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The paradox of the map: Semiotics and museum education
Mtrseum ~~nage~en~und
Curatorship (1992), II, 285-289
The Paradox of the Map Semiotics and Museum Education FRANS
SCHOUTEN
After reading an article undefined but undeniably of the Map.
on ecomuseums recently, I was left with certain misgivings, there. Some time later I came across Lewis Carroll’s Paradox
“That’s another thing we’ve learned from your nation” said Mein Herr, “Map-making. But we’ve carried it much further than you. ” “What do you consider the largest useful map?” I asked. “Well, we got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the best idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!” exclaimed Mein Herr. “Have you used it?” I enquired. “It has never been spread out” said Mein Herr. “The farmers objected, They said it would cover the whole country. We use the country itself as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.“’ I then understood what was worrying me: the closer we want to come to reality, the more we have to violate it. Attempts to finalize this process can even result in ‘musealization’ of the whole environment. Our reconstruction of reality seems to be rated higher than reality itself. We use a country as its own ma * convention becomes construction. Alan Watts, in his book The Wisdom of Insecurity, P,argues that we tend to forget that thoughts and words are based on mutual agreements and that it is fatal to take these too seriously. He compares words with money: confusing money with true opulence is absurd. Money can go a long way but true opulence, like food for example, is perishable. Although thoughts, ideas and words are in a sense ‘small change’ for real things, they actually only stand for them. Just as money does not stand for the perishability and eatability of food, so words and thoughts do not stand for reality. In this context, Watts observes that we, Westerners, tend to eat menus instead of meals. The ambience and composition of the meal (preferably expressed in French) is often more important than the actual eating. We shape reality on the basis of our own ideas about it, often considering the abstract concept more important than the real thing. In our culture holidays and landscapes are enjoyed for their pictorial potential and are ‘frozen’ into photographs. The map-landscape relation reflects this dilemma very well. Museums are especially weighed down by the dilemma of whether ‘reality’ is true. This may explain why museums give such importance to the ‘real-ness’ of objects. The guarantee of authenticity is, as it were, a cover-just as banknotes are covered by gold in central banks, so the authenticity of the object ‘hides’ its real meaning. For museums, however, the authenticity of the object should be considered in relation to their real 0260-4779/92/03 0285-05 @ 1992Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd
286
Semiotics and Mweum Education
meaning. What does an object stand for? Is the value we attach to it identical to the original value? Does the act of showing the object out of the original context imply a shift in meaning? Semiotics, as a theory of signs, is concerned with meanings. Umberto Eco states in his book Theory of Semiotics:3 ‘ Culture in general should be studied as a communicative phenomenon based on the signification of systems’. Museologists, as keepers of the natural and cultural heritage of mankind, will certainly accept this suggestion. However, a distinction is made within the field of semiotics between semantics, concerned with meanings, and syntactics, concerned with formal structures indicating the relationship of meanings: grammatical territory. In terms of art history, semantics is identical to iconography, and syntactics to the theory of composition. Both elements, syntactics and semantics, have a certain effect; they influence each other in a certain way. In semiotics this is called the pragmatic aspect of communication. It will be clear that museums, as noted above, continually provide meanings to the objects in their care and that the way in which the objects are displayed is one of the factors determining which pragmatic effects of the meanings are transferred to the public. Thus museums are not free from value judgements, but they are to a large extent normative trendsetters in society. Every form of display of an object rules out other aspects of interpretation, or at least makes them less obvious. Museums do not only conserve objects, they also conserve meanings. The question is, of course, whose meanings? They will mostly be those of the dominant culture, just as history is written by the conquerors, and not by the conquered. The observation that museums play an important part in maintaining the myth of the ‘good old days’ is therefore correct, as the striking absence in our collections of material remains of the culture of the lower strata of society emphasizes. Museums are also merely depictions of reality. However authentic their ‘real’ objects may be, and however realistic the context in which they are placed, they are only representations of the reality which they stand for. The object itself is the materialization of an idea, and moreover alienated from its original environment. This applies even to in situ conservation. Indeed, in order to make everything in museums ‘more real’, historical and cultural reality must be increasingly violated. In the first chapters of his book Commonplace Irreality,4 Umberto Eco gives examples of this procedure. He mentions the ‘spastic desire for the almost-real as a neurotic reaction to the absence of memories’, and ‘the Absolute Unreal as the offspring of the unhappy consciousness of the empty present’. With these words Umberto Eco is referring to the United States of America. In Europe we look at that country with an element of pity as if it concerned a nation of Philistines. Reading Donald Horne’s excellent book The Great Museum5 is an eye-opener in this respect: Europe is in no position to cast the first stone. The parallel drawn by Donald Horne between medieval pilgrims and the modern ‘secular relics’ of the present tourist industry makes this very clear. I am struck by his description of the ‘Wasa’ museumship as a gigantic intensive care patient, artificially kept alive by special conservation equipment. Composed of 14,000 pieces, held together by steel pipes and rubber tubes, her temperature and humidity is checked several times a day, as if she were at death’s door. She deserves fame as the greatest conservation project of organic material rather than as the sole surviving Baroque man-of-war. The East has had a more flexible approach to the illusion-reality dichotomy than the West. Hinduism knows the concept of Maya, often misunderstood as if Hindus interpret the world as an illusion. Illusion is exclusively ours when we think that forms and
FRANS SCHOUTEN
287
structure, objects and events around us are realities of nature, instead of realizing that they are concepts formed by our way of thinking, which attempt to measure and categorize everything. Muya is the illusion that we consider those concepts to be realities, that we consider the map of an area to be the area itself. These reflections and observations are important aspects of current changes in the field of museums. In an article for Icofom, Peter van Mensch indicates some major shifts and changes in museology since World War II.6 Generally speaking, the concept of the museum object is broadening. A museum object can no longer be defined as an object in a museum collection with a one-dimensional meaning or value. More and more, museum practice comes close to Deetz’s definition of material culture: ‘that sector of our physical environment that is modified through culturally determined behaviour’. To Deetz this includes cuts of meat, ploughed fields, livestock, lily ponds, dancing, parades and even language.’ Another tendency mentioned by Van Mensch is that of conceptualization. More and more systematic object-centred exhibitions are being replaced by thematic approaches. In relation to the above mentioned issue, it becomes interesting to collect, preserve and display ideas and values. This tendency is also apparent in the development of science centres and phenomena like theme parks. Donald Horne’s parallel between medieval pilgrims and the present tourist industry is an example of the third tendency identified in Van Mensch’s article, i.e. the musealization of cultural and commercial institutions. Apart from these three tendencies, Van Mensch describes some other major changes in museums : I. The shift from object-centred to community-centred museums. In the second and third worlds this phenomenon is increasingly important, and he quotes the declaration from Quebec concerning the new museology. ‘While preserving the material achievements of past civilizations and protecting the technology of today, the museology is primarily concerned with community development . . .‘. 2. In accordance with this tendency there is to be seen the rise of the decentralized museum concept. There is an explosive growth of small specialist museums, especially in the field of history and technology, and it is anticipated that there will be further growth in the numbers of local, community based museums, neighbourhood museums, or decentralized museums. 3. A tendency to in situ preservation, by which museums show an increasing respect for the original physical settings of objects. There is a shift from an object-oriented to a context-oriented approach in collecting and exhibition policies. Due to these developments the role of the museum-educator is also changing. Museum education has grown from an additional facility in the basement to a component of museum policy which may not be neglected, although it is open to question whether it is yet an integrated part of museum policy. Still too many museum professionals, and even museum educators themselves, see this work as a way of clearing from the galleries too many children disturbing other (real) visitors from enjoying their visit. They try to hide away these noisy crowds in especially designed units far from the collections which they obviously are not able to understand at their own value. Although this conception is not entirely wrong, the basic misconception is that adult visitors are able to find their way through the collections in an intelligent way. Visitor surveys in recent years point out that this is not the case at all. Although visitors insist on looking upon museums as learning institutions, they hardly learn anything. Their behaviour in the galleries can more easily be compared to
288
Semiotics and Museum
Education
windowshopping on a sunny Saturday than an intelligent consuming of new knowledge. Our audiences are polite enough not to complain. Partly because it is very difficult for them to define any alternative, not being experts in the field of the displayed objects, and partly (and this is dangerous) our audience (like some museum people) think it is just like a museum ought to be. Fortunately more and more museums are changing to a more visitor-friendly approach and to understandable displays. These museums have one thing in common, museum education is not just involved with children but is an integrated part of the entire museum communication policy. There is nothing wrong in working with children but more needs have to be served in order to push the museum into an institution that really ‘serves the needs of the community and its development’. The world wide trend of the ‘integrated museum’,’ first expressed at the conference in Santiago de Chile in 1972 and since then further developed, needs a different type of museum professional. Based on the above-mentioned developments and thoughts there is an increasing demand for specifically trained museum educators. Not only in-service training for educators to enable them to face the new challenges but also a specific initial training for museum educators. Such a basic training needs to be focused on different audiences, tools and techniques than were available for the ‘classic’ educator. Specifically, museum educators also need to turn their attention to programming for the individual adult visitor, unguided family groups and to the exhibition design process. Museum educators should be recognized as having a unique and irreplaceable role in the museum, having an area of expertise comparable in depth and importance to the knowledge about the collections contributed by curators. To define and develop such a body of knowledge and expertise, specific training facilities and additional research in the field of museum education and visitor behaviour is necessary. Museums have an important role to play in making people aware of questions that are essential for the entire community. Museums in developing countries, for example, have contributed to the dissemination of new crop growing techniques, elementary health care and projects to teach people to read and write. An example of this is the ‘Casa de1 museo’ in Mexico City in the neighbourhood of Tacubaya: This little neighbourhood museum now functions as a general advice bureau, dealing with health problems, with educational opportunities and with marital disputes. It would be no exaggeration to say that it has become the local cultural centre, and once that stage has been reached any museum is entitled to say that it has fully integrated into its community.’ More recent are the experiences of Ione Carvalho de Meidova in the setting up of grass-roots museums in Nicaragua. lo The museum should change from a stately, distant and static presentation into the frontlines of society. If a museum is to play a reasonable role in society, people should be able to recognize themselves and their needs in the presentation of a collection. make people curious, make them wonder about A museum should raise questions, reality, and the training of museum employees at any level should focus on this issue. Only through cooperation and sharing of responsibilities will a new museum policy flourish, and this requires special training of museum educators and of curators. Only through intensive cooperation between the care of collections and the development of their educational role will museums become institutions that function for society and its development. Museums are both a mirror to the past and a window to the future in relation to the dynamics of contemporary society.
FRANS SCHOUTEN
289
Notes This paper, in its original form, was delivered Paris, 1987.
as an opening
address to the ICOM-CECA
meeting
in
1. Lewis Carroll, ‘Sylvie and Bruno concluded’, in The Works of Lewis Carroll, Roger Lancelyn Green, ed. (London, 1965). 2. Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity (Pantheon Books, USA, 1951). 3. Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1976). 4. Umberto Eco, De Alledaagse Onwerkelijkheid (C ommonpluce Zrreality) (Amsterdam, 1985). 5. Donald Horne, The Great Museum: the Representation of History (London, 1984). 6. Peter van Mensch, ‘Museums in Movement’, in V. Sofka, ed. Museology and Museums, Icofom Study Series 12, pp. 17-20. 7. Van Mensch, ibid. 8. Round Table on the Development and the Role of Museums in the Contemporary World. Santiago de Chile 20-31 May 1972. (Report by Hector Fernandez Guido, Unesco, 1973). 9. Kenneth Hudson, Museums for the 1980s (Unesco, 1977). 10. Maria Pagageorge, ‘Camoapa: A Community Experiment’, Museum News, July/August 1982, p. 57.
Curatorship (1992), II, 285-289
The Paradox of the Map Semiotics and Museum Education FRANS
SCHOUTEN
After reading an article undefined but undeniably of the Map.
on ecomuseums recently, I was left with certain misgivings, there. Some time later I came across Lewis Carroll’s Paradox
“That’s another thing we’ve learned from your nation” said Mein Herr, “Map-making. But we’ve carried it much further than you. ” “What do you consider the largest useful map?” I asked. “Well, we got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the best idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!” exclaimed Mein Herr. “Have you used it?” I enquired. “It has never been spread out” said Mein Herr. “The farmers objected, They said it would cover the whole country. We use the country itself as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.“’ I then understood what was worrying me: the closer we want to come to reality, the more we have to violate it. Attempts to finalize this process can even result in ‘musealization’ of the whole environment. Our reconstruction of reality seems to be rated higher than reality itself. We use a country as its own ma * convention becomes construction. Alan Watts, in his book The Wisdom of Insecurity, P,argues that we tend to forget that thoughts and words are based on mutual agreements and that it is fatal to take these too seriously. He compares words with money: confusing money with true opulence is absurd. Money can go a long way but true opulence, like food for example, is perishable. Although thoughts, ideas and words are in a sense ‘small change’ for real things, they actually only stand for them. Just as money does not stand for the perishability and eatability of food, so words and thoughts do not stand for reality. In this context, Watts observes that we, Westerners, tend to eat menus instead of meals. The ambience and composition of the meal (preferably expressed in French) is often more important than the actual eating. We shape reality on the basis of our own ideas about it, often considering the abstract concept more important than the real thing. In our culture holidays and landscapes are enjoyed for their pictorial potential and are ‘frozen’ into photographs. The map-landscape relation reflects this dilemma very well. Museums are especially weighed down by the dilemma of whether ‘reality’ is true. This may explain why museums give such importance to the ‘real-ness’ of objects. The guarantee of authenticity is, as it were, a cover-just as banknotes are covered by gold in central banks, so the authenticity of the object ‘hides’ its real meaning. For museums, however, the authenticity of the object should be considered in relation to their real 0260-4779/92/03 0285-05 @ 1992Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd
286
Semiotics and Mweum Education
meaning. What does an object stand for? Is the value we attach to it identical to the original value? Does the act of showing the object out of the original context imply a shift in meaning? Semiotics, as a theory of signs, is concerned with meanings. Umberto Eco states in his book Theory of Semiotics:3 ‘ Culture in general should be studied as a communicative phenomenon based on the signification of systems’. Museologists, as keepers of the natural and cultural heritage of mankind, will certainly accept this suggestion. However, a distinction is made within the field of semiotics between semantics, concerned with meanings, and syntactics, concerned with formal structures indicating the relationship of meanings: grammatical territory. In terms of art history, semantics is identical to iconography, and syntactics to the theory of composition. Both elements, syntactics and semantics, have a certain effect; they influence each other in a certain way. In semiotics this is called the pragmatic aspect of communication. It will be clear that museums, as noted above, continually provide meanings to the objects in their care and that the way in which the objects are displayed is one of the factors determining which pragmatic effects of the meanings are transferred to the public. Thus museums are not free from value judgements, but they are to a large extent normative trendsetters in society. Every form of display of an object rules out other aspects of interpretation, or at least makes them less obvious. Museums do not only conserve objects, they also conserve meanings. The question is, of course, whose meanings? They will mostly be those of the dominant culture, just as history is written by the conquerors, and not by the conquered. The observation that museums play an important part in maintaining the myth of the ‘good old days’ is therefore correct, as the striking absence in our collections of material remains of the culture of the lower strata of society emphasizes. Museums are also merely depictions of reality. However authentic their ‘real’ objects may be, and however realistic the context in which they are placed, they are only representations of the reality which they stand for. The object itself is the materialization of an idea, and moreover alienated from its original environment. This applies even to in situ conservation. Indeed, in order to make everything in museums ‘more real’, historical and cultural reality must be increasingly violated. In the first chapters of his book Commonplace Irreality,4 Umberto Eco gives examples of this procedure. He mentions the ‘spastic desire for the almost-real as a neurotic reaction to the absence of memories’, and ‘the Absolute Unreal as the offspring of the unhappy consciousness of the empty present’. With these words Umberto Eco is referring to the United States of America. In Europe we look at that country with an element of pity as if it concerned a nation of Philistines. Reading Donald Horne’s excellent book The Great Museum5 is an eye-opener in this respect: Europe is in no position to cast the first stone. The parallel drawn by Donald Horne between medieval pilgrims and the modern ‘secular relics’ of the present tourist industry makes this very clear. I am struck by his description of the ‘Wasa’ museumship as a gigantic intensive care patient, artificially kept alive by special conservation equipment. Composed of 14,000 pieces, held together by steel pipes and rubber tubes, her temperature and humidity is checked several times a day, as if she were at death’s door. She deserves fame as the greatest conservation project of organic material rather than as the sole surviving Baroque man-of-war. The East has had a more flexible approach to the illusion-reality dichotomy than the West. Hinduism knows the concept of Maya, often misunderstood as if Hindus interpret the world as an illusion. Illusion is exclusively ours when we think that forms and
FRANS SCHOUTEN
287
structure, objects and events around us are realities of nature, instead of realizing that they are concepts formed by our way of thinking, which attempt to measure and categorize everything. Muya is the illusion that we consider those concepts to be realities, that we consider the map of an area to be the area itself. These reflections and observations are important aspects of current changes in the field of museums. In an article for Icofom, Peter van Mensch indicates some major shifts and changes in museology since World War II.6 Generally speaking, the concept of the museum object is broadening. A museum object can no longer be defined as an object in a museum collection with a one-dimensional meaning or value. More and more, museum practice comes close to Deetz’s definition of material culture: ‘that sector of our physical environment that is modified through culturally determined behaviour’. To Deetz this includes cuts of meat, ploughed fields, livestock, lily ponds, dancing, parades and even language.’ Another tendency mentioned by Van Mensch is that of conceptualization. More and more systematic object-centred exhibitions are being replaced by thematic approaches. In relation to the above mentioned issue, it becomes interesting to collect, preserve and display ideas and values. This tendency is also apparent in the development of science centres and phenomena like theme parks. Donald Horne’s parallel between medieval pilgrims and the present tourist industry is an example of the third tendency identified in Van Mensch’s article, i.e. the musealization of cultural and commercial institutions. Apart from these three tendencies, Van Mensch describes some other major changes in museums : I. The shift from object-centred to community-centred museums. In the second and third worlds this phenomenon is increasingly important, and he quotes the declaration from Quebec concerning the new museology. ‘While preserving the material achievements of past civilizations and protecting the technology of today, the museology is primarily concerned with community development . . .‘. 2. In accordance with this tendency there is to be seen the rise of the decentralized museum concept. There is an explosive growth of small specialist museums, especially in the field of history and technology, and it is anticipated that there will be further growth in the numbers of local, community based museums, neighbourhood museums, or decentralized museums. 3. A tendency to in situ preservation, by which museums show an increasing respect for the original physical settings of objects. There is a shift from an object-oriented to a context-oriented approach in collecting and exhibition policies. Due to these developments the role of the museum-educator is also changing. Museum education has grown from an additional facility in the basement to a component of museum policy which may not be neglected, although it is open to question whether it is yet an integrated part of museum policy. Still too many museum professionals, and even museum educators themselves, see this work as a way of clearing from the galleries too many children disturbing other (real) visitors from enjoying their visit. They try to hide away these noisy crowds in especially designed units far from the collections which they obviously are not able to understand at their own value. Although this conception is not entirely wrong, the basic misconception is that adult visitors are able to find their way through the collections in an intelligent way. Visitor surveys in recent years point out that this is not the case at all. Although visitors insist on looking upon museums as learning institutions, they hardly learn anything. Their behaviour in the galleries can more easily be compared to
288
Semiotics and Museum
Education
windowshopping on a sunny Saturday than an intelligent consuming of new knowledge. Our audiences are polite enough not to complain. Partly because it is very difficult for them to define any alternative, not being experts in the field of the displayed objects, and partly (and this is dangerous) our audience (like some museum people) think it is just like a museum ought to be. Fortunately more and more museums are changing to a more visitor-friendly approach and to understandable displays. These museums have one thing in common, museum education is not just involved with children but is an integrated part of the entire museum communication policy. There is nothing wrong in working with children but more needs have to be served in order to push the museum into an institution that really ‘serves the needs of the community and its development’. The world wide trend of the ‘integrated museum’,’ first expressed at the conference in Santiago de Chile in 1972 and since then further developed, needs a different type of museum professional. Based on the above-mentioned developments and thoughts there is an increasing demand for specifically trained museum educators. Not only in-service training for educators to enable them to face the new challenges but also a specific initial training for museum educators. Such a basic training needs to be focused on different audiences, tools and techniques than were available for the ‘classic’ educator. Specifically, museum educators also need to turn their attention to programming for the individual adult visitor, unguided family groups and to the exhibition design process. Museum educators should be recognized as having a unique and irreplaceable role in the museum, having an area of expertise comparable in depth and importance to the knowledge about the collections contributed by curators. To define and develop such a body of knowledge and expertise, specific training facilities and additional research in the field of museum education and visitor behaviour is necessary. Museums have an important role to play in making people aware of questions that are essential for the entire community. Museums in developing countries, for example, have contributed to the dissemination of new crop growing techniques, elementary health care and projects to teach people to read and write. An example of this is the ‘Casa de1 museo’ in Mexico City in the neighbourhood of Tacubaya: This little neighbourhood museum now functions as a general advice bureau, dealing with health problems, with educational opportunities and with marital disputes. It would be no exaggeration to say that it has become the local cultural centre, and once that stage has been reached any museum is entitled to say that it has fully integrated into its community.’ More recent are the experiences of Ione Carvalho de Meidova in the setting up of grass-roots museums in Nicaragua. lo The museum should change from a stately, distant and static presentation into the frontlines of society. If a museum is to play a reasonable role in society, people should be able to recognize themselves and their needs in the presentation of a collection. make people curious, make them wonder about A museum should raise questions, reality, and the training of museum employees at any level should focus on this issue. Only through cooperation and sharing of responsibilities will a new museum policy flourish, and this requires special training of museum educators and of curators. Only through intensive cooperation between the care of collections and the development of their educational role will museums become institutions that function for society and its development. Museums are both a mirror to the past and a window to the future in relation to the dynamics of contemporary society.
FRANS SCHOUTEN
289
Notes This paper, in its original form, was delivered Paris, 1987.
as an opening
address to the ICOM-CECA
meeting
in
1. Lewis Carroll, ‘Sylvie and Bruno concluded’, in The Works of Lewis Carroll, Roger Lancelyn Green, ed. (London, 1965). 2. Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity (Pantheon Books, USA, 1951). 3. Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1976). 4. Umberto Eco, De Alledaagse Onwerkelijkheid (C ommonpluce Zrreality) (Amsterdam, 1985). 5. Donald Horne, The Great Museum: the Representation of History (London, 1984). 6. Peter van Mensch, ‘Museums in Movement’, in V. Sofka, ed. Museology and Museums, Icofom Study Series 12, pp. 17-20. 7. Van Mensch, ibid. 8. Round Table on the Development and the Role of Museums in the Contemporary World. Santiago de Chile 20-31 May 1972. (Report by Hector Fernandez Guido, Unesco, 1973). 9. Kenneth Hudson, Museums for the 1980s (Unesco, 1977). 10. Maria Pagageorge, ‘Camoapa: A Community Experiment’, Museum News, July/August 1982, p. 57.