Matthew Nisbett points to the dwindling amount of attention paid to science by cable news in his blog, Framing Science:
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Summary for Exhibiting Cultures (Karp & Levine)
This book is a collection of articles about museum exhibition divided into five parts. I will focus here on several of the articles I found particularly interesting/useful.
1. The Museum as a Way of Seeing (Alpers)
The main idea of this article is that by removing artifacts from their environment, by stripping them of their context, we can appreciate the objects themselves. In doing so, we can simultaneously distance ourselves from the artifacts’ creators and find in the objects something that connects us to them and to those that made them.
2. Exhibiting Intentions (Baxandall):
There are three agents inolved: The creator of the artifact, the designer of the exhibit, and the audience. The Exhibition should be a conversation by the maker of the artifact and viewer more than anything. “Exhibitors cannot represent cultures. Exhibitors can be tactful and stimulating impresarios, but exhibition is a social occasion involving at least three active terms. The activity the exhibition exists for is between viewer and maker. If the exhibitor wants to help or influence this activity, it should noe be by discoursing either directly or indirectiy about culture, which is his own construct, but rather by setting up nonmisleading and stimulating conditions between the exhibitor’s own activity (selection and label making) and the maker’s object. The rest is up to the viewer” (p. 41).
3. Resonance and Wonder (Greenblatt):
Greenblatt says there are essentially two models for exhibitions: the resonance model and the wonder model. The resonance model is more of an “intimation of a larger community of voices and skills, an imagined ethnographic thickness” (p. 48), while the wonder model consists of an “intense, indeed enchanted looking” (p. 49). Greenblat believes the best exhibits will incorporate both models and they will work together to create “wonderful resonance and resonant wonder” (45).
4. Locating Authenticity (Crew & Sims)
Current thinking is that artifacts don’t have much meaning on their own, but the exhibition makers help them. Meaning can be created simply by proximity.
“Authenticity is not about factuality or reality. It is about authority. Objects have no authority; people do. It is people on the exhibition team who must make a judgment about how to tell about the past. Authenticity--authority--enforces the social contract between the audience and the museum, a socially agreed-upon reality that exists only as long as confidence in the voice of the exhibition holds” (p. 163).
The rise of social history “history from the bottom up” (p. 163) reshaped not only the work of many historians, but also informed museum exhibition design.
Another way to look at it is to say that the event is primary, and that it is in the “place/time of the event that the audience takes part, becoming cocreators of social meaning. Authenticity is located in the event” (p. 174).
5. Noodling Around with Exhibition Opportunities (Gurian)
Creators of exhibits “impose learning impediments in [their] exhibitions” because they “possess unexamined beliefs about our visitors’ capacity to learn and because we want them to act in a style that reinforces [their] notions of appropriate audience behavior” (p. 186).
She goes on to list some political factors that shape museum exhibition. She says museums fall into one of three political categories:
• Aspiring establishment organizations (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Self-consciously liberal (New Museum of Contemporary Art)
• Counterculture (El Museo del Barrio)
Additionally, she says that the director of the museum often imposes her/his own political views on the museum. For example, The Exploratorium, in San Francisco was created by Oppenheimer, who was very concerned that the audience was be able to make sense of the exhibit themselves without help or interference from designers. This was an indication of his “power to the people” attitude.
She concludes by saying that an exhibit is like theatre: a collaborative endeavor where the collaborators have highly individualized visions and styles, so compromise is needed. An exhibit must have agreed-upon assumptions about the audience or a “coherent view of the audience as articulated by a single prevailing power source” (p189). However the current way in which decisions are made doesn’t allow for explicit discussions of the creator’s view of the audience/viewers.
6. Always True to the Object, in Our Fasion (Vogel)
Vogel believes curators have an “obligation to let the audience know what part of any exhibition is the making of the artists and what part is the curator’s interpretation” (p. 191). She admits this will not be easy, as some of the curator’s understanding rests on “unquestioned and unexamined cultural--and other--assumptions” (p. 191). “The museum must allow the public to know that it is not a broad frame through which the art and culture of the world can be inspected, but a tightly focused lens that shows the visitor a particular point of view. It could hardly be otherwise” (201).
My thoughts:
This book was a very interesting look at museums and the artifacts they display. Most of the articles dealt far more with artistic or cultural artifacts than the types of artifacts that might be found in a science center or science museum.
I noted that many of the articles were written by practitioners, and it is very interesting to see a field that is so openly critical and reflexive of their own work. I thought it was worth mentioning this, as scientists often are not so reflexive…
Something that I thought quite a bit about was that science museums and science centers are often putting ideas on display rather than objects. I am left to wonder how this body of work translates to those ideas. I think there are rich connections to be made. Situating the knowledge curators seek to impart within the context of their own desire to impart it might be a rich area of discussion. I’m thinking this specifically in terms of some of the large-scale, science based exhibitions at AMNH (Darwin, Einstein, and Genome to name a few): They, themselves are torn between representing what Greetblatt calls resonance: that is the history, the cultural surroundings in which a scientists lived or in which he made his revolutionary discoveries on the one hand, and presenting the ideas, which perhaps are meant to invoke wonder.
1. The Museum as a Way of Seeing (Alpers)
The main idea of this article is that by removing artifacts from their environment, by stripping them of their context, we can appreciate the objects themselves. In doing so, we can simultaneously distance ourselves from the artifacts’ creators and find in the objects something that connects us to them and to those that made them.
2. Exhibiting Intentions (Baxandall):
There are three agents inolved: The creator of the artifact, the designer of the exhibit, and the audience. The Exhibition should be a conversation by the maker of the artifact and viewer more than anything. “Exhibitors cannot represent cultures. Exhibitors can be tactful and stimulating impresarios, but exhibition is a social occasion involving at least three active terms. The activity the exhibition exists for is between viewer and maker. If the exhibitor wants to help or influence this activity, it should noe be by discoursing either directly or indirectiy about culture, which is his own construct, but rather by setting up nonmisleading and stimulating conditions between the exhibitor’s own activity (selection and label making) and the maker’s object. The rest is up to the viewer” (p. 41).
3. Resonance and Wonder (Greenblatt):
Greenblatt says there are essentially two models for exhibitions: the resonance model and the wonder model. The resonance model is more of an “intimation of a larger community of voices and skills, an imagined ethnographic thickness” (p. 48), while the wonder model consists of an “intense, indeed enchanted looking” (p. 49). Greenblat believes the best exhibits will incorporate both models and they will work together to create “wonderful resonance and resonant wonder” (45).
4. Locating Authenticity (Crew & Sims)
Current thinking is that artifacts don’t have much meaning on their own, but the exhibition makers help them. Meaning can be created simply by proximity.
“Authenticity is not about factuality or reality. It is about authority. Objects have no authority; people do. It is people on the exhibition team who must make a judgment about how to tell about the past. Authenticity--authority--enforces the social contract between the audience and the museum, a socially agreed-upon reality that exists only as long as confidence in the voice of the exhibition holds” (p. 163).
The rise of social history “history from the bottom up” (p. 163) reshaped not only the work of many historians, but also informed museum exhibition design.
Another way to look at it is to say that the event is primary, and that it is in the “place/time of the event that the audience takes part, becoming cocreators of social meaning. Authenticity is located in the event” (p. 174).
5. Noodling Around with Exhibition Opportunities (Gurian)
Creators of exhibits “impose learning impediments in [their] exhibitions” because they “possess unexamined beliefs about our visitors’ capacity to learn and because we want them to act in a style that reinforces [their] notions of appropriate audience behavior” (p. 186).
She goes on to list some political factors that shape museum exhibition. She says museums fall into one of three political categories:
• Aspiring establishment organizations (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Self-consciously liberal (New Museum of Contemporary Art)
• Counterculture (El Museo del Barrio)
Additionally, she says that the director of the museum often imposes her/his own political views on the museum. For example, The Exploratorium, in San Francisco was created by Oppenheimer, who was very concerned that the audience was be able to make sense of the exhibit themselves without help or interference from designers. This was an indication of his “power to the people” attitude.
She concludes by saying that an exhibit is like theatre: a collaborative endeavor where the collaborators have highly individualized visions and styles, so compromise is needed. An exhibit must have agreed-upon assumptions about the audience or a “coherent view of the audience as articulated by a single prevailing power source” (p189). However the current way in which decisions are made doesn’t allow for explicit discussions of the creator’s view of the audience/viewers.
6. Always True to the Object, in Our Fasion (Vogel)
Vogel believes curators have an “obligation to let the audience know what part of any exhibition is the making of the artists and what part is the curator’s interpretation” (p. 191). She admits this will not be easy, as some of the curator’s understanding rests on “unquestioned and unexamined cultural--and other--assumptions” (p. 191). “The museum must allow the public to know that it is not a broad frame through which the art and culture of the world can be inspected, but a tightly focused lens that shows the visitor a particular point of view. It could hardly be otherwise” (201).
My thoughts:
This book was a very interesting look at museums and the artifacts they display. Most of the articles dealt far more with artistic or cultural artifacts than the types of artifacts that might be found in a science center or science museum.
I noted that many of the articles were written by practitioners, and it is very interesting to see a field that is so openly critical and reflexive of their own work. I thought it was worth mentioning this, as scientists often are not so reflexive…
Something that I thought quite a bit about was that science museums and science centers are often putting ideas on display rather than objects. I am left to wonder how this body of work translates to those ideas. I think there are rich connections to be made. Situating the knowledge curators seek to impart within the context of their own desire to impart it might be a rich area of discussion. I’m thinking this specifically in terms of some of the large-scale, science based exhibitions at AMNH (Darwin, Einstein, and Genome to name a few): They, themselves are torn between representing what Greetblatt calls resonance: that is the history, the cultural surroundings in which a scientists lived or in which he made his revolutionary discoveries on the one hand, and presenting the ideas, which perhaps are meant to invoke wonder.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Interpreting Objects and Collections
Susan M. Pearce, Interpreting Objects and Collections
Pearce’s book is an anthology of papers on the role of objects and collections in museums. The book is split into two sections on the two aspects. The study of objects (or specimens or artifacts) is part of the study of material culture in anthropology and archeology, while the study of collections is only a recent academic development. In part I, Hodder’s short piece divides analytical categories of objects into functionalist (materialist or utilitarian), symbolic (structural or coded), and historical meanings. A crucial idea is that objects in museums are removed from a context in which they have use value, to one divorced or alienated from their original use value. Does “display” count as a use, and what does that mean for the transformation of the object’s relationship to a person? What happens when objects or whole collections are removed from view for preservation?
Pearce herself, as well as Christopher Tilley, focus on the symbolic aspect, drawing on the semiotic theory of Saussure. Saussure divides language into langue, the “system of codes, rules and norms structuring any particular language” and parole, “the situated act of utilization of this system by an individual speaker.” (Saussure 1960). The building block of langue is the diacritical sign, composed of signifier, the utterance or acoustic image, and the signified, the concept referred to. Signs themselves are arbitrary and therefore only have meaning in a system of relations to other signs. With post-structuralism, meanings break down even further because signifiers and signified do not have a one-to-one relationship, meaning coming about from chains of meaning to related signifiers and signs, and meaning derived differently in different contexts, different interpreters, different reasons for interpreting–any specific meaning of a sign at any time is derived from the act of interpretation itself.
Semiotics when applied to objects means that objects become material ways of narrating the past. with multiple meanings for multiple interpreters, and can be both signifiers and signified. Pearce traces the different stages in a jacket from Waterloo, what the jacket meant for its original owner who kept it, to its meaning for the viewer in a modern museum. The jacket has both a metanymic meaning and metaphorical meaning. It has come to stand in for the Battle of Waterloo itself, but even then, had different meanings for victorious British upperclass as well as working class who sympathized with French Republican ideals.
Pearce begins Part II with some definitions on what is a collection. Durost defines a collection to be a set of objects whose value is not use value but derived from their relation to other objects or an idea of being one in a series. Aristide considers collection “obsession organized” and the drive for completion which separates collection from mere possession. Baudrillard suggests the difference between collection and accumulation lies in the motive of classification of the objects in a collection, but Pearce notes that the line is often blurred. Pearce summarizes by saying a collection comprises the ideas of “non-utilitarian gathering, an internal or intrinsic relationship between things gathered, subjective view of the owner, and the notion that the collection is more than the sum of its parts.” Danet and Katriel look at collecting as play, as an aesthetic experience, and as a striving for closure, completion, or perfection. Collections are not always actively pursued, a gradual accumulation of clothes in the closet may suddenly be discovered one day by the owner as a collection–a collection isn’t one until one thinks of it as one. Pearce notes three aspects of collecting–collections as souvenirs, involving a romantic connection to one’s past through the materiality of objects, collections as fetishes, collecting the objects for their own sake but without any systematic reasoning, and systematic collections, involving some abstract order such as classification or arrangement in evolutionary trajectory. Both souvenir and fetish collections are attempts to create a private world, through removal of objects from their social relationships in order to freeze time but in opposite ways, with souvenirs objects are alienated from a romantic self, while with fetishes, self is divorced from romanticized objets. Systematic collections lie in between these two poles, but with also the crucial difference that their purpose is public, not private, seeking to engage and instruct viewers in the abstract idea or system they are trying to convey by their arrangement in space. Bringing back in semiotics, collections of objects become languages, means of communication. Historical accounts of collecting by Eva Schultz and Susan Stewart (quoted in James Clifford) note that collection for museums in part arose out of a desire to represent the universe through collections of exemplary or representative objects whereby through metonymy the whole of the universe would be gathered under one roof–in natural history especially, this impulse was related to the impulse to compile encyclopedias, and was part of the Western desire to acquire knowledge of the entire universe through appropriation. James Clifford’s look at art collections focuses on the art-culture divide–masterpieces collected for their artistic, aesthetic, formal value (Zone 1), and artifacts collected for scientific anthropological study of cultures (Zone 2). In addition, both categories have splits between authentic and inauthentic (Zone 3 is inauthentic masterpieces and Zone 4 is inauthentic artifacts). Clifford traces how pieces can move between Zone 1 and 2, Zones 1 and 3 or 2 and 4, or 3 and 4, and the associated changes in meaning which occur in such shifts.
Pearce’s book is an anthology of papers on the role of objects and collections in museums. The book is split into two sections on the two aspects. The study of objects (or specimens or artifacts) is part of the study of material culture in anthropology and archeology, while the study of collections is only a recent academic development. In part I, Hodder’s short piece divides analytical categories of objects into functionalist (materialist or utilitarian), symbolic (structural or coded), and historical meanings. A crucial idea is that objects in museums are removed from a context in which they have use value, to one divorced or alienated from their original use value. Does “display” count as a use, and what does that mean for the transformation of the object’s relationship to a person? What happens when objects or whole collections are removed from view for preservation?
Pearce herself, as well as Christopher Tilley, focus on the symbolic aspect, drawing on the semiotic theory of Saussure. Saussure divides language into langue, the “system of codes, rules and norms structuring any particular language” and parole, “the situated act of utilization of this system by an individual speaker.” (Saussure 1960). The building block of langue is the diacritical sign, composed of signifier, the utterance or acoustic image, and the signified, the concept referred to. Signs themselves are arbitrary and therefore only have meaning in a system of relations to other signs. With post-structuralism, meanings break down even further because signifiers and signified do not have a one-to-one relationship, meaning coming about from chains of meaning to related signifiers and signs, and meaning derived differently in different contexts, different interpreters, different reasons for interpreting–any specific meaning of a sign at any time is derived from the act of interpretation itself.
Semiotics when applied to objects means that objects become material ways of narrating the past. with multiple meanings for multiple interpreters, and can be both signifiers and signified. Pearce traces the different stages in a jacket from Waterloo, what the jacket meant for its original owner who kept it, to its meaning for the viewer in a modern museum. The jacket has both a metanymic meaning and metaphorical meaning. It has come to stand in for the Battle of Waterloo itself, but even then, had different meanings for victorious British upperclass as well as working class who sympathized with French Republican ideals.
Pearce begins Part II with some definitions on what is a collection. Durost defines a collection to be a set of objects whose value is not use value but derived from their relation to other objects or an idea of being one in a series. Aristide considers collection “obsession organized” and the drive for completion which separates collection from mere possession. Baudrillard suggests the difference between collection and accumulation lies in the motive of classification of the objects in a collection, but Pearce notes that the line is often blurred. Pearce summarizes by saying a collection comprises the ideas of “non-utilitarian gathering, an internal or intrinsic relationship between things gathered, subjective view of the owner, and the notion that the collection is more than the sum of its parts.” Danet and Katriel look at collecting as play, as an aesthetic experience, and as a striving for closure, completion, or perfection. Collections are not always actively pursued, a gradual accumulation of clothes in the closet may suddenly be discovered one day by the owner as a collection–a collection isn’t one until one thinks of it as one. Pearce notes three aspects of collecting–collections as souvenirs, involving a romantic connection to one’s past through the materiality of objects, collections as fetishes, collecting the objects for their own sake but without any systematic reasoning, and systematic collections, involving some abstract order such as classification or arrangement in evolutionary trajectory. Both souvenir and fetish collections are attempts to create a private world, through removal of objects from their social relationships in order to freeze time but in opposite ways, with souvenirs objects are alienated from a romantic self, while with fetishes, self is divorced from romanticized objets. Systematic collections lie in between these two poles, but with also the crucial difference that their purpose is public, not private, seeking to engage and instruct viewers in the abstract idea or system they are trying to convey by their arrangement in space. Bringing back in semiotics, collections of objects become languages, means of communication. Historical accounts of collecting by Eva Schultz and Susan Stewart (quoted in James Clifford) note that collection for museums in part arose out of a desire to represent the universe through collections of exemplary or representative objects whereby through metonymy the whole of the universe would be gathered under one roof–in natural history especially, this impulse was related to the impulse to compile encyclopedias, and was part of the Western desire to acquire knowledge of the entire universe through appropriation. James Clifford’s look at art collections focuses on the art-culture divide–masterpieces collected for their artistic, aesthetic, formal value (Zone 1), and artifacts collected for scientific anthropological study of cultures (Zone 2). In addition, both categories have splits between authentic and inauthentic (Zone 3 is inauthentic masterpieces and Zone 4 is inauthentic artifacts). Clifford traces how pieces can move between Zone 1 and 2, Zones 1 and 3 or 2 and 4, or 3 and 4, and the associated changes in meaning which occur in such shifts.
Karp & Lavine (1993) Communities and Museums: Partners in Crisis
This article is a partial synopsis of the book, Museums and Communities by the same authors. It looks at the evolving perspective of museum curators and staff toward their audiences and vice versa. It discusses paens made in the post-recession 1990s to the need for demonstrable value and accountability in public institutions (think "Contract with America"), and what that meant for the future of museums. What value do museums have to society? Why should they continue to be funded by communities or governments?
Karp and Lavine hold that museums—those that continue to take a one-way, top-down approach to the communication of vetted culture, at any rate—are likely to have a hard time answering this question adequately.
As the authors point out, in a struggle to survive in the face of scant patronage, many museums had already begun to "consider their audience" by installing entertainment-heavy blockbuster exhibits intended to appeal to the lowest common denominator (think "Bodyworlds").
Critics suggest that something has been lost in this transition to massive, lavishly produced exhibits—that museums have made this leap at the expense of reputations as repositories of high culture and spaces for quiet reflection. The authors spend some time picking apart one such critique by New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik.
Gopnik may have a point, they say, but his criticism is not sensitive to the economic pressure felt by museums to draw bigger crowds, and even to compete with amusement parks, which increasingly include education in their mission statements.
None of this is to say that Karp and Lavine believe the blockbuster exhibit is the solution to museums' need to be relevant. On the contrary, they suggest that attendance figures are a poor surrogate for the cultural value of museums. Mere crowd size does not speak to the value of the quality of the experience of attending a given exhibit, which is their preferred metric.
To increase their cultural value, museums should not focus myopically on entertainment—value, which they've tended to do in a very top-down fashion, but should instead begin to view the mounting of exhibits as a two-way communication process. Museums shouldn't just market to more visitors or more diverse visitors. They should engage in dialogue with these audiences, and let them inform the forms that the museum's exhibits and outreach programs take.
The authors close by giving examples of museums that have engaged with their audiences in more or less successful fashions, and by pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of these experiments. Suffice to say that successful engagement must avoid several pitfalls, which the examples elucidate—either through their limitations or their success.
One is the building of exhibits that explore multicultural points of view, but in a way that appeal primarily to the same educated, white crowd to whom the museum has always catered. The second is for a museum to be so responsive to the demands of its audience that it loses sight of the aim of objectivity.
The authors close the article by reiterating their main points, calling for museums to be spaces for experimentation, and pointing out that if museums are to truly take on new forms, they may have to buck their traditional forms of institutional organization.
Politics of science funding
Just thought this was an interesting article from the perspective of "selling science." It's got it all: institutions and experts throwing their authoritative weight around, political scare tactics, the use of the media to impact public opinion and sway policy, high financial stakes, invocations of the uber-narratives of progress and international competition and human rights, appeals to patriotism, threats to the physical health and well-being of Joe American Patient, etc. Interestingly, at the bottom of the article the source is listed as "Brokenpipeline.org," which sounds like an advocacy group formed by the institutions that put together this report, itself titled A Broken Pipeline: Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a Generation of Science at Risk.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Museums and the Appropriation of Culture (Edited by Susan Pearce) – OR, Bruno Latour visits the museum
The main theme of the book is that traditional Western museums are essentially halls of cultural artifacts, stolen from other civilizations in the name of science and learning. This systematic pillaging of other’s culture is essentially the product of colonialism.
The presentation and display of these collections of “stolen booty” convey control and power, e.g. DO NOT TOUCH. In the article “Please don’t touch the ceiling,” Beard and Henderson play with the notions of the museum to make the patron realize these cultural norms. For example, they add life-size cutouts of people’s heads among the plaster casts to give the patron feel that the observer is being observed. They ask people to look outside the windows, question what the curators forgot to include in the displays, add plastic sculptures to the collection, put price tags on objects and create joke displays. A “do not touch” sign is placed on an impossibly high Victorian ceiling. Above the visitor’s book are hung mirrors so that patrons become aware that they are indeed part of the exhibit. In sum, by playing with (or is that mocking?) many of the traditional ways museums create use objects and space, they make us aware of the narrow social norms we traditionally apply to museums.
Pearce, S. M. (1998) Collecting in Contemporary Practice.
Pearce, S. M. (1998). Collecting in Contemporary Practice. London: Sage. Summarized by Laura Rickard
• This book explores: how “culture is collected”; what “collections are like as culture” in their own right.
• Justification for this study, or, a “hypothesis” posed by the author: “…Collecting practice is significant in contemporary British society because it can tell us more about the nature of that society and of the individuals which comprise it; that since collecting practice is essentially an individual enterprise, understanding of it must start with the collectors themselves; and that collecting is embedded in the individual collector’s emotional, economic, and inter-personal life…” (p. 17).
• This book is based on the 1993 Contemporary Collecting in Britain Survey. This mail survey, including both multiple choice and free-response questions, was distributed to 1500 randomly selected adults in GB. This survey aimed to:
o Look at narratives of the collectors to try to determine “collecting rhetoric”
o Focus not so much on the collectors themselves, or their collections, but more on offering explanations of the process of collecting (p. 8); this is seen as a “paradigmatic shift” to the field known as “collecting studies.”
Main questions posed by the book (roughly corresponding to chapters):
1. What things are collected, and by people from what background and social context?
• “Collectors, therefore, are not a different or in any meaningful sense a particular personally characterized group either within the survey respondents, or within the population as a whole; on the contrary, they are drawn proportionately from the general population” (p. 26).
• 42% male, 58% female described as having “normal” or “traditional” lifestyles, thus contradicting the popular image of the collector as a loner or outcast.
• Peak of collecting appears to be in early adulthood (18-30ish), second peak in late 50s and early 60s, sharp decline after age 65.
• Very small % of ethnic minorities were represented in the survey, a smaller percentage than in British population at large, but author argues that their collecting patterns are the same as non-minorities.
• Large differences between what men and women collect (e.g., machinery and musical instruments collected by men; most of the jewelry and tourist goods held by women)
• Discussion of kitsch and the “axes of value in objects and collections” (p. 41); one idea here is that people collect kitsch and tourist items both sincerely and in jest (ironically) and there is a spectrum of “quality and rubbish” as well as “masterpiece and artefact” within which you can “locate” any collectible.
• The particular category of the object that people collect does not seem to be related to class. This seems to run against the “popular wisdom” of certain classes collecting certain objects.
2. How do collectors integrate ideas about work and leisure/play into their habits and relationship with the outside world?
• A small percentage of respondents belonged to “collector’s clubs”; however, younger professionals are more likely to see demarcation between work and play as “fluid”: “their work and their collecting interlace, with the one feeding from the other” (p. 71)
• According to the survey, the notion of the collection as “set aside” and “sacred was most often expressed by more blue-collar workers, whereas younger, technologically-based professionals were more likely to express a less clear boundary between work and collecting.
3. What is the relationship between the collector and the marketplace (i.e., role of consumption)?
• About a third of the respondents gathered material “actively” (i.e., sought out particular things) whereas the rest “wait[ed] for it to appear” (p. 77). Nearly all were in some way involved in the commercial marketplace and purchased things for themselves.
• “…people’s own fierce collecting passions can and do influence perceptions of value and hence have impact upon systems” (p. 94)—in other words, people don’t necessarily fall victim to the “manipulative corporation,” despite its power.
• I wonder if the discussion of purchasing (i.e., how collectors get their material to begin with) would be wildly different now, given the tremendous success of eBay and other online brokers.
4. How does collecting operate within the family and home?
• “Family” in the study denoted “a man and a woman living together on what is intended to be a permanent basis, whether in marriage or partnership, together with any children of either of them who are living with them” (97).
• Gift giving played a critical role in the development of many collections.
• Collecting does not necessarily strengthen relationships, e.g., marriages, but can give a spouse a sense of “personal individuality” (p. 124).
• Differences between male and female patterns of collecting were touched upon. More specifically, women expect that men will live with material passed down from women’s grandmother, mother, etc., but women wouldn’t expect that they would have to live with heirlooms from men’s fathers, grandfathers, etc.
5. How does collecting inform/is informed by gender?
• Author suggests that collecting takes on a “gendered” or “sexual” meaning, and has come to be associated with discussions of sexuality.
• There are gendered associations of certain collected items; people tend to collect within widely accepted gender stereotypes.
• The particular uses of collections vary across genders— serving a memorial role (e.g., of a dead relative), intrinsic role (e.g., “to look good”), etc.
• Women are more likely to use collecting as a way to showcase family relics throughout the home; men’s collecting is more private, geared more toward control and domination. Women’s collections can actually promote family stability and the “warmth” of the household.
6. What is the collector’s inner life, of thought and feeling?
• People understand their collections in many varied ways
• The “body” is understood both as a collector’s physical body (e.g., there is a discussion of piercing and tattooing) and the “body of the world” (p.154)
• Collecting can be understood as a way of turning the physical world into an “aggregation of signs” (p. 170).
7. What would be an “integrated view” of collecting in contemporary Britain?
• The final chapter of the book again highlights some of the results presented in the previous chapters, and tries to draw out broad themes.
• Contemporary collecting is described as “postmodern”: “Collecting is therefore an emblematic activity which ransacks the past to create a present idiosyncrasy of style” (p. 14).
• Also: “Postmodernism is seen as developing an aesthetic of the body which exalts the surface of things instead of their content, to prefer appearance to meaning” (p. 177). In this way, collecting can also “deny” society’s foundational meta-narratives: “…collections are organized according to individual whim, seen as an authentic record of particular experience, rather than an affirmation of received values” (p. 177).
• Part of the postmodern “task” for the collector is making sense of himself and his experience: “…helps in the construction of a personal narrative of selfhood and recognizable, individual identity” (p. 174). Yet, at the same time, the author warns: “The role of collecting in the effort to make meaning within collectors’ lives must not be over-estimated….the obsessed collector is the anomaly, and most collectors take a relaxed, low-key, unemphatic approach, even while taking their collection seriously as a focus of their lives” (p. 184).
My critique: Having limited knowledge of this subject area, I found it hard to relate this text to some of the larger themes of our class. I appreciated Pearce’s continual discussion on the “postmodern” project of collecting, and wonder how other scholars have characterized historical collecting. Though I understand Pearce’s argument for declaring the collection of kitschy tourist memorabilia “postmodern,” would some of the same “sense making” be occurring with other collectors in earlier times? And, if so, would that still be “postmodern”? I would like to know more about the transition from individual collections to museums, as I can imagine that the process of moving from personal to “public” might have required collectors to be more deliberate and forthright about their aims. If someone were collecting medical paraphernalia just because he/she found it “interesting,” would that be enough justification to create a public viewing place? When a collection becomes public, how much (if any) interpretation is needed/expected/required? (For instance, I may have a collection of rare insects that I don’t label specifically because the information is known tacitly. If I make my collection public, how much information must I share with the public, beyond the “obvious” genus, species, etc.?)
• This book explores: how “culture is collected”; what “collections are like as culture” in their own right.
• Justification for this study, or, a “hypothesis” posed by the author: “…Collecting practice is significant in contemporary British society because it can tell us more about the nature of that society and of the individuals which comprise it; that since collecting practice is essentially an individual enterprise, understanding of it must start with the collectors themselves; and that collecting is embedded in the individual collector’s emotional, economic, and inter-personal life…” (p. 17).
• This book is based on the 1993 Contemporary Collecting in Britain Survey. This mail survey, including both multiple choice and free-response questions, was distributed to 1500 randomly selected adults in GB. This survey aimed to:
o Look at narratives of the collectors to try to determine “collecting rhetoric”
o Focus not so much on the collectors themselves, or their collections, but more on offering explanations of the process of collecting (p. 8); this is seen as a “paradigmatic shift” to the field known as “collecting studies.”
Main questions posed by the book (roughly corresponding to chapters):
1. What things are collected, and by people from what background and social context?
• “Collectors, therefore, are not a different or in any meaningful sense a particular personally characterized group either within the survey respondents, or within the population as a whole; on the contrary, they are drawn proportionately from the general population” (p. 26).
• 42% male, 58% female described as having “normal” or “traditional” lifestyles, thus contradicting the popular image of the collector as a loner or outcast.
• Peak of collecting appears to be in early adulthood (18-30ish), second peak in late 50s and early 60s, sharp decline after age 65.
• Very small % of ethnic minorities were represented in the survey, a smaller percentage than in British population at large, but author argues that their collecting patterns are the same as non-minorities.
• Large differences between what men and women collect (e.g., machinery and musical instruments collected by men; most of the jewelry and tourist goods held by women)
• Discussion of kitsch and the “axes of value in objects and collections” (p. 41); one idea here is that people collect kitsch and tourist items both sincerely and in jest (ironically) and there is a spectrum of “quality and rubbish” as well as “masterpiece and artefact” within which you can “locate” any collectible.
• The particular category of the object that people collect does not seem to be related to class. This seems to run against the “popular wisdom” of certain classes collecting certain objects.
2. How do collectors integrate ideas about work and leisure/play into their habits and relationship with the outside world?
• A small percentage of respondents belonged to “collector’s clubs”; however, younger professionals are more likely to see demarcation between work and play as “fluid”: “their work and their collecting interlace, with the one feeding from the other” (p. 71)
• According to the survey, the notion of the collection as “set aside” and “sacred was most often expressed by more blue-collar workers, whereas younger, technologically-based professionals were more likely to express a less clear boundary between work and collecting.
3. What is the relationship between the collector and the marketplace (i.e., role of consumption)?
• About a third of the respondents gathered material “actively” (i.e., sought out particular things) whereas the rest “wait[ed] for it to appear” (p. 77). Nearly all were in some way involved in the commercial marketplace and purchased things for themselves.
• “…people’s own fierce collecting passions can and do influence perceptions of value and hence have impact upon systems” (p. 94)—in other words, people don’t necessarily fall victim to the “manipulative corporation,” despite its power.
• I wonder if the discussion of purchasing (i.e., how collectors get their material to begin with) would be wildly different now, given the tremendous success of eBay and other online brokers.
4. How does collecting operate within the family and home?
• “Family” in the study denoted “a man and a woman living together on what is intended to be a permanent basis, whether in marriage or partnership, together with any children of either of them who are living with them” (97).
• Gift giving played a critical role in the development of many collections.
• Collecting does not necessarily strengthen relationships, e.g., marriages, but can give a spouse a sense of “personal individuality” (p. 124).
• Differences between male and female patterns of collecting were touched upon. More specifically, women expect that men will live with material passed down from women’s grandmother, mother, etc., but women wouldn’t expect that they would have to live with heirlooms from men’s fathers, grandfathers, etc.
5. How does collecting inform/is informed by gender?
• Author suggests that collecting takes on a “gendered” or “sexual” meaning, and has come to be associated with discussions of sexuality.
• There are gendered associations of certain collected items; people tend to collect within widely accepted gender stereotypes.
• The particular uses of collections vary across genders— serving a memorial role (e.g., of a dead relative), intrinsic role (e.g., “to look good”), etc.
• Women are more likely to use collecting as a way to showcase family relics throughout the home; men’s collecting is more private, geared more toward control and domination. Women’s collections can actually promote family stability and the “warmth” of the household.
6. What is the collector’s inner life, of thought and feeling?
• People understand their collections in many varied ways
• The “body” is understood both as a collector’s physical body (e.g., there is a discussion of piercing and tattooing) and the “body of the world” (p.154)
• Collecting can be understood as a way of turning the physical world into an “aggregation of signs” (p. 170).
7. What would be an “integrated view” of collecting in contemporary Britain?
• The final chapter of the book again highlights some of the results presented in the previous chapters, and tries to draw out broad themes.
• Contemporary collecting is described as “postmodern”: “Collecting is therefore an emblematic activity which ransacks the past to create a present idiosyncrasy of style” (p. 14).
• Also: “Postmodernism is seen as developing an aesthetic of the body which exalts the surface of things instead of their content, to prefer appearance to meaning” (p. 177). In this way, collecting can also “deny” society’s foundational meta-narratives: “…collections are organized according to individual whim, seen as an authentic record of particular experience, rather than an affirmation of received values” (p. 177).
• Part of the postmodern “task” for the collector is making sense of himself and his experience: “…helps in the construction of a personal narrative of selfhood and recognizable, individual identity” (p. 174). Yet, at the same time, the author warns: “The role of collecting in the effort to make meaning within collectors’ lives must not be over-estimated….the obsessed collector is the anomaly, and most collectors take a relaxed, low-key, unemphatic approach, even while taking their collection seriously as a focus of their lives” (p. 184).
My critique: Having limited knowledge of this subject area, I found it hard to relate this text to some of the larger themes of our class. I appreciated Pearce’s continual discussion on the “postmodern” project of collecting, and wonder how other scholars have characterized historical collecting. Though I understand Pearce’s argument for declaring the collection of kitschy tourist memorabilia “postmodern,” would some of the same “sense making” be occurring with other collectors in earlier times? And, if so, would that still be “postmodern”? I would like to know more about the transition from individual collections to museums, as I can imagine that the process of moving from personal to “public” might have required collectors to be more deliberate and forthright about their aims. If someone were collecting medical paraphernalia just because he/she found it “interesting,” would that be enough justification to create a public viewing place? When a collection becomes public, how much (if any) interpretation is needed/expected/required? (For instance, I may have a collection of rare insects that I don’t label specifically because the information is known tacitly. If I make my collection public, how much information must I share with the public, beyond the “obvious” genus, species, etc.?)
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