Museums collections were founded on the belief that people have the right to look at and question everything. The right to question is not yet under threat, but the right to look is.
Across North America, gaps have started to appear in museum displays. The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act required museums to ask aboriginal groups how 'their' collections were to be interpreted, stored and, above all, seen.
So 30,000 human remains and 600,000 funerary objects have left museum collections to be reburied or re-used. It had been decided that they should not be exposed to public view.
All right-minded curators agreed with this. 'Red Indians' had been treated as sub-human by most settlers. If you look at it cynically, handing back a few objects was a lot cheaper than returning land. But there was more to it than righting a wrong. A shift had occurred in the museum profession.
The curator's job was no longer to collect, research, understand and display, but to represent a community's interests. To use the jargon promoted by the Smithsonian, curators were to be 'stewards'.
Stewards are the epitome of discretion: they manage what their masters wish to be seen and what they don't. They are the bulwark against the investigative journalist whose ambition to expose was much closer to that of the curator of old.
I'm not advocating a return to the rampant disregard of the coloniser, which underpinned so many museums' collections. The Roman general Pompey famously tore apart the curtain covering the Holy of Holies in the Temple at Jerusalem, to find what he'd been told but didn't believe; that there was nothing there. He only needed to peep. But even that wouldn't happen today, so respectfully do we avert our gaze at another's request.
The right to look, though, is not one that should easily be given up. It is as human to want to see as it is to want to imagine - and believe. Seeing for ourselves, testing the evidence of our eyes, has brought us all the benefits of science, and helped to protect us against exploitation. And seeing for ourselves is what museums are, or were, about.
The right to look was hard won and by no means universal. I've tried to outline the story for the first time in my book The Art of Wonder: A History of Seeing. I'm still amazed how long we took to look. Descartes, writing at the start of the Enlightenment in the 17th century, thought it was a disgrace that we'd only discovered the telescope and microscope by chance.
It never occurred to Leonardo, a century earlier, to think that there might be anything to see beyond what he could see with his naked eye. That is why he developed his sfumato effect in painting. He thought the secret of life would be found in the mist that encompassed all perception - the equivalent to the Veil of Maya that Buddha's mother threw around us to prevent us remembering our birth or foreseeing our death. That's the reason Leonardo's mountain scenes are so like those of the Chinese.
Veils have now become the symbol of two different ways of seeing - Christians and materialists on the one hand and Muslims on the other. The burka probably had its origins in our perception of the sun and moon, which appear, remarkably, to be the same size when viewed from Earth. The moon becomes pregnant and is veiled during the day - as are Muslim women when they walk out from the home.
The burka also protects its wearer from the evil eye. Seeing was universally believed until the 17th century in Europe to be a beam sent out from the eye, not merely the passive reception of light waves, and it still is in many cultures.
It might seem odd today to link Christianity with materialism but that is exactly what distinguished it from the other biblical faiths, and why the art it inspired was unique. Christians believe that God not only created the world but also walked in it. He could be seen. Jews and Muslims believe the same God cannot be seen.
Alone among the great world religions, Christianity encouraged its followers to look closely at the world and see divinity in God's creation. So Christianity led to naturalistic art and the scientific examination of nature, which ultimately undermined its own teachings of creation.
The debate between creationism and evolution illustrates just how much ways of seeing are becoming polarised. Museums, if they want to be meaningful to people of all cultures, have to embrace all of these views. They have to cease being spearheads for the Enlightenment, and become agents for imaginative understanding.
The American Museum of Natural History has left creationism out of its Darwin exhibition, arguing that 'creationism invokes a cause that lies outside our powers of observation and thus outside the realm of scientific enquiry' - and, therefore, of science museums. But who is going to take on board these conflicting views, and audiences, if science museums don't?
The history of seeing provides museums with a common ground on which to present different views without taking sides. Both religion and science sprang from our sense of wonder, which legitimises the act of looking without prescribing the conclusion. By learning new ways to
generate wonder, museums can become genuinely multicultural - and, once again, an agent for good in society.
Julian Spalding is an author, the former director of art galleries and museums for the cities of Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow, and a founder of the Campaign for Drawing
The Art of Wonder: A History of Seeing by Julian Spalding is published by Prestel, price £18.99, ISBN: 3 7913 3150
Across North America, gaps have started to appear in museum displays. The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act required museums to ask aboriginal groups how 'their' collections were to be interpreted, stored and, above all, seen.
So 30,000 human remains and 600,000 funerary objects have left museum collections to be reburied or re-used. It had been decided that they should not be exposed to public view.
All right-minded curators agreed with this. 'Red Indians' had been treated as sub-human by most settlers. If you look at it cynically, handing back a few objects was a lot cheaper than returning land. But there was more to it than righting a wrong. A shift had occurred in the museum profession.
The curator's job was no longer to collect, research, understand and display, but to represent a community's interests. To use the jargon promoted by the Smithsonian, curators were to be 'stewards'.
Stewards are the epitome of discretion: they manage what their masters wish to be seen and what they don't. They are the bulwark against the investigative journalist whose ambition to expose was much closer to that of the curator of old.
I'm not advocating a return to the rampant disregard of the coloniser, which underpinned so many museums' collections. The Roman general Pompey famously tore apart the curtain covering the Holy of Holies in the Temple at Jerusalem, to find what he'd been told but didn't believe; that there was nothing there. He only needed to peep. But even that wouldn't happen today, so respectfully do we avert our gaze at another's request.
The right to look, though, is not one that should easily be given up. It is as human to want to see as it is to want to imagine - and believe. Seeing for ourselves, testing the evidence of our eyes, has brought us all the benefits of science, and helped to protect us against exploitation. And seeing for ourselves is what museums are, or were, about.
The right to look was hard won and by no means universal. I've tried to outline the story for the first time in my book The Art of Wonder: A History of Seeing. I'm still amazed how long we took to look. Descartes, writing at the start of the Enlightenment in the 17th century, thought it was a disgrace that we'd only discovered the telescope and microscope by chance.
It never occurred to Leonardo, a century earlier, to think that there might be anything to see beyond what he could see with his naked eye. That is why he developed his sfumato effect in painting. He thought the secret of life would be found in the mist that encompassed all perception - the equivalent to the Veil of Maya that Buddha's mother threw around us to prevent us remembering our birth or foreseeing our death. That's the reason Leonardo's mountain scenes are so like those of the Chinese.
Veils have now become the symbol of two different ways of seeing - Christians and materialists on the one hand and Muslims on the other. The burka probably had its origins in our perception of the sun and moon, which appear, remarkably, to be the same size when viewed from Earth. The moon becomes pregnant and is veiled during the day - as are Muslim women when they walk out from the home.
The burka also protects its wearer from the evil eye. Seeing was universally believed until the 17th century in Europe to be a beam sent out from the eye, not merely the passive reception of light waves, and it still is in many cultures.
It might seem odd today to link Christianity with materialism but that is exactly what distinguished it from the other biblical faiths, and why the art it inspired was unique. Christians believe that God not only created the world but also walked in it. He could be seen. Jews and Muslims believe the same God cannot be seen.
Alone among the great world religions, Christianity encouraged its followers to look closely at the world and see divinity in God's creation. So Christianity led to naturalistic art and the scientific examination of nature, which ultimately undermined its own teachings of creation.
The debate between creationism and evolution illustrates just how much ways of seeing are becoming polarised. Museums, if they want to be meaningful to people of all cultures, have to embrace all of these views. They have to cease being spearheads for the Enlightenment, and become agents for imaginative understanding.
The American Museum of Natural History has left creationism out of its Darwin exhibition, arguing that 'creationism invokes a cause that lies outside our powers of observation and thus outside the realm of scientific enquiry' - and, therefore, of science museums. But who is going to take on board these conflicting views, and audiences, if science museums don't?
The history of seeing provides museums with a common ground on which to present different views without taking sides. Both religion and science sprang from our sense of wonder, which legitimises the act of looking without prescribing the conclusion. By learning new ways to
generate wonder, museums can become genuinely multicultural - and, once again, an agent for good in society.
Julian Spalding is an author, the former director of art galleries and museums for the cities of Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow, and a founder of the Campaign for Drawing
The Art of Wonder: A History of Seeing by Julian Spalding is published by Prestel, price £18.99, ISBN: 3 7913 3150
