DOES ALL OF THIS BELONG TO YOU?: PUBLIC SPACE IN THE GLAM SECTOR

GLAM Guide | Madison Carmichael

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More than a century ago, in 1917, John Cotton Dana – a Progressive Era thinker and a proponent for the re-imagination of the public library – wrote an essay titled: “The Gloom of the Museum.” With eerie accuracy, Dana said of the museum that:

“They become enamoured of rarity, of history … They become lost in their specialties and forget their museum. They become lost in their idea of a museum and forget its purpose. They become lost in working out their idea of a museum and forget their public. And soon, not being brought constantly in touch with the life of their community … they become entirely separated from it and go on making beautifully complete and very expensive collections but never construct a living, active, and effective institution.” (Source)

102 years ago, John Cotton Dana grappled with the same problem of museums that we here in Museum Studies grapple with today. As I said, it’s eerie. It’s troubling. And it’s something of a wake-up call. As museums continue to wrestle with their relevancy, they also wrestle with their purpose and, as Dana points out, if the museum forgets their purpose they forget their public and are inevitably estranged. 

For the purposes of this article, I am intrigued by how Dana ties purpose to public. There’s some consensus to the idea that museums – and most GLAM institutions writ large – exist for the benefit of the public. But are they public spaces? 

This bold, bright claim served as the title and centerpiece for the Victoria & Albert Museum's 2015 Exhibition. (Source)

The image above is from the Victoria & Albert Museum’s “All of This Belongs to You” Exhibition in 2015. Already that intrigued me, but if you will – just for a moment – divorce the image from its institution, the sentiment is somehow even more striking. Imagine walking into a museum that declares, in bright, white lights, that all of this belongs to you. I’m not sure I’d buy it. 

This exhibition took place during election season in Britain, back in 2015. At the time, the V&A sought to examine the role of public institutions in contemporary life and their role as stewards of a national collection. The exhibition sought to question the opportunities, obligations, and limits to participation in the V&A and explored how design and architecture define civic identity, citizenship, democracy, the public realm, and the urban experience. 

Civic identity, democracy, and the public realm: although the latter could be otherwise known as the public sphere, which is comprised of public spaces. 

This glass chandelier hangs in the V&A Rotunda, at the entrance to the museum. (Source)

Public space is a broad and perhaps a murky term. The important part is that it must host, to some extent, discourse that is of public importance. As defined by Jennifer Barrett, in her book, “Museums and the Public Sphere,” public spaces are spaces of contestation within civil society. It is perhaps redundant on my part to add that museums are certainly sites of contestation, but I think that it’s worth questioning for whom they are sites of contestation. Museums are, as Barrett argues, often excluded from consideration as public spaces due to their status as institutions of the state.

Laura Raicovich writes from the Brooklyn Public Library, which has 59 branches throughout Brooklyn. This library endeavors to cultivate curiosity and to encourage their visitors to question their society. (Source)

In contrast, libraries are often considered to possess a public spirit that museums do not. In her examination of the Brooklyn Public Library, Laura Raicovich explains that as a public space, the library’s job is to encourage its visitors’ capacity to question their reality and dig into their discomfort. She critically states that: “a true public space is constantly negotiating knowledge or the lack of it, rather than presenting a position of expertise.” Public spaces must not only be open to contestation; they must welcome it. To her, libraries – and public spaces more broadly – should be considered by the public as spaces within which they can negotiate issues of public importance.

Library and Archives Canada acquires, preserves, and provides access to documentary heritage for any curious Canadians. (Source)

This is also true of public archives, despite how popular culture might paint them (i.e., dusty, dim, and disorderly), for they too possess a civic-minded spirit. According to Jennifer Anderson, an archivist from Library and Archives Canada, public archives believe that the truth matters, and their research is concerned with understanding the past. Archivists operate on the conviction that people have a right to understand their society, so they engage in community outreach, research, and teaching, and in doing so, they hope to model engaged citizenship and organize their values around democracy and respect for people. In short, they endeavor to convey ideals of the public good and ideas of public importance. 

The John Madejski Garden rests at the heart of the V&A. It serves as a place to gather, rest, and view outdoor displays. Could this be a public space? (Source.)

So, where does that leave museums and galleries? Have museums truly, as John Cotton Dana put it, become so devoted to the creation of intricate, show-stopping exhibitions at the expense of any efforts to become “a living, active, and effective institution”? I have no concrete answer to offer you. It’s a question we’re still tossing around. But this much is clear: if we want the museum to belong to us, as the V&A purported back in 2015, then museums and galleries must become sites where people can explore, discuss, and address matters of public importance despite their status as institutions of the state. 

I’ll leave you with this. In 2017 – a century exactly from John Cotton Dana – at the Ontario Museums Associations conference, Dr. Guy Berthiaume spoke to the value of memory organizations. Of GLAM institutions, he said: “GLAMs represent not only safety, but freedom. Freedom to think and to question, to create, and, of course, to disagree.” I like the sound of that. But I’m not sure I’ll buy it until we see more of an effort on part of museums to open up their space for questioning, creating, and disagreeing, for the welcoming of a diversity of voices, or for a more concrete assertion that the museum is indeed a living, active, and effective space that belongs to us all.