned in its own life cycle by comparing it to others of all types and sizes. The comparisons made possible by this book are refreshingly stimulating because they bring us out of our comfort zones and give equal weight to museums outside of our gridded networks, encouraging us to find possible affinities in unlikely places. We too have seen the possibilities of applying this theoretical metaphor to museums. These cultural, human-made institutions also live their lives by traveling through life cycles, each one in its own manner and at its own rate. Reading the texts in Remix as if they were a set of conversations organized by life-cycle phases can enhance our ability to spot certain situations that surface in a particular phase of the life cycle of any museum. The conversations around phases can heighten our awareness that what might appear to be a state of permanent crisis is actually part of a condition of constant change and opportunity. That is, these conversations can give us some sense of what the life-cycle loop looks like and can help us think more tranquilly, clearly, and creatively about the next steps we might take that could enable us get us out of a crisis we are presently enduring. These conversations, arranged as they are, make us aware of how our colleagues throughout the Americas have managed similar crises attendant to that particular phase in the loop, and how they have creatively moved on to the next phase of the life-cycle loop. Oddly, reading the essays in a given phase can help reduce the frustration we, our staffs, our “bosses,” and our stakeholders feel when a museum we thought we had

4. For example, Glenn Sutter, curator of human ecology at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum (Canada) and the Canadian museologist Douglas Worts have been looking at Holling’s work and the role museums can play in environmental sustainability. For further info see G. C. Sutter and D. Worts, “Negotiating a Sustainable Path: Museums and Societal Therapy” (2005), in Looking Reality in the Eye: Museums and Social Responsibility, ed. R. R. Janes and G. Conaty (Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary Press); K. D. Arbuthnott, G. C. Sutter, and C. T. Heidt, “Natural History Museums, Parks, and Connection with Nature” (2014), in Museum Management and Curatorship, DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2014.888818; and R. Logan and G. C. Sutter, “Sustainability and Museum Education: What Future Are We Educating For?,” International Journal of the Inclusive Museum 4 (2012): 11–26.

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“fixed” only a few years ago appears, once again, to be in grave need of strategic attention. The loop is always on the move.

the adaptive cycle and museums No museum can or should be static throughout its existence. Times will change and new needs will emerge at different times, at different rates, and (at large museums) within different departments. Any museum that does not adapt and creatively evolve to meet those changing times and their needs will not develop the resilience required to be sustainable over generations. Happily, most museums do adapt. But because our conversations are usually limited to museums of our own scale, prestige, and discipline, we often disregard viable alternatives that exist outside our own circles.

Four Museum Phases: Origins, Conserving, Uncertainty, Renewal Origins, conserving, uncertainty, and renewal are the four phases that we have broadly identified in the life-cycle loop that every museum passes (or should pass) through if it is to have a long, multigenerational life. Collecting institutions, even Kunsthallen, all have, in the beginning, their celebratory origins, followed by a period of increasing realism and maturity when they must take into account responsibilities, challenges, and contradictions associated with conserving—both the conservation of things and questions around the conserving or revisiting of original philosophies and missions. Later on, uncertainties become more pronounced and reforms are floated and attempted—some succeeding and some failing. Next up there will inevitably be a period of renewal, once again summoning up the expenditure of great energy, along with a unique kind of tough critical thinking and the ability and courage to reexamine. But be forewarned: there is no end to this cycle. Think Möbius strip. With that perspective in mind, In chapter 1 we celebrate beginnings of museums, and even look at the potential for new kinds of museums in the future. We mark that phase as one where the best leadership is in high gear: energetic, charismatic, strategic, and politically strong, greeting new opportunities and resources with the most positive of attitudes. It is in the origins phase that a quick rate of overall growth and accumulation characterizes the mood of the institution as a whole. At these early stages, there is often great fluidity, as regulation and systematization of the museum can be weak, precisely so that it can still respond flexibly to experimentation and accumulation.

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In chapter 2, we open up conversations around conserving. Conserving is, for the museum life cycle, that time when a museum is expected to take itself seriously as an institution, one of society’s models. In its maturity, a museum must look inquiringly at challenges that derive from the infinitive to conserve. We thus begin with several essays around the topic of the conservation (and, logically, stewardship) of collections, and entertain some conventional and some iconoclastic points of view. This phase, accompanying the growing maturity of the museum, signals the growing requirement to consider what conserving means: its positive and negative implications. A healthy conservatism helps to regulate a museum’s internal state, yet at the same time, this is the moment when there is the danger of a less healthy conservatism: a hardening of internal and external connections, a loss of supple inquiry and flexibility. Chapter 3 is about the phase that is rife with uncertainty. Threats of all kinds begin to be apprehended on the close horizon, and there is often confusion. In response to growing uncertainty, reforms are often begun. Some are successful, some not. It is a time of danger for any museum, even as it offers a space for creativity and new opportunity. Our essayists represent various manifestations of this phase. Chapter 4 addresses renewal, the phase that, if a museum is to thrive, follows on the heels of uncertainty. In this phase there is room for a myriad of new possibilities: another identity might be forged, or new supporters targeted. A mission might be tweaked or even totally revised, and whole departments might be created or eliminated. This renewal is the future, but only for now, as the whole life loop of a museum, as the looping of a Möbius strip, will repeat itself dynamically over the decades as the museum continues to adapt and experience the adaptive life cycle.

a panarchy of conversations: a new way of communicating Panarchy: Neither Hierarchy nor Anarchy Panarchy is a way of apprehending the natural world that lies in direct opposition to both hierarchy and anarchy. It is a conceptual framework for looking at the ways people, nature, and their civilizations are organized. In Panarchy, influence is not predominantly “held by larger-scale, top-down processes, but

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can also come from small scale or bottom-up processes.” The conversations we are proposing here are to be considered as among equals and are, by design, cross-scale and cross-disciplinary. In adapting the theory of Panarchy and its life-cycle loop as a metaphor for this life cycle of museums, we invited forty-three authors from across the Americas to relate the histories of their museums. We devised a way of fitting each of those stories into the life-cycle loop, in the hopes that the loop could be seen as adaptable to any museum. Ultimately, it should become clear that all museums are essentially living in a theater of dynamic change and movement—a mirror of the interplay of creative energy, stability, resilience, and change—and that there are more ways than we could imagine, in our separate museum typologies, to grow, adapt, change, and increase resiliency and sustainable development at every phase. The challenge, as in nature, “is to conserve the ability to adapt to change, to be able to respond in a flexible way to uncertainty and surprises. And even to create the kind of surprises that open opportunity. It is this capacity that a view of an evolving nature should be all about: i.e., maintaining options in order to buffer disturbance and to create novelty. A living system cannot be kept within some desirable state or on some desirable trajectory if adaptive capacity is continuously lost.”

Panarchy as a Mode of Communication Panarchy is not only a way of understanding the life cycle of museums, but also a way museum professionals can think and communicate about museums with one another. We have, we hope, devised a way of encouraging a set of remixed conversations that are neither top-down nor bottom-up. We are representing developments in the museum field in the Americas panarchically—as raw material for yet more conversation and dialogue. Thus, part of Panarchy is based on disrupting how we look at our museum world, how we measure authority, and how we assign relevance to those outside of our traditional networks. 5. Craig R. Allen, David G. Angeler, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Lance H. Gunderson, and C. S. Holling, “Panarchy: Theory and Application,” Ecosystems 17, no. 4 (2014): 578. 6. Crawford S. Holling and Lance H. Gunderson, “Resilience and Adaptive Cycles,” in Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems, 32. This is the crux of the raison d’être of the organization of Remix. The more we know, and the more open we are to knowing more, the more arrows we have in our quivers to face the inevitable challenges to adapt creatively and change effectively.

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No doubt our traditional networks of communication do normally serve us well: they are efficient, and in their systematic, gridlike ways, they keep us connected to like-minded museum professionals and are useful for daily functioning. But, given the rapid rate of change throughout the world, these established networks also limit us because they are (even though we don’t ordinarily want to recognize it) by nature exclusionary. “Networks work on a binary logic: inclusion/exclusion . . . in social and organizational networks, social actors, fostering their values and interests, and in interaction with other social actors, are at the origin of the creation and programming of networks.” To make space for a more panarchic community, this book aims to momentarily disrupt the generally accepted communications systems that exist in our field. At a time of specialization and separations, Remix argues that we could all profit by finding a space where we can communicate differently, panarchically. That is, Remix is a call to open ourselves up to networks of awareness outside the silos we have erected in our museum culture—to think about “other” solutions that would involve scaling up, scaling down, individualizing, adapting, collectivizing, and breaking barriers, and thereby creating a communications approach that better approximates systems of contact that already happen in nature. If we are to accomplish this, even if only from time to time, even if only as tonic to our established mindsets, we must be aware that “a new program (a set of goal-oriented, compatible codes) needs to be installed in the network— from outside the network.” It is the point of view of this book that our traditional networks can and should be on occasion disrupted—from outside the networks—in the interests of experiencing the bracing condition of Panarchy.

our aspirations This book is meant to be that “safe” place we often aspire our museums to be, where visitors (all of our readers) can explore and discuss worldviews that are so far afield from their own that they would normally feel uncomfortable

7. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 10–22. 8. See Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Álvarez, “Conclusion: Museumspace,” in Beyond the Turnstile: Making the Case for Museums and Sustainable Values (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), 201.

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including them in their problem-solving dialogues or strategy sessions. We envision such a provocative panarchic “space” moving beyond these pages and into the way we practice. We imagine turning to it as we determine who populates our conferences, who writes for our exhibitions, who publishes our books, who teaches our classes, who structures our projects and educational programs, and who formulates our conclusions and narratives about the nature and future of museum culture. We don’t expect the hierarchical or disciplinary or gridded ways of meeting and communicating to disappear, nor are we encouraging anarchic, unframed conversations. Still, we do wish to challenge the expectation that the largely rectilinear grids that continue to separate museums of differing types and sizes, differing scopes and levels of prestige, and different missions remain the best way to enrich the enterprise of the museum in our time. We are rooting for establishing a place for Panarchy in the museum world. We are betting that, along with social media and blogging, conversations of an entirely different nature are still of value. We hope that after reading this book, if we are stumped for a solution to an unexpected museum problem, if we have come to see that we are in a certain phase on the loop of the life cycle, there will be an inspiration to pick up the phone, email, text, or Skype a colleague of greater or smaller influence than our own, or someone one who hails from a different type of museum, even one with an entirely different mission, for advice and conversation. Panarchy sets up four related museum conversations. It remixes partners and hopes to catalyze readers to engage in unorthodox thought. It aspires to effect unlikely contact, to change and adapt practices creatively, and to actually provide a kind of access to other values, other criteria, and other possibilities. All of that will be in the museum space where “communities, allegiances, affinities, and roots bump uncomfortably up against one another” and enrich us all.

9. Tony Judt, “Edge People,” New York Review of Books, March 25, 2010.

chapter one

Origins

Reflecting on Origins selma holo and mari-tere álvarez

We open chapter 1 celebrating origins, the first phase of the panarchic museum loop. Unique as every museum may become, there will always be, at the beginning of its life cycle, a profound desire for meaning-making that can only be fulfilled by the creation of a museum. Nine reflections on this earliest phase of the museums of our time bear witness to that kinship lying at the very heart of the museum enterprise. Characterized by vision, optimism, passion, intelligence, empathy, and energy, as well as an implicit expectation that the museum whose story is being told will be sustainable, these texts convey that kindred desire well. They also reveal the distinct challenges that accompany the origins phase—challenges faced and, to a greater or lesser degree, met. Within each museum’s origin story is a distinct and individuated future, one that will be shaped by a particular set of hard economic, political, psychological, environmental, and/or cultural trials. This first phase of the loop will always, though, be associated with particular kinds of challenges related to accumulation, building, innovation, and growth. These challenges will be met by men and women possessing those very qualities of vision and passion, intelligence, optimism, and energy mentioned above. However, as necessary as these qualities are to give shape and form to a museum’s beginnings, we will see in subsequent chapters that they are not necessarily the qualities that will guarantee its long-term resilience and sustainability. But that is for later; for now, we are celebrating beginnings and the personality types that launch museums. These are museums of many types, of different scales and sizes, and of different imaginations. Being aware of them, as we are doing by reading the nine texts panarchically, by giving them the equal 11

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weight of our attention, underlines the infinite variety available to us as we think about the museums we help build, and those that are parts of our lives as museum goers, workers, visitors, and leaders. First, we become acquainted with a powerful lecture by the former president of Costa Rica, Óscar Arias Sánchez, in which he argues for his museum of peace. This is his foundational statement, directed to a global audience, and it is a passionate plea. President Arias’s clarion call, and the accompanying text a few years later, delivered by Manuel Araya-Incera to the Global Conference of Peace Museums, emphasize that this peace museum would go beyond the usual expectations for this type of museum. More than a mere depository for documents, it would be a dynamic education site promoting peace—a model for other nations. What is unique about the ambitions of Arias and his foundation is that their museum would be a mirror of Costa Rica’s actual cornerstone national policy of peace. It is rare to capture the moment of inception of a museum. Since that moment, Arias’s peace museum has gathered and put in place all of the mechanisms and strategies for fundraising so that this much-needed museum can become a concrete reality. It is appropriate to begin this chapter with passionate advocacy for a museum at the very beginning of its origins phase. We move in the next section to a museum in southern Mexico that has been in existence for about three years. The battles for its funding and governance were fought and won by the visionary archaeologist Nelly M. Robles García, who, with her commitment to social justice, sought to build an archaeological site museum that the people of the adjacent pueblo would completely own and manage—not just in the spiritual sense, but in the quotidian sense of physical control. With that ultimate desire in mind, Robles began to worry—after she had achieved its full construction—because there was unexpectedly low attendance, even though the people of the pueblo were managing the site. Surprisingly, “local citizens claimed that this early low attendance was because the museum lacked a chapel with its own iconic sacred image. This was rectified and mass was celebrated to a standing-room crowd. . . . The museum now truly reflects the will of its people. . . . Prehistoric and colonial Virgins can now be found in a precinct that struggles every day to survive, and official procedures and proceedings are now made opaque by the enormous force of the present communitarian customs. A great lesson!” 1. Letter from Nelly Robles to Selma Holo written two years after the opening of the Community Museum of Atzompa.

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Robles was able to almost immediately adapt the Community Museum of Atzompa, even in its origins phase, thereby avoiding a crisis of confidence. Her acceptance of the need for a place for the pueblo’s saints quickly endowed the museum with the resilience it needed, and the potential for sustainability. Of course, Robles’s commitment to achieving social justice for a community via a museum is not exclusive to Mexico. Bernardo Paz in Brumadinho, Brazil, also conceived his contemporary outdoor sculpture museum, Inhotim, with social justice in mind. From its origins phase, Paz imagined Inhotim as a gorgeous space for the most contemporary of art installations, made by artists who appeal to the most demanding members of the contemporary art crowd. But also, “within a scenario characterized by red dust and degradation of the natural landscape, Inhotim offered its employees, through educational activities, a new perspective of looking at their own space. These employees are intended to find at Inhotim an opportunity to reflect on everyday issues and on the environment in which they live and work. Thus, they are able to establish a relationship that goes beyond simple employment . . . and . . . become able to establish a more positive relationship with their own houses, the school, the plaza . . . the city. Led by Paz and embodying his vision of creating not only a “cool sculpture park” but also one dedicated to improving the lives of its employees, Inhotim will no doubt be afforded the kind of local loyalty that will endow a longer life to the project than if it only served an elite crowd of one-time international visitors. Origins histories are not limited to those of single museums. Next, Cuauhtémoc Camarena and Teresa Morales reflect on the origins of not just one museum, but the larger museum system that they created. Pioneers in the communitarian museum movement, their driving impulse was to find a way to help pueblos define and claim their own memory and identity. Morales and Camarena approached the question of communitarian identity differently than it had been before: they listened closely to the voices of members of these tiny communities who wanted museums of their own. Sometimes the resulting museums defied traditional conventions of what a museum should be. They might, for example, eschew the materiality of normal art displays, or they might combine art, anthropology, and performance in a single space, or they might celebrate customs rather than objects. They are all well designed, taking museography seriously, even if with extremely limited resources. Born 2. Email dated March 25, 2014, from Lara Ceres, director of the education program.

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of a profoundly felt desire to give voice to the pueblos, the Oaxacan communitarian museum system has become a model in the ever enlarging and embracing network of the communitarian museum movement spreading throughout Latin America. The origins phase never rests solely on a single person’s shoulders. Héctor Feliciano, both witness to and a principal midwife of the innovative Museum of Art of Puerto Rico, believed that Puerto Rico needed an art museum to display its own creative and cultural identity—an identity that did not depend upon the United States or Europe for its lineage. As a board member, Feliciano gave the then-inchoate project serious intellectual credibility; he was able to ensure that the plans emerged for an authentic institution that, yes, did address, but also transcended identity politics. As our only example of a recently created Caribbean museum, the MAPR is a paean to origins that are dramatic and powerful, energetic and passionate. Its challenges in the future will inevitably relate to the precarious economy of Puerto Rico itself, and will demand vigilance and ever more strategic thinking to stay ahead of that economy. The MAPR’s origins phase was thrilling for its community of artists, intellectuals, and supporters, and for the citizens of that island. Some museums struggle in the beginning. Mario Vargas Llosa, a Nobel Prize winner in literature from Peru, was an advocate for a museum never before imagined in his native land. He argued, in the face of strong opposition, for the necessity of a museum wherein the nation’s most painful memories of its recent ferocious civil war might be constructively remembered. Origin phases are not always completed without struggle. This institution evolved from a straightforward museum of memory to what is now called a Place for Memory, Tolerance, and Social Inclusion, (Lugar de la Memoria, la Tolerancia y la Inclusión Social). This lugar encourages debate and multiple frames of memory while also still being a center for documentation, photographs, films, and archives. Vargas Llosa’s original argument for the museum developed even beyond his concept into an active tool of memory, but also of education and reconciliation. The lugar had already followed the path of adaptation even before opening, due to a variety of political and social pressures. No doubt this “museum of memory” will continue to adapt to its demanding civic environment. And it will do so in a democratic way, where everyone has his or her say. 3. See also Selma Holo, Oaxaca at the Crossroads (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Press, 2004) for in-depth discussions of the Oaxaca cultural environment.

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Museums are not necessarily begun by museum professionals, collectors, or artists. In 1987, Carlos Tortolero, a Chicago schoolteacher, created the museum presently known as the National Museum of Mexican Art. Tortolero’s vision was unprecedented: he wanted to build his museum to simultaneously function as a traditional, AAM-accredited art museum and also as a community center, a crucible for ethnic identity, a training ground for responsible and responsive citizenship in the United States, and, always, an institutional ambassador for Mexico to the non-Mexican world. Whether curating a stereotype-smashing show on the African presence in Mexico, hosting a community blood drive, offering job training, or overseeing a radio station for youth, the National Museum of Mexican Art embodies that complexity on a daily basis. It was a tall order, and its outcome has been a phenomenon. Tortolero’s museum embraces the newest of immigrants as well as those who are “coming of age” as American. The greatest challenge for this museum in its hopefully long future will be to prepare to carefully transfer leadership to those in the next generation, whenever its founder retires. It will, as all museums do, have to adapt to new realities as it proceeds along its own panarchic life cycle. It would be remiss, when looking at museums and their origins, to limit our discussion to the standard collecting museum. Lori Starr writes of an imaginative approach she developed for the creation of a Kunstalle—one positioned within a more expansive community center. Her idea was to organize a nomadic experience of art and dialogue that would, paradoxically, “knit together” the constituencies she was serving in Toronto. With that in mind, Starr initiated the original phase of the Koffler Centre of the Arts with satellite spaces. After Starr left the Koffler to run another museum, it followed a different course from the one she had initiated: it ceased being nomadic, but because of her inspired leadership at the beginning, it had adaptability and sustainability built into its fabric. Starr wrote to us in 2015, “The decision to find the Koffler a new home in 2011 so the ‘nomadic’ would cease turned out to be the right decision. It opened in fall 2013 right on schedule and fully funded with a new gallery and offices in Artscape Youngplace in the most vibrant neighborhood.” In this communication we see that there can be life beyond the founder, and that resilience can be built into the origins as long as there is already a disposition toward creative adaptation. How necessary it became to adapt was evident in the face of the recession that accompanied and challenged the Koffler’s beginnings.

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All museums begin as an idea, often a utopian one. We end chapter 1 by entertaining a meditation on a very large idea of a museum for a small city. Edward Rothstein, a museum critic, first for the New York Times and now for the Wall Street Journal, writes about the city of Oaxaca as a museum—that is, a museum composed of many museums. Not the first person to imagine a whole city as a single museum, Rothstein takes a leap, somewhat akin to that of the Spanish museologist Santiago Palomero Plaza, who has imagined the city of Toledo, Spain, as a completely integrated museum, another model for our time: “The twenty-first century and the new global world demand a different effort on the part of our museums. . . . We have the warps of appropriate historical buildings and a history to be told that proposes using them as bridges and sinews that crisscross their wefts in the city’s own time and space, its streets and squares.”  This chapter relates the origin stories behind a number of newer museums in the Americas and suggests certain commonalities about their beginnings, as well as enormous differences as each advances in its own life cycle. We are positioning them all at the beginning of a panarchic life-cycle loop, a loop that promises constant change and the need for adaptive renewal over a museum’s lifetime, right from the start. Every one of these museums or ideas about museums came into the world as a passionately held dream. They were the products of determined, visionary personalities who assumed leadership roles, each in his or her own manner. In the next chapter we examine other museums that have been around longer, and have already entered the next phase of the loop—the more mature phase where a shared issue to be dealt with is “conserving.” It will become clear that after the celebrating is over, the next phase for any museum in the panarchic loop will be more sober and will probably require other personality types to join the leadership team.

4. Email correspondence with Santiago Palomero Plaza, director of the Sephardic Museum in Toledo, Spain, December 26, 2013.

What Legacy Will We Leave on These Walls? óscar arias sánchez

My dear friends: We’ve met for the last two days in a cathedral of words; a monument to those who record the path of humanity; an extraordinary collection of historical events, captured on the page and on the screen. Immortalized all around us, on broadsheets and in photographs, in newsreels and transcripts, are the adventures and misadventures of the human race. As a student of history, I cannot help but marvel at the fact that we are currently surrounded by more than thirty-five thousand front pages announcing five hundred years of news. As a student of peace, I cannot help but note that of all these many thousands of documents, the oldest artifact on exhibit is the record of an armed conflict: a letter from 1416, bearing news of the Battle of Agincourt, Britain’s improbable defeat of the French during the Hundred Years’ War. William Shakespeare would later transform that battle into art by giving Henry the Fifth one of literature’s most rousing speeches: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” But here, in this building, are words set down on paper not to create great poetry, but to commemorate the real event in which human lives were lost. Here, in this building, many a band of brothers is displayed forever for all to see. Here, behind glass or on a digital display, men and women look out at

Óscar Arias Sánchez spoke at the Affordable World Security Conference, cohosted by the W. P. Carey Foundation and the EastWest Institute, at the Newseum, Washington, DC, on March 28, 2012. This is a substantially abbreviated version of his talk, edited to provide deep context for the origins of his museum project.

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us: men and women from all creeds and nations, who lost their lives, or lost their families. Here, carefully shelved or filed in archives, are the stories of parents who sacrificed, willingly or unwillingly, and children who sacrificed without ever being given a choice. Here are revolutions and rebellions, hot wars and cold, civil wars in every hemisphere and every century. Here are Paris and Waterloo, Bunker Hill and Gettysburg, Dresden and Hiroshima, Saigon and Chosin, Baghdad and Kabul. We share this space, these walls, this roof, with a million strokes of a pen, a million strokes of a key, that have set down for posterity our human story—a story that is sometimes triumphant, sometimes tragic, and nearly always violent. The reason we are gathered here is that the present reality with which we are grappling is very different from the past reflected in this museum. When it comes to security, it is increasingly difficult to apply the words and lessons of times gone by to the threats and dangers we now face. Some of the oldest written words anywhere in the world are those found in “The Art of War.” Not five hundred, but two thousand years or so have passed since Sun Tzu authored the basic precepts of an expert general. This ancient text describes Five Factors for Success, Three Areas of Resistance, Six Ground Positions, and Nine Terrains. It also tells us that “if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” In this twenty-first century, this advice is hard to hear, because our enemies are not clear to us. We no longer face forces easily defined by formations, flags, or uniforms. We can no longer separate ourselves from them by building a wall between our country and theirs. We can no longer defend against them with soldiers and weapons, with barracks and bunkers. To paraphrase Clement Attlee, we cannot sustain a paradise within our borders if there is hell on the other side. Waves of immigration, both legal and illegal, are literally bringing home the concept that poverty and crime in faraway places can have a tremendous impact on our own soil. The terrorist attacks of recent decades have shown that our real enemies today are climate change, poverty, inequality, hunger, disease, environmental degradation, and illiteracy, which can create dangers anywhere in the world. The interconnected nature of this globalized planet makes it impossible to isolate ourselves. All of this requires us to change our approach—and the economic reality of our time requires reduced, smarter spending. In the twentieth century, we might

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have used hawks and doves to define our positions, but these ideological separations no longer make sense. In today’s context, the only thing that matters is getting results. The situation we face today is something much closer to Deng Xiaoping’s cat—the one he used in his famous assertion that “it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” But I am preaching to the choir. I am standing before a group of people who have been brought together by their belief that the way our world approaches security must change. I am standing before a group of people who recognize that a world that devotes less of its resources to weapons and war has become not only a moral goal, but a practical necessity. I am standing here thanks to two visionary institutions, the W. P. Carey Foundation and the EastWest Institute, which have asked us to explore not whether we should reduce military spending, but how to do so. How can the developed world reduce its military budgets while protecting the safety of its citizens? How can we spend less, with greater impact? And how can someone from a country without any military budget at all add to what has been done and said during these past two days, by leaders and scholars whose expertise in this field is unmatched? To address these questions in the time left to me, I would like to begin with the story of my country. I do this not because I believe other countries will repeat our actions, but because I believe that our experience can provide concrete lessons for the international community as it seeks maximum impact with minimum spending. In keeping with the style of “The Art of War,” let us call this the Three Ideas Whose Time Has Come. When I was a child, Costa Rica endured a war of its own, though it did not receive any attention in the pages housed in this building. When the war ended in 1948, Costa Rica made a voluntary decision that no other country had ever undertaken: to abolish its army and declare peace to the world. By doing this, my country promised me, and all its children, that we would never see tanks or troops in our streets. My country promised me, and all its children, that it would invest not in the weapons of our past, but in the tools of our future; not in barracks, but in schools, hospitals, and national parks; not in soldiers, but in teachers, doctors, and park guards. My country promised to dismantle the institutions of violence and invest in the progress that makes violence unnecessary. Quite simply, my country invested in its people. This resulted not only in a healthy, educated, and free society; it resulted in concrete gains for national and regional security. When conflicts and civil

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wars swept our region in the 1980s, Costa Rica was able to maintain its stability and freedom from violence. What’s more, this enabled my little country to become the platform for the peace accords that gradually ended the unrest in our part of the world. And today, while the terrible consequences of drug trafficking in our region and consumption in the developed world are posing serious challenges to our government, Costa Rica continues to maintain its foothold in the world of peace. Here in the developed world, those achievements might seem distant, or even insignificant. But an oasis of democratic stability in a region that is among the most dangerous in the world, and whose exports of goods and people have a direct effect on its northern neighbors, is valuable indeed. That is the first of the three concepts I want to share with you: the concept that security does not lie in weapons or fences or armies. Security lies in human development. Social spending and military spending have too long been divorced in our minds. Investing in human development is not a competing priority to defense spending. Such investment supports security. And no matter the economic constraints at hand, there is no arguing with the fact that the developed world has unprecedented resources to make a difference. Eleanor Roosevelt once asked, “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery, rather than to avenge it?” I am afraid that we must answer her: “Not yet. Not yet.” To explain the second idea: the rules that our international community has established for aid and debt forgiveness say that a country that makes good decisions must be punished. A country that invests wisely and achieves improvements in human development is then told it is “too rich” for debt forgiveness or aid. A country that finds a way out of war is told that it is no longer of interest to its more powerful neighbors. That is one reason why, today, when homicide rates are considered, the northern region of Central America is the most dangerous in the world. It should have been different. It easily could have been different. That is why I have proposed a change: the Costa Rica Consensus. This simple idea uses international financial resources to support developing nations that spend more on environmental protection, education, health care, and housing for their people, and less on arms and soldiers. It would change the way international aid is distributed. It would end the ridiculous policies that punish countries when they make good choices, and that reward corrupt or misguided governments that create conflict and deprivation. It would make

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a real difference in some of the most dangerous and conflict-ridden nations on Earth. The third and final idea I offer here today is linked to another initiative of my recent administration. Like the Costa Rica Consensus, it has the power to improve international security without any spending to speak of. Like the Costa Rica Consensus, it has emerged from painful lessons my country learned in the 1980s. Despite the end of conflicts in Central America, the irresponsible flow of small arms and light weapons that occurred in the previous decades had done its damage, and continued to wreak havoc in our societies. For many years after arms suppliers channeled weapons to Central American armies or paramilitary forces in the 1980s, those weapons were found in the hands of the gangs that roamed the countryside of Nicaragua, or teenage boys on the streets of San Salvador and Tegucigalpa. Other weapons were shipped to guerrilla or paramilitary groups, as well as drug cartels, in Colombia, ready to destroy yet more lives. We learned the hard way that a shipment of weapons into a developing country is like a virus in a crowded room. If it is legitimate for us to worry about the possibility that terrorist networks gain access to a nuclear weapon, it is also legitimate for us to worry about the rifles, grenades, and machine guns that are given into their hands, not to mention the hands of young people, gangs, and drug cartels. I hope you will lend us your support, either from the governments of your countries of origin, or as a part of the international Control Arms coalition, based in New York, through which civil society organizations can join forces with us to lobby for a comprehensive treaty. This is an idea whose time has come. But the change will not occur by chance. It can only occur by choice. My friends: The Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus likes to say that he hopes one day, the children of his country, Bangladesh, and the children of the world, will have to go to a museum so they can learn about poverty, since it no longer exists. In Costa Rica, we have not yet reached that goal, but our National Museum is housed in what was once a military barrack, so that our children really do have to go to a museum to see what military spending looks like. I am not so naive as to think that many other countries will confine their weapons to a museum. But as the exhibits that surround us here demonstrate, the pace of change on our planet means that today’s news is always tomorrow’s historical artifact. There is always something about to be lost, about to become

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part of the past and not the present. And whether we like it or not, in a museum of news, we are all part of tomorrow’s exhibit. So the choice before us is this: What are we willing to leave behind? What legacy will we leave on these walls? Will it be more documents of losses and casualties? Will it be evidence of continued military spending beyond all proportion? Will we place behind glass the faces of children whose hopes were dashed by our choices, whose dreams were deferred by a refusal to use our resources to alleviate human suffering? Or will we start to replace those artifacts with headlines about a change of strategy, intelligent reductions of weapons, a consensus for development, and a treaty to stop needless bloodshed? Will we start to replace those artifacts with news about the world’s realization that we cannot afford to continue as we are—neither in economic terms nor in human terms? We are gathered here because we know the answer. We are gathered here because the choice is clear. And, if we have done our work well, we will leave here with hope, knowing that the tools to change the world really are within our grasp. If we can rise to the challenge, the day may finally be in sight when we begin to write a new story for humankind. The day may finally be in sight when violence ceases to be the birthright of our sons and daughters. The day may finally be in sight when, at long last, the art of war gives way to the art of peace.

A Project to Create a Peace Museum in Costa Rica A Nation That Abolished the Army manuel ar aya-incer a

why a peace museum in costa rica? The creation of a peace museum in Costa Rica aims to deepen and to perpetuate, through exhibits and educational programs, the political values of a society that has been able to solve its conflicts by nonviolent means and negotiation. Likewise, it aims to frame the Costa Rican experience within the dynamic of conflicts and conflict resolution on an international level. The use of pacific means, instead of violence and enforcement, has been a common practice in the dynamic of Costa Rican social and political relationships. The use of negotiation has been a prominent feature in social and political conflicts throughout Costa Rican history. Such behavior is an important feature of this nation’s political culture.

a concept of peace From the multiple ideas that may define a concept for peace, it is conceived for this museum as the expression of a dynamic social process, where peace is a primary option for the achievement of human aspirations, versus other options of a negative and even a violent character. This approach avoids definitions of This lecture (substantially abbreviated for this book) by Manuel Araya-Incera, speaking for the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, was submitted to the International Network of Museums for Peace at the Eighth International Conference of Museums for Peace at No Gun Ri Peace Memorial Park, South Korea, September 19–21, 2014.

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peace as a state close to stillness, as in utopic or spiritual definitions. Instead, peace is seen as an option attainable by society through constant work.

a nation without an army In 1948, a de facto government in Costa Rica abolished the army by decree. A few months later, when the democratic order was reestablished, a new political constitution included in its text the nonexistence of a military institution within the Costa Rican political system. Since then, the country has been able to face different threats to its borders and national sovereignty without any military resource, by implementing peaceful instruments for international conflict resolution based on international law. It was the peace initiative promoted by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias Sánchez in 1987 that gained the support of the five Central American presidents. The agreement took the name of Esquipulas II, or the Arias Peace Plan, in honor of its creator and leading actor. After almost eight years of fighting, the Central American presidents signed the agreement in August 1987. A distinctive element for the Esquipulas process is that this agreement was reached as a result of direct multilateral negotiations among the Central American presidents, without the participation of external parties. Since the success of the initiative and the agreement was due to the president of Costa Rica, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his achievement, Costa Rica as a whole was invested also with that prestige, which helped to enhance the country’s standing in the international community. A country without an army could mediate in a conflict going on just beyond its borders and achieve agreement among the parties, establishing the basis for peace. From the arguments expressed by the constitutional court through its rulings, it is possible to witness the construction of a new concept that is relevant for Costa Rican society: the right to peace. Every one of the rights that make up the history of human rights emerged as a concept first, followed by social action that materialized and gave effectiveness to those rights. We see here the possibility that peace will become an effective human right.

mission and objectives of a peace museum in costa rica Its mission is to promote the value of peace as a positive and constructive resource for the human experience. Among its objectives will be:

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to research, recover, preserve, study, and communicate regarding cases and experiences of conflict resolution

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to promote through education the search for negotiated and pacific solutions to conflict situations

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to contribute to preserving and enhancing those values that Costa Rican society has developed throughout its history, in the construction of a culture of peace and a right to peace

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to demonstrate the feasibility of peaceful coexistence

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to teach the value and profits of solving conflicts in a nonviolent way

postscript As the fundraising for the peace museum of Costa Rica begins in earnest in 2016, it is important to note the ongoing engagement of President Arias in this project. As Annique Dewitt, a participant in the Wharton International Volunteer Program, reported on November 13, 2013: “I found myself sitting in the living room of the former two-term president of Costa Rica and 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner who was responsible for the peace process in Central America. We also met with the preeminent museologist  in Central America, the number-one history professor in Costa Rica, and a top architecture firm in the country during our two-week stay here. The access was amazing, and we were able to put together a presentation and model that set them up to begin fundraising for the museum.”

Rethinking the Spirit of a Museum Atzompa Archaeological Site nelly m. robles garcía

To think that the existence of a museum can change lives and old paradigms in the relationship between culture and society in Mexico can seem like a cherished dream, but a dream nevertheless. To think that we can finally reach agreements that enable all parties to share in the responsibilities and benefits of an archaeological project in a marginal area of rural Mexico seems like nothing more than a wish; but it’s a wish that is achievable. The case of the Community Museum of Atzompa, Oaxaca, has its origins in both precepts. Its existence reassesses the collective spirit of a community and its ancestral culture, demonstrating that it is possible to change the egotistical and unilateral (top-down) official view with which these projects usually emerge. It offers a version of a community museum that is not only intended to be the interpretive complement of an archaeological monument site like the one recently discovered in Atzompa near Oaxaca, but it also, by demonstrating the cultural link between past and present within the community, reveals the enormous difference between past and present with respect to asset management. As an essential urban component of Monte Albán, an archaeological World Heritage site, Atzompa had remained on the sidelines throughout the years of archaeological discoveries in Oaxaca, a situation that led to constant complaints by the population against the official sector for lack of action. It was in constant peril as well due to the misuse of land resulting from the omnipresent phenomenon of aggressive urban growth upon archaeological vestiges that today afflicts many Latin American cities. 26

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The project for this museum emerged in 2007 from agreements between the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the community of Atzompa as a way of resolving the encroachment of urban growth that threatened the archaeological area, the very same site that up to that moment had scarcely been explored; the last investigation to have taken place was Jorge R. Acosta’s in 1940. Additionally, the common practices of collecting firewood (for pottery kilns used by the local craftspeople) and edible and medicinal plants, as well as cattle grazing, rendered the Cerro del Bonete (its geographical location) in constant danger of looting. Through innumerable discussions and frank requests by both parties, the institutional archaeologists, and representatives of the communal lands (ejidos) committee (the owners of the lands), and often with the entire community, the necessary steps were taken to develop a prerequisite planning process in order to arrive at solid proposals. To summarize these agreements: INAH would direct an ambitious archaeological project in order to successfully highlight the archaeological monument site of Atzompa; the community would agree to the physical demarcation of the site; and INAH would arrange for funding for the construction of the museum, as well as negotiate the necessary agreements with the state government of Oaxaca for the construction of the road that would connect Monte Albán with Atzompa, and with the community itself. It seemed like a win-win situation for the community, and, in reality, everybody won. The INAH archaeologists had an excellent opportunity to lead investigative work on a large scale; the community obtained all the construction jobs generated by the project (more than one hundred jobs over a period of six years); and the town of Atzompa obtained the management of the museum’s admissions, in such a way as to provide strong support primarily for the education of the entire community, as well as income from admissions. The key to planning this museum was undoubtedly putting on the table issues of mutual interest—that is, the archaeological ruins and ethnographic values that needed to be developed in order to transform them into true cultural resources. The organization of the museum’s creation was based on a frank and open attitude toward resolving whatever aspects could become issues. And the construction of the museum led to an interesting reevaluation of the elements of vernacular Zapotec architecture despite a certain skepticism on the part of

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the committee of communal lands, and other honorable members of the community, with respect to the possibility of constructing all museum spaces in adobe with stone foundations and wooden roofs covered in tile, indispensable elements of traditional Zapotec architecture. This reevaluation undoubtedly resulted in a change of attitude away from a preference for mass-produced construction materials of minimal aesthetic appeal. One of the intellectual gains of this project has been to prompt people to take a good look at the sobriety, excellence, beauty, and effectiveness of native earthen architecture. The Community Museum of Atzompa, whose collection essentially demonstrates the link between past and present in pottery production through its splendid exhibits of archaeological objects from the Monte Albán IIIB-IV (600–850 CE) phase, places special emphasis on the extraordinary large storage jars. This is the result of a careful study of the context of a pre-Hispanic kiln found on the site, proving conclusively that economic activities and specialized knowledge of pottery have persisted in the area for at least thirteen hundred years. The exhibits of contemporary ceramics, shown in a special gallery, are the result of an interesting form of intracommunity organization with different versions of the pottery technique of Atzompa. This allows for a balance between the interests of the exhibition (in the museum) and sales (directly in craftspeople’s houses). The establishment of the Community Museum of Atzompa, which was made possible by negotiation between academic interests and the community, is undoubtedly contributing to the achievement of the project’s most comprehensive goal, which was to put in practice the paradigm that it is possible to link archaeology and development in a compelling way. The case of Atzompa has given us the chance to rethink the value of institutional planning in a community that today is involved in, and cares about, constructing and sharing the spirit of its museum. Without a doubt, this constitutes a great achievement, and is the result of excellent planning. (Translated by Francisca González Arias)

Lessons Learned in the Principles and Practice of Community Museums cuauhtémoc camarena and teresa mor ales

Over the past four decades, the field of community museums has greatly expanded and gained relevance as local entities struggle to strengthen their identities and develop greater self-determination. It has been an honor to contribute to this field over the last twenty-eight years, principally in the areas of refining the concept of the community museum, developing methods to expand community appropriation of the decisions and creative processes involved, and providing ongoing guidance for the creation of community museums and networks at the local, national, and international levels. In this last respect, we have been and continue to be engaged in the Union of Community Museums of Oaxaca (Oaxaca is a state in southern Mexico), the National Union of Community Museums and Ecomuseums of Mexico, and the Network of Community Museums of America. This work was not motivated by an abstract, academic interest that later was projected onto local communities, but by a commitment to support and provide tools to communities as they undertook the creation of museums as instruments to strengthen their integrity in the difficult context of contemporary society. Our theoretical and methodological reflections grew out of this concrete experience. It began when we were invited to support the initiative of an indigenous community of Oaxaca in 1985 and continued when a great number of diverse localities requested guidance to create museums; the communities themselves have been our most inspiring and demanding teachers. For us it is important to clarify: the community museum is not a tourist attraction or a site where the animation of the presentation hides the voices 29

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of those who speak—and peoples’ right to speak for themselves, about themselves. The community museum is a process, rather than a product. It fosters the construction of collective subjects through the elaboration of memory, reflection, self-knowledge, and creativity; it helps strengthen community identity by legitimizing its own histories and values; it contributes to the improvement of the quality of community life through multiple projects for the future; and it strengthens the community’s capacity for action through the creation of networks with similar communities. This is a collective process, which comes to life within the community; it is a museum “of ” the community, not built from the outside “for” the community. The community museum is a tool to foster self-determination, strengthening communities as collective subjects that create, re-create, and make decisions that shape their reality. This concept is empty, however, unless the methods used build on and continuously expand the decision-making capacity of the community. One of the first lessons we learned was that a definitive aspect of the community museum is that it is born out of a local initiative and responds to the needs of the community. Even the best-intentioned external agent cannot substitute for the initiative and engagement of local people and community-based groups. This is not to say that these initiatives develop in a vacuum; clearly, external support and guidance can play an important role. But this support is present in a second moment, as a consequence of the action of a local group that seeks to develop its own project. The external agent must discipline itself to build on the actions of local groups and contribute to the process of expanding their ownership of the initiative. A critique of previous experiences of so-called community museums, promoted by a national institution that trained schoolteachers to convince local communities that they needed museums, was useful in clarifying the selfdefeating results of these methods. The museums were fragile projects dependent on a central authority working through the promoter and a few community members who became involved. At best, they became miniature versions of mainstream museums. Thus one of the elements that defines a community museum is also a methodological principle: its basis is a local initiative, a local decision to respond to concerns about memory, heritage, and patrimony. The process of developing the museum throughout its initial establishment and beyond is a process of expanding the initiative, respecting the local traditions of decision making within the community, or developing new strategies of consensus

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building, linking a wide network of community-based groups in a comprehensive project. Often we have encountered the opinion that the methods we have developed work only in the specific context of the indigenous communities of Oaxaca, with their long-standing tradition of collective decision making through community assembly. It is true that we learned a great deal from the enormous tenacity of these communities to sustain their decision-making bodies and to define their collective interests and projects. But their example helped us identify the critical importance of community appropriation through decision making as a principle; we never suggested that the specific process of decision making was the same in all contexts. Rather, early on it became clear that the strategy to create a community museum had to be based on a specific analysis of the decision-making processes of the particular community involved. In many scenarios, the identification of grassroots organizations and the development of a procedure to consult and include them within the project proved to be a valid consensus-building process. In a similar fashion, the appropriation of the management of the community museum through committees elected by the community assembly, which was possible through the tradition of community service through the “cargo system” in Oaxaca, helped us define as a general principle that the community museum be directed and managed by community members. Again, this principle can be put into action in many ways, not only in the specific tradition of community service practiced in Oaxaca (although similar traditions exist in many local communities, at least throughout Latin America). This does not imply that people from outside the community will never be involved, but it does mean that the direction of the project should remain in the hands of a representative body of community members. Methods to expand community appropriation also include consultation to decide on the themes to be researched and represented in the museum. In this way, collective community concerns, instead of the preoccupations of external experts, are expressed through the museum. The process of creating exhibitions, including the creative aspects involved in doing research and designing, producing, and installing elements of the exhibition, offers extraordinary opportunities to engage community involvement. Community members learn to carry out oral history research, to document through photography and observation, to develop ideas for design, to represent their stories through drawings and murals and dioramas. A large part of our work has been and

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continues to be an attempt to enrich the ways in which community members can carry out these processes. Finally, networks of community museums can play a fundamental role. Just as the engagement of a network of local groups and organizations enables the development of community appropriation of the museum, so does the creation of networks between different communities make possible community management of regional projects. In 1991, the Union of Community Museums of Oaxaca was founded, and today it comprises nineteen communities. It participated in the creation of the National Union of Community Museums and Ecomuseums of Mexico in 1994, and in 2000 it fostered the formation of the Network of Community Museums of America, which brings together grassroots representatives of communities and organizations in Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico. These networks offer opportunities for each participant community to learn from the others, and to develop ties of mutual support and solidarity. Through the network, multiple relationships can be expanded, establishing collaborations and alliances with other organizations and institutions. Negotiations can be carried out in more favorable terms, as communities are capable of proposing and executing increasingly comprehensive and sophisticated projects. Collective projects can address the needs of all the communities involved, and approach these needs from their own resources as an organized network. Thus networks generate a broader field of action and greater autonomy. This autonomy does not develop without opposition. It is difficult for most national and private institutions to place themselves in the position of collaborators and to treat to community-based networks as equals. Most frequently they assume that they must exert their authority with regard to policies for the conservation and dissemination of heritage without entering into a dialogue with communities to consider their concerns. But community museum networks are developing their own voices and initiatives to meet this challenge. National networks of community museums are arising in many countries of Latin America. The Association of Community Museums of Costa Rica was established in 2009. There have been training events and national meetings in Colombia, Venezuela, and Bolivia, from which committees have been formed to move forward with initiatives to organize their own networks as autonomous, nongovernmental organizations of grassroots community representatives.

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Networks help transform relationships of subordination and disempowerment in non-hegemonic communities. They allow explosions of discontent to be replaced by creative efforts of communities to transform their own conditions. They project the capacity for community self-governance to higher levels, expanding the reach of their organized action. In this sense, both community museums and their networks are tools that local communities can appropriate to help them face the future.

The Museum of Art of Puerto Rico, or, the Reconstitution of a History of Art héctor feliciano

I would like to begin with two commonplaces: a good art museum is the essence of a country. And it is even more so when it is a museum devoted to national art. For decades, my country, Puerto Rico, postponed the unfinished task of creating an art museum. José Campeche, one of the great painters of eighteenth-century religious art in America, as well as Francisco Oller, a founder of Impressionism (with his friends Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne), were Puerto Rican. Furthermore, the country’s art existed long before these two artists, beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But a museum to house it did not. One sole institution dominated the years of my childhood and youth: the Museum of Anthropology, History, and Art of the University of Puerto Rico, a small establishment that, as its title declares, sheltered a well-intentioned jumble of works and objects. It contained in its small galleries native pieces, a bit of Puerto Rican art, and a couple of Egyptian mummies. I probably owe to it my first aesthetic awakenings, but its collections and exhibitions did not obey defined curatorial objectives, resembling instead those old curiosity cabinets where the only common link was the collection’s very heterogeneity. The Ponce Museum of Art was just opening its doors then. Founded by an industrialist, its collections brought together excellent works of European art that were of no particular interest to Puerto Rican artists. It recalled—dimensions aside—the exclusively European institution that New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art had been at its start. And, unfortunately for me, it 34

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was founded one hundred and fifty kilometers south of the capital, too distant for my childhood enjoyment. Those early years of my education occurred, therefore, without any possibility of direct proximity to good art collections. My knowledge of foreign art was based on books and reproductions, and that of national art, also on books, and on the occasional and chance direct encounter. I recall that when as an adolescent I began to visit the great museums of Paris and New York, I would observe with joy (and envy, of the good kind) the children who strolled through their galleries admiring works, or who copied them as they sprawled on the floor. I wondered how different my life, my own cultural heritage, would have been if I had been able to visit a museum of Puerto Rican art on a regular basis from an early age. Every country needs its own narrative about itself—a national story, an epic—and a memory that gives it meaning, that links and ties together past and present events in a kind of secular teleology. A nation’s history starts to become essential to its inhabitants when a wide consensus about it, and its memory, is reached. Then, reconciled with themselves, and with an acknowledged sense of common destiny, they can begin to forget this history as they integrate it into the unconscious in their daily routines. At that point they don’t need to concern themselves about it constantly; they take their history for granted, deriving from it so much nourishment that they hardly realize it. Thus, a national museum of art is, among other things, a mirror composed of the elements of that consensus—a necessary mirror in which to look at oneself, preferably not too much, but once in a while, to remember what one’s face is like, how much it has changed, what it remembers. It’s a place in which, in addition to enjoying and delving into aesthetics and art, new features, national topics, and circumstances are discovered, and others are questioned. It is a mirror in which one reflects on a common journey, on the composition and recomposition of a kaleidoscope whose pieces change from time to time. As I learned about other national histories, whether those of small countries such as the Czech Republic, Iceland, Panama, or Uruguay, or large countries such as France, Mexico, and the United States, I began to discover the central role that their museums, curators, and art historians had played, and continued to play, in conceptualizing, marking the limits of, and restoring not only their own artistic trajectory, but also the history of an entire people. I wondered then when it would be my country’s turn to do so.

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Despite the fact that in Puerto Rico a general consensus about a definitive national history has not yet taken shape, in the year 2000, as a result of a government initiative, the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico (MAPR) opened to the public. It was a sure step toward that consolidation or reconstitution of the history of Puerto Rican art. Its opening was a twofold act because it is not only an art museum, but also a museum of national art. In just a few years the museum has managed to gather together an emblematic permanent collection, and it is in the process of documenting the most important and representative works of Puerto Rican art from the sixteenth century to the present, thus making it the first museum devoted exclusively to the art of Puerto Rico. It is essential for a country to observe its art and its artists throughout its past, and in the context of all other nations. In its fifteen years of existence the museum’s exhibitions have succeeded in giving meaning to the country’s history of art, enabling it to enter fully into the history of exhibitions of Latin American and world art. We can now allow ourselves the luxury of reestablishing and conceiving ourselves from different perspectives, of admiring and gathering the collective imagination of the nation and the creativity of our artists, their themes, their influences, their repetitions and obsessions, even their favorite colors, and begin to consider new artistic subject matter. We can now gather together and train curators who know Puerto Rican artists, and who write about and reflect on their trajectory. It is a fundamental stage, and it is central to the history of any country—a stage that began to take place in earnest in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and which in Italy and France began in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Today the dynamic Education Section of the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico brings to its galleries and exhibitions thousands of children in public and private schools so that they can have fun as they learn. I enjoy watching them as they admire and copy works, having at their disposal a museum that I did not have at their age. And I end here with the commonplaces with which I began. An institution’s purpose is clarified when it is compared to another. I cannot imagine the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico as another Museo del Barrio, the museum of Latin American art established in the city of New York and founded by Puerto Rican immigrants. The latter’s collections are composed of art by Hispanics or Latinos who live in the United States. And that history increasingly forms part of the history of art of the United States and of its minorities.

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To conclude, I would like to point to a position whose logic is a result of the MAPR’s very creation. The existence of this institution is for me clear and overwhelming proof that the art and art history of Puerto Rico are not part of the objectives proposed by the National Museum of the American Latino. The MAPR’s collections and exhibitions narrate and activate the reconstitution of the history of art of a country in process, of a nation that is becoming, and not of an immigrant minority in a federation of states. One nation—in this case, the United States—cannot integrate another nation into its history; it can do so only if it strips it of its essence. (Translated by Francisca González Arias)

Peru Does Not Need Museums mario vargas llosa

The originator of this theory—that Peru doesn’t need museums as long as it is poor and has social needs—is Mr. Ántero Flores-Aráoz, minister of defense of the Peruvian government. Not a thug decked out in gold braid epaulettes and with sawdust for brains, but an attorney, a professional, and a politician who has had a distinguished career in the Christian People’s Party, which he left some time ago to serve as Peru’s ambassador to the OAS (Organization of American States). What could induce a man who isn’t stupid to spout such foolishness? Two things that are deeply ingrained in the political classes of Peru and Latin America: intolerance and ignorance. In order to place the minister’s words in their proper context, it is necessary to recall that between 1980 and 2000, Peru endured a revolutionary war unleashed by the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), whose terrorist savagery provoked a military response of similarly vertiginous excess. Almost seventy thousand Peruvians, the immense majority of whom were simple Andean peasants and inhabitants of the country’s poorest and most marginalized villages, perished in the cataclysmic upheaval. After the end of the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori (who is about to be convicted for the human rights abuses perpetrated during his regime), the democratic government formed a Commission on Truth and Reconciliation to investigate the magnitude of this social tragedy. Presided over by the respected philosopher and intellectual Dr. Salomón Lerner, former president of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, the commission produced a documented study of those bloody years and a careful analysis of the causes, 38

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consequences, and toll in human lives, the destruction of public and private property, the torture, the kidnappings, and the disappearances of people and villages that were caused by the violence of that period. A vast swath of public opinion acknowledged the commission’s valuable work, but, as was to be expected, its conclusions were criticized and rejected in military circles, and by diehard supporters of Fujimorism who in this way were insulating themselves from their complicity in an authoritarian regime that was not only kleptomaniacal and corrupt to its core, but also holds a terrifying record of murders, torture, and disappearances perpetrated under the pretext of a battle against subversion. With the materials of its investigation, the commission organized one of the most moving exhibitions ever seen in Peru and which can still be visited, albeit in a somewhat reduced version, in the National Museum in Lima. Entitled Yuyanapaq (To Remember), it shows, through photographs, films, synoptic charts, and various other testimonial materials, the demented ferocity with which the terrorists of the Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), along with special forces commandos and death squads, such as the sadly infamous Grupo Colina, spread terror as they mowed down tens of thousands of innocent human beings. It reveals as well the impotence and despair of the poorest and most defenseless sectors of the country knocked down by the gale that was unleashed by ideological fanaticism, and widespread scorn of morals and of the law. On an official visit to Peru, the German Prime Minister Angela Merkel offered her government’s help in financing a Museum of Memory which, following the guidelines established by Yuyanapaq, would be an authentic, didactic, and educational document about the material and moral devastation that Peru endured during those years of terror, as well as a call to reconciliation, to peace, and to democratic coexistence. For obvious reasons, Germany is sensitive to these issues, and it is not surprising that a country that has made such an admirable effort to confront an abominable past in a spirit of selfcriticism, and has managed to overcome it, and is now for that reason a solidly democratic society, has wanted to support the initiative of the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. True to the chancellor’s word, the German government proposed donating $2 million to Peru for the construction of the Museum of Memory, which already has a possible site, in the Campo de Marte in Lima, near the lovely sculpture The Eye That Cries by Lika Mutal, inspired by that very same

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tragedy. In a deplorable action, the Peruvian government announced that it would not accept the donation. And the Ministry of Defense was charged with justifying this snub with the theory summarized in the title of this article. The minister explained that in a country in need of so many schools and hospitals, and where so many Peruvians go hungry, a museum cannot be a priority. According to this philosophy, countries should invest resources in defense of their archeological, architectural, and artistic heritage only when they have secured their entire population’s prosperity and well-being. If such pragmatism had prevailed in the past, the Prado, the Louvre, the National Gallery, and the Hermitage would not exist, and Machu Picchu should have been sold off at public auction in order to buy pencils, textbooks, and shoes. The minister also validated past criticisms made of the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation and of Yuyanapaq: a lack of impartiality, and the maintenance of an unfair and abusive neutrality between the terrorists and the forces of law and order. Those criticisms are flagrantly unjust. No one criticized the terrorism of the Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement more than I. As a candidate during those years I devoted a large part of my campaign to denouncing their crimes and fanatical madness. And I defended the need to fight against them most vigorously, but within the law, because if a democratic government starts to use the same methods as terrorists, as Fujimori did, in a certain way the terrorists will win the war, even if it seems that they have lost. For that reason there were two failed attempts on my life, one in Pucallpa and another in Lima. On the other hand, I believe that I have been equally steadfast in criticizing the compromises, cowardice, and vagueness of leftist intellectuals in the face of terrorism. For all these reasons I believe I can say with total objectivity, without being accused of extremist sympathies and after having spent many hours reading the commission’s report, that there is in it a sustained effort to unearth the historical truth from the labyrinth of contradictory documents, testimony, reports, declarations, and manipulations that it had to scrutinize. Undoubtedly some errors slipped into those nine bulky volumes. But there is not the slightest intention of partiality in either its considerations or its conclusions; on the contrary, it exhibits an honest and almost obsessive eagerness to show with the greatest exactitude what occurred, demonstrating unequivocally that the first and greatest responsibility for that monstrous butchery lay with the fanatical Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru

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Revolutionary Movement, convinced as they were that by murdering with impunity all of their opponents they would bring a socialist paradise to Peru. We Peruvians need a Museum of Memory in order to combat the intolerant, blind, and obtuse attitudes that unleash political violence. To prevent what occurred in the 1980s and 1990s from happening again. To learn in a graphic way where the raving madness of Marxist and Maoist ideologues leads, just like the fascist methods with which Montesinos and Fujimori fought them, convinced as they were that anything was valid as long as the goal was attained, even if it meant sacrificing tens of thousands of innocent lives. Museums are as necessary to nations as schools and hospitals. They educate as much, and sometimes more than, classrooms, and above all in a more subtle, private, and permanent way than teachers. They also heal, not only bodies, but also minds, from the darkness of ignorance, prejudice, superstition, and all the defects that isolate human beings from one another—that inflame them and push them to kill one another. Museums replace the narrow, provincial, small-minded, unilateral, top-down view of things and of life with an expansive, generous, and pluralistic perspective. They sharpen sensitivity, stimulate the imagination, refine feelings, and awaken in people a spirit of criticism and of self-criticism. Progress means not only many schools, hospitals, and roads. Also, and perhaps above all, it means the wisdom that enables us to differentiate the ugly from the beautiful, the intelligent from the stupid, the good from the bad, the tolerable from the intolerable. That, we call culture. In countries that have many museums, politicians tend to be rather more presentable than ours, and in those countries it’s less often that the people who govern say or do foolish things. (Translation by Francisca González Arias)

A Mexican National Museum in Chicago Integrating Cultures carlos tortolero

Say what? You’ve got to be kidding? There’s no way that can work! These are the doubts with which the museum field / arts world greeted me when in 1982 I decided to create a Mexican museum in Chicago. I was a teacher/ counselor/administrator with the Chicago public school system, and I asked five other educators to join the founding board. I was told by the museum field / arts world that my dream to create a museum in a working-class neighborhood, an art museum in a working-class neighborhood, and to make it a free museum, was never going to work. And they were Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Opened in 1987 as the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, then renamed the National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA) in 2006, the museum is the only Latino museum accredited by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). From the outset, I understood that there are two hurdles that institutions of color must constantly be confronting when viewed by the mainstream world. The first is that our art is not good. This is such a ridiculous perception, but I can’t say how many times I’ve been asked, even by reputable museum and arts people, “How can you do a museum only on the Mexican culture?” My response has always been to please never put the word “only” in front of the Mexican culture. The second hurdle that we always have to be overcoming is the mindset that institutions of color can’t “manage things.” It’s too sophisticated for us. After our first year, when our budget was barely more than $1,000, I made sure that we had an audit done. People told me, “Are you crazy? Why do an audit on such a small amount of money?” But I felt it was necessary, right from the beginning, to demonstrate that we were as managerially savvy 42

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as anyone. These two mainstream concerns range from ignorance to racism, but they clearly illustrate how far as a nation we still have to come when it comes to issues of diversity. I wanted the museum to be an institution that organized super-important exhibits and events. We have established a great reputation in this area. But at the same time, I wanted our museum to be a catalyst for changing what a museum is all about. Museum and philanthropic professionals hate it when I publicly comment that most mainstream museums don’t really believe in diversity, or at best don’t “get it.” But guess what, folks? Most mainstream museums don’t serve a wide range of people, and honestly it isn’t a priority for them. Being a museum that serves everyone isn’t just a slogan to us; it’s part of our DNA. There has been an immense amount of attention in the media on the changing demographics that our country is experiencing. Museums need to change. Too many museums overwhelmingly serve primarily the rich, educated, white population of the country. It is extremely hypocritical for museum and arts advocates to argue, when they are trying to secure funding, that the arts are essential to the human experience, then turn around and exclude so many people from participating. It is extremely ironic that at a time when there is so much conversation about diversity, the price of museum admission has reached a point that makes it difficult for many families to attend. Half of the attendance at our museum has been non-Mexican since day one. How do we attract a wide array of people? It’s simple: we believe in diversity and equality. To the NMMA, believing in diversity is not something we say to please funders; it is something fundamental. We have worked to transform the concept of a museum from an ivory tower complex with collections to a place that is involved with its community, and involved in local and national issues. Our African Presence in Mexico exhibition probed the historical presence and contributions of Africans in Mexico more thoroughly than any other exhibition in history. Rastros y Crónicas: Women of Juarez focused on the hundreds of women who have been exploited, raped, and murdered in Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, while the authorities have done nothing. Declaration of Immigration explored the insane and racist attitudes that exist toward undocumented workers. People have accused our museum of having an agenda, with the implication that museums shouldn’t have agendas. This is a ridiculous statement. All museums have agendas! The difference with our museum is that we are

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honest and up-front about our agenda. When mainstream art museums reserve their best spaces for European art, aren’t they saying that European art is the best? Isn’t that an agenda? Give me a break! The National Museum of Mexican Art also works diligently to present events and activities that most museums would never dream of organizing. The museum sponsors an annual Día del Niño Family Festival that is attended by several thousand individuals and features free screenings for diabetes, high blood pressure, and HIV, as well as dental examinations. The museum has been involved in the issue of obesity and better eating habits. During our annual Day of the Dead exhibition, NMMA organizes a blood drive. What better way to honor those who have died than to help give the gift of life to those who need it? The museum has organized many activities and events for the LGBTQ community, including a Queer Prom that attracts diverse high school students from throughout the Chicagoland area. The Mexican community is still very conservative when it comes to this issue, but the museum understands and believes in the importance of equity for everyone. Consequently, we believe that leadership is not just doing what your community wants, but leading your community in a necessary direction. Women’s issues have always been extremely important to the NMMA. The museum presents a performing arts festival focusing on the artistic contributions of Mexican women from both sides of the border. It has hosted workshops dealing with domestic violence toward women, access to health care for women, and workplace discriminatory practices toward women. We have held workshops for women on learning to do breast self-examinations. Education has always been at the core of our museum’s mission. We are especially proud that when our institution underwent its most recent museum accreditation, our outside evaluators commented, “The Education Department is as prestigious within the museum structure as is the curatorial department. Everything that the museum undertakes demonstrates that education is part of the mission.” One third of our staff and one quarter of our budget is devoted to educational and after-school programs. I can’t think of any other art museum that comes anywhere close to these figures. NMMA has hosted and organized events on such topics as improving academic performance and dropout prevention. We believe in arts education not because it’s a fad and or 1. Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Álvarez, “Accreditation Visit National Museum of Mexican Art Final Report,” American Alliance of Museums, 2009, page 4.

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because foundations want to fund it. We believe that all museums should be an integral part of educating everyone, but especially our youth. NMMA has numerous school-based programs where museum educators and artists are actively involved in educating children. The museum is typically described by many people, Mexican and nonMexican, as being the “heart of the Mexican community” and the “ jewel of the Mexican community.” Consequently, many important events involving the Mexican community are held at the museum. From hosting presidents of Mexico to a wide range of events focusing on initiatives in the Mexican community, our institution serves as the “cultural home” of our community. A museum can have quality exhibitions and excellent collections and still be connected to its community. The National Museum of Mexican Art is not the museum your mom and dad attended . . . and we are very proud of that!

The Multinodal Institution Going Off the Grid lori starr

2014 The case study you are about to read addresses the key theme of this chapter: reimagining the museum. I write it with the perspective of distance, as director now of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. It was out of necessity that the Koffler Centre of the Arts redefined itself as a cultural center with no fixed home—a creative enterprise and brand that made an impact through a nomadic series of exhibitions and programs. As of this writing in early 2014, the good news is that the Koffler recently opened a five-year interim facility at Artscape Youngplace, to critical and popular acclaim. The institution is still determining where its permanent home will be. Can it succeed in a fixed location after the immense success of its nomadic years? That is a question for the next generation of leadership to address. This essay was written while I was problem solving. It is my hope that it presents a model that might be of use to other institutions struggling with similar issues.

2013 My institution is the Koffler Centre of the Arts, Canada’s only multidisciplinary, contemporary, Jewish cultural institution. Our mission is to bring people together through arts and culture to create a more civil, global society. We present cutting-edge exhibitions of new Canadian and international art and diverse programs in music, dance, literature, film, theater, and spoken

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word. We teach art to hundreds of children and adults, and employ many professional artists in doing so. We welcome everyone from every background and embrace culture as a living thing, as a means to understand both ourselves and others. Over the past few years we have become a prominent voice in the Canadian art scene, often presenting emerging artists and engaging with artists to cross genres. Our unique mix examines the arts across disciplines and cultures in a way that strengthens identity and community while fostering an appreciation of difference. Most of our programming has a Jewish component. In some instances, the Jewish content is inferred and not overt. In others, there’s no ostensible Jewish content but the way we deliver our programs, we like to think, has a kind of Jewish “personality.” Precisely what do I mean? These qualities, to name a few: A certain chutzpah. A tendency to ask questions rather than give answers; to present “in the round,” not from a position of authority; and to be unafraid of a challenge. An interest in giving artists their first break. And most certainly a desire to engage everyone in dialogue, to be warm and welcoming and not take ourselves too seriously. We’re also after that elusive factor of “salience”—creating remarkable experiences that stay with you—and we’re trying, like most arts and cultural institutions, to play a larger role in daily life through the power of social media and broadcast. Given that our audiences are increasingly younger, more diverse, and moving to the downtown core, it is paradoxical that our home base continues to be in a northern area of Toronto that has historically had a very large Jewish population—on a lush ravine that also houses the headquarters of the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, the Prosserman Jewish Community Centre, and numerous Jewish charitable organizations. The plan has been to build a new Koffler Centre of the Arts that is part of the reenvisioning of this campus (in 2009, our building was demolished to make way for the new construction). With the recession, however, and given the other major building projects undertaken by the Jewish community outside of the city, ground has not yet been broken for our new building. Perhaps this is for the best. We’re changing quickly, and what we ultimately might build here could be quite different than what was originally envisioned more than a decade ago. What has happened? We’ve challenged existing networks by defining ourselves not by the restrictions of a single location but by a multiplicity of programs at many locations throughout the greater Toronto area, particularly downtown. We’ve become our own nomadic road show. As the writer Michael

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Kaminer once said in about the Koffler in the Forward (November 2, 2011, “Toronto Arts Center Gets Downtown Home”), the Koffler has “made a virtue of necessity [by] building a brand” with these efforts. By bringing our content to the community, we are engaging with hundreds of thousands of people annually in their own neighborhoods, on their terms. We didn’t wait for the demolition. In 2007 we started programming in nightclubs (Kobi Oz: Psalms for the Perplexed), on university campuses (Melissa Shiff: Cine-Seder Roundtable), in bars (Crackin’ Up: Canadian Mosaic Comedy Night), in rented halls (About the Oranges, written and performed by Robbie Gringras), and at MarS—a center for innovation and technology (One World / Double Take: The U.S. and Canadian Elections Through the Lens of Culture) and Nuit Blanche 2008 (Evan Tapper, High Holiday Office Hours with God the Almighty). We operated out of public libraries (The Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards) and venerable institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario (Koffler Chamber Orchestra with Soloist Andrew Barashko: A Concert in Conjunction with Chagall and the Russian Avant-Garde) and at a decrepit loading dock in an alley (a concert by the all-girl band the Pining). Simultaneously, we transformed our Koffler Gallery program into an offsite series now completing its fifteenth exhibition. We’ve done them in deserted houses (how good are your dwelling places), in an abandoned photo processing kiosk in a parking lot (Stephen Cruise: Share the Moment), on a sidewalk (Panya Clark Espinal: Vagabond Vitrine), at the Royal Ontario Museum in conjunction with the blockbuster Dead Sea Scrolls (Joshua Neustein: Margins), in the Gladstone Hotel (Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women), and in the landmark, vaudevillian, over-the-top discount department store and Toronto landmark Honest Ed’s (Iris Haussler: Honest Threads and Summer Special; in the latter, six Canadian artists created new works based on the store’s historic hand-painted signs). Perhaps most emotionally stirring of all these exhibitions was E. C. Woodley’s Auguststrasse 25. This multimedia installation engaged the interior of one of the city’s oldest synagogues, the Kiever. By re-creating a living room typical of a Jewish home from 1920s Germany inside the historic sanctuary, Woodley brought to life a tableau vivant that enticed thousands of people into this landmark. With ambient sounds and an actor’s presence animating the setting, Auguststrasse 25 recalled the daily cultural life of a lost past—a bourgeois Jewish living room of 1926. An elaborate arrangement of radio broadcasts and echoes of the neighbours’ activities provide a subtle backdrop for the mundane gestures reenacted daily by

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the resident of a hybrid space between homes, communities and generations. Through its title, the piece recalled a flourishing Jewish street in pre-Holocaust Berlin, while also evoking the name of Augusta Avenue, situated just around the corner from the Kiever, once the hub of Toronto’s bustling Jewish market. An imaginary address is thus created at the synagogue’s site, symbolically entwining two distinct geographic locations, two spheres of life, and two different moments in time, connected by the thread of Jewish history. (Mona Filip, curator, Koffler Gallery)

All of this is about to transition with our final exhibition in the series (Iara Freiberg: Where I’m Waiting From). This exhibition is curated by Mona Filip, who has organized the majority of these off-site shows (a professional tour de force). It presents a site-specific and semipermanent intervention by the Brazilian artist Iara Freiberg. Freiberg is creating a monumental minimalist drawing for the 1970s Brutalist architecture of the Toronto Island ferry docks—the place of embarkation and arrival for millions each year. It is a good way to end a journey full of mystery and risk. While the plans for our new building are not yet finalized, in fall 2013, our institution is going to settle down for a while. We are invited to be part of an innovative project called Artscape Youngplace—an adaptive reuse of a 1915 Beaux Arts school building in the heart of the downtown art and design district. With nearly five thousand square feet for our exhibitions and offices as well as space to share with a rich variety of nonprofit arts organizations, in this new place we expect to see how, by engaging and adapting to new geographies and communities, we can advance our vision to be a vanguard, salient, and relentlessly fearless institution. We’ve signed a five-year lease. When we redesign our new building for uptown, we’ll be thinking again about what it means to be a Jewish institution, and we hope to never stop bringing art and culture to people where they live.

2014 I accepted the position of executive director of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, commencing work here in June 2013. Much has changed in the last seven years. People now expect museums to reach out beyond their walls with pop-up galleries, new kinds of products and publications, traveling shows, and co-branded partnerships at multiple venues, and of course in the digital realm. The Contemporary Jewish Museum, in its jewel

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of a building downtown—an adaptive reuse of a nineteenth-century power station—enjoys a robust audience, and in its five years since opening in this location in 2008, it has successfully made itself a premier cultural destination in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its audience is remarkably diverse for an identity museum, and it tracks ahead of the national average in attracting and serving families of all types. Still, as I plan with my staff and board for our next chapter, it is clear that we, too, from this place, will need to reach out beyond our walls to program in varied communities throughout the Bay Area and create multiple new digital platforms to vibrantly involve ourselves in the lives of many more people who can and should be engaged with our content. As a place with a mission to make the diversity of Jewish life relevant to a twenty-first-century audience, we are beginning to think of our museum as the bricks and mortar of an institution that also lives online and in many other geographies.

The Museum of Oaxaca edward rothstein

Museums are artificial places. And they are constructed for very mysterious purposes. Millions of dollars are spent, architects strain for effect, and objects of great value or rarity are gathered and put on display in strange and dramatic ways—all so that visitors will enter and look. Why? To what end? And who determines those ends? Mostly, we think, the displays reflect a particular individual’s choices—the curator’s—but given the museum’s cost, the institution’s size, and the nature of its objects—which are, almost by definition, beyond common experience—the museum transcends any individual contributing to it. It also seems to depend on a public much larger than those who created it. Museums need an audience. Without visitors, a museum is little more than a closet, however many it wonders may hold. Can we say, then, that museums are a reflection of something more inchoate, more difficult to pin down, and that when they succeed they cannot be traced solely to the will of a particular individual or a small coterie? They seem to be manifestations of a culture, perhaps even embodiments of its dreams. We know, too, from the great imperial and Enlightenment museums of the world, that those dreams can be immense. Museums represent a culture. They also seem to define it. They trace its origins and map out its imaginings. Claude Lévi-Strauss once said that in modernity, music took over the function of myth (he was thinking of Richard Wagner), but we might add that museums have taken over the function of myth. Or more correctly: that they are now the homes of a culture’s myths, retelling them and presenting them. Museums 51

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preserve the past and interpret it. And in the process they define both the past and the present. But what if the character of a place is already inseparable from that mythological attitude toward the past? What if a place has a long history and has already, for a variety of reasons, preserved that history or made it an everpresent presence? In such a culture, the objects of daily life, the appearance of ruins or buildings, even the ways in which food is prepared or artworks created—all of this may be suff used with a kind of museological spirit, not in the dry sense of approaching living beings as if they were artifacts, but in the more vital sense of treating artifacts as living beings. In such a culture, the museum is in the surroundings. The resonance of myth is everywhere. There are few places like that, where it seems as if an entire place has the status of a museum, presenting before us the mythologies of a culture and its varied histories. One of those places, as I discovered at the 2012 “Remix” symposium, is Oaxaca. In Oaxaca, which lies on the southern end of the Mexican landmass as it curves eastward to the isthmus, the first impression may be of a quaint Spanish colonial town set in a protected valley. But the next impression is of a place that is itself a museum of various pasts, their well-cared-for heritages put on display. Objects in museums carry resonant meanings. But here they are plentiful outside of museums. What, for example, is one of the oldest human practices in agricultural communities? The market. And in the district surrounding Oaxaca you can see markets that have been set up weekly since the beginning of recorded memory. There are some stalls stocked with merchandise scarcely a week out of Chinese knockoff factories: SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirts and bootleg Snow White baskets. But there are also stalls that offer the produce of the season from small landowners’ plots, much as they have from the very beginning, or stalls that offer food prepared according to antique customs: crunchy grasshoppers laced with chili peppers, and mounds of black mole paste used for making spiced sauces. But all of it, even the kitsch, has a special provenance, because it is the custom as much as the objects that are palpable to visitors. We are placed in the midst of ancient practice and have no choice but to contemplate both its focus and its immense variety. No matter, though, if such ancient practices have fallen away and are no longer understood. The market is a living ancient artifact, but there are others, long dead, that live on nevertheless, because here you cannot escape being reminded of them. When you stand on a flattened hilltop above the village of

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Atzompa, some seven miles outside of Oaxaca, and look over at a nearby peak, you can glimpse the immense ruins of Monte Albán, a pre-Columbian plaza of breathtaking expanse used for ceremonies and games. Below those ruins, where perhaps twenty-five thousand people lived in the early part of the first millennium, you can make out faint remnants of terraced farming on the hillside. The past is visible in the landscape. On Atzompa’s adjacent plateau, similar ruins have also been discovered, and in a newly discovered tomb you can see in fifteen-hundred-year-old paint images of an “I”—the same shape as the mysterious ball fields of Monte Albán, whose functions and rules remain unknown. We are not dealing here with imagined reconstructions, but with the past’s palpable presence. Most of these ancient cities and monuments were abandoned some six centuries before the Spaniards plundered the region. After eighty years of archaeological research, their meanings are still unclear, though much has been written about Zapotec social hierarchies, gladiator-style games, and stone carvings. The objects remain, along with a powerful sense of the weight of the past, not only as material object (the ruin) but as mystery (the ball field). So, in Oaxaca, the past casts a sharp shadow: you are always aware of its presence. For a visitor from the United States, the effect is startling. It has something to do with the indigenous past, which has a different weight here, a different character than it does in the United States, partly because its traditions have not been so grievously disrupted by time and only in certain regions have been wiped out by conquest. Remnants of those worlds exist in the valley, where the slow-changing cultures of this buffeted but protected region still reflect Zapotec and Mixtec heritages. So here everything is plentiful that in the United States is rare: indigenous ruins, ancient languages, signs of direct lineage. And there is an edge to it all. Centers such as Monte Albán are monuments to power and accumulated material wealth; they are also clearly evidence of a large-scale political organization, relics of perhaps the earliest state in the Americas. The past is not imagined or turned into Romance (at least not too often; some of the carvings in the museum at Monte Albán were once thought to show dancers in acrobatic motion; now they are more convincingly interpreted as images of brutally castrated prisoners of war). The past, though, is always present and nothing in the present can completely ignore the past. Anything contemporary also confronts the mythic heritage. It is the spirit of the museum, writ large.

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And as such, what a host of museums—the familiar, artificial kind—does this place inspire without seeming to exert any effort! There are more museums here than can readily be explained even by the patronage of the Alfredo Harp Helú Foundation: museums devoted to stamps, to pre-Columbian statuary, to the region’s histories, to contemporary artists, to archaeological sites. How does this come to be? The museological effect is infections. An example: When the Oaxacan painter Rufino Tamayo was riding on a donkey around the state of Veracruz in 1948, it is said that he saw ancient Olmec figures lying in streams; girls would dress them as if they were dolls. Tamayo, himself of Zapotec heritage but also a surrealist, saw in them something completely different, of course, not just antiquities of great value (which he accumulated for small change) but animated figures that were still quivering with preColumbian expression. He left his imposing collection to the state of Oaxaca, which has housed them in their own museum, where they reign not according to principles of scholarship or history, but according to their aesthetic powers, the figures gathered into ensembles, speaking across millennia. Or else there is an attempt to retell the history that surrounds the town. The regional museum of Oaxaca is in an exquisitely restored former monastery of Santo Domingo, encompassing the prehistoric past, the cultures of Monte Albán, and the Spanish conquest. It then returns you to the near present. Or is it the present at all? The monastery’s open arches look out on the remarkable Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca, which is an attempt to map the natural world as a reflection of intersecting cultures—a botanical garden of native plants whose exotic cactuses and succulents are bounded by the walls of a sixteenth-century Dominican monastery, the Spanish colonial structure creating a plangent counterpoint to the indigenous flora. The artifacts surrounding you in Oaxaca are relics that somehow still live in the cultural consciousness. In reverse, the region’s flora, the living plants of the surroundings, are, in their essence, also relics and artifacts, testifying to a complex past. The anthropologist Alejandro de Ávila Blomberg selected the plants and gave the garden its conceptual structure. In a manuscript about the garden, he cites Pablo Neruda’s description of Mexico, “with its cactus and its serpent,” as being a land both “flower-bedecked and thorny, dry and hurricane-drenched, violent of sketch and color, violent of eruption and creation.” That is the mixture evoked in this ensemble of native plants. This is not a garden in the European sense, presenting an idealized landscape. At first, it can even seem untamed. The Oaxaca region, Mr. de Ávila

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Blomberg explains, has been home to more ethnic groups, more indigenous languages, and more species of plants than any other region in Mexico, and indeed more than most regions of the world. So, while sections of the garden, with its five acres of planting, are organized by climatic zones, it is also organized to shape a kind of history, beginning with plants grown from “the oldest cultivated seeds known”: ten-thousand-year-old squash seeds found in a cave about twenty-five miles from the city. Most dramatically, extending down the garden’s center are columns of organ pipe cactuses, planted as if to guard the prickly pear cactus gathered nearby. The prickly pear, or nopal, cactus turned out to form a crucial axis on which Spanish colonization turned. A white parasitic insect, the cochineal, can be seen on its broad leaves. Squeeze them, and a bright red stain is left behind, the source of a cherished crimson dye once coveted for oil paints and cardinals’ robes. The cochineal, Mr. de Ávila Blomberg explains, made “the splendor of Santo Domingo” possible. It is also used in the garden, he explains, to color the water that pours through a sculpture by the Oaxacan artist Francisco Toledo called La Sangre de Mitla (The Blood of Mitla), invoking one of the great local Zapotec ruins. There is a polemical point to this bloodletting, of course, because this is a nationalist garden. But such polemical displays do not undermine the garden’s ultimate embrace of even that past as one more strand in a complex cultural fabric. What happens to the world in the present, in a context so weighted with its many pasts? The Oaxaca contemporary art museum should come with footnotes, demonstrating the invocations of the past in each artist’s work. Or turn to the most recent museums, founded by the Harp Foundation under the guidance of María Isabel Grañén de Porrúa. There is a Museum of Stamps in which history and contemporary life are condensed into small rectangles of official issue, now fated to turn into exquisite artifacts of a snail-mail past. There is a Museum of Textiles in which ancient techniques and styles confront contemporary playfulness, creating, as the museum puts it, a “link between the traditional and the contemporary, highlighting the techniques of the craft, the complexity of the design, and showcasing parallels and distinctions between rural and urban artists.” There is a children’s library in which the building’s emphasis is not on the weight of classical grandeur, but on the graceful interweaving of sensations and influences and styles. Or there is Oaxaca itself, a living museum in which the others all dwell, giving voice to intertwining myths.

chapter two

Conserving

Reflections on Conserving Conservation and Conservatism selma holo and mari-tere álvarez

After the giddy, sometimes grueling, often exhilarating phases of their origination and founding, museums pass into a phase of maturity where conserving becomes an important dynamic. Conserving, in our theory of Panarchy, relates to both collecting and non-collecting museums as they enter into stages of consolidation and complexity. Inevitably all museums experience growing complexity as they engage with and try to conserve their own missions—and as they begin to court sustainability. The conserving phase, as we call it, brings with it complexities from the external world and from the museum itself. With respect to the conservation part of conserving, when it is a collecting institution, a museum has no choice but to confront decisions about the care of its already accumulated (and most likely growing) collections. We make a point of presenting, with the first four essays in the conserving phase, case studies or reflections particularly dedicated to the complications around the conservation of collections. In the spirit of Panarchy, of changing our conversation in the Americas, we want to open up some of the multifacetedness of that issue. Conservation is both a straightforward imperative and a more complicated and contradictory museum function than ever before in today’s politicized, polarized, and ever more transparent world. We are looking to instigate more cross-scale interactions, similar to those that occur in nature. We will profit when “such cross-scale interactions also occur in human affairs

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from the individual to the community, to the nation and region, and to international patterns of relationships.” But, every museum, collecting or non-collecting, must also face issues related to growing conservatism as the institution matures—a conservatism that is an inescapable, indispensable, and multifaceted part of the conserving phase. Museums are, after all, institutions, and the conservative element of the conserving phase is the one that will breed organizational order, shepherd finances, and garner solid support for their missions. Conservatism will strengthen the foundation for the museum at this phase, and it is an essential piece of the fabric of any museum’s stability, resilience, and sustainability. The leader who inspired the origination phase will most likely not singlehandedly lead the museum through the conserving stage. The highly creative energy—even charisma—embodied by the originator will need to be supplemented by another kind of wisdom: one characterized by calm, grounded-ness, and determination. Because, even as the museum matures, it will face new external and internal challenges and threats. The conserving phase requires the balancing of both a forward movement and a constructive stasis. It is critical that it also be dynamic to function in a Panarchy. And it must be recognized when conservatism has become a hardening of, rather than a foundation for, the museum. There simply “must be some sort of shifting balance between stabilizing and destabilizing forces . . . and somehow the resilience of the system must be a dynamic and changing quantity that generates and sustains both options and novelty, providing a shifting balance between vulnerability and persistence.” When that balance has lost its dynamism, conservatism becomes a negative force in the conserving phase. Thinking of the museum in a panarchic life-cycle loop, each museum will enter its various cycles at different times and at different rates. That is, some museums will enter their maturity and the conserving phases seamlessly. They will rally around issues of conservation early, and they will face the values and dangers attendant to conservatism gracefully. Others will wait for crisis— economic, political, environmental, or mission-related—to move forward. Each

1. C. S. Holling, L. Gunderson, and G. Peterson, “Sustainability and Panarchies,” in Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (Washington, DC, and London: Island Press, 2002), xxii. 2. C. S. Holling, “The Renewal, Growth, Birth, and Death of Ecological Communities,” Whole Earth (Summer 1998): 32.

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museum will progress into the conserving phase in its own manner: some gracefully accepting the process; some lurching into it; some hesitating; some resisting. The first four essays in this chapter focus on conservation and physical stewardship. These are followed by four essays that are concerned with conservation of intellectual and cultural histories, the over-conservatism and crippling that can occur around knowledge and its categories in museums, and finally a meditation on museum networks and what conservatism means when considering those. This phase, while it recognizes the value of conservatism, also suggests that, if unchecked, it can ultimately turn to rigidity. In the conserving stage, when museums are maturing or mature, conservation and conservatism are fraternal twins, sometimes cohabitating amicably and sometimes in tension. This chapter opens with a variety of examples of the conservation piece of the conserving stage found throughout the hemisphere. We hope that it will allow even readers who are not specialists in any of the types of museums represented, or who are not specialists in conservation or the politics of knowledge, to feel free to probe and see how they might think differently by witnessing how another museum, one clearly out of their ken, navigates this stage. Everywhere there are possibilities to learn and to adapt for our own purposes. Every one of these essays has relevance. We hope they give readers raw material for provocative conversations—conversations that can change the course of a museum in the conserving stage. Starting with an example of a museum that has not completed its maturation phase, Art Museum of the Americas (AMA) has suffered greatly from an essential lack of commitment to conservation. Two of its directors write here about their persistent efforts to turn that museum’s dismal story around. Lydia Bendersky, the former director, and Andrés Navia, the current director, underline the seriousness of the situation—so serious was the lack of care of the collection that the AMA stopped acquiring new works. Navia is inclined to think that one way to guarantee the conservation of the artworks, and hence the sustainability of the AMA, would be to seek a stable partnership, perhaps with a university. Because of its inability to care for its collections the AMA is stuck in the maturation phase and will not be able to move forward in the panarchic loop. Deeply reflecting on conservation is a key aspect of this phase, and the resulting conclusions will be critical to the sustainable development of any museum. Ben Garcia’s essay is a troubled and troubling meditation around

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the fraught issues that natural history and anthropology museums are facing. He candidly reveals how he was and remains shaken by the enormity of the ethical and moral, academic and legal, contradictions he encountered with respect to the retention, conservation, and return of human remains. As a young professional, Garcia had to squarely face the dilemma of the tensions between accumulation and social justice. The next essay is an example of a museum that confronted this dilemma head-on. Going against the grain, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science pitted its own ethical and moral impulses against the expressed obligation still pervading most natural history museums to hold tightly to their collections (when not instructed otherwise by NAGPRA laws in the United States)—that is, to their specimens. But Denver’s decision to adopt an iconoclastic policy to return all sacred objects and human remains reflects its certainty that “an adaptive cycle that aggregates resources and periodically restructures to create opportunities for innovation” can be a fundamentally sound policy. The Denver Museum of Nature & Science chose to let ethics trump the oft-cited possibility of increasing knowledge that might accrue from retaining certain objects. It disaggregated its resources for what it determined to be a higher cause than the generation of knowledge. It was an example of a radical change of attitude toward conservation—opposing the conservative inclinations of most museums toward retention—that might, if better known and more widely discussed in the larger field of museums, have a tonic effect on related conversations. That the Denver museum’s decision to include sacred objects in its repatriation policy might be more than an isolated incident, and may well be part of an emerging zeitgeist, was signaled by the sub-rosa intervention into an auction in Paris on December 17, 2013. At that auction, the Annenberg Foundation bid a little more than $530,000 to retrieve indigenous Hopi artifacts that would have, without its intervention, gone to private collectors or museums. That the arc of justice is long and often tortured is without question, but there is a trend of giving more weight to moral and ethical arguments than

3. C. S. Holling, L. Gunderson, and G. Peterson, Panarchy, 398. 4. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/arts/design/museums-move-to-return-humanremains-to-indigenous-peoples.html?_r = 0. 5. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/arts/design/secret-bids-guide-hopi-indiansspirits-home.html?pagewanted = 2&_r = 0&hp.

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relying on purely legal ones; we witnessed this with respect to Nazi looting, and the return of Inca objects to Peru from the Peabody Museum at Yale. Indeed, some if not “most Western museums now acknowledge a strong ethical case for returning objects, especially if they have been found to have left their countries of origin under dubious circumstances.”  Hence, as important as conservation is to museums, even that value ought sometimes to be questioned. It takes a special kind of leader in this phase to recognize when conservation is of the utmost importance and when, perhaps, it has become the product of a hardening conservatism that is starting to undermine the resilience of the museum itself. Next, Guillermo Barrios writes about the plight of museums in the fraught times that Venezuela has endured since the Chávez Revolution. With flying under the radar in mind, Barrios writes about the inadvertent conservation of three historic houses outside of downtown Caracas that represent a disappearing cultural history. Barrios’s courage in speaking out in Oaxaca, and now writing for this publication about the devastating political situation in Venezuela, is extraordinary. Following his text, Piedade Grinberg describes her university museum’s mission of conserving a disdained architectural history in Brazil. Grinberg reports here on the repairing of a thread of the Rio de Janeiro urban fabric—its French neoclassical past—that had, until her museum took on the responsibility, been relatively unexplored and largely destroyed. That is because “the French who brought Neo-Classical styles to Brazil in the 19th century were perceived by ‘Moderns’ in the 20th century as ‘enemies’ who corrupted the national culture, that is, the culture usually perceived as the truly Brazilian artistic past, the Baroque.” Grinberg thus reminds us of the powerful intellectual resources available to a university museum (this one dedicated to architecture) when it works hard to fulfill its mission of conservation of a nearly disappeared tradition. She also questions the overriding conservative position that held tenaciously to a single perspective on Brazil’s cultural history. As a museum matures, a conservatism that affects the institution and its relationships can begin to take hold. The J. Paul Getty Museum, having

6. Rachel Donadio, “Vision of Home,” New York Times, April 17, 2014, 1, 21. 7. Jorge Coli said this in his recent paper “Fabrication and Promotion of Brazilian-ness: National Arts and Issues,” according to David Robert, “Neo-Classical Falls Foul of Brazil’s Love of Baroque,” The Art Newspaper, no. 260 (September 2014): 8.

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entered into the glorious period of its own maturity, was accomplishing marvelous things on the world stage. At the same time, it was perceived by some in Southern California as detached from its local roots. More and more it was understood as a profoundly conservative institution, “on the hill,” aloof and elitist. At that very stage of its existence—wisely, calmly, determinedly—the Getty developed a highly successful, well publicized, terrifically marketed, deeply regional multi-museum program (more than sixty institutions participated) celebrating and documenting the art history of Southern California. Clare Kunny describes how, with this initiative, the Getty accomplished three critical things: it acted to conserve its regional roots and relationships, it broke with its own growing conservatism, and it actually did conserve and to some extent create a local art history on the brink of oblivion by preserving deteriorating art, funding exhibitions, conducting oral histories, and producing catalogues. As is evident from the previous three essays, any museum’s sustainability, including the Getty’s, beyond the origination stage “will lie in the capacity to create, test, and maintain adaptive capability.”  The last two essays in this chapter focus on problems around conservation and conservatism, but go beyond any specific museum’s issues to look at larger questions in the field. Ivan Gaskell posits that knowledge in art and anthropology museums has become overspecialized and perhaps overly guarded—overly conserved—especially within the disciplines. Gaskell asks us to use our museums as intellectual challengers of conservative academic and intellectual authority so that we can nurture more daring exhibitions. He also exhorts us to see (literally) that the world does not have to be represented and interpreted as we find it, and to rethink our museums as a way of breaking old and increasingly outdated intellectual habits of hierarchy and discipline. Vanda Vitali, in her concluding essay to this chapter, argues for a healthy balance between progressiveness and conservatism. She lauds the capabilities of newer information technologies to expand networks, nurture collaboration, advance knowledge, and increase efficiencies. But she warns us that they also have the capacity to drive museums back into disciplinary boundaries and unexpected exclusions. Ultimately, she argues for the ongoing need for human interaction and conversation, for a deliberate panarchic breaking of boundaries 8. C. S. Holling, L. Gunderson, and G. Peterson, Panarchy, 76.

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and hierarchies as the best way to help museums be their best and most inclusive selves. This chapter is, then, about conservation and conservatism and how they play any number of complementary and conflicting roles. Warning bells during a museum’s maturity might be obvious and catastrophic, or subtle and insidious. Sometimes they are easily ignored, because at this stage in the panarchic loop, complexity and challenges to stability and innovation creep in from all sides. The challenges are distinct from those at the origins stage of the loop, but they continue to require creative adaptation and leaders and teams with the capacity to question a museum’s progress while aiding and abetting resilience and sustainability. But be forewarned: whatever they might be, these challenges are never as consistently or dramatically unsettling as they will be when a museum enters phase three of the loop, when uncertainty takes center stage.

Conservation, Stewardship, and the Future of AMA Art Museum of the Americas, Part I lydia bendersky

In the late fall of 2006, I was offered the position of head of cultural affairs at the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, DC. A part of my responsibility was to oversee its Art Museum of the Americas (AMA), a small museum of 2,870 square feet with an important art collection representing the OAS’s thirty-five member states. It was a huge challenge, accompanied by a meager annual budget of $16,000 for operations, excluding the salaries of the staff of six (at the time), who, myself included, had very little academic museum background. Eighty percent of the collection was hanging in public areas and offices throughout the OAS buildings. The rest was—and still is—stored with some degree of climate control (and not much else) in the museum’s basement. A few sculptures are installed in the museum gardens, with minimal to no conservation. Sadly, many OAS officials regard the collection as a repository of decorative pieces for their offices. I also “inherited” a grand sculpture by arguably Colombia’s most prestigious sculptor, Édgar Negret. El Maíz (The Corncob) had been a gift from the Colombian government to the OAS some fifteen years prior. It is a magnificent piece of art, embedded with symbolism, since corn, originally American, is the continent’s historic staple. And there it stood, in all its height of thirty-one feet, right at our museum’s entrance, in a complete state of decay. 1. Andrés Navia, email correspondence dated February 18, 2014. El Maíz, by the Colombian artist Édgar Negret, one of the masters of Latin American Constructivism, arrived new

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Deteriorated by winter snowstorms, strong winds, summer heat, thunder, rain, and humidity, it was sad and appalling to see such a valuable piece of art turned into an eyesore. We made innumerable efforts with the Colombian government and private donors to have it restored, to no avail. At the end of the day, nobody seemed to care. This gift from one of OAS’s member states did not take into account the future of the sculpture beyond the clinking of glasses at the unveiling ceremony. Not even that: it was installed in an impossibly bad spot, a scant ten inches from the museum’s facade! One doesn’t need to have taken Art 101 to grasp that a sculpture, particularly an outdoor sculpture of that size, needs to breathe. It deserves and demands a space where it can be walked around. This lack of long-term vision, and resources, is affecting the whole collection. Part of the problem lies in the fact that AMA belongs to a multilateral political institution whose member states generally regard the museum as alien to the OAS’s core mission to foster democracy, human rights, development, and security in the Americas. They consistently fail, now more than ever, to see an opportunity to use the arts and AMA as powerful means to further their mission. The museum’s rich collection of Latin American and Caribbean art began in 1949 with the donation of a painting by the Brazilian artist Candido Portinari. Today, the collection has grown to more than two thousand works of art in varying media, including painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, and installations. It is an important collection that reflects in fair measure the contemporary art of the OAS’s member countries, but in the last few decades, its few acquisitions—mostly through donations—have had little to no curatorial focus. As a result, it has grown haphazardly. It has many extraordinary and valuable pieces, but it is neither terribly cohesive nor balanced. It has few works from Canada, few from the English-speaking Caribbean countries, and some clear gaps such as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Fernando Botero—that last even had his very first show outside of Colombia precisely at the OAS, in 1957. He sold every single work, for approximately $200 apiece, and not one was left for acquisition by the OAS Visual Arts Unit (the foundation for AMA, which was established much later, in 1976). Acquisitions have stalled over the last few decades. Parts of the collection at the OAS. It was donated by the artist upon request from the OAS in 1996. It’s a work that requires annual maintenance and repainting.

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need to be carefully deaccessioned in order to resume constructive development under a strong curatorial direction. AMA is now photographing all of the permanent collection as a prerequisite for Christie’s to assess the collection in 2013; the last appraisal was done by them in 1998. Today, my successor, Andrés Navia, at the helm of AMA since February 2012, has done an outstanding job in connecting AMA’s exhibits and programs to the OAS’s agenda while highlighting the collection in wide-ranging ways, resulting in glowing reviews by art critics. However, as he rightfully states in AMA’s vision statement: Building a strong permanent collection, which reflects current directions in the arts as well as those historical movements most important for present and future generations, continues to be the mission. Today’s collection provides a rich framework for future growth.

AMA continues to be under permanent scrutiny from the OAS member states (particularly the United States), and steep budget and staff cuts remain a fact of life. Its 2013 budget suffered a 30 percent reduction, which resulted in the loss of two (out of eight) staff positions. A potentially bright and thriving future for AMA and its collection seem to be inevitably linked to a divorce from the OAS and a new marriage to a strong academic partner, or perhaps a ménage à trois of all three. This partnership effort will be one of the museum’s many challenges in the years to come.

2. Ibid. The Christie’s appraisal never happened because we haven’t been able to raise the funds to hire someone to take quality photos of mid- to high-value pieces (Christie’s is only interested in these). We are doing our own photography, but are not even close to finishing; we’re so busy trying to maintain active programming that we rarely find time for it.

Stewardship and the Future of AMA Art Museum of the Americas, Part II andrés navia

Serious challenges in AMA’s institutional stewardship still prevail despite the valuable cultural legacy that the museum embodies, and despite vigorous programming promoting artists from the Americas. Even though AMA is among the three most important strongholds of modern and contemporary Latin American and Caribbean art in the United States, the struggle to justify its existence among its political stakeholders prevails. There is an urgent need to identify a legitimate long-term partner to secure AMA’s sustainability. Having accompanied my predecessor, Lydia Bendersky, in an effort to modernize and present an innovative and fresh image of a reputable—however troubled—museum, and being pleased to see a positive response outside our parent institution’s realm, taught me valuable lessons regarding the need to simultaneously cater to two completely different publics: the Washington, DC, museum crowd, with its craving for the new and the contemporary, and the Organization of American States (OAS) bureaucracy and political representation of thirty-five member countries, with their continual demand for budget cuts. While maintaining the important legacy of my predecessor, I am now working closely with OAS member state ambassadors on a survival strategy. This has to respond, in part, to a historic concern on the part of the U.S. representation in the OAS that there is a lack of strategic value to the museum, existing as it does within an institution suffering from dwindling financial resources and other overwhelming imperatives. 69

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In a letter dated November 14, 2012, sent to the OAS by the U.S. Senate Committee of Foreign Affairs (signed by John Kerry, Richard Lugar, Robert Menendez, and Marco Rubio), the senators expressed their concern regarding the organization’s lack of effective management and the need for its leadership to prioritize mandates. The letter called for a major change in AMA: “The Art Museum of the Americas and its magnificent art collection cannot be adequately sustained by the OAS and is a prime candidate for being bequeathed, with appropriate safeguards, to a world-class partner that would refresh the museum with skilled management and additional resources.” This clearly illustrates that AMA is undergoing increasing scrutiny. Therefore, one of my responsibilities is to more actively promote and advocate for AMA’s existence by presenting the museum as an essential promotional instrument of the OAS corporate image in Washington, DC, and in the region it represents. Equally important is highlighting AMA’s relevance via varied and engaging programming as a tactic to make it attractive to potential longterm partners. Such a partnership would allow AMA to exercise proper stewardship and operate smoothly. For this reason, we are also in the process of assembling the Group of Ambassador Friends of AMA, a working group among the OAS permanent council that would ideally discuss and approve the terms and conditions of such a partnership. In the process of consolidating AMA’s prestige and making use of the advantages provided by its institutional and historic ties to the OAS, AMA’s mission was redefined. It now addresses core values of the organization, highlighting themes such as democracy, human rights, peace, and justice. The new mission statement also links AMA to the advancement of the inter-American agenda, drawing on the arts to showcase a constructive vision of the future of the region via hemispheric cultural exchange. This new mission has been reflected in AMA’s more politically and socially engaged programming. AMA has also engaged other OAS departments, such as the Commission of Human Rights LGBT section and the Secretariat for Political Affairs. We exhibited part of the AIDS quilt in our sculpture garden and organized a photo contest to celebrate fifty years of the OAS electoral observation missions. We have also linked exhibitions to specific OAS programs such as firearms and land mine destruction and OAS efforts to promote immigrants’ rights, among others. During Bendersky’s direction, we put together an orchestral training program for at-risk youth in Haiti, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia, and we recently implemented an art exchange program with at-risk

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Salvadoran children living in the Washington, DC, area and rural El Salvador. With all of this in place, we have made a consistent effort to present the permanent collection as a solid asset with good value growth and a positive rate of return, particularly now, when interest in and prices for Latin American modern art are on the rise. For example, in 2013 the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma showcased Libertad de Expresión: the Art Museum of the Americas and Cold War Politics, a survey of AMA’s permanent collection, the OAS’s approach to cultural diplomacy, and the acquisition practices of founding director José Gómez-Sicre (1916–1991) during the Cold War. Other recent permanent collection exhibits include Fusion: Tracing Asian Migration to the Americas Through AMA’s Collection (2013) and Constellations: Constructivism, Internationalism, and the Inter-American Avant-Garde (2012), which were praised by the press and critics, and by OAS leadership. Nevertheless, highlighting the permanent collection’s worth is a doubleedged sword, considering that under the current financial crisis the OAS could consider the sale of valuable works as a revenue source. This would have disastrous effects on the integrity of the collection. Under the current circumstances, a long-term partnership seems to be the only way out to secure the existence of AMA, a highly regarded modern and contemporary art museum.

For Whom the Human Remains? ben garcia

Blood was rushing to my head and for a moment I heard only its “whish, whish” as I watched the director’s lips moving. It was my first day on the job as head of interpretation at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, and I had just asked her what the priorities were in what was clearly an enormous task ahead: manifesting her vision to create one of the world’s most respected museums of contemporary anthropology in a new facility in downtown Berkeley within ten years. There were many challenges to be surmounted in order to realize it; the ones I was thinking of included the fact that the museum has more than 2.3 million artifacts and a gallery space of just five thousand square feet; that it was seeing significantly fewer than one thousand visitors each month; and that there was no board, few resources, and just one staff curator. I was prepared for all that. I knew that I was dealing with a diamond in the rough—what the staff thinks of as a 110-year-old start-up museum—but I was not prepared for her response to my question. I did not even understand it. It was one of those moments where you understand each individual word in a sentence, but have no idea what they mean all together. “We have a collection of about ten thousand human remains in the basement of the gym next door. Mostly Native American. Getting them into an appropriate, respectful collections facility is our first job.” As embarrassing as it is to admit, I had never heard the term “human remains” before that day. After spending nine years working in museums and two years in a graduate program in museum education, and having attended dozens of museum conferences, I had somehow managed to entirely miss the 72

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issue. At that point I had never considered the fact that museums held collections of human remains. Somehow I had not connected Egyptian mummies with that term. In that moment I felt both revulsion at the thought of all those displaced people and profound embarrassment for what I realized immediately was a huge and inexcusable deficit in my education. In the three-second gap between her words and my response, I realized that I was supposed to be okay with this—that I was supposed to be professional and worldly enough to talk about this particular task objectively and unemotionally. And so I faked the ease that I did not feel and asked how the collections had come to the museum and what the plan was. The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, was founded in 1901 and since then has served primarily as a research facility with a secondary emphasis on public displays and programs. Since 2010, the museum has embarked upon a fast-paced and ambitious transformation that is both physical and philosophical, designed to bring the collections from narrow to wide use and relevance in the spirit of the founder’s intent. Phoebe Apperson Hearst gifted these collections to California’s public university because she believed in public education and broad access to artifacts that had previously been the purview of an exclusive minority. The greatest logistical hurdle to overcome on the road to realizing the vision of a transformed museum is, unsurprisingly, securing the resources to fund and sustain that vision; the greatest psychic hurdle, in this particular case, is the handling of issues related to the collection of human remains and associated funerary objects. The questions of ownership and providing research access to the human remains of individuals in the Hearst collections has been contentious for several decades, particularly with California Indian communities (almost 90 percent of this collection comes from California). This is because, in large part, these questions are tied inextricably in the minds of many to the history of forced removal, enslavement, and genocide perpetuated against California Indians from the time of contact through the early twentieth century by Spanish, Mexican, and then U.S. settlers. The population of California Indians was reduced by disease, battle, and slaughter from more than three hundred thousand to just sixteen thousand during this period, according to official state estimates. The subsequent removal of the buried remains of the victims and those who lived in the area in earlier eras to research institutions such as the University of California is seen as a further violation

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of this population’s dignity and right to self-determination, in the eyes of many California Indians and others. Passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in the United States in 1990 resulted in the repatriation of several hundreds of sets of human remains from the Hearst. In some instances, human remains eligible for repatriation have continued to be held in the museum at the tribe’s request. NAGPRA is a federal statute, and therefore only federally recognized tribes have the right to repatriate remains when they can prove that they are the most likely descendants. Because of the proportionally small number of California tribes that are federally recognized, the Hearst will not be legally compelled, in the foreseeable future, to repatriate the vast majority of its collections of human remains. The museum is located within one of the premier public research universities in the United States. The collections are held by the regents of the University of California, not the museum. The museum is the steward of these collections, and those who work for the museum walk the boundary lands between (at least) two worldviews: those of the California Indians who claim descent from the people whose remains are at the museum (and who wish to see the remains of people they regard as ancestors laid to rest); and that of osteologists and physical anthropologists on the faculty who believe there is a compelling research need to retain these collections within the parameters of the law, and who see no science-based rationale (genetic or cultural) for associating many of the contested remains with those who are claiming them as ancestors. Staff members navigate these boundary lands with few certainties to guide us. Some of us believe in science, some in truths that are not measurable in Western scientific terms, and many negotiate belief in both areas. Ultimately, however, this question is about not about belief, but about authority, power, and control. And history. Doing the “right thing” by communities whose oppression, if not destruction, was sanctioned for centuries by American institutions of government, law, culture, and religion is part of my motivation for working in museums. For those interested in the social-justice aspects of museum work, working within the nuanced and foggy realm of questions related to human remains is compelling and very challenging. This is a terrain of emotion- and ideology-fueled certainty. This is terrain where linear and narrative ways of thinking collide— where those who hold these collections subscribe to Western scientific notions and are challenged by thought systems that do not hold objectivity as the high-

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est ideal, or even as an ideal at all; where resentment, frustration, anger, guilt, and profound grief all lie close to the surface. And where the bluntest possible tools—law and policy and regulation—are wielded on both sides as if they can address what is really at issue: historical trauma and the half-life of violence. Rights related to cultural materials are among the key concerns facing museums today and include questions surrounding didactics, display, origin, borders, frontiers, colonialism, and indigenous rights. My thinking about these questions continues to evolve. Today I am no longer at the Hearst, but after more than three years learning about this issue from colleagues and community members—after three years of walking those boundary lands— I still see human remains as people. As impracticable as it may have been, I would have liked to open the doors and let Native communities who view these remains as their ancestors come and collect them for reburial. But in part this is because I sought a quick resolution to the problem as a way to feel better about the genocide and slavery and racism. I wanted a happy ending, and I wanted to view this issue as the psychic “hurdle” I described earlier, because that implies that it can be leaped over and left behind. Naïveté and cynicism are the two ditches that border the path forward. Part of this work is ensuring that you do not get mired in either. Museums have a significant role to play in redressing the legacy of racism and political and cultural imperialism that informed many academic disciplines and collecting practices in the last century. But museums (especially those with accessions dating to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) too often do not step up and lead, and have to be pulled by legislation with dragging feet to examine their assumptions about ownership. I realize that questions of ownership and authority are complex, especially when the disputed collections date back hundreds to thousands of years. And those who work in the area of repatriation know that there is no simple resolution to these problems, and that it is rare to find a position that can be applied consistently on any side of the issue. But even so, the inescapable fact is that the disposition process always favors the possessor. And the process for arriving at decisions about repatriation will remain laborious and often entropic as long as the institutions that gained these collections through past imperialistic and racist policies continue to hold them while decisions are being made. Some will see this as an oversimplification, but I do believe that when it comes to the disposition of collections, things are often less complex than the baroque legal and ethical constructions we build to justify holding on to them.

Reimagining an Ethical Approach to Museum Collections stephen e. nash and chip colwell We aspire to curate the best understood and most ethically held anthropology collection in North America. —Aspiration statement, Department of Anthropology, Denver Museum of Nature & Science

In the summer of 2007, the reconstituted Department of Anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) crafted an aspiration statement, an announcement of its intention to help define and establish a worldclass museum. This ambitious declaration set in motion our hope that the anthropology collections can come to be widely used and appreciated by a range of communities, from scholars to schools to tribes to the person on the street. To be the “best understood” anthropology collection means having a detailed data management system, active research programs, and multiple opportunities for scholars and cultural experts such as tribal elders to document the significance of particular objects and subcollections. The DMNS anthropology collection is not so large as to be overwhelming, and hence ultimately unknowable, as can be the case at larger natural history museums. At the same time, the collection is substantial and significant enough to serve as a material window into hundreds of human cultures that have existed through centuries of time. To be the “most ethically held” anthropology collection, the museum acknowledges the need to be in compliance with important laws. First and foremost is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act 76

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(NAGPRA) of 1990, which outlines legal procedures by which federally recognized Native American tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations can request the repatriation of their ancestors, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. In fall 2008, the museum’s board of trustees codified the institutional commitment to NAGPRA by formally stating in the collection policy that it will comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law. Additionally, the museum policy acknowledges that many tribes, communities, and countries may want certain items returned, even though there are no formal laws requiring repatriation. In these cases, the policy recommends entering “into equal and open communication with the communities that connect themselves to the objects in the museum’s custody.” DMNS has long recognized the worldwide crisis in the looting and theft of archaeological objects. Many scholars have described how museums can (often unwittingly) perpetuate the problem by encouraging more destruction through the purchase or accession of looted antiquities. As a result of such concerns, the museum’s policy statement makes clear that we will seek to address the problem of the illicit antiquities trade through extant international treaties such as the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Further still, the policy articulates adherence to codes of ethics such as those promulgated by the American Alliance of Museums, the Society for American Archaeology, and the American Anthropological Association. We recognize that the museum’s policy guidelines and our aspiration statement warrant genuine commitment and effort to make such lofty goals a reality. We have therefore undertaken a series of projects and programs under the rubric of the repatriation initiative, seeking to deal with the ethical problems that have arisen with the collections. The repatriation initiative integrates anthropological understandings of sacred and inalienable property, ethical values surrounding the dead, collaborative methodologies, and notions of restorative justice to proactively grapple with the tangled history of museum collections.

1. The Manual of Collection Policies, section 11.1.A.1; 11.II.A, C, D; also see “Denver Museum of Nature & Science Ethics Policy Statement,” approved and adopted by the DMNS board of trustees, April 15, 2008. 2. See for example Colin Renfrew, Loot, Legitimacy, and Ownership (London: Duckworth, 2000). 3. The Manual of Collection Policies, section 11.II.B.

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We take as our guiding principles notions of respect, reciprocity, dialogue, and restorative justice. “Respect” means honoring people, and the things that make up their social and ceremonial lives, and showing deep consideration for their personal autonomy and collective welfare. “Reciprocity” means creating relationships that are based on parity, and the cooperative exchange of ideas and things. “Justice” is needed to repair past wrongs and to treat all people fairly. “Dialogue” is a commitment to open, democratic, sustained conversation. Adherence to these principles means that we have come to see repatriation as a form of social justice necessary for reconciliation between tribes and museums. Adherence to these principles means that we recognize that repatriation can be an important part of restorative justice, a way for all of us to come to terms with the darker side of anthropology’s history. Adherence means that we believe that the museum cannot have a meaningful and productive future with Native American tribes in particular until it has resolved its past. Adherence means that we will no longer curate human remains in the absence of informed consent.

native american human remains Since 2008, we have received four National Park Service NAGPRA grants to consult with federally recognized tribes to address the Native American human remains (e.g., ancestors) in the collection. Our goal through these grants was to enter into meaningful dialogue to arrive at a collective decision about what the disposition of these remains would be. Although some work remains to be done, we have now completed 25 repatriations under the initiative, including those of 86 Native American ancestors, 238 funerary objects, and 22 sacred and communal objects. More importantly, in the near future, when all the ancestors will have been returned home, the museum will no longer curate human remains in the absence of informed consent.

vigango The repatriation initiative also addresses ethical concerns surrounding thirty Mijikenda memorial statues in the collections. The Mijikenda (literally “the nine tribes”) consist of nine ethnic subgroups (the Giriama, Kauma, Jibana, Chonyi, Kambe, Ribe, Rabai, Duruma, and Digo) living on the eastern coast

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and in the hinterlands of Kenya and northern Tanzania, in northeast Africa. The northernmost Mijikenda, particularly the Giriama, Chonyi, and Kambe, worship their ancestors through the construction of memorial statues. These memorial statues, known as vigango (kigango in the singular), are carved by the Gohu Society and erected on graves and placed in family compounds after an elder dies. The Mijikenda believe that vigango are living objects that actively embody the spirits of departed and honored elders. They believe that unmolested vigango bring luck and prosperity to the whole community, particularly to the family of the elder being honored, and that vigango should not be moved or otherwise molested after they have been erected. More than four hundred vigango are now in museums in the United States; many are directly traceable to the African art dealer Ernie Wolfe III of Los Angeles, who almost singlehandedly created the market for these artifacts in the late 1980s. Untold numbers of them are in private hands. Mijikenda elders document cause-andeffect relationships between the theft of these vigango three decades ago and troubles continuing to affect descendant families since then. Strictly speaking, the sale of vigango on the international art market is not illegal, because laws prohibiting their sale and transfer do not exist. Kenya has not signed the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, under which, if ratified by Kenya, the United States could be compelled to return the cultural property because it was exported without a permit. In the absence of such, the United States could enter into a bilateral treaty with Kenya to prohibit the vigango trade, but it has not yet done so. In the parlance of Western legal and ethical traditions, we believe that vigango should be considered “inalienable possessions” or “objects of cultural patrimony”—things that belong to entire communities, not to specific individuals. Considered in this light, the primary breach of ethics (if not law) under consideration is the original theft of vigango in their source communities. The sale of vigango thereafter, whether by the thief, by a dealer, or by a collector, should be considered null and void because those individuals do not have the right to own, much less sell, the objects in question. By extension, 4. Monica Udvardy, Linda L. Giles, and John B. Mitsanze, “The Transatlantic Trade in African Ancestors: Mijikenda Memorial Statues (Vigango) and the Ethics of Collecting and Curating Non-Western Cultural Property,” American Anthropologist 105, no. 3 (2003): 567.

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museums that have come to hold vigango in their collections do not have legal title to those objects. As such, they should be repatriated. Denver and Nairobi are sister cities, and Denver’s mayor, Michael Hancock, has been collaborating with his Kenyan counterparts in an effort to boost business relations between the two. In mid-summer 2013, we notified Hancock and Denver councilman Albus Brooks of our fledgling efforts to repatriate the vigango. In late 2013, we received word that a delegation of Kenyan officials from Nairobi would soon be in Denver. We formally proposed deaccession of the vigango to the museum’s governing committees, and they approved the proposal unanimously. Although the delegation’s visit was canceled, another will happen soon. When it does, we will sign a letter of agreement stating that the vigango will be transferred to the National Museums of Kenya, which will then work with the Mijikenda to identify where and from whom the vigango were stolen. Other institutions have worked to repatriate vigango from their collections, but the process is complicated, expensive, and never straightforward. Some museum administrators resist because, they argue, no laws have been broken in the acquisition process. Others would like to repatriate their vigango but cannot afford to pay for packing or shipping. Still others have entered into deliberations only to have them be derailed by changes in institutional administration. We believe that our efforts, going through formal governmental channels and established business contacts, may serve as a successful model for future repatriations. The Department of Anthropology’s aspiration statement can never be quantified or evaluated, and, admittedly, it can probably never be fully achieved. Yet it is a vision to which the museum aspires, a clear statement of what this collection and this department seek to become, and it constitutes a reimagining, a re-practicing, of respect, reciprocity, dialogue, and restorative justice in a museum context.

Small Museums and the “Cultural Revolution” in Venezuela, 2001–2012 guillermo barrios I understood that in those silent and tiny house-museums, in whose interiors objects of the past are encrusted like souls, I was able to find the comfort and beauty that were my link to life. —Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence, 2008

At the “Remix” conference convened by the International Museum Institute (IMI) in Oaxaca, Mexico, I presented a talk about the situation of museums in Venezuela today, and how the small museum sector has managed to elude the impact of the so-called Bolivarian cultural revolution. The compulsory imposition by the factions that are presently in power of an ideological value system has become evident in several components of the public museum system, and it is clear that the ones most affected are the major museums. Consequently, observers of the cultural dynamic have focused their concern on these cases of greater relevance to the public, but there is still a need in the 1. The term “cultural revolution” that we propose to refer to the phase that is the object of these reflections was publicly defended for the first time in Venezuela during a televised presidential address at the beginning of 2001. On that occasion, without previous warning, and with epithets that are unrepeatable, the entire staffs of cultural institutions, including all the directors of the major national museums in Caracas, were removed. With the proposal of a superficial agenda, the president announced “a radical change aimed at ending the elitist character of institutions and opening them up to the public as spokesmen for a new nation, built upon the ruins of old capitalist politics.” See, among other international press reports, ABC Madrid, January 28, 2001, http://www.abc.es/hemeroteca/historico-28–01–2001/abc/Cultura/chavezdestituye-a-sofia-imber-como-directora-del-museo-de-arte-de-caracas_8488.html.

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present circumstances to follow the progress of small museums. The points presented here have their origins in a rough overview of the general situation, and focus attention precisely on those smaller-scale museums through examples in Caracas that allow us to recognize the possibilities of, and the reasons for, silent resistance to the impositions of the present political situation. The first clear effect of the takeover of the public museum system has been the leveling off of exhibition offerings due to the elimination of healthy and lively program competition among the different museums because of the progressive deactivation of each institution’s marks of identity, independently of their typology, subject matter, and program emphasis. While these aspects have been shifted to second place, a common mission has been imposed on all museums: the positioning of an official “revolutionary” rhetoric that cloaks both the discourse of exhibition galleries and the ways in which museums operate. The exhibition gallery has become, in some cases more than others, a tool for ideological propaganda of the official “revolutionary” narrative. Beyond what can be seen on a gallery’s walls, in recent years there has been a movement toward forced centralization of decision making and a reconfiguration of modes of operation. With centralized management, successive changes in the structure of human resources and orientation of exhibition programming, among other aspects, obey motivations that are largely political. Under the banner of a collectivist vision, and in opposition to the supposedly elitist tradition of museums, the practice of curating, the authorship of support texts, and individual exhibitions have been banished. The effects of the imposition of government control on museum practices have been relentless, not only in the reduction—under a sort of political cleansing—of research staff, the number of exhibitions per year, and publishing projects, but also in the relaxation of museum standards for the installation of exhibitions. The homogeneous discourse imposed on museums and the resulting decline in the quality of exhibition proposals has distanced traditional audiences created over a trajectory of many years, and major museums, like “big empty boxes,” have evidently not managed to build an alternate public. Their essential values— from public confidence, undermined by premeditated association with a single ideology, to their capacity to be connected to the global cultural scene, as well as others that essentially define the museum’s task—have been seriously diminished. Overwhelming evidence of the annihilation of national museums’ autonomy is the cancellation in the last decade of their respective websites. The online presence of these institutions, which for decades energized the

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Venezuelan cultural scene with their diverse programming, now occurs only through a centralized portal (fmn.gob.ve) with official and slanted information, divorced from each museum’s individual voice and history. The political takeover of museums affects the entire sector, but, as we have observed, to differing degrees. It is more noticeable in the larger institutions that are centrally located, and it is less severe in the case of those in outlying neighborhoods and streets. Apart from the Casa Natal de El Libertador Simón Bolívar (Birthplace of Simón Bolívar), and others whose narratives are inscribed in the official discourse of nationalist veneration that has enveloped the “Cultural Revolution,” some of the most attractive small museums of Caracas sit on the periphery of the historic district, where they have somehow managed to preserve their own voices. We can point to at least three among them that, within their respective particularities, represent examples of resistance to the intervention that Venezuelan museums are presently experiencing. They are public or private institutions that, in an environment with totalitarian tendencies, continue today to tell independent stories about the universal validity of free personal undertakings, and their stimulating association with collective memory. Directly to the north of the historic district, in a traditional working-class area of the city, the Arturo Michelena Museum constitutes a unique example of the historic house museum on a local level. The smallest of the museums that integrate the National Museums Foundation, a governmental institution, it was created in 1963 and occupies the house that the master painter Michelena, one of the greatest figures of Venezuelan art of all time, built and used as a studio and as a venue for academic dialogue at the end of the nineteenth century. A lovely collection of decorative art and period furniture highlights the studio’s vivid ambiance, and serves as a frame for a magnificent collection of works by the artist. Although the museum’s raison d’être calls for the conservation of an evocative atmosphere, from the 1980s on, its management program has undertaken risky initiatives in order to stamp upon it a contemporary museum dynamic and stimulate solid and permanent attendance. Visiting the museum with a critical eye today can leave the impression that, although the number of temporary exhibitions and programming activity has decreased, the small MAM continues to offer additional related activities that have long guaranteed a close connection with the surrounding community. The John Boulton Foundation has installed its museum not far from the MAM in a building that is public property, ceded through a loan and

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restitution contract, and which, because of its dimensions and style, offers a both contrasting and opportune presence on a central square with an enormous Brutalist ensemble constructed in reinforced concrete that houses the nation’s principal archives and libraries. The atmosphere achieved by recycling this old example of colonial architecture and adapting it to museum use highlights the importance of this privately funded archive and artistic establishment, whose focus is historical transition and the formation of the Republic in the nineteenth century. The museum holds and exhibits the so-called Bolivariana Collection, which includes, among other pieces of great value, an extensive series of portraits of Bolívar executed in different techniques during the Liberator’s lifetime, as well as documents and objects that were rigorously collected and studied over decades by the institution. Despite warnings of expropriation by the government, the foundation has managed to maintain its independent orientation, and has been so far giving priority to the internal tasks of preservation and protection of the collection, while exhibition programming, and diff usion in general, keep a low profile. As usually happens, small museums offer an excellent opportunity to promote the recuperation and recognition of heritage structures that survive the voraciousness of urban speculation in big cities. This is an essential principle embodied in the Lorenzo Mendoza House for the Study of the History of Venezuela, whose independent museum experience takes place in a large eighteenth-century Caracas house. Its open-air interior courtyard with welltended gardens of tropical plants and still fountains is an oasis in the midst of urban bustle. In several rooms opening onto this courtyard are archives that are open to the public as well as galleries for the permanent exhibition of furniture, art, and decorative objects from several generations of the family group, whose foundation has made possible this cultural initiative. Although its activity has declined in recent years, the center still welcomes temporary exhibitions of independent orientation, and occasionally offers a program of concerts and lectures, which helps to maintain its gentle presence in the city’s cultural life. This bird’s-eye view of these three cases reveals that small Venezuelan museums, even when they have been able to protect themselves from intervention into their discourses and program offerings, have not escaped from the onslaught of Venezuela’s current cultural situation. Despite the fact that many of them have clung to their core meanings and sustaining values, the general decline of the museum scene has weakened the vitality of these initiatives,

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which are tiny in size, yet large in their potential for inserting cultural values into the fiber of their communities. Each of these house museums, by recounting in its own way the city’s history, allows its own to flow through the network of neighborhoods. These quiet and tiny historic house museums interact closely with their people, in a calm tone, a hushed voice—in silence, even—in order to protect for the people of Caracas, for its citizens, the authentic experience to which each museum—not only small museums, but museums of every size—owes its existence. (Translated by Francisca González Arias)

Repairing a Lost History in Rio de Janeiro A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century piedade grinberg

How can we transform an old, historic residence, the Solar Grandjean de Montigny, into an attractive and compelling place for the university community it directly serves and for other visitors as well? There are many questions: What is a solar? Why does it have this name? What is the importance of this old house, with its specific and unique architecture, for the history of Rio de Janeiro? How can we make the personal and professional life of its architect/ builder/resident interesting? How can we display and give value to, using contemporary concepts, the location of this house, an area surrounded by the lush vegetation of the Atlantic forest and set on land in one of the oldest rural estates in the neighborhood of Gávea in Rio de Janeiro? And, finally, why is it located in the middle of the university campus, and to whom does it belong? Why should we preserve this past? These questions are constantly asked by our young university students and by visitors, showing a contemporary restlessness with our mission. Let us begin with the fact that much of the historical and architectonic heritage of Rio de Janeiro has been lost over time. The development of the city, modernization of the urban transportation network, and improper occupation of some areas have changed the very nature of the city—which is colonial and eclectic in its historical center—into a pseudo-modern city. Furthermore, the move of the federal capital of Brazil from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília in the early 1960s led to a loss of funding for preservation of the city’s history and architecture, causing harm to countless old structures, including institutional, private, and religious buildings. Sometimes these buildings had already begun 86

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to decay, but as a whole we witnessed the disappearance of significant examples of the Brazilian tradition in architecture. Solares are large residences, commonly built in Rio de Janeiro in the first half of the nineteenth century, with sophisticated finishings surrounded by large pieces of land, with gardens and yards, located at the edge of the city. When first built, such houses had the advantages offered by rural real estate: a connection to nature, proximity to provisions, and the benefit of some urban services, for instance transportation to the center and running water. In 1951, the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro bought the land on which Grandjean de Montigny’s country house—his solar (ca. 1822)—was located, as well as some surrounding areas. Since its creation as a cultural center in 1980 and a university museum in 2011, after restorations and renovations made in the 1960s and the end of the 1970s, the main mission of the Solar Grandjean de Montigny has been the preservation of this property, which is registered as a heritage site, as was its surrounding area, in 1938, by the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage, making this house an important architectural monument. Another objective of the university was to make issues related to Brazilian architecture and culture of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries more visible, through reflection and encouragement of study of a wide variety of themes from these periods, with special attention to the history of Rio de Janeiro, raising questions, documenting processes, and establishing relations through didactic and provocative exhibits. The Solar Grandjean de Montigny is located at the center of the university, and should be viewed as architecture and as “action,” an experiment that seeks to build a new space with interactive links between the old and the contemporary, between what is built by humans and by nature, and a constant preparation of projects and reformulations. Its original design is unknown, but it is present in the books and compendia on Brazilian and international architecture and is continually the subject of studies on a wide variety of questions of neoclassical architecture and the adaptations made by Grandjean de Montigny to the Brazilian environment. In this house, his most functionally and aesthetically successful, the regionalistic aspect, is, without a doubt, strongest. For example, the porches surrounding the house are related to characteristic solutions of European neoclassicism and to traditional porches used in colonial plantation houses. Yet another tendency is the Tuscan reminiscence identifiable by the monumental entrance staircase. Inside, the type of

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symmetrical layout used, with a square body and a circular salon, is characteristic of neoclassicism but in line with the Brazilian tradition: the entrance is made directly through the main living room, which has the best view and is open to the porch. In the same area, and repeated on both floors, is a circular living room, which stands out from the back facade, forming a semicylindrical body. On the facade, with its unique design, the only highlight is the small Renaissance-style portico, flanked by columns and topped by a triangular pediment that opens to the circular living room with its checkered floor in black and white marble. New, as of yet inconclusive, studies are attempting to determine whether this room was a possible environment for Freemasonry rituals, due specifically to its specific and unique architecture: externally, an entrance through a neoclassical portico with Doric-style columns, and internally, the floor in checkered black and white, as temples should be covered, symbolizing the diversity of the world and the races united by Freemasonry, as well as the dualities good and bad, spirit and body, light and darkness. Could some members of the so-called French Artistic Mission be members of the French Freemasons? Studies should clarify some of these and other relevant questions. Still, the question remains: how can we captivate, in a contemporary way, not only external visitors—researchers, professors, and other interested people who come specifically to visit the Solar Grandjean de Montigny for its exhibits and architectonical interest—but also the students and internal public, and the university? We intend to answer some of these questions through the following proposals and activities: •

Partnerships with different departments at the university to carry out interdisciplinary projects, such as exhibits of a historical nature regarding key moments of our culture; presenting works by artists or other contemporary cultural operators, emphasizing their origin and importance within the current cultural and social context; supporting events held by groups and bodies that are active inside and outside the university in different cultural areas; and organizing parallel events such as courses, roundtables, talks, audiovisual presentations, book releases, et cetera that provoke discussion on all the activities conducted and that enrich new approaches and new focuses on the issues raised.

•

Organization of a variety of events that are conceived, coordinated, and managed under the responsibility of students in the art, visual

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language, design, and architecture courses, integrating these activities into the annual calendar of the university museum. •

Creation of a virtual museum showing the timeline of the solar in hypermedia, containing images of the works and archival materials. It will also contain works from the collection and document archives in which visitors can learn about the solar’s architecture and its virtual exhibits in context with the document archive. Exhibitions may also be made not only of the works in the collection but also other topics, and reconstitutions of other exhibits. A specific center will focus on documentation of the house’s history with old documents and photos, as well as the different restoration processes.

•

The creation, through a partnership, with the Electrical Engineering Department of PUC-Rio3, of the virtual exhibit City of Rio de Janeiro in the Times of Grandjean de Montigny 1816–1850, containing images from institutional and private archives such as engravings, drawings, and paintings by artists of the French Artistic Mission and foreign travelers who visited the city in the first half of the nineteenth century. This work will also be made available in electronic media online.

•

The integration and participation of students in the architecture course at PUC-Rio, under the guidance of their professors throughout all the stages of the solar restoration and revitalization project, from its conception to iconographic research and research on archives, measurements, and the preparation of its designs and blueprints. The work will be shared throughout its execution for periodic visitation, thus creating didactic and educational actions on the meaning of, and preservation and publicizing of, its practices and methodologies.

By restoring, preserving, and conserving the Solar Grandjean de Montigny and its surroundings, we are bequeathing to the community of our city a piece of formerly destroyed and abandoned heritage. We are building the present through the history of a past that reveals a knowledge whose technique has become outdated, but which represents the core of a set of memories that go beyond the building, and which preserves the time in which the French culture of the nineteenth century mixed with the native elements, within a secular tradition, in an environment of exuberant nature.

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Based on these proposals, it is our hope that the Solar Grandjean de Montigny in the PUC-Rio university museum will be an attractive center, and a catalyst of ideas and activities, where the old and the contemporary complete each other, providing all visitors and users with a broad scope of the preservation and diff usion of a lesser-known but preserved Brazilian cultural identity.

On and Off the Hill in Los Angeles Making Connections and Making a Difference clare kunny

Views of Los Angeles from the Getty Center show the urban sprawl and geography of the city and its environs, as well as the density of humanity that L.A.’s museums must somehow serve. A map can superimpose a grid on a city like Los Angeles, but a grid, by itself, is inert. The grid must become a network that permits museums large and small to communicate and attract attention to their best work. Overriding the grid with a network would be to the mutual benefit of all cultural organizations, and, as this essay will show, that is what the Getty tried to create with its Pacific Standard Time initiative. The perspective I offer is through the lens of museum education and a selection of programs. Here, I examine aspects of Pacific Standard Time (PST) that sought to change international perceptions of Southern California art and culture and increase museum attendance across the region. To achieve these goals set for the PST initiative, a complex network of alliances among small, regional museums and larger national ones was created. The educational programs I review demonstrate the impact of PST on the museumgoing public, but also provoke questions about the challenges and benefits to museums working under the PST umbrella. More than a decade ago, the Getty Foundation and the Getty Research Institute realized that the history of avant-garde art in Southern California was in danger of being lost. Around 2003, archival materials were identified, collected, catalogued, and made accessible for research. Oral histories were conducted, and a series of public programs brought the newly recovered 91

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material to light. Out of these early efforts, the collaborative initiative “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980” evolved. As a collaborative venture, PST involved more than sixty cultural institutions in Southern California. A significant sum of money was spent on this regional initiative. As the initiating organization, the Getty had $12 million in direct expenditures; partnering institutions’ total expenditures exceeded $18.9 million. Exhibitions, events, and educational programs were planned over a six-month period from October 2011 to April 2012. Exhibition catalogues and journal articles were written as scholarly contributions to the history of art. Writers and cultural observers covered the activities throughout Southern California and beyond in their reviews and blogs, as well as on Twitter and Facebook. The map of participating venues shows a complex network of institutions stretching from greater Los Angeles to San Diego and from Santa Barbara to Palm Springs. PST involved cultural institutions of every size and character across Southern California. Previously underrepresented art movements and marginalized artists were incorporated into the broader histories of American art of the period. This study of Southern California artists within a modernist context was achieved through an effort to connect the exhibitions and programs with institutions of higher learning. College and university faculty were invited to attend previews in the spring and fall of 2011 to learn more about the citywide, regional collaboration, to meet curators from selected exhibitions, and to hear from museum educators about themes of PST exhibitions that could be incorporated into their curriculum for the 2011–12 academic year. As the exhibitions opened in October 2011, PST provided faculty with a readymade syllabus for a course on Modern art made in postwar Southern California. They could select readings from recently published exhibition catalogues and direct their students to the PST website for content to assign in connection with visits to related exhibitions. Students could study an art movement in depth—Chicano art, modernist architecture and design, the feminist movement, African American art—or an individual artist in the context of different exhibitions. Access to the art in the sixty-plus exhibitions offered a rare opportunity for in-depth, object-based research with rich content. Faculty and students were encouraged not only to think about individual museum exhibitions, but to encounter the exhibitions as a cohesive and integrated experience with multiple parts. College group visits to the Getty Museum showed a marked increase during the PST exhibitions. The whole PST program aimed to have a lasting

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impact not only on the region’s museums in the aggregate, but through one college course that might instill in the next generation a new consciousness of the region’s cultural heritage. To what extent will the art historical revisionism generated by PST endure? While the PST initiative created a new regional awareness of the significance of Southern California art and culture, the national and international success of the initiative in rewriting the history of Modernism is harder to quantify. In time, the assimilation of underrepresented art movements and marginalized artists into national and international canons of art history will be apparent. The challenge now is for museums to maintain these newly strengthened relationships with college faculty and students in the absence of dozens of focused exhibitions and programs. To achieve another overall goal of PST—an increase in region-wide museum attendance—a two-phase audience awareness initiative was developed. A significant portion of the Getty’s direct expenditure of $12 million was devoted to marketing and communications. Phase one targeted the “art aware” audiences of seasoned museumgoers and encouraged visits to exhibitions in smaller museums. A printed guide and a continuously updated website helped the “art aware” audience navigate the offerings. Itineraries suggested visits to museums in close proximity and grouped exhibitions thematically for visitors with special interests. Phase two of audience awareness commenced in January 2012, targeting the “culturally curious,” an audience not accustomed to visiting museums. An ad campaign pairing pop-culture icons with artists sought to draw the “culturally curious” to exhibitions and programs. To appeal to the broadest multigenerational audience, programs and events linked the visual arts with popular culture, music, theater, opera, performance art, and the culinary arts. In the spirit of collaboration, teachers from several Los Angeles high schools worked with educators from the Getty Museum to develop a program for the visual and performing arts addressing curricular goals. Student projects done in response to PST exhibitions—dance performances, film screenings, and a one-night exhibition of student artworks—were presented at the Getty Center in a culminating event attended by four hundred students, family members, teachers, and school administrators. Other new audiences were reached in a program developed with the LA Opera to explore the influence in the 1930s and 1940s of émigré composers on young Los Angeles artists such as John Cage. The capstone of the programing for the “culturally curious” was a ten-day festival of performance and public art staged throughout Los Angeles and

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beyond. Innovative programming sought to reach new audiences by pushing them to learn about art by experiencing it. Public artworks, large-scale spectacles, and performances were planned to encourage attendance at nearby exhibitions. In one example, a reinterpretation of Lita Albuquerque’s dramatic Spine of the Earth was reenacted, with red-clad performers, at the Baldwin Hills overlook. New audiences in New York, Vancouver, Santa Fe, and Berlin were cultivated as several PST exhibitions traveled to additional venues. In this way, the initiative’s ambition to call attention to Southern California art moved far beyond the region’s own borders to give the local vision international consequences. Perhaps more of the exhibitions, in particular those with rare, narrowly focused subjects, should have traveled this way. The geographic spread of PST-participating institutions indicates how extensive visual arts activities were in post–World War II Los Angeles. The initiative recovered a heritage in danger of being lost by reconnecting artists of the past with today’s art schools, galleries, and museums. PST served as a regional reunion for artists and recontextualized their work. Younger artists visited exhibitions and attended programs to learn firsthand about the past and an older generation’s network. The Getty’s economic impact analysis reports that 1.8 million visitors participated in the PST exhibitions and events across Southern California. Yet a survey conducted by the Los Angeles Times noted that only six of the sixty-plus participating museums reported their best attendance during PST exhibitions. In hindsight, some museum administrators asked whether there wasn’t too much to choose from in too short a time. Were the migration networks connecting large, national museums with the smaller regional museums activated and renewed? Further analysis of the data collected from Getty surveys will reveal the extent to which PST museumgoers moved from one exhibition to another. To increase museum attendance region-wide and to respond to the sprawling geography of Southern California, a future PST initiative might allocate funds for continuous, free transportation among the institutions. Furthermore, a geographic sequence of exhibitions might also encourage a pilgrimage to museums clustered in adjacent communities, ensuring better attendance among all museums and building a lasting impact on the region’s museums in the aggregate.

Art and Beyond Some Contemporary Challenges for Art and Anthropology Museums ivan gaskell

Museums of various kinds no longer embody the way in which the world might best be categorized, as they still reflect now-superseded Western distinctions between civilizations and cultures. In this schema, civilizations are largely sedentary, use plow agriculture, have a conspicuous urban component, employ writing, and have histories. Cultures, on the other hand, may be sedentary, but are likely to observe nomadic or seasonal movement, use hoe cultivation if they are not dependent on hunting and gathering, and are not predominantly urban. They commit their records to memory, transmitted orally and by means of visual representation, and are supposedly without histories. Westerners view themselves and selected societies on the Eurasian landmass as civilized and relatively removed from nature. They produce art. The others, once designated “savages” by Westerners, are supposedly in a state close to nature. They produce artifacts. Westerners have viewed certain products of civilized peoples—Europeans, some Asians, and some ancient Americans—as art in the sense proposed by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment (1790). In such cases, attributes This is an abbreviated version of the original keynote lecture for the symposium “Engaging Adult Publics: Museums Today and Future” at the J. Paul Getty Museum in June 2009 under the auspices of the University of Southern California International Museum Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum. It develops ideas I first offered at the symposium “The Public Object: Facing Contemporary Challenges in the Art Museum” at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, in 2008. I should like to thank Maite Álvarez, Martina Bagnoli, Selma Holo, and Clare Kunny for their kind invitations.

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unique to it characterize each object. They form the contents of those institutions founded to refine and disseminate such definitions: art museums. By contrast, these same arbiters of hegemonic values have viewed the products of cultures supposedly close to nature as craft objects, and as such devoid of the beauty defined by Kant in his third critique as proper to the fine arts. They have treated these things as specimens, each no more than representative of its kind. Specimens constitute the contents of anthropology and natural history museums. This schema came under pressure, however, even as it achieved its classic realization in the art and natural history museums of Europe and North America in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In these years, some Western artists challenged normative notions of what constitutes art. Some, such as Marcel Duchamp, appropriated “mere real things” (Arthur Danto’s phrase) from within contemporary Western material culture. Others embraced the so-called primitive by appropriating forms from colonially subjugated societies, predominantly in Oceania and sub-Saharan Africa. Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso took the lead in expanding the Western repertory in response to the arts of these—to Europeans—exotic places. Some collectors and scholars also adopted indigenous art itself, exhibiting and discussing it in aesthetic terms previously reserved for the art of what they considered to be civilized societies. Their concerns overrode any significance that such things might have had for indigenous makers and users. Furthermore, Western artists, scholars, and collectors also began to look to aspects of their own previously ignored cultural traditions, aspects that had been dismissed as “folkloric.” In 1907 and 1908, Picasso and Constantin Brancusi emulated “folk” forms, introducing the archaic European “primitive” into Western “high art.” A true expansion of Western ideas about what constitutes art came about. The “primitive” acquired cachet as directly expressive, uncontaminated by sophistication. Even so, scholars tended to define perceived values in “primitive” art in terms of the values they ascribed to the art of Mediterranean classical antiquity. For instance, Roger Fry responded to Kuba and other art from the Congo in “Negro Sculpture at the Chelsea Book Club” (1920) as another viable form of antiquity. It took Franz Boas, in Primitive Art (1927), to propose a radical break. Boas’s pioneering work drew on an extraordinary breadth of knowledge of world cultures in addition to his fieldwork among the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples of British Columbia. In its wake, no one has been able to demonstrate either cultural inequality among peoples, or an

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evolution from savagery to civilization. Many, though, have continued to assert these ideas, often in racist terms. Let us now look at art even more expansively, acknowledging the points of view of peoples other than art-world Westerners regarding what they might think of as artworks. A Maōri jadite hei-tiki pendant, the small statue known as the Virgin of Scherpenheuvel in a Belgian pilgrimage church, and a terracotta Kneeling Angel by Gian Lorenzo Bernini are in one sense very different kinds of things. The first is a living being in the eyes of most Maōri people. The second is a miraculous image imbued with agency that can respond to the petitions of those who venerate it. The third is a model used by a sculptor and his assistants to solve puzzles arising from fulfilling a sculptural commission. These descriptions emphasize vast differences among these things, differences that acknowledge non-art-world conceptions of them as being just as important as their designation as art. Yet they function as artworks, sharing the unifying designation “art.” I want to press this question of art a little further. Not all Westerners recognize the expansion of the classes of things that function as art in Western institutions. Among those who do, few do so without hierarchical distinction. For example, many today consider a European painting in oils to be inherently superior to a marble statue. Many would see both as superior to a Chinese painting on silk (unless you happen to be Chinese, Korean, or Japanese, in which case the judgment is likely to be the other way around). A preponderance of both Europeans and East Asians likely view all these things as inherently superior to a sub-Saharan African masquerade. Even if we try our best to be evenhanded in our assessment, what constitutes art is no longer conceptually clear. It is a great deal of quite varied material. Does “art” remain either a viable concept or a useful category of things in the world? What is art? Two philosophers can help. Nelson Goodman pointed out the inadequacy of the question “What is art?” and proposed in Ways of Worldmaking (1978) that we replace it with “When is art?” That is, under what circumstances can something be considered a work of art? Or, under what circumstances does an object function as a work of art? Although he does not discuss art, Ian Hacking’s concept of the “open kind,” developed in his work on mental illness and social constructions (Mad Travelers [1998] and The Social Construction of What? [1999]), can be applied to art. As well as being an open kind, art as a category is subject to what Hacking terms looping: self-confirming circular definition and reinforcement. Further, art is in constant flux: we add to it and

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subtract from it. Yet does the concept of art, however we might understand it, help us very much? I prefer to think in terms of artifacts—human-made things more generally. Artifacts exhibit a wide range of qualities. One characteristic is that they perdure. That is, various people use them in various ways at various times. Giving these things aesthetic attention is just one species of use. One person’s god is another’s idol, another’s anthropological specimen, and yet another’s artwork. Yet even if we seek to replace the category of “art” with that of the more inclusive “artifact” for most, though not all, purposes, we should also recognize that the latter category is no less systematically unstable. It depends on a distinction between the thing in nature and the human-made, the natural and the artificial. Indeed, some objects with which we engage aesthetically exhibit characteristics dependent on human making in combination with the effects of natural actions. In the case of damaged things, what is due to art and what to nature? We can point to any number of human-made things in the process of being reclaimed by nature through degradation. The separation of the natural and the artificial from the seventeenth century onward in Europe undoubtedly brought about huge intellectual gains. The application of systematic distinction to things in both nature and art from the mid-eighteenth century is well known. Yet such systematization entailed losses as well as gains. The rapprochement between nature and artifice to be found now in fields such as artificial intelligence, cybernetics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology might lead us to reexamine earlier integrative considerations of nature and artifice. Early museums, discussed for their vital role in the taxonomic ordering of things both natural and artificial, could also prompt integrative thinking that cuts across those boundaries among things that we have come to take for granted. Some museums of the future might have more in common with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Kunstkammern and Wunderkammern than with today’s museums. Yet they would not be replicas. Rather, they would deploy things according to contemporary philosophical, rather than taxonomic disciplinary, criteria. The artworks beloved by many will not go away, but will be found in post-art museums among a far greater variety of things than ever before. The museum scholar Peter Parshall claims that museums should remain “places to go for things one doesn’t find at home,” though not exclusively in the sense of rare, precious, irreplaceable, and beautiful things. Rather, they should contain things—some perfectly ordinary, others extraordinary—pre-

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sented for comparative scrutiny in ways unavailable elsewhere in the world. In order to do this effectively, a post-art museum must be able to draw on a far wider range of material than has heretofore been considered art. It will need to draw on the fruits of human ingenuity in making—artifacts—from no matter where in the world, from the productions of the earliest hominins to the present. But even that is not sufficient. It will also need to draw on things previously classified as properties of the natural world. After all, part of the increasing uncertainty regarding the distinction between the natural and the artificial is due to increasing uncertainty about who is or was human, and who is or was not. As recent scholarship in this field has demonstrated, this distinction becomes increasingly uncertain the further back we go in hominin history. Art is not necessarily what humans—Homo sapiens sapiens—alone make. We shall need to learn to engage with a far wider range of tangible things and their intangible associations than ever before, and do so in a far wider range of disciplinary and postdisciplinary modes than we have been used to. All art and anthropology museums face challenges both practical (which is what those who run them tend to focus on) and conceptual, which is where attention is really needed. Museums have two fundamental socially constitutive roles. One is to sanction arguably questionable values: values that exalt certain material things at the expense of others, and values that promote certain people who demonstrate their association with those allegedly special things and the institutions that validate them. The other role is far more challenging, for it is to exhort us to see (literally) that the world does not have to be as we find it.

A Museum Is a Museum Is a Museum Is a Museum Museums and Networks vanda vitali

the premise of our work When the importance of Panarchy in this volume is considered, as well as various connections, conversations, and perspectives inside or outside of museums, it is important to remember that a museum is a museum. Museums have been created and exist for a reason. They are there to collect, preserve, and exhibit evidence of our heritage. Our primary role as museum professionals is to interpret these holdings and place them in the context of our time so that the public can fully appreciate, experience, and enjoy them. Whatever evolution of museums we imagine or participate in, the goal remains that museums become better museums. The sharing of information and methodologies by museum professionals is of the utmost importance for the development of the museum discipline and its many institutions. Networks of museums, networks of museum professionals, and networks of those connected to museums all play important roles in this sharing. While information technology allows for the development of large-scale networking, there is increased need for human encounters among experts from various disciplines so that we may consider developments in the museum field, either directly, in conversations and debates, or in mediated forums such as symposia, conferences, or publications like this volume.

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museums and networking Museums across the world have participated in museum networks for more than a century. Both the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and the Canadian Museums Association, since their foundings, have been bringing museums together to help develop standards and best practices, gather and share information, and advocate issues of concern to their communities. Similarly, the International Council of Museums (ICOM), created in 1946, is the organization of museums and museum professionals committed to the promotion and protection of natural and cultural heritage, tangible and intangible, with some thirty thousand members in 137 countries. The idea behind the creation of museum associations around the world is anchored in the belief that museums can learn from one another and that exchanging information and practices will create better museums. Over the past few decades, driven by business considerations and desires to improve efficiency, museums, and in particular public museums representing national or regional collections, have explored amalgamation into larger institutions that allow a sharing of administrative (back-of-house) activities such as human resources, management, marketing, and even governance, while keeping independent activities such as the development of exhibitions. This is happening in the Western hemisphere (the focus of this book), but it is also happening throughout the world. Most of the advancements in terms of linking museums have been achieved through the collaboration of public institutions. But private museums have also explored efficiencies of scale. For example, Museo Soumaya in Mexico City, which is owned by the Carlos Slim Foundation, retains within the museum itself responsibility for its collections and exhibitions, but shares non-core functions (security, legal affairs, finances, et cetera) with other members of the foundation or even other holdings. This arrangement allows not only for efficiency, but also for a cross-pollination of public and business knowledge. Furthermore, as mentioned in this book, a plethora of small museums and cultural sites in this hemisphere are struggling financially, and also for audiences. Some of them have created links and ties with universities, and these university-museum collaborative networks are allowing the museums not just to survive, but to prosper. And with advancements in information technology, the degree of connectedness has greatly increased; new ways of “linking” have become possible or are anticipated.

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museums and information networks Museums are embracing new technologies and exploring the use of information networks in all domains of institutional functioning: operations, core work, publics, and strategic positioning. The efficiencies of scale that museums achieve by merging their operational activities are today more easily achieved because new technologies allow for larger-scale operations and do not require the movement of people. For instance, the Balboa Park Museums in San Diego today unites some fourteen museums in the park region, as well as the zoo (which is not in the park), allowing them to market and promote activities jointly. It is hard not to imagine that public museums, particularly in the same geographic region, would not in the future share operational activities such as security, human resources, purchasing, financial and legal operations, conservation, facility management, and even governance, very much in the spirit in which universities function with various departments. In the domain of collections and their management, networking allows for much broader and more standardized collecting, for the creation of collections of significance, and for exchanges of information between the institutions and individual researchers, which can lead to new knowledge. A great deal of progress has been achieved in creating joint if not united databases across the world on a variety of levels. Eight ethnographic museums of Holland have created a joint database. For years, the Canadian Heritage Information Network has been developing databases, networking, presenting online exhibits, and offering assistance to Canadian institutions. Natural history museums across the globe are participating in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), which will eventually result in a single database. Europeana. eu is a web portal that acts as an interface to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects, and archival records from all across Europe. More than two thousand institutions are participating in this project, ranging from major international museums such as the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum to regional archives and local museums from every member of the European Union. Collection enrichment and storytelling have also benefited from information technology. Science North, in Ontario, Canada, has established programs of collection enrichment by involving amateur science groups. So has Naturalis, the National Natural History Museum of Holland, but on a much larger scale. The Auckland Museum, New Zealand, has developed online educa-

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tional programs with native communities as well as with some selected local schools. At this point, the exhibition domain is least prone to large-scale or widespread developments. With globalization, museum communication is becoming more local and tailored to local audiences—their needs, identities, and circumstances—as well as demonstrating a new vitality in response to the global village phenomenon. In the domain of strategic positioning, although much less present than in other domains of museum functioning, information technology has facilitated work, if not substantially changed the nature of that work. The Auckland Museum, aided by information technology, has established collaborations with local arts groups, science institutes, and universities to create a social hub for civic discourse.

going forward Information technology is helping create museums as nodes in networks of institutions. This is an ongoing process driven at this time principally by economies of scale. But information technology also allows museums to do more. When networking leads to true collaboration, it also creates opportunities for the advancement of knowledge. Development of comprehensive databases of information and the sharing of experts are all positive developments for museums. But, as with all new developments and tools, caution is required. New technologies and the desire for efficiency and economy of scale can drive museums back into disciplinary boundaries. To avoid further divisions, feedback mechanisms, exchanges, and reciprocities, as well as shared authority and responsibility, are necessary. The bringing together of international experts from a variety of museums and experiences to focus attention on interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinarity, the direction in universities, or what we can learn from one another, as demonstrated in this volume, is of utmost importance. And sharing information and knowledge about key museum issues in small-scale “conversations,” which the International Museum Institute has promoted as a way of experimenting and incubating solutions to various museum challenges, is essential to preserving the true spirit of museums.

chapter three

Uncertainty

Reflecting on Uncertainty and Reform selma holo and mari-tere álvarez

The transition from the conservation/conservatism phase to the uncertainty phase in a museum can happen in a heartbeat or it can be gradual, even imperceptible. The challenge or the key for any museum in this stage is to accept uncertainty and change as a part of the life cycle—as intrinsic to the loop. “Change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change, which is inevitable, but the manner by which that change should be carried out.” Accepting uncertainty as inevitable will allow a museum to better plan for its next steps; embracing this inevitability will actually enhance the museum’s adaptive capability and, ultimately, its resilience. It is the nonresilient, inflexible museum that will be most vulnerable to external change, whereas a resilient museum will view uncertainty or disturbance as an opportunity for reform. When a museum finds itself in the midst of, or on the verge of, a change that breeds uncertainty, adversity, or crisis, the most common reaction is fear. There is a consequent tendency to respond by battening down, by hiring a technocratic or business-only leader who will hold things together by reining in the situation, controlling and putting a stop to the underlying sense of chaos

1. Speech on Reform Bill of 1867, Edinburgh, Scotland; reported in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield vol. 2, part 4, ed. T. E. Kebbel (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1882), 487. 2. See Selma Holo, “A Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste,” in Beyond the Turnstile: Making the Case for Museums and Sustainable Values (Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), xiii.

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or lack of confidence. Rather than fight disturbances, the wiser leader, during the either insidious or rapid changes that are bred in the multiple uncertainties of this phase, might be better served, and might better serve his or her museum, by reforming a dysfunctional or unraveling culture—by the shaping and unleashing of constructive and positive staff and board energy, and by redirecting any negative energy toward the required creative adaptations. Former museum director Maxwell L. Anderson, when finding himself in the middle of fiscal uncertainty, decided to become the fiercest advocate for free entry to museums—his own first and foremost. Going against a tidal wave of conventional wisdom that would have led him to charge yet more for admissions, fire staff, and cut services, he researched the matter carefully, seeking to learn if entrance fees really do significantly support the costs of a museum. He emerged from his research with a new insight: entrance fees would not solve the monetary crisis. His unorthodox solution of making the Dallas Art Museum, the fourth largest in the United States, free to the public unleashed a debate around the issue of rising admissions costs in so many other museums throughout the country. Here he discusses this conversation starter, one that we should all engage with as we think about dynamic ways to nurture our museums and our audiences. Not all uncertainties are fiscal in nature, nor do they always emerge from the museum itself. In 2012, the BBC issued a disturbing report about the economic and racial divide in the city of Saint Louis. The report prompted the Pulitzer Foundation, a private art institution founded by the philanthropist Emily Rauh Pulitzer, to hold a town hall meeting to further discuss the issues brought up by the report with the very people who lived closest to the foundation. “We hoped maybe 100 people would show up, and more than 350 did,” says Kristina Van Dyke, then the Pulitzer Foundation’s director, and the author of the essay included here. Approaching its tenth anniversary, the foundation realized that it needed (and actually wanted) to be a contributor to real and long-lasting social change. Rather than retrench and reinforce its original elitist stance, one that was distancing the museum from its own neighborhood, the Pulitzer looked at itself critically. Flexible leadership, encouraged by the foundation’s president, Emily Pulitzer, carved out a path that allowed it to face local uncertainty by adopting practices to aggressively 3. Van Dyke speaking to the New York Times. Randy Kennedy, “Outside the Citadel, Social Practice Art Is Intended to Nurture,” New York Times, March 20, 2013.

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confront previously unmet and unacknowledged needs in its own city. The Pulitzer Foundation went on to employ social workers (instead of museum educators) to implement programs charged with markedly improving opportunities for recently incarcerated prisoners and homeless veterans. Although the program did not survive in its original version, that vision of reform in the face of civil strife sparked other institutions to consider creating similar programs in their own unsettled and unsettling situations. In fact, in the adaptiveresilience model of Panarchy, it is not uncommon for fertile ideas to move on from where they were created and germinate in other institutions. “The large influences of wonderful, integrative organizations . . . can come and go,” says Buzz Holling. “They often become burdened by their success and rarely are able to maintain the same liveliness and novelty needed over time. Instead, the novelty develops in one place and then typically shifts elsewhere, expanding, extending, testing and deepening the work as it moves. The intellectual area or topic becomes the evolving entity, but often not the founding organization itself.”  Richard Koshalek, former director of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum, sought to find a way for the Hirshhorn to confront the limitations of contemporary art museum practice. Concerned about its future relevance, he sought to transform the “presentation” purpose of that museum into a “convening” arena that could support a different kind of action and output. The future of the contemporary art museum, according to Koshalek, lies in its ability to gain that new relevance by engaging audiences differently, and by affecting the production of creative and critical thinkers in society—as a result (at least partially) of the museum’s work. Koshalek, writing with Erica Clark, outlines how he hoped to create at the Hirshhorn a space where creative people from different intellectual fields would meet, and where artists working in all media would interact and be understood as change agents who were important—indeed, crucial—to society. His dream was to construct an eggshaped bubble where generative ideas would be born and hatched in the Hirshhorn’s “dead” atrium space. His is a story of immense imagination meeting a failure of will, and a consequent failure of funding, resulting in a burst bubble. The individual museum, the Hirshhorn, with all of its dynamic 4. Buzz Holling, “What I Learned of Organizations: Reflections Pt 10,” The Resilience Science Weblog, March 19, 2007, http://rs.resalliance.org/2007/03/19/what-i-learned-oforganizations-reflections-pt-10/.

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desires, met, according to our writers, a formidable obstacle in the bureaucracy that governed it: the Smithsonian. The Koshalek story is evidence that relationships and ideas that develop in uncertain environments do not always survive. Reforms do not always take. However, even though there was resistance to including Koshalek’s story in this book precisely because this particular reform failed, we understood it to be a seed that will surely sprout somewhere else. (And the story is not entirely a sad one; in his essay he also describes other of his efforts that met with success.) In this Panarchy we are open to successes and to apparent failures. In the giant mega-museum of the Smithsonian, there was an inability to recognize the potential advantages of Koshalek’s reform. There are many types of uncertainties in today’s museum landscape. For example, many see rapidly evolving technologies as a series of shocks to traditional museum values. Susana Smith Bautista, in her essay, helpfully points to the benefits of incorporating the world of technology and its “placeless placeness” at a fast pace. She asks us to meditate on the unease that inevitably grows as we hold onto ever more antiquated concepts of place in the digital age, and to entertain the notion of distributed place and space. If we only think of large and wealthy museums, we will not be aware of how constantly changing technologies continue to be disruptive to smaller and poorer museums— for better or for ill. Study after study has demonstrated that suppressing or ignoring such disruptions will only diminish the ability of any given museum to face its (technological) future. The lesson from Bautista is that savvy leaders will find ways to make new technologies serve their museums, and not vice versa. The contemporary artist Demian Flores describes another internal uncertainty, one facing artists in Oaxaca, Mexico. Flores dedicates himself to defining paths by which he can better connect local artists to the larger society, and finally to the museum world. He provides the artists in his sphere with the education and the tools to develop philosophical and artistic practices that will allow them to address their own uncertainties and conflicts. Mostly, he deals with how they can be educated to act as representatives of their own culture while also participating in the broader contemporary, globalized art scene and its museums. 5. C. S. Holling, “Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems,” Ecosystems 4, no. 5 (2001): 133.

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Occasionally, artists will come along who are adept at helping museums tear down their own internal walls and limitations. David Wilson and Fred Wilson were billed as the Wilson Brothers for a conversation that USC IMI co-organized with the Getty Museum. Of course they are not really brothers, but their eccentric and provocative ways of seeing the world and challenging all of its certainties—by making a virtue of uncertainty—suggest elective if not biological affinities. Together, in this abbreviation of their long and freeranging conversation, they consider how each has, in his own fashion, destabilized and disrupted the larger museum constellation. Encouraging disruption in order to breed a kind of constructive uncertainty, they challenge the accepted categories to which museums cling. In the great tradition of provocateurs, Wilson and Wilson posit conditions of uncertainty, leaving the museums they touch and the visitors they attract with questions and anxieties that they can choose to face—or ignore. There are those in the ecomuseum world who have been actively looking at uncertainty and resilience as their principal concerns, which they relate to sustainable development. Marco Barrera Bassols, one of the most experienced Mexican museologists, most often associated with natural history and history museums, moves us further along into the vagaries of communitarian and regional museums. Bassols looks at philosophies that he thinks ought to guide those museums—philosophies whose origins lie in George Henri Rivière’s concept of the ecomuseum. Since the 1984 Declaration of Quebec, most of the countries in the western hemisphere have built ecological community-based museums of one sort or another. According to Bassols, the communitarian and regional museums of Mexico are successful in that they are mirrors, albeit sometimes broken ones, that reflect their own uncertain status in Mexican society. Also in Mexico, Alejandro de Ávila B., director of Oaxaca’s Ethnobotanical Garden, writes that museums have to face head-on the greatest crises facing humanity. He asks all of us to confront one of the most enormous uncertainties surrounding humanity’s impact on the Earth. He challenges every one of us to assume responsibility for, above all, stewarding and repairing our shared world. Ávila is not the only museum voice who has identified 6. See G. Sutter and D. Worts, “Negotiating a Sustainable Path: Museums and Societal Therapy,” in Looking Reality in the Eye: Museums and Social Responsibility (Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary Press, 2003).

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this apocalyptic uncertainty and the role museums could (if they would) play to head off collapse. (For his part, Glenn Sutter of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum also sees that museums are in a “unique position to contribute to sustainable development as cultural institutions and as respected parts of the nonformal education system.”) After reading all the essays in this chapter, focused as they are on the uncertainty phase that occurs in every museum’s life cycle, it becomes evident that reforms and creative adaptation need to be considered during this phase in order to open up possibilities for greater resilience and sustainability. If the leadership of a museum is successful at this stage at facing uncertainty with reform, reinvention, and experimentation, that museum will have a better purchase from which to move from uncertainty to renewal. In the next chapter, we will look at some exciting examples of the renewal phase.

7. See Leonard Krishtalka, “Natural History Museums as Sentinel Observatories of Life on Earth: A Public Trust,” in Beyond the Turnstile. 8. G. C. Sutter, “Promoting Sustainability: Audience and Curatorial Perspectives on The Human Factor Exhibition,” Curator: The Museum Journal 51 (2008): 187–202.

Freeing Up Art Museums maxwell l. anderson

As the U.S. economy began its slow climb out of the Great Recession in 2012, some art museums opted to ask the public’s help in meeting operating expenses by increasing entrance fees. The Art Newspaper reported on this in its September 2011 issue: “To Charge or What to Charge? As Museums in Boston and New York Put Up Prices, We Ask Who Charges, and Why.” A geographical and ideological pattern emerged from the analysis, revealing that the largest museums in the largest cities saw opportunity through tourists’ pocketbooks, while larger museums in smaller markets privileged deeper community involvement and, by extension, repeat attendance. While the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area is the nation’s fourth largest, behind New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, it lags in international tourism, as does Chicago, which had only 1.1 million overseas visitors in 2010, or 4.3 percent of all international visitors to the United States. In recognition of our potential to build both community participation and a case for philanthropy, the Dallas Museum of Art eliminated its general admission fee at the end of January 2013. More significantly, it has ceased charging for entry-level museum memberships, and instead offers these at no charge. These moves have led many to wonder about the financial realities of earned revenue in art museums. For the last three decades, the evaluation of museum performance has been squarely on attendance, but there has been minimal For an expanded discussion of this idea, see Maxwell L. Anderson, “Free Entry Can Pay Dividends,” The Art Newspaper (February 2013).

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attention paid to the exact relationship between attendance and admissions income. This basis for judgment is not readily apparent, just as it would be odd to count those crossing the threshold of department stores but not measure or reveal sales volume per customer, per annum, or per square foot. The key transaction in stores is financial, but the key transaction in art museums is emotional and intellectual. Financial transactions in museums can support the emotional and intellectual ones, but they can also be a distraction and a disincentive to visit. Part of the reason that admissions revenue, unlike attendance, has been largely unexamined is that the data is complicated to collect and report. Art museums in the Association of Art Museum Directors, or AAMD (a North American membership organization), share data with one another for comparative purposes, but the data were unpublished in the past. Federal tax filings are an open source of information, but they are far less granular and do not distinguish among general admissions income for the permanent collection versus special admissions charges for temporary exhibitions versus voluntary contributions to donation boxes. The resulting points of comparison are uneven and maddeningly unscientific. For the purposes of this essay, I obtained preliminary statistics from the most recently completed statistical survey of the Association of Art Museum Directors, and have compared these with the statistics reported on the most recent federal tax filings. The results will be surprising to those who assume that, as is the case with symphonies, theaters, and operas, box office revenue is a very significant part of art museums’ income. Self-reported data collected for the 2012 AAMD statistical survey reveals that 133 of the 168 responding museums charge admission of some sort, whether it is a fixed admission fee, a special exhibition surcharge, or a suggested donation. There are indeed some art museums for whom the take at the gate is relatively robust. These are, however, limited to the largest museums, which are not coincidentally often located in three of the top international tourist destinations in the United States: New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The total population of the three aforementioned metropolitan areas is about 36 million people out of a total U.S. population of 312 million. But their combined number of domestic and foreign visitors totaled about 103 million. Given this enormous tourist base, they command a massive supply of potential ticket buyers. It should come as no surprise, then, that the large institutions in these

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cities reap as much as 10 to 20 percent—or more—of their budgets from ticket sales. But once you leave these cities and venture into the rest of the United States, the numbers tell a different story. In the 2012 survey, these 168 art museums reported combined admissions revenues of $180,107,422, yet just three institutions—the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim, the three largest art museums in New York—accounted for $75,902,355, or 42 percent, of that revenue. The operating budgets of all museums surveyed in 2012 totaled $2,621,883,714, with the Met, MoMA, and the Guggenheim accounting for $555,486,422, or 21 percent, of the total. Excluding those three outliers, the aggregate percentage of operating budgets paid for by admissions income totaled just 5 percent. Many museums far and wide, including the Dallas Museum of Art, reap significant revenue from special exhibition tickets. These are, however, episodic returns. Some museums stage major exhibitions only once a year, or even less frequently. When we remove additional fees for special exhibitions, the numbers fall even further. Without those fees, the museums in the AAMD survey generated revenue of $159,846,760, with the Met, MoMA, and the Guggenheim now contributing 47 percent of that total (the Met does not collect an exhibitions surcharge). Again excluding those three museums, “general” admission covered just 4.1 percent of these museums’ operating budgets. Further, when excluding those three New York museums, total annual attendance of 40,533,048 yielded general admissions revenue per visitor of only $2.07—less than a latte in the museum café. And that is why going free, except perhaps for the largest museums in the epicenters of international tourism, is not so risky or as much of a privation as might first be assumed. Crowds don’t connote cash. They do suggest that museums are relevant to peoples’ lives. And entry-level memberships, below $100 per annum, do little to augment our coffers. Which is why the DMA now offers free memberships to all, with inducements to return often so as to collect points. Those signing up for free membership at the Dallas Museum of Art are known as DMA Friends. Upon typing their name and email address into one of a number of iPads near the entrance, a membership card is instantly printed out at the front desk and handed to them by a visitor services staff member. The simple act of joining triggers an award of one hundred points; by adding other information and zip or postal code, the DMA Friend earns additional points. Each card has a bar code which, which placed in front of

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iPad cameras throughout the museum, automatically adds points at each station. In time, the DMA Friend accrues points from attending, making their way through the facility, and spending money, and they can redeem the points in exchange for rewards, ranging from special exhibition tickets to free parking. The greatest number of points are awarded for deeper interactions, including contributions of comments about their visit, and the most valuable rewards are uncommon experiences, such as tours of the storerooms, a private guided tour, or even an overnight stay at the museum. While this system of credits and rewards may seem unusual for an art museum, most consumers are exposed to some variant of it in the commercial sphere, for instance airline frequent flyer programs. The DMA Friends program has in common with such offerings a quest for loyalty. But the currency being imparted and spent down in the museum is not pecuniary; it is experiential. And the DMA’s goals in creating this program are to increase participation and build loyalty while allowing the museum to analyze the activities and preferences of our visitors. The DMA’s new loyalty program is built by means of an open-source platform, free for other museums to retrieve and implement using their own graphic identity. Our ultimate ambition is to create a national or even international network of museum friends who might gain points in Los Angeles and redeem them in North Carolina, allowing museums to attract and retain participants from all walks of life and without regard to their place of residence, and to learn about the men, women, and children we have normally called, in an undifferentiated way, “the public.” The DMA’s board and staff believe that our attention is more usefully focused on burnishing our relevance to peoples’ lives than on pursuing admissions income. With that philosophy, we are likelier to attract more government, foundation, corporate, and individual support—the true lifeblood of American art museums. No less importantly, in time we will build a robust database about the preferences of tens or even hundreds of thousands of individuals visiting the DMA, one person at a time. The blunt measurement of “attendance” typically tells us nothing about the people visiting. DMA Friends is the first step in understanding our audience not merely as segments of an undifferentiated population, but as a community made up of individuals.

The Arts and Citizens in Transition A Case Study from the Pulitzer kristina van dyke

The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts opened to the public on October 17, 2001, in Saint Louis, Missouri. It functions as a sanctuary and laboratory for art, architecture, and ideas. Founded by Emily Rauh Pulitzer in 1999, the foundation operates as a 501(c)3 entity and is governed by a board of trustees and a director. It is primarily funded by an endowment provided by Mrs. Pulitzer, but has benefited from the generosity of other donors. Though it has commissioned works of art for permanent display, it does not function as a collecting institution or house the Pulitzer family collection, which is privately owned. Designed by Tadao Ando, the building captures and projects natural light throughout the day and across the changing seasons to create an experience for visitors that makes them keenly aware of the fact that they are communing with art in time. This sanctuary-like approach to presenting art is further enhanced by the decidedly minimalist installations that do not include didactic material. Gallery guides are provided to visitors should they desire additional information about the curatorial premise of an exhibition or the works on view. The foundation’s intent is to show art in the most immediate way, the premise being that all people are capable of having their own highly personal encounter with objects made by another human being and that the foundation’s role is to set up the conditions to make that experience possible without dictating the shape of the outcome. The foundation opens its doors to the public for exhibition viewing on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Exhibitions generally run six months, allowing for experimental programming to take place on days when the building is 117

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not open for standard gallery visits, including tours and lectures, music concerts, theater performances, and readings that respond directly to the works on view. In this way, the foundation also functions as a laboratory for art and ideas. The most ambitious experiment run by the foundation is its “Staging” program, executed under the direction of Lisa Harper Chang, director of community projects and a trained social worker, first in 2009 in conjunction with the exhibition Ideal (Dis-) Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer and then in 2011 in conjunction with the exhibition Reflections of the Buddha. The idea to appoint a social worker to the foundation’s staff came from the Pulitzer’s former director, Matthias Waschek. He argued that the foundation needed to make a significant contribution to its community and address the pressing social needs that were evidenced in its own neighborhood of Grand Center. He was insistent that the foundation should not function as an elitist jewel box for art, but rather as a laboratory for social change through art. He found a sympathetic audience in Emily Rauh Pulitzer, foundation trustee Walter Metcalfe, and Edward Lawlor, dean of the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University. Dean Lawlor was himself thinking about how to identify new pathways for employment for his master in social work graduates, and ways to make social work more interdisciplinary at Washington University. He was particularly concerned about how social workers’ job opportunities were shrinking with budget cutbacks in state and federal governments, and concerned not only about finding job opportunities for his graduates, but also about meeting the increased demands for their services in a period of economic downturn. All participants in this early conversation were asking how the private sector, and cultural institutions in particular, might step up and help fill the gaping void left by the devolution of government-provided services to citizens in need. The idea of an exploratory collaboration, proposed by Waschek and Metcalfe, thus naturally appealed to Lawlor. After initial conversations, they decided to give Harper Chang—a 2007 graduate of the program with a strong background in policy, research, and program design and implementation—a two-year, experimental, co-funded co-appointment between the PFA and the GWB School for Social Work. Chang began to explore the social relevance of art through the lens of social work. She contacted various potential community partners in Saint Louis, eventually focusing her efforts on institutions and schools in Grand Center and developing some short-term programming around a Dan Flavin exhibition.

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Once immersed in the Pulitzer, Chang spoke with Waschek about the exhibition planned for 2009, Ideal (Dis-) Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer. Waschek explained the premise of the show, which was bringing together fourteenth- to eighteenth-century paintings and drawings from the Harvard University Art Museums and Saint Louis Art Museum collections, featuring such artists as Michelangelo, Pontormo, Giambattista Tiepolo, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Jean-Baptiste Greuze. To literally cast them in a new (old) light, these works were to be shown in the natural light of the Ando building, as they were originally intended to be seen, as opposed to the spotlighted way they are normally shown in contemporary galleries. This idea played on the unique circumstances of the gallery to reenergize other institutions’ collections. In addition, the subject matter of the works of art covered a range of subjects, including transformational moments of self-discovery, which made Chang think that they could be inspirational for a community she cared deeply about: former prisoners, with whom she had worked in Baltimore prior to moving to Saint Louis. The addition of homeless veterans arose from the collaboration with Employment Connection, as their client census included both client groups. Simultaneously, Waschek was exploring the potential for a theater collaboration with the exhibition and, encouraged by Chang’s expressed interest in working with former prisoners and homeless veterans and her own interest in theater arts, he spoke with Agnes Wilcox, artistic director of Prison Performing Arts (PPA). PPA is renowned for working with offenders inside prisons to form acting companies that produce plays for inmates and an invited public, making the case that acting skills are critical for survival inside prisons and reintegration into society afterward. These skills are gained through workshops that address self-presentation, including verbal communication, body language, and eye contact, as well as interpersonal activities that focus on team building and conflict resolution. In the prison context, inmates choose the scripts that speak to them and their life journeys; at the Pulitzer, it was decided that they would write their own scripts based on their personal reactions to the works of art on view in the exhibition. The groundwork was thus set for “Staging Old Masters,” an intensive theater and job training course. Sixteen participants, selected by caseworkers at Employment Connection, met for six weeks, five days a week. They learned acting techniques and practiced close looking, formal analysis, and content research and analysis of works of art to become more self-aware and develop

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presentation skills that would allow them to interact successfully in job interviews and the social milieus into which they were transitioning. The end result was seven weeks of performances, staged in the exhibition space itself, where actors were at first students, then teachers, sharing their experiences and interpretations of art through short vignettes that connected Old Testament themes treated in the artworks to their personal histories. Social boundaries were crossed as museumgoers and friends and families of the actors suddenly found themselves imagining the participants not as former prisoners and homeless veterans, but rather as actors with stories to tell about their experiences with the works on view in the exhibition. In 2011, the Pulitzer decided to conduct the experiment again to see what it had learned from the first go-around and apply it in “Staging Reflections of the Buddha,” consciously recording and evaluating the experience along the way to conduct a comparative analysis that could be shared with parties interested in this experiment. Three alumni of the previous class and two alumni from PPA were invited to rejoin and help shepherd the newly formed company. St. Patrick Center was brought on along with Employment Connection to better provide case management and mental health services during the process. Emily Piro, a caseworker at St. Patrick Center who had theater experience, was appointed to lead group sessions. Unlike the “Old Masters” company, the “Buddha” company was generally older, creating a dynamic that was comparatively more reflective. The timeframe for the project was extended to five months. Workshops met three times a week, as opposed to the more intense five-day-a-week schedule earlier, in order to help frame the program as an extracurricular activity, with the idea that using recreational time productively is one of the keys to overcoming recidivism. This schedule allowed people to continue to work or seek employment during their participation, which was viewed as a significant improvement on the first iteration. Experts and stakeholders were invited by the Pulitzer to witness the process under way in hopes of getting critical feedback, and opportunities for data collection were identified that would be meaningful in assessing the program after it ended. Professional evaluator Leslie Scheuler, PhD, was employed to conduct research on past and present participants, and the documentary filmmaker Frank Popper was asked to capture the process on film and produce segments of varying lengths that would both follow the impact of the program on individual actors and give a broad overview of the project.

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As Adam Gopnik reported in his article “The Caging of America” in the New Yorker (January 30, 2012), the number of people incarcerated in our country today has tripled since 1980. At present, more than half of all African American men without high school degrees go to prison. There are more African American men in the criminal justice system than were enslaved in 1850, and more people under “correctional supervision” today than were in Gulag at its height. No other country approaches these numbers. What is more, it is estimated that one third of the adult homeless population are veterans. With cutbacks in government services that provide social support to individuals in need that would prevent criminal behavior and help in transitioning incarcerated or homeless persons to stable and productive lives, the odds do not favor an improvement in this situation. The question posed by the founders of the “Staging” project, “How can cultural institutions help address the gap left by slashed governmental service budgets?” needs to be explored under such circumstances. While data collection is still under way and will continue into the future, some of the preliminary results identified by Leslie Scheuler suggest that programs such as “Staging” are worthy of future development. The impact of “Staging” can be measured in a variety of ways. One of the main goals of the program is to build the-self-esteem and skills of the actors in an effort to help them attain personal goals of obtaining employment and/ or stable housing. In order to measure this particular goal, Scheuler conducted surveys and focus groups with the actors and is also incorporating data collected by the partnering social service agency in order to determine the impact on the actor’s mental well-being. Additionally, alumni from the initial “Staging Old Masters” project were contacted in order to see what they self-identified as the impact of the program in the two years since they’d completed it. Since one of the main goals of the program included changing perceptions of the audience attending the performance (impacting their perceptions of former prisoners, veterans, and those seeking social services, as well as of the art in the exhibition), each audience member was asked to complete a brief survey assessing whether or not he or she experienced such a change. This qualitative data is also being analyzed to assess the impact of this project on viewers. It will be united with interview data collected from project staff and staff from the Pulitzer to provide a comprehensive picture of the program from concept to implementation, conclusion, and beyond. An example of the qualitative feedback from Scheuler’s research is found in her summary of the follow-up interviews with participants from “Staging Old Masters”:

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There is overwhelming agreement among program alumni, community partners, and Pulitzer staff that “Staging” participants gain employment skills, particularly in the areas of communication skills (including the ability to make eye contact and confidently express themselves during job interviews), self-presentation (in terms of appropriate dress and posture), discipline and commitment, enhanced cognitive functioning (creative thinking, problem solving), and in the ability to trust others and work effectively as members of a team. •

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Of the seven “Old Masters” alumni interviewed, five have obtained and sustained paid employment (although one worked at the same job for a year and then had to resign due to persistent mental health issues), two were enrolled in college and working toward degrees (one was also working in paid employment and the other in an unpaid internship), while another had experienced mental health problems that prevented him from working (both alumni with mental health issues are on disability and receiving treatment). All of the “Staging Old Masters” alumni who were interviewed have experienced significant increases in their quality of life, which they attribute to program participation, including improvements in living environments, relationships with family members, health, and mental health.

Scheuler also documented participants’ feedback on the impact their participation in “Staging” has made on their lives in terms of skills and knowledge gained. Many participants commented on the ways in which they looked to culture as a way to use their leisure time and developed empathy for others’ points of view as a result of their encounter with theater and art. Some examples include: •

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I am able to speak in front of people better, and I am more mindful of someone else’s perspective. It’s no longer my way or the highway. When we had to do our plays, we had to be really close to each other. We learned how to speak without saying anything. We learned how to stand and how not to look nervous. I’ve continued to use those skills to speak to people correctly. I am more able to express myself and talk to people instead of blowing up. I can do it in different ways now. My ability to think outside the box really increased as a result of the program. There is a place in the market for creativity and that is how I want to move forward. I learned that thinking outside the box can be rewarded in our society. Several times a week, I am creative, like carving or writing in a journal. This is good for me. I am always trying to be creative because it maintains the better side of me and brings out my confidence. When you create something, it has a good feeling attached to it.

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My appearance has really improved since the program. I also like to express myself through music. Depending on the mood and how I feel, I like to experiment with different types of artists and music.

With the conclusion of “Staging Reflections of the Buddha,” the Pulitzer continues its process of evaluation and discovery, completing paper and video documentation. The Pulitzer co-organized a colloquium on the project in 2013 with the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University, with the intention of assessing the program’s successes and failures and identifying future opportunities to replicate “Staging” (or projects inspired by this experiment) at other institutions.

The Contemporary Museum in a New Creative Agenda richard koshalek and erica clark

The world today is entering a new creative agenda. Social power, long tied to government and business, is rapidly shifting to embrace input from provocative new voices in other quarters, especially artists and creative practitioners. Individually and together, these are becoming the true change agents whose original, deeply thought solutions to the most complex challenges facing society—education, communications, democracy, sustainability—are driving innovation in the broadest arenas, and will do so to an ever greater degree in the coming decades. Since contemporary art is increasingly shaped by the issues of our time, any contemporary museum that hopes to remain vital and sustainable must also respond to and promote this new social equation. This response can take many forms, but ultimately it must serve to transform the traditionally passive, presentation-based museum environment into a dynamic forum that convenes and supports creative thought, action, and output on many fronts. Regardless of its location, a contemporary museum must become a profoundly relevant cultural resource that gives diverse audiences the tools to engage with the work at hand—and to actively communicate with and become participants in the development of the institution. More than ever, the vibrant contemporary museum must embrace artists and creative practitioners as the lifeblood and essential tool givers in this newly After this essay was written, the Smithsonian decided not to move forward with implementing the fifteen-story Diller Scofidio + Renfro dome-topped “bubble” described here.

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charged environment. With their unique capacity to operate (literally and figuratively) beyond the walls of the institution, artists are capable of reaching new audiences—and interacting with the broadest spectrum of disciplines— in content-rich ways that transcend the superficial marketing approaches used by more conventional institutions. The appropriate use of technologies further expands these audiences while also bolstering the artists’ larger presence and influence. To fulfill this expanded mission, the contemporary museum must, above all, take both clues and cues from its particular locale and context. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, which occupies a unique position in many respects, makes a powerful case for site-specific relevance: as the contemporary arm of the Smithsonian consortium of nineteen museums, and hence, part of an institution dedicated to lifelong learning; as a museum in the very center of the nation’s capital and in proximity to nearly two hundred embassies and five hundred think tanks; and as an institution sited directly on the National Mall, one of the world’s symbolic touchstones for democracy and freedom of expression. Individually and together, these factors inherently demand that the Hirshhorn function as a creative forum capable of embracing and broadcasting a range of perspectives on art and society in our time—as nothing less, in other words, than “the nation’s museum of contemporary art and issues,” with equal emphasis on each. Virtually every initiative and program at the Hirshhorn now reflects this expansive outlook, from its emphasis on multidisciplinary curatorial research to greatly broadened options for the permanent collection, exhibitions, communications, and institutional collaborations. Of special significance as well is a new approach to “curating” all of the museum’s public spaces—the lobbies and interior and exterior plazas, heretofore lifeless—as vital environments supporting a range of artistic and education-oriented programs. In early 2012, for example, using video and state-of-the-art digital technologies, the multimedia artist Doug Aitken created a new commissioned work, Song 1, a film projected on the entire 220-foot exterior circumference of the museum’s circular building. Embodying a unique response to the architecture at hand as well as a poetic vision of social alienation and connection, the film drew rapt audiences and became a true urban event throughout its evening showings over the course of three months. Visible across the National Mall, Song 1 animated the usually deserted spaces that surround the Hirshhorn at night, transforming them into a singular new environment for “mass contemplation”

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of art by an enchanted public. Similarly, the museum’s bookstore, formerly an awkward commercial structure wedged into the entrance lobby, has been relocated as part of a powerful site-specific, word-based installation by the artist Barbara Kruger: an ideal union of a social vision, creativity, and education, and an immensely successful revitalization of a previously “dead” lowerlobby space. Most dramatic of all will be the forthcoming transformation of the museum’s central atrium via a radically innovative architectural structure by the renowned firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro: an inflatable, fifteen-story, dome-topped “bubble” that fills the atrium every spring or fall, and that serves as a perennial “anti-auditorium” facilitating first-person and digital dialogues, performances, and interventions by internationally known artists, thinkers, and students in many fields. None of these initiatives would function similarly—or at all—at another museum. Only the Hirshhorn’s setting and context could provide the necessary cues for these particular transformations. Other museums must identify their own site-specific opportunities, and from these, fashion ways to connect with the broader world that both preserve their institutions’ unique qualities and extend their relevance. Technology will inevitably play an ever-broader programmatic role in this process, with museums of all kinds confronting its myriad effects on art making and cultural spaces from many vantage points. A forthcoming Hirshhorn exhibition, for instance, will explore the astonishing proliferation of animation throughout the entire visual landscape, from cellphone screens to urban spaces. The Hirshhorn’s presentation of this vast subject will be quite different, however, from one that could be organized by a Los Angeles museum, in the heart of the film industry. The critical thing, as ever, is balance. Despite the allure of new media and new types of institutional events and presentations, a contemporary museum must never abandon its fundamental artistic commitment—in the Hirshhorn’s case, to painting and sculpture. There are always artists advancing these mediums, always something new. In a world changing at warp speed, we will simply see greater complexity in the work produced—and hence, greater complexity in terms of its role and place in the overall museum context. Most excitingly, the dialogue between artists (in all media) and audiences will become ever richer. Thanks to the energetic play among disciplines already evident today, one can even begin to imagine that in the not-terribly-distant future, art making and the creative professions will not be perceived as exotic or marginalized, but rather as “normal” modes of existence.

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This, then, is the ultimate role and responsibility that a contemporary museum can fill: to present a vision of life lived with greater imagination by bringing the public into contact with artists and creative practitioners in settings that the museum is uniquely able to provide. This involves varying degrees of risk, depending on how far afield the individual institution is willing to venture in terms of engaging other disciplines, cultures, and regions, but this bold approach is increasingly the sine qua non of a contemporary museum’s artistic prosperity and well-being into the future. Just as artists have the passionate curiosity and ceaseless desire for new ideas, museums must follow suit. When this happens, museums will be part of a new leadership equation in the world—a new order in which creative institutions and practitioners, along with traditional political and corporate leaders, make the major decisions that shape our society, and especially the urban environments in which most people will soon live. Entirely new types of artists will also emerge from all of this ferment and collaboration. As ever, these artists will be opportunity seekers who transform the world around us. More than anyone, they will serve as the ultimate reminder—to museums especially—that while the future may be unknowable, it is not unthinkable.

A New “Place” for Museums in the Digital Age susana smith bautista Place is as requisite as the air we breathe, the ground on which we stand, the bodies we have. We are surrounded by places. We walk over and through them. We live in places, relate to others in them, die in them. Nothing we do is unplaced. How could it be otherwise? —Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, 1997

Technology has freed us from the desk computer, from the landline phone, from going to the post office, from having to be in any one place (such as a museum) in order to connect with other people and experiences. In the past, technology freed artists from the studio with the invention of the easel; inventions in transportation such as the steam locomotive, automobile, and airplane made us more mobile; and mechanized inventions freed women from much time-consuming domestic work to leave the house in search of careers and leisurely pursuits. Not to damper this early bit of techno-enthusiasm, but, as the American politician Adlai E. Stevenson once said, “Mobility must not be confused with freedom.” To understand museums in the digital age is to understand the importance of their place, both in the physical, geographical sense as well as in the more abstract, sociological sense. We focus on place because, as Martin Heidegger said, “The essence of technology is nothing technological.” The notion of place is a difficult one to tackle, and even more so within the context of museums. Philosophers and scholars through the ages have attempted to understand the meaning of place. Albert Camus wrote, “A sense of place is not something that people know and feel, it is something people 128

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do,” Michel de Certeau asserts that space is a practiced place, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari talk about the convergence of place and region or territory, and Richard Chabrán and Romelia Salinas point out other meanings of place such as social location, class location, or existential space. Ethnographers and anthropologists have long been aware that places are socially and culturally constructed: contact zones. Let’s start with the physical notion of place, since museums are all about the tangible and the material. Throughout their history, museums have been place-based cultural institutions. Early European museums sought to “civilize” the masses by providing an uplifting public place in which all parts of society could intermingle. Much like libraries and parks, they represented and glorified their respective nations through public displays of royal collections and plundered art from military conquests, and their architecture was meant to inspire reverence and respect, like the temples of ancient Greece. The modern age of museums also witnessed a geographic consciousness of the importance of place, with the rise of ecomuseums in France in the 1970s, the proliferation of largely community-based, ethnically and culturally specific museums around the United States, and more recently community museums throughout Latin America. The Guggenheim Foundation’s global expansion began in the late 1980s in Bilbao, Spain, and other large museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Louvre in Paris, and the Tate in London created their own networks of satellite spaces. This physical distribution preceded the digital revolution in the museum field, which would transform entire notions of community, mobility, and place. Museums began incorporating mobile technologies as early as the 1950s with handheld devices based on closed-circuit shortwave radio broadcasting systems, and they continued to adapt their mobile tours as technology developed; today we take advantage of podcasts, QR codes, mobile applications and websites, RFID tags, and bar codes. In their book Net Locality: Why Location Matters in a Networked World (2011), Eric Gordon and Adriana de Souza e Silva propose, “Now that our devices are location aware, we are much better positioned to be location aware ourselves.” They refer to the preponderance of location-aware technologies (based on global positioning systems and Wi-Fi) in websites, mobile devices, search engines, maps, cars, and social media. In the past decade, the “mobile museum” has morphed into the “distributed museum” (as described by Susana Bautista and Anne Balsamo in 2013) because of its dispersed, decentered, and nonlinear place in the networked

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space, or the space of flows that the sociologist Manuel Castells writes about. The distributed museum experience is no longer tied to a fixed place, as visitors access and interact with content through home computers, laptops, digital notebooks, MP3 players, and mobile devices. “Place” for museums in the digital age, therefore, becomes more about practices and relations than about the physical, tangible, and permanent. But, you ask, what about the revered museum objects and their marvelous architectural encasings? It is true that experiences can distract us from material artifacts, and that many online visitors will never visit the physical museum, which is why it is imperative for museums to understand how this notion of place has changed in the digital age. Once museums acquire a truly symbiotic vision of fixed and mobile, local and global, physical and virtual, as well as an awareness of their nodal place within a larger network, the opportunities are limitless for connecting social networks to their collections and programs. Museums—particularly in the United States—began to recognize a more abstract, sociological notion of their place starting in the 1980s with populist museological practices that sought to understand visitors, bring in marginalized communities, and merge high and low culture with blockbuster exhibitions. They offered social services, and entertainment such as films and concerts, and they took on the burden of arts education by partnering with schools to provide classroom resources and teacher training, and busing in thousands of schoolchildren each year. Digital technology facilitated these democratizing efforts by providing new means for visitors to participate and contribute with crowd-curated exhibitions, social tagging, social media, and user-generated content. Technology also allowed for more interactive experiences with online games, on-site educational spaces and galleries equipped with computer kiosks, mobile applications, and augmented/virtual reality. “Place” in the digital age implies a different form than the one we are familiar with. The liberating power of digital technology frees us from the burden of identifying place as permanent, fixed, and physical to embrace a new notion of place as mobile, intangible, experiential, and changing. Museums must recognize their new place in our distributed society that holistically connects their physical spaces and collections to the experiences and relationships that they inspire and endeavor to provide visitors.

The Artist in Crisis The Artist Embracing Society demian flores

La Curtiduría is a self-managing independent contemporary cultural space founded in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2006 with the purpose of creating a place for self-reflection, dialogue, exchange, education, and contemporary artistic production. It is located in a former tannery (curtiduría), with an open space of more than five thousand square feet and an apartment for housing artists. It has private studio spaces, an area for graphic design with presses for printmaking, as well as a shared workspace. In its ten years of activity, La Curtiduría has carried out more than two hundred gatherings of Mexican and non-Mexican artists from many places in the world with whom we have conducted numerous workshops, lectures, multidisciplinary exhibitions, and curatorial presentations in coordination with museums such as IAGO, the Graphic Arts Institute of Oaxaca, the Museum of Mexico City, and the Mexican National Museum of Art, as well as multiple interventions in public spaces, concerts, and a film series with talks by the directors of the films. All of these activities have enabled us to include the wider Oaxaca community in dialogue with artists, generating an audience of ten thousand attendees. A large part of the visual arts practice in Oaxaca today expresses a regionalism that is out of touch with respect to contemporary artistic practices. In painting, for example, flora and fauna and fantasy narratives continue to fill paintings and commercial galleries. This type of painting, once considered an evocation of “Oaxaca style,” has become tired and worn out both in style and in imagery. A number of artists in Oaxaca have experienced questions, 131

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uncertainties, and doubts as to what this means vis-à-vis their own practices. Contemporary Oaxaca, and its new generations of plastic and visual artists, are trying to discuss Oaxacan art in relation to what is happening in the rest of the country and the world. Responding to the growing interest of the Oaxacan community and groups of artists in seeking interactions between local, national, and international artistic communities, in 2009, La Curtiduría was established as Centro Cultural La Curtiduría A.C. That same year, La Curtiduría took note of the need for “formal” art education for the young people of Oaxaca, and created a program made up of Clinics of Specialization in Contemporary Art with the support of the Alfredo Harp Helú Foundation and the 5 de mayo School of Architecture of the Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca (UABJO). The intent was to update and professionalize practitioners of the visual arts today, with an emphasis on the critical and planning capacity to develop artistic production, and solid training. This educational program, composed of fifteen clinics, was created by La Curtiduría and received academic accreditation from the UABJO. La Curtiduría has sought to facilitate the necessary means to allow artists to work through doubts, worries, and hesitations regarding their practices. For example, the Specialization in Contemporary Art that La Curtiduría offers attends to the needs of mature artists who are trying to reinvigorate their work, as well as the needs of young people who seek to enter into art practice, by enabling experimentation and reflection on tendencies in art today, for instance the exploration of new iconographies, three-dimensional media such as installation, approaches to the body as a means of expression, painting and gestural drawing, graphic art processes, and photography. In this way, participants in the Contemporary Art Specialization examine more fully the philosophical aspects of different artistic practices, as well as knowledge of the directions and characteristics of aesthetic thought, allowing them to form critical judgments in a way that is compatible with the contemporary art scene, from collectors to galleries and museums. The methodology is designed to provoke the creation of environments and experiences of growth, and its variations will occur in relation to the level of development and background of each clinic participant, with an emphasis on productive work and social confrontation. Evaluation will allow us to construct and reconstruct an image of the student’s abilities, through a consideration of Rudolf Steiner’s idea: “We should not ask ourselves what man needs

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to know and be familiar with in order to maintain the established social order, but rather: what potential is there in a human being and what can be developed in him? In this way it will be possible to contribute to the social order new strengths coming from the younger generations.” Parallel to the development of this educational program, La Curtiduría constructed the Contemporary Graphic Arts Workshop. It offers a place for graphic arts training, creation, research, and experimentation through the development of diverse artistic projects, publications, and programs. It is open to all young people who come to the workshop to develop their own creative proposals and/or learn the craft of printmaking in a collective and self-managing environment. Initiatives of public participation are also fundamental and a vital axis in our project. La Curtiduría is widening its horizons and venturing into a new artistic undertaking, the creation of La Cebada, a space in Mexico City that opened in 2012. The Mexican historian Jorge Reynoso Pohlenz points out that the artistic field has become one of the few places where one can activate an altruistic experience of social process without a defined and immediate political, economic, or religious goal, since every creative process, to the degree that it occurs in the social sphere, results in an aesthetic experience not limited to the finished product. Likewise, the process is not restricted to a sphere controlled by artists, but spreads out in a social, spatial, and temporal tapestry that is largely unpredictable. For this reason, it was important that La Curtiduría opened the Community Laboratory, La Cebada, in a settlement with urbanrural characteristics in Mexico City. Its location is in one of the most marginalized areas—the largest poverty belt in the entire Federal District. The intention of La Curtidura and La Cebada is to build public spaces relevant to the community—meeting places, spaces for dialogue and artistic production, and laboratories for the processing of artistic experience in highly deprived areas. The goal is to create collective aesthetic experiences, develop teaching-learning methodologies, and loosen social boundaries while generating systems of meaningful cultural practice. (Translated by Francisca González Arias, further edited by Fred Croton)

Museum Freefall Excerpts from a Long Conversation at the Getty Museum fred wilson and david wilson

selma holo: In preparation for this conversation, it struck me that as different as you are in your respective practices, you also have things in common. One, you both care a great deal about museums. And two, you both care about them in unconventional ways. David Wilson, you’re a museum director with a place—the Museum of Jurassic Technology—a museum that has entered the lifeblood of those who care for museums. Fred Wilson, you’re a curator/ artist who invites us into your decentering experience of what museums are or might be. You both provide us with the permission to believe in the appropriateness of occasionally tearing up the maps of what museums have been, and starting fresh. fred wilson: I was thrilled to come and do this when I heard it was going to be with Brother David. I thought of one project, that I did at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. It has been quite a number of years. When I first went up to Dartmouth, it was when George Bush was talking about war, trying to get people used to the idea that we were going to go to war. When I ended up on the campus of Dartmouth, it felt as if nothing was afoot, nothing happening, nobody was talking about this. It surprised me that it would be like that on a college campus. So I think the project I did there had that as its backdrop. However, I did what I normally do, which was look at collections. I looked at their collection. They have an incredible art collection at the Hood. But then, of course, as it was an older museum, I dug a little deeper and found some collections in deep storage, which is where I just 134

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love to go. I called this project So Much Trouble in the World—Believe it or Not! It was for two reasons that I called it this. Obviously partly because of what was coming down the pike with Mr. Bush. But also I was—as I usually am when I do these itinerant projects—alone in a hotel room. I had one CD, of Bob Marley, and one of the songs was “So Much Trouble in the World.” The “Believe It or Not!” part came from the little-known fact that Ripley actually got an honorary degree from Dartmouth. This is not something that Dartmouth touts, but they gave him the degree because he gave some of his collections to the museum. At the time that Ripley gave them, there were two separate museums: the anthropology museum and the art museum. Most of his things fit in the anthropological section, and not too much of it remains. In addition to that, they have lots of other stuff. If you go into deep storage, you find all these other arcane collections from various individuals who donated things that you never see in the museum because it’s not within their purview presently. But they are there, and I decided to put them on view. What you have here [shows photograph] is actually a box with “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” on the case, and then some photographs of things that he donated. And then other things that were in Ripley’s collection, but also things that were in other of these bizarre collections. Also in deep storage, I came across this bust. There is no climate control or anything like that in there, and the bust was kind of chipped and what have you. There were many busts, but this one, out of all the ones I found, looked familiar to me. It says “pygmy” on the front of it; all the busts bore the name of the tribal affiliation. But in fact, I did know who this was: Ota Banga. Some of you may have heard of Ota Banga. He was a real pygmy brought to the United States and displayed at the Saint Louis World’s Fair among other people from different parts of the world, like Geronimo. After the fair was over, Ota Banga was moved to New York, where they put him in the chimpanzee cage of the Bronx Zoo. And (this was in the early twentieth century) there was a big outcry among the community, with newspaper articles—in the New York Times, even—about the African American community in particular getting upset about this. So he was moved to the American Museum of Natural History. And then eventually, after he did various shows of his crafts (after he had done his time there) he was moved to Virginia, where he committed suicide at age twenty-seven or something like that. A very sad story, but it made a wonderful book that if you ever get your hands on, it’s quite interesting. Anyway, I felt I knew this man.

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That opened a world for me to all these characters who were nameless. I put him on display along with many of the other characters and wrapped him with this little white scarf, kind of as a memorial to him and an honorific gesture, and also to cover up the taxonomic word “pygmy”—as I did with all the other ones—to take him in as a person rather than via his tribal description. In addition, on the pedestals there were labels with statements that I thought he might be saying to someone. It says, “I’m the one who left and didn’t come back.” Again, thinking of him speaking to other pygmies that he left behind. I found many busts of them there, but he was the only one whose biography I knew anything about. And so I lined them up. Interesting enough about these busts is that they all look sad, angry. Something about their expressions was quite interesting. I thought these were wonderful sculptures, but in fact they weren’t carved. They were casts made by the American Museum of Natural History to be distributed to other museums around the country so people could look at these different race types. You can imagine: someone’s casting your face and you don’t speak the language and they put this stuff on your face, and say “hold your breath.” I got very interested in these casts and went to the American Museum of Natural History in New York and found the originals, and they’re grimacing even more. The sculptor seems to have tried to get rid of as much of the grimace as he could in making the successive casts. And so, in my project, they were all lined up like that: “Someone remembers me,” “I have a family.” And I decided to leave them as they were. The museum asked me if I wanted the conservator to fix up the chips, but I was really interested in not only the historic nature of the object, but also the idea of showing something that has been there all this time. With these chips, it shows in stark relief other things in the museum. It shows the value that the museum puts on these things, or does not put on them. Across from them were other casts that I found in storage. They were all hands of great men, all of whom were named, unlike the heads. david wilson: Thank you, Fred. As always, an excellent talk. I woke up this morning and recognized that I would kick myself forever if I didn’t do what I’m about to do, which is not what I said I was going to do, and that is to make this short presentation on one of the exhibitions at the Museum of Jurassic Technology. It’s an exhibition that’s actually been there almost as long as we have. One of the hallmarks of our institution is that it doesn’t really make any

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sense that it exists at all. It’s essentially an economic impossibility that we’re there. And we probably wouldn’t be there were it not for Fred, because in the darkest days of our economic doldrums, Fred—without us ever having met— sat on a panel at the National Endowment for the Arts and gave us a grant that literally saved us. So thank you, Fred. [Applause] The exhibition that I’m going to try and quickly go through is called No One May Ever Have the Same Knowledge Again. The reason I felt I would kick myself eternally if I didn’t present it is that the subtitle is Letters to Mt. Wilson Observatory 1915–1935. And given that we’re the Brothers Wilson— The Mt. Wilson Observatory lies a short distance northeast of Pasadena, California, at an altitude of 5,704 feet above the sea in the range of mountains known as the Sierra Madre. The idea for the observatory was conceived in the early years of the twentieth century by Doctor George Ellery Hale, a uniquely brilliant and visionary astronomer. Through the 1910s and especially after the completion of the extraordinary one-hundred-inch telescope in 1918, the trickle of information approached a stream and, through the 1920s and into the 1930s, fueled by the astonishing discoveries made by Hale, Hubble, Michaelson, and their contemporaries, the flow of public interest became a torrent. As early as 1911, the astronomers began receiving letters from people all around the world, people from all walks of life, educated as well as uneducated. Many of the letters were simple expressions of appreciation and awe for the work that the astronomers were accomplishing. There was, however, another class of letter: communications to the observers by individuals who felt that they had information or understandings that should be given or shared. These individuals had gleaned information they wished to communicate, either by experimentation, observation, or intuition, and invariably felt a strong sense of urgency in their need to communicate it. There was a swell in the letters received between the two World Wars, the years when the observatory received perhaps its greatest public attention. During these years, the letters were most often written to Milton Humason, Seth B. Nicholson, and Edison Pettit, all prominent astronomers of the time, as well as to Walter Adams, who assumed the role of director of the observatory from George Ellery Hale in 1921. In the 1940s, the letters were collected and organized by Joe Hickox, chief solar observer. Since that time, they have been passed from observer to observer, finally falling into the hands of Larry Webster, who most generously arranged them for the exhibition.

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selma holo: The two of you constantly de-map museum categories: Is this a history museum? Is it art? Is it an art installation or an “exhibit,” the word usually used in a natural history museum? Is it a science museum? And so on. What you do, Fred, may have taken place originally in Baltimore at the Maryland Historical Society, but as far as most people in the art world are concerned, it’s art and you’re an artist. I wonder if you could speak a little bit toward that confusion that the two of you generate that bucks the turnstile thing, like, this is going to be a show of Impressionist art or of history or dinosaurs or whatever. And, you, David, decenter, remap, realign what everyone’s thinking about what a museum is or might be. fred wilson: Well, I mean, I’m doing what I do. And how other people see it is a whole other thing. There’s two different questions there. But I consider myself an artist, and I’m working from that vantage point. It’s a solemn path in a certain way, and it doesn’t take into account all these things that museums concern themselves with. It’s a good question for David because I don’t have an infrastructure that I’m supporting, and I don’t have to worry about the numbers that come in the door. I fly in and do my thing and leave. I try to stay as long as I can, but I do eventually leave. So I’m inured to a lot of that, but I have great empathy for the museum people who are left behind when I leave and have this thing they have to deal with. I really dislike this term in terms of art, but if there’s a “brand” that I have, of any kind of brand, it is that I don’t let museums know what I’m going to do before I get there. Perhaps “credo” is the better word. On the flip side, different people see me in different ways. Educators see me as an educator. Museum professionals see me in a quasi–museum consultant, sort of going in to fix their museums. Sometimes they actually ask me to fix their museums and I have to say no, I’m not a consultant, I can’t promise you I’m going to do anything or that anything’s going to be fixed. In fact, I don’t know what I’m going to do. david wilson: As I mentioned before, Fred saved us, because the economic reality, our economic reality—even though it’s on a much smaller order of magnitude, dwarfed, pygmy-ized compared to most institutions—it’s still very real to us. We’ve discovered that our practice is in a certain way on a parallel path to Fred’s—which is to say, we don’t know what we’re going to do and our decisions are made (actually, our decisions clearly are not made; I think

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anybody with any sense could see we never have done anything that would make logical sense in terms of getting people to come visit us) for their own sake. I just was thinking that what Fred and I have in common is that we destabilize the viewers who come in. selma holo: I always loved the name of Fred’s Mining the Museum exhibition because it’s not just about mining into the deepest depths of storage, but actually kind of blowing up— fred wilson: Yes, definitely. david wilson: As often as I’ve seen Fred’s work, I’m forever destabilized by it. [Laughter by group]

A Mountain of Broken Mirrors Museums with a Social Approach marco barrer a bassols

The Shan-Dany Community Museum was a major landmark in the Mexican history of museums. It was the result of discovering a very early pre-Columbian tomb beneath the plaza of Santa Ana del Valle, a Zapotec pueblo in Oaxaca. According to Mexican heritage law, any archaeological findings are national patrimony; hence, disturbing ruins, even if they are within a community’s territory, is completely unauthorized. So in 1985, when the tomb was discovered, the standard procedure involved notifying the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), which, after evaluating and excavating the site, would have eventually relocated all artifacts to the regional museum in the capital city of Oaxaca (Pierce Erikson, 37). However, the community of Santa Ana del Valle went a step further; they notified the INAH of the discovery but also requested through the municipal government that all archaeological objects stay in the pueblo. The initiative was supported and, today, Santa Ana del Valle can lay claim to being the first indigenous community museum established in the state of Oaxaca. In fact, solely in Santa Ana del Valle, there are already two additional community museums, one of which is the Children’s Museum, which is completely autonomous, with a decision-making board of children native to the pueblo. Shan-dany means “at the foot of the hills” in Zapotec, and it was undoubtedly a pioneer step in climbing one of the most challenging hilltops of museology. But the reason I have chosen to invoke it here is because this new institutional expression of stewardship also created a new rapport between communities and regional museums. By this, I mean it set a precedent 140

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for a crucial new commitment to be taken up by regional museums: their future role in facilitating proposals arising from the communities in their regions. This structural hinge offers an opportunity to reflect on the role that Mexican museums have played thus far in light of the recent 50th anniversary of the National Anthropology Museum in its current location, and the 150th anniversary of the National Museum since its establishment in the former Mint Palace. The meaningful shift in heritage management produced by this event not only has brought about new challenges but also, I dare say, has become, at a micro-scale, an instance of the enforced dialogue between oldschool museology and new museology. Community museums derive from the concept of “ecomuseums” put forth for the first time by George Henri Rivière in 1958 at a UNESCO regional seminar on the new role for museums: An ecomuseum is an instrument conceived, fashioned and operated jointly by a public authority and a local population. The public authority’s involvement is through the experts, facilities and resources it provides; the local population’s involvement depends on its aspirations, knowledge and individual approach. It is a mirror in which the local population views itself to discover its own image. . . . It is an expression of time [past and future]. . . . It is a laboratory, in so far as it contributes to the study of the past and present of the population concerned and of its environment and promotes the training of specialists. It is a conservation center, in so far as it helps to preserve and develop the natural and cultural heritage of the population. It is a school, in so far as it involves the population in its work of study and protection and encourages it to have a clearer grasp of its own future. (Rivière in Hoobler, 446–47)

During the 1970s, the notion of an “integral museum” broadened the concept of ecomuseums by shifting three classical museology principles: the focus on building, public, and collection changed to a focus on territory, community, and patrimony. In Mexico, the Scholar Museums Program, promoted by Iker Larrauri Prado, and the Museum House Program, designed by Mario Vázquez Ruvalcaba, were important precedents. But it was not until 1984, after the Quebec Declaration of Ecomuseums and the Oaxtepec Declaration in Morelos, Mexico, that the concept of the community museum became appropriated by Mexico and Latin America at large (De Carli, 19).

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Before, there had been a marked struggle in the appropriation of the preColumbian past where ancient monuments and archaeological sites had been integrated within a discursive historical tendency to forge what the noted Mexican anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla termed “imaginary Mexico” (Bonfil Batalla 1996, 116). As Bonfil noted, it was particularly striking how the selfsame spatial design of the National Anthropology Museum alienated living indigenous cultures from their Mesoamerican past by placing them on separate floors, with the effect of also subsuming indigenous diversity under a colonized, hegemonic concept of Indian-ness or indigenismo—the “Indian” becoming an output of Western invention rather than a living presence (Bonfil Batalla 1988, 19). The greatest impact of this discursive positioning has been economic, in the sense that small communities have been experiencing the tourism industry over the past fifty years as a somewhat imposed intrusion centrally managed by the state. Despite this $6.4 billion per year industry that mostly benefits large-scale Mexican chains and foreign investors (Clancy in Ardren, 385), people comply with it even at the expense of their identity because of the infrastructural support linked to ecotourism resorts. Then, as Patricia Pierce Erikson rightly asks with regard to her study on community museums in Oaxaca, “Why are indigenous peoples of Mexico adopting this Western institution—the museum?” Most of the pueblo communities had never visited a museum prior to establishing their own, but a grassroots movement like Santa Ana del Valle’s heals the political and economic wound that has historically marginalized indigenous communities’ development, as well as fragmented their traditional knowledge and cultural identity. Community museums have become an opportunity for pueblos to clarify for themselves what the community is. In the process, the elders have become revalued as protagonists of social history when curating the topics that have traditionally been part of the pueblo, and the people for a change begin to research and interpret their own cultural patrimony and write their own history, breaking with the romanticizing showcase concept of indigenismo. The integration of Mesoamerican history into indigenous populations has also allowed an insider’s outlook on heritage representation, in most cases restituting artifacts and sacred objects to the meaningful uses given to them by a living community. Instances of biocultural memory, including orchards, medicinal plant gardens, musical instrument shops, and weaving ateliers,

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normally not considered museological cultural expressions (and, to a certain extent, not considered part of heritage until quite recently, when UNESCO drafted in 2003 the protection and promotion of “intangible cultural heritage”), have been integrated as essential components of exhibits. But perhaps the most important benefit has been noted in community involvement, selfdetermination, and restoration of the social fabric. The community museums have also become a source of economic development, not just because they appeal to a certain kind of tourism, but also because they promote learning local traditions. Two factors that have considerably ailed pueblos in past decades, aside from poverty, have been migration and organized crime. In that sense, community museums not only have become an aid in carrying on artisanal techniques of production that due to their unique character are highly valued by foreigners, but have also taken up the role of diplomatic liaisons marketing pueblo arts and crafts abroad through exhibits, with the advantage of dispensing with the need for middlemen. Moreover, these museums have been playing a prominent role in schooling expatriate community members, as well as in reintegrating young migrants; rather than becoming fragmented, pueblo communities have turned their museums into repositories of historical pride and tradition. Finally, although INAH, in compliance with federal law, sees its indigenous constituency as stewards and curators of patrimony, the state-pueblo partnership, which allows communities to seek federal financial and technical resources to support museums, has resulted in a productive interaction of national discourses and policies with community petitions. This is the active role that regional museums are expected to have. Being directly under the supervision of the National Coordination of Museums and Exhibits of the INAH, regional museums may network community museums with other similar community-based initiatives that permit an exchange of ideas and experience. Furthermore, they have the means to manage and promote cooperative projects with federal, civil, and tourist agencies. Regional museums, for their part, face different challenges due to their professional component and collection guardianship. They have had to become sensitive to the public in order to come up with innovative and creative solutions to maintain their income from admissions. Technology-savvy generations bring new demands when experiencing culture through exhibits, and this requires new skills on the part of museum staff (Horjan, 14). And unlike national museums, regional museums are more vulnerable to crisis and change

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because they have limited staff and finances, which again often deters their access to new technologies. Therefore, these museums require continuous, well-rounded professional training to help staff perform in different combinations of duties and tasks. In order to show living collections, they have to tap into the diversity of the social mosaic and appeal to collective memory. Being an important linkage between academia and community, both in the city and in the rural landscape, regional museums have become crucial in the evolution of institutional community-based methodologies, a factor in cultural renewal, an educational resource supplier, a promoter of societies of knowledge in country areas, and an asset of sustainable growth given their city-rural reach of cultural infrastructure. The question, “Why do we preserve things and for whom?” is more than ever on the table for regional museums that may often feel torn between academic-marketing considerations via-à-vis communityusufruct petitions. Even so, the administration of regional museums in Mexico has been sadly neglected, and community museums practically disappeared from institutional policies over the past ten years, although there are at least two hundred of them today. The 2012–18 proposal designed by the National Coordination of Museums and Exhibitions of the National Institute of Anthropology and History seeks to rescue and expand the community museums program. To this purpose, we’ve proposed the creation of the National Program for Community Spaces. This would give greater administrative autonomy and creative independence to regional museums with regard to heritage management and rearticulate the overall network of museology policies aimed at recuperating cultural diversity. Currently, the composition of museums that depend on the INAH through the national coordination consists of 121 museums, of which five are national, five are metropolitan, twenty-seven are regional, and the rest are either local or site-based (some linked to one of the 180 archaeological sites open to the public, and the others to historical monuments). The aim would be to rearticulate this conglomerate into regional networks coordinated by regional museums. On the other hand, the training demands of a new, well-versed generation of museographers speaks to the need of a museographers’ experimentation laboratory capable of training them in new technologies but also in the manifold aspects that classically used to be managed in their practice. Regional museums cannot afford to have a specialist in each area. They need people capable of performing with a certain depth and skill in different areas.

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Inasmuch as institutions are reformed and rearticulated at the level of practice, I hope we are able to instill an integral sense of administration in the exact same way I once heard Lorenzo Aillapán, a Chilean Mapuche, speak of the plough. He said, “The plough is central to life because it allows sowing the seeds, and its ways are taught to children to show them how to be correct in their behavior—straight like the furrow. The furrow needs to be straight and even so the seed grows properly; these are the paths of our teachings. A person must have a straight behavior since childhood to grow into a rightful adult and grandfather” (Barrera Bassols 1996, 120). That is, the plough contains in and of itself a principle of behavior that reminds its users of its integral prevalence in all aspects of everyday life. It immerses the whole of society in a practice that resonates with moral understanding. This is the memory that institutional practice should instill. Community museums have taught us that memories cannot be made or preserved because they are not objects in themselves; they are living practices, and as such they cannot be showcased, but rather experienced. I doubt we can make memories like we make any other artifact. And this is in accordance with both indigenous and Western traditions of memory. Mary Carruthers has shown this to be the case in medieval culture, when memory was used creatively to transform knowledge into a useful experience such that all knowledge had to show in one’s character and behavior to be verily known (Carruthers, 8–12). What I do grant is that memory is undoubtedly a maker. The Sami culture has a saying: “What our heart ignores, our backs carry.” I hope a more integral approach to museums will free us from some of the cultural burdens on our backs.

bibliography Ardren, Traci. “Conversations About the Production of Archaeological Knowledge and Community Museums at Chunchucmil and Kochol, Yucatán, México.” World Archaeology 34, no. 2 (2002): 379–400. Barrera Bassols, Marco, and Ramón Vera Herrera. “Todo rincón es un centro: hacia una expansión de la idea de museo.” Cuicuilco 3, no. 7 (1996): 105–40. Barrera Bassols, Narciso, and Víctor M. Toledo. La Memoria Biocultural: La importancia ecológica de las sabidurías tradicionales. Barcelona: Icaria Editorial, 2008. Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo. Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization. Translated by P. A. Dennis. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. . Utopía y revolución: el pensamiento político de los indios en América Latina. Mexico City: Nueva Imagen, 1988.

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Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. De Carli, Georgina. Un Museo Sostenible: museo y comunidad en la preservación activa de su patrimonio. San José, Costa Rica: UNESCO, 2006. Hoobler, Ellen. “ ‘To Take Their Heritage in Their Hands’: Indigenous Self-Representation and Decolonization in the Community Museums of Oaxaca, Mexico.” The American Indian Quarterly 30, nos. 3–4 (2006): 441–60. Horjan, Goranka. “Towards the Education We Really Need in Regional Museums.” Staff and Training in Regional Museums. Paris: ICOM, 2011. Kotler, Neil. “New Ways of Experiencing Culture: The Role of Museums and Marketing Implications.” Museum Management and Curatorship 19, no. 4 (2001): 417–25. Pierce Erikson, Patricia. “ ‘So My Children Can Stay in the Pueblo’: Indigenous Community Museums and Self-Determination in Oaxaca, Mexico.” Museum Anthropology 20, no. 1 (1996): 37–46. Ross, Max. “Interpreting the New Museology.” Museum and Society 2, no. 2 (2004): 84–103. Simpson, Moira. “Museums and Restorative Justice: Heritage, Repatriation and Cultural Education.” Museum International 61, nos. 1–2 (2009): 121–29.

The Planet’s Flatulence and the Likelihood of Our Extinction alejandro de ávila b.

The small Ethnobotanical Garden that we have created in Oaxaca tries to forge links with our counterparts in other parts of the world. More than exchanging seeds or horticultural advice, botanical gardens seek to coordinate a common agenda of environmental management aimed at preserving the flora of the entire planet. Seven years ago, César Chávez Rendón, our collaborator in charge of plant collections, visited the Eden Project (EP) in Cornwall, where an old china clay quarry was turned into a paradise of biodiversity under enormous geodesic domes covered with plastic. In addition to attracting nearly a million visitors every year to the largest greenhouses in the world, which house a tropical forest and other ecosystems ex-situ, the EP organizes terrific music festivals in the summer, featuring artists of the stature of Amy Winehouse and Peter Gabriel. Yet neither the music nor the gardening impressed us about the Eden Project so much as its ecological activism. Its programs draw children as well as convicts, homeless people, and alienated adolescents. It promotes education and experimentation in response to the environmental crisis we humans have brought about. We admire the keen vision and political skill of our British colleagues. César returned to Mexico with a briefcase full of information about the EP—books and brochures that have fostered a remixing of old reflections and new ideas in our garden. One of the books published by the EP that César brought to Oaxaca is Fred Pearce’s The Last Generation: How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change (2006). I felt overwhelmed as I read it. The sensationalist tone doesn’t go beyond the title page, since the text is written as an objective, 147

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rigorous, and conscientious report. When I got to the fourteenth chapter I learned that in western Siberia there is a gigantic frozen swamp that covers more than a million square kilometers, a greater area than half of Mexico. The moss and lichens that grow on its surface have been slowly absorbing over millennia immense quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Due to low temperatures during all this time, the plants have not decomposed as they die to once again release carbon into the air; instead they have been forming a growing mass of frozen peat. It is estimated that there are tens of billions of tons of carbon in this immense Siberian bog. In the summer of 2005, Sergey Kirpotin, a young professor of botany at Tomsk State University in Russia, began to spread by email an urgent message for humanity: the great bog has begun to melt. Why should those of us who live on the other side of the world worry about this? The reason is stark and terrifying: as it thaws, the peat will rot and will finally release its carbon. Immersed in stagnant water with little oxygen, the rotting peat will not generate carbon dioxide again, but rather methane (CH4). This is a gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere, and it is twenty-five times more potent than the carbon dioxide emitted by our stoves, automobiles, and factories. As I write this essay, methane has been on the lips of Mexico’s politicians as the alleged cause of the explosion in the administrative offices of the state company PEMEX (Petróleos de México), which killed thirty-seven people on January 31, 2013. Seven years ago, the tragic death of sixty-five miners in Pasta de Conchos, Coahuila, brought this gas to the front pages of our country’s newspapers. In coal mines, methane interferes with miners’ ability to breathe; it is also highly flammable, causing explosions. In the past, to avoid mishaps it was simply burned, but now the aim is to store as much of it as possible in order to use it as fuel. So-called natural gas, which is currently being extracted by several companies in North American by means of the infamous fracking technology, is in reality a mix of hydrocarbons whose principal component is methane. We human beings coexist intimately with methane due to the particularities of digestion in mammals with only one stomach. The plant foods we ingest include many non-nutritional compounds, such as the carbohydrates called glycosides. Examples of these are the raffinose oligosaccharides, which constitute energy reserves stored by many plants in their seeds. When we eat beans, among other legumes, we are unable to digest these compounds because the mucous membrane in our intestine lacks an enzyme that ruminants have

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for this purpose. Undigested, they pass whole into the colon, where they are fermented by bacteria. This produces a great amount of gas, mainly carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and methane. The result is flatulence. While methane is quite familiar to us, its effects on climate change are only now being revealed. The polar bogs of Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and Scandinavia contain around 450 billion tons of carbon. If it were released in the form of carbon dioxide, the average temperature of the planet would rise about 3 degrees Celsius. But if it is converted into methane, the increase may exceed 10 degrees. The force of the punch will depend on the speed with which the gas enters the atmosphere, since methane decomposes after a decade. The result of the decomposition is more carbon dioxide, which remains in the air for two centuries. Thawing arctic swamps are not the only source of methane linked to global warming, nor the most worrisome. Frozen in the sediments below the oceans are large accumulations contained in reticular ice structures called clathrates (methane hydrates), whose geometry recalls the honeycombs of bees. They are an enigma: specialists debate how and when they are formed, but they seem to result from the clash of very cold water with methane generated by microbes that live under the seafloor. Seismological studies have identified clathrates in the sediments below tens of thousands of square kilometers of the ocean, usually along the margins of continental shelves. Many of these structures retain even greater accumulations of gaseous methane beneath them, where the heat emanating from the Earth’s center prevents them from freezing. It is estimated that there are between one to ten trillion tons of CH4 stored within and below clathrates all over the world. Fifty-five million years ago, more than a trillion tons of methane bubbled up from the sea into the atmosphere, increasing the temperature more than ten degrees. “Earth’s biggest fart ever,” as Pearce puts it, brought about the extinction of two thirds of marine species and had an evolutionary impact that is still felt today in terrestrial ecosystems. In the millions of years before the great extinction, the Earth had been warming slowly, apparently because of solar effects. It is thought that the sea’s higher temperatures warmed sediments until the clathrates burst, releasing CH4. The discharge of methane must have acidified the waters, killing an infinity of organisms, and provided positive feedback to warm the planet further. Even greater warmups had already caused apocalyptic events hundreds of millions of years earlier. Recent studies of fossils from those periods offer a

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new explanation for the massive extinction at the end of the Triassic period, 201 million years ago, and above all the Great Dying which ended the Permian period 251 million years ago—the “mother of all extinctions,” when 90 percent of marine species and 70 percent of terrestrial plants and animals disappeared. The most revealing data come from “biomarkers”: some forms of life produce very resistant organic molecules that endure after the decomposition of the organism, and remain buried in sedimentary rock. Various types of microbes leave traces of lipids that are characteristic of their cellular membrane. The biomarkers found in silt deposited during the great extinctions attest to the fact that the seas have reverted time and again to the anoxia (a very low concentration of oxygen) that prevailed before plants and animals evolved. Among the molecular indicators found recently are the remains of photosynthetic sulfur bacteria. Today, these bacteria inhabit anoxic environments such as the waters of the Black Sea. In order to obtain energy, they oxidize hydrogen sulfide (H2S, a gas that is toxic for most living beings) and turn it into sulfur, requiring sunlight to accomplish this. The remains of sulfur bacteria in sediments at the end of the Permian and Triassic periods indicate that the seas were impregnated with hydrogen sulfide and lacked oxygen even at the surface, since those microorganisms inhabit shallow water because of their need for sunlight. Today, oxygen is present in almost equal concentrations from the surface down to the ocean floor because it dissolves easily from the atmosphere into the water and is carried down to the depths by ocean currents. What could have caused the oceanic anoxia of 200 million years ago? The question entails existential anxiety: could these conditions recur anytime soon? The blooms of sulfurous bacteria tally with periods of global warming. Large increases in the concentration of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere, apparently due to massive volcanic eruptions, raised the temperature during those eras. When water warms, it becomes more difficult for oxygen to dissolve in it, and as the ocean becomes anoxic, anaerobic bacteria proliferate, which release hydrogen sulfide and poison the air. The higher the temperature, the more lethal H2S becomes, and to make things worse, this gas attacks the ozone shield that protects organisms from ultraviolet rays. The warming that closed the Permian period led in this way to the greatest catastrophe in the history of life. A warming of that magnitude can happen in the near future because of us. The researchers who have sorted out the deadly role of hydrogen sulfide

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estimate that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during the great extinctions reached about 1,000 parts per million (ppm). The current ratio (as of May 2013) is 400 ppm, although we are rapidly increasing it (in September of 2010 it still hadn’t reached 387 ppm), and it would seem as if we are still far from the lethal threshold. But these calculations do not take methane into account. As we have seen, this gas has a much higher capacity to raise temperatures than does CO2. The accelerated increase of CH4 into the atmosphere may unleash an irreversible climatic process like the one that caused the great mortalities of the past, and it is unlikely that we humans would survive. As museum professionals, what can we do in the face of such a scenario? Since the 1970s, environmental leaders have urged us to think globally and act locally. In 1993, several of us who were active in local civil society were called together by the great artist and philanthropist Francisco Toledo to found the Association for the Defense and Preservation of the Cultural and Natural Heritage of the State of Oaxaca (PRO-OAX). The first actions taken by the association were to oppose the construction of an expressway north of the city, and to lobby for the creation of a cultural center (CCSD) in the old convent of Santo Domingo, part of the historic district that had been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The Ethnobotanical Garden where I write this essay was born in the heart of PRO-OAX as a project linked to the cultural museum and the historical library that make up the CCSD. Today the garden tries to educate the public about the risks inherent in our addiction to hydrocarbons. We speak of the ticking time bomb in the arctic, and we have designed a packet of teaching materials to try to explain in low-income neighborhood schools the self-imposed threat that hovers over our species. We do not see this campaign as out of place in any way with respect to our mandate, insofar as the garden’s mission is to inculcate in our citizenry the value of traditional knowledge about life, as well as the everyday habits of the communities guided by that knowledge. At the global level, it’s indigenous societies who fight most bravely for the rights of nature, and Oaxaca is no exception: more than 70 percent of its forests and headwaters are communal property. To explain our activism, let me go back to the sequence of events twenty years ago. Once PRO-OAX was constituted, we managed in 1994 to convert the old Dominican monastery into a public space with a cultural mission, preventing the installation in it of a luxury hotel, a convention center, and a

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huge parking lot, as the ministry of tourism of the state government proposed to do. At the same time, our protest against the construction of the libramiento norte (north expressway) found wide support in public opinion and the project was canceled. Our arguments against the speedway were summarized in two statements. First, we were convinced that the new road would lead to speculation in real estate, and with this the expansion of asphalt on forested hillsides that constitute the lungs of a city that’s getting close to a million inhabitants. Second, we believe that our society should not provide incentives for the use of automobiles, but instead privilege public transportation and the use of bicycles to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. In letters written at that time on stationery with PRO-OAX letterhead, we asked officials to “defend environmental equilibrium, which is our greatest collective asset.” The request had a positive effect for a while. Twelve years later, the libramiento norte project was resuscitated by the municipal and state governments. Once again we mobilized under the PROOAX banner, and once again we succeeded in reversing the initiative thanks to the moral authority of Francisco Toledo. The reasons we blandished were the same ones we had articulated in the declaration called “City of Oaxaca Charter,” signed in 2002 by the city mayor, PRO-OAX, and various civil and academic entities as a result of a forum on the preservation of our cultural heritage, which we had organized together. The charter stressed that “the participation of citizens is an irreversible fact. . . . Above all, we must take care of the quality of life in our city. Care for quality of life includes . . . vehicular traffic regulations that foment the circulation of pedestrians and bicycles.” At the beginning of 2012, a few months before our “Remix” conference, the state government unveiled a project to build an interchange at one of the busiest crossings in the city. Aggravated by that new “pro-development” attack, PRO-OAX and the Alfredo Harp Helú Foundation, which hosted our colloquium, invited specialists in city planning to present alternative proposals. The urban planners showed that the projected “road distributor” would not resolve traffic congestion, and that the best way to facilitate mobility and preserve the city’s air quality is to create an efficient system of public transportation. The state ministry in charge of the project rejected the counterproposals, and Maestro Toledo received death threats on Twitter, but a few days later the governor announced that the official project would be modified. This change of attitude happened after a closed meeting in which PRO-OAX read the City of Oaxaca Charter, which the governor himself had signed in 2002

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when he was the mayor. The document had been forgotten, but its symbolic weight was still in force. The next day, Oaxaca newspapers announced the cancellation of the interchange, which they attributed to public opposition. Our organization had to publish a note to deny the triumphalist tone attributed to us. In that letter to the editors we acknowledged that “for the first time the door is open for an effective collaboration between the authorities and the citizenry to plan, in an orderly and systematic way, a transit program for our city that does not privilege automobile drivers, who are the minority, but takes into account the needs of pedestrians, cyclists, and the users of public transport, who are the majority.” But our victory was short-lived. Two months later, on the eve of the “Remix” conference, we found out that the self-interest of the construction companies was to be imposed with no respect for anybody, and the interchange would be built no matter what, contrary to earlier declarations by the governor himself. To justify its stance, the ministry of infrastructure, which is responsible for the project, published in the media the results of a survey, which we believe to be fictitious, showing a disproportionate percentage of the public backing the interchange. Maestro Toledo’s demand to find out when and how the supposed survey was conducted was ignored. During the opening session of our conference, some of our colleagues witnessed the indignation of María Isabel Grañén, president of the Alfredo Harp Helú Foundation, as she explained to us the newly unmasked stratagems of the project’s promoters. Humongous backhoes resumed work shortly afterward. A year later, automobiles now circulate on a mighty mass of concrete amid a swarm of complaints about accidents provoked by faulty design. As a committed walker, I can offer my personal testimony that it is now more hazardous than before to cross those thoroughfares on foot. Selma Holo welcomed us to “Remix” 2012 with an affectionate speech, which she ended with the Hebrew phrase tikkun olam. My readings about the role of methane in global warming, as much as my experiences under the local dictatorship of the automobile, force me to conclude that the urgency of “repairing the world” is not a trite metaphor. As I finish these lines, with my head full of memories of our colloquium, and of the urban drama that unfolded a few blocks away, I hear Amy Winehouse’s bewitched voice intone once more the 1960s pop song “Our Day Will Come.” I wonder if those lyrics made the domes of paradise tremble when she brought her music to the Eden Project.

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In my ears, her beautiful singing has a deeper and more ominous resonance today. (Translated by Francisca González Arias, revised by the author)

bibliography Barnosky, Anthony, et al. “Approaching a State Shift in Earth’s Biosphere.” Nature, no. 486 (2012): 52–58. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full /nature11018.html. Bautista, Eduardo. “El puente de 5 Señores, otro proyecto fracasado.” E-Oaxaca: periodismo digital, January 21, 2013. http://www.e-oaxaca.mx/opinion/eduardobautista/15410-el-puente-de-5-senores-otro-proyecto-fracasado.html. Caldeira, Ken. “The Great Climate Experiment: How Far Can We Push the Planet?” Scientific American 307, no. 3 (2012): 64–69. Carey, John. “Global Warming: Faster Than Expected?” Scientific American 307, no. 5 (2012): 36–41. Castles, Stephen, et al. Migración humana y cambio climático. Mexico City: Fundación BBVA Bancomer, 2012. Chomsky, Noam. “Ocupemos el futuro.” La Jornada (Mexico City), November 2, 2011, 23. . “Puede la civilización sobrevivir al capitalismo?” La Jornada (Mexico City), March 17, 2013, 22–23. Forster, Piers, et al. “Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing.” In Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Edited by S. Solomon et al. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter2.pdf. Hansen, James. Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009. Kump, Lee R. “The Last Great Global Warming.” Scientific American 305, no. 1 (2011): 41–45. Múzquiz, Mercedes. Impacto positivo del consumo de legumbres en la salud humana. Madrid: Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, 2005. http://www.grainlegumes.com /ulf/AEP/AEP_cata/paragraphe/Slides04-Muzquiz_815_2305.PDF. Nadal, Alejandro. “Capital financiero y cambio climático.” La Jornada (Mexico City), February 6, 2013, 29. Pearce, Fred. The Last Generation: How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change. London: Eden Project Books, Transworld Publishers, 2006. Pearson, Richard G., et al. “Shifts in Arctic Vegetation and Associated Feedbacks Under Climate Change.” Nature Climate Change, March 31, 2013. http://www .nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1858.html.

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PRO-OAX archives. Letters written to the state and municipal governments, and notes published in the Oaxaca newspapers El Imparcial and Noticias, January to May, 2012. Renne, Paul R., et al. “Time Scales of Critical Events Around the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary. Science 339, no. 6120 (2013): 684–87. http://www.sciencemag.org /content/339/6120/684.full.pdf. Rignot, Eric, et al. “Recent Antarctic Ice Mass Loss from Radar Interferometry and Regional Climate Modelling.” Nature Geoscience, no. 1 (2008): 106–10. http://www .nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n2/abs/ngeo102.html. Simpson, Sarah. “The Peril Below the Ice.” Scientific American 300, no. 6 (2009): 30–37. Sluijs, Appy. Interview by Rebecca Morelle, cited in “Arctic’s Tropical Past Uncovered.” BBC News: Science & Environment, May 31, 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi /science/nature/5034026.stm. Walter, Katey M., et al. “Methane Bubbling from Siberian Thaw Lakes as a Positive Feedback to Climate Warming.” Nature 443 (2006): 71–75. http://ine.uaf.edu /werc/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Walter_nature05040.pdf. Walter Anthony, K. M. “Methane: A Menace Surfaces.” Scientific American 301, no. 6 (2009). http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=methane-a-menacesurfaces. Ward, Peter D. “Impact from the Deep.” Scientific American 295, no. 4 (2006): 42–49. http://www.chicagocleanpower.org/ward.pdf.

chapter four

Renewal

Reflection, Renewal, and Rebirth selma holo and mari-tere álvarez

When Hurricane Katrina struck on August 28, 2005, New Orleans was decimated. The storm not only physically and economically damaged its museums, but in many cases it forced them to reconsider their original reasons for being. More than a decade later, some New Orleans museums are still struggling to recuperate, some never recovered, and others adapted to the new world they faced. The need for a museum’s renewal might not always be so dramatic; it might involve an economic recession, failing management, a shifting political environment, or another definition of identity or community. But when such a condition confronts a museum, only a daring renewal, reorganization, and creative adaptation will breathe life back into it. The absolute need for renewal will almost always come after a period of troubling uncertainty and attempted reform. Every museum will face the need for renewal—even very successful ones, if they have been in existence long enough. The best leaders in this stage will be able to spot a crisis not after it has decimated a museum or its environment, but as that crisis is positioning itself, about to take place. A leader of that caliber will not wait for the perfect storm to happen. He or she will possess another kind of energy and passion than the originator or the navigator through conserving and uncertainty possessed. This leader of a museum into renewal will need to be both visionary and courageous, perhaps completely upending an original mission, sometimes engaging or disengaging

1. See J. Weigel, “Will Museums Survive?,” in Beyond the Turnstile: Making the Case for Museums and Sustainable Values (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), 48–51.

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from critical partnerships, always creatively adapting to changing times, and sometimes reinventing the museum. On the other hand, if the correct leadership does not appear and does not take charge at that very time when renewal is required, the museum will shrink or even eventually disappear. This chapter is written by those leaders and thinkers who have taken renewal in hand and averted crisis. Renewals will follow the phase of uncertainty. In what can only be described as an act of creative destruction, the Canadian Museum of Civilization transformed itself into the Canadian Museum of History. As recounted here by the Canadian philanthropist and museum trustee James Fleck and coauthor Nichole Anderson, the trustees took a beloved and successful institution (the Museum of Civilization) and literally overturned its mission. The hope was that the new museum would enhance Canadian concepts of a separate national identity on the American continent. The trustees faced the need to creatively adapt, looked opportunistically at the range of options available in their own social context, and launched into the period of renewal described here. Moving into an active strategy of renewal and restructuring will always be difficult and challenging. Change agents such as Graham W. J. Beal, former director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, will need to exercise maximum awareness, sensitivity, and ultimately authority in order to identify the need for renewal, communicate it well, and direct the process with absolute care. Practically as soon as Beal assumed his position as director, he challenged what he saw as the elitist and time-honored “standards” by which the institution had been presenting its encyclopedic collection to its city, and he went on to restrategize its future. He repositioned the museum so that, while continuing to serve the scholarly community, it could also become more compelling, more

2. The risk of shrinkage and disappearance has been exemplified by just a few cases we can name here: the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena; the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the Textile Museum in Washington, DC; and the Ringling Museum of Art in Florida. There are many others. In these situations disaster was averted by radical renewal and new leadership. 3. The economist Joseph Schumpeter first coined the term “creative destruction” to describe an internal mutational process that “incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London and New York: Harper and Row, 1942), 82–83.

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relevant, more appreciated, and more loved by its visitors. Beal examined (with his various communities) the range of options available. He became a fast adapter, inventing, experimenting, and testing, all the while being both “creative and conserving,” balancing learning with continuity, and exemplifying sustainable development. Ultimately, the DIA came to be recognized as “this country’s most visitor-friendly art museum.” Of course, Graham Beal’s achievement of renewal did not keep his elite critics from accusing him of “dumbing down” the museum, but they now appreciate that not only did he reinvigorate the DIA, but he contributed greatly to saving it during Detroit’s ensuing bankruptcy. Via the implementation of new digital strategies, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has completely renewed the relationship between its site and its audience. Now, anyone in the world can enter the Met via its digital doors, stretching the museum’s engagement globally. Through digital outreach, the museum is inviting a wider, explicitly non-geographically-bound community into its orbit. Thomas P. Campbell, director, heads up a great institution that describes itself as a “universal museum: where every category of art in every known medium from every part of the world during every epoch of recorded time is represented.” Facing the fact of its appearance of being a detached monolith, Campbell began to plant new seeds of life via projects such as Connections and 82nd & Fifth. Connections brings together Met staff (curators, librarians, security), their beloved objects, and us—the public—in a sort of electronic bulletin board. The Met is constantly refreshing this digital relationship with ever-new projects, appealing to a global public to be members (even if they don’t live in New York), inviting artists to respond to particular works of art, and announcing new acquisitions. This renewal has

4. C. S. Holling, L. Gunderson, and G. Peterson, “Sustainability and Panarchies,” in Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems, ed. L. H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling (Washington, DC, and London: Island Press, 2002), 76. 5. See Graham W. J. Beal’s essay in this section of the book. 6. Even as late as April 3, 2015, Roberta Smith of the New York Times, while praising an exhibition at the DIA at the same time finds fault: “It is riven with dumbed-down labels that emphasize the artists’ relationship, presenting a much simpler view of their artistic efforts than Mr. Rosenthal does in the catalog,” simply not realizing the different audiences that catalogues and labels must serve. 7. Philippe De Montebello, The Met and the New Millennium: A Chronicle of the Past and a Blueprint for the Future (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994), 9.

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both globalized and personalized the Met in ways more far-reaching than any other major museum has successfully done until now. The beauty of what the museum has accomplished in its renewal phase is that everything is scalable: one-person museums, small museums, and medium-size museums can cherrypick from its programs and adapt its elements—with or without digital technology—to serve their own publics. Like the Metropolitan, the award-winning medium-size Levine Museum of the New South recognized that there was a new, important, but marginalized community just outside its walls, specifically the rapidly growing Latino community. It wondered: Could the museum create ties to this new group and thus create deeper civic attachments in this population? How could it renew its mission and activities to include new communities? The museum initiated a series of community collaborations, programs, and forums, and Latino participation immediately increased. The writer and curator Tom Hanchett shares the process of how this regional museum assumed the role of completely renewing the institution while holding onto its original historical mission. The Levine Museum of the New South became a highly successful proponent for positive change, intent on improving the integration of oftenfrightened arrivals from Latin America. In the following chapter, JoAnne S. Northrup, curator of contemporary projects, and William Fox, director, of the Center for Art + Environment in Reno, Nevada, describe how their old museum has been reborn. The museum (and its founder, Dr. James Church) had been intricately connected to the area’s natural resources since its inception. The staff took the museum’s historical interest in the cross-section between art and nature as the basis for a rebirth as the (new) Nevada Museum of Art. Since 2003, it has completely recast itself as a vital art museum that is interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and global, but regional in many of its guiding values and in its recollection of its founding principles. As evidence of its dynamism, the museum has the only public research institute in the world devoted exclusively to the subject of creative, art-based interactions with natural, built, and virtual environments. It regularly offers radical, global, unconventional contemporary projects and exhibitions related to its environmentally based mission. It does this sensitively by also serving up the more conventional exhibitions expected by 8. Indeed, the Met’s digital projects are scalable, meaning that any museum, large or small, could adapt such projects to fit their own circumstances.

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the local population. As in any Panarchy, the Nevada Museum of Art takes into account that renewal—as radical as it might seem—also needs to be accompanied by enough conservatism to maintain stability. The following examples of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles highlight practices that warrant special mention. Jane Burrell and Karen Satzman write about a quickly developed, long-range, massively ambitious program in Los Angeles called Nextgen. LACMA in the 1990s decided to seriously consider what the next generation of its visitors would look like. The realization that its audience was both graying and demographically changing with no identifiable “next generation” of museumgoers produced an internal conversation. What would the museum do when its current audience died out? How would it readapt to this new reality? LACMA answered this by literally seeking out the children of Los Angeles County and making them museum members—along with a parent. Burrell and Satzman dedicated themselves not only to making the museum a central part of children’s lives, but also to mixing up, remixing, and mashing up the generations in a situation that now regularly includes marginalized and privileged children playing and working on projects in the same galleries, and on the same plaza. Across town, Jane G. Pisano’s long-term and long-anticipated revival of the Natural History Museum is no less impressive. Despite the thirty million objects in its collection, the museum was in the doldrums. Pisano began by claiming the museum’s principal obligation to be to serve the public. She came to understand that a significant number of the staff were, in her view, stewarding their own fiefdoms as much as the museum’s collections. She sought to vanquish these fiefdoms and create one museum communally stewarded by the entire staff. In this renewed mental museum space, the precious collections came alive, and even the staid old dioramas were imbued with the new creative spirit based on interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. With a truly reborn sense of purpose and a complete makeover, this museum has indeed been revived and will without question be attracting repeat visitors for years to come. Renewal and resilience are about adapting to ever-evolving changes that enter one’s ecosystem. Considered among the best-assembled collections of Latin American art in recent history, the Cisneros collection of Latin American art, a Venezuelan treasure, has throughout its history embraced new ideas and adapted to its circumstances. Reading Patricia Phelps de Cisneros’s essay

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here, it is clear that there is an ethos of “adapt and regroup” at the heart of this foundation. The presidency of Hugo Chavez (1999–2013) brought with it societal upheaval across Venezuela, and amid all that, the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Foundation did not collapse; rather, it adapted and evolved. It decided not to create a permanent home for the collection, but rather made a virtue of its lack of rootedness, and has become a metaphor for a reconsideration of guardianship, resilience, and renewal. The writers Santiago Palomero Plaza and Miguel Fernández Félix move us from the histories of individual museums into the terrain of systemic revamping. Palomero Plaza proposes a reconceiving of the old colonial/nation-state network relationship, with its history of dependence and rupture, to a reframed cross-scale Ibero-American network of museums, acknowledging, where appropriate, the possibility of a shared cultural future. Working closely with his counterparts throughout the Americas, he sought to revive and completely reframe an old, rejected network, specifically the Ibero-America/Spain network, and to reconfigure it into a renewed relationship of equals. The network that he describes here is itself a kind of multi-scale Panarchy that attempts to recalibrate the asymmetrical power hierarchies that governed the past. Miguel Fernández Félix, director of Mexico’s Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts and former director of a range of national art museums in that country, has been strategizing the future of Mexican art museums for years. In a world of constant change, some systems actively adapt, while others resist. In a Panarchy, in nature or in culture, it becomes apparent that “there are three strategies for dealing with external variability. One is to live passively with external variability by evolving appropriate adaptations; one is to control variability actively, minimizing its internal influences; and one is to anticipate, create, and manipulate variability.” From Fernández Félix’s perspective, there is now an urgent need to anticipate, create, and manipulate variability in the system itself. In his text he encourages a different sort of network with a more complex, system-wide awareness of museum functions (from storage to curation, community outreach to security) that will meet Mexico’s aspirational place in the global and local art worlds. In this essay, he argues for a thoughtfully developed renewal within the museum network to enliven an aging system. 9. Lance H. Gunderson and Crawford S. Holling, Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (Washington, DC, and London: Island Press, 2002), 52.

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It is our expectation that by taking a panarchic look at this span of organizations and systems of organization and how they might deal with renewal, our readers can become aware that there are many paths to renewal, from total renewal to departmental renewal, and from the theoretical to the practical. It is also our hope that understanding the power of renewal will underline the ongoing-ness, the continuity, of the life-cycle loop of museums. Eventually, as in that aforementioned Möbius strip, this renewal will bleed into the loop of origins; it will mature, conserve, and become conservative; it will enter into phases of uncertainty; and ultimately the need for renewal will emerge again. And so it goes.

A New Vision for a Treasured Canadian Institution and the Opportunities and Challenges We Face along the Way james d. fleck with contributions by  nichole anderson

In fall 2012, Canada’s minister of heritage announced the creation of a new museum of history to tell Canada’s story. The press release of October 16, 2012, indicated “the Harper Government’s intention to introduce legislation creating the Canadian Museum of History, first in a series of measures on the road to Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017. . . . In order to achieve this, the Harper government plans to introduce amendments to the Museums Act to change the name and mandate of the Canadian Museum of Civilization.” There was mixed reaction to the announcement regarding one of Canada’s most popular and distinguished museums. There has been much debate over whether the name change and new mandate are good ideas, as well as some suspicion around the timing of the change (more on this below). As a then new trustee of the institution, I needed to understand the concerns of Canadians as we moved toward a new vision for the museum while supporting the museum’s leadership as it navigated through the change. From what I am able to gauge so far, the new vision has been generally well received: twenty-four thousand ordinary Canadians participated in consultations both live and online, and academics have responded well in general, as many had often lamented the lack of a Canadian Smithsonian of sorts. As the 1. This essay was written while the Canadian Museum of Civilization was in the process of transition; it has since successfully become the Canadian Museum of History.

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Toronto Star remarked, “Historians and cultural critics have long complained there was no place in the nation’s capital paying tribute to the big events, ideas and people that shaped Canada. There are museums to honour war, nature, science and technology and even currency, but no venue that presents the country’s whole story, from Confederation to modern times.” The concern seems to lie not in the idea of the museum itself, but that the new museum of history may dismantle the current purpose and mandate of the Canadian Museum of Civilization. I understand the fears associated with this change, but am convinced that this new vision for the museum will be for the better. The Canadian Museum of Civilization’s current take on Canadian history, called Canada Hall, is shaped by an interest in social history in the form of vignettes that re-create what life was like in the past, for instance for the early settlers. James Turk, executive director of the Association of University Professors, calls the current exhibit the best display of social history in this country. Craig Heron, a prominent historian at York University and a past president of the Canadian Historical Society, has said Canada Hall portrays the lives of people who have been left out of history: “You can find the Chinese laundry, the Ukrainian Hall, a print shop, a union hall, a whole variety of things that came out of the work of social historians over the last three decades.” There is also a “personalities hall” that showcases twenty-seven Canadians, some not so well known. Critics looking for a more chronological history of Canada might say the current exhibit in the Canada Hall selection of personalities feels a bit random and vulnerable to bias. But the purpose of the museum has always leaned more toward an anthropological interest in describing what life was like for human beings through the ages, versus describing a larger historical narrative specifically about Canada. Some have criticized that the history is largely focused on the European experience. Mark O’Neill, the museum’s CEO, describes the problems inherent with the current Canada Hall exhibit: While visitors enjoy the Canada Hall, they don’t really learn about the chronological history of the country, or even what it is about Canada that makes it Canada. . . . The Canada Hall’s story begins in the eleventh century with the arrival of Viking explorers and ends at the Vancouver airport about 1970. The First 2. Susan Delacourt, “Civilization Ends, History Begins at Canada’s Biggest Museum,” Toronto Star, October 16, 2012.

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Nations aren’t even there. There’s nothing in it after 1970, absolutely nothing. . . . As a result, important events in Canada’s more recent history are missing, such as the constitutional crises, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the 1972 Canada-Russia hockey series. . . . Major themes and critically important Canadian events that define who the Canadian people are and where they come from are completely absent. I’m one of those people who believe that has to be fixed.

The idea now is to dismantle Canada Hall and the “personalities hall” and instead use this forty-three-thousand-square-foot exhibition space to present a chronological description of Canadian history. As O’Neill explains: “The Canadian Museum of History will present the national narrative of the history of Canada and its people. With a renewed focus on the connections between past and present in the shaping of Canada and Canadians, the museum will explore the major themes and seminal events and people of our national experience by bringing history to life and providing the public with a strong sense of Canadian identity.” Two other halls of the museum that focus on aboriginal history will remain intact. What has delighted many is also a new focus on collaboration with other smaller museums in this new vision, as the museum’s website explains. Included in this new exhibition will be a space dedicated to presenting exhibitions from museums across the country to complete the national story. This will be done through the development of a network of museums. This new sharing of resources through a network of partners has received positive reviews. The executive director of the Canadian Museums Association, John McAvity, has issued a statement saying, “The CMA welcomes these improvements to one of Canada’s flagship national museums. By investing in a new strategic vision for the museum, the federal government is sending a strong message that museums play an important role in our society.”  More than a simple name change, the new vision represents a shift to a more collaborative approach to operations. The new Canadian Museum of History will work in close partnership with other museums across Canada for exhibition exchange, 3. Testimony of Mark O’Neill regarding Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Museums Act in order to establish the Canadian Museum of History and to make consequential amendments to other Acts: hearings before the Canadian Heritage Committee, Meeting 67, 41st Parliament, 1st session. June 5, 2013; all subsequent O’Neill quotes are from this same source. 4. Marie-Claire Langlois, Canadian National Museums Background Paper (Ottawa: Library of Parliment), 8.

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artifact sharing, and research projects, increasing access to our country’s heritage for all Canadians. What seems to unsettle some of the critics of this new effort are the changes that are being made to the Museums Act. Clause 2 of Bill C-49 Dec 4 2012 is billed as “An Act to amend the Museums Act in order to establish the Canadian Museum of History” and also “amends section 8 to set out the purpose of the Canadian Museum of History.” The amendment changes the purpose of the museum in several ways. First, it changes the target for the museum’s endeavors from “throughout Canada and internationally” to “Canadians.” Second, it changes the museum’s purpose from increasing “interest in, knowledge and critical understanding of and appreciation and respect for human cultural achievements and human behaviour” to enhancing “knowledge, understanding and appreciation of events, experiences, people and objects that reflect and have shaped Canada’s history and identity, and also to enhance their awareness of world history and cultures.” Third, it deletes any reference to the ways in which the museum carries out its purpose. The first two points fit squarely with the vision to give the museum a clear mandate to focus on Canadian history and speak firmly to Canadians. One could call this better clarity of purpose. The third point has presented some concern to researchers and curators who wonder if the museum leadership will be less interested in collecting and preservation, in favor of promoting and celebrating Canada’s history. The NDP heritage critic Andrew Cash says the conservatives are throwing money at the museum while they are cutting federal library and archive budgets—“robbing Peter to pay Paul”—and paying more attention to displays of history than to preserving it. This feeling has been fueled by the museum’s request that Canadians share their vote on what they would like to see in their new museum by way of “liking” (Facebook fashion) various events and objects, from hockey legend Rocket Richard’s jersey to Métis leader Louis Riel’s coat. The museum launched a campaign in the fall and winter of 2012–13 with this message: “What would you put in your national history museum? What stories would you tell? How would you reach Canadians across the country?” In response, there were more than seventeen thousand visits to the site and more than one thousand people completed the online survey. This focus on telling the Canadian story, as well as taking into consideration the stories that resonate most strongly with the Canadian public, is not at all

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a bad thing in my mind, as long as this process is met with the rigor of our team of expert curators, historians, and researchers. Our museum leadership has made it very clear that they will continue to operate at arm’s length from government, and their team of researchers and curators will be in charge of developing the new museum exhibitions. Other concerns surround the connection of the new museum initiative to the celebrations that are being planned for Canada’s 150th birthday. The clear association of launching this new museum in connection with the celebration has provoked some fears that perhaps the telling of the history of Canada will be colored by a larger political desire to celebrate and promote pride by conveying an entirely rosy, airbrushed picture of Canadian history. Some have pointed to a perceived conservative bias toward celebrating war and the Queen as part of a systematic communications agenda. It is easy to understand how this perception came about, if one reads some of the press statements from the government about the project. As James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, conveyed at the announcement of the new museum project: This year marks the start of the five-year countdown to Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017. It offers us an unprecedented opportunity to celebrate our history and those achievements that define who we are as Canadians. . . . The Canadian Museum of History will highlight the national achievements and accomplishments that have shaped our country, including the “Last Spike” from the construction of the Canada Pacific Railway, Maurice “Rocket” Richard’s hockey jersey and items from Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope. . . . Through existing resources and new partnerships with museums across Canada, the Canadian Museum of History will renovate over 50,000 square feet of public space. This renovation, to be completed before Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017, will provide the public with the opportunity to appreciate how Canada’s identity has been shaped over the course of our history.

Some commentators have voiced a concern that the link to the 150th celebrations for the project, and the funding for the celebrations, will dictate what themes are focused on with the telling of the story. As Minister Moore relays in another statement, “Our government is proud to invest in projects

5. Museum of Canadian History (2012). Announcement from the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages (press release), retrieved from http://www.historymuseum .ca/media/announcement-from-the-minister-of-canadian-heritage-and-official-languages/.

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that contribute to our collective identity and define who we are as Canadians, and we are proud to take a leadership role in planning this celebration. On the road to 2017, let us continue to  celebrate all of the things that make Canada the united, prosperous and free country we are today.”  Clearly a balance will have to be struck between the telling of a Canadian history that people take pride in and revealing lesser-known parts of our history that may (also) be less easy to consume comfortably. Simply, we must build an informed citizenry that is also sensitive to mistakes made in the past. Mark O’Neill echoed these sentiments to parliament on June 17, 2013, and relayed findings from a recent survey: “Canadians want the new museum to be comprehensive, frank, and fair in its presentation of their history. They want us to foster a sense of national pride, but not gloss over our mistakes, failings, and controversies. They want us to present various viewpoints and voices, recognizing that people and events can be interpreted in different ways when seen through different eyes.” For our part as trustees of this great institution, we will need to help O’Neill, the curatorial staff, and the research team leverage the potential we have now to create a powerful but balanced presentation—one of which we can all be proud—of Canada’s rich history.

6. Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, Government Response to the Fourth Report to Parliament’s House on “Canada’s 150th Anniversary in 2017,” presented to the House on January 28, 2013, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=5943818.

What’s the Big Idea? Rethinking the Permanent Collection gr aham w. j. beal The Detroit Institute of Arts creates spaces where visitors can find personal meaning in art. —DIA mission statement

prelude It all began for me in Omaha, Nebraska. I had spent most of my career working in either university art galleries or museums dedicated to modern and contemporary art. But at the Joslyn Art Museum, where I was director from 1989 to 1996, a number of disparate factors began the process that led me to attempt a thorough reevaluation of how we present art to the general public. For the first time I was dealing with audiences that were not, to one extent or another, “self-selected,” and I was involved in docent training. As part of the expansion and renovation of the museum, my colleagues and I created a small gallery (called the Mind’s Eye) in which we planned to present interactive exhibitions exploring museum practices and philosophy. For the first of these, Points of View, we selected five paintings from the permanent collection and reproduced each of them five times; each group hung Andy Warhol style, cheek by jowl. Under each picture a different label was installed carrying texts based on: 1) pure fact, 2) “old” art history, 3) “new” art history, 4) non-art content, and, finally, 5) a blank label for visitor-generated texts. When these latter texts began to materialize, I was deeply dismayed at how off-the-mark they seemed, bearing little or no relationship to the information we had pro-

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vided and largely relying on personal feelings. I remember muttering darkly about the inadequacy of the U.S. educational system even in a city where my children had gone to school in a district regularly graded among the top ten in the country—or so I had been told. At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, from 1996 to 1999, I was involved in the reinstallation of several collections and had the great pleasure of working with specialist curators in such areas as European, East Asian, American, and African art. We introduced extensive didactic materials and graphics, including maps (hitherto, not even the country of origin had been called out), and made a concerted effort to use straightforward language. The results were elegant and informative but, I dimly realized, not much more compelling to the general visitor, and I should not have been as surprised as I was when a senior administrative colleague commented, “I can see what you’re trying to do but I have to tell you, it doesn’t make any difference to me.” By this time, I had accepted the position of director at the Detroit Institute of Arts and a major motivation in doing so was the opportunity to rethink how we present art to the non-specialist visitor (i.e., most people!) using one of this country’s premier collections. Attempts along these lines elsewhere had been given pretty short shrift by the critical community. The recently opened Tate Modern’s thematic approach had been slapped down as necessitated by a collection too weak to recount the “Courbet/Manet/Cezanne to Warhol/Richter/Favorite Name Here” epic. An attempt by the Museum of Modern Art to break from this story was roundly condemned as a betrayal, and the return to the heroic approach welcomed as the recovery of “curatorial courage.” I exaggerate, perhaps, but not much. One senior MoMA curator commented to me on the impossibility of trying anything new under the BIG Apple microscope. Such is definitely not the case in Detroit, but, as we were to find out, experimenting with the long-standing art historical and connoisseurship-based format was regarded with a deep skepticism verging on hostility by those to whom the traditional art museum belonged: the Specialists. When in late 1999 I arrived at the DIA with my general notions of rethinking the permanent collections, I was fortunate to inherit a number of colleagues who were also challenging established notions of presenting the permanent collection to the general public and, indeed, had recently reinstalled the contemporary collections using a wide array of interpretive devices. They were also experimenting with various tactics in special exhibitions. We broke ground for the master plan renovation and expansion in April 2001 and,

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in 2002, embarked upon the reinstallation project. The goal was to engage the general public—to stop the nonspecialist in front of individual works of art and help him or her find meaning. At the heart of the project were teams— initially three, but ultimately four—of staff members drawn from across the museum’s departments. Each of these teams was charged with learning about different areas of the collection and, with the help of the specialist curators, drawing out the stories from the works of art that they themselves found interesting. I asked them to keep two questions at the forefront: “Why does this object exist?” and “Why is it in the DIA collection?” The first question examined the human purpose for the object: somewhere, sometime, someone had made this thing, or asked someone else to. That gave us a lot of history. Why the object found its way into the DIA addressed artistic values. Finally, I asked them to remember the modernist adage that less is more. The team leaders were typically younger and less senior than their colleagues. There was a great deal of activity around the teams. First they were sent to look at recent groundbreaking collection installations at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s British collection, the University of Leiden’s Egyptian collection, the Newark Museum’s American collection, and the Walters Art Museum’s early Christian and Islamic collections. Consultant specialists were engaged to foster team building and discuss visitor behavior. Over eighteen months the teams drew out well more than two hundred themes, and these were whittled down through careful editing to more like one hundred. The larger themes that tended to occupy several galleries we called big ideas; the smaller ones, in a gallery or two, collection segments. These groups were reviewed by the steering team and, when we felt that the ideas were as solid as we could make them, nationally and internationally recognized specialists were engaged to visit the DIA for a day or two and critique the teams’ work. By this time, word had spread that the DIA’s management was planning something different with the presentation of its great collections and the response was far from encouraging. Quite the opposite. “Dumbing down” was

1. We joked that we were out to stop two particular visitor behaviors: the “museum shuffle,” in which people move forward and backward to check the label and its relationship to the work of art, and the “museum glide,” which has them moving slowly through the galleries, never quite stopping, and consequently feeling that, after forty-five minutes of traversing the facility, they have “done” the museum for the year. 2. The term “big idea” is Beverly Serrell’s.

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the favorite epithet, with “Disneyfication” a distant second. We told ourselves that we were, in fact, “smartening up,” but there was no snappy response to the “DD” accusation. I still scratch my head over the near-universal suspicion of what we were doing, and the accusations made without any serious investigation. Why would one of the country’s more serious bloggers write, “I don’t know much about what they’re doing, but it sure sounds like dumbing down to me”? What permanent damage could we be doing by moving away from one particular intellectual construct based on deep specialization, to one geared at the vast majority of our visitors? After all, I tried to reassure my colleagues, it’s not as if we’re invading Iraq. But with this kind of scrutiny, the last thing we needed was to be seen as furthering outdated or questionable ideas. With the ideas secured, we began testing them, as well as our ability to convey them effectively, against three visitor groups that paralleled the three main staff teams. Selected by an outside agency and balanced in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity, these groups were largely made up of individuals who rarely, if ever, visited the DIA. Rewarded with a free dinner and a yearlong membership to the museum, the visitor groups attended three tightly moderated, five-hour meetings during which they critiqued our big ideas and engaged in other activities intended to increase staff sensitivity to general visitor behavior and concerns. From where I sat, the proceedings were revelatory. These individuals—diligent, intelligent, but far from specialists—asked any number of questions that highlighted how much of an obstacle course visiting a major art museum could be. They were puzzled by the little numbers at the end of tombstone labels. They regarded as intentional anything they saw situated in the galleries and worried about the implications. On one occasion, I listened as two men of Native American origin discussed why “their” art was in a small, wood-lined room next to our grandly Pompeian Great Hall. One felt “insulted” at being relegated to such a space, the other “honored” at being presented as “closer to the earth.” There had been no such intention on the parts of the curator and myself when we decided, primarily for budgetary reasons, to temporarily install in the cabin-like space a small group of Native American artworks, but we had, it seemed, managed to evoke strong and strongly contrasting emotional responses. If the staff teams represented one crucial factor in the reinstallation, another was the consistent effort and emphasis placed on formal evaluation. Along with the information derived from visitor groups, more was extracted

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by two full-time evaluators working in the galleries, testing everything from overall ideas to specific label copy, finding out what worked and what didn’t, what could be improved, and what had to be discarded. All such information was fed back into the plans for the actual installation. The fact that an introductory panel—discreetly placed so as not to disrupt an elegant installation— was being missed by 80 percent of visitors argued for more prominent placement. The smaller the label copy and the more a label was designed to blend into the installation, the more likely it was to be missed altogether. If you want visitors to read labels, you have to make them feel that it’s in their best interest to do so. Subordinating them to the wall color generally has the opposite effect. Experience and experimentation in our special exhibitions had clearly demonstrated how effective interactive stations could be, and we built into the reinstallation a range of interactives. Notionally divided into “high-” and “low”-tech, none of them were, in truth, technologically more advanced than projections and computers. But they were all designed to make the visitor look back at the work of art after absorbing the information. In this sense, even descriptive labels were “interactive”: providing the reader with facts, notions, and questions to test against the works of art as they toured the gallery. Artworld terminology was avoided or, where unavoidable, accompanied by dictionary definitions and phonetic pronunciations. Much effort went into trying to decide when this or that term needed to be accompanied by a pronunciation guide, and we reached a point where they were ubiquitous, appearing on practically every other label, with the result that they seemed about as condescending as they were helpful. Someone decided to call the New York Times. After all, they must have a system! But no, it turns out it’s all a matter of intuition for them, too. Label writing was—and remains—an area of serious contention among curators, who fear oversimplification and consequent professional scorn, and educators, who fear obscurantism and subsequent public bewilderment. To lessen the struggle for ownership, we opted to use professional writers, who combined the expertise of curators with that of the interpretive educators. But! Five drafts was the norm, with some requiring further revision. Our visitor research had convincingly shown that 150 words was the ideal length for a gallery introductory panel, and less than that for group and single-object labels. Conveying complex ideas in 150 words about, say, feminism and repression in late-eighteenth-century Europe while discussing Henry Fuseli’s The

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Nightmare (1781) is a real challenge. But it can be done, and I particularly treasure the comment of a highly regarded curator from somewhere in New York, standing in front of this very work: “You know, these are really sophisticated labels.” Our research also underlined the degree of importance that visitor apprehension plays in the successful museum experience. It was downright touching to be reminded how valued art museums are—how strongly the general public regards us as guardians of important community and individual values. Accordingly, when people bring their children or out-of-town guests to the museum, they feel to some extent on trial. Will they be made to feel foolish by getting lost in the galleries, or by not knowing the answers to their children’s questions? Will people get bored? In other words, will they be in control of their own experience? Lack of control equals an absence of comfort, and without comfort, the prospect of pleasure and fulfillment retreats. In this sense the experience in the galleries is only the culmination of a much larger experience that encompasses every aspect of getting to, inside, and around the entire institution. When in 2006 the opportunity arose to hire a new vice president of operations, the chief operating officer—herself an individual whose previous distinguished career lay well outside the art museum world—suggested that, rather than looking to the traditional architect/engineer universe, we turn to the world of the hospitality industry. It was, for the DIA, a final breakthrough and brought us expertise and energy of an entirely different order that enabled us to revise various practices and retrain a wide swath of staff toward the end of satisfying the visitor experience. This remains an ongoing process, but it is always with great pleasure that we cite the Wall Street Journal’s description of the DIA as “probably this country’s most visitor-friendly art museum.”

addendum The “new DIA” was an instant and ongoing success with the general public as well as not a few erstwhile critics. But even as we enjoyed the appreciative and even fulsome comments, management and board knew that we faced an unsustainable financial future. Long the recipient of significant tax support, between 1990 and 2006 the DIA lost all such support and now relied on fundraising for more than 60 percent of its annual $32 million budget. Following the submission of a $34 million annual budget in May 2008 (well before

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the financial crisis), management was instructed to begin the process of cutting $15 million over five years, and in 2009 savage cuts were made that reduced staff by 20 percent and reduced the budget to $24 million. In keeping with ongoing strategic planning, the cuts were made in such a way that the new visitor-focused DIA was maintained at the cost of what are traditionally core activities. Board-level strategic planning discussed three options for sustaining the DIA long-term: sell art, make further cuts, or restore the previous tax-support model. Selling art was clearly a fraught path, with lessons from the National Academy of Design and Brandeis University’s Rose Art Gallery debacles at hand for all to see. Further cuts of $4 to $5 million effectively closed the DIA: half the museum open on weekends, no special exhibitions, few educational programs—a dismal prospect that would begin a death spiral to mothballing. In 2008, the Detroit Zoo had persuaded the taxpayers of the tri-county area to pass a millage (property tax) specifically to support the zoo. But could an art museum do the same? And in the middle of the Great Recession? To the surprise of many, polling showed that the idea of a tax for the “new DIA” was strongly supported in all three counties by 60 percent or more. After much hard work, the proposal was put on the ballot in August 2012, and passed—easily in two counties, and a squeaker in the third. Whatever the margin of victory, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that such a tax could never have passed for the old DIA. Only the total rethinking of the institution as a place for everyone enabled the tax support that provided the museum with ten years’ guaranteed operating support of $23 million. Celebration of our newfound security came to an abrupt halt when the City of Detroit went into bankruptcy proceedings and the emergency manager appointed by the governor of Michigan declared that the DIA’s collection, nominally owned by the city, could be available to creditors to settle city debt. Obviously, an art museum stripped of many of its masterpieces cannot be helpful in the task of rejuvenating a city. Judicious pruning was a distinct possibility except for one major factor. To control the collection, the emergency manager would have to void a contract whereby the DIA’s private support wing, a 501(c)(3) called DIA Inc.—runs the museum on behalf of the city. And it is to this private support group that, by law, the tax levy goes. In other words: no contract, no tax support. Put another way, the emergency manager cannot cancel the contract without precipitating the closure of the museum. I am not alone in believing that, without this stricture, the emergency manager could

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well have tried judicious pruning in an attempt to realize cash for creditors (particularly Detroit pension funds) while maintaining a respectable, if not stellar, collection for the future. The rethinking of the collection may well turn out also to be its salvation. At time of this writing, negotiations are in process with a wide range of interested parties to produce assets for the emergency manager’s purposes that would essentially “buy” the DIA’s independence and ensure that nothing like this situation can ever occur again. If this indeed happens, the DIA’s recent palpable reassertion of its central worth to the region will have paid off once more.

Reimagining Access to the Met thomas p. campbell

One of my favorite places at the Met is the second-floor balcony, where you can look down at the museum’s Great Hall. Last year more than 6.2 million visitors from all over the world came through that space. It is interesting to watch their movements: the determined New Yorkers barreling through the crowds to get to an exhibition on its last day, the overwhelmed international tourists summoning their English-speaking skills only to be relieved to find that the museum map is published in ten languages, the enthusiastic families, often being led not by parents, but by children excited to share what they learned during a previous visit with their school. What they all have in common is a sense of the Met’s magnitude; in those first moments, the museum always feels monumental. In addition to the six million people who come to the museum each year, the Met has another forty-four million annual visits to its website. It, too, is monumental in scope and depth. Extraordinary work has been done to put all of our catalogued collections online for the public, and our Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, an authoritative exploration of more than five thousand years of visual culture, includes more than nine hundred essays on a remarkable range of subjects. The timeline alone receives more than 1.5 million hits a month. With this scholarly foundation in place, we began to consider the idea of a different kind of entry point into our collections: a web feature that would encourage people to think about the Met in a fresh way. A committee of curators was formed to pursue this idea, led by two senior staff members from our digital media team. The result was a 2011 web series called Connections, a 180

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yearlong exploration of the Met’s holdings by staff throughout the museum, from curators to security officers. Each episode was a four-minute journey through the collection narrated by the staff member and illustrated with a presentation of still images. One hundred episodes were made, released in groups of two each week throughout the year. What made the series so distinctive was that the topics were not driven by art history, but by broad, often personal, themes. Some were playful, some deeply complex: dogs, date night, fatherhood, and survival, to name a few. As works of art were tied together—across time, cultures, and disciplines—we experienced our staff ’s individual responses to these objects, and by extension, introduced new ways to travel through and understand the Met’s riches. The public found these stories incredibly intriguing as they appeared throughout the year. Consistently we heard how visitors were inspired to discover their own paths through the Met using this model. Connections continues to serve as a vital portal to the museum, and the challenge to create the next generation of content was considerable. Another committee was formed, and some updated parameters were established: while Connections was personal and broad based in terms of authorship, the next project would celebrate the experience and knowledge of the curatorial voice. The format would be visually stunning and would use web technologies—360degree views, hot spots, image comparisons—to allow a kind of access to works of art that is impossible in the galleries. After much spirited debate and several prototypes, 82nd & Fifth (a title based on the address of the Met’s main entrance) was launched in January 2013. In it, one hundred curators from across the museum each talk about a work of art from the Met’s collection that changed the way they see the world: one work, one curator, two minutes at a time. Each episode is coupled with an “explore” segment that allows the viewer to delve deeper into the details of the object itself. As with Connections, they were released two at a time weekly throughout the year. Both Connections and 82nd & Fifth speak directly to my interest in linking historical art and culture to a broader conversation. The Met’s relevance is global, but the perspective encouraged in these projects is intimate and, ultimately, human in its approach. By opening up innovative ways of thinking about art and demonstrating new ways of examining it, we are giving our visitors tools to understand what they experience at the museum. If successful, that inescapable monumentality that greets every visitor in the Great Hall will not go away; it just might be a little less daunting.

Rethinking Immigrant Integration in the American South Can Museums Help Communities Address a Major Social Challenge? tom hanchett

A demographic wave is transforming the United States. Since 1990, cities and states that historically had few Latino residents have become magnets for newcomers from Mexico, Central America, and South America. Latino growth is the most visible part of a larger population shift. Within a generation, the entire United States will have no single racial nor ethnic majority. Rather, this nation will be a mixture of people from every background. The Center for the Future of Museums, created by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), urges all American cultural institutions to engage directly with this new reality: to boldly rethink what audiences they aim to reach, what programs they undertake, what tools they use. Currently only one in ten core museum visitors are people of color, writes the center. If that does not change quickly, museums will find themselves marginalized, irrelevant, defunded. Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, North Carolina, finds itself at the forefront of museums grappling with the demographic shift. Thanks to an Innovation Lab grant from AAM, it has joined with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the Atlanta History Center to form a learning network to explore this recent history and increase engagement with Latino communities.

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Can our museums do even more than that? Immigrant integration—full and active participation by newcomers in every aspect of community life—is a major challenge for cities today. Can museums help lead that work?

levine museum’s journey Levine Museum has worked its way toward something of a new model of what it means to be a history museum. At its founding in 1991, the museum focused on post-1865 history and included in its mission “to provide historical context for contemporary issues and a community forum for thoughtful discussion.” But how to do that? Iteration by iteration, we have discovered ways to be useful in the life of our city. In 2004 Levine won the AAM top exhibition prize for Courage: The Carolina Story That Changed America, which connected the well-known Brown v. Board of Education civil rights story with local events in the 1950s and hotbutton debates about race and education in Charlotte today. The museum created a dialogue program aimed at attracting decision makers—existing leadership teams who toured the exhibition, then engaged in facilitated discussion. We gingerly promised the funder, Knight Foundation, to bring in six hundred leaders. Nearly eighteen hundred participated. Now, all of our major exhibits include dialogue programs. Courage also spurred us to be bolder in tackling recent history. We did an exhibition on the 1970s, Purses, Platforms & Power, tracing women’s emergence in public roles; a big bank not only funded it, but also used it as a training site for employees and ended up commissioning a permanent version for their national headquarters. A community curator planned Families of Abraham, photos documenting Jewish, Christian, and Muslim families in Charlotte today; organizations of every background embraced it and created programs far beyond what our small staff of fifteen could have dreamed. We partnered actively with such groups on the front end to create Changing Places, documenting how cultural traditions—from the South, the United States, and the globe—are bumping up against each other in this fast-growing city; AAM named the project a co-winner of its annual Excellence in Exhibition Award with special recognition for community engagement, and we became charter members of the Immigration Sites of Conscience Network, an international consortium of museums interested in immigration issues.

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the latino new south project Now we are turning to immigration again, digging in deeper with the Latino New South initiative. In the 1990s, Charlotte and three other metros in the southeastern United States ranked as the nation’s top “Hispanic hyper growth” cities. Latino growth has continued rapidly across the Southeast, with many cities going from barely 1 percent in 1990 to 10 percent or more by 2010. This is just a subset of larger demographic changes; roughly half of immigrants come from other corners of the world, and in turn the foreign-born are vastly outnumbered by population flows to the South from within the United States. But Spanish speakers are a highly visible group, and thus an excellent place to start. How does a history museum go about including newcomers? That’s a vital question for every museum, since so much of our potential audience is “new”: young people, transplants arriving due to job changes, as well as immigrants. And it’s a tough question precisely because we deal with history and these new groups are, obviously, not part of their cities’ deep history. Fortunately, museums possess some pretty strong existing skills. Museums are machines for cultural connection. That’s what we do. And we’ve already begun thinking creatively about getting new visitors inside our doors and helping them interact with our installations and with one another once they are here. Can we use those skills for an even greater good? Can we aid our communities in the hard work of helping newcomers connect with local culture and history? And vice versa, can we assist “receiving communities” (a term borrowed from WelcomingAmerica.org) in learning about and interacting with the new neighbors? As the Latino New South project gets under way, we are not yet sure what will be the deliverables: what mix of programs, dialogues, exhibits, online initiatives, and so on. And that’s good. We have started by listening to our communities. The Innovation Lab grant allowed Levine Museum, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and the Atlanta History Center to each select key staffers and one or two Latino community volunteers to form long-term “innovation teams.” After some introductory meetings getting to know one another, we came together for two-day “listening sessions” in each city. We visited social centers, grocery stores, a school, and a credit union. We listened to Latino leaders, grassroots folks, service providers who work with immigrants, and scholars who are just now writing this new history. From what we

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heard, we condensed Working with Latino Partners: Seven Insights, posted online at museumofthenewsouth.org/7insights. In September 2015 Levine Museum opened ¡NUEVOlution! Latinos and the New South, a major exhibition that will travel to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (late 2016), the Atlanta History Center (2017), and beyond. Read more at museumofthenewsouth.org/NUEVOlution.

bigger implications: using history to build community As museums adapt to a tighter economy and the fast-changing cultural landscape of the twenty-first century, some of the avenues being explored by the Latino New South project may be useful to the wider field: •

Traditionally, museum projects have originated “inside”: from a curator’s vision, a collection of artifacts, historians’ writings. Can we look “outside,” asking what issues are at the forefront of our community’s concerns? Then ask how history can add useful background and stimulate discussion of those concerns?

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Partnerships are the key to relevance, and relevance is the key to survival. When choosing a topic to pursue, get out there and talk with potential partner organizations. What gets them excited, and eager to suggest synergies and programs of their own?

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Addressing a community need, especially a hot-button issue, might seem likely to alienate funders. Instead we have found that it increases the funder pool. Corporations and foundations want to build better communities.

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In addition to traditional skill sets, listening sessions and dialogue programs may become a valuable part of every museum’s tool kit.

The “how” is as important as the “what.” People want to be listened to. They want to reach out and connect, though they often do not know how. A museum that offers those opportunities, that becomes known for looking “outward,” will be respected and valued—not simply as a repository for historical and cultural knowledge, though that will not diminish, but as a living, active, useful player in civic life.

A Rebirth The (New) Nevada Museum of Art, a Museum of Ideas joanne s. northrup and william fox

“We are a museum of ideas,” the Nevada Museum of Art’s mission statement reads. “While building upon our founding collections and values, we cultivate meaningful art and societal experiences, and foster new knowledge in the visual arts by encouraging interdisciplinary investigation.” The only art museum in Nevada accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the institution presents a variety of accessible exhibitions geared toward the general public, while also operating the Center for Art + Environment—a research library and archive of artists’ projects unified by an overarching focus on natural, built, and virtual environments. But with this focus on art and environment, the museum risks losing the attention of average museumgoing Nevadans. What is the right programming balance, and how does an adventurous museum walk the fine line between catering to local mainstream audiences and alienating them? What are the risks of forging an internationally relevant museum identity when regional relationships and resources are important to the museum’s overall success? Art, science, and design have been major parts of the Nevada Museum of Art’s institutional programming for the past eighty years. Founded during the Great Depression in 1931, the Nevada Art Gallery (as it was known at the time) was first envisioned by Dr. James Church, a University of Nevada, Reno, humanities professor and early climate scientist who established the first snow laboratory in the world in the Sierra Nevada at the turn of the century. The gallery was developed in concert with members of the Latimer Art Club, who met regularly to view and discuss the visual arts and other interdisciplinary 186

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topics across the sciences and the humanities. Following a generous bequest in 1949 from the world traveler and collector Charles Cutts, the institution was well on its way to becoming a scholarly resource and gathering place for the community. The interdisciplinary interests of Dr. Church were widely felt during the earliest years of the institution’s founding. Public programs and lectures held at the gallery in the 1930s and 1940s included programs ranging from “Birds of Nevada” and “Plant Life of the Sierra Nevada” to meteorological studies and landscape architecture, proving that the early founders believed that the gallery was more than just a place to display art on the walls. This philosophy continues to foster the dynamic and multidimensional public programs and open dialogues offered by the museum today. Traditionally, museums have focused on a single discipline and rarely venture outside those boundaries. Since its establishment in 1931, the Nevada Museum of Art’s mission has challenged expected museological conventions, focusing its collections and exhibitions on art about landscape, science, and interdisciplinary concerns. But how might that commitment be deepened in the twenty-first century? Revisiting the institution’s founding principles has provided a pathway for future strategic and programmatic growth and has enabled the museum to expand its reach beyond the art world. Staff conducted research and interviews in an effort to determine whether the museum could make a unique contribution to this field, eventually concluding that short-term efforts, such as exhibitions and symposia, had been made, but had not been sustained over time. Transgenerational inquiry was the most relevant model—the type of research most often found in science institutes such as the Max Planck Institutes in Germany, the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. But did any museums elsewhere in the world focus on art and environment? How might science and the humanities create new knowledge? How could a small institution make an impact in the field, and what are the unique circumstances in Reno? The indicators were there: the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), had a Literature and Environment graduate program in the English department, founded in the mid-1990s. And the Reynolds School of Journalism, also at UNR, established an innovative environmental journalism graduate program in 2006. The established and admired Desert Research Institute, a nonprofit organization operating under the auspices of the Nevada System of Higher Education, was also located in Reno and had international

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ties with scientists working on all seven continents. The field of art and environment was wide open, and the museum set out to claim it. Staff wrote a plan for the Center for Art + Environment (CA+E) in 2007–8. The first big risk in claiming this territory was taken in 2008 when the first Art + Environment conference was designed to survey the field. Speakers such as Vito Acconci, Fritz Haeg, and David Maisel were joined by the architect Will Bruder and the artists Lita Albuquerque and Chris Drury. Matt Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Los Angeles spoke, as did the biologist Lynn F. Fenstermaker of the Nevada Desert FACE Facility and Bill Gilbert, director of the Land Arts of the American West program at the University of New Mexico. The conference was both a metaphorical stake in the ground and an educational tool for museum staff, enabling them to educate board members and supporters about this new initiative. The conference was attended by two hundred people, but interest reached far beyond the immediate audience: live bloggers from Extreme Media Studies at the New School in New York enabled interested parties to follow the virtual discussion. In the wake of the conference, the story of the Nevada Museum of Art and the conference had 3.1 million hits online. The Center for Art + Environment, established in January 2009, remains the only research institute in the world devoted to the subject of creative interactions with natural, built, and virtual environments. In the four years since that first conference, the center has inaugurated an exhibition and publication series, initiated a program for research fellows, and collected dozens of archives from seven continents containing work by more than five hundred artists. Why does the Center for Art + Environment collect archives? It has been estimated that up to 97 percent of the world’s art is destroyed within one hundred years of its making. We’re not familiar with the best classical Greek statues because most of them are destroyed, buried, or underwater. We’ve lost a century of Dutch painting due to war, and countless Asian artworks are gone because of dynastic upheavals and tragic looting. Archive collections offer a momentary stay against decay and loss, and are an important opportunity for researchers to learn from the past—even as the present accelerates away from it. Most of the projects the center collects help scholars around the world not only understand environments, but also reshape our relationships with them—whether through land art, cataloguing global change, or the design of adaptive architectures and ecologies. Key to this effort is the assembly of a

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unique archive that contains foundational materials from Michael Heizer and Walter De Maria, and contemporary works from the Center for Land Use Interpretation and Land Arts of the American West. Many speakers at the museum’s triennial Art + Environment Conference are contributors to the Center for Art + Environment archive collections. For example, the archive holds a thorough working record from the artist Mandy Martin and a library of publications from Fritz Haeg, both of whom spoke at the second conference in 2011. The archive also contains materials from Amy Franceschini and Michael Taussig, the recipients of the pilot program Artists | Writers | Environment, as well as notes, sketches, and records from Geoff Manaugh’s Landscape Futures exhibition. During the past three years, the museum’s library has been refocused, retaining a core survey of general art history texts while significantly increasing holdings in topics such as land arts, green architecture, design, and art and science projects. A special collections component has been added for the acquisition of rare and out-of-print materials from the midtwentieth century that underpin the field of art and environment studies. As a physical corollary to this intellectual concentration, the library has been developed to better serve the needs of visiting scholars by expanding and uniting the archive collections, library, and gallery in one distinct space. The study of art and environment is about not just remembering what has been done, but also an ongoing re-creation of the future through imagination, aesthetics, and technology. That re-creation—which we call art—is dependent upon conversation as well as collecting, conservation, and public programs. In deciding to embrace the Art + Environment program, the museum took an enormous risk. Some museum visitors question whether “science center” programming is appropriate for an art museum. The community continues to desire mainstream blockbuster exhibitions, and for this reason, museum programming generally takes one of two tracks. One track aims to serve regional audiences by presenting broadly popular exhibitions on a regular basis (Celebrate Art of the Tiffany Era; Titian’s La Bella: Woman in a Blue Dress; To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures). The second (national and international) track focuses on Art + Environment. This accessible programming is believed to be a duty of the institution, and crucial, given the museum’s status as the only accredited art museum in the entire state. In 2011 attendance numbered 105,000 visitors, and many specifically came to see the Egyptian Treasures exhibition. The futurist and science fiction author Bruce Sterling was engaged to write a text that addressed the country’s speculative future, and illustrators

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were hired to create an eighty-foot panoramic mural illustrating how Egypt might look in the future. So, the two entities of the museum—engaging local and global culture—are in constant dialogue. The local cultural engagement might be seen as short term, while the global engagement is long term. The museum continues this balancing act, attaining international prominence within the framework of being a regional museum. The work of the Nevada Museum of Art and its Center for Art + Environment demonstrates how it is not enough for people to invent technologies that support human endeavors. A culture of sustainability is also required—a culture made manifest in art, architecture, and design. As global change becomes more evident through intensified weather patterns, declining natural resources, and stresses on social systems such as food production, audiences may desire encounters with art that address those situations. It seems only “natural” that a museum in Nevada would undertake a leadership role in what is increasingly a concern of cultural organizations around the world. Deserts are indicator regions where change occurs earlier and is more readily apparent, a fact that James Church relied on when measuring the water content of snow to forecast the availability of irrigation for the growing season. His work in the mountains created a baseline of data for contemporary climate science. His work in Reno to establish the museum as a place where scientists could discuss the state of the world while surrounded by landscape paintings likewise laid down a baseline for understanding our world.

Reenvisioning Children and Families into the Museum Arts for NexGen, LACMA jane burrell and karen satzman Art is an amazing aspect of life, and I value the ability to see art with my family at no cost. —Seventeen-year-old NexGen member

Reaching out to the community and providing access to underserved audiences have for several decades been central to the programming at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, but the concept of making the museum free for young people and their families, which began in the late 1990s, wasn’t fully realized until 2003 with the founding of the Arts for NexGen LACMA program. The original impetus for the program came from the museum’s director and CEO at the time, who charged several staff members with developing a program that would encourage children and their families to make visiting the museum a routine part of their lives. With many conflicting agendas, including a need to make revenue and a desire not to compete with a thriving membership program, it took several years to gain consensus around a viable plan. A team comprised of marketing, membership, and education staff met regularly over the course of a year to resolve the financial, branding, and staffing concerns associated with the concept. The team decided that the museum could absorb the loss in revenue that resulted from giving free admission to anyone age seventeen and under and an accompanying adult. Branding was developed for bilingual Spanish-English signage, banners, flyers, stationery,

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and a bright-orange lanyard with a matching membership card for the children to wear. The Education Department assumed the staffing responsibilities and coordinated a launch celebration on April 13, 2003. On that day, 5,186 children signed up for the program and a total of 26,404 enrolled by the end of the first year; today the program has 215,885 members. Although the original idea envisioned that the program would remain a collaborative effort, interest by staff outside of Education rapidly declined, and NexGen enrollment applications went unprocessed due to the need to focus on paid memberships. Education then assumed not only a programmatic lead but also a practical one, enrolling new members and entering their information into the member database. Since its launch in 2003, the program has grown not just in numbers but in its quality and depth. Today it serves as an umbrella for all of the museum’s programming for children and families and includes many innovative and award-winning experiences. On any given day, it is possible to walk across the LACMA campus and see youth proudly wearing their NexGen lanyards, a symbol of membership that gives them, and their accompanying adult guest, access to all the art the museum has to offer. Many NexGen children and families report that they value this message— that they belong to and at the museum and are a part of something—more than the free admission, discounts on classes, and host of programs designed specifically for this audience. We love this program! It’s a wonderful way for us to share our excitement about art with our son. He enjoys it too and we look forward to many years of coming here. (NexGen parent) The best time to spend family time with my family. (Ten-year-old NexGen Member) I love LACMA: my favorite museum of all time. I brought my family after going with friends. They loved it too. (Seventeen-year-old NexGen member)

In its initial years, surveys indicated that families attended the museum more often and developed a more positive view of the institution as a result of their membership. Because of increased family attendance, the Education Department created and implemented customer service trainings to teach security staff to be more welcoming and helpful to families. The Education Department also increased its bilingual staff and created more self-guided materials.

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To learn even more about these visitors, educators initiated a one-year study from June 2009 through May 2010 and a four-month evaluation from February through May 2010 under the guidance of an independent consultant and researcher. A participatory evaluation method called Theory of Change was chosen for the project to refine and articulate social and learning goals of NexGen and to study the effectiveness of the program and the levels of engagement and learning by youth members. Evaluation methods included family interviews, member surveys, observations of participants, and a family journal project, all of which allowed Education staff to adjust the program as the need arose and make long-term improvements. The evaluation revealed that what families value most about their free membership is the museum access, the opportunity to see art, and the ability to engage together as a family. The majority of families feel the LACMA family experiences are different and more positive than other family experiences in which they engage.

nexgen’s weekly and daily programs The overarching umbrella of NexGen includes Andell Family Sundays, which happen weekly throughout the year, and the Boone Children’s Gallery, which is open every day the museum is open. Both of these components provide in-gallery experiences integrated seamlessly with art-making activities and create opportunities that support families’ desire to work together. In fact, side-by-side learning is a hallmark of the Boone Children’s Gallery. This participatory space, located adjacent to the Korean and Chinese galleries, offers a drop-in brush painting activity—appropriate for individuals as well as families—to practice painting techniques and experiment with different materials and tools. The project was specifically designed to be adaptable to any age and level of experience. Even babies in high chairs have the chance to paint alongside their adult companions. At LACMA the visit is centered around a joint experience. (NexGen parent) I really enjoy the art room. I like it when the people there talk to me about art. (Six-year-old NexGen member)

During the week, the Boone Children’s Gallery draws a mixed crowd of toddlers, their caregivers, and—despite the name of the space—adults. On the weekends the space draws a big family crowd. When Education

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Department facilitators noticed that the youngest visitors were limiting their museum experience just to the Boone Children’s Gallery, and not exploring other galleries, they developed a story-time program in the Korean galleries. Here, children learn how to be comfortable in the sometimes-unfamiliar and intimidating museum environment by participating in a familiar activity. Preschool-age children and younger practice sitting still in the gallery, listening, and responding to facilitators who read books about colors and shapes, art, and folktales. The concept of side-by-side learning extends to the weekly Andell Family Sundays program. In this “gateway” program that includes artist-led workshops, in-gallery activities, bilingual tours, and free community busing, educators noted that the adults were often reluctant to actively take part in the tours, as they viewed them as being for children. The evaluation established a goal for 80 percent of the child and adult participants to actively look at and talk about art, engage with one another, and make connections between art and their own lives. To reach these new learning goals, gallery educators needed more training; thus, as a result of the evaluation project, a new, collegial, gallery educator lesson-planning process was established. Lesson plans, created collaboratively by gallery educators and the program coordinator, were redesigned to emphasize skill building for families. Together, families learned and practiced different ways of approaching works of art, developed a stronger visual-arts vocabulary, and gained an increased comfort level in the galleries. The revamped training increased the quality of tours and the commitment of gallery educators to new teaching practices. By focusing intentions and changing the way gallery educators worked with families, adult response increased and family members engaged more fully in looking at and talking about art. More families participated in family interactive activities as a part of the tours. When NexGen members were invited to share personal reflections about the activities, they referred to the many dimensions of the program, from making art to looking at art, but most often noted the experience as a whole. They also valued LACMA as a museum—even children at relatively young ages noted the quality and diversity of the art itself. A noteworthy number of respondents mentioned the Boone Children’s Gallery as a value-added experience, as well as the breadth of activities available at the museum, including music, dance, and art-making experiences. Through NexGen, LACMA is making itself relevant for the next generation of museumgoers. It will be interesting to learn if and how those children

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who have made the museum a regular part of their lives will continue their relationship with LACMA after they enter adulthood and possibly become parents themselves. Further research over time will reveal more about the long-term impact of NexGen on its members, on the future of LACMA, and perhaps even on other museums. Our daughter developed tremendously because of attending. . . . You’re doing a great thing because not all children will be exposed to art without this. It’s a great introduction to the younger generation as long as it is free. (NexGen parent)

100 Years Later The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Reactivated and Reimagined jane g. pisano

The transformation of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County began in September 2001, when the board of trustees adopted a new mission and vision, and verbally committed to a capital campaign. I started as CEO two months later with the expectation that I would be a change agent. Over time, one change agent became many as talented staff committed to the transformation. Today, twelve years later, on the occasion of our one hundredth anniversary, a twenty-first-century museum has been created, and large numbers of visitors of all ages enjoy learning about their world, how it changes over time, and why this matters. How did it happen? How did we repair, redefine, and reactivate a classic but tired natural history museum? It started with the new mission, which was a radical shift, involving making the visitor experience our central concern. The new mission is “to inspire wonder, discovery, and responsibility for our natural and cultural worlds.” The old mission was all about us. To paraphrase: we do research, take care of the collections, and educate the public. The old attitudes followed suit: researchers saw the museum as a research institute; educators saw it as a place for moms with kids in strollers, and so on. The shift from “us” to “the visitor” was profound and initially resisted by staff. Widespread acceptance was achieved over time but started with a research-based branding process that concluded that our mission is our brand. This was a key turning point: all staff had a pathway to a common understanding of our institutional goals, a common understanding of our challenges, and a collective willingness to work together on museum-wide priorities. 196

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In the early days, we experimented with new ways of presenting exhibits and new programming. We spent many hours on weekends with our own families enjoying the museum but also watching our visitors explore the galleries. We kept accumulating exhibit techniques and programs that worked. As we learned from our successes and failures, we deepened our understanding of our visitors—not generic visitors but our visitors. We did visitor surveys and focus groups, which helped us innovate and communicate in ways that struck a chord with those who walked in the door. We tended to our infrastructure, built new restrooms, a new café, and a new shop, all designed to appeal to our audiences and make NHM a destination. Our new mission changed our focus. And this was a necessary, but still insufficient, condition for our transformation. We could not have repaired, redefined, and reinvented the Natural History Museum without fundamental changes in our institutional culture. Decision making in natural history museums is traditionally top-down and segmented within departments. The budget process, for example, was a series of bilateral negotiations between each department head and me, and the total budget was the sum of these parts. No one except the president was focused on what was best for the institution as a whole and, as a result, what was best for the institution was not reflected in the budget. Beginning with the budget process, executive staff and I began to work collaboratively as a team. “My” budget, the dominant motivation before, was replaced by joint decision making motivated by a consensus on what would be best for the museum as a whole. Over time, collaboration and teamwork has become the norm at every level of the organization. In addition, we changed our performance evaluation process to more closely tie individual goals and performance to institutional goals. Our visitors don’t see these changes, but they experience the results. Collaboration and team building make every staff member responsible for moving the institution forward. Collaboration in teams has spurred innovation and motivated the entire staff to keep searching until we have invented visitor experiences that will entertain and educate the widest possible audience. (This mirrors our new vision: to inspire the widest possible audience to become stewards of the living Earth.) Our visitors have responded: attendance keeps growing, and visitor surveys report high visitor satisfaction across every indicator. When the board of trustees approved the first-ever capital campaign in the museum’s history, the board and staff were completely aligned and would be for the remainder of the project. Board and staff leadership were committed

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to constructive conversation; transparency with adequate information, including good and bad news; and mutual respect for one another’s roles. We simply could not have produced such innovative exhibits without the board’s confidence in the process, the project managers, and staff leadership. That confidence was the result of information sharing, and a clear willingness of the staff to listen to the board’s “right track, wrong track” directional comments. The exhibit development process began with our curators, who produced an intellectual framework for each new gallery, subjected it to peer review, and worked with a team that included educators, communicators, graphic designers, and exhibit designers. Information design proved key to presenting layered information through labels, wall signage, and interactives, all of which were necessary to reach our diverse audience. In addition, we did formative evaluation. As we developed Age of Mammals, we learned, for example, that many of our visitors couldn’t say what a mammal was but wanted to know. Clearly this information had to be presented in order to have a successful exhibit on plate tectonics, climate change, and mammal evolution. As a different team worked on the new Dinosaur Hall, we took elements that were working well to a new level with a focus on the process of science—“how we know what we know”—and a focus on scientists. What is their work like in the field? In the lab? What are the answers to the questions that everyone wants to know: Did dinosaurs get sick? How did they have babies? What do we know for sure and what do we think we know? Finally, we were opportunistic. Once we got started, opportunities presented themselves and we took advantage of those that were consistent with our strategic intent. For example, we envisioned the three-and-a-half-acre Nature Gardens and its complement, the indoor Nature Lab, after we received funds from our Los Angeles County partner to consolidate our parking in a structure. Deciding what to do with the gardens and lab was not self-evident for a natural history museum. We finally concluded that our gardens and lab would showcase Los Angeles’s native and introduced plants in order to study local biodiversity. Our emphasis on citizen science, always present, assumed greater importance. The Nature Gardens became a bigger idea as we realized the importance of the future light rail line with a stop at our front door. Planning for the Nature Garden also inspired our new permanent Becoming Los Angeles exhibit with its focus on explaining change over time as the result of the interaction of nature and culture. We also began talking about a new main entrance—a six-story glass box facing the light rail line that would showcase

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our treasured fin whale skeleton, one example of the wonders to be found inside. Today, our repaired, reimagined, and reactivated Natural History Museum is a civic treasure, a renewed space open to the light, an indoor-outdoor experience, a unique destination for understanding nature and culture, a home base for science education and citizen science, and a magnet for everyone at every age who wants to learn more about our planet and life on it, how it has changed over time, and why it matters.

Reinvention Collector as Custodian patricia phelps de cisneros

When my husband and I bought our first artwork forty years ago, we had no idea it would inaugurate the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC). It took some time to realize that the works my husband and I had fallen in love with and purchased in the first years of our lives together had begun to coalesce into an entity with significance beyond the merits of its individual components. With the realization that what we had was, in fact, a collection (or, really, the collections, plural, as the things that we have collected fall into several distinct categories, as I will explain) came the understanding of the scale of our responsibility for it—the responsibility for educating ourselves about the works, for the conservation of individual pieces, for systematically shaping the collection in a coherent way, and for providing the means for it to become available to others via the objects themselves and through scholarship. Implicit in all of this was the custodial nature of our role as collectors, and the fundamentally public nature of what had begun as a private endeavor. Before I ever considered acquiring a work of art, there had already been several important influences in my life that would affect the collector I would become. One was growing up in the city of Caracas in the 1950s, where art and public space were fused in international collaborations between architects, urban planners, and visual artists, such as the University City of Caracas, designed by Carlos Raúl Villanueva and named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. From an early age, I was aware of my country’s aesthetic and intellectual dialogue beyond its borders. Being surrounded by art in an urban 200

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setting allowed me to understand that art did not need to be confined within the walls of a museum—indeed, it could have a very public, immediate presence—and also introduced me to a Modernist aesthetic that has, ever since, felt like “home.” A further inspiration was the work of my great-grandfather, William H. Phelps, who was a renowned ornithologist. His meticulous cataloguing and conservation of his collection of tropical birds and his determination to disseminate knowledge about them were lessons that I have carried with me throughout my life. After we began collecting, it was my husband, Gustavo, who intuited that our quest should be international in scope; he has always had a global outlook and has cultivated alliances throughout the world. This, too, has had a tremendous impact both on how we have collected work and the ways in which we have sought to share it. Our collections are also a reflection of our lives together and of our deep interest in the many facets of Latin American culture. We therefore have not only a well-known collection of Modernist geometric abstraction from Latin America, but also Latin American colonial furniture and art, a collection of objects from and documentation of indigenous groups in the Amazonas region of Venezuela (many of which were obtained in the course of our family’s thirty years of expeditions in that area), a group of Latin American landscape paintings by traveler artists who explored and documented the region beginning in the seventeenth century, and a growing collection of contemporary art. Our daughter Adriana Cisneros de Griffin has become increasingly involved in the CPPC, and her insights into the possibilities of new technologies and digital media for disseminating information and drawing people together across geographic boundaries have pushed the collection and our thoughts about it in promising new directions. The factors cited above—the extra-mural possibilities of art as seen in my youth in Caracas; the awareness of Latin America’s involvement in a broader discourse of modernity and the inculcation, by virtue of its pervasiveness in my native city, of an aesthetic that has ever since enthralled me; the value in preserving, documenting, and sharing one’s discoveries that my great-grandfather communicated to me by his example; the encouragement of my husband to have an international outlook and to develop broad-based alliances; the love that we have for the diversity of Latin American culture; and the expansive powers of the new technologies in this digital age—have each contributed to

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our attitudes about the things we have collected, our responsibility toward them, and the legacy that we hope to build through them. I would like to point to concrete examples of how those various seeds have grown and sometimes intertwined. First, we considered but soon rejected the idea of a permanent museum for the collections, preferring instead to adopt a liberal lending program that has seen a large percentage of the material traveling at any given time to museums and institutions in Europe and the Americas for exhibitions and long-term loans. The Orinoco collection (our collection of material culture from indigenous peoples of the Amazonas) has been seen by more than seven million people in ten countries. We have made works that are in storage available for intimate study to students and their professors from partnering institutions of higher learning in New York; they have been able to examine and handle works of art pertinent to their studies firsthand, in an unmediated way. The CPPC has underwritten travel grants and fellowships so that curators and scholars can go to Latin America and conduct primary research, gaining the depth of understanding that comes with immediate, contextual encounters with art and artists. We have also supported scholarships for Latin American artists to take advantage of international programs, and have, with partner institutions, created seminars and supported programs, exhibitions, and publications that promote scholarship about Latin American art. There is now, at Hunter College, a Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Professor in Latin American Art, and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, we have endowed a position for a Latin American bibliographer. There, too, I founded the Latin American and Caribbean Fund, a committee that works closely with MoMA’s curatorial staff to identify and fund acquisitions that will build upon its already incomparable and long-standing holdings of art from those regions. Through publications, we have been able to document and disseminate images of and critical texts about works in the collection. We have given consideration to the preservation not only of artworks, but of the voices of the artists themselves. To this end, we published a series of bilingual Conversaciónes/Conversations featuring in-depth discussions between contemporary Latin American artists and art historians, critics, and curators. Some of these books have also been published as e-books, in which a wealth of additional material, such as videos and documents not possible to include in print, are made available. Our partnership with Artstor has allowed us to make hundreds of images of colonial, modern, and contemporary Latin American art

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accessible through their digital library. A website with a journal format, launched in 2014, addresses topics of interest and importance in Latin American art and culture and invites discussion and debate. Of course digital conservation and dissemination was not available in my great-grandfather’s time, but he, too, utilized the best practices of his day, as did his friend, fellow ornithologist, and secretary of the Smithsonian from 1964 to 1984, S. Dillon Ripley. Ripley’s attitude and policies regarding museum stewardship were admirable and forward thinking and still instructive; he believed in making material available to the public as a living experience. A couple of examples will indicate what I mean. About the Smithsonian’s collection of musical instruments, Ripley famously decreed: “Take the instruments out of their cases and make them sing,” inaugurating a practice of concerts at the museum. During a tumultuous period in Washington, DC, when crowds of protesters were expected on the Great Lawn and other organizations were shuttering their doors in fearful anticipation, he decided that the Smithsonian should remain open, and open later than usual, not only so that the protesters would have access to its restrooms, but because, as he observed, “How often are these people going to be in Washington?” Dillon ensured that the Smithsonian and its collections were fully participatory in a democratic society. He wrote a wonderful book of essays about museums— their past, present, and future—that is still fascinating to read titled The Sacred Grove: Essays on Museums. In that volume, Dillon points out that collecting is among the most ancient of human instincts, and notes that “Culture . . . creates collections; collections create culture.” Collections create culture, I believe, by gradually shaping a shared sense of what matters; of what is valuable; and of what speaks to our connections to an interwoven past, our understanding of the present, and our hope for the future. The cultural worth of previously undervalued or underknown material can, though a collection whose stewardship includes a mission of education, exhibition, publication, scholarship, and the creation of associations with others, be better understood and appreciated. It is our most fervent wish that, through the initiatives and efforts we have made on behalf of the material that is briefly in our hands but belongs ultimately to the world, we have contributed new insights into the fascinating dialogue between collecting and culture, and have presented the broad spectrum of Latin American art in a way that captures the global imagination.

Tales from the Ibero-American Museum Network Realigning the Power santiago palomero plaza

When Five Years Have Passed (Así que pasen cinco años) is the title of a play written by Federico García Lorca in 1931, but which could not be performed in Spain until the country’s transition to democracy; it appeared at Madrid’s Teatro Eslava in 1978. It premiered before then, in 1959, in its original language, directed by Julio Castillo at Mexico City’s Teatro Zócalo. Spain’s debt to Mexico is huge because Mexico welcomed the most distinguished Spanish intellectual exiles after the Spanish Civil War. Even in these postcolonial times, Mexico continues to offer examples of intellectual lucidity and creativity that make it, and the other countries of Latin America, a beacon of hope, for their museums are essential tools in the development of public policy, as well as policies of cultural heritage and social cohesion. Whereas Europe is in the midst of an identity crisis with regard to the value of its heritage institutions and is drifting toward neoliberal privatization, having forgotten the values of the ancient mouseion. As a representative of the Ministry of Culture of the Spanish government, I had the great honor in 2007 of signing the by-now famous Declaration of Salvador de Bahía along with twenty-two other Ibero-American countries, and of helping to launch the Ibero-American Museum Network program (Ibermuseos), a utopia come to fruition whose work we can summarize just five years later. In my new role as director of the Sephardic Museum of Toledo, which is also part of other networks—the Jewish Museums of Europe and the Network of Jewish Quarters of Spain (Red de Juderías de España)—I can reflect on what has taken place up to now. 204

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In my view, the Ibero-American Museum Network was a wise decision, even from the moment of its initial planning. As opposed to the system, which sets forth hierarchical and centralized organizational models with a single and uncontestable academic discourse, and from the semantic point of view often used in mathematics as an organizing model (decimal metric system, equations system), the network (in Spanish red, from the Latin retis) model is, according to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, “a collection of elements organized with a specific goal,” which, in the words of Luis Grau, one of the best Spanish museologists, “is arranged horizontally and allows for connection among its different modules in terms of equality and co-responsibility, while it is also fair and distributive in its profit sharing.” Decisions are the result of consensus, agreement, and compromise. For that reason, one speaks of “intelligent networks,” and if there is an attractive mathematical model for museums, it is the fractal network. According to their creator, the French mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, fractals combine irregularity and structure, and create details in arbitrarily small scales; they demonstrate great self-similarity, can be defined recursively, have limits, and can develop cyclical and asymmetrical multiplications of activities. Their applications in art and music are already well known, and for this reason it is not surprising that they can be used to define our own dense network of IberoAmerican museums: different among themselves, but with similar issues. In this way, small fractal museums are more able to survive crises, and are capable of creating networks of solidarity and new alliances. If we undertake a brief overview of the work of the Ibero-American Museum Network in the first five years of its infancy, we can see that it has already succeeded in producing declarations and documents of high caliber, from Bahía to those of various other meetings in Florianópolis, Brazil; Santiago, Chile; Toledo, Spain; Mexico City; and Asunción, Paraguay. If we briefly review the lines of work approved by its Intergovernmental Committee based in Brasília, we see that to a great extent its expectations have been met, from the creation of the Ibero-American Museum Network (Ibermuseums) website to the fulfillment of the various lines of work proposed in the program. Through its educational actions, the Ibermuseums program endeavors to extend the educational capacity of museums, and of natural and cultural heritage as a strategy for the transformation of social reality. The IberoAmerican Museum Prize, funded by the Bank of Good Practices, has been awarded to the Rainbow Project of Havana, the Museum of Modern Art of

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São Paulo, and to the Kite Mapamundi (Planisferio del Papalote) of the Children’s Museum of Mexico City. The Program to Support Endangered Museum Heritage has drawn from Chile’s painful experience in order to establish a methodology to protect and safeguard museum heritage in at-risk or emergency situations, and to ensure cooperation in the protection of Ibero-American nations’ museum collections. Of the many seminars and workshops that have taken place, those in Lorca (Spain), Bogotá, and Brasília stand out. A plan of action with short-, medium-, and long-term goals was created at the meeting that took place in Santiago in 2010. It is the basis for all actions to be undertaken in the future, including the creation of an Action Fund. In 2012, a meeting for ICOM specialists for the protection and promotion of museums and their collections took place in Rio de Janeiro, in which all members of the Ibero-American Museum Network participated. The results of this important meeting are already on the Internet: it renewed the message of the 1972 meeting in Santiago, and its conclusions and recommendations will be of great consequence for museums of the twenty-first century. The Program in Support of Curating Projects aims to support the conceptualization and the preproduction of exhibition projects between institutions with the purpose of incentivizing cooperation among museums of similar subject matter. For example, support has already been provided to AfroAmerican projects at the National Museum of Colombia, and to the National Afro-Peruvian Museum of Lima. The creation of an Ibero-American Museums Observatory is an institutional, intergovernmental, interdisciplinary project for the production, management, and exchange of knowledge among Ibero-American museums with the goal of establishing criteria that allow for the comparison of concepts, methodologies, data, and information relative to the museums of Ibero-America. The lines of action of the Ibermuseums Program are complemented by multilateral projects presented by various countries and approved by the Intergovernmental Council of the Ibero-American Museum Network. Specific projects for strengthening public museum policy in Central America have been set in motion by REDCAMUS (Central-American Museum Network); others include the project for digital access to museum heritage in Portuguesespeaking countries and an agreement with Ibero-American Educational and Cultural Television to publicize the diversity of museums that are part of the network.

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The call for competition funding makes possible the mobilization of specific projects in annual competitions, and the following have already been approved: the Publication on the Decade of Museum Heritage (2012–22), promotional videos, meetings for specialists such as the ICOM meeting in Rio de Janeiro, and the normalization and digitization of the collections of state museums in Uruguay. Finally, another Program on Instruction and Training has been established to develop a human resources specialization in the museum area. The first ID card for Ibero-American museum workers has already been created in order to make possible a fluid network, and to put in motion a new model of collaboration and joint management of resources, generating in this way a competitive and sustainable cultural community. The workers of the IberoAmerican museum community will themselves promote museum activities within the network in order to optimize resources. The only requirement to become a member of this network is to work in any museum or interpretation center of the twenty-two countries that comprise Ibero-America. Membership allows access to forums and projects, and discounts for courses and activities. Networks and open forums have not only been successful, they have inspired “good vibrations” and have actively “infected” other museum areas. An example is the recent creation of the Reina Sofía Museum Foundation in Spain, in which major Spanish and Ibero-American collectors participate with the aim of using contemporary art as a way of promoting the role of the Americas on the world stage, and of understanding cultural hybridity. José Jiménez, director general of fine arts in the Ministry of Culture between 2007 and 2010, offered institutional support for the birth and development of the Ibero-American Museum Network and Program. And as if that were not enough, a few months after leaving his post and returning to his professorship in aesthetics at the Autonomous University of Madrid, he presented us with his publication A Theory of Art from Latin America (Una teoría del arte desde América Latina), in which several Ibero-American specialists invited and selected by him reflect on the present and future of art in Latin America, tackling such issues as the relationship between native cultures and the university, cultural translations, aesthetic categories, the figure of the artist, the work of art, the curator, the exhibition, museums and their publics, the art market, the formation of megacities, performance art, new electronic media, digital culture, and art for the Internet. In sum, it offers a perspective from America with global reach. In one article, Ticio Escobar, former

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minister of culture of Paraguay and previously director of the Museum of Clay, wrote an observation that we believe can serve as a meditation on everything that has been said up to now on the vitality of indigenous art as a challenge to the universal, and as a space that offers a new alternative to the Western model, in opposition to the colonial model, which discriminates between superior and inferior cultural forms: Popular art implies a project of historical construction, an active movement of interpretation of the world, constitution of subjectivity, and affirmation of difference. By creating alternative forms, different communities work out their own stories, hastening sustainable models for the future: they relocate the landmarks of memory, and reimagine the reasons for the social pact. The self-affirming consistency of popular art constitutes a fundamental reference for collective identity and, therefore, an ingredient of social cohesion, and a factor in cultural resistance and political dialogue.

Ibero-American museums are those landmarks of memory, and our single banner is the Ibero-American Museum Network. We wish it a long life and a prosperous decade, forged in its 2012–22 program. (Translated by Francisca González Arias)

Realigning Mexican Museums in Today’s World Some Proposals for Communication, Development, and Evaluation of Our Museum Institutions miguel fernández félix

characteristics of mexican museums During the twentieth century, Mexico developed ways of caring for its cultural heritage. The immense historical and artistic wealth of our country has rendered cultural offerings, management, research, and care of our historical, ethnographic, and artistic heritage to be likewise diverse, thus giving life to differences in procedures and systems that must be debated. The present document aims to set forth the challenges regarding Mexican museums at the start of the twenty-first century.

historical antecedents and the present situation of mexican museums •

The practices established by cultural policy have become obsolete, resulting in the birth of a “new museology” characterized by renovations in design, installations, and subject matter that are on the way to breaking free of this centralized policy. To study public reception, management practices, et cetera has become essential. This implies the professionalization of guides, educators, museographers, museologists, caretakers, psychologists, administrators, and so on.

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The centralization of national identity values is visible in the distribution of the republic’s museums. There is a need for pluralization. 209

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There is a lamentable lag in the training of museum professionals and specialists devoted to museological research who can contribute to the improvement of the quality of conservation services and facilitate access to knowledge about museums.

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The cultural consumption of the INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History) and the INBA (National Institute of Fine Arts) has exceeded the conditions of infrastructure, management, and financing with which these institutions were originally created in the years between 1939 and 1947.

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There is an unequal distribution of supply and demand. The majority of museums are in the capital, while in Nayarit, Colima, Veracruz, or Tamaulipas there are around two hundred thousand inhabitants per museum. Chronic shortages of resources, and marginalization, exist in the greater part of Mexico’s museums.

some reflections on the inah and inba museums With the consolidation of the modern state, the institutes played a fundamental role as primary enunciators and guarantors of what, in the eyes of Mexicans, their culture should be. •

The goals that gave rise to the INAH are not current; the objective was to nourish Mexico’s mestizo pride in the consolidation of identity, and in defense of historical riches facing looting.

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The artistic sphere lacked an organism that would watch over its most celebrated works in the same manner. The INBA was born out of the need to alleviate this situation; the importance of arts education and the cultivation of literature were its central objectives.

This is a fundamental point that requires rethinking. The pressing issues are no longer identity and the construction of the past, but rather the autonomy that leads to more profound and current values. It is now essential to develop a program to foment research that transcends the tasks imposed in the past. Likewise, it is necessary to develop diff usion, information storage, educational outreach, services to the community, and so on.

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toward other possible axes of coordination 1. The coordinating axis of the functions of tracking and research is the visitor; it is necessary to have an understanding of the variety of audiences attended to by national, regional, private, and community museums in our country. Museums have lost their guardianship mission, and the awareness of the diversity of audiences renews and solidifies their purpose. •

Research on symbolic mediation exercised by museums should take into account the production of micro-identities, which entails a study of the public and its interaction, the rethinking of purposes, and the creation of a new awareness among individuals from diverse communities, underlining the importance of the museum as a media institution.

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It is essential to outline strategies to create better studies on the public, for which it will be necessary to train staff, which means investing in specialized personnel.

2. Collections are the basic strength that, together with visitors, makes possible the existence of museums. Today’s challenge is to establish a standardized catalogue of holdings, and to set into motion a network that will allow them to be known and valued. •

Registering and cataloguing according to minimum standards is indispensable in order to guard, administrate, and care for a collection.

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A standardized database for consultation by the public is fundamental in order to facilitate the work of planning exhibitions, caring for cultural heritage, and disseminating information to the public. In the short term it is urgent to have minimum authorized entries by index card for each work, and make them available on the web.

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Adequate policies must be developed that enable access to channels for the raising of funds devoted to the purchase of works, and recognition of their social value.

3. With regard to the political aspect, there are three types of museum institutions: those that rely on the state, those that belong to a community, and private entities. Basic lines of action exist in the form of internal standards,

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project development, annual programs or six-year programs, et cetera. Some needs are continuity of personnel to guarantee long-term performance, and training, evaluation, and incentives for administrative, manual, and technical workers. These dynamics can be improved through a plan that calls for the involvement of administrative, academic, and management indicators. For this it is necessary to create: •

Channels that facilitate interaction among institutions.

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Transparency of management mechanisms in each museum to facilitate communication and cooperation. This will make possible joint projects and new channels of cooperation. (But this should take into account differences and necessities determined by local laws in order to consider what is characteristic to each area so that institutions that do not, for some reason, have the possibility of taking part are not affected.)

4. With regard to standards, it is necessary to review the legislation for state museums and the regulation of cultural heritage, as well as to systematically inform workers about the rules guiding their work. If, as a result of this study and review, there is a need to change the law, museums should send a delegation to the government to promote such reforms. 5. One of the principal obstacles facing Mexican museums is the scarcity of resources and the difficulty, due to fiscal and administrative obstacles, of channeling funding that has been obtained. Trade union policies and fiscal strategies have, on occasion, made effective channeling of funds practically impossible. Private initiative has at times seen itself dissuaded from participating in the attainment of a public museum’s objectives given the difficulties established by law regarding the entry and distribution of resources. A major challenge is the consolidation of funds for investment in infrastructure to help standardize the quality of services. 6. Museum workers have been highly neglected. It is imperative to constitute axes of coordination that enable their adequate professionalization, as well as relationships with public and private educational institutions that train professionals in the areas of museology and museography. Correct evaluation of museum workers and personnel should be a goal, as well as raising awareness

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of museum workers’ public function (the corresponding government department would have to enlarge its functions in this area, analyzing the impact with the community, the mission of this work, symbolic mediation, and its purposes and results). Likewise, it is necessary to acquire a basic staff to guarantee quality and continuity in the event of political changes, and to be able to rely on a structure with a minimum number of positions. In addition, salaries should be made comparable across a category, with remuneration according to national standards that foresee budget possibilities and the needs of each museum. A network to announce existing job vacancies with their corresponding job descriptions would be of great value. 7. Tourism: For administrations, historical heritage has become an article of tourist consumption and an instrument for local development. The relationship between cultural heritage and tourism is becoming stronger, and should be seen as a continual source of feedback with major social impact, with the result, as well, of making a national system of small-scale museums ever more sustainable. The construction of a museum potentially means recognizing the social value of the public and the private. The insertion of museums into tourist enclaves also helps to develop projects of postindustrial urban reorganization, as has occurred in England, Germany, and Austria. Collective memory has taken on relevance in museums in tourist enclaves because they participate in the production of universal iconic symbols. To speak now of Aztecs, Maya, Romans, Jews, or Egyptians also implies acceptance of the fact that we possess images of post-museographic discourses. Historic districts, archaeological and monument sites, beaches, and museums are immersed in circuits of cultural consumption that tend toward feedback. It is appropriate here, however, to ask if it is possible to avoid the total mercantilization, the unilateral surrender of cultural heritage to private companies. How can we preserve the public objectives that gave rise to the creation of the museum without subordinating everything to profit? The need emerges here to guarantee the supervision of standards by the state. At the same time, it is essential that civil society activate its role of responsibility in the preservation of historical heritage.

by way of conclusion What is posited here is a profound revision of the functions of recording, coordinating, refereeing, and evaluating museums, independently of their

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origins, budget sources, or institutional affiliations. One of the challenges for museums is to attain greater autonomy in three areas: the administrative, the political, and the financial. Only in this way will it become easier for national and regional museums to find the right course for their social projection and the redefinition of their mission. What is still needed is the development of fundamental elements to track each of the points referred to here, and the clear task of de-bureaucratizing a sector that urgently needs to think about ever-more-agile mechanisms of selffunding and self-sustainment. Culture is indispensable for elaborating strategies of media persuasion, transmission, and communication that will make consensus and action possible. It is undeniable that one of the most critical debates focuses on turning the state not into a protagonist, but into one more agent, the guarantor of technical and standards oversight. To avoid the massive bureaucracy that has directed culture from the top down, the government should design practices that contribute to co-responsibility with civil society and the political class. This entails the construction of consensus and networks with viable proposals that lead toward the organization of civil society around a common cause. Intellectual elites and authoritarianisms within governmental entities have no place in this purview of co-responsibility. Transition to a new museology of social, democratic, and plural participation must take place. It is a matter of adopting a creative role in strengthening the autonomy of society, and of corporate interests created by the cultural apparatus of the last half of the twentieth century. (Translated by Francisca González Arias)

Creating Your Own Conversations in a Panarchy of Museums

This book, this platform for changing museum conversations in the Americas, came to pass in no small part from a desire shared by many of our colleagues to move beyond our comfortable networks. We did this often in our IMI meetings and workshops. Opening new windows, bringing in new voices, resulted in conversations that were multi-dialectical in nature, with specialists from various geographies, societies, structures, and disciplinary fields each speaking his or her own distinctive language. In an era of reductive specialization, this heterogeneity has not always been celebrated, as we live in a world thirsting for commonalities and universalisms. But, we would argue that to live resiliently in a volatile world, at least occasional remixing is requisite. We have expanded, in Remix, beyond the participation in our meetings and workshops and invited together even more voices and museums from throughout the hemisphere. Hopefully, reading through its chapters, you have been challenged to reconsider not only your own museum world and its work, but also the value in exploring the myriad of untapped museum voices in your own respective regions, inside and outside of your own museum constellations. We are, in effect, proposing that we move beyond our comfortable networks, remove the fences, and get out of our real and metaphorical backyards.

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Our Writers A Pan-American Highway

In 1929, the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges observed a significant hemispheric fragmentation: “The men of the diverse Americas remain so disconnected that we barely know each other secondhand, narrated by Europe.” Featuring writers from all points across the vast Western hemisphere, this book is much like the famous “Pan-American Highway, a system so vast, so incomplete, and so incomprehensible it is not so much a road as it is the idea of Pan-Americanism itself.” Stretching from Alaska to the pencil tip of Argentina, the nearly thirty-thousand-mile-long Pan-American Highway holds the record as the world’s longest mostly drivable road. It traverses the world’s largest north-to-south landmass, from arctic tundra to tropical rainforest and beyond. Along with the new application of the theory of Panarchy to the field of museology, perhaps the most novel aspects of this volume are its unharmonized voices from across the Americas: a flurry of ideas with little if any common ground or shared narrative. It should be underscored that it is

1. The original Spanish reads: “Los hombres de las diversas Américas permanecemos tan incomunicados que apenas nos conocemos por referencia, contados por Europa.” Jorge Luis Borges, “El otro Whitman,” in Discusión (Buenos Aires: M. Glezier) 1929), 206. 2. Jake Silverstein, “Highway Run,” Harper’s (July 2006): 70–80. 3. In a system of Panarchy, “common ground” is not necessary. In fact, it is the nonhierarchical or not-shared narratives that can produce the most fruit.

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not trying to use the writers as a trope to present some unifying or reductionist theory of the greater Americas. As the Mexican philosopher and historian Edmundo O’Gorman warned, that would only “flatten differences in order to produce a distorted narrative of similitude.”  Rather, this book celebrates a nuanced, complicated, Pan-American panoply via writers who emphasize the Americas’ lacunae and complexities. This collection of essays is a discourse setting up the potential for “multi-logues” across, among, and between other often-isolated discourses. It is meant as a catalyst, a convener.

4. Edmundo O’Gorman, Hegel y el moderno panamericanismo (Havana: Universidad de Havana, 1939), 61–74.

CONTRIBUTORS

mari-tere álvarez, phd (United States) is a project specialist at the J. Paul Getty Museum and associate director of USC’s International Museum Institute. maxwell l. anderson, phd (United States) is the managing director at the New Cities Foundation, New York, and former Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. nichole anderson (Canada) is president and CEO of Business for the Arts, based in Toronto. professor manuel araya-incera (Costa Rica) is president of the National Academy of History and Geography, San José. óscar arias sánchez, phd (Costa Rica) is a Nobel laureate and former president of Costa Rica. alejandro de ávila b., phd (Mexico) is the founding director of Oaxaca’s Ethnobotanical Garden and the founding director and curator of the Textile Museum, Oaxaca. marco barrera bassols (Mexico) was recently the director of the museums of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, and formerly the director of the National Museum of Natural History, Mexico City. guillermo barrios, phd (Venezuela) is dean of the Architecture School of the Central University, Caracas, and formerly the national director of museums for Venezuela’s National Council of Culture. susana smith bautista, phd (United States) is head of public engagement at the USC Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, California. graham w. j. beal (United States) retired from the Detroit Institute of Arts in 2015 and is now director emeritus. He is the 2015–16 Hannah Visiting Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University. 221

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lydia bendersky (Chile) is the former director of the Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC. jane burrell (United States) is senior vice president of education and public programs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. cuauhtémoc camarena (Mexico) is a cofounder of the Union of Community Museums of Oaxaca, the National Union of Community Museums and Ecomuseums of Mexico, and the Network of Community Museums of America. thomas p. campbell, phd (United States) is the director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. erica clark (United States) is the former associate director for program partnerships at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. chip colwell, phd (United States) is a curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. héctor feliciano (Puerto Rico) is the author of The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art (Basic Books, 1997) and a founding board member of the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico, San Juan. miguel fernández félix (Mexico) is the director of the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City. dr. james d. fleck o. c. (Canada) is vice chair of the Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, Quebec. demian flores (Mexico) is an artist and the founding director of La Curtiduría, an independent cultural space in Oaxaca and Mexico City. william fox (United States) is the director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno. ben garcia (United States) is the associate director of the San Diego Museum of Man, and formerly the head of interpretation at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. ivan gaskell, phd (United States) is a professor at Bard Graduate Center, Annandaleon-Hudson, New York, and curator and head of the Focus Gallery Project at Bard. piedade grinberg (Brazil) is the director of Solar Grandjean de Montigny - Museu Universitário PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro. tom hanchett, phd (United States) is a staff historian at Levine Museum of the New South, Charlotte, North Carolina. selma holo, phd (United States) is a professor of art history at the University of Southern California and director of USC’s Fisher Museum of Art and International Museum Institute. richard koshalek (United States) is a former director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

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clare kunny (United States) is the founding director of Art Muse Los Angeles. teresa morales (Mexico) is a cofounder of the Union of Community Museums of Oaxaca, the National Union of Community Museums and Ecomuseums of Mexico, and the Network of Community Museums of America. stephen e. nash, phd (United States) is a curator of archaeology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. andrés navia (Colombia) is the director of the Organization of American States AMA | Art Museum of the Americas. joanne s. northrup (United States) is the director of contemporary art initiatives at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno. santiago palomero plaza, phd (Spain) is the director of the Sephardic Museum in Toledo, Spain, former general subdirector of the state museums for Spain’s Ministry of Culture, and architect of the international Ibero-American Museums treaty. patricia phelps de cisneros (Venezuela) is a patron and collector, and founder of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. jane g. pisano, phd (United States) is president and director of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. nelly m. robles garcía, phd (Mexico) is project director at the Atzompa archaeological site in Oaxaca, Mexico, and former director of archaeology for Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology (INAH). edward rothstein, phd (United States) is a Wall Street Journal critic at large, and former New York Times critic at large. karen satzman (United States) is the director of youth and family programs in the Education and Public Programs Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. lori starr (United States) is the executive director of the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, and a former director of the Koffler Centre of the Arts, Toronto. carlos tortolero (United States) is the founder, president, and CEO of the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago. kristina van dyke, phd (United States) is the former director of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Saint Louis. mario vargas llosa, phd (Peru) is a writer and Nobel laureate for literature. vanda vitali, phd (Canada) is the former head of the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. david wilson (United States) is the founding director of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles, and a MacArthur Fellowship recipient. fred wilson (United States) is a conceptual artist based in New York.