Museums haven’t been shy about wading into the politics of the day, but a new definition of “museum,” which the membership of the nearly 75-year-old International Council of Museums will vote upon in Kyoto, Japan, this month, is poised to potentially remake the field. The proposed definition from ICOM, with 40,000 members in more than 141 countries, is worth quoting in full (sic throughout):
“Museums are democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people. Museums are not for profit. They are participatory and transparent, and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the world, aiming to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing.”
This 99-word definition, a more than 100% increase in words from the previous 2007 ICOM definition — “A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment” — directly engages today’s politics. This social justice bent risks alienating many traditional museumgoers, even as it seeks to encourage historically underrepresented populations.
At the press viewing last year of the $41 million Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, I saw Paul Rucker’s “Storm in the Time of Shelter” (2015–18), which displays more than 50 mannequins clad in colorful, Ku Klux Klan-styled robes. Rucker’s aim is to show that KKK-style racism is not simply a relic of history, but a very real force in society today.
Addressing racism so bluntly in an inaugural show less than a mile from Richmond’s Robert E. Lee memorial on Monument Avenue takes guts. But, as I asked VCU President Michael Rao, doesn’t displaying such a work essentially ensure the museum preaches to the choir and discourages those most in need of being dissuaded from their troubling beliefs on race?
Rao demurred, as have dozens of museum officials with whom I’ve spoken recently. If conservatives dismiss the estimated 3,000 ICOM general conference participants’ vote in Kyoto the first week of September as an inside-baseball definition that doesn’t affect their lives, they’ll do so at their own risk. Museums in the United States spend more than $2 billion annually to educate 850 million visitors every year, reports the American Alliance of Museums. “Museums are considered the most trustworthy source of information in America, rated higher than local papers, nonprofits researchers, the U.S. government, or academic researchers,” per AAM — rated higher than even books, teachers, and accounts from relatives.
The proposed ICOM definition, says former Smithsonian official and former director of the Baltimore Museum of Art Tom Freudenheim, omits key words that museums used to address, including: learning, education, enlightenment, public, vision, scholarship, expertise, quality, connoisseurship, distinction, difference, open, interact, enjoyment, pleasure, recreation, imagination, thoughtful, and leisure.
Freudenheim questions much of the proposed definition’s jargon, such as “democratize” and “polyphonic.” (Will that include creationist and climate change-denying voices in natural history museums? Doubtful.) He observes that museums often dispose of the objects the definition claims they hold in trust for society. Equal access is granted to visitors who pay admission, and even nonprofit museums often pay corporate salaries. What about contributing to human dignity? Freudenheim wonders how anthropological displays of weapons and medieval paintings of Jews jeering at the crucified Jesus contribute to human dignity.
“As I often said in the ’60s and ’70s when museums were under attack, ‘It’s only a museum. Don’t expect it to solve all the world’s problems just because society’s other institutions have failed to do so,’” Freudenheim told me. “Poor museums, they are now the Zambonis of the world: smoothing out (and covering up?) the messes made by everyone else.”
Not only does the proposed ICOM definition risk smoothing out the contours of museum collections, whose rougher imperfections are perhaps better preserved, but it also advertises to nearly half the U.S. population that it is welcome in allegedly reputable and often heavily publicly funded spaces if and only if it checks its values and beliefs at the door.
Menachem Wecker is a journalist and critic in Washington, D.C.
