In 2009, I wrote about museums, perception identity and David Bowie. I’ve put it here.
Back in May, a minister of the Copperbelt region of Zambia made a statement that museums were academic sites that helped promote tourism and not centres of witchcraft. Zambia still has a Witchcraft Act that can punish practitioners with jail time. There are many who prefer the more traditional process of accusing someone of harvesting child organs and beating them to death. Understand the severity of the situation for a politician to make this statement on International Museums Day where the theme was museums and tourism. “Please don’t set fire to our museums and their staff. We need them so people visit our country”.
Ten years ago, then-mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani had his Catholic sensibilities so offended by Chris Ofili’s ‘The Holy Virgin Mary’ and the Sensation exhibition that he tried to cut Brooklyn Museum’s funding. Because of the media-sparked outrage Sensation caused, Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold Lehman is forced to wear a bullet-proof vest.
NOT WITCHCRAFT is about the perception of museums, especially the perception that lies underneath attempts at branding. Any deviation from the construct we build up causes our most base human emotions to react.
The current trend for museums is to be NEW perceived as family-orientated as possible. This is often paired with “child-friendliness” and government white papers turning museums into part-time school classrooms with full-time agendas. Interestingly, Giuliani’s legal team said that Brooklyn Museum’s decision to not allow children unaccompanied by an adult into Sensations breaches the part of the lease that demands open access. The First Amendment got turned into a weird joke; we are trying to censor you because of your responsible censoring.
The British press had their own crusade against Sensation, sparking protests outside the Royal College of Arts and one account of egg throwing. The target was Marcus Harvey’s nineby-eleven foot painting of child murderer Myra Hindley’s mug shot, made up of thousands of child sized hand-prints. Not exactly a symbol of a pedagogical attitude.
In contrast, the perception museums fear most is being branded as “old fashioned”, a bizarre image of the dusty old institute of curiosa with a dusty old curator. This label with its connotations is probably borrowed from the fantasy about libraries. Labyrinthine buildings full of dark passageways and blind corners, hitting the fear centre with thoughts of being lost, and those who are lost are targets for predators. If a museum looks like something from a penny dreadful, it is more down to the curator’s loss of love for the job than any intentional action. Also, we know that museums are NOT WITCHCRAFT.
Then there’s the third perception. It doesn’t often get spoken about. It comes from that part of our brains that we try to cover with ideas about high culture. It’s that area at the fringe of our minds. Those dark places where Gods live. It’s the little voice that hears NOT WITCHCRAFT and replies, “Are you sure?” It’s the source of our consciousness that interprets two or our more consistent behaviour: Valuation and superstition, worth and meaning…
The Genesis of the museum has been masked but not forgotten. Boil down the museum to its lowest common denominator and you would find a collection of immense material wealth assigned with great importance. Forget the idea that the museum started as the collections of sixteenth century ‘private individuals’. It goes much further back than that. It hasn’t changed much since the first appearance of the caste that called themselves king, shaman or god. A large pile of treasure goes a long way to help your image, especially when those treasures become your symbols, creating a symbiotic relationship between wealth and power. Humans don’t need much encouragement to assign the supernatural to objects. Whether it is our toys coming to life at night, a cursed painting or the Hammer of Thor, we will always find an outlet for that mysterious voice.
This is why we look at a human body in a museum display and can’t help but wonder if the spirits would be angry. This is why museums often get letters asking if they can have their ancestors back, please. This is why a local museum could agitate the locals when there’s stuff hanging on the walls that looks pretty similar to the stuff owned by that guy who cursed an entire village. This is why staring into the cold hand-printed eyes of a killer chills us to our very soul.
Museums perpetrate this equation despite denying it: The value of an object is multiplied by its emotional/spiritual/metaphorical value. To many, this value can be worked out to be a negative number. This is probably why the most common criticism against modern/contemporary art is “I/My child could have done that!” or “That’s not art!” The monetary value is too high compared to its emotional void, spiritual bankruptcy or low metaphorical worth. Karl Freund’s only acting appearance satirised this, playing an art dealer who sweeps up the tobacco ash of a famous painter. Also, people get angry when an object contradicts their sense of emotional/spiritual/ metaphorical scale.
1980, David Bowie is dressed like Pierrot, the sad Commedia dell’Arte character who pines after what he desires. “We all know Major Tom’s a junkie”, Bowie sings, commenting on his astronaut persona who left the materialistic Earth and has became addicted to the Heavens.
But when an object rates highly on these scales as well as high monetary value, it sets off our understanding that he with the most, wins. The ancient kings taught us that their godhood proved them victorious. They are gone now, either killed off or amalgamated into legends or part of someone else’s myth. In their places is the Public Trust. Somehow the collection belongs to us all. But there’s that little thing that tickles at the back of our heads that wishes we had such wonderful things. We appreciate that ownership is a former ideal. We wish we were like those old Gods. But we fear such ambitions.
1999, David Bowie is taking the members of his Bowienet on a virtual tour around Brooklyn Museum’s Sensation exhibit, after calling it the “…most important showing since the Armoury Show…”. The same Armoury Show that caused President Theodore Roosevelt to exclaim “That’s not art!”
The museum’s image and stereotype of itself doesn’t tend to account for the two motivations of Want or Worship, too concerned with attracting families with “We’re not stuffy, honestly!” Outside voices are needed to tell the harsh truth. The museum is rarely a setting for anything nice in film or literature. Mostly varying degrees of crime or the paranormal, especially theft or curses.
Early 1920s, the ‘Curse of the Pharaohs’ is becoming popular newspaper fodder and Arthur Conan Doyle is telling everyone that those who died after opening Tutankhamen tomb were killed by elementals summoned by ancient Egyptian priests. No one thought to question the mental health of a man who claimed Houdini was a wizard.
One of the journalists was John L. Balderston, who would go on to write the screenplay for the 1932 film ‘The Mummy’, directed by Karl Freund. The first victim in the film is the young archaeologist who is motivated by winning a British Museum medal. You wonder if this is all the British Museum’s fault. Material motivations to obtain the objects of the old Gods will only lead to tragedy. From their formation during the Enlightenment, museums have had a firm grip upon fact as a basis, leading to others to instil their own perceptions upon a collection, despite the museums best efforts in assuring people that they are NOT WITCHCRAFT.
Here’s an idea: let’s take the ancient artefact from The Mummy that brings something to life then mix it with Toy Story, where things come to life when you’re not looking. Let’s use this to resurrect Ben Stiller’s career. I think we can get two films out of this.
James Smithson was the British scientist and member of the Royal Society whose bequest lead to the founding of the Smithsonian Institute. Considering his strong ideological connection to the Enlightenment, he would probably have baulked at his legacy being the setting of fanciful magic. Then again, he used to chew rocks.
Night at the Museum and its sequel represent an intersection of several aspects of how we handle material culture. Firstly, the abject awe at a relatively mundane artefact because of its biographical links to an age before European materialism. Next, the fantasy that our mass-manufactured consumer goods have a secret life. The knowledge that museums are NOT WITCHCRAFT despite the dualism of its self image and stereotypes portrayed in other media. It doesn’t matter if the object is ancient or plastic, people are able to assign magic to it. Large amounts of artefacts in one place surrounded by experts declaring their importance are like magnets to iron filings in the human psyche.
Ieoh Ming Pei is probably sick of this. Dan Brown’s exercise in apophenia may not have made a massive impact to the visitor numbers of the Louvre but it made enough of an impact for the museum to start Fact or Fiction tours. François Mitterrand wasn’t specific in his commission. There are more than 666 glass panes in the large pyramid-shaped plaza. The small pyramid beneath the Pyramide Inversée skylight can actually be moved and isn’t the tip of a large tomb. Any curator murdered inside a museum probably upset a conservator.
In an alternative version of the future year 1999, Detective Professor Nathan Adler investigates Art-Crime. The dismembered and mutilated torso of a fourteen year old is strung up between the pillars of the doorway to the Museum of Modern Parts. Adler knows it’s murder, but is it art?
The square pyramid is a simple geometric shape yet heavy with meaning. The volume is calculated by multiplying the area of the base with the height and dividing by three. Their specific use was as large burial tombs for the deities that walked the land. They would be filled with treasure, possessions and the occasional slave for use in the afterlife. The ancient Egyptians understood the link between wealth and power. Godhood is eternal
The architect of the first proto-pyramid in Egypt was the vizier to the Pharaoh Djoser, high priest to Ra and origin of the name given to the Boris Karloff character, Imhotep. He is also the earliest known architect to use columns in his designs.
Robert Hooke was Curator of Experiments at the Royal Society, inventor of the word “cell” to describe the basic unit of life and long-time collaborator with Sir Christopher Wren. One of Hooke’s works was Montagu House, which would become the first home of the British Museum. Seventy years later, it was demolished to make way for a massive Neoclassical extension designed by Robert Smirke. The Greek-style façade of the museum entrance, almost 4500 years after Imhotep, consisted of columns holding up a triangle. This is the closest thing the world of museums have to a universal symbol, even as the museums become architecturally diverse.
“The Joy I See, Thru’ These Architect’s Eyes,” sings Bowie.
1972 and the British Museum enjoys its most popular exhibition. Fifty objects to celebrate the fifty years since their discovery: the Treasures of Tutankhamen. Robert Smirke was taught architecture by Sir John Soane, who purchased the sarcophagus of the Pharaoh Seti I to display in his house museum. Strangely, Seti I was the Pharaoh whose fictionalised murder in the 1999 remake of The Mummy that lead to Imhotep’s punishment. Sir Christopher Wren had trained Nicholas Hawksmoor in architecture and commissioned him to build six churches. When it comes to architectural conspiracy, Hawksmoor is the granddaddy of them all. The location of all six churches apparently outlines the Eye of Horus on a map and the Whitechapel murders occurred on these lines. From this, it can get bizarre very fast. Satanism, Masonic Lodges, bastard children of Royalty and the ritual sacrifice of all womanhood - all wrapped up in the legends of East London. These threads are best described in the graphic novel From Hell. St Anne’s Limehouse Church was intended to be topped by a pyramid. It is still in the graveyard.
I. M. Pei can count himself lucky it was Dan Brown. If Alan Moore had written the Da Vinci Code, we would all believe that the upwardspointing triangle on top of Greco-Egyptian motif of columns was a symbol of the male dominance of civilisation. Or something.
Bowie again. “Talking about art is like dancing about architecture,” and this waltz has gone on long enough. We understand architecture in terms of status and power. There is power in buildings and urbanism, especially over the human imagination. There are three cities in the world that have psychological disorders named after them. Florence Syndrome is an art-induced ecstasy. Jerusalem Syndrome is the overwhelming sensation by the iconography of the centre of Abrahamic religions. Then there is Paris Syndrome because Paris is a city geared to be an endless grindstone of tourism.
Even though it is said to be influenced by a range of Islamic architecture, the steppedand-sandy-coloured Museum of Islamic Art in Doha looks like it fits right next to Djoser’s Step Pyramid in Memphis. Over 4600 years apart yet the tradition of the spectacular gesture of a building filled with stuff continues. The museum clings onto its Enlightenment heritage and exclaims NOT WITCHCRAFT as a way of denying its more ancient roots. Despite the layers upon layers of academia, they instil the same awe within us as our ancestors. Only the awe is channelled into different areas and leaks out into and over the media. We stare into these temples of materialism as their internal function becomes more separated from the outside. Places of worship the world over are almost instantly recognised through cultural signposts that focus the emotional state into the glorification of the divine. The treasure rooms and burial sites of ancient monarchs were for the same purpose except the deity was a walking, talking person. Are museums for the equivalent acclamation of humankind? Depends on your view on statements such as Smithson’s bequest that the money be used for “increase and diffusion of knowledge”. It could be, remembering the Enlightenment’s fetish for all things Rational.
That can’t be it, can it? These glorious buildings filled with wondrous treasures and we are to study them, measure them and look for patterns? Maybe we struggle with the concept of the “public trust” because we are still built to think in terms of the haves and have-nots. So museums become a backdrop of materialism in settings of fantasy. Do conservators make objects feel better about themselves like Woody in Toy Story 2? Are museum workers in danger of being possessed by 17th century paintings like in Ghostbusters 2? Is there a security guard in a New York museum wondering if the displays are moving around at night? Think about that security guard. Of course, he doesn’t deal with the supernatural. Museums are NOT WITCHCRAFT. It’s just a building filled with things.
The security guard has no time for magical nonsense. He has to deal with the very real issues of security and people. Like this man here. He has sandy hair and is quite handsome. He opens his mouth to speak and says:
“Afghanistan banana stand.”
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