Some ideas for discussion around the ‘Future of history Museums’.

Andrea Witcomb

Like Richard in his enthusiastic reply to Stephen’s and Kym’s invitation to us all, I too
tend to think that some of the most important questions for history museums lie around
this notion of insiders and outsiders. In my own work, I have been trying to think this
through as a change in the paradigm we have been used to. I’ll try and explain that, in the
hope that it might provide a basis for discussion and then illustrate with some examples.
I’ll bring as many images as I can with me as I know none of my examples will be
familiar to you.

As you would all be well aware of, history museums, especially those informed by a
social history approach, have worked hard to represent the voices of individual
communities under what we might call a concern to represent cultural diversity and to be
socially inclusive. In that attempt we have democratized the museum space, found ways
to include voices other than the curatorial one (use of first person, often through oral
history), collected and displayed the material culture of everyday life, developed
interdisciplinary approaches which brought together material previously held apart (the
use of art in history exhibitions for example) and indeed brought history to other
disciplines – art, science and technology and so on (Te Papa being an excellent example).

As Richard pointed out, much of this has reinforced a sense of belonging for the groups
being represented in such a way, making them part of the public sphere so to speak by the
very fact that this was occurring within a public space and for a broad public audience. It
was also, in its inclusive politics, part of a governmental agenda to encourage tolerance
and respect for cultural diversity. In this respect, these approaches underpinned the social
role of museums to contribute to the formation of modern citizens. The point has been for
people of all backgrounds to recognize themselves in museums and for others to know
that they are recognized in this manner.

I tend to think we are beginning to go through a process where this agenda is beginning to
change. My hypothesis is that it is increasingly no longer sufficient for people to
recognize themselves in museum spaces. Instead, museums are being asked to create
opportunities in which dialogue across cultural diversity rather than just the
representation of cultural diversity can occur. This is because the pluralist model that
informed our representations of cultural diversity did not exactly encourage this dialogue.
In reinforcing difference we were also reinforcing separation or, as Richard put it, the
sense of exclusion. To get to what he hopes might also be a response that includes
curiosity about the other that leads to some form of personal engagement we need to
encourage cross-cultural dialogue. And if we aim to support what, in the current
environment is a real need for social cohesion as well as inclusion, we need to do so using
new strategies of interpretation. What we need to learn to avoid, I am proposing, is what
an Australian theorist by the name of Ghassan Hage called ‘Zoological multiculturalism’.

In the examples I have been studying in Australia, the answer has lain in attempts to
explore Richard’s second point – the curation of silences. Such curations have attempted
to use a different understanding of immersive experiences in exhibition spaces to
encourage a more imaginative engagement with the past, one in which the viewer is
encouraged to be aware of the presence of the past in the present and the ways in which
the experiences of others are connected to themselves. Such exhibitions are attempts to
address groups that share contested histories, sometimes without recognizing that that is
the case (indigenous/settler for example) or to challenge preconceived ideas about
particular communities (around notions of class for example). The examples I can discuss
during the workshop include Bunjilaka, the indigenous gallery/centre at Melbourne
Museum, the current reinterpretation of a ‘pioneering village’ in Greenough, Western
Australia by the National Trust, and the recreation, inside the Melbourne Museum, of
Little Lon, a former red light district in inner city Melbourne. I have published on two of
these if you are interested (Witcomb 2006 and 2008) and about to publish on the last one.

Central to all of these exhibitions are:

1) an increased awareness of the importance of aesthetic experiences as part of the tool kit
for developing history exhibitions, particularly for expressing hidden or repressed
memories/knowledge
2) an understanding of the affective potential of people’s engagement with space,
aesthetic qualities and materiality
3) The attempt to work through the senses, through embodied more intuitive forms of
knowledge. This is related to the privileging of feelings rather than direct information
( related I think to what Sheila Watson is bringing to our attention in her discussion of the
differing ways communities remember).
4) The use of multimedia not as interactives but as part of an immersive interactive
experience throughout the display and integrated into the aesthetic experience
5) The requirement that audiences engage with the display in a number of different modes
– physically, emotionally and intellectually – in the process of making meaning. This is
quite different from and demands a different kind of engagement than the previous
pedagogy of walking, reading, and looking.

The point of these displays is not so much about imparting information about the past as
about making the past relevant to the present in ways that demand ethical engagement by
audiences in ways that challenge their own sense of identity in relation to others
(interested in Sheila Watson’s comments about the difference between moral and ethical
relations between people in this regard.) I think the exhibitions I am referring too are
attempts to move toward the ethical position by trying to make the links between people
thicker than they have been in the past. The use of affect forms of interpretation to do this
is also something to discuss).

All in all I tend to think that what these exhibitions are beginning to point towards is a
new set of requirements from visitors in terms of what they can expect from history
museums and the kinds of literacies they will need to read them (in itself I think these
literacies are connected to contemporary visual and media culture and have much to do
with what Cary Carson is advocating for in his paper albeit at a much simpler level).
While these literacies are familiar to younger generations they might not be for
established museum goers leading to difficult issues about audiences. The shift could also
be interpreted at a more abstract level as one in which museums are now helping to form
citizens not simply or even by, the provision of information, but by helping to shape an
ethos of responsibility for each other amongst those citizens.