Piotr Bienkowski on how museum authority has traditionally been based on knowledge – or a particular form of knowledge. This article analyses that type of knowledge, and the authority that is based on it. It explores three examples of how museums have attempted to share or cede authority and control.

Museum authority has traditionally been based on knowledge – or a particular form of knowledge. This article analyses that type of knowledge, and the authority that is based on it. It explores three examples of how museums have attempted to share or cede authority and control, working with different external groups who acknowledge different types of knowledge, and who are challenging the museum’s authority. I particularly focus on when things go wrong, and when genuine anger is aimed at the museum, either by the groups it is working with, or by its traditional audiences.

Part of the theoretical framework that I will be using here is that of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of museums as a cultural practice, developed in his classic study of European art museums in the 1960s, The Love of Art. Bourdieu’s framework informs or at least is relevant to much of the current debate on the ‘authorised’ and ‘alternative’ or ‘subaltern’ heritage discourse. Although much has changed– at least in some countries, though sadly not all – since Bourdieu’s work, there are nevertheless important aspects of his conclusions which help in our exploration of what is happening in museums now. Bourdieu’s conclusion was that museum visiting was a form of cultural practice, which ‘consecrated’ established, traditional values. The true function of museums was to reinforce for some the feeling of belonging, and for others the feeling of exclusion. Museum visiting was bound up with formal, traditional learning, techniques connected with a whole attitude to the world, what Bourdieu called ‘an academic culture’, and so museums were only truly accessible to those already equipped to participate in them. This ‘sanctification’ of culture fulfilled a vital function by contributing to the maintenance of the social order and feelings of identity and belonging.

So Bourdieu acknowledged that a certain type of knowledge and formal education were what characterised typical museum visitors at that time. That is not all that surprising, since the emergence of museums themselves – and of all the academic disciplines contained within them (archaeology, zoology, botany and so on) – was made possible by the development of ‘objective’ Science, principally expounded by the French philosopher Rene Descartes in the seventeenth century, through his original method of systematic doubt setting out to establish what it is possible to know, and later by the Royal Society in England. This was a type of rational knowledge based on perception and measurement: if something could not be perceived or measured then it was not real or significant. Museums, archaeology and all the other academic disciplines were essentially about rigid order, measurement, classification and objectification – what we now recognise as the traditional curatorial approach: in other words, the scientific approach which is still today the basis of most formal learning.

Crucially, that type of knowledge was based on the privileging of perception above all other senses: taste, smell and hearing were excluded because of their lack of certainty, and touch was only narrowly employed. As Eileen Hooper-Greenhill has put it (1992), sight was ‘the sense by which proof was to be both perceived and established’. Colours were also little used for comparative purposes, so ‘observation therefore assumed its powers through a visibility freed from all other sensory burdens and restricted to black and white’. In museums, and in the world of learning generally, this had an effect on classification, with the separation and ordering of types of objects and indeed of the whole empirical world, and into the different academic disciplines, and the resultant growing specialisation.

This of course led to the authority of the privileged expert, and of the museum as the authoritative voice offering knowledge for passive consumption: moreover, a knowledge which was and is usually a single selected meaning offered as natural, authoritative, and complete. I would further argue – and I think Bourdieu’s work bears this out – that this created a public expectation of institutionalised authoritative knowledge which was to be accepted passively. As Hooper-Greenhill puts it, a division was drawn between knowing subjects, between the producers and the consumers of knowledge, between expert and layman, the division holding within it relations of advantage and disadvantage.

This whole system of cultural practice, which we still live with today, is utterly dependent and contingent on that form of scientific knowledge, which lies at its core. But scientific, visual knowledge is only one way of experiencing and understanding the world. Indeed, while western ‘science’ was originally grounded in Cartesian dualism and has since become almost entirely materialist, dualism and materialism are still metaphysical assumptions about the fundamental nature of the world. Museums are increasingly working with communities and individuals who experience and construct the world differently: ethnic, migrant and refugee communities, indigenous source communities, modern Pagans, Eco-Pagans and other nature-celebrating spiritualities, local communities with a strong relational sense of place, and artists. Among these, ‘knowledge’ is broadly phenomenological and relational, that is, based on experience – including all those senses excluded from scientific perceptual knowledge – , emotion, creativity, memory and connection, and it is often animistic rather than scientific, and relations with the continuing personhood of the dead and with the non-human and non-animal world are also part of their daily experience. Crucially, philosophically, these are perfectly valid world-views, though they are still too often dismissed as romanticised and irrational by those working in museums who were trained within a scientific framework and regard it as self-evidently ‘true’. In the western philosophical tradition, such world-views are generally subsumed within the ‘panpsychist’ category – though I tend to prefer the term ‘animist’ – meaning that all things have some mental element with which one can feel a connection.

Museums have traditionally positioned themselves as the uncontested authority on a given subject, with dominant world-views presented as objective reality. In most cases they are finding it difficult to relinquish that ‘expert’ role, even when seeking to negotiate new relationships with audiences. Nevertheless, groups and communities – in this country and elsewhere – are increasingly demanding their rights as citizens and to have their contribution to society recognized, and their children’s rights to see their cultures represented in a serious and respectful manner.  This has been seen as the liberation of culture itself and giving credence to bodies of knowledge that have been historically overlooked and devalued (Kreps 2003).  

Many communities are now reacting angrily if they feel their voices and their perspectives are overlooked or overshadowed. There are increasing disputes about the ownership of cultural property and interpretation, not just between nations, but between local communities and national heritage institutions within one country, with institutions being accused of setting the criteria which other communities have to satisfy, criteria for who can be included in decision-making, who has a right to be heard, who has a legitimate claim – in a sense, making the rules, ensuring that institutional, and national rather than local, knowledge hegemony remains.
It is also true that whenever museums set out to challenge orthodox practice, a fierce debate often erupts about the purpose of museums. Is it their job to challenge visitors, or should they reinforce society’s cultural norms?  My focus here is not just on provocation: it is specifically on the growing issue where museums cede their previously authoritative voice and allow previously unheard voices and forms of knowledge and as a result create an angry reaction among traditional audiences.

To see how this plays out in practice, below are three case studies of how museums are working with groups who acknowledge different forms of knowledge. The three examples are from Manchester Museum’s work with communities, with artists, and on human remains. What tensions and difficulties arise from the clash of different forms of knowledge?

The first example is from Manchester Museum’s work with communities through a variety of projects – Collective Conversations, the Contact Zone, Myths About Race – which are essentially about bringing people into close contact with objects, allowing them to find their own meanings, through ‘conversations’, and recording those encounters and resulting interpretations as genuinely significant and as part of the formal documentation of the collections. Here, ‘knowledge’ is broadly phenomenological, that is, based on experience, emotion and memory. All this sounds very laudable, and it would be possible to provide a very positive spin on how wonderful and successful these projects have been. But Manchester Museum has been criticised by participants, some have withdrawn, and some remain very angry (for analysis of the process, see Lynch and Alberti forthcoming). There are two key issues. The first is that, however hard the museum tries, what comes across is still the assumption that traditional curatorial knowledge and approaches are superior. Different kinds of knowledge are still regarded as somehow quaint or exotic and not qualitatively equivalent. This is manifested in museum decision-making processes, where the views of certain people are not taken on board. More value is given to interpretations and events led by museum staff or academics, and there is the accusation that the museum structures itself – maybe inadvertently – to protect itself from challenges. The second, linked point is that community interpretations and events are ‘quarantined’, not embedded, not taken onto the main museum galleries. The museum is accused of not integrating those different forms of knowledge into the general museum interpretation as a valid viewpoint. This in turn leads to accusations of museums carrying the traditional British baggage of superiority, racism and imperialism. As some community workers have told me, museums should work not only with excluded groups, but with traditional audiences who ‘need help’ to untangle their preconceptions.

My second example is Manchester Museum’s work with artists through the Alchemy project (www.alchemy.manchester.museum/). Here, ‘knowledge’ is creativity whose purpose is to disrupt institutional and visitor assumptions and practices, and the boundaries of freedom and control must be negotiated. The outputs of such work are varied: they can be ‘interventions’ on the main galleries, as with Jamie Shovlin’s ‘The Local Manchester Collection’ (2008), exploring real or imaginary connections to Manchester in various galleries, or stand-alone exhibitions, like ‘The Museum of Native Oaks’ (2008). What happened with this latter exhibition is an interesting example of authority and control. The work of these two artists, Jacob Cartwright and Nick Jordan, is always about mixing fiction with fact – they make no clear distinction (www.nickjordan.info/mono.htm). So, in the panels and labels there was a free mixture, and some of the supposedly descriptive labels were complete fiction. But nowhere did it explicitly state that the labels might not be factual. The artists thought this was part of the remit, to push the boundaries of interpretation and visitor assumption. Within the museum there was a discussion and a subsequent decision that the museum has a responsibility to its audiences to at least alert them that all they read may not be factually true: and so a panel was added to explain this. When this was explained to the artists, they were quite amused, and saw it as ‘the museum machine kicking into action’. Of course, had this exhibition been in a contemporary art space, such experimentation with notions of ‘truth’ would have been unexceptional: these sorts of discussions would not have been necessary since audience expectations are different. As the artists themselves point out, there is something about working with a museum that carries a great weight of responsibility – to audiences, to objects, and to future generations.

My third example is around human remains, and Manchester Museum’s controversial work in opening up decision-making to all interested groups. Here, knowledge is often animistic rather than scientific, and the interests of the dead themselves are taken into account. I want to focus on audience backlashes to the Lindow Man exhibition (April 2008-April 2009). Rather than being a traditional exhibition of archaeological human remains, ‘Lindow Man: A Bog Body Mystery’ was a consultative approach all about different types of knowledge and interpretation. Seven different voices gave their own perspectives of why Lindow Man is important to them. These included perspectives traditionally aired in museums, such as the archaeological and scientific importance of Lindow Man, but also included perspectives normally excluded and unacknowledged, such as the woman from Lindow Moss who talked about Lindow Man’s importance to her community and her own life, and her participation in a ‘repatriation’ campaign; or the perspective of a Druid priestess, who talked about Lindow Man as a venerated ancestor and discussed her visceral feelings that he should be reburied.

Some of the visitor reaction to the Lindow Man exhibition was extraordinary –in newspaper letters, on blogs, and on the museum’s comment cards, there was an outpouring of criticism and anger.  There was a sustained blast of invective from the media blog Manchester Confidential, apparently the biggest and most long-lasting response they had ever had to a single issue: that this was political correctness gone mad, that the perspectives included were invalid, ridiculous and inappropriate for museums, that this was not a proper exhibition, the museum had abrogated responsibility, failed to tell the proper story, there were angry personal attacks directed at specific named members of staff, some quite vicious, including demands that they should be sacked.

However, systematic survey through Personal Meaning Mapping has shown that the informal perception concerning negative audience reaction was misplaced (Brown 2009). Those who were extremely disappointed with the exhibition were a minority, but, significantly, they were all highly educated (even describing themselves as ‘expert’), experienced museum visitors, with traditional expectations.

It is this visceral anger in response to exhibitions that I find most interesting. What is the root cause of it? Why do some people get so angry about a museum exhibition, why do they react so viciously? As a reaction to what is only a museum exhibition, at first sight it seems disproportionate. Manchester Museum is not alone. One particularly disconcerting example is the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, which worked with the Muslim community to prepare a temporary exhibition in 2006 on Muslim cultures in Wales, The Muslim World on Your Doorstep, using objects from the national collection and the work of artists in Wales to provide a current and Welsh perspective. Not only did this receive many complaints on the museum’s own website, some aggressive, but it was attacked on the website of the extreme right-wing, anti-immigration, whites-only British National Party – who of course have just been elected to their first seats in the European parliament. The attack was couched in vicious, vitriolic and frightening terms, claiming that the museum was destroying the heritage it was supposed to protect.  What is it about doing something in a different way, and particularly bringing in hitherto excluded perspectives, that causes such a violent reaction? I suggest that people only react like that when they feel somehow threatened – I can think of no other explanation. So what is the threat?

Here we must return to Bourdieu’s analysis of the role of museums in feelings of identity, belonging and social order. It is true that, on the whole, museums have tended to work with traditional forms of knowledge, have displayed things in a particular way which has become accepted, acceptable and expected, and more often than not it has been the authoritative voice of the institution which has spoken through those displays. This is what regular visitors expect, it is what they are comfortable with and see as the proper role of museums, they feel safe in this view of shared heritage, and can see where they fit in – where the museum reflects their own values. So what happens when the museum, working with other communities, brings in voices and perspectives that have been hitherto excluded, silent and unacknowledged? How do established audiences react when they are faced with interpretations based on types of knowledge that are alien to them, and that the museum is no longer reflecting their knowledge, their values, their heritage, their identity? In a sense the museum used to reflect their monopoly over interpretation and knowledge which was unquestioned, and now that monopoly is threatened: I suggest it is a threat to how they see the world, to what is important, to how their past is understood, to their values, to their feelings of belonging, to their identity. In Bourdieu’s words, it is a threat to the social order – and so they get angry and react viciously, using easily available modern technology such as blogs to ‘participate’ in public reaction.

So museums find themselves in an interesting position. They find themselves criticised by community groups for not integrating their perspectives sufficiently, and criticised by established audiences who no longer see their own values reflected.  They are faced with the visceral reactions of those who previously had a monopoly based on knowledge and privilege – and therefore who see this as a challenge to the social order, the breaking of a social contract that the museum’s role is to present an authoritative perspective which the user can rely on, believe, accept and expect.

What can museums do? This is of course all connected with power practices, with authority and ownership – of knowledge, of interpretation, of a particular understanding of the past, and the mechanisms by which that authority and ownership are practised and maintained, or which can, in principle, be shared.

So, who has the power to facilitate that sharing, or maybe to suppress one dominant perspective and introduce alternatives? If it is the museum, then it is clear how it could be accused of being the responsible agent in a shift of power from one set of values to another, from celebrating one identity and heritage to another, even from acknowledging the existence of one authorised ‘true’ narrative to the validity of many perspectives. That is why traditional audiences – even if it is just a vocal minority – get angry and make the now standard accusations of ‘political correctness gone mad’. And of course it is such accusations that museums are afraid of, and many directors shy away from conflict deliberately, because it is their traditional audiences who often point the accusatory finger – the well educated ones who are articulate and who know how to get their message across, and who can influence stakeholders and funders. Yet, in my view, there is no alternative but to become more inclusive, to include such alternative perspectives. Museums are part of a vanishing number of ‘safe’ debating spaces, spaces for democratic exchange and intercultural dialogue about culture, memory, identity, community, belonging and loss. Their plural funding sources increasingly stress the need for diversity, difference, equality, democracy and dialogue, although among some of the public there is a reaction against this diversity and inclusiveness, as if something else of value has been lost. The answer is not to avoid that diversity and subsequent conflict – and museums have many subtle practices for circumventing issues and avoiding conflict, hiding behind academia, professionalism, managing process and internal blame cultures. The answer is simply to learn how to better manage the resultant fallout by expecting it and planning for it, perhaps by being pro-active with those groups who might feel somehow disenfranchised, and to ignore accusations of ‘political correctness gone mad’, which are reflex and frankly meaningless. Conflict, controversy and lack of consensus are not necessarily bad things, and maybe heritage institutions should actively embrace a post-modern ‘discensus’, which is precisely the legitimising of different kinds of knowledge that accepts conflict as the standard mode of existence. For in seeking to avoid conflict, museums suppress alternative world-views and continue to exercise their cultural authority.

Piotr Bienkowski is a cultural, heritage and museums consultant, writer and researcher. Previously he has been Acting Director of Manchester Museum, Professor of Archaeology and Museology in the University of Manchester, and Head of Antiquities at National Museums Liverpool. The ideas in this article were first presented at the 2008 Museums Association annual conference, and form part of his research towards a paper entitled ‘Whose Past? Archaeological Knowledge, Community Knowledge, and the Sharing of Authority’, to be published in Appropriating the Past: Philosophical Perspectives on the Practice of Archaeology II, edited by R. Coningham and G. Scarre (Cambridge University Press, in preparation).

Selected references

Bourdieu, P. and Darbel, A. 1991. The Love of Art: European Art Museums and their Public, trans. C. Beattie and N. Merriman. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Brown, P. 2009. Us and Them: Who Benefits from Experimental Exhibition Making? Unpublished MA dissertation, University of Leicester.

Hooper-Greenhill, E. 1992. Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge. London/New York: Routledge.

Kreps, C. 2003, Liberating Culture: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation and Heritage Preservation. London/New York: Routledge.

Lynch, B.T. and Alberti, S.J.M.M. forthcoming. Legacies of prejudice: racism, co-production and radical trust in the museum. Museum Management and Curatorship 25:1 (January 2010).