Popular Science Monthly/Volume 64/January 1904/The Functions of Museums: A Re-Survey
| THE FUNCTIONS OF MUSEUMS: A RE-SURVEY. |
By F. A. BATHER, M.A., D.Sc. (Oxon),
PRESIDENT OF THE MUSEUMS ASSOCIATION; BRITISH MUSEUM, NATURAL HISTORY.
WE are rapidly approaching, and some parts of the world have already reached, that millennium desired by the writer—was it not Professor E. S. Morse?—who exclaimed 'Public libraries in every town! then why not public museums?' With this increase in number has come a change of function, or at least an added function or two. Such a change is in the nature of an adaptation to the new surroundings, and is necessary for the vigorous life and propagation of the modern type of museum. How great the change is may be realized by contrasting, let us say, the American Museum of Natural History, which not only arranges attractive exhibits, but makes them known by its popular Journal, with some museums in Europe that still appear to be maintained in the interests of their staff, while the public is only admitted for a few hours each week, to gape at an unorganized crowd of objects which it can not comprehend. The student of science or of art who has to make his living as a curator in a public museum, which is public in fact and not merely in name, often envies those colleagues who, undisturbed by the profanum vulgus, spend a peaceful life in original research, such as he can only squeeze in at the close of a hard day's work. But in America and Britain we can never go back to those old days when visitors, after securing tickets by prayer of some high person, assembled at the gate of the British Museum and were conducted around it by a verger with a livery and a black wand as his chief qualifications for the task. Nor indeed can we now find ourselves in the position of that eager spinster, who, after many a vain attempt, journeyed from her suburban residence through mire and fog to those giant portals. 'Which department, Madam?' said the majestic policeman on the threshold. 'Oh! just a general look around, thank you.' 'Museum closed to-day, Mum, except for students.' Back on a 'bus to Brompton, and 'No more British Museum for me!'
No, the times have changed and are still changing. A stage in the advance was marked when Flower and Brown Goode gave us their masterly surveys of museum organization. They laid down the lines on which we have all been working. But still the outer conditions are changing, and in some respects we fail to keep pace. The occasion for a re-survey of the situation recently presented itself to me, and I was led to the conclusion that a redisposition of our forces was required if we were to cope adequately with the difficulties of the present situation. On that occasion, however, I had another object in view, and alluded to this question only so far as was necessary to explain certain proposals with regard to art-museums.[1] The subject is too important to be dealt with as a side-issue, and so I wish to discuss some aspects of it a little more fully.
Let us then consider the main purposes of museums, and see first how each of them may best be worked out, and secondly how they may be combined when necessary.
First, then: What are the functions of museums? Multifarious though they are, the more important of them may be placed under three heads:
(a) The collection and preservation of material for study by experts, so that they may widen the bounds of knowledge. The ultimate aim of this function may be summed up in one word—investigation.
(b) The collection, preservation and exhibition of material for the education of less advanced students and for the assistance of amateurs. The provision for students covers such collections and exhibitions as samples of textiles for the use of weavers, specimens of wood-carving and of wrought iron for the workers in wood and in metal, plaster cases, paintings and engravings for students of the plastic and graphic arts, anatomical preparations for medical students, series of natural objects or of physical apparatus and the like for young people taking their B.Sc. The term 'amateurs' is a convenient one to include the field-naturalists who come to a museum to identify their captures, the collector of coins, of postage stamps or of china, who wishes to verify some recent acquisition, and, in short, the many lovers of art, who without being artists, art critics or connoisseurs, yet enjoy the examination of even inferior productions of some school or period in which they have assumed an interest. For students and amateurs alike, this function of the museum may briefly be expressed as instruction.
(c) The selection and display of material in such a way as to attract the general public, to provide for its members intellectual and esthetic pleasure, and so eventually to interest them in noble things outside the daily groove. Any one who visits a museum, or any portion of a museum, not as a specialist or student, but as a sight-seer, is to be regarded as one of the general public. To every such layman, learned or unlearned, the museum should help to give that higher and broader outlook on life for which we have no better name than culture. In a word, the third great function of a museum is inspiration.
It must be recognized clearly that these three functions—investigation, instruction and inspiration—are quite distinct from one another. Their point of contact lies in the fact that all are carried out by institutions in which material objects are assembled; and that there is any contact at all depends partly on the convenience of utilizing the same objects for different purposes, and partly on the economy of employing one staff of curators (or one curator) instead of three. But the distinctness of the functions will be realized by taking the standpoint of the several visitors; for they constitute separate and mutually intolerant groups: the specialist disdainful of the amateur and ignoring the public, the amateur and college student with an absurd reverence for those specialists whom they have not yet found out, and the public gaping at the spectacled enthusiast with a mildly contemptuous pity. The same individual may come into each of these classes, but, so far as any one branch of knowledge is concerned, he does so at different periods: first, as a member of the public, he receives the inspiration; then, after learning something in the field or in the classroom, he comes to the museum for further instruction; finally, he advances to the ranks of the researchers and finds in our cabinets material for investigation.
From what has been said it follows that, in considering how a museum may best fulfil these main functions, or, in other words, best serve these three classes of visitors, we shall do well to treat them distinctly.
Beginning with the function of investigation, we see that a museum serves investigators by collecting and preserving fresh material for research, or by accumulating standard historical specimens, such as those which in systematic biology are known as types.
An enquiry into the methods of collection scarcely falls within the scheme of this survey; but I should like to express my conviction that, in general, the best results are obtained when a definite purpose is clearly kept in view. If expeditions are sent out, they should be specially equipped and informed towards the acquisition of particular specimens. If purchases are made, they should be, not of miscellaneous collections, but of pre-selected objects. The curator should know what his museum wants, and should bend his energies to obtaining those things and those alone. He should resist the temptation of cheap bargains. But when temptation comes as a present, and the donor is a patron who may not be offended—what then? Well, then the curator without a settled plan must open his mouth and shut his eyes, take what the millionaire sends him, and pray for a speedy release. But donors generally mean well, and even a millionaire may have common sense. Therefore, the curator with a plan, and with a little tact, will say "My dear Mæcænas! This is a charming thing you offer; I only wish we could accept it. But you will understand at once that it does not fall within the scheme drawn up for our museum and sanctioned by the authorities [here he will drag in the most imposing authorities at his command]. On the other hand, there are many sad gaps in our collection, and there is now in the market a most desirable rarity, which I should rejoice to have in our museum with your name attached. When you see it you will agree that it will bear perpetual witness to your discrimination no less than to your generosity." But it is possible that those 'authorities,' on whom the curator ought to rely, may themselves be the difficulty. Then the curator must stiffen his back and, with as much dignity as is politic, say "Gentlemen, you have yourselves appointed me to a position of trust, and it is my duty towards you and the public to advise you on these matters. If you dispute my competence, you stultify your own action."
This need for keeping to a plan in the acquisition of material applies to all museums, whatever be the nature of their contents and whichever function they profess to fulfil. But chiefly does it apply to the smaller museums and to those of limited scope, since it is the best way, I will not say to prevent overcrowding, but at least to put off that evil day. And among such museums it applies most forcibly to those that make their chief appeal to the great public.
But to return to the investigators. What methods of preservation are the most favorable to their studies? Preservation includes both the technical processes by which objects are saved from decay and the disposition or storage of the objects within the museum. It is with the latter division of the subject that I am now concerned. The methods adopted must be such as to permit readiness of access to the specimens, readiness of comparison and readiness of handling. The investigator must be afforded quiet, light, space, and facilities for using such apparatus as may be required for his study, such as books, microscopes, measures, brushes, reagents, and the materials for drawing, painting and writing. Clearly the exhibition of the specimens in galleries visited all day long by the public is opposed to every one of these wants. They are best met by keeping the specimens, when their size and constitution admit, in a series of interchangeable drawers.[2] Such drawers can readily be removed to a private workroom for study, and may, while there, be stacked in a spare cabinet body kept for the purpose. The specimens may then be examined and replaced without disturbance of their order, and with the least possible trouble to the museum-staff.
But in almost all departments of a museum we are met by objects too large for such treatment, or otherwise incapable of being kept in drawers. The usual solution (if so it can be called) is to place such objects on public exhibition, because in the public galleries alone can room be found for them, or the show-cases are the only receptacles big enough for them. This method of storing such specimens is opposed to all the requirements of the investigator, and has the additional defects of disturbing the harmonious arrangement of the exhibitiongallery, and of distracting the public with a multitude of unsuitable objects. For all parties, then, it were better to shut off a portion of the exhibition space and to devote it to storage alone.
Passing now to the function of instruction, we have to see how a museum may best serve students and amateurs. To its activities of collecting and preserving, it must add a third—that of exhibiting specimens.
The remarks on collecting need no repetition. As regards the other activities, two essentials must be kept in view. First, the need of the student to handle specimens in certain instances. Secondly, access for him to a fairly large series of accurately labeled specimens, the handling of which is not as a rule required.
The objects to be handled, which need not be very numerous, must be kept in such a way that their removal does not interfere with the exhibited series, does not require the prolonged attendance of a member of the staff, and does not give much trouble in unlocking, checking and so forth. For this purpose, therefore, it is as well to have a sample collection, stored in a workroom, or placed on its walls; and in this room might be posted an attendant, who would usually be carrying on his regular work.
The series not as a rule to be handled might be kept either in cases or in stop-drawers, under glass. What is important is that it should not interfere with or encroach on the public exhibits, for the following reasons: The public distracts the student; the student, with his chair and his own specimens, or his note-books, or his easel, gets in the way of the public; the explanatory labels useful to this class of student are too advanced for the general public and act as a deterrent; and here again the mere multitude of specimens, frequently of restricted interest, is but a source of weariness to the lay mind.
On these grounds the rooms for the technical series should be set apart, and should be in connection with a library whence books might be taken into them. The specimens on exhibition might be as numerous as space allowed, so long as needless duplication was avoided. There would be no need for elaborate methods of mounting; it is only essential that each specimen, with its label, should be clearly visible.[3]
The last function, that of inspiring the layman with an interest in the subject-matter of the museum, demands adherence to two leading principles. First, only a few specimens should be shown, and those the best obtainable. Secondly, the arrangement of the objects must both arrest attention and give pleasure, so that the visit may be repeated. Here, then, we speak not so much of 'collection and exhibition' as of 'selection and display.' In these two respects, as well as in minor details, such as the nature of the labels, the spaciousness of the rooms and the absence of any need for handling, the requirements of the lay public are, if not always opposed to, at least different from, those of either investigators or students.
Thus far then, we are, I trust, agreed not only that museums have three distinct classes of visitors, but that the proper methods of fulfilling those functions are likewise distinct. Possibly these considerations may help the curator to find an answer, when he asks the question: 'What exactly is the object of my museum and how nearly do I attain it?'
The curator, however, may fear that, since museums are so various, and the activities even of a single museum so numerous and diverse, therefore the question can only admit of a confused and futile answer. This complexity may be partly disentangled if he realizes that museums may be classified in various ways. For instance, according to their subject-matter, as of geology, fine-art, archeology, sanitation and the rest. So far as this is concerned the answer to the question is in each case obvious and needs no discussion here.
Another point of view is that of their financial relations to the community. A museum may be under national, provincial or municipal control; it may be run by some semi-public body,—a university, a local society, or a trade guild; it may be a purely private concern—the secluded treasure of a dilettante, the money-making show of a company, or the freely open halls of a philanthropist. This classification indicates the class of visitor for whom the museum is intended: the guild museum for the members of a trade, the university museum for the university student, and the state museum for 'all sorts and conditions of men.' But the connection is not inevitable.
Omitting other possible classifications, we find that the only one bearing on the curator's problem is that according to the visitors either actual or desired. In its main lines this follows our classification of the functions of a museum under three heads. Few museums, however, have their scope so rigorously defined, though in some cases, as just suggested, it is, or should be, defined by circumstances.
Perhaps the most usual restriction is to that group of functions above comprehended under instruction. Here and here alone come the teaching collections of a university, the technological museum for artisans. and the gallery of plaster casts for art-students. Frequently, too, the museum of a local society is intended solely to preserve natural or artificial objects for reference by the collectors and amateurs who constitute its members.
Scarcely any museum can nowadays be regarded as the strict preserve of investigators. In fact, the total number of museums whose main function it is to amass vast collections for the advancement of knowledge can never be very great; indeed, the smaller the better. The scattering of material and of the necessary literary apparatus through thousands of towns would not conduce to either economy or efficiency. Concentration permits of comparison, better equipment, a larger and more highly trained staff, while it necessitates the intercourse of fellow-workers and leads to interchange of ideas. Such a museum should be a great organization for research, with laboratories, libraries, studios and publications, with a staff of investigators, preparators, artists, photographers, copyists and the usual servants. I have not mentioned curators, believing any attempt to separate them from investigators to be a false economy.
Museums entirely devoted to the inspiration of the lay public are hard to find. But they exist in theory if not in practice; and theorectically too the encouragement of art and science among the populace is the main reason for the establishment of most museums, especially the municipal.
Now, where museums come to grief is in attempting to sit on these three stools, or rather through not distinguishing clearly enough that the stools are three and that they are of very different nature.
A small museum with small means should make the choice of not more than two out of the three; and the function to be dropped should, in my opinion, be investigation. Not that the curators of small museums should be warned off the field of original work; but the museum should neither amass nor preserve specimens of interest chiefly to specialists. From the two remaining functions, instruction and inspiration, it should select the one more appropriate to the conditions of its existence and spend its energies on that.
Many a large museum, on the other hand, is able to undertake all three functions, and if it be supported out of public funds, it is its duty so to do. It is not enough to provide admirably for two classes of visitors, and to suppose that the same provision will satisfy the third class. On the contrary, the more thoroughly the wants of any two classes are supplied, the more will the third class be left out in the cold.
Take the case of a large museum of any subject. Usually an attempt is made to combine all three functions in one series of rooms and cases. For the sake of the collectors and amateurs, a large number of objects is exhibited; and this perplexes the public. For the sake of students, too, technical terms and labels are introduced; these are above the ordinary visitor and disgust him. For the sake of the public, on the other hand, much space, time and money are devoted to elaborate mounting of the objects. This, in itself to be commended, and practicable when restricted to a selected series, sets a standard that is far too high for application to all the thousands of exhibited specimens, since this extension of it absorbs energy that were better employed in other directions, and renders the specimens less accessible to both investigator and student. Again, much of the material amassed for the specialist is not readily stored, and, finding its way into the show-cases, detracts from their effect and overweights both layman and student.
For such a museum then, I suggest a tripartite arrangement of the collections, corresponding with the three functions.
First, there would be a stored series, in drawers, or special cases, or private rooms, so arranged as to be easily transferred to the workrooms, and reserved for the use of specialists or researchers.
The series for students may assume two forms. One, a collection of objects to be handled, best stored in a private room and immediately accessible to accredited students. The other, a large exhibited series, under glass when advisable, arranged systematically and properly labeled, but without superfluous niceties of mounting. This should be kept in galleries to which access could be had on application to an attendant. The general public should not be permitted to wander freely through them, and especially should loving couples and infants in arms be warned off. It would probably be a sufficient barrier if each visitor were required to write his or her name and address in a book kept at the entrance.
Finally, there would be other rooms for a smaller series of carefully selected objects, so arranged as to make the utmost appeal to the great public.
The fundamental distinction between the series for research and that for public exhibition has long been realized by directors of natural history museums, and has been strenuously urged by Flower and Brown Goode. The directors of art-museums are just beginning to apprehend it; but even the best museums of natural history are still far from the ideal upheld, not for the first time, in Flower's address to the British Association fourteen years ago. If I may judge from my own limited experience, the chief reason for this failure is the existence of those two distinct types of visitor, the layman and the student. We are obliged in self-defence to exhibit far more specimens than we know to be good for the public, because if we did not we should be doing little else than answering the enquiries of amateurs, and unlocking drawers for all manner of students. Moreover, in the absence of proper store-cabinets, and especially of interchangeable drawers, our reduced and over-worked staff finds it less trouble to thrust a new acquisition into a show-case than to make room for it in the confused and crowded study-series.
It is to obviate such difficulties that I propose the further division of the exhibited series. In this way more specimens can be exhibited for the student and amateur with less trouble and expense, and in a more practical manner, as, for example, on interchangeable trays or frames, which can as needed be removed for the use of the specialist. The student will no longer be disturbed by the loud-voiced pastor or by urchins at hide-and-seek, and the elimination of crowds will permit a saving in floor and cubic space. The public galleries in their turn will be freed from students with their apparatus and from inappropriate specimens, while such objects as remain can be displayed in a more becoming manner.
It is easy enough to see where we have gone wrong. The advance towards democracy has been too rapid, the revolution too complete. We have thrown open everything to the public, to the public's bewilderment and our own undoing. The lot of a curator in a large museum is not altogether a happy one. Surrounded by the treasures that his heart longs for, he must maintain them for the use and enjoyment of others, while, Tantalus-like, he himself is unable to reach them. He consoles himself with the thought that he is a martyr for the good of humanity, and he has not seen how to shift his ever-increasing burden. The suggestions here made will, I believe, benefit the specialist, the student and the man in the street; but the argument most likely to secure their adoption is that they will also benefit the curator. If consistently and boldly carried out, they would result in a saving of expense on architecture and installation, so leaving more money for actual work on the collections; and they would, in the various ways that I have indicated, effect a saving of time, thus permitting the curator to make better use of the material at his command. In this firm belief, I ask for these proposals the serious consideration of the large number of people who to-day are interested in museums.
- ↑ Museums Association. Aberdeen Conference, 1903. 'Address by the President,' Museums Journal, III., pp. 71-94, 110-132 and 36 plates; September and October, 1903.
- ↑ There are many excellent models. Some are described in Appendix II. of the address above referred to.
- ↑ Only to those familiar with museums will this remark appear a needless truism