A une Damoyselle Malade

Ma Mignonne

Je vous donne

Le bon jour.

Le sejour

C’est prison :

Guerison

Recouvrez,

Puis ouvrez

Vostre porte,

Et qu’on sorte

Vistement :

Car Clement

Le vous mande.

Va friande

De ta bouche,

Qui se couche

En danger

Pour manger

Confitures :

Si tu dures

Trop malade,

Couleur fade

Tu prendras,

Et perdras

L’embonpoint.

Dieu te doint

Santé bonne

Ma Mignonne

 

-Clement Marot

 

The poem itself, a silly get well card of sorts, has little relevance to museums, technology, or the digital humanities. What matters is that it’s featured as the topic of the first story on season 13, episode 1 of Radiolab. The episode is called “Translation,” and this particular story details Douglas Hofstadter’s obsession with translating the poem into English. After many years, dozens of translators, and hundreds of versions, no one poem managed to maintain Marot’s strict form, lighthearted tone, and original content all at once. Hofstadter makes the point that just as one cannot understand the essence of a person based on a single photograph, one must read a collection of translations to truly understand a poem. In a world where technology has the potential to either enhance or detract from the museum experience, where “museums will have to find new ways to tell stories and engage their audiences,” this holistic approach to translation might act as a crucial tenet of the marriage of museums and technology (Museums in the Digital Age, 2013).

The ARUP article cites collaboration and diversification as two themes that museums must seek to incorporate in our increasingly global and desensitized society. Hofstadter’s approach speaks to both of these issues: by inviting and sharing translations of the poem done by people of all walks of life, he engages disparate people in an obscure, arguably irrelevant 16th century poem, to the point that they undergo a shift from apathy (I am projecting and generalizing here, but I know that if I had come upon this poem, I would’ve glanced at it, recognized a few words I knew, and never given it a second thought), to connection on a very personal level. In fact, in the comments section on the Radiolab website, members of the general public offered their own translations and insights, proving a deeper engagement with the piece. Further, the vehicle of Radiolab, as a popular podcast, allows for the expansion of the audience of the poem in a way that an anthology of 16th Century French poetry, for example, would not. In fact, “Translation” has the most downloads of any Radiolab episode ever. Scholars of Marot can only dream of his poems, on their own, reaching even a fraction of that audience.

The integration of technology in museums can serve a purpose similar to the effects detailed above. If one applies Hofstadter’s approach to the considerations detailed in the ARUP article, technology can have the ability to contextualize objects, further their storytelling, expose diverse audiences to them, and facilitate engagement with them on a deeper level, in a way that the traditional museum setting cannot.

In “The Exhibitionary Complex,” Bennett describes the role museums played early in their inception as places though which perception is manipulated and the public, in a sense, controlled through them.  Greenblatt presents resonance and wonder which are tools, really, through which the museum is able to influence the audience’s perception of the objects.

Greenblatt’s definition of resonance and wonder are part of the museum effect, how an object, by simply being placed inside the museum, is elevated from being an object of function and décor to being seen as a fine piece of art.  Resonance and the cherishing of objects for the cultural history they carry is part of this effect.  Wonder also plays into this.  Greenblatt’s description of “boutique lighting” can be seen in LACMA’s South Asian and South East Asian galleries where works have been arranged within a dark room with their own, individual spotlights.

The effects of this curating are double sided.  While the object focus elevates the works and causes wonder or admiration for the skill and beauty, the cultures of origin are being isolated from the viewer.  The dark walls and light create such “awe” that the works begin to feel other worldly.  The works are being admired and praised out of our admiration of their aesthetic beauty and we are not given any knowledge or understanding of the culture that produced them.

I would argue that these galleries do not contextualize and justly historicize the works they present as there is little didactic information attached to them.  In essence, there is so much wonder created that the viewer is not able to place the work in a cultural context and resonate with them.

Who really benefits from museums? Is the question posed by Tony Bennett in his ‘Exhibitionary Complex” essay. In examining knowledge as a form of power, Bennett insinuates that audiences of public museums are prey to museum curators who regulate society. Making museums public is a method by the government for controlling society’s knowledge, while displaying the state’s power.

“Institutions comprising ‘the exhibitionary complex’, by contrast, were involved in the transfer of objects and bodies from the enclosed and private domains in which they had previously been displayed (but to a restricted public) into progressively more open and public arenas where, through the representations to which they were subjected, they formed vehicles for inscribing and broadcasting the messages of power (but of a different type) throughout society.”

This reminds me of my final paper for Art History 56B, Art of Africa, in Spring of 2014. In the assignment, the class was asked to visit the Fowler Museum’s Afrian Art exhibit and examine the benefit of the exhibit. Did the exhibit properly convey the true artistic climate in various African countries? Was it misleading in any way to the viewer? How can an exhibit, curated by an American for an American audience, give true homage to the African origins of the objects within?

After many hours of analysis, I answered the question by saying that the exhibit relied heavily on the assumption that the audience had no baseline knowledge of African Arts. Therefore, the exhibit became a dumbed down interpretation of the objects, which may lead to an overly simplified view of African art.

Is it problematic for curators to display art in a way that may limit the viewers’ own interpretation?  No. Curators must seek to present information as simply as possible in order to cater to a varied audience. The enlightened audience has thousands of tools at their fingertips: libraries, internet resources, worldly friends, etc, to expand their learning if they so desire to research an exhibit further on their own time. At the time of Bennett’s writing (1988) this was a less feasible option. But our class is called Museums in the Digital Age. In this world, the viewer has more power than the curator, jumping off from ideas presented in an exhibit as a baseline for research. Viewers do not take a curator’s word as law because they have the power to further expand, dispute, or qualify the ideas presented to them in the museum.

This week’s readings, specifically Resonance and Wonder, were very interesting to consider in relation to multiple exhibitions I visited at the Fowler Museum on the UCLA Campus. The Fowler aims to be a cutting edge museum that works with communities to integrate their own ideas into curated exhibit. Though they do not always accomplish this goal, their attempt to challenge historical methods of curating reflects the openness that Greenblatt discusses.

This newer approach to curating museum spaces has led to the creation of two exhibits, one on maps and one on the cabinets of curiosity that are discussed in the Greenblatt article. I believe that the acknowledgement of the cabinets  of curiosity by the Fowler opens a space for discussion, and prompts the subject of wonder to be about the museum as an institution.   By allowing the audience to be critical of the museum as an institution, I believe it opens a space for people to consider the objects both in the context of their culture, but also in the context of their history. Opening this space is crucial for individuals to gain a more complete understanding of the histories if the objects and the people that objects belong to. This space also allows individuals to consider the relationship that the museum has with the people who it aims to represent.

The Fowler also has exhibits, like the exhibit on Zuni Maps, which aim to completely integrate both the people and the objects that a culture presents in a museum. This particular exhibit was created in association with the artists and elders from the Zuni community to curate an exhibit that the community felt comfortable with. By integrating the voices of community members, the exhibit evokes wonder and openness in the experience because it allows for exposure to marginalized point of views.

These readings were effective to consider with relation to the Fowler Museum because it allowed me to contemplate the different approaches to curating museums and required me to be critical of the institution that I have attended since my freshman year at UCLA.  I believe that the museum can utilize digital technology to enhance this integration both as a method of curating and as an aspect of the exhibition

In “The Exhibitionary Complex,” Tony Bennett discusses two opposing views when exhibiting museum art and artifacts: the Carceral Archipelago, and the Exhibitionary Complex. These two opinions interpret both the public gaze and the display of art in different ways–the former seeing it as a form of incarceration, and the latter seeing it as way to educate the public through such artifacts. The articles surmises that through self-monitoring, museums acts as an exhibition which seeks to educate and inform normal everyday people by directly integrating them into it.

I had somewhat of a difficult time trying to draw an example I’ve personally experienced, but one of the first things that came to my mind was Projection LA–a public art piece here in Silverlake on Sunset Boulevard, which I’m sure everyone has seen on their social media feeds at one point or another. This article I found best describes the scene surrounding the whitewashed motel.

As you walk the western edge of the trendy hamlet of Silver Lake on the city’s storied Sunset Boulevard, it’s the palms you see first, as the monotone piece slowly emerges from the contextual beige of strip mall stucco. Actually, first you’ll see dozens of people standing precariously in the middle of four lanes of traffic to Instagram the piece, which is about as social-media ready as a public art piece could possibly be.

I feel that the first half of the description relates to Bennett’s Exhibitionary Complex because the art that is being showcased is not imprisoned or incarcerated, but is rather extremely accessible to the public, and therefore allowing the “common man” to partake in an experience that is normally thought to be that of higher-class or wealthier populations. Furthermore, the second half of this excerpt takes this exhibition from public to… I guess “super public” through social media, thereby expanding the reach of this art piece even further to populations that would normally not partake in such an experience.

That being said, it’s definitely evident that more and more museums are taking advantage of the Exhibitionary Complex–take for example, The Broad, LACMA’s Urban Light, etc.–by exposure to and incorporation of everyday people. It’s a trend that is fueled by today’s digital media, and although I love the concept of increasing art’s accessibility, I wonder if all this is just that–a trend–and how long will it last?

 

In “The Exhibitionary Complex” by Tony Bennett, when discussing world fairs there was a quote I found interesting regarding their “function less as vehvles for the technical educaton of the working classes than as instruments for their stupefaction” (22). I think with museums there is somewhat of a line drawn between what is educational vesus what is meant to amuse and entertain the masses. The need for a growth or consistancy in terms of visitorship often means curation of exhibits that will draw in the greatest numbers which does not automatically indicate a loss in educational value and purpose, but can do so. Regardless of the educational value of an exhibit, the self-celebrating quality of musuems which show human acheivments seems clear. The prestge associated with various museums of art and the pieces they display are in themselves evidence of a culture that places value in its own productions. To clarify, the issue of what is art versus what is an artifact is part of this. For example, the museum in my hometown has a number of famous pieces of art and photography from Western artists reflecting the history of the county. In a comletely separate exhibit are the pieces of Native American history that were likely originally taken without permission. The separation of cultural identities to both self-congratulate and almost voyeuristically speculate is definitely problematic. Though perhaps done to educate the masses on the history of the Native American peoples in the are, the exhibit was advertised as something exotic with if I recall correctly a tagline about entering another world suggesting the kind of alien nature of another culture. The need to create the sense of stupefaction to draw in visitors to celebrate what is not their own is problematic and undermines the value of the museum experience.

 

In Greenblatt’s article, he discusses the life f the object before it entered the museum, that these objects served a purpose and have a history that shifts when it is placed in the museum setting. He asks us to consider:

How have the objects come to be displayed? What is at stake in categorizing them as ‘museum-quality’? How were they originally used? What cultural and material conditions made possible their production? What were the feelings of those who originally held these objects, cherished them, collected them, possessed them? What is my relationship to these same objects now that they are displayed here, in this museum, on this day?

This weekend I visited the Art of the Pacific exhibition at LACMA I contemplated these questions. While the hierarchal nature of museums have historically subjugated non-western arts and artifacts, I feel that many museums have attempted to correct these wrongs by “elevating” these arts by in some ways decontextualizing their objects to display them for purely aesthetic value, as western art objects. This was apparent in the Art of the Pacific Exhibition. The presentation of the works is rather beautiful in a minimalist “white box” display with no text.

While the lack of text to give context for these pieces and their “former life’s” is problematic in itself, as many of them where not just meant for aesthetics and were stolen from their original owners through colonialism, I also found it troubling that they invited a visiting artist, Franz West, who is neither of Polynesian or Melanesian descent or an expert on the objects to present the show. While one from the culture cannot represent the beliefs of all pacific communities, I found it a bit strange that they chose a western artist to “elevate” these works to make them “museum-quality”.

When considering multifunctional cross-cultural objects that have been displaced and re-contextualized in a museum, I think that in may ways, the way to resolve the flattening of their presentation is not just through text as Greenblat’s article suggest, but unique approaches to display including digital technologies.

Tony Bennett’s “The Exhibitionary Complex”, for me, was the most interesting out of the three readings — followed shortly by “Why Museums Make Me Sad” by James Boon. They both cover similar topics, Bennett going moreso into the history of how museums emerged as a sort of middle ground between the low brow exhibitions such as freak shows, and the high brow. All of these come from a similar desire to put things on exhibition (thus, “The Exhibitionary Complex”), especially things regarded as unknown to the general viewer. For instance, this is what eventually popularizes the world fairs that defined a generation for its exuberant and ostentatious exhibits that showed off things from ‘far, far away’ (although maybe not a galaxy’s distance).

Common people then did not have the luxury of the Internet, or even the luxury afforded to us today through a public school system that covers world history and cultures. Rather than being able to form their own opinion about pieces they see on view, they are subject to whatever information the curator decides to put on display for the viewers. As Boon notes, people have an inherent interest in the unfamiliar, and enjoy viewing such objects with fascination and amusement, disregarding the curator’s assertion of power over them. In 2016, the sentiment has morphed. With the advent of the Internet, and more importantly, Wikipedia, the way we consume knowledge has drastically changed. This has also changed how we have come to view knowledge and museums. Coincidentally, my friend posted a link to an article about the “crisis” museums and the humanities are facing on Facebook (right here), which outlines this scenario well. We want to know more and more about whatever subjects pique our interests, and drawing our own opinions on the subject, which has resulted in a power struggle between the museum and its viewer.

Beth and Steven, the authors of the article, say that these institutions have the option to make their images and knowledge open source, or to even just advertise their published works more. Rather than protest against this shifting change, museums should acknowledge their special presence on the Internet as a key source of information.

James Boon’s “Why Museums Make me Sad,” elaborates on some discussion held in class last week about the exhibition of objects in museums, and how they are portrayed the public. This reminded me of something I saw a few days ago. While doing my daily browsing on my social media, a fellow acquaintance (and huge social activist) posted this article with some very opinionated comments.

To summarize, Boglarka Balough, a Hungarian journalist, released an article called “I Morphed Myself Into Tribal Women To Raise Awareness Of Their Secluded Cultures,” in which she photoshops herself to represent different styles and standards of beauty for women in African tribes. There were lots of problems with this project, as what Balough did was a form of blackface and cultural misappropriation. However, her intentions were just to share with the world a culture that she found to be fascinating.

We walk a fine line when exhibiting objects in museums. It is the museum’s purpose to preserve history and to educate and share with the public. However, some of these objects are not always acquired through righteous methods, like pillaging. By exhibiting things in a museum, curators “glamorize” these objects, when its origins are ethically questionable. With the application of modern technology, this is something curators must consider even more heavily. Balough physically did not dress or perform blackface- she did so through photoshop, by meshing her face onto the faces of other existing women. Though not to this extent, what we call “fun” museum sites, like the Wig making website, can easily go wrong and offend many people if not done properly.

A lot things are open to interpretation, and thus creates a large spectrum of reaction from the viewers. Though we cannot always “please everyone,” it is crucial to be considerate of all audiences and be mindful of the sensitivity that exists when displaying objects, no matter what they are.