According to sociologists, such as Anthony Giddens and others, modernity is characterized by its reflexivity. Here is a self-reflexive museum for you: the Cité de Sciences in Parc de la Villette, Paris, reflecting itself in the silver dome of its own IMAX movie theatre. To be honest, I was a bit underwhelmed by the science centre – but the park was nice

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This is #6 of the Museum Pics of the Week. Please come back in (about) a week to see the next one. Or follow me on Google+.

Today I attended the conference ”Sharing is caring – digital cultural heritage for all”. Lots of interesting presentations and discussions about how museums can – and should – use digital media, to make their collections more accessible, and to turn their audience into participants.

To do this we of course have to overcome technical obstacles. But probably even more organizational and even mental obstacles. And then there are all the issues raised by copyright and digital rights management. During the discussions of concepts such as Creative Commons and Public Domain, I got a sense of déjà vu. Suddenly it occurred to me: the museum as institution is inherently Public Domain.

Following Krzysztof Pomian,  a museum can be defined as a collection of natural or cultural objects
taken out of utilitarian circulation, placed under special protection and made
accessible to the public. Collections are nothing new in history. But the museum is not just a collection – it is a public collection. The museum, in a modern sense, does not belong to any individual – it belongs to an association, a public authority or the state. The private collection is a subjective endeavour, the public museum is inter-subjective. The museum has durability, independent of a human life span.

Museum visitor and future democratic citizen

The museum has its roots in the era of enlightenment and absolutism. But it acquired its present meaning with the formation of the bourgeois nation state. The museum, as we know it today, is closely connected with the concept of democracy: On one hand, it’s an element in the gradual recognition of the universal human rights to education and cultural fulfilment. On the other hand, the museum is also a vehicle for infusing national sentiments into the citizens, the new subjects of history, and to legitimate the nation-state.

The modern museum rests on the hope, that by looking at the objects – the left-over’s from history – in a certain, scientific way, it is possible to get behind their surface, and gain a deeper understanding of their original context, which we are otherwise separated from in time or space. This is the informative purpose of the museum.

But another, less obvious, but in reality equally important purpose of the modern museum, is
the formative one: through our relationship with the objects – whether this relationship takes the form of identification or alienation – we form an image of ourselves as individuals and collectives. The formative
role is a result of the simple fact that the museum does not exist in a time warp, but in its own historical context.

Thus, the role of the museum is twofold: it is on the one hand, created for information and understanding, and thus inherently retrospective. In the other hand, it’s created for forming society, and thus inherently oriented towards the present and the future.

The liberal bourgeoisie of the 19th century fully understood this. They build museums in order to be able to mobilize cultural history for their own political project: the museums were the piles of foundation, which bourgeois society hammered into the soil of history. And in a sense there is a parallel between representative democracy and the museum. In representative democracy, there are elections for parliament with regular intervals, but between elections decision-making is the sole prerogative of the politicians. In the same way, society employs museum professionals – not by election, though, but by an intellectual process of elimination – and once employed, interpretation of the past is the sole prerogative of the museum professionals.

Concepts such as web 2.0., social media, crowd-sourcing, etc. is challenging this concept of the museum. The challenge, however, is not new. It has been there for at least 50 years, if not more. An example:

Claims have been made, that it is no coincidence that the youth rebellion so far has totally ignored the museums. They are perceived (…) as repositories for left-over’s from previous societies, and simply not worth the effort.
It is undeniably true that museums are repositories - but they could be much more than that. (…) Exactly because the museums are dealing with all other societies than that, in which we actually live, they could become arsenals, from which arguments could be gathered for criticism of the present; points of departure for new ways of living

These are not the utopian reflections of some radical socialist. It’s a passage in an official report on cultural politics, published by the liberal-conservative Danish government in 1969. It’s not digital media that has put the participatory museum on the agenda. It is a change of political environment, which has made old concepts of citizenship gradually more and more obsolete.

What digital media has done is providing us with new, powerful tool, in our effort to realise the participatory museum. It’s no strange thing, that the museum community is excited about the new possibilities. We should use them to the maximum extent. But we should also realize that we are heading into a process, which is not only about changing the way museums disseminate knowledge and communicate with their audience. It is also a process, which has the potential of changing the formative role of the museum. We need to reflect on this and discuss the role of museums in society, just us as much as we need to discuss open API’s.

Who knows: just as museums in the 19^th century acted as vehicles for bourgeois democracy, the participatory museum of the 21^st century might be a vehicle for a new, even broader vision of democracy – a participatory democracy. Realising that the museum is inherently Public Domain – and should stay so, also in digital media – might be just a start.

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Note: The argument is inspired by Krzysztof Pomian: ”Museet: Europas kvintessens”. Den jyske Historiker, nr. 64, 1993. (Sorry, but I’m not aware of an English version).

Vaserely was born in Hungary, but lived most of his life in France, so it’s not surprising that his museum is to be found in Aix-en-Provence. Even if you’re not into op-art – which I’m not particularly – the building and the artwork form a fascinating gesamtkunstwerk. I like this particular picture, because of the relation of the persons to the strict geometry of the building – and because of their relation to me, since they happen to be my family

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This is #5 of the Museum Pics of the Week. Please come back in (about) a week to see the next one. Or follow me on Google+.

This is the sort of museum, which most museum professionals scorn. What you see in the picture are probably the only real objects in the Museum of the partisans in Dongo, Italy – the rest are faded photo copies. The texts are in Italian only, and there is dust in every corner. By its subject, this modest little museum, however, is as important as any national gallery. It’s about the actual place where Mussolini was caught, sentenced and executed by partisans – thus finally ending the despicable era of Italian fascism. In a world where neo-fascists can become respectable members of government, we should not criticise those, who strive to keep the public memory of these important events alive, for not doing it well enough. Let’s criticise the Italian state and museum professionals for neglecting their effort.

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This is #4 of the Museum Pics of the Week. Please come back in a week to see the next one. Or follow me on Google+.

What’s in a life? Well, medicine, for instance. Like in this fascinating installation by Pharmacopoeia in British Museum. It shows the number of pills, swallowed through lifetime, by too different persons – supplemented by pictures, letters and other reminiscences of their lives. A moving and thought-provoking cross-over between art and ethnography.

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This is #3 of the Museum Pics of the Week. Please come back in a week to see the next one. Or follow me on Google+.

Gazing through a replica of one of Tycho Brahes instruments on the island of Ven. The Tycho Brahe museum is not necessarily exceptional, but it’s nice and easy going – like the rest of this small island, which is sort of a condensed version of any tourist’s dream of the Swedish countryside. Take the ferry for a daytrip around midsummer – but watch out for the yellow bikes.

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This is #2 of the Museum Pics of the Week. Please come back in a week to see the next one. Or follow me on Google+.

As mentioned, I have at least three different computers that I regularly work on: my desktop at the office, my home desktop and my laptop. In the best of all worlds I would automagically have access to the same data from all three of them, without the need to resort to USB stick’s, sending documents CC to myself and other dirty tricks. This, of course, includes my Android: what I can access on PCs should be available on the phone, too.

I’m not there yet – but quite a long way down the road. The keyword is cloud computing.  It’s geek-talk, meaning that your data is not stored on a desktop PC desktop, making it available from that machine only, but on a server “out in the cloud” from which they can be accessed from any internet connected PC. Example: The calendar in MS Outlook is basically only on your own PC. You can only use it when you sit in front of that PC. A Google calendar is on a server. It can be used from any internet-connected computer. A smart-phone is not just a phone, it’s actually a permanently net-connected mini-computer, making it an ideal tool for cloud computing. Enough theory, now let’s get practical:

I have the ability to access my email and my calendar at work via Exchange ActiveSync. Android’s own e-mail and calendar program will handle that just fine, so it’s just a matter of entering the server name and passwords, and you are up and running. However, I have this obsession that I want to have both my work and my private e-mail and appointments on my phone, so I only need to look at one place to keep updated. Furthermore, I want my e-mail and my appointments marked with different colours, so I can quickly see whether it is work, home, etc.

Enhanced Email is an email client that is able to handle both Exchange and an IMAP mail server. The latter is important for my private email account is on one of these. EE is not necessarily the most advanced e-mail client around. But it gets the job done, in an easy and accessible fashion. For example, you can get all your e-mail shown in the same inbox, but with colour coding by type. The only thing missing is a good widget – but that might just be a matter of time…

Through EE, I can also sync my Android calendar with Exchange. That’s okay if I only have one type of appointments in my calendar. But again, I have this obsession that I want all appointments in the same calendar – but in different colours according to type. The solution is, in short, to use Google Calendar as the centre. Android is syncing with Google calendar out of the box. On each of my PCs I’ve installed a small addition to Outlook, called gSyncit, which syncs each Outlook calendar with Google Calendar. gSyncit have a lot of options and can be cumbersome to set up – but once that’s done, its working fine. Except when it’s not. But then there’s usually an update available which makes it work again.

A calendar needs to be easy to overlook and easy to enter new agreements into. To me, the one that’s built into the phone doesn’t quite live up to that. A good alternative is the Business Calendar. It has a good user interface and a large variety of widgets, so you can display your appointments right on the start page, without having to open the calendar.

gSyncit is also able to sync your task list from Outlook to Google Calendar and vice versa. Install gTasks on the Android, and you can sync your tasks with that too: tasks typed into your computer pops up automagically on your phone and vice versa. And – surprise! – coloured by type.

I fight a daily battle to keep my desktop free of sticky notes and piles of A4 sheets. An important weapon in this battle is Evernote. It’s a program into which you can type text, copy from web pages, etc., store it in the cloud and retrieved it again with many different clients, running on smart-phones or PC. Obviously, the advantage is that the notes you store in one place is also available everywhere: cut some text from a web page on your PC and it will also be available on the Android. Write a note on the phone (to which you can also attach pictures, sound recordings, etc.) and it’s instantly available on your PC.

In addition to notes you may also need to access documents and other files from different computers or from your smart-phone. For this, Dropbox is indispensable. It is a kind of extra hard disk out in the cloud. You can save and retrieve files from your Dropbox from any PC via a web interface. But you can also install a client, which will appear as a folder on the PC, like any other. The difference is that the files you save in this folder are automatically available on all other computers that you have the client installed on. Of course there is also a Dropbox application for Android.

Making use of all the options described here, your phone will soon be filled with personal information such as e-mail, appointments and documents. Should your phone fall into wrong hands, a villain would be able to not only read these things but also have access to send e-mail in your name. Therefore, you should at least block access to your phone with a password or lock-up pattern. You should also consider what you store in the cloud, with programs such as Evernote and Dropbox. I save everything from shopping lists to manuscripts without hesitation. But I would never save notes and documents containing sensitive information about a third party or pose a security risk to my workplace. There are also applications, such as Prey, which makes it possible to block a stolen phone by sending a code by SMS and / or locate it via GPS.

This woman is without doubt the most iconic of all museum objects. Ever. Period. We all know her from innumerable reproductions.
Maybe that’s why we feel such an urge to make our own, personal reproduction, when we get close to her in real life? I reproduce, therefore I exist….
I made my reproduction at the Louvre, Paris.

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This is #1 of the Museum Pics of the Week. Please come back in a week to see the next one. Or follow me on Google+.

D. 24.08. skriver Politiken igen om sikringen på Nationalmuseet. Det fremhæves bl.a., at der fremover vil være færre vagter i museets afdeling i Brede. Det er skidt. Men sikringen er desværre ikke det eneste offer for museets skrantende økonomi. I Brede findes også Nationalmuseets nyeste, faste udstilling, Brede Værk. I den gamle tekstilfabrik fortæller vi om det danske industrisamfunds historie. Her kan man se fabrikkens arbejdere og direktør komme til live i en interaktiv film, midt mellem de store tekstilmaskiner. Man kan prøve arbejdet ved samlebåndet på sin egen krop. Man kan se eksempler på hvordan industrialiseringen forandrede vores hverdag. Og til sidst kan man gi’ sit eget besyv med om industrisamfundets nutid og fremtid – en højst aktuel problemstilling.

Denne store udstilling er kun blevet til virkelighed, fordi velvillige fonde har bevilget et tocifret millionbeløb til etableringen. Driften skal derimod dækkes af museets faste bevilling. Men museet skal spare, så fra starten er åbningstiden indskrænket. Efterfølgende er der afsat et rundt 0 til markedsføring – med det resultat, at publikum udebliver fra en udstilling de aldrig har hørt om. Men så slipper de da for at opdage, at cafeen og butikken nu også er faldet som de seneste ofre for besparelserne.

Nationalmuseet har én million besøgende, plus de mange der følger os på nettet, læser vores publikationer, osv. De forventer kulturhistorisk formidling på et højt fagligt niveau, men også et museum som gør fortiden relevant for nutiden og fremtiden. Det knokler museets mange engagerede medarbejdere dagligt for at leve op til. Desværre må vi opleve, at opgaven bliver sværere og sværere at løfte. Stadig mere tid går med at flytte rundt på de sparsomme midler for at lappe de værste huller. Og som i tilfældet Brede Værk oplever vi, at vores arbejdsindsats undergraves af nye sparekrav.

Museet må selv prioritere, lyder standardsvaret fra politikerne, når de konfronteres med konkrete følger af nedskæringerne. Det kan museet også godt. Eksempelvis kan vi prioritere at holde sikkerheden helt i top. Det vil så blot kræve, at vi skærer endnu mere ned på andre aktiviteter, som f.eks. at udvikle og drive nye og engagerende udstillinger.

Nationalmuseet er nået til det punkt, hvor der ikke blot skæres ind til, men også ind i benet. Diskussionen bør derfor ikke kun handle snævert om sikkerheden på museet. Den bør handle om hele Nationalmuseets fremtid. Skal Danmark fortsat have et Nationalmuseum, som er levende, engageret og relevant for nutidens publikum? Eller skal museet skrue ned for ambitionerne, nedprioritere forskning og formidling, men til gengæld sikre fortiden et trygt liv på lukkede magasiner? Vi kan levere begge dele – men ikke til samme pris.

(Oprindeligt bragt som debatindlæg i dagbladet Politiken d. 25.08.2011. Dagen efter fulgte Politiken op med dette interview)