Of all the courses that I’ve taught recently, by far the most exhilarating was a class on the history, politics and future of museums. Whereas the left at times dismisses museums as bastions of elitism, relics of colonialism and representations of Eurocentrism, the right sees activist museums perpetrating attacks on traditional values.īut perhaps the most serious challenge is a lack of clarity about what museums are supposed to do: To preserve, enlighten, educate, uplift, engage, stimulate, provoke or simply elevate people above the mundane?
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There is also an audience challenge: how to attract a much more diverse audience and ensure that these institutions better represent the communities they serve.
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No longer can museums rely on the free or low-wage labor of volunteers or the scions of the wealthy. There is a financial challenge, as the cost of maintaining museums climbs while revenue stagnates. Today, there are more than 17,500 museums in the United States touching upon virtually every subject imaginable, from art to ice cream, from natural history to sex.īut museums also face serious challenges from without and within. More people attended more museums than ever before. Prior to the pandemic, there was an unprecedented museum boom. On one side of the ongoing culture war are those who cast museums as instruments of exclusion and artworks and other museum artifacts as masks for power and privilege that “actively sought to silence other artists and traditions out of a racist, colonialist impulse.” On the other side are those who consider museums guardians of civilization, sanctuaries for aesthetic contemplation and preserves for artistic and scholarly expertise.įor museums, these are the best of times and the worst of times. She accused the Met of valuing “racial consciousness-raising over scholarship and historical accuracy,” of interpreting paintings and sculpture on identity rather than artistic or historical grounds, and building exhibitions like its 2021 “The African Origin of Civilization” around “discredited theories” and “doctored quotes.” Conservative polemicist Heather Mac Donald accused both the Art Institute of Chicago and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of redefining their primary purpose as antiracism and abandoning their “core mission of preserving history’s treasures and instructing future generations.” Meanwhile, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s leadership announced that the Met must “aspire to be an agent of change.” To that end, the museum mandated “anti-racism training for all staff, volunteers, and Trustees” committed “to a program of hiring Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) candidates to Department Head and senior leadership roles” and promised “a program of exhibitions, events, and publications that addresses complex and unfamiliar narratives, cross-cultural perspectives, and fosters a more diverse and expanded canon of art history.” Says the Art Institute of Chicago: “Museums like ours have long centered certain stories while marginalizing and suppressing others … Firmly rooted in Eurocentric tradition, the founding objectives of our institutional history did not consider gender, ethnic, and racial equity.” Sacramento’s Crocker Museum’s website states unequivocally that “museums are the legacy of Western colonialism, serving as the products of straight, able-bodied, white, male privilege.” Yet even by historical standards, today’s Kulturkampf is especially intense. If you want to see the culture wars at their most extreme, enter the museum world.Īs the cultural historian Michael Kammen demonstrated 15 years ago in Visual Shock, his history of art controversies, museums and exhibitions have long been flashpoints in the ongoing struggle over cultural values, civic and national identity, and the ways that the past is commemorated.
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