Museum Management and Curatorship (1991), 10,403-417

Museum Studies

Reflecting on Reflective Practice

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Museum Studies Masters programs have been operating in university settings for about a quarter of a century. The George Washington University in Washington, DC and the University of Toronto Program are both celebrating their 22nd anniversaries, and the Cooperstown Program at the State University of New York began in 1965, while in Britain the Leicester Postgraduate Certificate will soon reach the quarter-of-a-century mark’. These programs have been built on university and college courses and Museums Association training efforts dating from the turn of the century. In North America, 1908 saw the University of Iowa inaugurate training in exhibit technique at its Museum of Natural History under Professor Homer R. Dill. Wellesley’s Farnsworth Museum of Art initiated courses in 1911 to prepare women to be museum instructors, librarians and assistants, while at Harvard University, Paul Sachs began the influential Fogg Art Museum-based course.’ Elsewhere, the University of Brno, Czechoslovakia, established a Chair for Museology in 1919, Buenos Aires has operated a course since the 1920s and Rio de Janiero since 1938. Museums associations have been preoccupied with the problems of training individuals for museum work for much of their history, as marked by the startup of the Museums Association’s diploma of the 1930s and a variety of apprenticeship training programs at Newark, Buffalo and Brooklyn.

But what has this century of activity brought into being for Museum Studies as an academic field of study, and what can one expect from the next? In North America, in particular, there is continued resistance to a field of study for museums-whether entitled Museology or Museum Studies-not least among the museum establishment. There is some encouraging evidence for museums, though. Over the past fifteen years a growing use, or at least tolerance, of the language of museology has occurred, despite resistance from some museum directors. A poll among museum workers would find remarkable agreement on at least a basic definition of museology, for it is fundamentally simple-it represents the study of museums.

What is difficult is getting beyond definitions. The subject, theory, structure and inner logic of museology is not readily apparent. Any literature review of a museum topic will reveal a volume of material from articles to texts, but many are technical or descriptive, lacking an effectively informed museological method of inquiry. Most often research about museums, as the Czech archaeologist Jii; Neustupny has identified, is ‘personal experience sometimes supplemented by the experience of one’s predecessors’ and ‘elevated to the role of a theoretical model’.3 Thus, on the one hand, some of what exists as museum studies research is most often primary research presented without a framework rather than being formed from our domains of thought and method. Often, work is marked by indiscriminate borrowing from parallel disciplines and related fields

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without a critical adaptation to museum topics. What is evident within North America is the growing marginalization of museology in both the profession and academe. Substantive museological work is developing but it is missing from the mainstream literature of the profession. Indeed, in the last five years there has been an explosion of more theoretical views of the museum emerging from anthropology, sociology and semiotics, many prepared by academics interested in museums but who study them from external perspectives. Practitioners, however, do not access this theoretical body of writing, and if they do they often find it too replete with jargon and rooted in the particular theoretical discipline to make much sense in the context of their own working lives.

In this dysfunctional divide between practitioners and theorists, the field of study for museums may follow the splits observed in other disciplines and professions between theorists and practitioners. Part of the problem lies in the failure to conceptualize a field of study and disseminate its premises to either the theorists or the practitioners. Indeed, attempts to conceptualize a museological discipline have concentrated in the period since World War II, and been centered at ICOM and Unesco in Paris and in university centres, mainly in Eastern Europe, or fostered by a small number of individual theorists in isolated parts of the world. Little of their discourse would seem to have been disseminated to either museum workers or those teaching in the majority of the world’s academic centres, who thus remain ignorant of the intellectual traditions of the field of study.

Perhaps more important for the establishment of a field of study for museums is its continuing place on the fringes of academic circles. Consequently, any growth of programs within post-secondary educational structures is difficult to achieve. Adaptations of curriculum and elective requirements are suspiciously watched for any watering down of ‘academic’ standards, while the growing financial pressures on university administrations encourage the search for any perceived weaknesses on which to base program cuts.

The common academic perception is that Museum Studies programs are too practice-oriented, accusations that send us reeling in scientific and discipline-based directions as the words of practice are banished from our vocabulary. PhDs in Museum Studies are viewed as oddities; Masters as second-class, terminal degrees. Why are we surprised? Universities are institutions in essence based on a view of knowledge that devalues practical competence and professional artistry. This view persists despite the existence in their midst of strong social science, and applied and pure science disciplines tied to professional competence as well as professional faculties. This is a problem seldom understood by museum professionals who call for more relevancy in our programs and who criticize the theoretical orientation of our teaching. We are involved in a delicate balancing act between the profession and academe and often fall off our high-wire.

And is the questioning of our academic validity by our university peers justified? Have we, ourselves, articulated our own field of study, the basis of our practical competence, in a manner suited to our professional scholarly evolution? Our ambitions to have a scientifically formed academic discipline for museum work may be only reinforcing our dilemma in maintaining the divisive language of the theory-versus-practice base of professional competence. Indicators are that the division of skills and knowledge, based on a split between scientific, university-based researchers and technical, professional schooling for practitioners, is a flawed conceptual model on which to base a field of knowledge or a profession. The approach is based on a dichotomy which barely resembles the daily problem-solving world of museum workers or museum theorists.4

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Our problems of academic identity are compounded by a field of practice which is rushing towards the competence-based measurement of industrial training models, especially in the United Kindom, through the Museum Training Institute. Similar if much less thorough analysis, using an industrial training model, was attempted by the Canadian Museums Association in 1977-78, from which was distilled a curriculum model for Museum Studies.5 Current schemes must inherently question the pure knowledge context of the skills base in an attempt to create job-evaluation measures and training programs relevant to the specific functions of museum workers in all types of museum jobs. As an attempt to rationalize a varied workforce, comprehensive in application, the competency-based system raises some serious questions as to whether it will support a unique field of study for museums, and what relationship that training will have to academic or research centres which create the knowledge and understandings in addition to the information base of the field.

These problems beg for academic and professional analyses and strategies, and at both a local and global level. But first, where is the field of study today? One indicator may be the nomenclature of the field; a second its epistemological development; finally, a look at alternative analyses and strategies for museological clarification.

1. Nomenclature

The study of museums through the term ‘museology’ goes back formally at least 100 years while the concept of a theory of museums can be traced back to at least the 16th century as part of the evolution of the concepts and terminology of modern museums. One of the earliest times the suffix ‘ology’ was added to museum was by J. Graesser in I885 (in the periodical Zeitschrift Fiir Museologie und Antiquitcitenkunde), where he made the overconfident claim that:

If thirty or even twenty years ago anyone had talked or written about museology as a science, many people would have reacted with a compassionate or contemptuous smile. Today, this is, of course, different.6

Well, 105 years later, what has changed? The field of museology has long been marked by a conflict between competing views

of professional knowledge. In one, the museum worker is a craftsperson, a practitioner of a set of skills combined with wisdom that cannot be articulated or reduced to explicit rules and theories. Within this view, the corollary opinion is that the skills of museum work are considered secondary to disciplinary subject knowledge, and as such the field is not suited to academic pursuit. In another approach, the museum worker is viewed as a technician whose practice results from the application of the principles and methods derived from museological science. One version of this view elevates the technical skill to the stature of a separate science, the other presents the field in interdisciplinary terms, as an amalgam of others’ methods and subjects. This discussion turns on the depiction of museum expertise as a science versus a technique or art form, with little understanding of the history of the argument or its fruitlessness.

One of the first practitioners to formulate a theory of museum work in the Post World War II period was JiE Neustupny who, in 1950, in the document Questions de mustologie moderne, ’ offered a definition of general museology as the ‘theoretical aspects of museum work’ consisting of ‘scientific research and collecting, educational activities, conservation, exhibitions, theory and technique’. Museography was defined as the descriptive and technical part of the doctrine, while museology was the theory. Neustupny added a concept to general museology, ‘special museology’, which consists of

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the application of subject disciplines to museum work as an applied science serving museum needs.

Neustupny had begun the definition of museology’s terms, allowing that museology was a theory but dependant on the subject disciplines found in museums. Only parts of museology are scientific, those reflecting the scientific character of their museum subjects. This model of museology, as a derivative field of study, was refined further by museologists of the German Democratic Republic in 1966 who represented museology as a ‘composite body of a number of disciplines that are related to a common social institution, the museum’. For them museology was interdisciplinary, a marginal science which coordinates and integrates. Nonetheless, it had its own subject and structure: the theory of museum work, history of museums and museum work, and the methodology of collecting, research and exhibition. But others argued for the definition as a separate, even scientific field. By 1964, some museologists in Eastern Germany, used the term ‘Museumswissenschaft’ to represent an independent scientfic discipline with a place in the system of science to replace the more general term ‘Museumskunde’.’ The further definition of a museum science has continued. Museumswissenschaft depicts the study of museums as a separate and scientific discipline; its unique subject is museums, while it studies the tasks and functions of museums arranged into systems drawn from valid and testable precepts.’

Remarkably, only a few accessible studies have dealt in English with the theory of museum work, two being those by JiZ Neustupny in 1968 and 1971, and another series being the publications of Raymond Singleton at the Museum Studies Department, University of Leicester (1966-77), who represents another, more pragmatic, trend in the evolution of the study of museums. Although most of his writings have been directed to the question of a museum profession and the appropriate training for museum work, Singleton’s particular contribution has been to articulate the concept of ‘museum studies’ first popularized in the United States of America.

For Singleton, the discipline of museum studies was defined simply as ‘to study musems’; it included both museology and museography but has an even wider conceptual basis. lo The chief asset of the term ‘museum studies’, in his opinion, was that it was self-explanatory. Given the resistance of the museum working group to adopting the terms museology or museography, there was some validity to Singleton’s logic. Although, conceptually, museum studies may seem to present a broader, unified subject, in practice it is often interpreted as technique or practical skills, i.e. in training programs in North America. Singleton’s own definition is, however, precisely museological, centered on the ‘purpose of museums’ and their relation to their community, as he has written. Yet it is here, in the role of the museum in society, that

. . . the essence of a true museum profession lies. . . This is the common ground, the one factor which unites and integrates all museums, whatever their sizes and function, into a single body, with a special, unique contribution to make to the life of the community.”

He contends that museum thought should be a rational study based on the ‘why’ for ‘it is only by questioning and analyzing and considering everything we do in museums’ that practice will be improved. , l2 Still Singleton’s definition was traditional to the extent that it was centered on collections.‘3

The attempt by some museum thinkers to define the study of museums was reflected internationally. In 1958, one of the first attempts to codify a definition was made at the Unesco Regional Seminar on Education held at Rio de Janeiro. Museology was then defined as a ‘branch of knowledge concerned with the study of the purposes and

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organization of museums’.‘4 Over the next dozen years, the ICOM International Committee for Administration and Personnel examined questions of training for the museum profession. Later renamed the Committee for Training of Museum Personnel, and centered on the ICOM Training Unit headed by Georges Henri Riviere and Mme Yvette Odonne, this group returned naturally to discussions of the subject and theory of museum work and museology.15 In the 1971 syll b a us, entitled Professional Training of Museum Personnel in the World: Actual State of the Problem, crafted by the ICOM Training Unit in conjunction with the University of Leicester, the authors inevitably offered further definitions:

Museology is museum science. It has to do with the study of the history and background of museums, their role in society, specific systems for research, conservation, education and organization, relationship with the physical environment, and the classification of different kinds of museums.

Museography covers methods and practices in the operation of museums, in all their various aspects. l6

Another Czech, Jan Jelinek, Director of the Moravian Museum in Brno, was active in promoting museological discussions both in Czechoslovakia and through ICOM. Jelinek was struck by the fractionalization of museum curators and became concerned about two issues: (a) the profile of the museum profession, and (b) the nature of scientific research within the museum context.” Within Czechoslovakia, he created a Department of Museology at the Moravian Museum and re-established a chair in museology at the Jan E. Purkinje University, Brno. As President of ICOM from 1971 to 1977 he suggested the formation of an international committee on museology to serve as the ‘conscience’ of ICOM. Established in 1977, the purpose of the new International Committee for Museology then was clear:

Every branch of professional activity needs to be studied, developed and adapted to changing contemporary conditions-and not the least that of museology. To pursue the aims of distributing knowledge of modern museological ideas and to help in different fields of museological development, this will be the programme of the ICOM International Committee for Museology.”

The Committee evolved, under the direction of Vinos Sofka, through meetings and issues of Mu WoP,” several aims: (1) to establish museology as a scientific discipline; (2) to study and to assist in the development of museums and the museum profession, to study their role in society, their activities and their functions; and (3) to encourage critical analysis of the main trends within museology.20

Museological theorists have responded to these goals with answers that fit into one or another of the three categories provided by Vili Toft Jensen, each offering a different articulation of museum theory2’ -1. Museology as Applied Science; II. Museology as an Independent Science (a) Social Scientific, (b) Metatheoretical.

With this last category, Toft Jensen introduces the phenomenological interpretation of museology, represented in the work of 2.2. Stransky, Tomislav Sola, the New Museologists and others. Stransky, another Czech museologist, believes that what is critical now is the study of the existence of museum theory, a methodology and system for the study of museums, for the realm of practice alone will not solve museum problems. The aim of the theory must be ‘to discover the objective sides of reality, to define its laws and to find optimum ways of both solving daily tasks and working ahead’. For Stransky, the raison d’Ptre of museums is not the museum itself but the ‘social reason

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for the existence of museums’.** At this point, Stransky’s argument resonates with that of Singleton and Riviere.

But Stransky adds another concept; for him, the heart of museology is the human activity of ‘conserving against natural decay certain objects and creations which represent, for many, certain values closely linked with humanization’.23 Museology is thus about the ‘specific relation of man to reality’.24 In particular, museology is based on objects which make up collections and function as material documents, evidence which should be related to what he calls ‘integrated scientific knowledge’ and which serves its purpose only if communicated for example by exhibition. For Stransky, museology does not replace the role of subject disciplines found in museums, but neither do these special museological disciplines function as a substitute for museology; in this he has departed from Neustupny.

To complicate the museological scenario, however, several new terms have entered the field in the last decade: ‘neo-museology’ and ‘new museology’, while several fields of study such as ‘public history’ and ‘historical resource management’, ‘heritage management’ and ‘arts administration’ overlap with some of the subject areas of museology. New Museology has been built on the work of Georges Henri Riviere, founding father of the ecomuseum movement, plus a number of French and French Canadian museologists (Mathilde Bellaigue-Scalbert and, in Quebec, museologists RenC Rivard and Pierre Mayrand). 25 It is based in the premise that museology only represents what occurs within the four walls of l%h-century ‘traditional’ museums, while new museology deals with the museum-like activites of society which occur beyond the traditional institution of the museum, as represented by eco-museums, open-air museums, and so on. At its base, it claims a:

. . . renewal of the museum as a necessary instrument of service to society. To serve a global heritage for global development. To serve man in totality, embedded in nature in its totality, yesterday and today, seeking above all his future and intellectual and material means to master it.26

Tomislav Sola has gone further and introduced the term ‘heritology’, based on the word heritage, to represent this more comprehensive sense of the museum and its study.*’

All of these newer theories have been created to fill shortcomings in the perception of museology as a defined field of study, but they are also confusing to most practitioners or academic opinion-makers and lead to the last view of museology-representing by far the largest number of followers-the Practitioners, who must often reject theory for a pragmatic usable product. Indeed in North America, there has been a general failure to approach museology as a theoretical study, with the exception of one or two museum programs such as that at the University of Toronto and some theorists in Quebec; there is little familiarity with the X-year international debate on museology, let alone knowledge of earlier roots. A contributing factor may be that museology has been replaced by the term ‘museum studies’ which has become a catch-all phrase for any type of study of museums and need not necessarily be museological. Most of all, this pragmatic approach avoids the discussion of the theoretical substance of museology, and focuses instead on the secondary aspects which are of more immediate concern: definitions of museum positions, the validity of a ‘separate’ discipline or degree and

the existence of a museum profession. Since these questions are never resolved satis-

factorily for all of the museum occupational groups, the energy of museum people is directed away from constructive discussions about the nature and theory of museum activities towards opinionated, heated debate.

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The denial of museum theory has most often been expressed in the debate about a museum profession and its training. This discussion is documented very early in the claim against the existence of a museum profession made by the naturalist Alexander Ruthven and its refutation in 1939 by Laurence Vail Coleman (The Museum in America)28 and it resurfaces frequently, no more dramatically than in Wilcomb Washburn’s (1967) article in Curator, ‘Grandmotherology and Museology’, which epitomizes the aversion to a profession based on museology, at least as then articulated.29

At the 1990 annual CMA Conference in Ottawa a claim that museology was non-existent as was the profession was answered by Des Griffin, an Australian museum director. He said that if one more person raised the question of whether there was a museum profession, he would take out his gun and shoot them. Dramatic colonial excess! But the message was clear that some of the older debates as to whether there is such a thing as Museum Studies-is it a discipline, a scientific field, is museum work a profession-with apologies to my colleagues at that conference and myself, are tired, a dead-end a counterproductive debate that takes us away from substantive discussion of our field of study. It is time for a new tune! Such dilemmas may disappear only if theories of practice can be developed which place technical problem-solving within a broader context of reflective inquiry rooted in philosophical domains of Museum Studies. But a shift in strategy is required for development of our field of study and it must be one which acknowledges global cultural processes.

2. Epistemological/Methodological Discussion

What of our epistemological and methodological health? Central to the field of Museum Studies as it has been discussed in the last 40 years is whether it must be scientific or a discipline to achieve a theoretical place. Debates about the scientific character of museology which have dominated the theoretical discussion of the field of study have been muddied by different definitions of ‘science’ and ‘scientific’ in discussions, a problem common to definitions of the social sciences and science itself. With the arguments for the scientific validity of museum work go the debates as to the field’s academic credentials or status as a discipline.

Such views are under attack in society and in academe. Universities, in their values and organization, exude the view that professional knowledge represents the application of scientific theory and technique to the problems of practice. This mistaken view, according to Professor Donald Schon of MIT, is the product of Technical Rationality built out of the l%h-century view of Positivism and 300 years of the evolution of western ideas and institutions. 3o From Bacon and Hobbes forward, the scientific world-view has gained precedence and with it the idea that progress would result from the production of technology from science. Professions would be the heralds of the application of science to progress. Within this model of Technical Rationality, practice is seen as the application of knowledge to instrumental decisions and is reflected in our educational system where a division of labour, and consequently of credibility, exists between the scientists or the academics who build the theory and the professionals or technicians who are the conveyors of practice. Since World War II, however, the professions have come under attack, increasingly viewed as unable to help society reach its goals.3’ Professions have been plagued by arguments of ends versus means, uncertainties about the context of their practice, and conflicting value systems that have made them less certain as their clients have grown in critical demand.

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Schijn in his book, The Reflective Practitioner, offers some insight on the tension between ‘hard’ knowledge of science and scholarship and the ‘soft’ knowledge of artistry, intuition and practice. 32 He argues that e p x ert practitioners usually have a sort of ‘knowing-in-practice, most of which is tacit’, and it is this knowing which may be at the root of professional research and education, equally as capable of rigorous scholarship and controlled experiment as any science.33

Starting with premises of actual performance, it is possible to build and test models of knowing. Many practitioners in fact often demonstrate a striking ability to reflect on their intuitive knowledge in the midst of action and draw on this for exceptional decision-making requirements in their job. It may be the communication of this ability which has marked the best of museological education in this century. At work, the process represents the on-your-feet thinking of problem-solving, like a diagnostic set of steps operating within specific philosophical constructs. First, you raise the problem to the surface of awareness by exploring the questions and issues and background; then you criticize, test and restructure the intuitive understandings of experienced phenomena based on the observed phenomenon; and the process draws on the organizational learning, extends or restructures all the knowledge-base appropriate to the present question until insight and possible actions are clear. The touchstone is the structures of knowledge and skill which are built through formulation and testing.

Research on the fundamental theories and methods for fields of study related to professions must take the form of an action science, i.e. researchers must be exposed to the contexts of action while practitioners are given a theoretical setting for their reflections.34 Both enter into modes of collaboration very different from the models of applied science where the practitioner is merely the user of research.

How is this translated into museology? What is clear is that academic departments in universities are being measured by humanities, social science or applied science models that are inappropriate to an integrated field of study. If not, then they are being measured in terms of a technical view of the profession in which applicability to particular museum operations is more valued than larger research purposes, a model more suited to technical colleges or training institutions.

Epistemological discussions of museology are rare, indeed, but most often heading in the wrong direction-either defensive articulations of the scientific or discipline aspects of the field, or based on new and better ways to conceptualize the field denying historical antecedent. JZ Neustupny offered one of the few examples when he attempted to clarify the bases of museology by articulating his views on the interdisciplinarity of museology: if museology was ‘the theory, the methodology of the application of various disciplines in museums and museum work’ and it has ‘neither its own subject of study nor its own

methods. . . [it] must use and apply methods of other disciplines, according to the branch of museology concerned’.35 The methods of special museology are obviously derivative

of the methods of their disciplines, e.g. history, archaeology, natural history, and so on. General museology is also composed of methods from other disciplines:

I. Theory and methods of collected source materials of individual bases of sciences; 2. Theory and methods of mass communications; 3. Theory and role and function of museums in society, science and culture; the

organization of museums, museum work-Sociology; 4. The history of museums-historical method; 5. A group of museum problems; mass communications, scientific information,

buildings, financial. 36

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But one could dissect most fields of study, let alone disciplines, into subsidiary methods in a similar manner. A false measure, it denies the integration of these elements into the single act of the knowledgeable practitioner, nor does it approach the resolution of the schism between the theorist and the professional. Splitting the field of study into its parts does not negate the epistemological virtue of its study.

In 1969, Georges Henri Rivihe, in contradiction of Neustupny, argued for the integrative function of museology, and for the need to research ‘museology as a discipline designed to establish definite relations between museums, on the one hand, and between science, culture and society, on the other’.37 Research should be explored using experimental techniques to take it away from its current state of ‘ultra-conservative’ ‘ready-made theories’.38 For him, ‘Museology was essentially synthetic’, covering a number of activities which varied among museums and countries. He called for an international study ‘to systematize the theories and standards outlined in different countries, with a view to their adaptation to the various cultures and to the requirements of all museums’ and that they ‘should be practical as well as theoretical’.39 With these comments, a new reality for Museology was raised-it was to be a synthesized field of study and a universal one.

Perhaps it is the global perspective which offers the basis for the integrating principles of a museological field of study. Viewed from space, one earth-sharing soil, oceans, air-an organism whose future depends on the health of all parts, tangible and intangible, what does it mean for museums? What will the museums’ role be in studying environmental and cultural resources to ensure sustainable human progress and survival, the goals of which are to promote harmony among human beings and between humanity and nature?

Following Schon’s model, the basis of the Riviere synthesis, then, is the critical, reflexive action of professional competence seen from a global-to-specific perspective. As such it goes beyond the set of skills or techniques that make up museum work; it goes beyond a building which may or may not be named a museum; beyond its collections, its administration or the communication of its contents; nor is it the application of individual subject areas to the museum. It is the idea of the museum, the cross-cultural examination of the purposes of museums and their social, economic and cultural roles, combined with the practitioner’s toolbox of skills, which make up this ‘thinking-in- action’, the basis of the professional field of study. But can we articulate our ‘models-of-knowing’?

The Museological Models-of-Knowing

Throughout the territory of museological study, there exists a discourse based on a series of basic problematiques or issues that reverberates through the scripts of museological tradition, although unknown to most practitioners and theorists. All the skills and techniques practiced in our field operate within the domain of these concepts and are referenced by them. They provide the ‘models of knowing’ which are at the root of all reflective practice and the essence of museological education. The language and meaning of traditional discussions of museology can be explored for changes in the language emerging from global pressures.

The Discourse: (in no way a comprehensive list)

Problematique 1. What is a Collection, ideas or objects? Or Objects versus Ideas? One of the untested axioms of museum thinking is that museums are fundamentally unique

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institutions because they are purely about concrete objects, physical things, the material remains of the past. Therefore, any collecting or exhibiting organization that lacks the physical basis of artifactual collections cannot be a museum.

This definition of museums has been at issue for some time, as characterized in the now famous debate between Benjamin Ives Gilman and George Brown Goode. Goode stated (in 1896) that a museum was a collection of labels illustrated by specimens. Gilman responded (in 1915) that while Goode’s dictum might be true in a museum of science, when the specimen is an abstraction, this was not true for a museum of art which represented the collection of objects to which were added interpretations.40 Similar discussions mark the pages of ICOM International Committee for Museology and have been the theme of several sessions: ‘Collecting Today for Tomorrow’ (1984) about the relationship between the object and society; ‘Originals and Substitutes in Museums’ (1985) about the object and the museum; ‘Museology and Identity’ (1986), focusing on the relationship between the museum and society.

Clearly, there has been a range of museum types over time, with a variety of emphases on things or ideas. It can be argued that, historically, museums have had elements of ideas and things, to some extent or another. Museum media, whether named object, artifact or specimen, may consist of a range of material, some three-dimensional (airplanes to tape-recordings), others two-dimensional (photos, maps). Some collections exist in situ, referred to as immovable cultural property. The additional complication is that a significant number of museums and departments deal with human or physical processes for which the tangible objects may not exist or may be irrelevant, i.e. linguists and folklorists who acquire utterances; natural scientists who collect animal behaviors; science centers, much like early demonstration collections in Mechanics’ Institutes, which illustrate scientific processes. For material culture, James Deetz epitomizes a definition which has escaped the artifactual world to include a range of events from: ‘cuts of meat’ and the human body to language, water or air, any effect shaped by the hands of

people. 41 Museum collections can signify two meanings; one, manifested in the physical holdings of the museum (museum-centered); and another, signified by the museum area of subject and not totally contained by the collections (museum-referenced). They can be as important for what they do not contain as for what they do.

Professional thinking may be catching up to this sense. A recent ICOM definition discusses museums as ‘material witnesses’, thus containing both tangible and intangible aspects of our natural and cultural past. The museum study area, historically and for the present, evidently sits equally between tangibles and intangibles, focused entirely on the human interrelationship of ideas and objects.

Subsidiary Precepts: l Real vs. Authentic l Information vs. Things l Future Shock: the view that only collections of things give stability

in a rapidly changing environment.

Problematique 2. Museums: What is a Museum?Museums are equally artifacts for study and are the essence of museological investigation. The very definitions of musems are being pushed and reformed all the time-a definition is chaos.

The study area has often been defined in this century from the experience of large,

specific institutions which were large, ‘traditional’ and happened to be called museums or galleries. However, there has been a shift as we look less to the specific evidence of a narrow sampling of institutions and more at the breadth of human actions of making

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museums or ‘museumizing’. The multiplicity of museum roles and subdivisions has

recently been comprehensively stated in George Macdonald and Stephen Alsford’s list for the Canadian Museum of Civilization:

I. Museum as Symbol 2. Museum as Vision 3. Museum as Showcase 4. Museum as Treasure-House 5. Museum as Memory 6. Museum as Communicator 7. Museum as Mentor 8. Museum as Celebration 9. Museum as Host

10. Museum as Resource4’

Inevitably, the discussions of the Canadian Museum of Civilization also raise questions of the role of technology in museums-the Disneyfication of the museum, or the Ride Museum goes Rampant.

Subsidiary Precepts: l Multiplicity of Museum Types and Their Interrelationships:

A Community of Museums l Physical Collection vs. Museums as a Phenomenon

(Idea, Ritual or Behaviour) l Multiplicity of Museum Functions

Museums as Collections vs. Communication Research vs. Education vs. Entertainment.

Problematique 3. Or Whose Museum is it?/ Museums for Whom? One obvious context for museum discussion is the question of power and ownership. Out of the longstanding concern for visitors embodied in Museum Studies, an approach is emerging which confronts the possibilities of systemic and systematic discrimination in museums based on Eurocentric, value-laden collecting and interpretation. We are building the skills of deconstructing our ideologies and itemizing the politics of exclusion versus inclusion.

An important program for the future of museology will be to develop different conceptual frameworks for the study of museums which allow for gender, class, race and ethnicity, as categories of analysis, and understand the museum within the social, political, economic, historical and over-arching ideological context. We need to teach critical methods of life-history analyses of museums and their contents. Unwinding prejudices in order to begin to declassify objects and create new juxtapositions will require new languages of collections management and communication in exhibiting and programming and in the management of our institutions.

The Process of Museological Democratization

The paradox of culture rests in universality combined with infinite diversity of content and forms, and it demands new methodologies and strategies for intercultural and intracultural relationships.

l All Cultures are Equal l Personal and Collective

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l Breakdown between Inside/Outside l Equality of Voices-Expert vs. Everyday l All Cultures are Equal l Balance of Developed and Third-World

Is a Global Museology possible which values equally the developed with the Third-World countries in its analysis of museology? In North America, it is the example of the indigenous peoples that is showing us the way of museological renaissance. The results are new ways of thinking about museums:

l Multi-vocality/Partnerships l Museums as Dialogues

In what is sometimes named the postmodern museum, the emphasis shifts from truth to truths, from product to process, as expertise becomes shared rather than owned by only one party. This distribution of expertise has implications for the discipline divisions of academe: individual subject areas and their methods become equally important within an

interdisciplinary forum.

Problematique 4. Who Owns the Museum-Economuseology? We have heard of the process of global warming; but it is also possible to describe the global commercializ- ation of museums and to question the loss of our museological souls. There is no doubt for those of us who study the history of museums, one marked by fights for survival by museums unable to sustain viability whether from financial or other failures, that the creative use of new funding solutions for museums has merit. But there are some fundamental changes at work in the economic bases of museums throughout the world-no more I think than in the United Kingdom-which can either create opportunities for cultural development or coopt organizational values. There needs to be careful examination of the constant workings between economic structures and museums.

The limits to our commercialism, our heritage tourism, surely should be based on our understanding of our business and our own intent, and on the best understandings of the business of non-profit organizations which are not just profit organizations rewrit. Questions such as these come back to one of who is in control. Can we define the business we are in? Or what is a Museum? What are the economic processes working towards cultural uniformism that needed to be countered by the premise of the equal dignity of all cultures and all peoples-‘all cultures form part of the common heritage’? What part will museums play in this?

The Framework

The resulting framework of museology, built on these and other discourses, is composed of five parts:

1. The Field of Study; 2. The Museum Process and Ideology-being the philosophy, ideas of the purpose of

museums seen in the process of museumization and representation; 3. The Museum Context-being the structure and development of the museum within

the cultural organization of society(ies), which includes the historical, legal, economic and organizational approaches adopted;

J. LYNNE TEATHER 415

4. Operations: Internal operations-‘the experience of the object’, collections and their resources, research, information production; External operations-‘the experience of the clients’, communication, education and public programs, whether on or off the

premises; 5. Management-the planning and management principles and techniques that carry

these activities to the goals of the institutions.

In addition, we need to cross-reference the global issues, such as the ecological condition of the planet, as interrelated with its multifarious cultures and proposals for sustainable economic development. This analysis will need to encompass both the image and operational context of the museum and its collections assessment and communications systems.

The result is a very different definition of the field of study. Museology study represents a human process: it originates with the activity of identifying and collecting certain objects or their symbols from our material world, whether natural or human productions, as representations of some value, which may be aesthetic, religious, curiosity, entertainment or scientific. It may add on the function of housing this objectified reality in a custodial institution and presenting the object or its symbol for viewing by an audience, again to communicate values encapsulated within the museum meaning system. But it is also about the translation of these processes into action, into professional skills and the problem-solving expertise necessary for handling the everyday responsible techniques of museum work. It is this combination of the museum process and museum skills that frames the field of Museum Studies.

Museums are thus about:

l the human activity of viewing our world through the selection of phenomena, tangible objects, tangible or intangible behaviors or beliefs from our material world (natural or manufactured);

l the representation of value(s)-aesthetic, religious, curiosity, entertainment, scientific explanation;

l the physical care of objects (combined) or intangibles; with (a) the academic and other knowledge which surrounds them; (b) the information which can be extracted from them; and (c) the presentation and exhibition of these various tangible and intangible artifacts;

l all these to be expressed in terms of concern with (a) communication values; (b) the recontextualization of reality within the museum; (c) a multitude of types of visitors and users; and (d) a constant awareness of the museum present and the responsibility for expressing and representing points of view.

All these attributes are to be translated into the skills and knowledge of the responsible practitioner.

Conclusion

We must now build links with our past and with each other, formed from the integration of practice and theory, from the experience of researchers and practitioners; and we should build not on the burgeoning false gods of science and disciplines and theoretical irrelevance, but on a thoughtful examination of our cultural museum traditions in terms of a modern global museology which attempts to test the premises of the field of study for the future.

416 Museum Studies

In terms of our epistemology and present-day language, it comes down to whether we want a field that educates museum workers to ‘Do the Thing Right’ or to ‘Do the Right Thing’. Clearly, the future well-being of the Museum Studies or Museology field of study depends on our ability to define it as a balance of ends and means, of critical reflections based on the integration of theory and practice.

1.

2.

3.

4.

fi.

Appendix The Framework of Research for Reflective Museum Practice

Roots of the Field of Study:

the history, method of studying museums.

Museum Process and Ideology:

the philosophy, purpose of museums and the process of museumization.

The Museum Context:

structure and development of the museum(s) in the cultural organization of society(ies) which includes historical, legal, economic, organizational aspects from the global to the particular.

Operations:

l internal: ‘the experience of the ob- l external: ‘the experience of the ject’-collections, research and conser- clients’-communication, education, pub- vation and information production. lit programs.

Management:

to ensure that the planning and management principles and techniques match the operations with the goals of the organization.

Notes

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

For an international list of museum training opportunities, see Museum Studies International (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, Office of Museum Programs and ICOM Committee for the Training of Personnel, 1988). Laurence Vail Coleman presents an early history of US training in The Museum in America: A Critical Study (Washington DC: American Association of Museums, 1939), Chapter xxiv. JiZ Neustupny, ‘Museology as an Academic Discipline’, MuWoP (Museological Working Papers), I, 1980, p. 28. Donald A. Schiin, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York: Basic Books, 1983). For the purposes of this paper, the words ‘reflective’ and ‘reflexive’ are used interchangeably as they have the same or similar meaning (The Concise Oxford Dictionary. London: Oxford University Press, 1964, 1976). L. Teather, Professional Directions for Museum Work in Canada: An Analysis of Museum Jobs and Museum Studies Training Curricula (Ottawa: Canadian Museums Association, 1978). J. Graesser, Zeitschrift fiir Museologie und Antiquitiitenkunde (1885) as cited in Evzen Schneider, ‘The Way of Museums: an Exhibition at the Moravian Museum, Brno’, Museum, 29, 1977, p. 183. J. Neustupny, Otazky Dnesniho musejnictvi- Questions de mus6ologie moderne (Prague, 1950) p. 197. as cited in J. Neustupny, Museum and Research (Prague: Narodni Museum, 1968) which presents an extensive history of museological discussion in Eastern Europe referred to here. See also, J. Neustupny, ‘What is Museology?‘, Museums Journal, 71, 1971, p. 67. ‘Beitrage zur Museumswissenschaft’, Neue Museumskunde, 7, 1964, p. 11. Klaus Schreiner, ‘Criteria on the Place of Museology in the System of Sciences’, MuWoP, I, p. 41. R. Singleton, ‘Museum Studies: the Theory and Practice of Curatorial Training’, an unpublished talk given in Norway, 1977. R. Singleton, ‘The Purpose of Museums and Museum Training’, Museums Journal, 69 (December) 1969, p. 133.

J. LYNNE TEATHER 417

12. R. Singleton, op. cit. Note 10, p. 2. 13. R. Singleton, ‘Professional Education and Training’, Museums Journal, 70 (December 1971) p. 99. 14. Report by Georges Henri Riviere, UNESCO Regional Seminar on the Educational Role of

Museums, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil, 7-30 September 1958), p. 12. 15. The Training of Museum Personnel (London: Hugh Evelyn for ICOM, 1970), pp. 23-4. See also

G.H. Riviere, ‘The Museum-The Intensification of Scientific Research and the Growth of Art Production’, UNESCO International Symposium on Museums in the Contemporary World (Paris, 1969), p. 18.

16. Professional Training of Museum Personnel in the World: Actual State of the Problem (Paris, 1972). 17. Jan Jelinek, ‘Museology and Museography in Museums’, in The Training of Museum Personnel

(London: Hugh Evelyn for ICOM, 1970), pp. 23-4. 18. The Establishment of a New International Committee on Museology, as quoted in Peter von

Mensch, ‘A Short History of the International Committee for Museology’, a document prepared for the ICOFOM Committee.

19. ‘Museology-Science or Just Practical Work?‘, MuWoP, No. 1 (1980) and ‘Interdisciplinarity in Museology’, MuWoP, No. 2 (1982).

20. Peter Von Mensch, ‘A Short History of the International Committee for Museology’. 21. Vili Toft Jensen, ‘Museological Points of View-Europe 1975’, MuWoP, I, pp. l-10. 22. Z.Z. Stransky, Bmo: Education in Museology (Brno: J.E. Purkyne University and Moravian

Museum, 1974), p. 27. 23. Z.Z. Stransky, Bmo: Education in Museology (Brno, 1974), p. 26. 24. Ibid., pp. 27-28. 25. Pierre Mayrand, ‘The New Museology Proclaimed’, Museum, No. 148, 1985, 200-201; and in the

same issue Rene Rivard, ‘Ecomuseums in Quebec, Museum, pp. 202-205. The whole issue is devoted to ecomuseums.

26. Hugues de Varine. ‘The Word and Beyond’, Museum, No. 148, 1985. 27. Tomislav Sola, ‘A Contribution to a Possible Definition of Museology’, in Znterdisciplinarity in

Museology, MuWoP (Paris, 1982); ‘Definitions and Revisions: Towards the Total Museum’ (Zagreb, 1989).

28. For a discussion of these developments see L. Teather, Professional Directions for Museum Work in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Museums Association, 1978), Part III; Alexander G. Ruthven, The Naturalist in a University Museum (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1931); and Laurence Vail Coleman, op. cit. Note 2, pp. 416-418.

29. Wilcomb Washburn, ‘Grandmotherology and Museology’, Curator, X (March 1967), pp. 43-48. 30. Donald Schon, The Reflective Practitioner, pp. 31-37. 31. For example, Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, Vol. XLIV (New York: Harper & Row, 1970) and

Schon, op. cit. Note 30, pp. 37-48. 32. Ibid., pp. 49-61 33. Ibid. p. viii. 34. Ibid., pp. 307-325. 35. Jii-; Neustupny, ‘What is Museology?‘, p. 67. 36. Ibid. 37. Georges Henri Riviere, ‘The Museum-the Intensification of Scientific Research and the Growth of

Art Production’, UNESCO International Symposium on Museums in the Contemporary World (Paris, 1969), p. 18.

38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. George Brown Goode, ‘Museum History and Museums of History’, Report of the Smithsonian

Institution for 1896 (Washington, DC) Part II. Benjamin Ives Gilman, ‘Dr Goode’s Thesis and Its Antithesis’, Proceedings of the Tenth Annual General Conference of the American Association of Museums (1915), pp. 21-25. See also, Duncan Cameron, ‘A Viewpoint: The Museum as a Communication System and Implications for Museum Education’, Curator XI, 1 (March 1968), pp. 33-40; and E.I. Knetz and A.G. Wright, ‘The Museum as a Communication System: An Assessment of Cameron’s Viewpoint’, Curator, XIII, 3 (December 1970), pp. 204-212.

41. James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: the Archaeology of Early American Life (New York: Doubleday, 1977), pp. 24-25.

42. George Macdonald and Stephen Alsford, Museum for the Global Village (Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1989).