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Self-representation in museums: therapy or democracy?

2010; Routledge; Volume: 7; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17405904.2010.511837

1740-5912

Nancy Thumim,

Art Education and Development

Abstract This article explores the discourses of citizenship through which the museum institution is currently framing its public: museum-goers as participants. Drawing on qualitative research on the London's Voices project at the Museum of London, and 1934: A New Deal For Artists at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC, this paper examines the ways in which the contemporary museum, and cultural policy internationally, has converged around the activity of inviting members of the public to 'speak for themselves' through a variety of media technologies. Discursive analysis of such mediated activities as activities of self-representation suggests that this strategy of participation is simultaneously both productive and uneasy, as questions of institutional legitimacy and citizen empowerment co-exist within the broader social context of the self-speaking or auto/biographical society. Keywords: self-representationparticipationpublicmuseumtherapeuticcitizenshipdemocraticculturediscoursemediationnew media Notes I first came across this term during the 1990s when interviewing producers of Video Nation at the Community Programmes Unit at the BBC. For a discussion of the tensions surrounding the construct 'ordinary people', see Thumim Citation(2006). Contemporary institutional discourses of participatory community are part of what has been called the Post-Washington consensus wherein policies of the New Right were followed by attempts by the Clinton and Blair administrations to temper the free reign of the market in some areas of life (see Mayo, Citation2006). At the time of writing there is a highly publicised invitation to the public in the UK to contribute to a British Museum/BBC co-project called A History of the World in 100 objects: 'Add your object and help tell a history of our world'; http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/. Instructions state that the personal should link to broader historical – so that ordinary experience is used to shed light on known historical events. The UK data cited in this article are taken from the years 2005–2008 and yet, at time of completing this article, in 2009, the trend discussed seems only to be more pronounced in the UK. For example see the Arts Council of England's current homepage and emphasis on 'experience'. The following excerpts are from the Smithsonian Institution's Strategic Plan (accessed September 2009) taken from the Smithsonian Institution website (comprising a number of museums and including the Smithsonian Museum); http://www.si.edu/about/documents/SI_Strategic_Plant_Exec_Summary.pdf (last accessed 24 September 2009). Heritage Lottery Fund; http://www.hlf.org.uk/english (retrieved 10 July 2008). The following excerpts are from the Smithsonian Institution's Strategic Plan (accessed September 2009) taken from the Smithsonian Institution website (comprising a number of museums and including the Smithsonian Museum); http://www.si.edu/about/documents/SI_Strategic_Plant_Exec_Summary.pdf (last accessed 24 September 2009). See, for example, Leo Marx's classic discussion of the 'technological sublime' in nineteenth century American Literature (Marx, Citation1964). Of course the question of technological properties and democratic praxis leads to a wider area of debate about the role (and challenges) of new media in organising for social change. See for example Fenton Citation(2007).