Introduction: Developing new Knowledge from History
As the definitions of communication and learning theories indicate, there has been a shift in thinking within museums themselves. The concept of communication has moved from being a linear process to a much more flexible and dynamic one. This requires a closer look at how museums see their own purpose and relevance in today’s society.
This chapter covers two different sections. Section one considers those tendencies that can be analysed through historical developments and the creation of communicative thinking, which have taken place within museums over the past decades. This means taking a further look at the development of two main theoretical perspectives, Modernism and Postmodernism, and how these perspectives have shaped ways of thinking. Section two will engage further in discussions of how our
understanding of museum communication, interpretation and interaction has been shaped by our historical understanding of modern and postmodern ways of thinking. It will also discuss how philosophical approaches and epistemological developments within museums have influenced one another and how these influences continue to shape our understanding of knowledge and interpretation.
When investigating the development of modernism and postmodernism within museum history, we have to look at the social movements and tendencies of past societies too. The way objects were collected, how actual exhibitions evolved and how knowledge was created from collections was very much influenced by the way society (and the world) was viewed and understood. This also means looking into ideological aspects of thought.
Foucault is a well-used source when identifying and analysing epistemological perspectives. He has, however, also been known to promote a somewhat negative view on museums as institutions that encourage learning - especially after having described the museum as a heterotopia (Foucault 1998; Heterotopian Studies: website; Lord 2006a: 1). This concept, when defined in terms of museums, leaves us with an
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impression of museums as being negative and disturbing places where cultural
development is suspended or neutralised. Foucault used the term heterotopia to describe spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships than other places. A
heterotopia is a physical representation of a utopia or a type of parallel space that contains undesirable elements to make a real utopian space possible. A heterotopia can therefore be understood as a space of otherness, difference or transformation (Foucault 1998; Heterotopian Studies: website; Lord 2006a).
This idea of place as a heterotopic entity has been gaining attention in the current debate on postmodern theoretical discussion in social sciences. In Different Spaces (Foucault 1998) Foucault actually promotes a society with many heterotopias. Not just as an encouragement of difference, but also to promote spaces of new social developments.
Beth Lord, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee, argues that Foucault did not paint a negative picture of museums through this description but rather formed a definition to state how museums can contribute to progress: “When the museum is understood essentially as a heterotopia or space of difference, it becomes clear that the museum can perform Foucault’s own historical methodology of
genealogy” (Lord 2006a: 2).
Foucault understood progress as the growth of capabilities and not necessarily as a historical or cultural progress, nor as a progress working towards a specific goal or ideal. Growth of capabilities would define power relations and historical events as necessary for a given time and it is within this type of progress that museums can contribute (Foucault 1998; 2002; Lord 2006a).
The Modern and Postmodern Epistemes
Before discussing the museum as a heterotopia, a historical definition will be discussed. Foucault identified a set of different epistemes or historical periods with their own discourse for knowledge development. Foucault’s epistemological definitions are not directly linked to museology. Rather, they are viewed as acknowledgement spaces of a given time but therefore useful when identifying museological epistemology. What Foucault tried to establish was that the way people regarded and managed the first collections very much depended on how they regarded the world, society and
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community around them (Findlen 2004: 23-36; Foucault 1972; 1998; 2002: 235-240; Hooper-Greenhill 1992: 15; Lord 2006a; Taylor 1987). He was especially interested in those principles that were viewed as accepted or allowed or could be thought at a specific time. Foucault believed it to be of great importance to understand these
principles in order to identify and understand the social development of, for example, a museum and indeed how and why collections were managed the way they were. By an episteme, Foucault understood those techniques, codes, languages, cultures and values which shaped a culture. These principles of knowledge define what was regarded as ‘acceptable thought’ or as the truth at a specific moment in history. The first two historical epistemes Foucault mentions are the Renaissance and the Classical epistemes (Foucault 2002: 235-240; Hooper-Greenhill 1992: 12-16; Witcomb 2002). These two epistemes shaped the understanding of the following epistemological periods; the Modern and the Postmodern, which will be analysed in greater detail here. It is,
however, important to understand the evolution from one episteme to another, as well as the logic by which thinking was shaped and developed into something quite new and sometimes consciously oppositional. As the main focus of this chapter is on modern and postmodern developments, I have chosen to concentrate primarily on the development of these two movements through Foucault’s definitions, which are then applied to museum development.
Modern Developments
From the very beginning, museums have not only displayed objects, but also objects’ relation to words and concepts. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, museums (or collections) sought to define how objects could be represented in a structural system of reason and sense. When museums defined this ‘order of things’ in their displays they also created an idea in which objects were necessarily interpreted through certain structures and principles. This definition is the core essence of the Enlightenment and has remained the foundation of museums throughout many of their historical transformations.
Although developed and defined over some centuries, it is from the beginning of the nineteenth century we begin to identify the consequences of a major shift in learning and thinking within the first collections. Many private collections opened to the public,
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and for the first time it was possible for everyone to gain access to knowledge and new understandings. This was very much the premise behind modernism, which: ”... signals a dialectical opposition to what is not functionally ”modern”, namely ”tradition” (Eysteinsson 1992: 8). This very simple definition also affected the scientific studies, which for the first time, made Man the centre of knowledge: “…with the rejection of religious and monarchical authority comes a rejection of the idea that the universe has an essential or divine order” (Lord 2005: 147). God is no longer the great creator of the world and Man defines his/her own history (Gordon 2001; Foucault 1972; 1984; 2002: 245-252; 2004; Hooper-Greenhill 1992: 185-188; Lord 2005).
”History was no longer a secure and fixed foundation but an uncomfortable abyss which had to be filled” (Olsen and Svestad: 1994: 7). This point of view shifted understandings of science and research. In some cases, historic and archaeological interpretations took a more nationalistic turn. History was, in general, used to state who you were and where you came from. However, questions like these required some very precise answers and the way to make history speak was through order, classification and indeed tradition: “The Enlightenment recognizes, for the first time, that there is a gap - a space, if you will - between nature and the systems we use to order it. This space is the space of representation” (Lord 2005: 147). This gave the first Enlightenment museums a great advantage; history became something that concerned everyone and the place to find answers was in museums. It also gave interpreters and scholars of history and archaeology a very powerful position in the process of social development. They could provide answers (sometimes with surprising clarity) about our origins through
classification of historic objects, and by creating chronologies. People were introduced to historical objects almost as though they moved through a linear timeline; in Denmark a direct example of this was created by archaeologist Christian Jürgensen Thomsen who invented the so-called ‘Three-Age System’. In 1816 Thomsen was appointed head of the Antiquarian Collections (later the National Museum of Denmark). Whilst organizing and classifying the artefacts for public display, he decided to present them according to the materials that they were made of; stone, bronze and iron. This approach changed how archaeology had been viewed up until then (Damm and Nielsen 1998).
Although this approach can seem very instructive today, it made it very easy and clear for people with little or no education to understand the past. The museum brought
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different collections together and interpreted them according to systems of
classification: “It is the role of the museum in the eighteenth century not only to study and display objects, but to study and display these human systems for understanding objects” (Lord 2005: 148). However, as many museums gradually discovered, it was almost impossible to add new analysis and interpretations to this very strict established chronology: ”During much of the twentieth century, many museums became divorced from the communities they were set up to serve. Others oriented themselves towards powerful social elites. Many museums became inwardly focused and introspective institutions that turned their backs on societies that no longer fully upheld the purposes for which museums had been founded” (Hooper-Greenhill 2000: 21). Hooper-Greenhill bases this criticism on the two main approaches to communication, the transmission model and the cultural model (Hooper-Greenhill 1994: 15-19).
The transmission approach fit well into the modern museum and is still part of museum communication today because it views learning as part of ‘an education’ and as something external to the learner (Hooper-Greenhill 1994: 15-16). As stated by the cultural approach, communication is a very broad process through which knowledge is transformed, analysed and interpreted. New perspectives might come from different sources, and the receiver can use this information as he/she prefers depending on prior knowledge, experiences and interests. From a communication point of view, these two models have outlined a very clear difference between modern and postmodern museum practices and between visitors: “The use of communication theory has enabled us to understand how the transmission model positions ‘receivers’ as passive, and how the cultural model acknowledges that participants are active” (Hooper-Greenhill 1994: 19).
Foucault saw these modern tendencies as a natural and necessary development even if total order or classification could never actually be reached:
”… it is of little importance that these endeavours did not reach fulfilment or that they did not entirely accomplish the purpose that had brought them into being: they all expressed, on the visible surface of events or texts, the profound unity that the Classical age had established by positing the analysis of identities and differences, and the universal possibility of tabulated order, as the
archaeological basis of knowledge” (Foucault 2002: 268).
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development of postmodernism. Hooper-Greenhill and Lord also argue that examples of the modern museum exhibition are still prevalent across large parts of Europe. Even though many museums today explicitly encourage visitors to consider how objects are related to other social or cultural concepts or if they might be interpreted differently, there is still a tendency to display objects in a modern style (Hooper-Greenhill 2000: 21; Ingemann and Larsen 2005; Lord 2005: 154; Preziosi 2004). This is not an unusual understanding if we consider Foucault’s definition of modern and postmodern
development. In fact, this might be a natural development of modern and postmodern tendencies within museums.
Some museums are deliberately returning to modern representation approaches within their exhibitions. Lord analyses a few of these in the article Representing Enlightenment Space: “It has also been suggested that these exhibitions represent a reaction against the trend for exhibitions led by designers and educators:
Enlightenment displays return power to curators and restore objects as the essence of the museum” (Lord 2005: 152). Lord suggests that a reason for recreating
Enlightenment spaces is that the question of museum representation has become relevant again (Lord 2005: 153). As learning and experience become the main focus of museums’ visitor communication, questions of how and why we represent objects and the contexts in which they are displayed become important: “We are returning to the notion that the organizing principle behind museum display can be the theme, material or function of the objects as well as their chronology or geography” (Lord 2005: 152). However, Lord also acknowledges the danger in representing a historical museum space like Enlightenment galleries; some visitors might not realise that they are entering a historical exhibition space and these spaces may reinforce their worst fears about what museums are: “…long rooms of closely-packed shelves, eighteenth-century cabinets and marble busts, with little interpretation” (Lord 2005: 154). No matter how museums are being viewed, they have always sought to be spaces of reflection and that tendency has developed even further with the concept of postmodernism.
Postmodern Developments
Foucault’s definitions also revolve around the development of a postmodern episteme, which can be thought of as an extension of the Modern. It may, however, sometimes
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seems to be in contrast with it. It has been widely discussed when exactly the ‘shift’ from modernism to postmodernism took place (if it can indeed be described as ‘a shift’). Some might consider the period after the Second World War as postmodern, and others might argue that the shift did not take place until the introduction of Social
Constructivism (Eysteinsson 1992; Foucault 1972; 2002: 257-270; Hein 1994: 73-79; Hooper-Greenhill 1995: 189-203; 1997). Postmodernism does indeed have a lot in common with constructivism: ”Constructivist learning theory points out that learning is both personal and social; meaning is mediated through interpretive communities. Meanings are in large part controlled by the validation accorded them by the relevant interpretive community” (Hooper-Greenhill 2000: 139). Constructivist theories are often viewed by museums as a postmodern way of interacting with visitors (Hooper- Greenhill 1994: 67-72; 1995: 189-203; 1997). Museums have to understand learners and create a space where useful learning can take place (Foucault 2002: 375-387). In a postmodern approach, learning is a social activity. When we learn we are influenced by social circumstances - however, we are also affected by prior knowledge and
experiences. It is therefore not possible to adapt new knowledge without prior knowledge and this is believed to be what motivates people to learn.
Postmodernism raises many new issues for museums, especially regarding their learning and communication practices. Museums have to provide possibilities for learning, which means that museums have to acknowledge visitors’ prior knowledge and experiences. They do not only have to recognise that people learn differently, they also have to make learning interesting and create suitable learning environments.
Processes of learning and meaning-making are also considered to be in constant change; not only do learners construct their own meanings, but museums and curators are viewed as enabling in this process. This has probably resulted in one of the greatest shifts in thinking for museums; from institutions where new knowledge was transmitted to visitors that were, more or less, passive, to places that foster motivating environments where social interaction can take place and develop (Hein 1998: 135-154; Hooper- Greenhill 1994: 67-73; 1997; Lord 2006a; Macdonald 1992: 677-688; 1998; 2006).
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Modernism ‘versus’ Postmodernism
Postmodernism clearly developed as a result of modern tendencies. In order to understand why this change in thinking has taken place within museums - and why it has been necessary - it is useful to take a closer look at some of the perspectives and issues it has influenced the most within museum communication:
1) Chronology - Storytelling
Creating a chronology was part of the entire foundation of knowledge in the modern episteme. It put knowledge in a specific order and made it easier to gain new information. Research and information gathering was put into
classifications or ‘timelines’ that made them relevant and useful.
In a postmodern understanding there seems to be more focus on themes and stories of objects, research, interpretations, analysis, etc. It becomes easier to add your own knowledge and experience to historic objects and themes. In a postmodern exhibition visitors will have their own say in the meaning-making process - and museums will have to engage in dialogues with visitors, especially as part of their learning and communication strategies (Foucault 2002: 257-270; Lord 2006a; Hein 1998: 155-179).
2) Guidance and Instructive Learning - Visitor Interaction
Modernism seldom questions or tests new knowledge. Knowledge as it was presented by museums was believed to be ‘the truth’. Museums did the research, analysis and interpretation and presented ‘facts’ in their exhibitions. This
approach was especially valued by behaviourists, who believed visitors’ creation of knowledge had to be stimulated by and was dependent on a teacher (Hooper- Greenhill 1994: 73-79). Visitors were guided and instructed in their learning approach and, generally speaking, communication was one-way (Foucault 2002: 257-270; Hooper-Greenhill 1994: 73-79; 1995: 260-275).
In the postmodern episteme, guidance has turned into a conversation that continues at many levels; conversations between audiences, societies and museum institutions. Museums are no longer the only party responsible for research and interpretation; history is expected to be part of an endless
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discussion. We also see the rise of new academic disciplines created with the purpose of discussing these issues: ”In fact, we might even venture to say that Museology is, in many ways, the ultimate ”postmodern” discipline” (Duclos 1994: 4).
3) National focus - Global focus
In a modern approach, it was of utmost importance to study your own history. This was especially true during the nineteenth century when many historic writings had a nationalistic view of the past. This was partly because not much had been written down before, but mostly because the study of history was part of finding and defining your own origins.
Postmodernism is a very global way of thinking. Different cultures and traditions exist in the same societies and it has become possible to share the same values and beliefs without sharing the same nationality (Hooper-Greenhill 1994: 105-109; Macdonald 1992; Sarker et al 2011).
4) Objectivity - Subjectivity
In the modern episteme, Man slowly became aware of his/her own role in the scientific research, which meant that exhibitions of culture and history were created in an ‘objective’ manner. This was reflected in the instructive learning styles; there was only one (or a few) answer(s) to questions concerning your own origin and history, and as a learner you accepted these answers as the truth: ”The closeness of ”object” to ”objective” and ”objectify” reveals the tendency to regard the meanings with which objects may be imbued as emanating from their own physical existences. It is not so long since the truth of the objects was taken as a given within the museum” (Hooper-Greenhill 2000: 106).
In the postmodern episteme you question or challenge the role of the interpreter