CECA 2009 - Day 3
7 October 2009
Today saw an inspiring morning full of stimulating presentations. It’s impossible to cover them all in great detail, so I will focus a few that stood out for me.
To start us off we had curator/artist/writer/architect couple Tanja Thorjussen and Don Lawrence from Norway presenting ‘Museum Architecture as an Interpretive Instrument’, which looked at how museums should tackle space planning based on visitors’ needs. They introduced us to the idea of ‘formidling’, a Norwegian term which can mean as much as to convey, interpret, educate, transmit, inform, intermediate or communicate, and suggested that the role of the architecture is to facilitate how collections are experienced, acting much like background music in a film does. They proposed that the museum can be seen as a constellation of sensations, which can be grouped into three categories: stimuli (e.g. critical, curious), rest (e.g. relaxed, calm) and wow (e.g. fascinated, amazed). Within this framework, spaces can thus be designed depending on how we want our collections to be experienced - stimuli spaces could include gallery and exhibition spaces or lecture halls, rest spaces could include a cafe, courtyard, or even just benches around the museum, wow spaces could include the entrance to a museum or special events spaces. Some examples given were the Bilbao (possibly too much wow?) and the V&A (a good balance of stimuli and rest spaces based around their courtyards).
In his keynote paper, Prof George Hein revisited the question “Why do we educate?” - without display/ interpretation/ education we may have a collection or a warehouse full of objects, but we don’t have a museum. His paper further went on to examine the relationship between museums and democracy, and gave an historical overview of key ideas in museum education, reminding us among other things of Dewey’s philosophy, the Jeffersonian conception of education, Constructivism, and Paolo Freire’s approach to teaching. Prof Hein concluded by saying that “Progressive education institutions examine their own structure and processes, not only their relationship to their visitors.”
An engaging talk by Arja van Veldhuizen (from Utrecht, the Netherlands) looked at museums as a tool for making identity. Arja suggested that the growing interest in local and national history may be a result, among other things, of globalisation, i.e. people wanting something for themselves. She then went on to introduce some recent initiatives in the Netherlands: a ‘Canon’ of Dutch history and culture, with the task of the Canon committee being to select the valuable aspects of Dutch culture and history to pass on to new generations; and a National History Museum. Museums in the Netherlands were sceptical of the Canon, but have embraced it and the attention it has brought in creating a new spotlight on museums and an increased interest in history. She concluded by advising that museums ‘use these developments, instead of them using you!’
Finally, Michael Cassin (from Massachusetts, USA) reminded us that we need to create space for thinking, both for visitors but also for us as museum professionals. Quote of the day: “Museums are places that house some of the most wonderful things in the world.” Ergo, museum education is about enticing a capacity for wonder, and offering opportunities for engaging with wonder - thus we need to create space for thinking and give people time to think.
Peter Schueller (from Düsseldorf, Germany) also introduced the ‘Qualitätskriterien für Museen: Bildungs- und Vermittlungsarbeit’, the guidelines and standards for museum professionals produced by the German-speaking museums associations. It’s currently only available in German, but can be downloaded on the web at www.museumspaedagogik.org or www.museumsbund.de. Also, cudos to Daniel Castro Benitez (from Bogotá, Columbia), who had prepared his paper in Spanish but, due to lack of a translator, switched to presenting in English (from his Spanish notes) at short notice.
After an afternoon of visiting various museums in Reykjavík (and the disappointment of discovering that the much revered manuscripts mentioned in Tuesday’s keynote paper are currently not on display), the day finished with a reception at the National Gallery of Iceland, with more art, networking, music and even some dancing.
