Marjorie and Mitchell Schwarzer at Pompeii
Mitchell Schwarzer is Professor Emeritus of Art and Architectural History at California College of the Arts. He has written extensively on modern European and American architecture, memorialization, and urban history. Marjorie Schwarzer is the author of Riches, Rivals, and Radicals: A History of Museums in the United States. In addition to her professional museum work around the world, she has taught museum studies at the graduate level at JFK University and University of San Francisco. They are teaching "What Do Museums Do?" with us this spring.
So of course I have to ask: What do museums do?
Marjorie: Museums are complicated beasts. We think that museums take a bunch of objects, put them out on display, and visitors come in and see them. On the surface, that is what museums actually do.
But to get more philosophical about it, museums reflect what's going on in the world back to us. They do that by collecting material culture that tells stories about the world from different points of view, and they take care and safeguard those objects and those archives. By doing so, they also safeguard memory and legacy. The way I see it, museums serve as bridges across generations. They do this not just through exhibits, but through education, documentation, and creating these really unique public spaces in society where people can come together.
Mitchell: I think you have to look at museums and their collections as storytelling. The question is, who's telling the story? Historically it was royalty and clergy who collected these objects. They’re the ones who opened the first museums or places of exhibition. Then it was wealthy industrialists and governments who pioneered public museums. Furthermore, you have to look at where the objects are coming from and how they're getting into museums. Who is donating or buying them, and what stories do they want to be told with these objects?
I imagine the storytelling is key.
Marjorie: If you look around the world and at the phenomenon of nation building and nationalism, including in the U.S., back in the 1770s, one of the first things nations do when they gain independence from colonial forces is the founding of museums. This goes back to the history of the Louvre, the Rijksmuseum, to all the way to museums in India, Mexico and Ghana. Sometimes we talk about museums as soft power, communicating a message about civilization and society through these public spaces.
Mitchell: You have to add that the first museums founded in Asia, Latin America or Africa were founded on European models, so that you have colonial powers orchestrating both the archeology that digs up the objects, and then the actual philosophy of showing them and what they mean to those who control the message. There was a transition from the ruling colonial powers from the 19th century into the 20th century where you have national governments taking over, and telling their different stories. To this day, some countries do it really well and are very proud of it, and other countries hardly do it at all.
What’s an example of a museum doing it well and vice versa?
Mitchell: We were just in Lithuania, Poland and Germany. The Polish attention to telling their story through museums was astounding. We went to POLIN in Warsaw, a museum concentrating on the thousand years of Polish Jewry and then, in Gdansk, a museum telling the history of the Second World War from a Polish point of view. There was also a museum that told the history of the communist era and the Solidarity movement. These are huge museums, enormous efforts, really detailed and comprehensive. It was quite the contrast in neighboring Lithuania. We were astonished that the national museum was shuttered. A sign said it was under renovation, but it looked like nothing was happening.
Theoretically, Lithuania has the same motivation as Poland to tell their stories. They were both part of the Soviet sphere after the Second World War. So why is Poland going gangbusters with the planned opening of a huge national museum of Polish history in Warsaw next year, and Lithuania, admittedly a much smaller country but nonetheless wealthy, not appearing to do much with their national museum?
What U.S. museums stand out to you in terms of national messaging? We certainly have a lot of them.
Marjorie: I would say, from my perspective, the most important museum that we have opened in the U.S. in recent times is the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It’s an extraordinarily moving and exceptional museum. It took 100 years or more of advocacy to build. It tells the African American story through the lens of the United States and it’s highly effective in doing that.
What types of museums are you going to focus on in your course?
Mitchell: We’re going to sketch the history of museums from Neo-Babylonia, some 2500 years ago, to the present moment. We’re going to talk about the Christian Church’s exhibition of relics and sacred representations, the royalty’s collection of an immense range of works — called Cabinets of Curiosity. We’re going to discuss the emergence of the public museum, new display techniques, and the revolutionary ideas of modernism in the 20th century. We’ll cover art, natural history and history museums, curation as well as education. We’ll end with current ethical questions.
What do you hope OLLI members take away from your course?
Marjorie: We hope they will be motivated to visit more museums with a greater appreciation of the decisions that led them to where they are today.
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