Throughout the year I’ve become increasingly interested in space and its relationship to culture and authoritative voice. I had been reading all kinds of works by theorists dealing with collective memory, and I was stunned by how much its definition echoed criticism of museum spaces. This essay fleshes out why and ultimately suggests a move toward a new understanding of museums. It’s a rather basic account, and I’m interested in exploring this further as it relates to new spaces, such as public space and the Internet. Is the Internet as a site for art production and distribution the antithesis of the museum? Just asking.

I welcome any comments or questions that might help me improve this paper.

The danger of the museum lies not in its inability to act as an objective voice of history, but in the public’s assumption that it does, in fact, represent a universal truth within its exhibitions. The authority of the museum is often questioned within museology, but outside of academic discourse, its authority is rarely addressed and ultimately believed. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, in her exploration of the “new museum,” reiterates a common postmodern critique of museums, wherein “analyses of museums from anthropology and cultural studies emphasized the political and economic authority exercised by the ‘museum masters’ who shaped the knowledge base and functioning of museums from the eighteenth century into the twentieth century.”¹ Critiques of the museum continue today, with many scholars calling into question the ability of the museum to objectively present a culture through the exhibition of material objects. While discourse is expansive, solutions are scarce. Perhaps what is necessary, then, is not to determine a better way to display artifacts in order to represent anthropological categories, but instead to redefine the museum itself. By redefining the museum as an institution dedicated to representing the objectivation of collective memory—instead of as a site of history—the danger of historicization and issues concerning appropriation and cultural identity can be explored in a way that accepts the institution as a subjective one. This essay explores the parallels between the functions of the museum and of collective memory, and how redefining the museum would more accurately reflect its practices.

As theories of collective memory deal explicitly with the ways in which individuals form cultural identity, their relationship to the ethnographic museum is one that should be further established. The study of memory is often explored with scientific objectives—how the physiology of the brain collects information and stores memories—whereas collective memory deals with the social and communicative production of memory as it relates to cultural identity. Wulf Kansteiner, in his paper, “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies” writes that collective memory is:

a collective phenomenon but it only manifests itself in the actions and statements of individuals. It can take hold of historically and socially remote events but it often privileges the interests of the contemporary. It is as much a result of conscious manipulation as unconscious absorption and it is always mediated.²

Kansteiner’s definition of collective memory, while established completely irrespective of museology, echoes popular criticism of museums and the danger in their inherent, perceived authority. On the basis of the existence of so many objects from the past, people desire to create and collect objects that are representative, in some way, of their experience. Producers of collective memory also desire to create objects that are linked to the past as a manifestation of (what is misleadingly termed,) oral history. Ultimately, however, “collective memories have a strong bias toward the present; they dedicate disproportionate amounts of time, space and resources to communications about events that happened within the lifetimes of its producers and consumers.”³ It is easy to consider collective memory and history to be the same thing, but their distinction lies in the time-space relationship between its objects, the producers of its objects, and the consumers of its objects. History itself has a specific location in the past; museums merely interpret and display objects found within history. Museums run into problems of appropriation and representation when they define their contents as historically accurate.

Collective memory depends on individual participation and formulates group identities, which is essentially what the museum does as well. What the museum also does, however, is form an additional level of cultural assumptions based on what visitors perceive to be objective truth. These exhibitions are produced by curators—individuals who are hired by museums to compile and display artifacts in a way that is faithful to history, which discourse proves is never entirely possible. What makes historical accuracy so difficult for curators is their inability to relate to eras that reach beyond their own remembering. Jan Assmann, a frequently-cited collective memory theorist, asserts that individuals within groups produce collective memory based on their recollection of oral history, which extends about a hundred years in the past:

as all oral history studies suggest, this horizon does not extend more than eighty to (at the very most) a hundred years into the past, which equals three or four generations or the Latin saeculum. This horizon shifts in direct relation to the passing of time. The communicative memory offers no fixed point which would bind it to the ever expanding past in the passing of time.⁴

It is for this reason that contemporary exhibitions do not face the same criticism as “historical” exhibitions. The individual who assembles the works that are featured in a contemporary exhibition does not necessarily have the memory of direct experience, but may better understand social, economic, technological, environmental and political nuances that inform the material objects at hand, thus providing a greater cultural context that lends the curator sensitivity toward the objects. Individuals curating exhibitions that include objects from beyond their remembering do not have a concrete understanding of the external effects that led to the production of the objects and thus, are always ill-equipped to assemble a bipartisan view of the past. The museum, instead of recreating history, should instead be clear about its attempts to recreate collective memory. Assmann believes that the reconstruction of memory is an integral characteristic of collective memory, although it comes with the following caveat: “No memory can preserve the past. What remains is only that which society in each era can reconstruct within its contemporary frame of reference.”⁵ Based on this characteristic of collective memory, the museum’s purpose of preservation is fundamentally misguided.

Individuals can be members of several different collective memories, based on the number of social groups (such as family or school) that they belong to,⁶ although their material manifestation of experience is ultimately removed from experience itself. Kansteiner is clear in his distinction between collective memory and history: “Collective memory is not history, though it is sometimes made from similar material.”⁷ The museum functions in the same way that collective memory does, although general visitors do not typically perceive it in that way. Just as Kansteiner describes collective memory, the museum, indeed, is not history, though it is sometimes made from similar material.

The idea of collective memory in opposition to history is particularly relevant to Canada, where the issue of cultural (or national) identity is deeply entrenched in museology and the ways in which material objects and art are collected to define the country’s “essence.” Unfortunately, Canada’s national identity cannot be so tidily packaged, as its history includes several layers of colonialism, conquest, referendum and worldwide ancestry that make accurate “Canadian” representation impossible in a museum environment. Despite the difficulty in representing cultural identity through the collection and display of material objects, large institutions in particular are specific about their desire to use ethnographic museums to communicate someone’s interpretation of a national identity. This desire is influenced not only by ego and politics,⁸ but also by the simple fact that large museums are considered tourist attractions. Assmann’s assertions about the production of collective memory touch on the different groups that individuals belong to, including countries:

every individual memory constitutes itself in communication with others. These ‘others,’ however, are not just any set of people, rather they are groups who conceive their unity and peculiarity through a common image of their past. Halbwachs [another collective memory theorist] thinks of families, neighborhood and professional groups, political parties, associations, etc., up to and including nations.⁹

This suggests that national museums in particular are, in fact, collective memories. Anne Whitelaw describes the National Gallery of Canada as being “motivated by a quest for a specifically Canadian aesthetic vocabulary: an artistic language that would reflect Canada’s distinct identity and signal its separateness from the formal colonial power.”¹⁰ The trouble of doing this lies in the individuals who administrate, manage and curate these institutions and their ability (or lack thereof) to speak for a group to which they have no direct association:

museums have been critiqued for habitually appropriating objects for control and access, and then reappropriating objects by divorcing them from their original context and assigning them new and alien meanings.¹¹

This is not a new concept—since the late 1800s, ethnographers, anthropologists and museum directors alike have struggled with the paradox of the museum as an educational institution that isn’t necessarily communicating objective information as much as mediated opinion. Otis Mason, a late-nineteenth century ethnographer, was aware of the complexities of anthropological exhibitions, and attempted to address the complexity with curators who “organized their materials in mobile cases so that they could be presented by geographical region or, alternatively, by type.”¹² Mason “suggested that cabinets (i.e., collections) were essentially ‘thoughts in things.’ Whatever the configuration, of course, the presentation formulated a position about human development and imposed an order on the artifacts that was not implicit in them.”¹³ That similar discourse is taking place more than a hundred years later proves the futility of attempting to reach an acceptable curatorial solution.

Museums maintain their authority for the simple reason that the institution has not been redefined since its inception several centuries ago. Cultural theorist and critic Mieke Bal, in her article “The Discourse of the Museum”, criticizes the museum as an institution founded upon anthropology, which she describes as a self-critical discipline that finds itself in “the predicament of [being] a discipline thus entangled in a history of bad faith.”¹⁴ The pre-museum predilection for collecting was born of the desire to exhibit the refined, expensive and exotic tastes of European aristocrats. What about the museum has really changed, including the discourse surrounding it? Whether showcasing fine art or ethnographic artifacts, discourse identifies museum exhibitions as presenting “an out-of-date, essentialist view of non-Western cultures, that is, the belief that there is an “essence” of…culture…that can be represented through dioramas and exhibits.”¹⁵ While the general public may not have the academic vocabulary to define the museum as such, there is a general understanding that what is displayed in the museum is “historical” and “true,” though critics of the museum know better. Of course, the discourse of the museum finds no trouble with the authenticity of the objects themselves—the difficulty lies in the communicative realm where mediated versions of history are often imparted on visitors who do not know to question the validity of its presentation.

Collective memory is described in the same way that museums are often criticized: they are constructed through contemporary bias, objects are inevitably (though not necessarily intentionally) recontextualized, they bear the voice of a group of individuals, and they strive to achieve a unified visual and literary identity, among other points of distinction. If the purpose of the museum is, indeed, the pursuance of “the tripartite goal of preservation, research and education,”¹⁶ relieving the tension between academia and popular culture is only part of the solution. Jonathan Haas, a Field Museum anthropologist and curator, understands the tension “between the growing imperative to make anthropology relevant and an incongruous tendency to belittle the efforts of those who attempt to popularize disciplinary insights.”¹⁷ He recommends that “the people responsible for defining and articulating the knowledge and insights of anthropology to the interested visitors”¹⁸ adopt a more communicative technique that engages the visitors in the cultural discourse in a language they understand. While communicating the principles of anthropology and cultural identity may shed light on the exhibits viewers see, it doesn’t change the status of the museum and its pervasive authority. Discourse itself is especially biased, and any critical issues raised by museums and presented to visitors would inevitably be interpreted as absolute and final despite their biased views. Changing what is inside the museum does not address the fundamental problem of the museum’s authority in communicating “history.”

The museum’s location and purpose in civic environments should be redefined in a way that addresses their role as an interpreter of material objects from history, not a teller of history itself. Is it not proactive, then, to reestablish the museum as a site of collective memory? In this way, the public would understand the museum as a site not of history that offers a truthful, objective view of the past, but instead as one that acknowledges its contemporary privilege and mediated interpretation. Redefining the museum would not excuse it from criticism, nor would it eliminate the sensitivity curators require to assemble exhibitions that represent cultural groups. This attitudinal shift can be likened to the one that occurred with visual art in the nineteenth century—visual art forms were slowly understood and accepted as media of interpretation and expression instead of ones strictly for representational documentation. When the general public understands the subjective nuances of the museum—their interpretive bias, that exhibitions are constructed by individuals, and that their displays are distinctly removed from history itself—the dangers of misrepresentation will be lessened and their effects ultimately discussed. Collective memory is a natural phenomenon that occurs between people around the world. Accepting the museum as a site of collective memory would not require a change in its practice—it would merely define the site with terms that more accurately reflect them.

Bibliography

¹ Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory. “Thoughts in Things: Modernity, History and North American Museums.” Isis 96 (2005): 586-601. 30 Mar. 2008 <http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/498595>. 587.
² Kansteiner, Wulf. “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies.” History and Theory 41 (2002): 179-197. JSTOR. OCAD, Toronto. 2 Apr. 2008. 180.
³ Ibid. 183.
⁴ Assmann, Jan. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.” New German Critique 65 (1995): 125-133. JSTOR. OCAD, Toronto. 31 Mar. 2008. Keyword: Jan Assmann. 127.
⁵ Ibid. 131.
⁶ Kansteiner, Wulf. “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies.” 180.
⁷ Ibid. 180.
⁸ Schubert, Karsten. The Curator’s Egg. London: One-Off Press, 2000. 89.
⁹ Assmann, Jan. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.” 127.
¹⁰ Whitelaw, Anne. “‘Whiffs of Balsam, Pine, and Spruce’: Art Museums and the Production of a Canadian Aesthetic.” Capital Culture: a Reader on Modernist Legacies, State Institutions, and the Value(s) of Art. Ed. Jody Berland and Shelley Hornstein. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2000. 122-137. 123.
¹¹ Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Chip, and T.J. Ferguson. “Memory Pieces and Footprints: Multivocality and the Meanings of Ancient Times and Ancestral Places Among the Zuni and Hopi.” American Anthropologist 108 (2006): 148-162. Anthrosource. OCAD, Toronto. 2 Apr. 2008. 149.
¹² Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory. “Thoughts in Things: Modernity, History and North American Museums.” 589.
¹³ Ibid. 589-590.
¹⁴ Bal, Mieke. “The Discourse of the Museum.” Thinking About Exhibitions. Ed. R. Greenberg, B.W. Ferguson, and S. Nairne. London & New York: Routledge, 1996. 201-218. 202.
¹⁵ Haas, Jonathan. “Anthropology in the Contemporary Museum.” Napa Bulletin (1999): 53-57. Anthrosource. OCAD, Toronto. 3 Apr. 2008. 53,
¹⁶ Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory. “Thoughts in Things: Modernity, History and North American Museums.” 587.
¹⁷ Haas, Jonathan. “Anthropology in the Contemporary Museum.” 54.
¹⁸ Ibid. 54-55.

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