Museums in a postmodern world: collections, exhibitions and opinions

Abstract

Since the late 1980s museums have been simultaneously described as undergoing unprecedented growth and being in danger of extinction, as their traditional practices have come under attack from various directions. Perhaps the greatest intellectual change in museums has been a shift from the profession being essentially conservative (with or without a capital 'C') to one whose language reflects a left-wing pedigree. This has led to a greater emphasis on the present instead of posterity, people instead of collections and access instead of scholarship. A 'New Museology' was established (Vergo, 1989) and the writing of postmodern critics, such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, was introduced to the literature (e.g. Ames, 1986: Hooper-Greenhill, 1992). Simultaneously, there has been a growth in consumerism and the 'leisure industry', which also encouraged people to visit museums. These two developments, while linked, have not created a coherent intellectual framework for museums. Instead, uncertainty continues as museums try to justify the continued care of vast collections created in a different age by claiming to be both socially useful and economically productive. Suzanne Keene's paper (this issue) highlights these tensions, suggesting that a postmodern critique can explain this predicament and offer salvation. Postmodernism has been described as many things, including 'an analytic scatterbomb waiting to be randomly secreted in argument by the cultural terrorist' (Jenks, 1993: 138). I therefore shirk from discussing Keene's identification of four perspectives or arguing whether or not her prescriptions are appropriately postmodern. Instead, while agreeing that using collections should be the main purpose of museums, it is the way that collections embody all that is not solid that is most powerful.