Welcome to my Substack
Hello and welcome to the my first Substack!
When I started writing about museums over a decade ago, friends raised a quizzical eyebrow. Interesting, they nodded, but implied that it was a niche interest. But today, controversies in museums often make front page news. They are hard to avoid.
I know because I have been trying to do just that. I have just delivered the manuscript for my next book – Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life – to my publishers, having spent the last few years in a book-writing-bunker, researching the profound influence of the public/ private divide, how it shapes all our lives, and how privacy was undermined long before the internet. You will hear more about Strangers and Intimates in forthcoming posts, believe me, but as I emerge blinking into the light, cultural conflicts have flared up.
In November 2022, the Wellcome Collection in London opened a Twitter thread—in which it announced the closure of its Medicine Man gallery—with the question: “What’s the point of museums?” Director Melanie Keen judged the exhibition of objects collected by the Victorian pharmaceutical entrepreneur Henry Wellcome, which had opened in 2007, as “racist, ablest and sexist.” (Here she explains the decision to close Medicine Man on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row).
The public response was fury.
In the Spectator , the political commentator Douglas Murray seethed: “In today’s Britain it is to be expected that our cultural institutions are run by people who hate the collection in their care as well as our culture and our history more broadly.”
Such acts of closure are not new, however. From the late 1980s museums in America, Canada Australasia, and the UK, were rocked by debates about the trauma caused by archaeology and anthropology to indigenous populations, and campaigns that challenged their ownership of collections of human remains. This led to the repatriation – the sending back - of thousands of human remains and scared artefacts to tribes.
In the 1990s, planned museums exhibitions in the US were consumed by the ‘history wars’. Like that of the Enola Gay, when, in 1994, the National Air and Space Museum planned to exhibit the B-29 used in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, as part of an exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary. The exhibition, initially titled The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb, and the Origins of the Cold War was intended to be a departure for the museum, which usually celebrated technological achievements and America’s role in them. It was going to provide new ‘context’, debate the role of the atomic bomb in international affairs, raise questions about its use, and reflect on the new era it introduced. One sentence in the proposed exhibition text read:
“For most Americans, it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism.”
As soon as the plans were made available, veteran groups protested that America was being criticised for ending the war. America was depicted as the villain, they said, the Japanese, the victims.
“I cannot believe they would create such an abomination,” said Charles Sweeney, who was part of the squadron who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “It’s certainly un-American. And it’s derogatory of the American culture and, I would add, if I get on my high horse, it might be close to treason”.
Firestorm Over Enola Gay Exhibit at the Smithsonian - ABC News Nightline - Oct. 25, 1994.
“We want to present, as best we can, a multiple view of that history, not a singular view.” Retorted Smithsonian Institution Secretary Michael Heyman, defending the plans. “I'm shocked that it's the military groups that are trying to use the anniversary to continue the myth that we were justified in dropping the bomb.” Another commentator said.
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal blamed the Smithsonian for employing “revisionist social scientists” who who wanted to transform museums into “vehicles of political re-education.”
In the end, the director of the National Air and Space Museum, Dr. Martin Harwit, resigned. The museum rewrote the plans more than five times, before cancelling the “contextual” aspect of the exhibit. Instead, it displayed the fuselage of the Enola Gay with minimal text. The sentence about “Western imperialism”? It was dropped.
Thirty years on, conflicts in museums have not only not been resolved—but have escalated, spilling into the national discourse in the US and Europe. My old friends who puzzled over my interest in cultural institutions a decade ago, now bug me: ‘just what is going on with museums and galleries?’ A bit like All Pacino's line, in The Godfather Part 3 "Just When I Thought I Was Out They Pull Me Back In", I feel it’s impossible to escape.
One aim of the Behind the Scenes at the Museum, then, is to explore what is happening in museums and galleries today, place it in historical context, and assess its significance.
Because I don’t think we are doing that right now.
Firstly, because the recent ‘anti-woke’ reaction, for want of a better phrase, can, at times, look like a mirror image of the ‘woke’, and creates more heat than light. Over in The Atlantic, Thomas Chatterton Williams expands on this point in relation to the French, who are “in a panic over ‘le wokisme’.” Chatteron Williams is critical of the organization of political and cultural institutions around identity politics, which he argues “elevate race and ethnicity to an extent that expands prejudice rather than reducing it.” But he notes that the anti-woke response is failing to take the other side’s arguments seriously, which they should. He reflects that the forceful rejection of identity politics is making him recalibrate his own views in the opposite direction.
Secondly, I want to engage with the common explanations that are given for the culture wars in institutions: that it is down to “institutional capture” ; that it is an extension of progressivism; or that it is a result of post-modernism and Foucauldian theories. By examining the drivers of todays culture wars, in future posts I will reveal the limitations of these explanations.
Under the title of The Roots of the Museum Wars, forthcoming essays will explore the different influences on contemporary controversies, examining:
The emergence of museums from cabinets of curiosities in the early modern period, to being institutions of enlightenment. And how and why this foundational purpose has been challenged.
How the nineteenth century museum went from giving material form to concepts of nationhood and national heritage to being infused by identity politics.
How museums and galleries are moving from their historical role in venerating the past to prosecuting history.
In addition, Behind the Scenes at the Museum will be about more than the current conflicts in the museum. Look out for cultural commentary, criticism, recommendations, and the second season of the Behind the Scenes at the Museum podcast. An interview with anthropologist Adam Kuper on his new book The Museum of Other People on anthropology museums, is dropping soon. Stories and insights from Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life will appear too.
RECOMMENDATIONS & LINKS:
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly In League With The Night, Tate Britain
There are two weeks left to see Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s show Fly In League With The Night. Yiadom-Boakye a brilliant British artist who proves that paint is back. Her arresting exhibition of imagined, enigmatic portraits work like novellas. And whilst at Tate Britain, pop into the new rehang. The Sunday Times art critic Waldemar Januszczak pronounces it “exciting, uplifting, involving and deep.”
Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance, V&A, London.
London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, in collaboration with Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Museo Nazionale del Bargello and Berlin’s Staatliche Museen, is opening its leg of Donatello exhibition, on 11 February. Do not miss the UK’s first exhibition dedicated to the radical Italian Renaissance master.
The Long Shadow of American Dirt, New York Times
“Looking back now, it’s clear that the 'American Dirt' debacle of January 2020 was a harbinger, the moment when the publishing world lost its confidence and ceded moral authority to the worst impulses of its detractors,” Pamela Paul on how a literary world uproar changed book publishing.
Live in a glass house? You can't cry privacy - The Times
Giles Coren on the row over Tate Britain’s viewing platform and the fancy flat owners who complain about privacy violations.
Museums are Hiding the Past, Compact Magazine
Rather than extend and delineate time, contemporary museums compress it, eliding the past and present." I was delighted to write for @compactmag_ on how museums are obscuring the past by concealing its troubling aspects.
As ever, comments and questions are welcome.
Until next time.
Tiffany