Days at the Museum
Reviewed by Bernadette Callery, Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences
Danny Danziger. Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Penguin, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-14-311426-0 (pb) $16.00
Editor and historian of science George Sarton notes in his 1950 “Notes on the reviewing of learned books,” that a reviewer should provide some background on the subject of a biography, asserting that “the reader cannot be expected to take any interest in the biography of a man of whom he knows nothing.” Danny Danziger was evidently of the same mind when he compiled the collection of soundbites called Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While the work is heavily weighted to transcriptions of comments from curators, including the outgoing director Philippe de Montebello, and trustees, we also learn what inspires and sustains the work of exhibition managers, editors, security chiefs, maintenance men, waitresses and the florist who does the flowers in the Great Hall.
Danziger is not the first to notice that museums create their own ecosystems and this kind of social anthropology is what gives interest to the ever-popular “behind the scenes” tours of museums. Unfortunately, what may have been intended as candor sometimes comes across as frivolous or sentimental, to the extent that one wonders if the subjects appreciated the fact that their remarks would be immortalized in print.
Predictably, and revealing my bias, the best sections are the mini-lectures from the curators, as they respond to the sort of questions they’re often asked about their favorite items in the collections, their academic training, and how they got their jobs at the MET. Given the treasures they represent, museum people are often interesting conversationalists, but, based on this sampling, the trajectory to their jobs would appear to be a bit more haphazard than the rest of us.
One irritating aspect of the design of the work is that while Danziger provides the job title of the person interviewed in the table of contents, that information is not repeated at the head of their chapter. Instead, we’re treated to a brief comment on the appearance or personality quirk of the subject. Danziger’s implicit message to those seeking positions in the museum community is that in addition to knowing a lot about your subject, you should also cultivate an attractive eccentricity.
For more detail on what at least one group of museum staff do, as well as why they do it, consider Registrars on Record: Essays on Museum Collections Management, edited by Mary Case and published in 1988 by the American Association of Museums. This collection includes registrar Carol O’Biso’s account of her involvement in the preparation of a major exhibition of Maori cultural artifacts, which is an example of museum storytelling at its best.
posted by Richard J. Cox @ 5:33 PM
3 Comments:
..."Danziger’s implicit message to those seeking positions in the museum community is that in addition to knowing a lot about your subject, you should also cultivate an attractive eccentricity. "
"For more detail on what at least one group of museum staff do, as well as why they do it, consider Registrars on Record: Essays on Museum Collections Management, edited by Mary Case and published in 1988 by the American Association of Museums. This collection includes registrar Carol O’Biso’s account of her involvement in the preparation of a major exhibition of Maori cultural artifacts, which is an example of museum storytelling at its best."
Bright, creative and talented individuals are always what others would call perhaps 'eccentric' somehow. Haven't heard much positive buzz about the Danziger Museum book, other than what resembles some of the items hawked in the museum stores, or peddled at the admission desk as a audiotour to listen to as one walks around the museum. These have also become popular in many museums--yet other times keeping it simple i.e. brief comments on a museum label and a few benches in a gallery, sells most. However, popular movies (Night at the Museum, Snakes on a plane even?) helps in other ways.
A related article and title from December some may have aleady seen shows how times have changed in American museums below. The AAUM title compiled by M. Case, museum consultant, from 1988, may also have different perspectives in 2009, also keeping in mind the differences between what registrars do in terms of loans and exhibitions of 'cultural collections' versus other collection management roles taken up by archives and curatorial depts. These differences also need to be looked more closely at in terms of storytelling and what they actually do in museums today and the legacy of why they do it.
Every museum has their own institutional standards and working relationship with other museums over the years.
Some more positive than others, like all things, and with the reputation which the museum holds within the profession at large.
-----------------------------------
"AN ACADEMIC IN AMERICA"
"Revisiting Natural Science
The business culture that dominates today's museums has no room for the eccentricities of introverted curators"
Chronicle Careers - from the linked full article - Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/12/2008121201c.htm?pg=dji
December 12, 2008
By THOMAS H. BENTON
(here are some interesting excerpts - from the full article lined above from the Chronicle, 12/12/08)
"In Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum (Knopf, 2008), Richard Fortey describes the transformation of the museum where he worked as a paleontologist from 1970 until his retirement in 2006. In many respects, his memoir shares the elegiac tone of recent memoirs of the book trade and librarianship (The Chronicle, October 10, 2008). "
..."Over the course of his career, the shift from comparative anatomy to genomics as the dominant method of natural science completely altered the nature of museum displays. Once one could teach evolution with a series of articulated skeletons showing the development of the eohippus into the modern horse, but how does one create a display for research that is conducted primarily with microscopes and computers? What is there to do but put the scientists themselves at the center of the museum experience? The visitor can observe them through a window the same way one might tour the facilities of McDonnell Douglas. Meanwhile, behind the glass, Fortey writes, conversation focused on "the virtues or deficiencies of a new piece of software rather than the discovery of a new species of butterfly."
"The title of Fortey's memoir refers to a type of space, unique to natural-history museums, that arouses mingled feelings of awe, curiosity, and whimsy through the gathering of unlikely natural and man-made objects: "Science, treasure, rarity, beauty, scholarship: this hidden gallery made me understand again the heterogeneous attraction of museum life."
"As Fortey rightly observes, "Those who have devoted their lives to collections — obdurate people, odd people, admirable people — actually make a museum what it is and should be." With nearly Pythonesque humor, Fortey shows how gifted eccentrics were once sheltered by natural-history museums, which were unpredictably enhanced by alcoholic, chain-smoking whale-defleshers and curmudgeonly obsessives who had spent so many years with bats — or beetles, or barnacles — that they began to resemble them and mimic their behavior."
"Fortey asserts — rightly, I think — that the older, interdisciplinary, vocational culture of natural history can no longer comfortably exist in the context of the modern museum. Such work is now wholly professionalized and dependent on advanced, specialized education, expensive technology, and access to the latest research. It depends on the same kind of management strategies and values that are transforming our universities along similar lines. And the experience can be quite alienating.
......"
"One goes to a natural-history museum not just to contemplate the minutiae of comparative anatomy — or to watch scientists demonstrate the insidious might of their corporate sponsors — but also to meditate, like Holden Caulfield, on the meaning of time, death, change, and the succession of generations."
More on this book mentioned before, from the Chronicle, 12/12/08 cited in previous post)
"In Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum (Knopf, 2008), Richard Fortey describes the transformation of the museum where he worked as a paleontologist from 1970 until his retirement in 2006. In many respects, his memoir shares the elegiac tone of recent memoirs of the book trade and librarianship (The Chronicle, October 10, 2008). "
I wanted to take a closer look at the library and archives at his museum to see where everything was!
Natural History Museum, London Library & Archives
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/library/index.html
The Museum Archives maintain the official records and historical collection of the Natural History Museum. The Archives is also responsible for organising records management across the Museum
The Archives catalogue contains summary descriptions of over 28,000 records from the Museum's organisational archive, including photographs and correspondence
Museum Archives Online Catalogue - Welcome to the online catalogue of the Natural History Museum Archives.
The online catalogue of the NHM Archives is for researchers, students, professionals and members of the public interested in the history, development and work of the Museum and its staff. The catalogue contains summary descriptions - rather than transcripts or images - of over 28,000 records from the Museum's organisational archive, including photographs and Tring Museum correspondence. New records are added to the catalogue on a regular basis, and development of the catalogue is ongoing.
The catalogue does not at present contain records of the manuscript collections held by the Museum libraries (General, Zoology, Entomology, Botany, Earth Sciences) such as the personal papers of naturalists. The one exception is the papers of Alfred Russel Wallace, held by the General Library, which have been catalogued onto this database, Information on the rest of the libraries’ manuscript holdings can be found via the Library catalogue.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/library/archives/catalogue/overview.html
Collections & Curation, & Collections Management
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/collections/index.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/jobs/case-study/ More museums are using their website for content delivery still
here is a link 'about us' to the same museum in London, with a clip about the current Registrar --who was also asked how his job has changed etc.
An interesting question may also be whether collections management refers to the same thing here-- it does, if the museum considers
its archival and library (including mss etc) collections as also 'collections' to be curated. In some museums, a library may function as more
of an education / outreach unit, rather than an actual museum 'collection'. I've worked with registrars, however they were more involved with
loans being sent out/in for exhibitions and the record keeping in this sense, esp for arts, cultural objects etc as opposed to manuscripts, archives or books
unless there were in special collections museums.
In my museum experience, registrars worked in records management, differently from curatorial depts unless it
involved a loan for exhibition. Records about an object would be kept within the curatorial dept and accessioned there, and collection management & planning,
took place under the individual curatorial dept. The registrar would be only involved with items going out on loan or to an exhibition in/out house.
"One irritating aspect of the design of the work is that while Danziger provides the job title of the person interviewed in the table of contents, that information is not repeated at the head of their chapter. Instead, we’re treated to a brief comment on the appearance or personality quirk of the subject. Danziger’s implicit message to those seeking positions in the museum community is that in addition to knowing a lot about your subject, you should also cultivate an attractive eccentricity. "
It's worth noting also that the author, columnist/journalist for the London Sunday Times, has dedicated the book, ..."with great love, to my mother, Gigi Guggenheim Danziger" Gloria Guggenheim had notable art/other collections around the world.
The writing style of short interviews seems to only scratch the surface in terms of "behind the scenes".
Post a Comment
<< Home