Past and presentation

Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives in the Paradigm Shift

Are we relevant yet? Many museums need to ask themselves that very question. In his landmark call to arms, A Place to Remember. Using History to Build Community, Robert R. Archibald issues a wake-up call to the public history community when he warns that. In the future, history will matter more than ever. In the past we could be mirrors on the margins, but now our skills are demanded by communities pursuing new decision-making process, seeking new methods of doing civic business, hither public history organizations assume a pivotal role in this process, or we will be sidelined far from where communities do the business that really matters."

Veteran public historian Gail Anderson has answered that call in Reinventing the Museum. Challenging museum leaders "to be alert, questioning, and committed to the ongoing challenge of making museums a relevant and integral part of civic life," Anderson frames the ongoing dialogue shaping todays public history organizations.

In a comprehensive collection of 34 essays, written by such notables as Stephen E. Weil, John Cotton Dana, Kathleen McLean, Marie C. Malaro and others, editor Anderson has assembled a formidable array of pioneering intellectual thought addressing the paradigm shift in public history since 1900. Divided into five sections covering "the challenge to remain relevant," the role of the public, public service, the nature and import of museum collections, and the "essential ingredient" of leadership, these articles tackle some thorny, perennial problems inherent in historical agencies today.

Indeed, many of the challenges that John Cotton Dana sought to overcome in the 1920s are, even today, obstacles to many museums as they seek relevance and the embrace of the public. In this quest to become socially responsive, museums must adapt, become flexible, and must embrace change. According to Anderson, these goals can only be accomplished through the rearrangement of an historical agency's mission and through visionary leadership.

Some of the more interesting discussions in this section revolve around the tradition or the curator as the scholarly voice of authority determining exhibit content. This arrangement has been under increasing scrutiny from various special interests and special cultural groups seeking input, access, and even content control. Sometimes contentious, other times embarrassing, is it really wrong to include others? Read this book to see how your organization can be more pluralistic.

While most authors in this work explicitly agree that museums have a primary duty to educate the public, the exact role of a museum's collection was, and is, the source of some debate. Noting that "...the very nature of an object changes when it becomes a museum object," Duncan F. Cameron and others, warn us as an industry to carefully consider the mission, cost, meaning, and long-term conservation needs of objects as they are brought into collections. As American museum collections are currently growing in excess of 1 percent per year and carry an annual cost of $30 to $100 to just maintain one object, these warnings should be heeded. Further, what is collected can be a political statement or an accommodation to connoisseurship. Whatever the end result, collections help determine the educational output of each museum.

Especially promising in this compilation were the articles dedicated to the "role of leadership." Stephen E. Weil's question, "Are you really worth what you cost or just merely worthwhile?", is a pointed, prescient query. This question hits the jugular vein of the industry during one of its most challenging economic periods. As of 2004, most states in America have reduced funding for cultural and historical agencies out of necessity and in reaction to a stumbling economy. How, then, can museums and cultural agencies survive?

Here authors rightly promote and applaud the benefits of sound, businesslike management, board and staff accountability, and acceptance of change. Critical to growth and survival, however, are the fourteen points "toward a new governance as proposed by John Carver. Declaring that the nonprofit sector is riddled with governance flaws; that boards, like the emperor, "have no clothes"; and that boards are generally either too weak or too strong and meddlesome, Carver asks that boards return to vision, values, and mission to more directly accomplish their goals. Carver's version of "tough love" applies to thousands of museums across the country both large and small.

Robert Janes' "Persistent Paradoxes" explicitly states that there are indeed too many museums for too few resources. His message: Throw off the weight and tyranny of nonproductive tradition. Embrace change, pluralism, and diversity to survive and to flourish, or be marginalized. We all need to look in a mirror. Janes offers hope through a new "Federalism. This concept would embrace extensive collaboration, cooperation, and even the sharing of collections. In federalism, the center of

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an organization would coordinate outlying groups and these groups would then supply the "initiative, drive and the energy" to accomplish a task. This arrangement would utilize both centralization and decentralization with the organization "led from the center but managed by its parts."

By combining these noted authors into one volume, Gail Anderson has created a useful primer for anyone interested in the past and current evolution of museology. Although the pioneering works of Carol Kammen and Robert Archibald are notably absent, this book is a "must have" resource for historical administration and public history courses and is a needed addition to the bookshelves of museum industry veterans. Editor Anderson makes it clear that today's museums can neither rest on good intentions, nor place all hope on flashy exhibits and rare works of art and expect to make a difference in their communities. Instead, Anderson reminds trustees and senior staff that, "it is the vision and the quality of leadership that make the difference."

—John Weck
Sycamore

John Week is an Illinois State Historical Society Advisory Board member and has a M.A. in American History from Northern Illinois University. John recently completed coursework for a M.A. in Historical Administration from Eastern Illinois University.

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