MUSEUMS, GALLERIES, POLITICS AND MANAGEMENT Clive Gray De Montfort University
MUSEUMS, GALLERIES AND FUNCTIONS Objects and pictures: meanings and displays Collection, safeguarding, displaying, trust Inspiration, creativity, education, economic regeneration, modernisation, identity construction, community, management
FUNCTIONALITY Untenable: overlap/interaction Uncertainty: change over time What will they do? Exogenous/endogenous choices Professionalism and politics
REPRESENTATION AND DISPLAY Social constructivist/interpretive approaches Reliance on qualitative data Top-down imposition of value Bottom-up reception/perception/interpretation of value Instrumentalism
INSTRUMENTALISM AND ATTACHMENT External imposition – social inclusion Internal attachment – education Outputs and outcomes Evidence-based policy The problem of assessment and hostages to fortune
DECISIONS, DECISIONS Seahenge and the Elgin Marbles Fragmented processes Internal ‘management’ decisions External ‘political’ interference Political symbolism/’practical’ choices ‘What and Why and When/and How and Where and Who’
CUI BONO Audiences/visitors/customers? Citizens/consumers/learners? The ‘general public’/curators/’politicians’? Locality/nation/the world?
CONCLUSIONS ‘The exhaustion of museums, of libraries:/It is nothing to do with dust, or being old, or dead. (Anthony Thwaite, Accumulations) Museums are the sites where a range of political choices are made: an effective political analysis of these is still needed