Curators and "Others"

There was an interesting discussion at our breakfast table yesterday about the nature of curators and the role of expertise.

While curators are not well-represented in this house (population: none), the debates about cultural authority are. Probably the result of too much post-modern, post-colonial, Foucaultian training in anthropology, education, museum studies, and even law, the nature of expertise comes up in conversation not infrequently around here.  This time we were playing with the nature of authority as represented by the curator stereotype.

To wit: do expert curators a role to play in the future of museums as the sole voice of authority?

In the Web 2.0 participatory world, the answer may be "no."

For an educator, however, expertise does have a role to play. After all, if everyone already knows everything, then why have school? Stick a diploma in someone's hand and send them out into the world. In a Web 2.0 world, everyone participates and the crowd is supposed to be wise, collectively. Yet as studies have shown, children don't know as much as they think they do, even about the Web 2.0 world (of which they are supposed to be Digital Natives), and that people often overestimate their capabilities.  Someone who knows something needs to speak up, and be heard.

This expert role in museums has traditionally been that of curator. Not of education department or anyone else. But the curatorial information flow traditionally has been one-way. How to manage the expertise?

Added to these considerations are readings about NAGPRA and "cultural property." NAGPRA represents in part a way to reclaim curatorial authority over items removed from the home culture by a "superior" entity in a power-dynamic that was at the time inherently skewed. Items of cultural patrimony are to be repatriated when they meet certain conditions (such as colonial exploitation).  Knowledge and power -- as described in Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge -- are conflated in the person of the curatorial expert and the institution which appoints the curator, an institution that is hegemonically empowered on the global stage and displays the objects gained from the cultures of "others"

In the readings about NAGPRA are two diametrically opposed positions presented by
Durrans, “Museums, Representation and Cultural Property,” Anthropology Today, 
and
Lowry, “Cultural Property: A Museum Director’s Perspective,” International Journal of Cultural Property, 1998

Durrans was wrangling with the concept that museums represent the cultural hegemony of that institution and its surrounding culture – that it speaks to its own cultural audience.  This hegemonic power is not shared, and thus we need a reflexive approach that is multivocal and works on multiple levels and spaces – probably in multiple areas at multiple times – about the sharing of information about the objects.  Thus, curators may have a role, but not the only role.

Lowry presents more problems for me.  He argues that art transcends the concepts of cultural property and therefore beyond culturally-based issues of history, politics, and law.  To quote Lowry:


By "works of art," I mean those objects, such as paintings, drawings,
photographs, and freestanding sculpture, that were created as separate and
independent forms. What is important about works of art, whether or not
they are considered to be cultural property, is that they must be understood
first and foremost within the ontological context of art, not jurisprudence,
national significance, or UNESCO Conventions.

Does this mean that art transcends all?  Who defines something as art?  By whose standards?  It seems that Lowry implies only curators have sufficient expertise to make an argument about art.  And, that art cannot be claimed as a cultural product, and therefore not property nor patrimony, and cannot be reclaimed by the original owners, because art is transcendent.  This argument seems paternalistic in its claim that the big western museum is entitled to keep famous artworks because this museum is  creating interest in the art and the other (less powerful but place of origin) country's museum cannot possibly do this and therefore the big Western (post-) colonial power gets to keep it…

My best working definition of art is something that has been created by human agency and is called such.  It seems I disagree with Nelson Goodman and the art aesetheticians.   Everything is made somewhere by someone and is a cultural product.   This includes art.


Art seems to the lightning rod here.  Aptly so.

More than one person I know has commented on how art museums have galleries upon galleries of "western" art, and then lump all of the world's cultures into another room, and one that generally does not have any contemporary examples, at that. This means that those producers of art are depicted as frozen in time and, by extension, evolutionary growth as well.   These "Others" are not equals and do not share in the exchange of information, nor retain control of their own material culture.  Seems I'm on the Durrans side of the argument, but really, Durrans still seems to be discussing the same side as Lowry -- it's still Eurocentric and does not change the power dynamic of curatorial authority.  For a view from a different perspective, try Michel-Rolph Trouillot or another native anthropologist.

Western museums are the products of a society that produced not only upper-class noblesse oblige and patronage for the arts but also Social Darwinism on a global stage.  Thus there is a conflict between "patrimony" and "paternalism"  when it comes to objects and repatriation.

If one takes a central tenet of cultural anthropology that members of a culture are experts of their own lives, and then add to that the ideas of Participatory Museums, then shared authority makes sense.
This seems to be the more logical response and application of the postmodern critique. 

So, with shared authority is there expertise?  Depends on whom you consider expert, and the conditions under which they share knowledge.   Today it seems appropriate to allow a variety of voices to speak.   This means curatorial experts should be present, but not the only voice -- truly multivocalic discourse.

Sharing the knowledge may mean sharing the stuff.  By allowing claims of cultural property and repatriating items, including art, shifts the balance of power and allows greater participation by all.