Museum Management and Curatorship (1990), 9, 93-102

World of Museums

The ‘World of Museums’ section brings together a wide range of museum developments and issues of more than local significance. Consequently, the Editors welcome for it any germane information, including press releases and cuttings, reports, photographs and

other relevant material, especially from minority language areas.

The University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology: New Money for Cross-disciplinary Initiatives

The University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, Canada, is the recipient of one of the first newly reformulated Canada Council’s Programming Assistance grants for 1988-90. This award provides support to institutions over a two-year period for programmes related to contemporary art. As the only anthropology museum to be awarded this highly competitive programming grant (all other recipients were art galleries), the Museum is enabled by the new money to ask questions and to create conversations in areas and issues which are betwixt and between disiciplinary and cultural boundaries. The overlapping spheres which form the core of our concerns for this include art, anthropology, archaeology and First Nations (Native Indians) movements towards self-determination.

In practical terms, this grant allowed the Museum to:

assemble a group of advisers from a variety of backgrounds representing the pertinent academic, cultural and artistic practices; discuss our initiatives and contribute to the programmes of a number of museum and discipline conferences; plan panel discussions and First Nations artists’ talks which included both Northwest Coast Indian and ‘modernist’ native artists for in-house programmes and co-sponsored events with other institutions; initiate discussions among interested curators, artists, academics and First Nations people on contemporary native art and modern Western art; contract First Nations artists to replicate previously ‘lost’ ISth-century bent box paintings which were severely darkened or faded by age, but have been recovered by infra-red photography; develop exhibition ideas with contemporary Western and First Nation artists whose work relates to our Museum collections and research mandate.

With the second year of the programme well under way, we are gleaning a few things from our initial efforts. As the Director, Dr Michael Ames, observes: ‘We all have more to learn about how to listen as well as how to speak’ in our attempts to stimulate and engage in conversations from different perspectives. There is, further, a need to develop ‘a methodology of discourse that encourages the exploration of the relations between points of view while at the same time permitting each of those views ‘to be heard’.

0260-4779/90/01 0093-10 $03.00 0 1990 Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd

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The programmes developed for the first grant are giving us some clearer directions for our future efforts. Some of these will include more varied and regular collaborations with First Nations artists and specialists, and short residencies of artists, critics and academics to examine different aesthetic and theoretical practices as they may be relevant to First Nations and Western contemporary art.

ROSA Ho

News from Wales

Another university museum is in difficulty. The University College of North Wales at Bangor is reponsible for the Museum of Welsh Antiquities and Bangor Art Gallery, both housed in the Old Canonry, near the Cathedral in the centre of the city. The Museum holds important collections of prehistoric, Roman and Early Christian antiquities, mainly of North Wales provenance, many recent objects relating to the history of Bangor and collections of costume and furniture of Welsh interest. The Art Gallery shows a succession of changing exhibitions, some of local origin, some circulated by other agencies, and the annual attendance figure is about 16,500.

The Museum and Gallery have received contributions towards their upkeep from the Welsh Arts Council, the North Wales Arts Association, Arfon Borough Council and the City of Bangor, but the major financial burden has been borne by the University College, which is now forced to reduce its commitments to keep within available revenue. The Welsh Arts Council, also under financial pressure, has withdrawn its revenue grant, though it continues to offer other types of grant. The predicament of the Museum and Gallery was made clear at a meeting held in Bangor early last year under the chairmanship of the Principal of the University College, Professor Eric Sunderland, at which Professor Brian Morris, as Chairman of the Museums and Galleries Commission, was present. There it was announced that the Council of Museums in Wales was commissioning a feasibility study on future options for the Museum and Gallery, especially regarding sources of revenue, This is being co-ordinated by the present author, formerly Keeper of Pictures and Maps at the National Library of Wales, and his report was scheduled to be ready by the end of 1989. A visitor survey was carried out in the summer holiday period of 1989 and produced results remarkably similar to those of the Touche Ross visitor survey, which covered a number of museums in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland earlier in the year.

DONALD MOORE

‘Past Present Future’ at the Tate Gallery, London

Sir Martin Davies, a former Director of the National Gallery in London, once remarked that the cheapest new acquisition was a rehang, and the wisdom of that observation is amply borne out by the new display of the Tate Gallery collection which opened to the public on 25 January 1990. The old and increasingly unworkable separation between Historic British Art and Modern Art has been abandoned and with K3OO,OOO sponsorship from BP a comprehensive programme of cleaning, redecoration and rearrangement of the

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The Kiss, by Auguste Rodin (1901-04) dis- played in the central Octagon of the Tate Gal- lery and beneath the suspended ceiling intro- duced by the Arts Coun- cil of Great Britain when the Duveen Sculpture Galleries were used for its exhibitions.

Interior of the Octagon of the Tate Gallery, looking north, after restoration in 1989 as part of ‘Past Present Future’. On display are two of Matisse’s Bucks, freestanding on plinths, and Slate Circle by Richard Long (1979).

galleries and collections has been undertaken. Headed by Drivers Jonas, as managing surveyors, with the architects Colquhoun and Miller, and The Steensen Varming and Mulcahy Partnership as consultant mechanical and electrical engineers, the project was initiated by the Tate Gallery Trustees, and the Office of Arts and Libraries provided an additional !ZlOO,OOO in the Gallery’s building and maintenance allocation for 1990/91. By this means thirty galleries have been refurbished, with some improvement to the lighting in a few galleries, and five of the nine galleries forming the northeastern section of the main building have now been brought into the main sequence of permanent collection displays, from ‘Painting in Britain in the 16th and 17th Centuries’ in Gallery 1 to ‘Recent

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General view of Tony Cragg’s 1989 Turner Prize exhibition display- ed in the north hall of the Duveen Sculpture Gal- leries before the removal of false walls and suspended ceilings.

Interior of the Duveen Sculpture Galleries, looking south towards the Rotunda, after the partial restoration under- taken for the new display ‘Past Present Future’ in 1989. The upper levels of these chaste classical rooms by John Russell Pope (1937) have been returned to their original state, but considerable work is required to res- tore the architectural ele- ments of the lower walls lost or damaged during the postwar adaptations.

European and American Art’ in Gallery 30. Particularly impressive after redecoration are the Duveen Galleries originally designed and built for the Turner Collection, and it is hoped that the wall cladding can be removed soon from the central pair of galleries (now Galleries 3 and 8) to reveal again the green marble mouldings and thereby complete the recovery of the architectural integrity of these splendid spaces.

Even more of a revelation are the results of the rehabilitation of the central galleries and Octagon which have been restored to their original function as spaces for sculpture. Given by Lord Duveen in 1937, these chaste classical spaces were designed by John Russell Pope in a distinctly Palladian mode shortly before he began work on the National Gallery in Washington, and they provide a revealing contrast to the Rotunda which lies on the same axis. The latter is derived from the main dome of Baldassare Longhena’s church of the Salute in Venice and the relationship between the architectural spaces is

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particularly subtle. The Arts Council of Great Britain, when it used the Duveen Sculpture Galleries as a space for its temporary exhibitions from the 195Os, inserted false ceilings and walls which have now been stripped away, but at the same time the lower walls were ‘sanitized’ by removing protruding architectural elements, filling in niches, etc., and the full restoration of these the finest sculpture galleries in London will have to wait for a future campaign.

Meanwhile, it must be emphasized that the present project is only a partial refurbishment of these galleries-usually little more than a few coats of paint-and a fundamental renovation involving overhaul of the roof, relining walls, improved heating and ventilation systems and lighting is still required for all but a few rooms as a result of inadequate expenditure in the past when the care of the building was in the hands of the former Ministry of Works and subsequently the Property Services Agency (PSA). The Gallery estimates that these renovations are likely to cost more than !Z5OO,OOO per gallery at I989 prices and the Trustees are looking for the means to undertake this work, room by room, starting in the summer of 1990 on the first of these, using funds donated by Nomura Securities Co. Ltd.

On the down side, however, is the substantial reduction in the space now allocated to the display of the Historic British Collection, notwithstanding the construction of the Clore Galleries for the Turner Collection, in order to provide for the often excessive space demands of monumental Avant-Garde sculpture and constructions. Changing displays are promised, but the overall distribution of gallery space is unlikely to change for a decade or so when interest in the Historic British Collection is growing rapidly. Perhaps, when the next great rehang of the Tate Gallery collections is undertaken, the Turner Collection can again be displayed in the fine Duveen Galleries specially designed for it.

Photo Credit. Tate Gallery, London.

P.C.-B.

Design Museum Study Notes

Created by the Conran Foundation, an educational charity established in 1981 by Sir Terence Conran to promote awareness of the importance of design in education, industry, commerce and culture, the new Design Museum in London was opened by Mrs Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 5 July 1989, and has attracted considerable attention to its study collection, backed by temporary exhibitions and a changing review of new products. Many of the lessons learnt by the Conran Foundation in setting up and operating the pilot Boilerhouse Project in the Victoria and Albert Museum have been incorporated into the Design Museum, and it is primarily an educational body offering carefully tailored programmes aimed at primary and secondary schools, further and higher education, professional designers, industry, commerce and the consumer. However, the educational mission of the Design Museum, as expressed by the opening exhibition-Commerce and Culture-has not been universally applauded, not least Stephen Bayley’s insistence that shopping and museum visiting are becoming indistinguishable and that this is a desirable development.

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Study Notes published by the Design Museum, London, and the ring file in which to store the series and additional notes. (f&to: The Editors)

The idiosyncrasies of the temporary exhibitions and displays do not extend to the first eleven Study Notes published by the Museum as part of the educational programme. Covering T~~g~~pby, The Radio, The Camera, The Chair, ~o~~ewor~, Styling, The Safety Bicycle, The Bauhatts, Telephone Study Notes, Typewr~tters and irhe Office, these follow a standard format with eight pages printed in black and white only, and the informative, concise texts conclude with recommendations for ‘Further Reading’. More Study Notes are promised in due course and the Museum also supplies a specially designed ring file which will eventually hold 25-30 Notes chosen by the student. Apart from curious misspellings (e.g. Uffizzi), these sheets in many ways achieve the object of stimulating design awareness better than the displays in the Museum themselves, and there are still many ideas which are better conveyed by means of the orthodox printed word studied in the school or at home rather than spread around the walls of a display gallery.

P.C.-B.

2nd Salon International des Musics et des Expositions

Held in the Grand Palais, Paris, 20-28 January 1990, the International Salon of Museums and Exhibitions (SIME) was organized under the patronage of the French Ministry of Culture, the Direction of the Musees de France and the Commission of the European Communities. Jean Frangois Grunfeld was again Commissaire General and the design of the Agora was entrusted to Jean and Maria Deroche. On the ground floor of the Grand Palais the museum exhibitors (10.5) occupied the North and West Wings, whilst that to the South was allocated to goods and services (70) and publishers (24). Compared to the 1st Salon, held in 1988, the number of non-French exhibitors showed a gratifying increase. The minimum size of a stand was 9m2 but, priced at 1550 francs per square

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View into the Agora de- signed by Jean and Maria Deroche for the 2nd Salon International des Muskes et des Exposi- tions, Grand Palais, Paris, January 1990. (Photo: Syracuse Photo, Paris)

metre, the overall cost to such an exhibitor was approximately 20,000 francs for nine days, which compares very favourably with normal commercial rates for trade fairs. On the other hand no discounts were allowed and all exhibitors paid the same rates.

Not surprisingly, French museums predominated in the museum sections, with 77 stands, as against 28 foreign exhibitors (Spain 6; Switzerland and Italy 5 each; Germany 4; Great Britain 3; The Netherlands 2; and Austria and Belgium 1 each), though some of the largest and most impressive presentations were those made by the Italians and Spaniards. Similarly, the French suppliers dominated the goods and services section (61:9) and only amongst the publishers was parity almost achieved (13:ll). Nevertheless, the publishers were almost entirely limited to art books, with conservation, museology, science and technology books unrepresented. Indeed, the strong interest in scholarly publications produced by museums surprised many exhibitors and the staff of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside found the demand for such material exceeded their expectations-and their provisions. This reaction was in accord with the experience of other exhibitors and the Salon provides a substantial marketplace for museum scholarly publications which is greatly in need of exploitation. During the first public days visitors were averaging almost 6000 per day, with 3000 museum professionals on Tuesday 23 January 1990, which was reserved for them alone. All in all the 2nd International Salon can be counted a big success and for the 3rd, scheduled for January 1992, it is hoped that the Pan-European character of the Salon will be further developed with the Scandinavians, for example, exhibiting, and a much larger number of non-French suppliers of goods and services.

P.C.-B

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IBM Recalls a Pioneer Exhibition

Located at 590 Madison Avenue, New York City, the IBM Gallery of Science and Art has, since 1983, established itself as the host to many innovative exhibitions exploring a broad range of topics in the arts and sciences. However, in the exhibition 50 Years of Collecting: Art at IBM the focus was the role of the company itself as a patron of the arts, not least its contribution to modern architecture. The art-collecting activities were begun by IBM’s founder, Thomas J. Watson, when in 1937-39 works of art from 79 countries were acquired for display alongside the latest models of IBM data-processing equipment in the 1939-40 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow, NY. A partial reconstruction of this pioneering display was the striking main feature of the autumn 1989 exhibition.

Interior of the IBM Gal- lery of Science and Art with the partial recon- struction of the IBM display at the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair.

ICOM’89

With more than 1500 participants and excellent work by the Dutch Organizing Committee of ICOM’89, the XVth General Conference of ICOM, held in The Hague, 27 August to 5 September 1989, is generally judged to have been a very considerable success. Certainly it was much enjoyed and the meetings of the International Committees were in general reasonably well attended. On the other hand, ten days is a very long conference, particularly for the ordinary members of ICOM, and many participants were unable to be present for the entire proceedings right up to the Farewell Party at the Rijksdienst Beelende Kunst (Netherlands Office of Fine Arts) in The Hague. The main theme of the conference was ‘Museums: Generators of Culture’ and this was expanded in the official programme:

From time immemorial, museums have concentrated their efforts on preserving our cultural heritage. Even in the midst of today’s power game of cultural innovation

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and social change, they are still stalwart defenders of tradition, intent on preserving our heritage and giving physical form, as it were, to our collective memory, by bringing together objects out of our past. But a second task of museums is indissolubly tied to the collecting and preserving of the past. This second task is to generate culture, a function that museums have continued to fulfil for as long as they have been in existence, and one that is closely linked to their place and role in society.

This task is performed on different levels and in different ways: (a) By passing on cultural traditions. (b) By providing insight into new forms of expression in art and science. (c) By the process of reassessing and reinterpreting the collections and individual

objects in museums, and presenting them to the public. On the threshold of the twenty-first century, it seems appropriate to devote a conference to this very theme ‘Museums: Generators of Culture’.

These ideas were explored by Mochtar Lubis (‘The Proliferation of Collections and Museums’), Hernan Crespo Toral (‘New Forms of Presentation’), Bela Kijpeczi (‘Cooperation for the Future’) and Neil Postman (‘Extension of the Museum Concept’) in the four keynote addresses, and each International Committee was asked to discuss them in order to report back to the Plenary Session held on 4 September 1989. A growing number of participants meanwhile became increasingly bemused as to what exactly the theme meant, in either English or French, though these doubts tended to be expressed more noisily late in the evenings than during the working sessions!

The activities in the Agora were dominated by the most informative exhibition devoted to the work of the Museology Department of the Amsterdam School of Fine Arts-the Reinwardt Academy. Peter van Mensch’s statement therein, concerning museology, is difficult to reconcile with many of the ideas developed round the theme of the conference, but for many colleagues in the museum field the intellectual environment he put forward is infinitely preferable:

Federico Mayor, Director General of Une with Pascal Makambila, President of Congo National Committee, at the X General Conference of ICOM held in Hague, 1989.

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the :vth The

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In my opinion museology is a complex of both theoretical and practical functions concerned with the management of our cultural and natural heritage, i.e. the selection, conservation and accessibility for the benefit of our society, now and in the future. A society without recollections is a society without a soul. A society without a soul is self-destructive. The moral task inherent in museology is the cement of preservational, documentational and public-orientated responsiblities of a museologist.

The methodology of museology is based on a systematic approach of the object as a data carrier (theoretical museology). The museological practice is concerned with the selection, conservation and accessibility of the data enclosed within the objects, which result in information (applied museology). This process takes place under many different conditions (special museology). The museum is one of these, but certainly not the only one.

Museology is committing oneself to the story of the object while keeping in mind the present and future needs of society. The object is an inexhaustible source which reveals its riches in a loving approach.

P.C.-B.