Letters
Ditch the reticent object and all its master narratives
Good luck to all those young museum professionals recently profiled in your magazine.
All had postgraduate degrees in museum studies and confidence that these degrees qualified them to do the job. But are these qualifications enough to mark these candidates out in a crowded field?
Museums are about preserving and interpreting objects. Though we are bombarded with images, visitors clearly recognise what all curators know intuitively: that there is something about the objects that the best reproduction and interpretive media struggle to capture.
The object is where the curiosity of the visitor and the passion of the curator meet. It was worrying, therefore, to find that only one of the six people profiled mentioned a love of “working with objects” or the appeal of working in the historic built environment. Instead, we found one noting the problems of engaging visitors with the “authentic”.
The silence as well as this problematising of “the aura of the original” are characteristic of the museology these students will have been taught in their museum studies courses, with its anxieties about “master narratives” and often impenetrable prose ruminating on “the reticent object”. If this was all there was to museum work, these students would indeed be well-qualified.
As someone with experience of running a masters programme in history, I recognise that museum studies courses can be a cash-cow for universities and that demand for such courses is rising.
But is this a good thing? My concern is not that museum studies courses represent poor value for money. It’s not even that they are adding to existing obstacles to entry to the profession by fostering a sense that you aren’t serious about the sector unless and until you have such a degree under your belt.
It’s that they are building barriers between the graduates you profiled and the objects they will – we hope – eventually care for.
Jonathan Conlin, senior lecturer, University of Southampton
All had postgraduate degrees in museum studies and confidence that these degrees qualified them to do the job. But are these qualifications enough to mark these candidates out in a crowded field?
Museums are about preserving and interpreting objects. Though we are bombarded with images, visitors clearly recognise what all curators know intuitively: that there is something about the objects that the best reproduction and interpretive media struggle to capture.
The object is where the curiosity of the visitor and the passion of the curator meet. It was worrying, therefore, to find that only one of the six people profiled mentioned a love of “working with objects” or the appeal of working in the historic built environment. Instead, we found one noting the problems of engaging visitors with the “authentic”.
The silence as well as this problematising of “the aura of the original” are characteristic of the museology these students will have been taught in their museum studies courses, with its anxieties about “master narratives” and often impenetrable prose ruminating on “the reticent object”. If this was all there was to museum work, these students would indeed be well-qualified.
As someone with experience of running a masters programme in history, I recognise that museum studies courses can be a cash-cow for universities and that demand for such courses is rising.
But is this a good thing? My concern is not that museum studies courses represent poor value for money. It’s not even that they are adding to existing obstacles to entry to the profession by fostering a sense that you aren’t serious about the sector unless and until you have such a degree under your belt.
It’s that they are building barriers between the graduates you profiled and the objects they will – we hope – eventually care for.
Jonathan Conlin, senior lecturer, University of Southampton