Museum international; Vol.:LII, 2; 2000 - UNESDOC Database - Unesco

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Museum International

University museums

Vol LII, n°2, april 2000

STOLEN Sixteenth-century icon painted on wood: Virgin and Child. The painting is badly damaged and only part of the head of the Infant Jesus is visible. Dimensions: height (left) 24.1 cm, (right) 20.7 cm, width 23.4 cm, thickness 1.7 cm. Stolen from a museum in Paphos, Cyprus, on 7 December 1998. (Reference CYP/CID/540(113/98) Interpol Nicosia.) Photo by courtesy of the ICPO±Interpol General Secretariat, Lyons (France).

Corrigendum We would like to apologise for the error printed in Jim Angus's article in Museum International 205. The final paragraph of his article should have read: In conclusion, there is a great deal to be considered when planning and building a Web site, and there are many good examples and resources on the Internet that provide inspiration and guidance. But the key to a good Web site is museum-wide involvement of staff. Consultants can provide polish, but only the experience and talents of museum professionals can translate into Web sites that have depth and meaning.

University museums and collections Peter Stanbury

Peter Stanbury has worked with university museums and historic houses for most of his career. In 1992 he was one of the co-founders of the Australiawide association of university museums, CAUMAC ± the Council of Australian University Museums and Collections. In 1998 he proposed the formation of an international university museums group at ICOM in Melbourne. He currently advises the vice-chancellor of Macquarie University, Sydney, on museums, collections and heritage, and is executive officer of the Museums and Collections Standing Committee of the New South Wales Vice-Chancellors' Committee.

This issue of Museum International and the next will be devoted to university museums and have been designed to provide insights into a variety of university collections and their staff. In the following pages, university curators tell of their collections, current programmes, achievements and experiences. These are important, not only to other university curators, but to the museum profession as a whole, and to those responsible for national heritage. University staff have a wide range of skills and look after a spread of collections of remarkable size and significance. University curators are keen to share their resources and to co-operate with other museum professionals. Such co-operation among museums is becoming increasingly important, especially in regard to staff development, research projects and funding. The articles in the two issues are intended to stimulate thinking and be a focus for communication among university curators and with museum colleagues in other sectors. It is hoped that such interaction will strengthen understanding between sectors, regions and countries, which would help forge a better future and greater protection for the heritage of the region that we know best ± our own.

Strengths and challenges There is little need to emphasize the significance and scale of the collections of great universities: for example, the ancient collections of Utrecht and Uppsala in Europe; those of Oxford, Glasgow and Manchester in the United Kingdom; those at Harvard, California and British Columbia in North America; and Sydney, Melbourne and Otago in Australasia. Patrick Boylan1 and others have recounted the glories of such institutions, 4

and almost everyone familiar with museums will know of noteworthy items in their local university collection. For every major and well-known museum there are scores of smaller, often specialized ones, which also contain important collections of regional and national value that were originally amassed for teaching and research. Today, they make up an essential part of a country's heritage and are becoming ever more accessible to a wider public. Universities everywhere are broadening the range of their funding sources. Governments no longer supply the bulk of their budgets, and money from research, teaching, technology, investments, real estate and consultancy now form much of their income. They have innovative outreach programmes to attract students and obtain support and their museums can play a key role by providing a welcoming, open door onto the campus. However, many university collections are housed within departments that face increasing costs and decreasing funds and that must give priority to maintaining academic strength in teaching and research. Competition among universities ensures that `customers' who have paid for instruction will not be happy sitting on the stairs of an overcrowded lecture theatre or working with outdated equipment. Current research is increasingly reliant on costly technology and skilled assistants, both of which become more expensive year by year. The outreach activities which are important for the university as a whole become less important for a department struggling to balance its budget. In consequence, university collections now face reduced staffing and funds. Some university `curators' essentially work in a voluntary

ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 206 (Vol. 52, No. 2, 2000) ß UNESCO 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)

University museums and collections

capacity at odd moments between their academic duties and after hours in order to serve their university's goals and maintain the integrity of their collection. Though some university teaching may be less collection-based than formerly, highschool students want to visit university museums to be stimulated by real objects in an increasingly virtual world. Their visits, often their first steps on campus, may influence their choice of subject or university. Such enrolments bring welcome money to a discipline and the university, but rarely enrich the original catalyst for their choice, the university museum. Thus, university curators are between a rock and a hard place, trying to serve, without adequate resources, several masters at the same time: the university, the academic discipline, local schools, and those overseeing the nation's heritage. The last, usually government agencies, want to know that the nation's movable heritage is easily accessible and is being responsibly maintained by the owner. Fourteen years have elapsed since Warhurst wrote `The Triple Crisis in University Museums'.2 The crises that concerned him were those of identity and purpose, lack of statistical information about the collections and staffing, and resources and funding. The article provoked discussion and action. In the United Kingdom the Museums & Galleries Commission featured university museums in its 1987 Report;3 Drysdale in 1990 published the first of many regional surveys of university museums in the United Kingdom,4 and in 1992 the Museums Association published a report on the relationship of higher education and collections.5 Subsequently, many lists of university museums have been made in different countries, some of which were followed by reviews that have ß UNESCO 2000

stimulated better policies and management. To take one example, at my own university (Macquarie University in Sydney), following a national review, we now have a university-wide policy for museums and collections, which has been formally approved by the University Council. We are using a second-generation Strategic Plan for the fourteen collections and there is an Advisory Committee composed of curators which reports matters of concern directly to the vice-chancellor. All museums have their own management committee. A museums and collections newsletter is circulated to the senior executive, heads of departments, those involved in university museums and the wider museum community. Brochures for the museums are regularly updated, and there is an established Web page which is accessible worldwide.6 Curatorial staff represent the university in a national association, the Council of Australian University Museums and Collections (CAUMAC), and at state level, on a Standing Committee for museums and collections established by the state ViceChancellors' Committee (representing twelve universities in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory). The Standing Committee meets three times a year at different university venues to encourage communication, discuss matters of mutual concern and bring them to the attention of the appropriate authority, and to organize staff development days and joint travelling exhibitions. The Standing Committee was set up in response to the first of two Federal Government reviews of university museums, Cinderella Collections (1996) and Transforming Cinderella Collections (1998).7 The vice-chancellor of Macquarie University, Professor Di Yerbury, and the present writer were members of both reviews. 5

Peter Stanbury

Despite these improvements in policy, management and advocacy in my university there is still much to be done. Departments take decisions to reduce the number of staff hours for curatorial work in the museum ± sometimes to zero ± and museum budgets are often small or non-existent. Our response at Macquarie has been to negotiate alternative staffing solutions (for example, an education outreach officer with responsibilities for a collection, and employment of a parttime postgraduate student) and to look for ways to increase the sources of income. At Macquarie, in spite of such setbacks, we are relatively fortunate; however, the situation is more critical in many other universities. The difficulty often stems from the lack of a clearly defined purpose for the collections and the absence of recognition by senior management of that role. Surveys and data collecting are important elements in defining the museum's mission and in drawing up a clear plan, both of which could make it easier to find the necessary funding.

Why are university museums special? What is it that makes university collections unique, both within the university campus and within the larger group of `ordinary' museums? Why are university museums special? The answers are clear: university museums have unequalled access to the skills and knowledge of academics and have had a head start in the electronic revolution; no other group of museum workers is surrounded by such a strong tradition of scholarship, research and publication, all of which provide staff with a privileged entry to knowledge and render them valuable contacts for those working in other types of museum; no other group of museums is expected to serve such a 6

variety of communities and become so intimately connected with the education of secondary, tertiary and postgraduate students; finally, university museums are expected to maintain a cloistered scholarly following while at the same time mount contemporary exhibitions sufficiently attractive to bring outside people into the strange, unfamiliar territory of the campus. Universities have the opportunity to introduce both secondary and tertiary students to museums over extended periods of time. Their collections play an essential role in teaching specific fields of study. It is difficult to imagine medical or veterinary students not studying anatomical collections, or art students not visiting the university gallery. Works of art and sculpture, often displayed throughout the campus, also subtly educate and influence both students and staff during the years spent on campus. University museums make a further significant contribution: when students, whatever their field of study, find visits to university museums meaningful and rewarding, their understanding of the important role that museums play in our heritage is fostered. Their commitment to preservation is deepened and may remain with them throughout life, influencing decisions made in work and leisure. The start of a career may be considerably assisted as a result of the practical skills learned and contacts made by voluntary assistance in a university museum. University museum staff are usually given less museological assistance by their employer or local museum association than any other museum personnel. They often have insufficient contact with those in other museums and frequently feel isolated and lack the necessary influence ß UNESCO 2000

University museums and collections

to alter their situation. Training and communication are areas in which they need help and support. Although they are expected to contribute to institutional outreach programmes, they must not create unwelcome controversy nor undue publicity, or upset the institutional scholars and the conservative administrators. They are urged to seek external funds to counter the diminishing or non-existent internal funding, yet must do so within departmental and institutional research and teaching grant systems. University museums are often not eligible for grants that are available to other museums. The university's senior executive body may consider it inappropriate to pass statutes to guide the management of collections, but university curators are nevertheless expected to conduct themselves in such a way that reviews or inquiries will not uncover poor practice. Staff frequently find themselves stressed by the tension of vaguely specified and competing expectations. Dedicated staff shoulder the responsibility of attempting to protect and preserve collections made by distinguished scholars because no one else in the institution seems to care. Those who look after university museums often find that their museological duties are not considered relevant by promotion committees; the responsibilities and the rewards of those who care for university museums are not reflected in their duty statements, which formally mention only their other university responsibilities. University museum staff are expected, with limited resources and ambiguous status, to maintain institutional, national and even international treasures. Collections are assets with a monetary and, especially in the case of university museums, a spatial value. Few museums ß UNESCO 2000

have such poor safeguards against capricious disposal of collections and alienation of space as do university museums. Proposals to close museums often materialize as real threats that need to be countered at short notice. The maintenance of the building fabric in which university collections are housed is frequently neglected because these areas are often ignored in the university's capitalmanagement plan and the collection staff not consulted. Universities must demonstrate responsibility for the collections in their care by consulting widely both within and outside the campus. University collections have many expectations placed on them. Some curators find themselves unable to counter lack of funds, disinterested line managers, poor accommodation, ill-defined career paths and increasing demands on their time. They need help before they abandon hope. If they lose the battle, the nation may lose a collection which may have taken decades to build.

Achievements and goals There are many fascinating stories on the following pages. Some authors recount how they have brought new life to their museum by linking it prominently to the city, as well as to the campus. Another innovation has been to bring several university museums into a building complex more accessible to the wider public, as for example, at the Utrecht University Museum in the Netherlands. At the 1998 ICOM meeting in Melbourne an international university museum and collection group was proposed. As there were already national university museum groups in the United Kingdom, North America, Australia and elsewhere, as well 7

Peter Stanbury

as conferences devoted to university museums, it seemed that there was potential for an international network. The idea was to assist communication, foster interchange of ideas and speed the progress of better practice. University museums almost invariably have access to the Internet and this makes communication much simpler than it was a few years ago. Macquarie University has established a convenient starting point to search for university museums worldwide at: www.lib.mq.edu.au/mcm/world/. Advantages of establishing a worldwide university museums group include: • Lessening the isolation felt by many curators of university collections by increasing regional and international contacts (networks). • Development of partnerships between university museums, and between those museums and other institutions, thus encouraging the sharing of resources. • Greater access to university collections, better research, teaching and public outreach, increased social and cultural development. • Concerted work to protect and maintain university collections, especially those in immediate danger. • Provision of guidelines for professional standards of management, staffing and museology for university collections, an often overlooked component of national heritage. These benefits could be augmented with the establishment of a Web site to develop and maintain: • A Web-based journal written by inter8

national representatives who contribute both scholarly papers and news items (material for exchange, new methods, positions vacant, new exhibitions). International video-linked conferences will also become a practical possibility in the near future. • Virtual exhibitions available in summary at one site on the Web.8 Having many virtual university-based exhibitions linked to and accessible from one site would provide a valuable extension to normal publicity. • Exchanges of staff, opportunities for staff development and mentors could be facilitated from a single Web site with the co-operation of granting bodies and institutions in host countries. • A forum to identify priorities for the needs of university museums, including national reviews, and drawing these to the attention of relevant bodies (for example, discussion about collections that are little known to the general public, such as herbaria, living collections, sculpture parks). This proposed consortium of university museums is important from the point of view of the rest of the museum sector because it would focus attention on the unique resources in university museums, provide opportunities to experiment with different models of organization, financing, and research, encourage the development of professional practices and ethics, extend the information technology within universities for the benefit of a wider public (a fascinating possibility is the development of personalized virtual museum tours9), foster discussion and promotion of cross-cultural issues and the appreciation of difference, and promote concerted and co-operative defensive ß UNESCO 2000

University museums and collections

action for endangered heritage. The substance of these points is similar to the stated aims of ICOM and UNESCO for the next few years, and the annual conferences of Forum UNESCO: University and Heritage have already made important contributions to this area.

4. Laura Drysdale, A World of Learning: University Museums in Scotland, London, HMSO, 1990, 11 pp. 5. Museums Association, 1992, `Museums and Higher Education', Museums Association Annual Report, 1991±1992, pp. 4±15, London, Museums Association.

The message of the university museum issues of Museum International is simple: the people associated with university museums need assistance and interest in their collections. They wish to work with colleagues towards a future in which there is increased understanding of others, a greater sharing of knowledge, and security for local heritage. ■

6. www.lib.mq.edu.au/mcm/ 7. D. McMichael et al., Cinderella Collections: University Museums and Collections in Australia, Canberra, Australian ViceChancellors' Committee, 1996, 226 pp; Di Yerbury et al., Transforming Cinderella Collections: The Management and Conservation of Australian University

Acknowledgements. I would like to thank my

Museums, Collections and Herbaria, Canberra,

colleagues at Macquarie University for help

Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee, 1988,

with this article, and I am especially indebted

331 pp.

to Professor Barrie Reynolds and Karl Van Dyke for many valuable discussions over the

8. For example, nine universities in New

years.

South Wales have combined to create an exhibition, Cinderella's Gems: Art and the Intellectual Mission, which will tour three Notes

Australian states over a two-year period. A selection from the exhibition is available at:

1. P. J. Boylan, `Universities and Museums:

www.all.mq.edu.au/gems/index.htm/

Past, Present and Future', Jouradas de Museos Universitarios (Universitat d'Alacant, Spain),

9. Maria Milosavljevic, Robert Dale, Stephen J.

No. 1/2, 1999, pp. 11±21.

Green, Cecile Paris and Sandra Williams, `Virtual Museums on the Information

2. A. Warhurst, `The Triple Crisis in University

Superhighway: Prospects and Potholes', in

Museums', Museums Journal, Vol. 86, No. 3,

Proceedings of CIDOC '98, the Annual

1986, pp. 137±140.

Conference of the International Committee for Documentation of the International Council

3. Museums and Galleries Commission, Report 1986±7 (specially featuring university

of Museums, 10±14 October 1998, Melbourne, www.dynamicmultimedia.com.au/papers/

collections), London, Museums and Galleries

cidoc98/

Commission, 1987, 72 pp.

ß UNESCO 2000

9

The loneliness of the university museum curator Jane Weeks

Doubly isolated ± from their colleagues within the university and from those in the larger museum community ± university museum curators are learning to develop new approaches and missions for their institutions. Jane Weeks, a museum consultant specializing in museums in non-museum organizations, describes how this is being done in the United Kingdom. She has considerable experience of university museums, having managed a major Collections Management Project for University College London, and undertaken two regional surveys of university museums and collections in the south-west and the midlands of England, in conjunction with Kate Arnold-Forster.

In university museums and collections, far more so than in other museums, personnel is a key issue. The fortunes of university collections fluctuate according to how they are staffed: a dedicated technician, an enthusiastic lecturer or a sympathetic head of department can make a crucial difference as to whether the collection flourishes or withers. Yet the role of university curator is a difficult one, uncomfortably bridging the gap between the university and the museum worlds. As one curator of a university art gallery said, `Sometimes I feel like a tennis player in a rugby team!' Research has suggested that there are around 400 higher-education museums, galleries and collections held in British universities, though the exact figure is unknown. University museums and collections take a wide variety of forms, from major museums with an international reputation, such as the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, housed in the first purpose-built museum in the United Kingdom and open to the public since 1683, to small departmental collections, used for teaching but with no public access. The quality of the collections is extremely high. Of the fifty or so museums that have received `designated' status, accorded to non-national museums in the United Kingdom that hold pre-eminent collections, almost a third are university museums. Fifty-six have been recognized as having reached the standards required by the Museums & Galleries Commission's Registration Scheme. However, the staffing structure in university museums differs markedly from that in national, local authority or independent museums. Very few university collections benefit from having professionally quali-

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fied museum staff, as the majority of those with curatorial responsibilities have acquired them thorough an academic rather than a museum career path, and rarely have direct experience of working in museums. This is partly explained by the dearth of full-time curatorial posts within university museums. The majority of university collections are cared for on a part-time basis, the role frequently being combined with that of technician, postgraduate researcher, lecturer, archivist or librarian. Only rarely is the balance of this role formally defined, leaving the curator, particularly during university terms, with little time for the collection. University curators can therefore endure isolation on a number of fronts. They can be isolated within their own university. Museums are not a core university activity, and those working with museum collections inside a university have different goals and different priorities from other members of staff, even in their own department. This is particularly true of science collections, such as geology and medicine, where the trend is away from using collections and towards learning through CD-ROMs and other information and communications technology. This is also true of libraries and archives, which although they are skilled in caring for books and manuscripts, seem curiously ill at ease with 3-D objects. Within their own department, they will also experience the tension between the need to produce academic publications and contribute to teaching and research, and the growing demand from funding bodies for university museums to develop a more public face. Within the university, the strong barriers that exist between departments frequently prevent curators in the same university from making contact, and some university museums and

ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 206 (Vol. 52, No. 2, 2000) ß UNESCO 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)

ß Loughborough University

The loneliness of the university museum curator

collections are physically located in remote parts of the campus. While some curators have access to the highest decision-making levels of the university through a museum management committee, consisting of senior members of staff and, occasionally, outside experts, many do not, and thus their collections fail to come to the attention of the vicechancellor or principal. Nor do university curators feel at home in the wider museum community. In recent years, the positions of university and other types of museums have polarized, with university museums regarding teaching and research as their main priorities, and other museums being increasingly pressured to broaden their public access and improve their public services. This lack of a common goal makes communication difficult and deters them from becoming part of the thriving museum network.

Tackling the problem So how do university curatorial staff tackle this problem of isolation? Like everything in life, there is no one simple answer, but the purpose of this article is to highlight some of the solutions arrived at by university curators within the United Kingdom. These can be grouped into three areas of activity: raising the profile within the university; networking with the museum community; and reaching out to the public. The Museums & Galleries Commission's submission to the 1996 National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, chaired by Sir Ron Dearing, highlighted one of the important roles played by university museums as being `a shop window for universities, a source of prestige and pride which contributes to the quality of life within a university'.1 ß UNESCO 2000

Several university museums have embraced this `shop window' role enthusiastically, none more so than the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow, which is now part of the University's External Relations Department, in recognition of its important showcasing role.2 To heighten awareness of its collection among the university community, the curator at the Strang Collection at University College London recently undertook a project to relabel all the paintings and sculpture displayed in public areas of the university, which include works by many ex-students of the Slade School of Art such as Gwen John and Stanley Spencer, giving information about the painting and the artist, and at the same time highlighting the depth and breadth of the collection.

One of the chairs made for the college library by students of Loughborough College under the direction of Peter Waals. Each chair was made by a single student and is individually signed. Loughborough University has been contacting alumni of the furnituremaking course as part of a project to gather information about their important collections of Arts and Crafts furniture.

At the University of Birmingham, the university curator has had great success in siting showcases in public areas of the university. Spaces converted for display purposes include old telephone boxes, 11

ß Grant Museum of Zoology, University College London

Jane Weeks

designed a Web site for the Grant Museum of Zoology and mounted an exhibition on eminent scientists.

Creating networks

At the Grant Museum's regular `handson' activity days, children can have fun as well as learning about animal diversity, fossils, extinction, and the importance of studying natural history.

made redundant by the prevalence of mobile phones among students! These showcases house material from the university's varied collections, which include ethnography, natural sciences and engineering, and bring them to a wider audience. At the Agricultural Museum at Lackham College in Wiltshire, the new curator realized that staff were unable to visit the museum which is only open at the weekends and on special open days. In order to encourage colleagues to feel ownership of the museum, he opens the museum at lunchtimes on weekdays and encourages staff to visit. Other curators have sought to embed the collections within the university by encouraging cross-departmental use for teaching. Students from the Slade School of Art at University College London attend regular drawing sessions in the Anatomy Department's museum. The museum studies course at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London has broken new ground by creating student projects based on the university's collections; over the last two years, students have devised an imaginative teacher's activity box for the Petrie Museum of Egyptology,

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University curators are beginning to appreciate the benefits of developing partnerships with their local museum, recognizing them as a source of advice and support. The University of Exeter has a close working relationship with the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter; the curator of archaeology at the museum lectures on local archaeology to undergraduates, and the director of the museum serves on the university's Fine Arts Committee. Loughborough University is planning to mount a joint exhibition with its newly opened local museum to showcase the university's important collection of furniture by two of the Arts and Crafts movement's leading furniture makers, Peter Waals and Edward Barnsley, who taught at the then Loughborough College. The role of university museums within the wider university community has been recently highlighted by two reports published in 1999: Beyond the Ark, a survey by Kate Arnold-Forster of the museums and collections of higher-education institutions in southern England, and a report by Melanie Kelly of the University of Bath's International Centre for Higher Education Management on the management of higher-education museums, galleries and collections.3 Both reports illustrated the need for university museums and collections to receive support from the museum community, and strongly recommended that the Museums & Galleries Commission and the regional Area Museum Councils should do more to understand the special needs of university collections. ß UNESCO 2000

ß Lackham College

The loneliness of the university museum curator

Networking within the university museum community also brings benefits. The University Museums Group, founded in 1996 with the purpose of promoting the interests of university museums and collections both within the universities themselves and outside, especially to government, has recently broadened its remit. Its first conference, held in May 1999 in Southampton, attracted university curators from all over the country and provided a much-needed meeting point. Universities have long benefited from being part of a global network, where researchers worldwide remain in close contact with colleagues in the same disciplines. And university museums are beginning to be part of this network. The recent creation of a Web site for university museums, the brainchild of Peter Stanbury, of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, has been a significant step towards linking university museums worldwide. A further move is the proposal, also from Peter Stanbury, for the creation of an International University Museums Committee, under the auspices of the International Council of Museums.

Finding new audiences The larger university museums, such as the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Manchester Museum in Manchester and the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, already attract together almost a million visitors a year and have a high public profile, but this is not the case with smaller collections, which are frequently constrained by lack of space and unsuitable or inaccessible accommodation. But the pressure is on them to develop a more public face, and they are devising some imaginative solutions. Although ß UNESCO 2000

they may not be able to accommodate large crowds of visitors, they can target niche audiences, such as schools, or enthusiasts.

Weavers at an open day at the Agriculture Museum at Lackham College.

Schools are a particularly important market for universities, as they offer access to a pool of potential students at a time when an increasing number of them are applying to their local higher-education institution. A number of university collections, such as the Museum of Classical Archaeology at University College London, have devised courses for A-level students, a service rarely offered by other museums, which are encouraged to target the larger market of younger schoolchildren. At the other end of the age range, the curator of Loughborough University's collections is developing links with the alumni of the furniture design course who were taught by Peter Waals and Edward Barnsley. Each student was required to make a piece of furniture, usually a chair, during his course and, at the finish, carved his name on it. The curator has compiled a 13

ß Manchester Museum

Jane Weeks

groups on bug hunts and seashore rambles. New audiences can also be accessed through the Internet. The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture at the University of Exeter has an excellent Web site, offering a virtual tour of its collections, which range from Magic Lanterns and zoetropes to Disney memorabilia and cinema posters (http://www.ex.ac.uk/bill.douglas) and Bournemouth University's Centre for the History of Defence Electronics (CHiDE) has an active Web site which features both images of equipment and interviews with leading figures in the history of the industry (http://chide.museum.org.uk).

The Manchester Museum has set up a joint project, the International Amphibian Research Group, with the University of Ulster, to research the skin venom from rare breeds of frog, such as this example, bred in the museum.

database of furniture and maker's names, and is contacting the makers through Loughborough University's Alumni magazine and recording their memories of working with Barnsley and Waals. The University of Exeter has an impressive sculpture collection which is displayed in the landscaped grounds of the main campus and which includes works by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. The curator of Fine Arts has recently obtained funding from the Henry Moore Foundation to produce a fully illustrated guide to the sculptures, which is on sale to the public. To further encourage public access, the university has recently obtained additional funding for improving the on-site signage, and linking it with the booklet.

This brief overview has attempted to outline the particular challenges facing the curators of university collections and the inventive and exciting ways they have adopted to overcome their potential isolation and widen knowledge of their collections. ■

Notes 1. J. Joll, `Submission to the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education', 1996 (unpublished MS). 2. See James Devine and Ray Welland, `Cultural Computing: Exploiting Interactive Digital Media', Museum International, No. 205 (Vol. 52, No. 1, 2000) ± Ed. 3. K. Arnold-Forster, Beyond the Ark:

Outreach programmes have been particularly successful for university museums, as they overcome the problem of bringing the public into the university. The Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Plymouth is part of a programme that funds lecturers to lead primary-school 14

Museums and Collections of Higher Education Institutions in Southern England, South Eastern Museums Service, 1999; M. Kelly, The Management of Higher Education Museums, Galleries and Collections in the UK, Bath, University of Bath School of Management, 1999 (Occasional Paper No. 7). ß UNESCO 2000

The shifting audience of the university museum Glenn Willumson

Faced with uncertainties of funding and the need to rely on increasing support from without the academic community, university museums in the United States are at risk of compromising their traditional mission of investigation, inquiry and challenge, according to Glenn Willumson. Yet the need for them to reassert their intellectual vigour and remain in the forefront of interdisciplinary dialogue has never been greater. The author holds a Ph.D. in art history and is currently curator of the Palmer Museum of Art, on Pennsylvania State University campus. He previously taught at the University of California and has served as a specialist in photography and American art at the Getty Research Institute. He has published extensively in American art and in the history of photography and is working on a book and exhibition project that considers the representation of the Western landscape and the first American transcontinental railroad. The recipient of numerous research awards, he has served on the editorial board of Cambridge University Press, the governing board of the Society for Photographic Education, and is a former advisor to History of Photography magazine.

As government support for museums in the United States diminished in the 1980s and as traditional supporters aged, museums paid increasing attention to promotion and to attracting new audiences. Some of these advertising and outreach efforts included developing museum `friends' groups and membership campaigns, extended museum hours, waiving the museum admission fee on certain days of the week, opening their building for use by corporate supporters, and, in some cases, sponsoring social events such as concerts and dances. By enticing people to participate in various programmes, museums reaped many benefits, only one of which was a growth in memberships. Equally important, increasing numbers of visitors provided museums with a potent weapon in the battle for government (federal, state, and municipal) financial support. At the same time, large museum audiences offered a target group for potential corporate sponsors. Within the last few years, the efforts to raise funds have gone beyond even these nontraditional venues of support. For example, the Brooklyn Museum has begun a campaign called `Adopt a Masterpiece'. Any person donating a specific sum can have his or her name as a sponsor placed on a label adjacent to a selected work of art. Criticized by many as a crass commercial venture, the director of the Brooklyn Museum argues that the museum's actions offer sponsorship at a relatively low fee. This effort, he continues, has the benefit of democratizing art patronage, removing it from the prerogative of an elite aristocracy and offering new possibilities of art support to the middle class. For the most part, the university museum would seem to be immune from this rush to increase audience and revenue at all costs. With its basic operating expenses

covered by an academic institution, the university museum is somewhat insulated from the financial vicissitudes that have buffeted large public museums in the United States. For some college and university museums, however, this has not been the case. Increasingly, university museums have found themselves searching for new audiences outside their academic institutions. Two of the reasons for this dramatic shift are the erosion of the museum's historical base of support within the academy and the concomitant change in the relationship between the university and the museum. Historically, university museums in the United States were closely tied to particular academic departments. Many of these institutions' beginnings can be traced to collections that were either gathered by faculty for pedagogical purposes, or developed with their assistance and expertise. In both cases, faculty took active roles in the establishment of museums as university institutions. These circumstances allowed the typical university museum to form collections and, at the same time, assured it of an academic audience ± one that included not only faculty members, but also their students. Furthermore, with an academic department heavily invested in the museum, the director could count on departmental support at university meetings that addressed budget and other campus-wide issues. This tradition, however, has begun to change in the last twenty years. The links between department and museum have been strained by two factors: the increasing professionalization of university museum staff and the shift in academic research models. As the university museum joined other museums in implementing accepted practices for museum professionals, the involvement of individual

ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 206 (Vol. 52, No. 2, 2000) ß UNESCO 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)

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ß Palmer Museum of Art

Glenn Willumson

University museums reach beyond their traditional student audiences to embrace their communities. Here, the author explains a painting to adult visitors to the Palmer Museum of Art at Pennsylvania State University.

faculty members was often diminished. In enforcing professional standards the museum too often found itself at odds with faculty who had enjoyed a privileged relationship with the collections. Even more important, however, was the shift in academic scholarship. As disciplines turned with greater and greater frequency to theory-based research, scholars increasingly regarded object-based inquiry ± the method upon which museums are founded ± as the antiquated scholarship of an earlier era. For the theory-based scholar, university collections were at least superfluous and, for some, they were a suspect remnant of an earlier, eclipsed ideology. The effect of this disciplinary shift went beyond individual methodology and challenged the position of the museum within the academy. With the widening gulf between museums and the academy, some university presidents cut budgets, arguing that museums drained increasingly precious funds from their universities' teaching mission. In more extreme cases, administrators have argued that museums' object collections are assets of their colleges or universities. Such notions are particularly frightening when carried to their logical conclusion where assets might be liquidated so that other programmes, envisioned as more central to universities as research and teaching institutions, could be strengthened. There are, of course, legal barriers to this latter course of action, but the very fact that it has been articulated suggests the tenuous position of museums within the academy.

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Even among those museums that enjoy administrative and academic support, new audiences seem a necessity. Until the 1980s when public universities experienced a dramatic loss of government support, administrators allowed museum directors and curators unprecedented access to potential donors. However, as universities turned to their alumni to make up for the loss of government support they adopted a fund-raising model that compartmentalized donations and, at times, placed the museum in direct competition with the departments that had been their traditional supporters. Many directors have attempted to meet the privatization of university funding by looking outside their institutions for a new, more broadly based audience. University museums turned to community supporters for those costs that lie beyond bare-bones operations: new acquisitions, exhibitions, educational programming and outreach. Certainly, any attempt to expand a museum's audience is to be applauded but, in the case of the university museum, the need to please these new constituents can exacerbate the challenges that university museums face in the new millennium. Too often, the necessity to build community audiences distracts attention from the museum's traditional university audience. There is not enough space in this short article to suggest any more than a few of the issues involved. The question of university exhibitions will suggest, I hope, some of the complexity of these issues.

Stepping back from controversy The power exercised by special interest groups has been increasing in the United States since the cancelling in 1995 of the Smithsonian Institution exhibition devoted to the historical results of the atomic ß UNESCO 2000

ß Palmer Museum of Art

The shifting audience of the university museum

bomb. This event has had a chilling effect on museum practice in the United States. Arguably, the greatest effect was on those museums, like the Smithsonian, whose primary funding depended on the government or on the general public. In the face of this new social and cultural reality, some have claimed that university museums, with their secure operating funds, are the best places for ambitious, innovative, or otherwise `difficult' exhibitions. The `academic freedom' of their supporting colleges and universities, they suggest, provides the intellectual justification for taking on challenging ideas and exhibitions. Under the university's financial and philosophical umbrella, the university museum is understood as one of the last exhibiting institutions positioned beyond public controversy. While appealing, this line of reasoning ignores the reality of the university museum in the late twentieth century. Marginalized by shifts in academic practice and supported by their communities as well as their universities, university museums discover that they are in positions not dissimilar from that of public museums. Instead of embracing the potential of `academic freedom,' university museums find it difficult to invite the type of debate that is at the centre of academic inquiry. The presentation of ideas outside mainstream thought and ideology is rendered increasingly difficult when museums are forced to garner widespread support from outside the academic community. As links between museums and academic departments fray, and as museums' direct relation to classroom instruction is framed as supplementary, museums find themselves positioned as expensive academic `frills', not worthy of increased institutional funding. To remain viable and to appeal to wider audiences, university museums mount major exhibitions and acquire ß UNESCO 2000

important objects, but to do this they must look to the outside community for additional financial support. This throws university museums into the same contested space as public museums. Both rely on government funding and private sponsorship, and are subject to their concomitant pressures.

Engaging community volunteers to lead tour groups allows university museums to expand their teaching mission to include regional, elementary- and secondaryschool audiences. The Palmer Museum's 42 docents led more than 150 tours for some 3,500 pupils in 1997/98.

As university operating budgets shrink and university museums are increasingly forced to look for new sources of funding, museums' susceptibility to outside pressures mount. Just as the notion of academic `tenure' has emerged as a topic of public discussion, so, too, is museum support no longer assumed to be exempt from public scrutiny. This manifests itself in more ways than university museums' self-censorship of controversial exhibitions. At its most extreme, outrage over controversial museum exhibitions has been used by state legislatures to threaten university-wide appropriations. More frequently, university museums find it difficult to gain support when their exhibitions are controversial or challenge the value systems of those individuals, communities or corporations to which they must increasingly turn for funding. The university museum's reliance on outside funding threatens its mission. It forces the museum to moderate the number of cutting-edge, controversial exhibitions, and even more harmful to its goals, 17

ß Palmer Museum of Art

Glenn Willumson

A museum-studies class at the Palmer Museum instructs students on professional standards. John Driscoll, guest lecturer and director of Babcock Galleries in New York, discusses methods of connoisseurship with the class.

it detracts the museum's attention from its primary audience ± the faculty and student body. Instead of acting within the university's academic environment and challenging their traditional audience of university students and faculty, museums moderate their content so as not to offend their regional constituency. This practice heightens the university's perception of the museum as separate and distinct from the institution's primary educational mission. This seemingly unavoidable shift in practice and perception is a quagmire into which too many university museums find themselves slowly but inexorably sliding. Despite the uncertainties of funding, university museums must reassert their role as sites of investigation, as sources of new knowledge and as an indispensable component of universities' teaching mission. The new university museum must seek out supporters and audiences that understand the primacy of its educational commitment so that they supplement, not distract from, the museum's university constituency. One of the most obvious examples is the university museum's service to elementaryand secondary-school visitors. Although this audience is shared with municipal museums, university museums have a unique role and a special responsibility to this audience. The university can begin to introduce the students to a sophisticated subject matter and a more complicated intellectual dialogue. This is important, most obviously, because this younger audience represents future university students and, by extension, future museum supporters. The university administration

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must be made to see, further, that in providing an enjoyable educational experience for younger children, the museum plays a critical role in the university's responsibility to serve the public. But it is not enough simply to promote challenging educational programming. The university museum must help the administration make its case to the legislature, and other government agencies, by providing quantitative information about the number of pre-college-age visitors, the amount of time spent in the museum, and the quality of their experience. Within this frame the university museum demonstrates its unique role as an educational site for future university students and present taxpayers. The university museum must also reassert its role in the educational experience of the university student. Although recent shifts towards theoretical inquiry seem at odds with the museum's privileging of the object, the university museum must not ignore these challenges but must instead engage the current dialogue within academic discourses. There are many pathways into this conversation. Attention might be paid to the function of museums as the embodiment of social and cultural discourses, as arenas of subjectivity, as places concerned with reception as well as production, or as sites not of single points of view but of constellations of ideas, to list just a few suggestions. Each university museum must re-examine its charter and redefine itself to embrace an intellectual approach that will move it beyond the scope of a single department's pedagogy. Its programming must cross disciplines and embed the museum within contemporary academic conversations. Not by looking to outside audiences but only by reviving its commitment to its academic audiences can the university museum thrive in the twenty-first century. ■ ß UNESCO 2000

Australian university museums and the Internet Vanessa Mack and Richard Llewellyn

Two different approaches have been used in Australia to make data and images from university museums and collections available on the Internet in a meaningful, user-friendly way. Vanessa Mack is director of the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney, and formerly senior registrar at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. She is on the editorial board of Archives and Museum Informatics: Cultural Heritage Informatics Quarterly (Kluwer Academic Publishers), chair of the Movable Cultural Heritage Reference Group of the Heritage Council of New South Wales, and member of various University of Sydney Heritage and Museum committees. In 1997 she acted as co-ordinator of the federally funded pilot project to create Australian University Museums on Line (AUMOL), a combined catalogue-with-pictures of the holdings of university museums. She is also on the co-ordinating committee of the National Teaching and Learning Data Base project which grew out of AUMOL. Richard Llewellyn was formerly senior registrar of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. In 1997 he became the project manager for AUMOL, and has since been instigator and project manager of the National Teaching and Learning Data Base project and other similar Web-based collection projects.

In the last four to five years, many museums have developed their own Web sites. These vary enormously, of course, usually in a way directly related to the size and wealth of the institution. Most, however, will give general information on the museum, its holdings, staff, opening hours and so on. In addition, some put enormous effort into recreating something of the museum experience ± for example, a tour of an exhibition, or a specially created virtual exhibition. Others include certain catalogue information about the holdings. There have also been co-operative ventures between groups of museums in the same country to facilitate various operations such as loans or to create joint registers. Australia is one such country, although its efforts have been somewhat different and perhaps more ambitious. In Australia, the Heritage Collections Council, a federally funded national body, has organized and financed the development of Australian Museums on Line, or AMOL, a national directory and major information source about most museums and their holdings (http://amol.org.au). One of the museum sectors least represented in this directory, at least initially, was the university museum sector. Few university museums were recorded and only a small proportion of these submitted catalogue information for inclusion in the AMOL database. The reasons are complex, but a contributory factor is the perception by university museum staff of their role in their institution. Primarily, university museums serve a teaching and research function, and any public role is secondary. Additional factors include a lack of staff trained or experienced in museum work, isolation from the museum mainstream, poor or varying documentation levels on holdings in university museums, and resource constraints. Often, university museum personnel are

not members of the national museum associations and know little or nothing of the Heritage Collections Council or of AMOL. In 1996 there was a national review of university museums arising from the work of the Council of Australian University Museums and Collections (CAUMAC). The ensuing report, entitled Cinderella Collections: University Museums and Collections in Australia,1 has assisted in raising the profile of university museums both within their host institutions, and in the wider museum community. More or less directly as a result of this report, two Web-based initiatives were undertaken, both of which are separate from but linked to the national project, AMOL. The Australian University Museums Information System, or AUMIS (run from Macquarie University in Sydney) is a directory of university museums and collections containing general information, relevant reports and so on (http:// www.lib.mq.edu.au/mcm/aumis). Linked to this is the project which is the main subject of this article ± Australian University Museums on Line, or AUMOL (run from the University of Sydney) which concentrates on providing catalogue or object-based information from a range of university museums. Currently seventeen collections from five universities are included, with other collections ready to go on-line (http://aumol.usyd.edu.au).

AUMOL: a path to discovery In 1997, the authors (in conjunction with colleagues at other universities) put forward a proposal to the national research funding body, the Australian Research Council, for a grant to develop an on-line, shared or union catalogue of

ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 206 (Vol. 52, No. 2, 2000) ß UNESCO 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)

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Image by courtesy of the author

Vanessa Mack and Richard Llewellyn

format used a set of fields based on the United Kingdom's Museum Documentation Association standards, and the raw electronic data transferred from the participating museums were mapped into them. The data were cleaned up, subject terms added and images loaded. There is much technical information available on the site, and we are happy to provide other details to interested readers. For example, it was decided to limit the size of the images to a fairly low resolution (72 dpi, and 7 cm high) to enable rapid retrieval on a variety of less powerful equipment, and to assist in controlling the intellectual property rights of the participating museums. The image is too small to be usefully downloaded for reproduction other than as a guide to the object's existence. The AUMOL entry page: http:// aumol.usyd.edu.au/

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the holdings of fourteen museums at four universities. The objective of the catalogue-with-pictures was to provide a piece of infrastructure to increase the potential and usage of the holdings of these research and teaching collections. Certain disciplinary strengths were chosen for this pilot project, for example, classical archaeology and ethnography, these being major teaching and research areas in three of the participating universities with good collections in these disciplines. Minor strengths included scientific instruments, natural history, and historic photographs. All the participants had contemporary art collections and this is now also another focus of the database.

The particular virtue of AUMOL over individual museum catalogues on line is the ability to make a single search, in a fairly standardized way by object and by subject, over the holdings of several museums. If one is after specific information on a class of object widely held in university museums, this is obviously an enormous advantage. The hit-rate analysis shows that demand is fairly attuned to periods in the academic year, and ranges from more than 20,000 hits in a few peak months down to an average of around 6,000 hits a month over the early part of the year. (The Australian academic year runs from March to December.)

The project was intended to provide a way into discovery and exploitation of these important resources, which tend to be used by those who are familiar with the holdings, but little used by departments, students and scholars outside the host institution or even host department. Technically, our procedures were well defined, and as standardized as possible. The data

Technically and conceptually AUMOL is relatively straightforward, and the idea of a shared catalogue is common in the library world, albeit quite rare among museums. The content of the underlying database is only as good as the contributed catalogue records, and it is neutral information without any interpretation of the object other than that contained in the ß UNESCO 2000

Image by courtesy of the author

Australian university museums and the Internet

original data. It is up to the user to combine records, objects, information and to provide an individual interpretive response. The information is given in a simple format analogous to a bibliographic record, with which the target audience, that is, students (secondary and tertiary), researchers, university staff and specialist users, are familiar. In providing this sort of information about university museum collections, there is little difference in approach to content and presentation required of the records over that which would be needed were other museums to attempt the same sort of project. The main difference for example, between the records on AUMOL and those on AMOL, apart from a greater concentration on obtaining a clean record (and, we think, a better presentation), is the addition of a references field, as it was found that in many cases this information was already provided on the records. Any differences in Internet content and presentation come more from the nature of the collections themselves, those in Australian university museums frequently being more specialized than collections in general museums, especially those of a similar size and resource level. Our purpose has not been to create the world's best Web site ± the quality and availability of the information provided is much more important. To this extent, if the goal is to make object-based data and images available on the Web, the approach would be similar whether the collections were held in a university or other type of museum. There is a fundamental difference, however, between what may be considered normal museum collections and the majority of university teaching and research collections, which may not accord with the ICOM definition of a museum, and ß UNESCO 2000

that difference relates to the basic purpose of the collections. Generally, teaching collections are intended to provide a source of physical evidence to support specific educational or research objectives. This is reflected in the nature and content of the records of the collections, and as a result, the sort of Web presentation appropriate to these collections needs to do more than simply provide access to the finding level record as described above.

AUMOL screen-shot showing a small representation of the object (a mask from the Macleay Museum ethnographic collection) with typical museum-type data fields.

For most museums, the basic object records of the collection are intended primarily for collection management purposes (especially those records that are computerized) and interpretive information is scant. Research records will frequently exist, but will often take the form of thematic or class research rather than being based on object records, for example, research files on Royal Doulton 21

Image by courtesy of the author

Vanessa Mack and Richard Llewellyn

NTLD screen-shot. The image may be viewed at a number of sizes, with or without labels, text, etc. and can be used for teaching, reference and even selfassessment purposes.

potteries, rather than on a particular piece. Of course this is not to claim that research on the particular piece does not also exist on a file. However, the differences begin to be more relevant when university collections that do not approximate those held in general museums also wish to be represented on-line. Museum-type collections tend to have relatively standard museum-type records with fields that map readily to a model such as the basic MDA collection management fields. Teaching and research collections are at the other end of the scale. Their target audience tends to be both narrow and captive, and all that is required of the object records is to convey the required core information. Descriptions are often confined to the disciplinespecific name of the object, its location and essential information related to the content of the object. It is not unusual for there to be no recognizable form of object management record. Objects may not have unique identification numbers, nor registered locations. One object may be destroyed, and replaced with another,

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which may be given the same object ID number. The data, if there are any, will usually conform to the specific requirements of the discipline rather than any museumdata conventions. For example, natural history specimens will record genus, species, family, etc., but no general description of the specimen to tell what it actually looks like. (This point is obviously equally true of many natural history museums, and they too have different requirements in developing Web access to their records, if they are to be made really meaningful.) The fact that much of what we consider to be conventional museum data is not present in the records of these objects does not mean that these records are deficient for their intended purpose. It does mean, however, that generic Web presentation formats such as those used on AUMOL, designed around the data and image types we expect of museum records, may not work for the objects in these collections, or may work only if this ß UNESCO 2000

Australian university museums and the Internet

record is intended to lead to further information in another format.

The National Teaching and Learning Data Base During the development of AUMOL, we were approached by the curator of one of the University of Sydney's medical museums, the Wilson Museum of Anatomy, about making the catalogue of that museum available on the Web for specific teaching purposes. The nature of the material contained in their catalogue record about an anatomical specimen, especially one prepared for teaching purposes, was substantially different from the finding-level record useful for general management purposes, and which we had been placing on the Web. It took the form of a lesson, describing and illustrating the salient points about the specimen (for example, a dissected hand). Although we developed a relatively easy way to produce a finding level record in the standard format which would allow retrieval of basic information on the name and type of the specimen, its physical location and so on, it was obvious that much more was required. This sort of enquiry led to the creation of the National Teaching and Learning Data Base (http://ntld.nettl.usyd.edu.au) as a way of increasing the use of university collections in developing courses to be taught on-line. The NTLD has received federal funding through the Higher Education Innovation Program of the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs. It is a national distributed database of learning resource `objects' which support post-secondary learning for formal tertiary education, lifelong education, and professional development and reference. ß UNESCO 2000

A learning `object' is defined as a small and self-contained resource of teaching materials, which may include simple records, images, sound, and even modules that provide interactive, single-theme learning experiences. These `objects', accessible through the NTLD, are the reusable building blocks for courseware which may be assembled in many ways, thereby supporting flexible delivery of learning within existing academic cultures. Thus, while these `objects' may be broadly defined, they may also include the holdings of the less traditional university museums, such as the collections of anatomy, pathology, X-rays, slides (microscope and transparency), etc. From our work with many university museums and collections, there does appear to be a difference between the catalogue records of a standard museum object such as a spear, vase, or microscope, and a teaching collection record, for example, a lung, a dissected hand or an X-ray of a heart condition. While it is possible to record the same basic information about the latter category as on a standard record, one may question how useful it is to do so, without some sort of underlying database to which one can go for further real information. The same is frequently true for the standard objects in our museums, and as on-line teaching, and, in particular, the National Teaching and Learning Data Base concept, develops further, additional information on this class of objects may also be developed. In the medical museum example, the specimens are used to teach anatomy to medical students. Much of the postgraduate medical course at the University of Sydney is now being taught on-line, interactively, in a problem-solving way using representations of the same specimens that have sat for years on the 23

Image by courtesy of the author

Vanessa Mack and Richard Llewellyn

searching. The NTLD method is to treat the native collection record as an object in itself and to standardize the metadata (literally, data about data) presentation and terminology at a high (i.e. fairly generic) level. This approach, while in some ways apparently inefficient, does have the advantage of being able to accommodate anything that can be sent over the Internet, whether it be a traditional type of museum record or a textless object such as a piece of streaming video or an audio or video file in MPEG format. The NTLD entry page: http:// ntld.nettl.usyd.edu.au/

museum shelf. Computerizing these data in a meaningful fashion has been part of the solution, and that has meant treating them more inventively than the AUMOL data. There are several possible alternative strategies to Web presentation of these types of record: mapping the data into the generic format as best as possible; recataloguing the object using a more generic format, or adopting a presentation strategy that accommodates the native format. On the whole this is a case-bycase situation. Re-cataloguing is seldom an option, though additional data, such as subject keywords or geographical terms, can sometimes be added to records programmatically rather than manually, because of the homogeneous nature of these types of collection. Because university staff are generally computer-literate and have significant computing resources available, there is often some form of digitized record of the collections. An approach is required that allows the original format to be retained so that the essential information (which may contain data in a cryptic form or format that is important to disciplineprofessional users) is not lost while providing a common-format approach for

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The essential difference between AUMOL and NTLD is that AUMOL provides an online, common-format catalogue designed primarily to inform users of the existence, nature and description of objects that may be of interest to them, while NTLD is designed to provide access to on-line information through a common-format interface. In many ways the two are complementary, and there will be a significant amount of information duplicated between the systems to ensure that users coming from different perspectives can find what they seek. Because there are two subtly different purposes underlying each system, duplication is desirable rather than inefficient. Museums and collections exist to provide repositories of information, and the traditional museum record is not necessarily the best way to distribute that information electronically, so the NTLD type of approach will increasingly play a role in the way university museums and collections can deliver access to the information riches they contain. ■

Note 1. D. McMichael et al., Cinderella Collections: University Museums and Collections in Australia, Canberra, Australian ViceChancellors' Committee, 1996. ß UNESCO 2000

A new museum for an ancient land: Patras University Science and Technology Museum Penelope Theologi-Gouti

Image by courtesy of the author

That university museums have a major role to play in contemporary life and are far more than the fortuitous outcome of random collecting is amply illustrated by the project of Patras University. Located just outside the city of Patras with a view over the Gulf of Corinth to the mountains of central Greece, it lies on a self-contained campus of about 240 hectares and is now the third largest institution of tertiary education in the country. Its decision to create a Science and Technology Museum was seen as vital to its mission as a major venue for scientific research and knowledge. The author is a member of the museum's preparatory team and is co-chair of the ICOM/CIDOC/Ethno Group. She was formerly secretary and vice-chair of the ICOM Hellenic National Committee. Her publications include texts in The International Core Data Standards for Ethnology/Ethnography (Collections Ethnographiques et Documentation MuseÂale), ICOM Study Series, 3, 1996, as well as its Greek version published in The Handbook for the Documentation of Ethnographic Collections, Athens, 1998.

An artist's rendering of the new museum.

Patras University was founded in 1964 and began functioning in the academic year 1966/67. A self-governing public institution under the supervision of the Ministry of Education financed entirely by the state, its initial orientation was towards science and technology with the first departments to be established being Biology, Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry, followed shortly by Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. Over the years the number of departments has grown to eighteen, now including Civil and Chemical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and the academic orientation of the institution has been balanced by the creation of schools of Health Sciences and of Humanities and Social Sciences and departments of Architecture and Management. Most departments include several academic divisions, so that in fact the range of disciplines is even greater than it appears at first sight. Two small museums already exist at the University, the Zoological Museum and the Botanic Museum, which mainly serve the research needs of the Biology Department. In addition, several university departments, sections and laboratories also hold collections of old equipment and material gathered in the field. Since his election in 1994, the rector, Professor Stamatis Alachiotis, began thinking of the

need for a museum in order to spread knowledge about the various sciences to a wider public, improve contacts with the city of Patras and emphasize the importance of a science museum as a tool for teaching the history of science in the region of Western Greece and the Peloponnese. After discussions within the university community, it was agreed to create a Science and Technology Museum to acquire, conserve and research (register, document and evaluate) the traces of science and technology starting with those sciences taught at Patras University. Those traces could be utensils, tools, machines, technical or other equipment (laboratory, pharmaceutical, industrial etc.), archives, photographs, cards, books and other accompanying material, which would be exhibited for purposes of study, education and enjoyment. The aim of the museum is to demonstrate the evolution of science and its latest achievements to as broad a public as possible, including primary- and secondary-school pupils, university students, out-of-school young people, adults, the elderly, scientists and researchers. It was decided that plans for the museum should be carried out along three parallel lines: development of a building and museological programme, including the design and the construction of the museum structure; collecting, recording and documenting relevant material, and creation of the museum's operating structure. A building and museological programme document was developed in collaboration with the university departments and a comprehensive bibliography and a host of Internet resources on science and technology museums and university museums worldwide were consulted in order to understand how similar museums function. The museum's operating framework was established and the special requirements for presenting the various sciences

ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 206 (Vol. 52, No. 2, 2000) ß UNESCO 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)

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Image by courtesy of the author

Penelope Theologi-Gouti

A 1920 manual soldering press engine belonging to the laboratory of machine elements of the Department of Mechnical Engineering and Aeronautics. It was bought and donated by Professor A. Dimarogonas.

were recorded in the programme document, which also contains a description of the space to be allocated to the museum's diverse activities.

tender for the museum and seven groups of jointly acting agencies, all experienced in developing museum projects, expressed their interest. The Selection Committee decided, in March 1999, to charge all seven to proceed to a preliminary project based on the directions given by the building and museological programme and to submit proposals by 22 June 1999. The winner was selected and an agreement signed on 5 October 1999 to draw up the final project which is to be completed in spring 2000. At that time construction of the museum building will begin and work on the definitive museological project will be completed in order to design the permanent exhibitions and be ready to open as soon as the building is ready. This will, of course, depend on the number of departments that agree to collaborate and the state of the different collections at that time.

A focus for campus and community The museological programme will be elaborated so as to present the history and development of the sciences over the centuries (mainly from the nineteenth century to the present, with references to the ancient Greek period), describe the relationship among the several sciences and technologies, and demonstrate the divisions and the links between the exact and applied sciences and the humanities. The museum will cover a surface of 3,200 m2, which may be extended, and will be situated in the centre of the university campus, just in front of the conference centre (at present under construction) and alongside the university cafeÂ-restaurant. This position confirms the important role that the museum can play within the university community and also the vital link between the university on the one hand and the town and region on the other. The University Technical Service put out a 26

Among the many collections that already exist within the university, some of the most important are those of the departments of Education, Physics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Technology. As indicated, the Botany and Zoology museums, with holdings of numerous specimens, will continue to function separately for the needs of the Biology Department. However, other traces of the biological sciences will be acquired and evaluated by the new museum in order to present their history and evolution. Thus, it was decided to begin gathering together all the existing material as well as supporting documents such as books, cards, photographs, etc., in a single place in order to record, document and evaluate them. The collaboration of the university departments is considered vital and each was requested to designate a co-ordinator for the Science and Technology Museum. The department co-ordinators will have to agree on a documentation and collections ß UNESCO 2000

Image by courtesy of the author

A new museum for an ancient land: Patras University Science and Technology Museum

policy and will be responsible for indicating the existing materials in their departments to be placed in the museum, suggesting ways to enrich them with other items that have to be found outside the university, assisting in organizing the logistic support for recording and documenting the objects, and offering ideas for the museological design of the exhibitions and the development of the philosophy of the presentation of each science. The university provided a building where the materials and documentation could be assembled; after renovation, it will contain all the facilities and equipment needed to create the permanent museum collection. The eventual content of the Science and Technology Museum will depend on the number of sciences represented and the variety of the traces of their history and evolution on hand, which will, of course, influence the museological implementation plan and the final form of the exhibitions. Existing documentation procedures and data standards developed by different organizations such as ICOM/CIDOC (Documentation Committee of the International Council of Museums), as well as the classification systems currently in use, are being evaluated in order to agree on the procedures and standards to be adopted in the new museum. It is hoped that the full collection, documentation and evaluation process will start at the beginning of the academic year 1999/2000 after the museum building is completed. The museum will operate in collaboration with the participating university departments, which will be expected to provide staff and other support for such activities as collection, documentation, temporary exhibitions, educational programmes, etc. The structure and functioning of similar institutions in Greece and abroad are being researched, studied and evaluated ß UNESCO 2000

in order to develop the museum's operations and work plan. The organization of the museum is not yet clear, but it is likely that a board of university professors and a director will lead it. Staff will be needed in several categories: scientific staff to run the scientific activities in collaboration with the university departments, administrative and support personnel (cloakroom, information, etc.) and security guards.

A Danish diesel engine donated to the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics by one of the oldest engineers in Patras, C. Skouras.

It is evident that the process of preparing and organizing the Patras University Science and Technology Museum is going to be long. However, it is possible that presentation of single-subject exhibitions, manifestations for International Museum Day or other activities may be organized before completion of all work in order to attract the public and make the museum known. So, in the space of a few years, we hope to offer to the Patras University community and the concerned public a contemporary museum that will benefit from existing experience in the field and respect the standards given by ICOM, and one that will constitute an important tool for the teaching of the history of the sciences. ■ 27

University and museum in Brazil: a chequered history Adriana Mortara Almeida and Maria Helena Pires Martins

University museums in Brazil often owe their existence to circumstance rather than design, and although this has given rise to a number of outstanding collections, it has not always fostered clear institutional links and structures. With this in mind, the University of Sa Äo Paulo, home to thirty-three museums, is leading a process of reflection and change that could have far-reaching consequences. Adriana Mortara Almeida is completing her doctoral studies in communication at the University of Sa Äo Paulo and is participating in the coordination of the educational programmes for the 500 Years of Brazilian Visual Arts exhibit, which will take place from May to August 2000. She has worked at the Educational Department of the Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum from 1989 to 1998. Maria Helena Pires Martins is a Professor at the University of Sa Ä o Paulo and Director of the Education and Cultural Action Department of the Museum of Contemporary Art.

In Brazil, as in many other countries, the museum was the very first institution to develop research and educational activities in the sciences and arts. Later, the university began to centralize those activities. A striking example is that of the first museum founded in the country, in 1818 when Brazil was a Portuguese colony, the Rio de Janeiro Royal Museum, later called the National Museum after independence in 1822. Following European patterns, it contained natural-history specimens donated by collectors or gathered by expeditions in the country, and served as a warehouse to send samples to Europe. It was also a major natural-history research and education centre. This striving and productive research centre of the nineteenth century gradually lost its autonomy and significance to scientific study with the creation of research institutes and schools of higher education early in the twentieth century. Internal crises, insufficient funding and resources combined with the dissatisfaction of researchers culminated in the incorporation of the museum into the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1946. The museum continued to be a research centre, but the work conducted had little to do with its collections. The current exhibition, for example, has not been changed over the last fifty years. The same situation is found in other museums incorporated into the universities at times of crisis. The universities received these institutions despite their having neither the special infrastructure nor the qualified people to manage them. In addition, research studies developed by the university departments are unrelated to those conducted on the museum collections because they usually adopt different subject matter and methods. Therefore, the same university witnesses

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duplication of research centres in a number of disciplines, such as biology, anthropology and history. Currently, there are more than 120 university museums and collections nationwide. The majority belong to the federal (49 museums) and state (54 museums) public universities. Most university museums in the country are of natural sciences (54), followed by history (33), anthropology (28), arts (16) and others (5). The large number of science museums follows the pattern of other countries and is explained by the gathering of collections for teaching and research purposes by the departments.1 Based on preliminary studies, the following recurring problems have been identified: insufficient and unqualified staff for museological work; lack of appropriate space to house, research and display collections; inadequate funding for minimum maintenance; absence of statutes endorsed by the university's governing body, which would ensure the continuity of projects and programmes, and great disparity in relation to the research and teaching developed by the departments. The University of SaÄo Paulo (USP) is no stranger to these problems. One of the largest universities in South America, it has its major campus at Cidade UniversitaÂria, in the western region of the city of SaÄo Paulo. Created in 1934 from the merger of existing higher-education schools in the city, today USP has about 33,000 students, 4,850 professors and 14,700 employees, spread over campuses in the capital and countryside. It is also the state university comprising the greatest number of museums (thirty-three), only four of which are officially considered museums and are as autonomous as teaching departments: the History Museum (Museu Paulista), the Zoology

ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 206 (Vol. 52, No. 2, 2000) ß UNESCO 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)

ß Maria Esther Alvarez Valente

University and museum in Brazil: a chequered history

Museum, the Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The first two were part of a single museum which was incorporated into USP when it was founded. The others were also previously formed collections that were later donated to USP in the 1960s. What they all have in common is the fact that they were incorporated into the university on the initiative of authorities with no involvement of professionals from related areas. In addition, there are museums that belong to schools and institutes which have their exhibits open to the general public, such as the museums of oceanography, geoscience, and veterinary anatomy, among others. These collections were formed from fieldwork and donations. USP also has a science centre called Science Station and some teaching collections. Nineteen museums and collections are located at Cidade UniversitaÂria, eight are located in various neighbourhoods in the city of SaÄo Paulo and six are on the countryside campuses. Each one operates ß UNESCO 2000

with greater or lesser autonomy, staff size, co-operation with related departments, and number of public programmes. This heterogeneity prevents any co-ordinated action by the university and the adoption of a common policy that might join the forces of the various museums. Nevertheless, in recent years, USP has created some mechanisms to foster the discussion of issues related to its museum cultural property: a cultural heritage committee and a museum co-ordination unit. The first has been systematically surveying cultural property under the responsibility of USP and its conservation, in addition to creating a database of courses and professionals in the area. The second has submitted the statutes of the four large museums to the University Council (the highest authority in the university hierarchy) in 1997 and 1998, and on this basis master plans for the museums, outlining goals and ensuring the continuity of programmes, are being drawn up. The other museums and collections have no autonomy to draft their own statutes because they are subordinated to the departments or sections of the institutes to which they belong.

The present level of academic research at the National Museum is known for its high quality.

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ß Maria Esther Alvarez Valente

Adriana Mortara Almeida and Maria Helena Pires Martins

other exhibits, as long as there would be no risk of deterioration. In this way, the collection would be preserved and would maintain its university educational and research purposes. The USP collections not regularly used for teaching and research purposes and which have great public appeal, such as the Museum of Oceanography and the Museum of Contemporary Art, have to find different solutions. The fact that no similar collections exist in SaÄo Paulo should be highlighted, for this makes these institutions of even greater interest to visitors from outside the university.

The collections of the National Museum are very diversified, covering a broad spectrum of disciplines including biology and archaeology.

Unity v. heterogeneity Considering the variety of museums and collections, each one with its own history and identity, it is difficult to propose a single solution. In our opinion, the governing body of USP should support the structuring and continuity of the programmes of every museum, small and large, provided that they are aligned with the general objectives of the university and developed with the highest quality. Some examples show how this idea might be put into practice. The herbarium of the Bioscience Institute basically serves professors and students for education and research and is not open to the general public, for its conservation would be threatened since there is neither space nor personnel available for maintaining a display. Therefore, the herbarium could continue its current function but would strive to improve access to teaching and research. Some samples could occasionally be lent to

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The Museum of Oceanography belongs to the Institute of Oceanography (IO/USP) and has an exhibit on physical, chemical and biological oceanography oriented towards elementary- and secondaryschool children, who can see equipment, photographs, graphs, drawings, biological preparations and aquariums. The equipment shown is no longer used in research studies and the collections are specially donated and/or gathered for the exhibits, serving as communication and education tools and not as objects of academic research. The educational activities promoted by the museum are geared to school and other audiences outside USP. From our point of view, some of the ways to improve the museum would be: to deepen relations with current audiences by improving the quality of exhibits and educational programmes; to attract professors and students from IO/USP to coordinate exhibits and activities at the museum aimed at the general and/or specialized public; or to establish relations with professors and students from IO/USP to form teaching and research collections and to create exhibits and programmes geared to specialized audiences. Bearing in mind the identity and image created by ß UNESCO 2000

ß Adriana Mortara Almeida

University and museum in Brazil: a chequered history

the Museum of Oceanography over the years, the first option would seem to be the most appropriate in the short term, for it would not require changes in the museum `culture' and in its audience. However, the two other options emphasize the fact that it is a university museum and would complement the first. The city of SaÄo Paulo has four large art museums but none of them has a collection equivalent to that of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC/USP), which was created in the 1960s when an important collection of modern art ± including works by Modigliani, Picasso, Chagall, MiroÂ, Bracque, LeÂger, Morandi, De Chirico and many others ± belonging to a private museum was donated to USP. Throughout the years, the collection has been significantly increased through the acquisition of works of art that received the first prize at the Biennial of SaÄo Paulo and several other donations, comprising a total of 8,000 works of art in 1999. The museum conducts research on its collection, on conservation of contemporary art, and on non-formal educational methods. It promotes exhibits of the permanent collection as well as individual and collective shows featuring the works of contemporary artists. Part of its mission is to make these exhibits physically and intellectually accessible to the public. Unfortunately, the location of the museum on the campus does not attract the general public owing to distance and safety problems. Opening hours are also a problem, because the campus (and the museum) closes at 2 pm on Saturday and reopens only on Monday morning. Thus, although MAC maintains a permanent programme that includes a specially designed exhibit and workshop for disabled people and a year-long programme for senior citizens, it is difficult ß UNESCO 2000

for the general public, especially for those who work, including parents with children, to get to the museum. The present administration has been advocating the necessity of a more central location in order to bring this important collection within reach of a larger audience. In the meantime, the museum is establishing partnerships with private galleries in good locations to display the most important works in its collection.

Schoolchildren are the major audience at the University of Sa Ä o Paulo's Museum of Oceanography. Here they observe the bones of a whale and try to reproduce its way of swimming.

As part of its efforts to make itself intellectually accessible, the museum offers several courses on modern and contemporary art history, and on art appreciation and interpretation, as well as workshops for the community and the general public, and a special elementary-teacher training programme. Its Education and Cultural Action Department is aware of the fact that contemporary art needs mediation to be understood, however, it does not have the staff to conduct guided visits for the general public. The solution would probably be to offer a docent training course for volunteer art students. 31

ß Maria Helena Pires Martins

Adriana Mortara Almeida and Maria Helena Pires Martins

MAC also needs to attract a new audience among the students, professors and employees who spend their days on the campus. With this in mind, the Education and Cultural Action Department has prepared a variety of activities for first-year students who were invited to interpret, look up information at the museum's Web site, draw and discuss the works of art they had chosen. Interestingly enough, these activities attracted more science students than humanities students. From now on, we shall invite each school individually for a visit and have activities planned for teachers, personnel and students. We are also preparing half-hour gallery talks given by the staff at lunchtime on Fridays, in an effort to attract the people who eat at the museum restaurant. As the relation between the museum and the art department is almost nil, MAC offers four undergraduate elective courses on contemporary art and art interpretation. In the near future we hope also to offer a graduate course on art curatorship. In sum, there is still a long way to go to make this important collection truly accessible, but the administration is very aware of the problems and is fighting bravely to solve them. ■

Note 1. Lists of university museums in Brazil and other countries may be found at www.lib.mq.edu.au/mcm/world/

Activities for first-year students at Sa Äo Paulo's Museum of Contemporary Art are intended to attract the university community.

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University and museum in Mexico: a historical partnership Yani Herreman

Mexican museums are well known for their strong educational and social role, a characteristic that may be attributable to the close links that have always existed between the university and the museum. Yani Herreman, head of the Unit for Cultural Promotion and the Dissemination of Science at the Iztacala Campus of the Autonomous National University of Mexico, explains how this came about. The author, an architect, was involved in the museographic design of the Outdoor Regional Museum of Iztacala and the project for the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Palaeontology in Villahermosa. She is a vice-president of ICOM and head of the working groups on museums and tourism and cross-cultural issues.

Teaching, research and cultural promotion are the three main objectives that underlie and structure the action of the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) and their development has been closely bound up with the history of Mexico itself. The university has incorporated culture into its philosophical and educational models as an integral part of the education of individuals and the promotion of national identity. Museums have played an important role in this regard, a fact that may be confirmed by a brief review of the historical development of what is regarded as the country's most important university centre and one of the most advanced in Latin America. The Royal Academy of San Carlos in New Spain began the `systematic formation of didactic collections and the creation of suitable premises to accommodate or exhibit them' in the closing years of the seventeenth century.1 In 1782, the new collection was enlarged to include paintings drawn from the convents that had been closed down. These works were exhibited in accordance with the `museographic rules' of the day, which required that pictures be shown in an `orderly' manner for `the public edification and recreational purposes'.2 Some years later, the great Spanish architect, Manuel Tolsa, in face of overwhelming difficulties, imported from the metropolis a collection of plaster casts of works in the main European museums. This enabled the people of New Spain to admire, in their own country, the Belvedere Apollo, among other examples of universal art. Interestingly enough, examples of pre-Hispanic sculpture were also exhibited. Some years later, Baron Alexander von Humboldt, on a passing visit to Mexico, described the collection: In the Academy building, or more precisely in one of its patios, relics

of Mexican sculpture have been brought together with some colossal statues in basalt and porphyry; these are covered with Aztec hieroglyphs which present some analogies with the Egyptian and Hindu styles. It would be very interesting to place these monuments to the early intellectual progress of our species, these works by a semibarbaric people who lived in the Mexican Andes, alongside the beautiful forms created under the sky of Greece and Italy.3 These early collections, which grew over the years between the end of the colonial epoch and modern Mexico, have recently been transferred to an exceptionally beautiful building designed by the selfsame architect Tolsa. The ancient academy has now become part of the university patrimony and is dedicated to teaching and exhibition activities. It currently houses postgraduate studies in the plastic arts and exhibition areas of the Architectural Faculty of UNAM. In 1790, the first public Museum of Natural History was also inaugurated following the fashion of the day: collections of this kind were very popular at the time. In his `Homage to the San Carlos Academy on its Bicentenary', Miguel Angel FernaÂndez tells of the reaction by New Spanish society who `enthusiastically welcomed the existence of this first museum. Dozens of donations began to arrive to enrich the collection and a consultative service was provided by a naturalist [the director, Mr Longinos]'. Like the academy, the contents of this museum also obeyed the contemporary canons of museography. During the War of Independence, some of the objects exhibited in the early Museum of Natural History were transferred to the university building, highlighting once

ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 206 (Vol. 52, No. 2, 2000) ß UNESCO 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)

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Yani Herreman

again the historical relationship between the university and the museum. The collections housed here were mentioned by the painter Gualdi in 1841 in his book entitled Monumentos arquitectonicos y perspectivas de la Ciudad de Mexico (Architectonic Monuments and Perspectives of Mexico City). He described them as `all kinds of antiques and curios'. A few years later, together with a rich fund of maps, hieroglyphs and manuscripts from the Boturini collection and the six monoliths discovered in the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City between 1790 and 1792, this became the collection of the Mexican Museum. In 1822, after the War of Independence, the Antiques Conservatory and a Natural History Cabinet were established in the university, bringing together once again the monumental pre-Hispanic sculptures referred to earlier and the remaining exhibits from the 1790 Museum of Natural History. With this collection, the National Museum was created by decree in 1825 and housed in several large rooms of the university. It was either accommodated on premises belonging to the university or maintained close links with it from then until its definitive separation in 1865, when the Public Museum of Natural History, Archeology and History was moved to the old Casa de Moneda adjoining the National Palace. I do not intend to describe the history of Mexican museums here, but the close relationship that has always existed between the university and museums is a significant factor. In the creation of what has now become a network of museums in Mexico, the university institutions have always been present and have controlled museological activity, sometimes for the good and sometimes with less satisfactory results. We share the view of the researcher, 34

Miguel Angel FernaÂndez, from whom we have gathered a great deal of information in this section of the article, that this complex relationship, woven throughout the history of Mexico, has enabled the museum to participate, like the university, in the struggle to define a national identity. Mexican museology has acquired since the early days certain features that can still be discerned today. It has a clear educational and social role, attributable to its permanent and close ties with the university.

The modern period According to Dr Daniel RubõÂn de la Borbolla, the museum is a public institution of popular education in all branches of human knowledge; a centre for scientific research which has made precious contributions in all fields of science, and a free body which stimulates self-education, the inquisitive mind and a sense of observation; last but not least, it is a unique institution with which the people are in constant contact for their own betterment throughout their lives.4 The University Museum of the Sciences and Arts (MUCA), which opened its doors to the public in 1960, is a landmark in the development of the UNAM museums and indeed in the whole universe of Mexican museums. At this time, the UNAM acquired the beginnings of a network of museums, including the Museum of Geology and some of the `museums' located in and co-ordinated by certain schools, faculties and institutes. The early activities of this first major museum space were founded on the philosophy of Daniel RubõÂn de la Borbolla. ß UNESCO 2000

ß DGAP/UNAM

University and museum in Mexico: a historical partnership

This personage, who played a key role in Mexican museology, was a prominent academic who proclaimed, years ahead of his day, the educational qualities of the museum. A man of his times, he witnessed the beginnings of specialization. In 1972, he wrote: `nowadays, man needs a more universal culture which enables him to understand cultural, political, scientific and artistic phenomena and their repercussions on life and on the changes that are taking place today. Aware of this necessity, the university follows two paths to foster this understanding: courses of general knowledge in the sciences, humanities and arts at different levels of preparatory and professional training and also all kinds of extracurricular activities through its schools, faculties and institutes, groups of teachers and students.'5 RubõÂn de la Borbolla believed that, to complete their professional and general culture, students should have access to university centres or cultural establishments in the local community, including museums, galleries, libraries, theatres, conservatories and concert halls. But professors too had a responsibility and commitment to complete their academic teaching by organizing lessons and demonstrations in industrial centres, experimental laboratories, museums of art and sciences, zoological and botanical gardens, etc. The University Museum of the Sciences and Arts was formed as a dynamic venture with the aim of becoming a pole of attraction for both the university community and the population at large. The museum became a leading promoter of national and international culture by presenting innovative museographic approaches on specific themes and endeavouring to safeguard traditions. Examples include the exhibition on Death and the circulation of the UNAM's own collections, or the interdisciplinary vision ß UNESCO 2000

of a topic such as `Law in Mexico'. After 1970, the museum began to offer services to other university bodies and went on to support the UNAM schools and faculties. In 1980, the Centre for Museological Research and Services was created.

MUCA Centro, located in the historic heart of Mexico City.

In 1985, when the museum changed its name to the Daniel RubõÂn de la Borbolla 35

Image by courtesy of the author

Yani Herreman

museographic practice. The philosophy of supporting museum activities at this time was congruent with the number of university students on the campus. One professor was not joking when he said that any of the students visiting the exhibitions here might, in the not so distant future, be the next President of the Republic. At the same time the number of museum spaces increased with the opening or refurbishment of the Casa del Lago and the University Museum at Chopo. At the latter, which had already housed the National Museum of Natural History from 1913 to 1964, a centre for the dissemination of culture and the arts was established. Finally, the work done at the Botanical Garden must not go unmentioned. Innovative programmes of interaction between biologists and the general public were set up here, together with the `Science Sunday' programmes arranged by the Academy for Scientific Research headed by distinguished university professors, in some of the city's museums.

The situation today

The University Museum at Chopo, as it appears in History of Mexican Museums, by Miguel Angel FernaÂndez.

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Museum, it became involved in programmes designed to achieve the aims of UNAM more effectively, that is, teaching, research and the dissemination of culture. As RubõÂn de la Borbolla himself put it, `The Museum is receptive to cultural concerns and intends to be a space open to the problems of the country and to the solutions proposed by academics.' That approach reflected advanced trends in museological thinking throughout the world and resulted in examples of good

The Autonomous National University of Mexico is the biggest in Latin America. It has more than 200,000 students spread between a number of campuses in Mexico City where its main schools, faculties, institutes, interdisciplinary schools, preparatory classes, final secondary-school classes and other university dependencies are situated. It also has establishments in other cities throughout the country as well as in Canada and the United States. With a population on this scale, most of them living in the world's biggest city, UNAM has acquired very special characteristics. Cultural action, and therefore the museums, play their role. ß UNESCO 2000

Image by courtesy of the author

University and museum in Mexico: a historical partnership

The Co-ordination for Cultural Promotion of UNAM is the body responsible for cultural action. Structured into major areas corresponding to the different arts, it promotes interaction between them through actions designed for students and the university community. Its programmes for the `outside world' have the same standard and impact as those arranged by various governmental institutions. The Directorate for Plastic Arts (DGAP), as part of the Co-ordination for Cultural Promotion of UNAM, has as its mission the popularization of the visual arts through museographic projects. It also offers educational services, workshops, lectures and other activities to facilitate closer ties between individuals and the arts regarded as expressions of human knowledge and skills in all their different aspects. It approaches this mission with a twofold strategy: to provide the university audience with a space for the arts and to impart a general vision of university cultural activity. Similarly, the projects of the directorate may be interpreted as the point of encounter between the different university institutions dedicated to research and the creation and preservation of the artistic heritage; in this way, it adds a further dimension to the studies of science and the humanities. To accomplish this goal, the University Museum of the Sciences and Arts, occupying a floorspace of 2,400 m2 on the campus of the University City, hosts living contemporary experiments and caters for the recreation of visitors, while also allowing them to create a special reality through contacts with the works. The University Museum of the Sciences and Arts, as an integral part of the DGAP, gives priority to contemporary art, which ß UNESCO 2000

it regards as one of the forms of expression that have lacked instruments to achieve empathy with the public. The decision has been taken to place the emphasis on this area, which ranges from electronic art to body art, by arranging a greater number of activities.

The sculpture gallery of the Academy of San Carlos, as it appears in History of Mexican Museums, by Miguel Angel FernaÂndez.

The branch of the museum known as MUCA Roma has been opened in the same spirit. This building is situated in a residential district called Roma, remote from the University City but forming part of a cultural circuit of the wider urban area. It is designed as a centre for documentation on contemporary art. On its floorspace of around 200 m2, special projects and brief museographic experiments are planned. They cover the work of young artists as well as graphic art, photography and sculpture. MUCA Roma will also be opening a contemporary art archive in due course. Another project, which has been put in hand as part of the policy of broadening the cultural offer to the maximum possible number of students and members of the 37

Yani Herreman

university community, is the MUCA Centro, located in the historic centre of Mexico City. It is the home to activities that present the memory of the country and of the university through objects testifying to, and documenting, the past. The DGAP is also active in promoting the circulation of an extensive range of objects that are displayed in the various university spaces, not necessarily in a museum context. Several exhibition sites have been organized in this way. They include the Nezahualcoyotl Concert Hall and the Cultural Festival of ENEP Iztacala, an interdisciplinary school dedicated to the sciences of health, on the outskirts of Mexico City, some 47 km from the University City.

where. At the same time, national and international programmes of general interest are presented, together with activities for young people and the elderly. Another network exists for science and technology, which falls under the overall responsibility of the General Directorate for the Popularization of Science. For its part, the Museum of Geology, which opened its doors at the beginning of the twentieth century, continues to provide instructive displays for the population of Mexico City. A number of small museums/ cabinets in the institutes, schools and faculties also make exceptionally interesting destinations for visitors.

Notes

The University Museum of Chopo is the alternative and diversified centre that enjoys the greatest popularity with young people. It has done particularly important work in the community, giving an opportunity for all kinds of individual and social manifestations by people committed to artistic production and the spirit of their own age. Alongside this approach, an opportunity can be provided for marginal groups to present their experimental and avant-garde work in a logical and natural context. The Cultural Gay Circle has been organizing the Lesbian and Gay Cultural Week and Anti-Aids Days for eleven years. For the past nine years the Collective for Radical Change has been organizing Punk Days. The Chopo is a contemporary, dynamic and different museum, which appeals to broad sections of Mexican society, including some academics who do not normally appear in public else-

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1. Miguel Angel FernaÂndez, Historia de los Museos en MeÂxico [History of Mexican Museums], Mexico City, EdicioÂn BANAMEX/ Promotora de ComercializacioÂn Directa S.A. de C.V. MeÂxico, 1987. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Daniel RubõÂn de la Borbolla, `La importancia del museo en la universidad latinoamericana [The Importance of the Museum in Latin American Universities]', paper presented at the round table on museums and galleries of plastic arts, Second Latin American Conference on Cultural Diffusion and University Extension, 20±26 February 1972. 5. Ibid.

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The University of Oregon Museum of Art: a bridge across the Pacific David Alan Robertson

From the outset, the University of Oregon Museum of Art (UOMA), was a museum with a mission. Founded in 1932 as a study centre for Asian culture, it continues to play that role by providing a broad cultural understanding of Asian cultures through the study of the visual arts. These responsibilities have grown in recent years as the state of Oregon extends its social, cultural, and economic relations with Japan, the Republic of Korea, South-East Asia, Taiwan, and, most recently, the People's Republic of China. David Robertson became director of the UOMA in 1996, having served as museum director at Loyola University in Chicago and, prior to that, Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His museum career has been predominantly at academic museums, including the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, and the University of Missouri Museum of Art and Archaeology. He also worked at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Since coming to Oregon, he has reinvigorated the museum's historical purpose of focusing upon the arts of the Pacific Rim and has established vital relations with sister institutions in Asia and throughout the United States for programme, collections, and exhibition exchange.

The great migration of pioneers to Oregon in the 1840s and 1850s still looms large in American mythology. The majority of individuals and families who made this trek were of English and Scottish ancestry, literate and moderately prosperous farmers. The relocation and resettling required considerable resources, a pragmatic outlook and careful planning. Once established in the fertile Willamette Valley of Oregon, these pioneers soon reconstructed their eastern environments, and named cities such as Portland, Albany, and Salem after their New England homes. They soon went about the business of building churches, schools, and colleges in a manner not unlike their east-coast ancestors when newly arrived from England. While this migration drew them to the westernmost boundaries of America and the very shoreline of the Pacific itself, these individuals remained fundamentally attached for decades to the eastern United States for their social and cultural identity. Shortly after the pioneers arrived, Chinese (and later Japanese) also located to this region. These `foreigners', with their strange religious practices, languages, and appearance, lived segregated and underprivileged lives, and worked as manual labourers in mines or on railroads. Like their Anglo-Saxon neighbours, they were drawn to the west coast of the United States seeking economic opportunities; they were also escaping civil unrest and economic downturns that followed in the wake of the Opium Wars. Negative social attitudes greatly curtailed cultural exchange within the region as well as trade between Oregon and Asia throughout the nineteenth century. And when the great universities of the Pacific Northwest ± Willamette, Washington, Pacific and Oregon ± were founded in the mid-nineteenth century, a traditional

European curriculum was a matter of course. Latin and Greek were core requirements; the study of Asian languages did not appear until more than a halfcentury later. Well into the first decades of the twentieth century, a Eurocentric way of life was firmly established in Oregon, and with the exception of coastal shipping and fishing, the Pacific Ocean stood more as a boundary than an opportunity to these land-traversing pioneers.

East meets West In 1921, a major step was made in Eugene at the University of Oregon which would irreversibly influence this dominant worldview in the state. That year, the university became the beneficiary of a significant collection of Asian art, including magnificent examples of Imperial Chinese furnishings, textiles, ceramics and jade as well as objects from Japan, Korea, and SouthEast Asia. A decade later, the university completed construction of a 32,000 square-foot (3,000 m2) museum to house this collection of more than 3,000 works of art in thirteen exhibition galleries. The facility also included a significant research library on Asian art and culture. Founded as a study centre, the University of Oregon Museum of Art was dedicated to the ideal that `the Occident and the Orient may meet on the shores of the Pacific', to quote the museum's benefactor Gertrude Bass Warner, `in amity and mutual helpfulness'. The museum ± the largest structure on campus at the time and also one of the largest university museums in the country ± dominated the buildings around it. Standing today in the heart of the campus, the University of Oregon Museum of Art has served as the university, state and regional cultural bridge to Asia for more than six decades. The goal of its founders,

ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 206 (Vol. 52, No. 2, 2000) ß UNESCO 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)

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David Alan Robertson

ence and humanistic bonds. Campbell's and Warner's decision to establish such a uniquely focused museum on the university campus ± as opposed to a civic centre such as Portland ± placed it in a highly influential and intellectually protected centre for the free flow of ideas. They essentially established an opening for Asian culture in the university's Eurocentric liberal arts curriculum. To understand the profound nature of their mission, it is noteworthy that during the same period the state legislatures of Oregon and Washington both passed nakedly prejudicial citizenship and landownership restrictions against individuals of Chinese and Japanese ethnicity. The museum's founding proved not only to combat prejudice and influence the nature of education at the university over the decades that followed, but also to help initiate the state's accelerating social, cultural and economic ties with Asia. Today, the museum continues to play a role in easing the inevitable difficulties that come from a growing shift in population demographics and with that, our recent economic shifts from a predominantly timber-based regional economy to a technology-based global economy.

Gertrude Bass Warner, the museum's founding benefactor and first director, speaks at the opening of the exhibition galleries in 1933.

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then university president Prince Lucien Campbell and benefactor and first director Gertrude Bass Warner, was to introduce the state's future leaders to the beauty, history, and antiquity of Asian cultures through the universal language of the visual arts, `the understanding of which', to quote Warner, `makes the whole world kin'. As they were to prove, placing such a dominant cultural centre in the heart of the university insured an open and respectful dialogue about cultural differ-

Today, Oregon is closely linked with Asia. Asian corporations make vital contributions to the state's growing high-tech industries and have established their own factories and headquarters along the historic Willamette Valley corridor between Portland and Eugene. Furthermore, fully 64 per cent of the state's exports now go to Japan, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and South-East Asia. As a result of these economic bonds, Oregon, California and Washington are the states most affected by Asia's economic downturns in recent years. These global economic trials serve to expand the museum's historical role of ß UNESCO 2000

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The University of Oregon Museum of Art: a bridge across the Pacific

maintaining an ongoing and vital humanistic link with Asia. Within the university much has changed since the museum's founding. Today, the University of Oregon's Centre for Asian and Pacific Studies, an offspring of the Museum of Art, engages more than ninety faculty members. They teach courses as diverse as ancient Chinese archaeology and modern Korean business practices, and students not only study mainstream Asian languages such as Mandarin and Korean, but also less-frequently taught languages, including Vietnamese and Indonesian. Student exchanges at the University of Oregon, underwritten in the early years by Gertrude Bass Warner herself, are populated predominantly by Japanese and Korean students. And today, the University of Oregon is noted for having one of the largest studentexchange programmes among public research universities in the United States.

A living tradition sustained through partnerships The UOMA continues to be a cultural bridge to Asia for the state and region. Today, it stands as the largest museum between Portland and Sacramento, California, and one of only two art museums in Oregon accredited by the American Association of Museums. Its historical `study centre' status has been enhanced in recent years with vibrant, publicly accessible exhibitions; the building receives more than 50,000 visitors each year, houses a staff of 14 and a volunteer corps of more than 300. The UOMA also plays a leadership role in Oregon by establishing partnerships for cultural exchange. In developing these ties, the museum has relied greatly upon its growing partnerships among other American university museums. This has ß UNESCO 2000

broadened our cross-cultural dialogue between the United States and Asia, nationally and in the heart of many university campuses. Regionally, the UOMA serves as a cultural backdrop to international trade meetings and as a welcome centre for visiting Asian dignitaries to the university and state.

The newly refurbished Fay Boyer Preble and Virginia Cooke Murphy Wing of Japanese Art.

Of particular note in recent years are the UOMA's developing relations for exhibition exchange and object loans to and from the Republic of Korea and Japan. These alliances have resulted from the university's student/faculty exchange relations abroad and, in the instance of Korea University, came about through an exhibition exchange between our respective museums. Other such links currently being strengthened are with Waseda University and Meiji University, both in Tokyo, as well as unlikely but vibrant ongoing relations with such companies as Tokyo's NUNO Textile Design Studio. The 1997/98 exhibitions, Fragrance of Ink: Korean Literati Painting of the 41

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David Alan Robertson

scholars' brush-painting. This exhibition was also shown at Berkeley, UCLA, Columbia and Pennsylvania, as well as Chicago and Oregon, and was funded by the Korean Hyundai Corporation. The UOMA took this opportunity to mount a complementary exhibition of our own holdings of ancient Korean ceramics, textiles, and screen and scroll paintings. These exhibitions served as focuses for a broad range of programming on Korean cultural, economic and social developments, historically and in contemporary society. Equally important, these exhibitions offered an excellent opportunity for the museum to engage in significant ways the region's growing population of Koreans and Korean-Americans. This included programme planning with such organizations as the Eugene-Chinju, Korea Sister City Partnership, area Korean Churches and choirs, and the KoreanAmerican Chambers of Commerce in both Portland and Eugene. The exhibition programme included lectures by internationally prominent figures in art and cultural history, and contemporary social and political issues relevant to the Korean peninsula, musical performances, children's cultural learning opportunities in the museum, and family culture days for the entire community.

The University of Oregon Museum of Art's primary exhibition gallery for Chinese Art was renovated in 1997. Furniture, textiles, ceramics and jade on display are mainly from the period of the Qianlong Emperor.

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Choson Dynasty from the Collection of Korea University and Treasures of Korean Art from the University of Oregon Museum of Art are examples of the UOMA's national and international partnerships in support of global understanding. The former, a travelling exhibition curated by the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago and organized by Korea University Museum, was a national touring exhibition of Korean

The engagement of the Hyundai Corporation as the corporate sponsor was also opportune. At that time, Hyundai was in the midst of completing and opening in Eugene its largest computer-chip factory outside the Republic of Korea. The trials and tribulations of the growing foreign corporate presence in the Willamette Valley have often resulted in heated debate among many of the region's residents. The Korean art exhibitions offered a deep cultural refrain to that dialogue. This is very much in keeping with the museum's vital historical mission. Response to these ß UNESCO 2000

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The University of Oregon Museum of Art: a bridge across the Pacific

exhibitions was outstanding. The heightened awareness of the Republic of Korea in the community, our growing economic ties, and location on the Pacific Rim fed interest in the programme and resulted in the visits to UOMA surpassing those in the larger cities where the Literati Painting exhibition was held. After hosting university administrators, curators and faculty from Korea University during the course of the exhibition, Oregon's administration undertook several important steps. They engaged the Hyundai Corporation for the first time in significant ways for student internships and potential university funding. Secondly, the exhibition instigated the cataloguing of Koreanlanguage texts given by the Korea Foundation at the University's Knight Library. Thirdly, the university reiterated its commitment to the study of the Korean language as a result of these growing relationships. Fourthly, the university funded a research/course development trip to the Republic of Korea for the museum's faculty curator of Asian art that resulted in the first course on Korean art history being taught at the University of Oregon. ß UNESCO 2000

Shortly after the closing of the exhibition Dr David Frohnmayer, president of the University of Oregon, other administrators and I visited Seoul. This trip was designed to reinvigorate our alumni/ae association there, to reiterate our partnerships with several Korean institutions for educational exchange, to visit the Korea Foundation and Oregon's trade representative, and to establish, for the first time, formal relations with Korea University, which have resulted in continuous dialogue and exchange. For example, Korea University Museum arranged the conservation and mounting in Seoul of important Choson Dynasty paintings of the Diamond Mountains from the UOMA collection. They also served as intermediary for a loan of these screens to the Ilmin Museum of Art in Seoul for a major exhibition focused upon images of the Diamond Mountains in the summer of 1999. In connection with this, Oh Mee Lee, a graduate student in art history at the University of Oregon who wrote her Master's thesis on these paintings, was invited to participate in this exhibition. Korea University's director Yoon Se-Young and curator Kim WooLim also brought their scholarly expertise

Treasures from the Collection of Korean Art exhibition, 1997/98.

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David Alan Robertson

to bear on our growing collection of Korean art and helped us evaluate its future development. In partnership with Haverford College, Pennsylvania, the UOMA brought the exhibition Imaging Meiji: Emperor and Era to the museum in 1998. This display of wood-block prints illustrated the radical cultural transformations of Japan under the highly Westernized Emperor Meiji in the nineteenth century. To enhance this exploration of Japanese culture, the UOMA developed expanded Web site information on the exhibition and linked it with Haverford's education site, and Cynthea Bogel, University of Oregon associate professor of Japanese art, developed courses on the Meiji era and Japanese prints using the museum's collections and exhibitions. Working with graduate students, she also curated a complementary exhibition from our own collections entitled Made in Meiji. This included laquerware, ceramics, paintings and furniture. Museum board president Jon Schleuning and Japanese ConsulGeneral Gunkatsu Kano officially opened both exhibitions to record crowds. The UOMA and the Smart Museum of Art joined forces again in 1999 ± this time concentrating on contemporary Chinese art. Curated by renowned Chinese art scholar Wu Hung and entitled Transience: Chinese Art at the End of the Twentieth Century, this exhibition of experimental art focuses upon the role of the individual in contemporary China to promote change. This was particularly timely as the state of Oregon is about to establish a

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trade mission in the People's Republic of China. The exhibition and programme offered valuable insights into life in contemporary China and pointed to many of the important issues involved in engaging the world's largest population and last megaCommunist state. Current international ventures include our organizing an exhibition and fashion show in Portland of contemporary Japanese clothing by Tokyo's NUNO Textile Design Studio. In addition, we are participating in an international travelling exhibition and programme on the development of the theatre in Japan from the collections of the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum of Waseda University with Waseda and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. The University of Oregon Museum of Art was founded in the early decades of the twentieth century with the noble purpose of creating a deeper appreciation and understanding of the peoples, art, and cultures of Asia. The net result of this mission has also helped to expound the unifying nature of global humanistic relationships. As a study centre for Asian cultures, the UOMA has utilized its exhibition programmes and growing collections (now numbering more than 12,500 objects) to engage the region and nation in diverse discussions about historical and contemporary cultural issues in Asia. This mission continues to serve us well as we bridge the Pacific Rim more and more effectively in the decades ahead through the study and appreciation of art. ■

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Carnival, cricket and culture: museum life in Antigua and Barbuda Arthur Gillette

ß Museum of Antigua and Barbuda

With a total population of some 65,000, the diminutive Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda can boast of surprisingly dynamic and forwardlooking museum activity. In addition to two rural heritage centres ± the Dow's Hill Historical Centre and Betty's Hope, a full-scale seventeenth-century sugar mill in working order ± it counts a national museum in the capital city, St John's, and a site-cum-museum ± Nelson's Dockyard ± at English Harbour, once a repair base for British fleets and now thronged with yachts of many nationalities. Arthur Gillette is former editor-in-chief of Museum International and, since retirement in 1998, a freelance writer on cultural heritage issues and guide to strolls through the history of Paris. A veteran yachtsman, he sailed into English Harbour on his Amity and shares his `discovery' with us.

The Museum of Antigua and Barbuda was founded in 1985. Its creation happened rather by chance after a temporary exhibition, held in 1984 to mark the 150th anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves in Britain's West Indian colonies, proved extremely successful. Housed in the main hall of a handsome ex-courthouse built of local stone in 1750, and in the early 1980s used only to store archives, that exhibition caused the then Minister of Education to wax enthusiastic. He told the exhibition's curator, Desmond Nicholson: `This is wonderful, but too short-lived. I'd like you to fill up this hall with artefacts of our history on a permanent basis!' `Fill up this hall' Des Nicholson did indeed, under the aegis of the non-profit national Historical and Archaeological Society, with government support for infrastructure and staffing and initial aid from UNESCO and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Today, and although it cannot afford such state-of-the-art museographical goodies as interactive videos, the museum tends to buzz with life. Its main entry sets the lively, allembracing tone of its approach. Under a neoclassical portico, the door is flanked ± in equally neoclassical museum style ± by two nineteenth-century British cannons. One cannot, however, fail to notice just to one side an explanation of the newly independent (1981) country's coat of arms: a bright yellow sun of hope rising from the ever-blue Caribbean sea.

A visitor `beats pan'.

Immediately inside, a group of uniformed schoolchildren are dived upon from the ceiling by a replica of Antigua's unique humpbacked whale and a huge headdress designed for the 1987 carnival celebrations in tribute to Jamaican reggae star Bob (`No

woman, no cry') Marley. Recovering from their surprise, the youngsters are then drawn to a half-size reconstitution of a prehistoric Arawak dwelling compound complete with dugout canoe, a woven reed sheath for squeezing the poisonous juice out of cassava to make it an edible staple, and a tepee-like hut from whose centre pole hang ± to preserve and revere ancestors' skulls ± two baskets, empty I was told. Clear explanatory panels take the visitor anti-clockwise around the hall to learn of the country's history ranging from the volcanic eruptions millions of years ago which created the Antigua and Barbuda islands, through the first human habitation around 3000 B.C.; the arrival of the Arawaks about the time of Christ, and the sighting (not the `discovery' since it was already inhabited) by Christopher Columbus on 11 November 1493. He named it for Santa Maria la Antigua ± St Mary the Ancient ± a chapel in Seville Cathedral where he had prayed before embarking on his voyage. British colonization and the slavery/ plantation/sugar triad are recounted and illustrated in all their cruelty and ambiguity. Christian missionaries, for example, preached to the slaves at one and the same time both the equality of all human beings and obedience and acceptance of suffering. Particularly attractive artefacts at the museum include: a delicate seashell collection ranging from `alphabet cone' to `zigzag scallop'; an exquisite, tiny, bugeyed, whistling tree frog with the longest scientific name of that species: Eleuthrodactylus martinicensis; a stingray spine fashioned into an arrowhead; one stuffed and very toothy mongoose, an animal introduced from India in the eighteenth

ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 206 (Vol. 52, No. 2, 2000) ß UNESCO 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)

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Overview of Nelson's Dockyard and English Harbour.

century to reduce the rat plague in the cane fields (a failed strategy since the mongoose is a daytime animal and rats are mostly nocturnal); and photos of the miserable wattle-and-daub huts in which most Antiguans lived well into the 1940s. The museum invites visitors to `please touch' certain objects, such as a well-worn Arawak zemi stone, caressed by villagers to ward off evil spirits, and a warri board recalling the importation by slaves from Africa of that bean-and-hole game, said to be as complex as chess. Let it be recorded that Antiguan taxi drivers while away their time waiting for clients by playing the game, and that Antiguan Trevor (Simple) Simon is world warri champion. I said earlier that the museum `buzzes' with life. Well, `tinkles' or `rings' is more like it when, unable to resist temptation, visitors young and old try their hand at `beating pan', that is, playing a steel-band drum. Other hands-on artefacts, including nineteenth-century bottles, early twentiethcentury steam irons and a 1960s telephone switchboard, lead one back under the diving humpbacked whale and Marley

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carnival mask to the permanent collection's last two objects, possibly the most popular among Antiguans: the bat and ball with which, during a West Indies v. England test match in 1986, Antiguan Sir Vivian (Viv) Richards scored the fastest century (100 runs) in cricket history.

Wherewithal and weather `What are your main problems?' I ask MicheÁle Henry, successor to Desmond Nicholson as executive director of the museum. A Trinidadian trained for a banking career, she points out that an Antiguan museum director needs to `wear many caps'. Still, once a colleague studying museum sciences overseas returns, she plans to focus on the museum's administration. She answers my question without hesitation: `Money is the number-one problem. We wish to exclude no one, so entry is free. We do, however, suggest a voluntary contribution of two dollars per visitor.' This donation can be deposited through the slit of a century-old round red ß UNESCO 2000

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Carnival, cricket and culture: museum life in Antigua and Barbuda

postbox, etched with elegantly scripted letters: VR (Victoria Regina). `Then comes weather. It's usually quite warm here in St John's, and our air conditioning is a good drawing point. But when a hurricane strikes . . . Oh my! In September 1998, Hurricane Georges was forecast. We covered our computers with plastic and just prayed. Georges blew out 180 window-panes at the museum, and we were very fortunate not to lose precious objects ± mostly uninsurable in any event. Space too is becoming an obstacle. People willingly donate family heirlooms. But we're in something of an exhibition versus storage impasse, the more so since our temporary exhibits ± Slavery, Independence and so on ± do draw crowds.' Joan Baldwin, an English volunteer `greeter' since the museum opened, has been listening and now chimes in: `Most of our visitors are tourists and, increasingly, they speak French or Spanish, which we don't.' (The present writer drafted introductory brochures for the museum in those languages ± at least one problem solved!) MicheÁle Henry: `On visitors, in addition to the secondary-school students who use the museum exhibition and archive for research assignments, we host groups of about 1,500 school pupils each year. The kids do seem to like their visits, the teachers are enthusiastic and we feel we're doing something really useful. But the bulk of our other visitors are foreign tourists.' `Anything wrong in that?' I ask. `No and yes,' MicheÁle Henry replies; `No, because the tourists who do come generally enjoy and learn. One hour here and they know something about a country that, previously, most couldn't even have found on a map. I will say, however, that ß UNESCO 2000

the big cruise liners tend to stop here for only about five hours ± little time, much less inclination, for our museum!' She continues: `The real paradox is that, with their history here for them in all its richness ± and free of charge ± not many adult Antiguans come to visit us. I know this to be the case in other parts of the West Indies too. Somehow, museums are not part of the Caribbean culture ± yet.' First museum director Des Nicholson agrees. He tells me of a truck driver who (by mistake?) dropped into one of the early museum exhibitions. The man looked around, increasingly wide-eyed, at the artefacts, then stamped out shaking his head and literally shouting, `What's all dis ignorance!?' Translated from the patois, this means `Who cares about oldtime junk?'

Handsome eighteenth-century architecture at Nelson's Dockyard.

At Nelson's Dockyard Museum, and by good fortune, the only `junk' Hurricane Georges destroyed was the labels. With the museum itself largely destroyed, Des evacuated the contents to a safer locale. The Dockyard site is, however, by and large intact. It offers mainly eighteenthand early-nineteenth-century Georgian architecture with hurricane-resistant Flemish-bond brickwork ± one brick lengthwise, the next end-on, and so forth. Located in Antigua's south-coast English Harbour, a `hurricane hole' for British ships of the line as early as the 1600s and for worldwide yachts still today, the Dockyard had its heyday in the early nineteenth 47

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Hands-on ± a warri board.

century when it repaired British ships protecting the lucrative sugar trade against French incursions. Horatio Nelson did serve here, indeed, he married a West Indian woman whom he later repudiated in favour of Lady Hamilton. But the Dockyard's history precedes and prolongs that of the one-eyed admiral who won, but died at, the Battle of Trafalgar. Created in 1725 and decommissioned in 1889, the Dockyard has survived plans to convert it into a sugar refinery in 1914, dilapidation to the point of ruin in the 1930s, and weekend campers and hurricane refugees two decades later. Restored at the initiative of Desmond Nicholson's father and under the supervision of the Friends of English Harbour association, it is now the centrepiece of Antigua's National Park and is run by the Ministry of Economic Development and Tourism. The ministry shares responsibility for the Dockyard Museum with the national Historical and Archaeological Society. A 1778 sign at the Porter's Lodge warns that `No foreigner, stranger or woman/is/ to be admitted . . . No person to be suffered to smoke tobacco . . . Crews, soldiers and wives not to straggle about the Yard at improper hours.' Hordes of tourists, schoolchildren and yacht crews ensure that, today, these rules are permanently disregarded. New life surges here as businesses have occupied the lovely old buildings. The Porter's Lodge is now a

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bank, where `crews, foreigners and strangers' do straggle, albeit not smoke, while waiting to change money. The Copper and Lumber Store is a hotel and the roofed Sawpit hums with sewing machines that repair seemingly endless metres of sails. The old Pay Office, Officers' Quarters and Mast House have been similarly recycled. In contrast, the Dockyard Museum ± located in the old Officers' and Clerks' House ± is, at the time of writing, a desolate view: no roof, no walls, just beams, one forlorn showcase containing a model of Nelson's HMS Victory, and curiously red flooring. But at least the sounds of hammering and sawing announce reconstruction. Like the national museum in St John's, Nelson's Dockyard seems more of a tourist enclave than a locally popular attraction. In the more than two months I spent near it, I saw virtually no Antiguan adults there apart from staff, taxi drivers, market ladies selling T-shirts and one beer vendor. I put my doubts to Des in blunt words: `What's the Dockyard got to do with today's Antigua? Isn't it really a monument to British imperialism?' `Not at all,' Des shoots back. `It's an Antiguan monument because it was built by slave labourers. We painted the Dockyard Museum's floors red to honour their memory and recall their suffering.' He and national museum director MicheÁle Henry do agree, however, that more has to be done to overcome the `all dis ignorance' attitude. `What we're going to do,' predicts Des, `is to concentrate more on what I call the ``three Cs'': more carnival, more cricket, and more culture ± African as well as Antiguan culture.' ■

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Carnival, cricket and culture: museum life in Antigua and Barbuda

Antigua and Barbuda's `heritage grandad' Mentally and physically spry at 73 years, Desmond Nicholson came to Antigua and museum activity quite unintentionally. Eager for civilian ocean-going after serving in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, Des's father, once demobilized, loaded the Nicholson family on a 70-foot yacht and headed for Australia. They got no farther than their first transatlantic port of call, Antigua. One thing led to another and Des soon found himself captaining a charter boat. This landed him Lisa, an early American passenger, as a wife. Then came 1967 and a visit with some sea-bored clients to an Antiguan cove where he stumbled on half an Arawak axehead. He returned the next day with toddler daughter Celia, who found the axehead's other half. Intrigued, Des began research that has made him, today, Antigua's `heritage grandad', in the words of one journalist. I talk with him at the hilltop and trade-wind-swept eighteenth-century Artiller Headquarters building, now a National Park storehouse to which he evacuated the contents of Nelson's Dockyard Museum when Hurricane Georges struck. Des fingers and explains favourite artefacts. `This stoneware sherd was found at the site of a plantation not far from here. Ah, and look at these clay pipes: the size of their bore tells you their dates. Hum . . . that bust of Nelson is two-eyed; it really ought to have a patch over one of them. Oh, and do you know why these eighteenth-century bottles are round-bottomed? No? Well, to keep them on their sides so the corks remain permanently moist and can't pop out!' The future of museums in Antigua and Barbuda? Holding Antiguan as well as British nationality, Des takes the question very much to heart. `You've seen for yourself that we need to interest a broader cross-section of local people ± office workers, market ladies, taxi drivers and ± why not? ± Rastamen too.' `How?' I ask. `Well, I already mentioned the ``three Cs'' approach. Then, too, we've had some success in stimulating the community ± luckily including private enterprise ± with various outreach programmes.' Des breaks off the interview to welcome a family of American tourists who have wandered through the storehouse door, left open to keep us trade-wind cool. `Look, Dad,' says an 11-year-old who then explains the sextant's ancestor, a wooden backstaff, to his father. Des and I trade glances, admiring the boy's precocious knowledge. `Look over here, young man,' Des clears his throat. `Can you tell us why these bottles have round bottoms?' The day after this interview, Desmond Nicholson marked fifty years since his arrival in Antigua.

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Innovation in Italy: the a.muse project Maurizio Maggi

Museum professionals and the public have long been aware of the inadequacy of Italian museums in view of the unparalleled artistic treasures they contain. The need for reform led to a major pilot project aimed at identifying the direction of ongoing change so as to point the way for Italian museums and to foster communication among the most forward-looking institutions. Maurizio Maggi is scientific director of the Arch Institute (Institute for Assessment and Research on Cultural Heritage of the Rosselli Foundation of Turin, Italy) and was manager of the a.muse research project. He has developed surveys and published books and articles on the cultural heritage, environmental management and sustainable tourism.

During the 1980s, politicians, public managers and intellectuals realized that Italian museums were very unsatisfactory, if compared with foreign ones. Absence of museum shops and catering services, static exhibitions, lack of timetables and inconvenient opening hours were singled out as the main cause of a lagging situation the public was already aware of. Most of the managers (in Italy, they were usually people other than directors) considered museums as `shop windows' that, as they were ugly and dusty, needed to be improved, in some cases by copying from other countries' shop windows. As a logical consequence, the surveys carried out in this field were often based on the corporate benchmarking approach, as they essentially aimed to close a technical gap. But museums are not businesses, even though this kind of approach may sometimes be useful for a short-term analysis, and they cannot be studied by means of a static appraisal, as they are not the result of a businessoriented process; on the contrary, they are the outcome of a social process, and furthermore, in a complex and changing society. Therefore, the gap to be bridged between `advanced' and `backward' museums is essentially a cultural one. So, the benchmarking method is insufficient and something else is required. With this in mind, in spring 1997 the Arch Institute (Institute for Assessment and Research on Cultural Heritage) of the Rosselli Foundation, on a task assigned by the presidency of the Council of Ministers, undertook a survey named `a.muse', an acronym for Advanced Museums. The aim was to anticipate innovation instead of pursuing it, to substitute planning for emergency and contingency reactions and to investigate the deep currents of transformation in the international museum world.

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A mail questionnaire was sent to 1,250 museums in about forty countries worldwide. The survey offered excellent results and, with a 25 per cent rate of replies, represented the largest one ever carried out in Italy. Still, this was not the most important source of knowledge: the survey was based on the presupposition that museums reflect the community that created them, so that to know them it was necessary to explore a social and cultural environment and to meet directly with people capable of communicating the world of passions, ideas and hopes for the future that questionnaire statistics, even if useful, are unable to provide. Therefore, in summer 1997 the Arch survey team1 met directors and museum professionals in Italy, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Sweden. In 1998, meetings were extended to extra-European countries, and a two-month world tour was organized, with significant support from the Italian Culture Institutes, to meet with museums and cultural bodies in Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States. Competence and availability, curiosity, desire to transmit knowledge to other people were the characteristics of the people we met and this allowed us to exploit more fully the results of the questionnaires and supplied important indications about the transformations in progress. Time and financial limits prevented us from involving museums in the less-developed countries, and this represents a lack to be overcome by future research.2

Between state, market and community Even within the infinite diversity characterizing and enriching the world of museums, it is possible to localize some useful typologies to explain the nature of the transformations now occurring.

ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 206 (Vol. 52, No. 2, 2000) ß UNESCO 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)

ß I.I.C., by courtesy of Takashi Kaneko, director of the museum

Innovation in Italy: the a.muse project

The model of the museum so far prevailing in Italy is the encyclopedia-museum, inspired by the Enlightenment paradigm of the collection as an ordering of knowledge. It is especially prevalent among the naturalscience museums, but also in art museums, where the exhibition of works follows a strictly traditional path, by schools, artists and periods. The visitor is considered as a student, according to the traditional meaning of the term, a passive element to whom knowledge is transmitted `one way only', an interpretation that runs counter to contemporary learning models. It is a fundamentally static museum, as it does not require any changes until knowledge in a specific field is revolutionized. Relationships with other museums depend on the country's traditions. Among the large museums, above all private museums or those in countries where culture is not traditionally based on public subsidies, the company-museum model is widespread. Here, the visitor is considered as a customer who must be satisfied, who possibly spends money at the shop and in the cafeteria and who returns or encourages others to visit the museum (in this model, there is little difference between one person who pays two visits or two persons who pay one); it uses all the innovations (technological, communicative and marketing) required to satisfy the customers' needs. It is a dynamic museum with regard to its displays, as it emphasizes temporary exhibitions in order to attract more visitors. It has many contacts with other museums, often considered as competitors. The public-service museum is a typology widespread in northern Europe and the United Kingdom, where public services represent an explicit contract between taxpayers and the state. The visitor is a user-taxpayer helping to maintain a public service and must be satisfied for reasons of ß UNESCO 2000

fiscal equity; attention is focused on audience, a wider concept, as it includes also non-users. It is a dynamic museum in its educational approach, considered as one of its most important functions. Its contacts with museums similar to itself and with foreign ones are frequent and regular, and it often carries out personnel exchanges.

The museum is no longer an encyclopedia organizing knowledge for passive visitors but has become a museum-forum which can take on the sometimes difficult task of conveying contemporary works of art, for example, Juggler by Gregory Barsamian on display at the Inter Communication Center in Tokyo.

A further typology, partially inspired from the experience of the ecomuseum movement, is that of the forum-museum: a place where not only the objects of the past are shown, but also culture for the future is built, a forum that must help the community to grow; visitors are citizens and thus have the right to enjoy cultural growth; therefore, they must rely on the museum, but the museum also relies on them, often involving them in the design of exhibitions or other forms of direct support; attention is focused on the concept of 51

ß Richard-Max Tremblay, by courtesy of Marcel Brisebois, director of the museum

Maurizio Maggi

Arbre. I Have Been a Tree in the Hand, by Giuseppe Penone, symbol of how a work of art can make possible a symbiosis between the museum as conservator of objects and the museum as producer of culture. From the exhibit L'AbeÂceÂdaire (The Spelling Book) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal.

compatible with the social, political and cultural environment of Europe, of which Italy is an integral part.

Winds of change The nature of the transformations in progress has often been misunderstood and interpreted as an adaptation to market constraints. This is no doubt true to some extent since financial pressures and the growth of the number of museums created a need for more accurate and structured management of available resources. This led to the adoption of more sophisticated techniques to manage existing activities in a different way, following a path called `process innovation' by economists.

community, wider than that of audience as it includes such considerations as ethnic and social balance (not only are two visitors paying one visit not equal to one visitor paying two visits, but social, gender and ethnic composition of visitors are taken into account to assess whether the museum is adequate to its aim); it is more widespread in Australia, Canada and northern Europe and, usually, among small museums. It is a dynamic museum, serving above all as a cultural animator in trying to interpret community changes, in line with the ecomuseum revolution. Relationships with other museums are regular, particularly with similar national museums, but contacts with institutions other than museums (cultural, ethnic or even productive associations, local government instances), are even more frequent. So far, the most admired model in Italy is the company-museum, but a possible reform must take into account examples

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Along with this important phenomenon, another and deeper transformation developed. It is a shift still in progress and of which the spread of marketing and management techniques is merely the reflection: the most revolutionary change, the real novelty, consists of `product innovation', as economists would define it. It resides in the metamorphosis of the museum from an institution basically devoted to preserving objects to a cultural centre working for the public. The concept of `public' has also evolved and nowadays no longer means simply the visitor; on the contrary, it increasingly represents the community to which the museum belongs. The role of museums is changing as well. Although their basic functions remain the same ± preservation, research and exhibition ± they are profoundly changing both in their relative importance and the approaches used. Citizens are the growing focus of attention and the museum is ever more a producer of culture and not merely a shop window for past vestiges. This is probably the most interesting innovation. ß UNESCO 2000

ß Guido Fino

Innovation in Italy: the a.muse project

The underestimation of these aspects has occasionally led to an excessive emphasis on marketing as the main tool of renewal. In Italy, this resulted in a crisis of rejection that involved most museum personnel. A closer relationship with the community, interdisciplinarity on the thematic level and internationalization (along with the development of local identities) seem to be some of the main guidelines shaping transformation. Civic sense coupled with fiscal crises that necessitated a more transparent relationship with taxpayers were the motors for change in many countries. Both were lacking in Italy, and the consequences were unfortunate, contributing to create a management system of cultural properties hostile to renewal. Moreover, the transformation in progress in the museum world has not been fully appreciated, and the realization of the gap, above all in the number of visitors in comparison with many other countries, was the main impulse that sparked research, debate and attempts towards reform. Thus far these efforts have concentrated on the institutional order of museums (more autonomy from central government), their services (shops, bars), timetables and fee structures. In short, at least in Italy, the museum is considered by some as part of the state and by others more along the lines of a concern, whereas those who behold the museum as a cultural institution and a mirror of community are still a minority. Elsewhere, in Australia, Canada, northern Europe, in many small museums and, of course, in the ecomuseums, this is, on the contrary, a widespread point of view.

sity. Those museums that are able to face these challenges will do so by accelerating the trends already under way towards co-operation with other museums and various cultural institutions, with private bodies interested in patronage operations and with government authorities, especially local ones. The social role of those museums that follow this path is bound to expand, above all in the educational field. Many museums may consider these images of the future undesirable or unrealistic. In any case, it is important that museums take into account their possible future and create a vision of themselves in that context. Without such vision, there will be no future or, worst of all, an unplanned future. It is of no use simply to defend the past as the future will be upon us in any case. We can decide to stand still and receive its impact, or to seize all the available chances to approach the most desirable future among the ones forecast.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Rivoli-Turin, Italy. The new long gallery by the architect Andrea Bruno, in a castle built in 1718, is a good example of the mixture of ancient and modern styles.

Notes 1. Vittorio Falletti (Arch Institute of the Rosselli Foundation) was the survey manager of a.muse. 2. The report A.muse: Innovation on

In future, museums will most likely experience quantitative growth in the public and a relative ageing of it, a drop in humanistic culture, greater leisure time and increasing cultural and ethnic diverß UNESCO 2000

Museums will be published by Clueb (Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria Editrice Bologna). Information: Arch Institute, Fondazione Rosselli, Via San Quintino 18/c, Turin, Italy; e-mail: [email protected]

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Exhibiting in a landmark: the designer's challenge Maria da Luz Nolasco

The city of Oporto, Portugal, built along the hillsides overlooking the mouth of the Douro River, forms an exceptional urban landscape with a thousand-year history. Its historical centre was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997 and in 2001 it will share with Rotterdam the honour of being European Capital of Culture. Its continuous growth, linked to the sea (the Romans gave it the name Portus, or port), can be seen in its many and varied monuments, among them the Santa Casa de MisericoÂrdia. To commemorate the institution's 500th anniversary Maria da Luz Nolasco was called upon to design an exhibition that had to confront the challenge of its exceptional architectural surroundings. Currently curator at the Museum of Aveiro, the author has written extensively on museum and heritage subjects and is an active member of the Portuguese Association of Museology and of ICOMPortugal.

Looking from Largo de SaÄo Domingos towards the end of Rua das Flores, the facËade of the church of the Oporto Santa Casa de MisericoÂrdia (a charitable institution) immediately stands out. Located alongside the road is a group of buildings used by the institution's management, which used to be called the organization's despacho (offices). A central patio, once in the open air but now covered by a translucent surface supported by an elegant structure, forms an internal link for the buildings. Seen as a whole, the ensemble is an interesting example of ironwork architecture that is characteristic of wealthy cities from the turn of the last century. The patio is surrounded by a two-storey structure with two galleries that run all around it. Given their design and size, these galleries create an interesting ambiguity in terms of the patio's true borders, as they are located between the central open space and walled surfaces that are both opaque and solid. The upper gallery is reached by a double staircase that is symmetrically aligned along the main axis for access; it takes up half the width of the galleries, leaving the outer border of the upper gallery free for movement. The entire structure uses a four-metre cubic model where the central space has two levels of modules set one on the other and each gallery has a single line of modules. While the modular system is not reflected in the buildings' height, it does define the design and suspension of the whole covering that allows light in from above. It is also emphasized by both the vertical support system and the horizontal bracing of the metallic structure. This explains why the light is unevenly distributed, with the lower gallery receiving only secondhand light, while the upper gallery enjoys the brilliance of direct light.

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Apart from acting as a connection to the buildings that it leads to, the space has also had other uses ranging from the location for large-scale meetings, shows and exhibitions to the (portrait) Gallery of the Santa Casa's Benefactors. This was the space chosen to house the exhibition of silverware and religious vestments from the collection of the Oporto Santa Casa de MisericoÂrdia. Preparing an exhibition of art, in this case of vestments and silverware of an almost exclusively religious nature, is always a complicated matter. In one way or another, objects have to be placed in an environment that is different from the one for which they were originally intended, planned and produced. Whatever the museological approach used, the result is necessarily always staged. Therefore, although the environment cannot be acceptably or realistically recreated ± a pastiche ± in methodological terms it is equally impossible to see the exhibition space as a neutral and anonymous support that only acts as a photographic negative of the objects exhibited. As with photographic film, where dark becomes light and light seems dark, the objects to be exhibited must be the light images. They thus stand out and impose themselves in a visual sense against the exhibition structure, which is like the film's dark background. This exhibition environment may perhaps be clearer by stepping back in loco from the idea of seeing the works of art and their supporting structure as separate entities. However, this is considerably more complex when the space for the exhibition has to be the result of restructuring an environment that is already strongly defined by accumulated, multi-purpose and architecturally important history. This building is a landmark of Oporto's

ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 206 (Vol. 52, No. 2, 2000) ß UNESCO 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)

ß By courtesy of the author

Exhibiting in a landmark: the designer's challenge

architecture. As such, its well-lit, generous space is, in itself, a potential subject and protagonist of the exhibition. This goes beyond its structure to include the design and sense of touch that comes from the wrought iron and the building's dominant colour, which contrasts with the multicoloured pattern in the paving. All these features mean special care in studying and conceiving the building's use as a spatial support for the exhibition.

The concept: forms, colours, materials, modelling . . . and questions `L'exposition ne s'improvise pas. Elle se fond sur les impeÂratifs de la recherche scientifique pour engager le long processus de son programme et de son projet.' (The exhibition cannot be improvised. It is based on the imperatives of scientific research so as to begin the long process of developing its programme and its purpose.)1 The process of planning and designing this exhibition had two defining factors that are common and contrasting: the container and the content. While the space used to exhibit the works is in itself an important and pleasant one, designing the exhibition's environment necessarily involved creating a sort of mediation or convergence between the space for the exhibition and the works that were to be on display. The first option in this dialectic was one of open and direct provocation. Thus, the idea was to cover completely all four inner walls of the patio by hanging translucent panels from the upper gallery to the paving on the lower floor, which would act as veils filtering the strong direct light projected by the covering. The ß UNESCO 2000

play of the different transparencies would reinforce the vertical nature of the patio, emphasizing the light, but would completely hide the space's architectural aspect. There were related problems involving the conservation and preservation of the objects exhibited, as it would be impossible to have adequate control of climatic factors required for certain pieces. For these and other reasons, this approach was abandoned.

The exhibition of religious and secular silverware in the lower gallery.

However, rejecting this approach established the following premise. Clearly, the physical and historical nature of the space could not be forgotten. Hiding its architectural structure by covering doors and windows, building false walls, eliminating the iron guards, covering the eight narrow columns, lowering the ceilings, etc., was unacceptable. Therefore, the design and conception of the exhibition could not avoid this confrontation. Consequently, I tried to put the exhibition's specific aims within a given spatial system that allowed the best of the existing environment to be emphasized, making it a participant in and 55

ß By courtesy of the author

Maria da Luz Nolasco

the social, cultural, economic and other aspects that form these objects' historical value be made clear and attractive to visitors? By organizing parallel activities, seminars, conferences, printed, audiovisual, multimedia or other material? These and other fundamental questions are the result of ongoing consideration of the methodology and principles that govern the transformation of an exhibition space. They give the form and even the concept to the idea of the exhibition, not merely as an aesthetic attitude that creates an image, but as a method for active intervention in the process of communication between the different parties, namely the promoter and the visitor/receiver. Direct light and clear architectural lines are the hallmark of the upper gallery where the religious vestments are displayed.

home for the exhibition. This gives visitors the sensation of entering a box that completely envelops them like a well, but which then expands at a certain inaccessible height, as if leaving them in the open air. Thus, it offers the visitor an accurate vision of the place itself and an understanding of its construction. At this preliminary phase, I concentrated on finding solutions for the fundamental premises of the programme, namely: What character should this exhibition have? Is it permanent or temporary? How should the collection be organized in the established space? Should the approach be chronological, thematic, typological, material, sequential or in series? How should the objects be exhibited? What criteria should be adopted for visual appreciation and what is the link to the results of scientific research? How should the route round the exhibition be set up and indicated? Should it be through circulation, clear structuring of the space, direction signs, plates and support texts, safety instructions, installation of support monitors for visitors, etc.? How could all

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Equally, the motivation that accompanies the design and subsequent assembly of the exhibition lies in the capacity for dialogue that can be established between the exhibition's environment, the objects and concepts exhibited in that environment and their interpreter or user. In this particular case, the circulation and direction plans for the exhibition were established on the two levels of the galleries. The two nuclei of silverware ± religious and secular ± were placed on the lower gallery in a sequential system following a continuous, uniform route in a closed circuit moving around the central patio and returning visitors to the entrance. On entering the exhibition, the visitor is immediately led into and guided along this route. At this stage, the exhibition has informative supporting texts on all the pieces exhibited, which were arranged in the same chronological order as in the catalogue. They are all numbered in order to link them to a group caption where they are both identified and described. The objects are presented through a regular series of glass screens whose lighting helps to emphasize the sequencing. Since ß UNESCO 2000

ß By courtesy of the author

Exhibiting in a landmark: the designer's challenge

good visibility is also a question of the visitor adapting to a specific environment, the light inside the glass cabinet had to be carefully studied to create a balance between reflection and the ambient light surrounding the piece. The general environment of the gallery was slightly darkened so that the pieces could be viewed in comfort. Moving around the central space, the visitor is stimulated to make an abstract re-creation of a procession coming from the upper gallery. Part of the scenery is suspended over the void formed by the central patio, thereby attracting attention and stimulating curiosity. Viewers are encouraged to go upstairs and discover the second part of the exhibition, confirming the image that they had formed at first glance. The collection of religious vestments was installed on the second floor and was also organized using a continuous and uniform route, a circuit running above the previously established one in the gallery. However, the environment is geometrically opposite to the one on the lower gallery. The space is open, the atmosphere is lively and the scenery gives a new dynamic and restructures the entire gallery. The visitor moves across this stage, going through a space that is defined by chandeliers and staffs of office of the MesaÂrios de Santa Casa (members of the board of the MisericoÂrdia). The objects are organized into series or groups of items (families) according to their use. There are also other items on individual and special display: feast-day vestments, those used for specific religious celebrations and those used for the cult of Our Lady of Hope. Given the characteristics of the space, the display cabinets are an essential support ß UNESCO 2000

for both collections in terms of controlling atmospheric conditions. The design of the cabinets (completely closed, protected with a film that filters ultraviolet light and with light control) protects the pieces exhibited from temperature variations in the galleries and from the high levels of relative and absolute humidity found there. The cabinets' construction includes a continuous perforated frieze at the base and the top which allows the wood frames to be ventilated. The bases of the cabinets have removable drawers for the controlled use of environmental condition

Part of the scenery is suspended over the void formed by the central patio, attracting the visitor's attention and stimulating curiosity.

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ß By courtesy of the author

Maria da Luz Nolasco

An essential component of the project drawn up for the exhibition at the Santa Casa de MisericoÂrdia Gallery of Benefactors was to reinforce its communicative function through the element of surprise seen in the exhibition's global staging, yet without undermining the plastic quality of the supporting space. This allows the general public, users and members greater accessibility. Equally, within the context of its underlying aims, it also allows a normal place of passage to be transformed into another resource and public service to satisfy people's need for leisure and recreation. The exhibition and its modus operandi are guided by the sense and sensitive understanding of the objects.

The collection of textile objects is displayed in an open gallery on the first floor.

stabilizers ± silica gel for the metals and art-sorb for the textiles.

A space for conviviality and memory The design and methodology applied aims to create a support system for the works so as to fulfill the exhibition's didactic and information goals. The intention was not to mirror the objects' original time and place faithfully, but instead to be a representation based on an abstraction of the exhibition's language. This process incorporated several different forms of approach to the pieces chosen. The silverware was organized according to the objects themselves, which were emphasized on a singular and individualized basis. The organization used for the religious vestments had different criteria for analysis and interpretation, which resulted from a premise of thematic units in sets or families of objects.

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The scientific programme defined the content and the ideological organization of each section of the exhibition, the museographical project defined this organization within the space chosen. Both the fundamental programme and the three-dimensional form given to the space were designed to transmit knowledge through publicizing and providing a scientific appreciation of the collections. This was made easier by the impact of the objects themselves, whose sensitivity and purpose convey the comprehension of other eras better than any image or written message can hope to do, bringing the institution and its most devoted workers into contact with specialists, a friendly public or simply a passer-by in this transformed space. ■

Note 1. La MuseÂologie selon Georges Henri RivieÁre, p. 269, Paris, Dunod, 1989.

ß UNESCO 2000

Grooming new millennium museum directors Sherene Suchy

Recent trends suggest that the new millennium museum director needs to be a leader who balances a belief in the institution and the reality of marketing. Sherene Suchy's research indicates that most curatorial staff, the pool from which museum directors usually emerge, are not necessarily suited for this role, raising questions about how museums create career paths, manage succession planning, invest in leadership training and orient boards for their role in the selection process. The author is the director of a private practice specializing in individual and organizational development based in Sydney, Australia. She has more than twenty years experience in management development programmes with public- and privatesector organizations, and has been actively involved since 1991 in the cultural-industry sector, including an international study on the director's role in museum leadership.

The position descriptions for `new breed' museum directors raise doubts that individuals capable of handling that degree of complexity actually exist. Questions are being asked about how to design a career path and suitable development programmes for shaping museum leadership. Some of the answers were revealed while mapping complexity with nearly eighty museum directors and other professionals across Australia, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.1 This research revealed why the museum director's position description has shifted so dramatically during the 1990s. First and foremost, managing financial challenges and shaping changes in the museum's form and function mean that directors are inventing what Peter Marzio, director of Houston's Museum of Fine Arts, called `hybrid museums with hybrid directors'. In the words of Nancy Kolb, director of the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia, the new breed, or hybrid directors, described their role as comprising essentially four functions: representing the museum, acting as an advocate or cheerleader and team-builder, taking an entrepreneurial approach to fund-raising, and managing the board of trustees. Historically, career paths to directorships have evolved from the curatorial ranks. It appears that director development has been based on three factors: external training programmes, on-the-job training and mentors. When position descriptions were analysed, directors interviewed, and data sifted there appeared to be critical gaps between what new millennium museums actually require and how this compared with the potential candidate pool, and current approaches to development for executive-level leadership roles. A review of press reports on appointments and position descriptions for directors between 1986 and 1998 revealed

the extent of the shift in expectations concerning the director's role. It also revealed conflicts and controversies in and around the selection process as trustees come to terms with new requirements. As the decade of the 1990s opened, increasing reference was being made to the need for business management skills in order for a museum director effectively to lead the institution. Leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing and business acumen gained emphasis as the mandate for the museum changed. A director's position description reflects an organization's perception of what it needs for the key leadership role. Concepts held by members of the selection committee are very powerful in shaping not only the position description but the selection process itself. Since this is usually carried out by the board of trustees, they would be best advised to review the descriptions for their director's job to ensure that the characteristics of new millennium museum leaders are highlighted, for example, someone who can support business development while developing a climate for the business of creativity. Current research suggests that passion or high energy is the bottom line. Passion may be best described as emotional intelligence or competences such as increasing effectiveness under pressure, building trusting relationships and an ability to create the future. As the 1990s draw to their close, `new breed' directors are those who are well educated (but not primarily scholars), communicators, organizers, educators, high-energy individuals, enterprising, possessing good political and public relations skills, and who run their museums as businesses based on participatory leadership.2 The most critical leadership characteristic is `that vision thing'. Secondly, the director has to be capable of

ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 206 (Vol. 52, No. 2, 2000) ß UNESCO 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)

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Sherene Suchy

These requirements underscore the need to groom directors who are capable of conceptualizing a meaningful vision shaped by passion, and who have the authority, energy, and clarity to communicate that vision to others.3 In this context, `others' include potential stakeholders in the museum: trustees, staff, volunteers, future members, visitors, corporate sponsors and government representatives. Communicating the vision relies on what one author referred to as the six constants of leadership, the most important being the ability to construct a story that represents the museum in such a way that it creates meaning and identity for others.4 The following position description for the hybrid museum director reflects a more accurate interpretation of the level of complexity, responsibility, capability and creativity associated with a CEO (chief executive officer) in an organization with national responsibilities in an international network:

in the broader socio-economic context, and setting the overall direction for business targets and objectives. Resource management includes the control of all expenditures, both capital and revenue, to ensure that proper budget structures and financial regulations are developed for the museum as a whole. Creativity involves sustaining the external and internal well-being of the museum in the face of rapid social, economic, and technological changes. Creativity is based on a sense of the interconnectedness of everything. It includes seeing potential links between apparently unrelated issues and events. Gaps in understanding are seen as a source of innovation and a base for creating new knowledge beyond the currently defined field with outcomes that may not happen for ten years. Emotional and intuitive intelligence is expressed as an ability to allow, adapt to, shape and select new environments. The director's approach needs to be one of constantly weaving or shaping and reshaping interconnections within and between the museum and the environment, in the light of anticipated rather than actual change.5

In essence, the director's responsibility is that of acting as the source of the mission or story, redefining it as needed in order to position the museum for long-term survival financially, socially, and culturally. The work is to realize the strategic intent of the museum by guiding it through various conflicts caused by its impact on the environment; modifying it to accommodate changes in the environment; maintaining a national position in an international cultural network; representing the museum

Research suggests that not everyone will be at ease with the requirements in the director's position description. Some people will not be willing to pay the price of leaving their domain of expertise nor accept the discomfort of shifting from indirect to more direct forms of leadership. Insightful self-assessment, awareness and good mentorship are necessary ingredients for potential director development. At the present time, developing leadership expertise appears to involve three factors: external training and development; onthe-job development; and mentoring.

adapting to change and seizing opportunities by not being territorial and should be able to set boundaries for the museum, to define its role in the community, and to advocate wisely on its behalf as a creator of social capital in a market economy.

A new position description

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ß UNESCO 2000

Grooming new millennium museum directors

External programmes or on-the-job development? Although external training is typically one of the first factors in any approach to leadership development, it seems that present programmes may not completely cater for changes in the 1990s and the decade ahead. This observation was discussed with Maureen Rolla, director of the international Museum Management Institute (MMI), an annual four-week programme funded by the Getty Trust and administered by the American Federation of Arts in New York, who described a critical shift in training needs in recent years. Participants said that their curatorial skills no longer supported them or the challenges associated with the director's job and that the abilities that served them well as curators (independence, scholarship, orientation to detail) often seem at odds with the strategic vision required of directors. They agreed that programmes such as that of the Museum Management Institute had been a catalyst for future directorships. For example, Charles Moffett, director of the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., initially `resisted' the idea of management training because it was `at odds with plans as a curator'. Once he saw management as a creative act, he wanted to be a museum director. On-the-job training was stressed by others as the most important factor for director development. Houston's Peter Marzio disagreed with the emphasis on museum-specific training courses. He suggested that physical fitness, training and experience in the hospitality industry and exposure to hard business were more beneficial than `soft approaches offered through museum training programmes'. His advice was to `mix with and learn about business functions through business relationships or do an MBA'. On-the-job training only works when there are ß UNESCO 2000

opportunities for leadership experience. It also is highly dependent on the potential director's attitude and willingness to take risks to stay in flow by exploring new domains of expertise. For example, the director of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne carefully married the creativity of the arts with the business of creativity by designing a career path that bridged both fine arts and experience in the finance industry. Most museum career paths do not encourage enough diversity, exposure to management decision-making, or leadership opportunities and few people actually plan a career path. Many of the directors described their careers as a series of happy accidents. Few had anticipated the development of hybrid museums or had deliberately merged their domain of expertise with others such as business. The director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Kevin Consey, was one of the rare directors who described combining two fields of competence (art and an MBA) to strengthen leadership effectiveness. Several of the directors said that current career paths had inherent problems for onthe-job training because there was so little movement in the field overall. Low pay, lifestyle options, professional ghettos within the museum field, and the limited number of positions in the sector as a whole limited career-path development. On-the-job training for leadership development means breaking down what Pat Fiske, director of the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., called the cult of the museum. Part of the cult problem and intense competition may be attributed to the size of the museum field. For countries such as Australia and Canada, smaller populations mean fewer museums and fewer opportunities. In contrast, the United States has a larger population base, more major cities and more museums. 61

Sherene Suchy

Career paths for museum directors in the United States followed a trajectory from the east coast to Texas, on to California, up to Chicago and back to the east coast. According to James Burke, director of the Saint Louis Art Museum, smaller cities may offer better lifestyle options and more career development. He suggested that part of the reason for the lack of movement had to do with golden handcuffs: financial considerations kept museum directors locked in positions creating stagnant career development for the sector as a whole. Creating a career path as a form of on-thejob development depends on opportunity, timing, and motivation. Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery in London, said he had no choice when he was offered the Tate Gallery due to the museum's presence nationally and internationally. The director of the Yale Center for British Art, Patrick McCaughy, had two rules that governed career paths: the first was to stay in the job for the length of time it takes to see outcomes for major decisions (e.g. a maximum of five to ten years); the second was to target museums that had problems and needed immediate leadership. James Wood, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, emphasized early childhood experiences, values, personal interests, and personality. He said that we cannot teach these things to a museum director but we hope to draw people with those characteristics to this profession plus experience with managing people and exposure to other types of discourse such as management, law, and economics. Several directors stressed the importance of deviations from traditional career paths. Josie de Falla of the Maryhill Museum in Goldendale, Washington, described marriage, a family, experience in marketing and law, and international moves as good grounding for directorship. Earl Powell of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, 62

D.C., described experience as an officer in the Navy and Navy Reserves as worth its weight in gold. And Richard Koshalek, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, started out as an architect designing installations in museums. His wise words included reference to `an inner sense of personal timing in a search for ongoing challenges'.

The importance of mentors Mentors were the third factor that shaped current museum leaders. Mentoring remains a valid choice for grooming new directors as long as the mentors offer and support the qualities outlined in the new position description. Mentoring is a powerful shaping influence based on a relationship that includes increased awareness through shared reflections, collaboration and a sense of challenge, and activities that foster personal and professional change.6 Mentoring was described as a critical part of leadership development by three other very experienced museum directors. Nicholas Serota stressed that mentors are very important because directors are often quite alone in their jobs with only one or two people around the world with whom they feel they can share their ideas and thoughts. Anne Hawley of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston described how two men changed her life because `they had such a commitment to museums as hands-on, participatory, and based on a vision from the soul . . . they made a big impact on the blending of science and children's museums'. David Ross of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York described a series of architects such as Frank Geary and I. M. Pei as mentors who taught him about the complexity of museum planning. Mentorship and internships were a pivotal part of ß UNESCO 2000

Grooming new millennium museum directors

development for Evan Maurer, director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He took a practical approach to leadership development, suggesting that hybrid museums were best served by integrating director and trustee development with smart business skills best experienced in a mentor relationship. It is clear that limited exposure to external training programmes, a bias towards onthe-job training, and mentorship are the three factors shaping the way the museum sector grooms future directors. Unfortunately, these preferences combined with slow if not direct resistance to change may be restricting the development of a talent pool for new millennium museums. A speedy reconciliation between past, current and future ways of grooming directors needs to be addressed. It takes at least ten years to master the expert domain in which a potential leader ultimately effects a breakthrough, whether it be art, science, history or business management. Shaping museum directors for hybrid museums means a decade of preparation, crossing one domain of expertise with others, for example, sociology, psychology and management. This being the case, the cultural-industry sector must critically examine key points of concern, such as what is being achieved and planned in reorienting boards of trustees for their critical role in director selection. High-potential individuals from previously ignored or alternative career paths might be considered and management or executive training and development programmes actively supported. Such programmes should reflect the generic nature of CEO-level functions as well as highlight the special role museums play in our communities. If it takes a minimum of ten years to groom a potential director, then one-month intensive courses are unlikely answers to ß UNESCO 2000

leadership development. A longer-term view with a concerted focus on integrated human-resource management is suggested. The first step would be a critical review of what is happening in leadership-development programmes outside the museum world to expand horizons on executive development as a whole.7 Three approaches being discussed in the broader field of executive leadership development need to be considered by the cultural-industry sector and strategies designed to groom directors for new millennium museums. First, moves towards more customized programmes rather than `public' or open enrolment courses. Case studies illustrate the advantages of working with directors and staff in-house to develop them as agents of change within the organizational setting through specifically focused programmes. Second, moves towards shorter, concentrated, large-scale programmes that integrate all levels of the museum as a matrix of working relationships. There has been a tendency in the past to operate within levels of work rather than to adopt integrated programmes designed as vertical slices, which would eliminate reference to `those up there' or `those down below' when different levels are represented in the same programme. Such efforts need to be conducted during the day in highly refined half-day programmes so that directors and boards of trustees can attend. Third, design learning projects with measurable results. As with any development investment, the ultimate test of relevance is whether there are observable, assessable and significant changes. Targeted development projects generate a higher rate of return on investment than generalized programmes. The trend suggests that general lecture programmes on 63

Sherene Suchy

Correspondence Questions concerning editorial matters: The Editor, Museum International, UNESCO, 7 place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP (France). Tel: (+33.1) 45.68.43.39 Fax: (+33.1) 45.68.55.91

leadership theory will not be as relevant as facilitated project groups within the museum or one-to-one leadership coaching in specific competences. This approach means that present and potential museum directors would spend more time in specially designed projects rather than on a university campus. Finally, there is a strong argument for mentorship and leadership sabbaticals as viable strategies that could be developed between museums and the corporate world and that support the view that familiarization with leadership is necessary so that one understands what can go wrong as well as what can go right. Leadership development occurs in small steps and builds through success and failure. Experience with executive development programmes in Australia over the last ten years suggests that coaching and mentoring may be among the most useful approaches for museum directors. This is widespread in other industries where managers in particular domains of expertise such as finance need to make the transition from upper-level specialist to senior-level executive.8 The transition issues are the same: executives must give up their independent, technically oriented work style and deal more with people, longer-range planning, more complex decision-making, and higher levels of ambiguity. This means fostering competence in emotional robustness backed by effective self-management so that directors are not disconcerted by increasingly rapid change. In closing, the advice given by a past director of the National Gallery of Canada, Shirley Thompson, seems pertinent for aspiring directors: `Develop a sense of emotional toughness so you are energized by the setbacks and can return to the battle with energy.' ■

Notes 1. S. Suchy, An International Study on the Director's Role in Art Museum Leadership, University of Western Sydney Nepean, Australia, 1998 (unpublished doctoral thesis). 2. K. Hudson, `The New Breed', Museum International, No. 197 (Vol. 50, No. 1, 1998, p. 50). 3. O. Khaleelee and R. Woolf, `Personality, Life Experience and Leadership Capability', Leadership and Organization Development Journal, Vol. 17, 1996, pp. 5±11. 4. H. Gardner, Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership, New York, Basic Books, 1995. 5. G. Stamp, Career Path Appreciation: Practitioners' Guide and Associated Material, Brunel, University of West London, Individual and Organisational Capability Unit, 1989. 6. B. Caldwell and E. Carter, The Return of the Mentor, London, Falmer Press, 1993. 7. Suggested works are: R. Boyatzis, S. Cowen, D. Kolb, et al., Innovation in Professional Education, San Francisco, JosseyBass, 1995; R. Fulmer and A. Vicere, Executive Education and Leadership Development: The State of the Practice, University Park, Pa., Penn State Institute for the Study of Organizational Effectiveness, 1995; D. Karpin, `In Search of Leaders', HR Monthly, June 1995, pp. 10±14; D. Whetten and S. Clark, `An Integrated Model for Teaching Management Skills', Journal of Management Education, Vol. 20, 1996, pp. 152±81. 8. J. McCafferty, `Your Own Vince Lombardi', CFO: The Magazine for Chief Financial Officers, Vol. 12, 1996, pp. 93±5.

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