The Museum of Australian Democracy: A House for the People?
2010; Routledge; Volume: 41; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/1031461x.2010.499601
ISSN1940-5049
Autores Tópico(s)Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation
ResumoAbstract One of the things that I think is missing, and in fact people have talked about this since the 1920s, is a counterpoint to Parliament House, a house for the people, if you want, where you can have civic engagement in democratic dialogue.Footnote1 1Peter Shergold quoted in Kate Evans, ‘“Missing” national institution proposed for Canberra’, ABC News Online, 26 March 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/26/2857655.htm Acknowledgements I would like to thank Kate Cowie (Museum of Australian Democracy), Mat Trinca (National Museum of Australia), and Sarah Engledow (National Portrait Gallery) for their lively and astute contributions to the ‘Museums and Citizenship’ seminar which I chaired at the National Museum of Australia on 2 June. The session further extended my thinking on the topic. Notes 1Peter Shergold quoted in Kate Evans, ‘“Missing” national institution proposed for Canberra’, ABC News Online, 26 March 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/26/2857655.htm 2Peter Shergold quoted in Kate Evans, ‘“Missing” national institution proposed for Canberra’, ABC News Online, 26 March 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/26/2857655.htm . 3Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press; Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1989). For discussion see Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, theory, politics (London and New York: Routledge, 1995); Tony Bennett, ‘Exhibition, Difference, and the Logic of Culture’, Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations, ed. Ivan Karp, Corinne A. Kratz, Lynn Szwaja, and Tomas Ybarra-Frausto (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 46–9; and Kylie Message, New Museums and the Making of Culture (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006). 4Dawn Casey, ‘The National Museum of Australia’, in National Museums: Negotiating Histories conference proceedings, ed. Darryl McIntyre and Kirsten Wehner (Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2001), 3–11, 3. 5Kylie Message, New Museums and the Making of Culture, 169. 6See, for example, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, http://constitutioncenter.org 7Commonwealth of Australia, Old Parliament House and Curtilage Management Plan 2008–2013 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2008), 263. 8The implications of key political events beyond the site are rather gloriously depicted in the 1983 television miniseries The Dismissal (dir. George Miller, Phillip Noyce, George Ogilvie et al.), in which authentic television news coverage of Whitlam's dismissal is montaged against scenes of union protest in Australian cities and towns, and accompanied by a (fictional) voice-over commenting: ‘for a moment it seemed the very fabric of Australian society may unravel…’ 9Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, theory, politics. 10Kim Rubenstein, ‘Citizenship and the centenary – inclusion and exclusion in 20th century Australia’, Melbourne University Law Review, 24, no. 3 (December 2000): 576–608, 579. 11Museum of Australian Democracy, Strategic Plan 2009–2012 (Canberra: Museum of Australian Democracy, nd), 1. 12The first segment of the Australian Democracy gallery is entitled ‘People Power: Many voices of change’. It explains: ‘A democracy is made up of many voices. Throughout history, these voices have had an impact on how we live today. While some have been silenced, many have spoken up about their ideas. Their dreams and passions have given others the courage to speak. Democracy is about differences of opinion and being able to express those differences freely. What does democracy mean to you?’ Soon after the museum opened, David Barnett (a conservative commentator who had been involved in earlier debates over the National Museum of Australia) criticised as biased the process by which the MoAD solicited responses from its audiences: ‘Many of the museum's displays are interactive. They offer touch-screens that pose questions and invite responses. All of them question the way democracy functions in Australia. All of them suggest that the way we are governed needs fixing. Disguised as polling, they undermine the Constitution and belief in our institutions’. David Barnett, ‘The Museum against Democracy’, Quadrant Online, LIII, no. 10, Oct. 2009, http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/10/the-museum-against-democracy. 13Kate Cowie, ‘Creating the Gallery of Australian Democracy’, Presentation to Museums Australia conference, Canberra 2007. 14Cowie, ‘Creating the Gallery of Australian Democracy’. 15Cowie explains that in ‘telling stories about our political system and our past, we found that democracy is much broader than that, opening doors into many issues. We've followed a trend that's growing in world museum studies, where the building becomes a museum not just of objects but of ideas’. She cites the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool as influential for demonstrating ‘how the big ideas of humankind are expressed in our material culture’. Cowie quoted in Penny McLintock, ‘New Life for Old Parliament House’, ABC Online News, 8 May 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/08/2564877.htm 16Parker quoted in ibid. 17Ruth B. Phillips, ‘Comments’ on James Clifford, ‘Looking Several Ways: Anthropology and Native Heritage in Alaska’, Current Anthropology, 45, no. 1, February 2004: 5–30, 22. 18See Commonwealth of Australia, Old Parliament House and Curtilage Management Plan 2008–2013; Commonwealth of Australia, Old Parliament House Annual Report 2008–09 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2009). 19Museum of Australian Democracy, Strategic Plan 2009–2012, 2. 20This requires the exhibitions remain current in the stories they tell. It requires the museum website to remain apprised of contemporary debates (engaging for example, with political analysis as well as news and social media sites committed to unpacking election campaigns and political intrigues). Most importantly, it requires the museum to continue to grow its influence in areas beyond Canberra, by developing outreach programs that offer an interface (a virtual ‘front entrance’ of the building) between a range of sectors and spheres that encourages people to think about what democracy is, where it happens, and how they contribute to its ongoing development. 21Kevin Rudd, ‘Apology to Australia's Indigenous Peoples’, House of Representatives, Parliament House, Canberra, 13 February 2008. 22Peter Vergo, The New Museology (London: Reaktion Books, 1989); Dawn Casey, ‘The National Museum of Australia’; Kylie Message, New Museums and the Making of Culture.
Referência(s)