I suppose this comes under the heading of the public understanding of science, but I’m really irritated by the current Ford Mondeo advert, especially the first line “Survival depends on the ability to evolve”.
Well, no, it doesn’t. In fact it could not be more wrong. Actually, “Evolution depends on the ability to survive.”
Disappointingly, we won’t be the first in Britain to be accredited, as I read in the latest MJ (that’s Museums Journal, not the Municipal Journal) that a museum in Cornwall has achieved that honour. Still we may be in the first group in Scotland. Which is nice.
However - the entire scheme is still as focused on buildings as ever, despite the promise of looking at museum services as a whole, and despite the fact that almost everything that accreditation measures in about collections care and services to the public, not buildings. It’s as if MLA just can’t get out of their minds the fixed picture of what a museum is: a (one, singular) building with collections (that belong only to that building because the museum only has one building), with staff (who all work in that building) and exhibitions (that only ever happen in the building). Essentially, every museum must follow the model of the BM.
For some reason it seems that the people in MLA can’t deal with the messy fuzziness of reality, and so have preferred to force fit the variously-shaped pegs of every museum in the UK into their round hole. So we all have to pretend a little making one of our museums stand in for ‘the service’ when in fact all our staff and collections are based in another building eleven miles away (and one that can’t be accredited as it’s not open to the public except by appointment).
Sigh. It makes me wonder if any of the civil servants who draw up schemes like this have any experience of actually working in museums. Real experience however seems to be something thats frowned upon in the Civil Service, especially in the London-based offices.
It’s refreshing to see more emphasis being placed on collections again by the Museums profession, though how long it will last is anyone’s guess. These things seem to go in cycles, but I suspect that it’s more to do with either boredom (we’ve done that kind of thing to death, let’s move on to something new) or fashion (focusing on [schools | families | outreach | internet | techie gadgets | presentation | best value - delete as appropriate] is so 2003). Always, though, in search of a panacea that will make museums a must-visit for everybody.
Why do we feel that we have to do that? Why the need to appeal equally to everyone? It’s as if Sports Centres would feel unfulfilled because they don’t appeal to the fat, lethargic, unathletically-inclined. What’s next? Hospitals for the healthy?
Sorry about that. Anyway, what’s cheering about the emphasis on collections is that, for the vast majority of us working in museums at least, it was the objects, the collections, the wonderful, real, tangible (carefully of course) things that attracted us into the job in the first place.
Or maybe it’s just me. I remember my moment of conversion - not as it happens, on the road to Damascus, but in William Brown Street in Liverpool. As part of the first year of my Archaeology degree we had a session in Liverpool Museum. In a sense nothing very exciting, just some bits of broken pottery (which almost sums up archaeology in two words :-)). But this pottery was from the earliest neolithic levels at Jericho, so it was bits of some of the oldest pottery there is. One piece in particular is still fresh in my mind nearly 22 years later: thick-walled, poor quality, as pottery quite rubbish, but with the maker’s fingerprints still visible in the fabric. Touching the past - it seemed (and still seems) like making physical contact with that unknown person across the millennia. You can read all you want, but nothing can surpass that feeling. Only objects are real: the physical manifestation of the ancient (or not-so-ancient) past, the distant land, the hidden world around us. No virtual experience can come close, no second-hand image or description in a book can give that thrill. That’s what museums have. And everything else - the books and manuscripts, pictures, videos, computer simulations, everything that is mere words - is just hearsay and opinion.