Collections, and the extent to which we are - or are not -honouring them appropriately in relation to acquisition, scholarship, presentation and public accountability are very much in the air once again. Scratch the surface of almost any regional museum's forward
plan and you will find a version of the assertion that 'collections are at the heart of everything we do'.
Yet there seems to be a growing discrepancy between what many museums say about their collections and what they actually do about them. Too often, in the drive towards the 'edutaining' narratives that we believe meet public need and institutional responsibility, we are using objects as secondary illustration rather than primary evidence.
As a result we are experiencing, and beginning to feel concerned about, an apparent loss of in-depth understanding of collections, particularly in regional museums. 'Of course,' we protest, 'we've never really lost sight of the centrality of our collections: it's just that we can't afford the luxury of dedicated specialist curators anymore.' But this is only part of the story of the erosion of collections-based knowledge.
What cannot be in doubt is that the kind of passionate commitment to the interrogation of collections that was still highly valued in most museums until, say, the mid-1980s, seems all too frequently to have become an irritating embarrassment to directors and managers driven by a very particular understanding of the concepts of access and accountability.
It is not over-dramatising to suggest that in many institutions, backroom battle lines are still drawn between the self-appointed defenders of collections expertise and the self-perceived champions of accessibility- and the real casualties are, of course, likely to be those very collections and people whom we claim to love and serve.
Let me be quite clear about two things. I am not for a moment advocating a return to some supposed Golden Age when specialist curators were gods, the collections their playthings and visiting mortals their pawns.
Nor am I suggesting that the recent emphasis placed on ease of intellectual access is wrong. Rather, I have a concern that we may now be in danger of reaching a point of no return with regard to curatorial expertise in some disciplines unless we begin creatively to consider what is to be done to arrest the decline. So how might we best address the problem?
First, I believe, we need to take a hard (and, for some colleagues, painful) look at what kinds of object-based scholarship we think we need or should positively encourage. Next, we might consider if a single individual could offer that knowledge. In many museums, conservators and those closely involved in education are likely to have a greater understanding of the potential of individual objects than the ostensible experts.
Where they are potentially sustainable, the initiatives surrounding specialist subject networks are a promising start, particularly those being considered by the newly launched Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of its research in museums. But we also need to address the institutional cultures that have, however passively, condoned the situation.
Museums are, alas, hotbeds of institutionalisation. In all but the smallest, even the youngest staff are inclined to identify quickly with one sub-group or another, and the longer our careers the more entrenched we are likely to become in our position.
Which brings me to entry-level training. It is here, I suggest, that we stand the best chance of nudging those changes in culture without which we stand little hope of re-energising our collections.
But to do so we may need to reconsider the approach and content of postgraduate courses. At the moment - and I recognise that I am over-simplifying - there are two principal routes to entry. The formally academic route proposes that scholarship is king and any necessary generic museum skills can quickly and easily be learned 'on the job'.
Alternatively, the rapidly proliferating museum studies masters' programmes turn out increasing numbers of extremely well-trained generalists, with a great passion for museums, but surprisingly little real love of objects.
The young academics are often in danger of learning and replicating the benignly autocratic professional attitudes and behaviours of their institutional predecessors, while the neophyte generalists can quickly be absorbed into a culture in which objects must be subordinated to the political, social and regenerative roles of museums.
How, then, to get the best of both worlds? How might we train people with a resistance to reactive institutionalisation and a more fluid, creative and proactive approach to the relationships between collections, knowledge and access? Perhaps we should begin to develop postgraduate programmes that place students in museum collections from the outset, in much the same way as trainee teachers are plunged straight into the classroom.
The assimilation of object-based knowledge, surely, comes most easily in the context of apprenticeship to a skilled and generous tutor. Such practical initiation is far more substantial than mere internships, but it would need to be balanced by the structured acquisition of generic skills, understanding of learning theory and development of an open, self-analytical and politicised professional approach.
In the future it may be that we are most likely to need 'mutable' or 'adaptive' museum scholarship, which allows for, rather than defends against, varied and even contradictory approaches to the same material. But what is surely self-evident is that it must be underpinned by the passionate commitment to the understanding of objects and collections that so many museums are in danger of losing.
plan and you will find a version of the assertion that 'collections are at the heart of everything we do'.
Yet there seems to be a growing discrepancy between what many museums say about their collections and what they actually do about them. Too often, in the drive towards the 'edutaining' narratives that we believe meet public need and institutional responsibility, we are using objects as secondary illustration rather than primary evidence.
As a result we are experiencing, and beginning to feel concerned about, an apparent loss of in-depth understanding of collections, particularly in regional museums. 'Of course,' we protest, 'we've never really lost sight of the centrality of our collections: it's just that we can't afford the luxury of dedicated specialist curators anymore.' But this is only part of the story of the erosion of collections-based knowledge.
What cannot be in doubt is that the kind of passionate commitment to the interrogation of collections that was still highly valued in most museums until, say, the mid-1980s, seems all too frequently to have become an irritating embarrassment to directors and managers driven by a very particular understanding of the concepts of access and accountability.
It is not over-dramatising to suggest that in many institutions, backroom battle lines are still drawn between the self-appointed defenders of collections expertise and the self-perceived champions of accessibility- and the real casualties are, of course, likely to be those very collections and people whom we claim to love and serve.
Let me be quite clear about two things. I am not for a moment advocating a return to some supposed Golden Age when specialist curators were gods, the collections their playthings and visiting mortals their pawns.
Nor am I suggesting that the recent emphasis placed on ease of intellectual access is wrong. Rather, I have a concern that we may now be in danger of reaching a point of no return with regard to curatorial expertise in some disciplines unless we begin creatively to consider what is to be done to arrest the decline. So how might we best address the problem?
First, I believe, we need to take a hard (and, for some colleagues, painful) look at what kinds of object-based scholarship we think we need or should positively encourage. Next, we might consider if a single individual could offer that knowledge. In many museums, conservators and those closely involved in education are likely to have a greater understanding of the potential of individual objects than the ostensible experts.
Where they are potentially sustainable, the initiatives surrounding specialist subject networks are a promising start, particularly those being considered by the newly launched Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of its research in museums. But we also need to address the institutional cultures that have, however passively, condoned the situation.
Museums are, alas, hotbeds of institutionalisation. In all but the smallest, even the youngest staff are inclined to identify quickly with one sub-group or another, and the longer our careers the more entrenched we are likely to become in our position.
Which brings me to entry-level training. It is here, I suggest, that we stand the best chance of nudging those changes in culture without which we stand little hope of re-energising our collections.
But to do so we may need to reconsider the approach and content of postgraduate courses. At the moment - and I recognise that I am over-simplifying - there are two principal routes to entry. The formally academic route proposes that scholarship is king and any necessary generic museum skills can quickly and easily be learned 'on the job'.
Alternatively, the rapidly proliferating museum studies masters' programmes turn out increasing numbers of extremely well-trained generalists, with a great passion for museums, but surprisingly little real love of objects.
The young academics are often in danger of learning and replicating the benignly autocratic professional attitudes and behaviours of their institutional predecessors, while the neophyte generalists can quickly be absorbed into a culture in which objects must be subordinated to the political, social and regenerative roles of museums.
How, then, to get the best of both worlds? How might we train people with a resistance to reactive institutionalisation and a more fluid, creative and proactive approach to the relationships between collections, knowledge and access? Perhaps we should begin to develop postgraduate programmes that place students in museum collections from the outset, in much the same way as trainee teachers are plunged straight into the classroom.
The assimilation of object-based knowledge, surely, comes most easily in the context of apprenticeship to a skilled and generous tutor. Such practical initiation is far more substantial than mere internships, but it would need to be balanced by the structured acquisition of generic skills, understanding of learning theory and development of an open, self-analytical and politicised professional approach.
In the future it may be that we are most likely to need 'mutable' or 'adaptive' museum scholarship, which allows for, rather than defends against, varied and even contradictory approaches to the same material. But what is surely self-evident is that it must be underpinned by the passionate commitment to the understanding of objects and collections that so many museums are in danger of losing.
