"I do not believe in the end of man...
. I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he, alone among creatures, has an inexhaustible voice but because he has a soul, a spirit, capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."1William Faulkner, "Speech on Acceptance of the Nobel Prize," 1950In Faulkner's fictional world it is memory that pulls pieces of the past into the present and resurrects the dead. A museum is in its own way a model of memory, for by preserving the past it ensures the future. Like any work of art within it, the museum is an act of faith in the power of the human imagination.
In previous days a museum was an academy or a library and even in the eighteenth century a museum could be a temple for the veneration of the muses. Most properly, it was a building in which scholars lived, dined, and studied together. Museums dedicated to the arts and open to the public are relatively recent.The evolution of the cabinet of curiosities into the museum we know today took place in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century. The setting and construction of monumental museum buildings revealed the emerging view that art was sacred and that the museum was not only a temple of art but a work of art itself. In Europe the proximity of the museum to the cathedral and palace reminded visitors that here was a national institution equal in standing to church and state.
Works of art are the timeless currency in the exchange of human aspirations and values. It remains for our generation to decide whether we shall guarantee the ebb and flow of this currency or whether we, the temporary custodians, will debase one of the remaining measures of our immortality. It is therefore imperative that we understand the role of such time pieces in both our community and those who decide to visit them.Museums and SocietyMuseums are an integral part of the societies in which they exist. They reflect the cultures they represent and serve as foundations for collective memory, continuity, and development.
One of the museum's primary role is to offer life-long opportunities for people of all ages to learn about themselves, each other, and their environment through the museum's collections.It is well recognised, then, that museums are by their very nature rich learning resources. In addition they are as much a part of the fabric of society as are our schools and libraries. As primary evidence museum collections form the bedrock of learning in every discipline; history being but one. For example, natural history collections are used as the basis for cutting edge scientific and environmental research; fine art collections as the stimulus for contemporary art; archaeological archives as the input to urban planning decisions.Museums mean many things to many people.
And over the past decade, museums have come to mean much more than they have in the past. The role of museums in society has expanded. Not only are they "institutions devoted to the procurement, care, study and display of objects of lasting interest or value," as defined in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, but they are safe havens where individuals and families can connect with others, information centres for children and adults offering resources that give context for understanding our world; they are special environments where people may retreat into work, beauty, literature, entertainment, projects or hobbies.Museums present us with something that does not simply exist. They are culturally constructed and frequently politically motivated, whilst also useful to individuals and societies in a number of ways.
Museums often provide material evidence of the history of ourselves and others, complete with both the triumphs and the disasters. We gain comfort from being able to relate to the past, not only through the sometimes trivial concept of nostalgia, but also in deeper and more meaningful ways."..
. 'the past was safe!'...We are at home in it because it is our home - the past is where we come from.
"David Lowenthal (pg 4)2It is obvious then that we need connections with both place and time to locate our present lives geographically and historically; museums' artefacts help in both the temporal and spatial sense. These memorabilia also help us locate ourselves socially, in the sense that they are one of the things that bind communities and nations, giving a sense of group identity to both insiders and outsiders. It is also then very important to recognise the role of these institutions in the tourism industry, an industry which in fact in its very nature pushes cultures to meet.Museums and TourismTourists are temporarily leisured persons who voluntarily visit a place away from home for the purpose of experiencing a change 3and those who are motivated by interest in the historical, artistic, scientific or lifestyle offerings of a community, see museums as their main source of information. As people travel more, they don't travel aimlessly -- they travel to get to know a particular place in a meaningful way. The power of cultural tourism is in its ability to satisfy this desire.
In this regard the tourist feels in some way committed to and involved with the object of the visit. It is this that makes him different from, for instance, the mass tourist whose main objective is to enjoy the sea and sun. The tourist who is interested in the museums collections because of his desire to reach to other communities is mostly stimulated by senses such as emotion and escape."Would-be time travellers long to experience an exotic antiquity, to live in times superior to today, to know what actually happened in history, to change the present or the past."David Lowenthal (pg 21)It is therefore obvious that a tourist seeks the same thing more or less like the person who lives in that same community.
He wants to know the past, he wants to associate it to his present life, he wants to give it meaning.Having said this, however, there are some tourists who see the museum visit to be quite secondary and incidental and their visit may be purely based on either curiosity or just because they were pushed to go there by the organisers of their vacation. These are those people who cannot grasp the meaning of what they are seeing or rather refuse to "waste" time in trying to relate to the host community.For this purpose the museums must then, be planned and manned well enough to generate that interest that is needed - not only for the tourists but also for the local community whose interest may be lacking, as in the case of Malta.ConclusionIn our post-Enlightenment age, the visible world has lost much of its mystery (which is perhaps why we care so little for it).
Collecting is no longer a key method of research. Nor might so many people have visited museums in the past if they had been able to hop on a plane to see a kangaroo for themselves, or buy a book of colour reproductions of Japanese prints, or watch, from the comfort of a couch, a computer simulation of a dinosaur sinking its teeth into its latest victim. Hence museum curators cannot go on running their museums as if the world hasn't changed. Yet many operate as if the last eddies of the Enlightenment still lapped through their galleries and stores.
Museums around the world, and especially here in Malta, do not think they are responsible for what the public gains from visiting them. Little wonder, then, that many rival attractions have appeared on the scene. Abroad science centres, children's museums and heritage theme parks have shown how it is possible to interest and entertain wide sections of the public in subjects that were originally the domain of museums but without using unique artefacts at all.To do this, museums will have to abandon, the role they have inherited from the Enlightenment. They will need to cease seeing their collections as a means of defining categories of knowledge, and, instead, use them to inspire understanding among the public, and, quite distinctly, to provide a resource for the research of others (not just their own). It is a national dissappointment that it is so difficult to gain access to collections in store.
I personally think that there are many ways in which these can be opened up to researchers at all levels, from school-children to scholars, without turning the main public galleries of our museums into open storage whilst at the same time keeping the integrity which is require by these institutions.
