New York Times article review

The article can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/arts/artsspecial/18SCIENCE.html?scp=11&sq=history%20museum&st=cse.

In this class we have invested a great deal of time and energy into picking apart just what constitutes a museum, and well as what the role of a museum is (or should be), and what influence museums have on contemporary society. Edward Rothstein’s The New York Times article of 13 March 2010 entitled “The Thrill of Science, Tamed by Agendas” discusses just such important issues. The article serves primarily as an editorial, and is moderately critical of the contemporary trend of using museums as a tool to sway public perception of political and social issues, generally with a liberal slant. Though on the whole the article is a fairly valid critique of today’s museum culture, Rothstein’s incompleteness and editorializing can be slightly abrasive at times and limit the overall success of the article.

Deep schisms have been developing in Western society over the past few decades, and in recent years that that the rate of that separation appears to have increased significantly. It seems to be increasingly difficult to find an issue that fervent liberals and conservatives alike do not boast polar opposite opinions on. Compounded upon this issue is the fact that hardliners from both ends of the political spectrum are constantly working to co-opt the moderates and independents from the middle, using all tools at their disposal. Museums, unfortunately, have not been able to escape this disturbing trend. While Rothstein focuses largely on popular science museums, this movement runs the gamut on popular museums of many disciplines, including hard science, natural history, history, and anthropology, just to name a few.

Rothstein does a good job in citing specific examples of exhibits that, if not scientifically inaccurate, per se, may not be entirely on the level with regards to science. For example, he recalls an exhibit at the American Museum of natural History that included “a scary model showing southern Manhattan smothered by a five-meter rise in sea level turned out to be — if you read the label — something that ‘experts consider unlikely anytime soon’ but could take place ‘thousands of years in the future.’” He bemoans the appropriation of museums as a tool to “cultivate apocalyptic fears” and ponders that: “Learning is guided by a political judgment; it is also limited by it. Couldn’t an intriguing exhibition be mounted, for example, showing the inevitability and importance of prejudice?”

As a reviewer, I will admit that I agree with many of Rothstein’s ideas. I believe that science and the accompanying museums have been inappropriately twisted into a political tool, and in many ways this article was successful in highlighting the ways in which that has occurred in recent years. I feel, however, that this article was rather lopsided, which significantly limits my praise for it. Rothschild criticizes the use of museums to raise awareness of environmentalism and cultural sensitivity—traditionally liberal causes—but never does he note ways in which conservative groups strive to influence the content of museums. For instance, a Canadian anti-gay group lobbied against the construction of Winnipeg’s Human Rights Museum, on multiple occasions conservative groups have been successful in having “obscene” or “offensive” art (such as Andres Serrano’s photograph, “Piss Christ”) taken down from galleries, and in Kentucky an entire museum exists devoted to bolstering the idea of Creationism in the public consciousness (“NATURAL SELECTION IS NOT EVOLUTION” their website loudly proclaims).

This subject is far too complex to attempt to explicate fully for my purposes here. In some cases, perhaps museums should be used as a political or social tool; in other cases, perhaps not. In any case, this article puts forward a good effort to bring this issue to the attention of the public, and for the most part what is included is accurate and reasonable. However, that does not excuse Rothstein’s lopsided treatment of the issue, especially when he chooses to editorialize the issue so heavily.

Essay #5

I feel like architecture does not significantly influence a museumgoing experience unless that is a specific goal of those who establish the museum. In general, it seems that most museum structures are fairly standardized and bland, as if their goal is just the opposite: to have little or no impact on the experience of viewing the collection, to not overwhelm the objects housed in the museum.

Occasionally, however, a museum will swing the opposite direction and actively work to incorporate the building's architecture into the museum experience. The most obvious example of this to me is in the Experience Music Project in Seattle. The EMP is a bold and arresting piece of architecture that hardly looks like anything a person has ever seen before, but in some strange way it still fits with other experimental structures in the area, such as the Space Needle. The architecture of the ESP, both inside and out, is so unusual and all-encompassing, that it is impossible (at least for me) to separate the “exhibit” aspect of the museum from the “architecture” aspect. From the outside the building looks like a combination between a sound wave and an acid trip, reinforcing the theme of the museum. Additionally, in the foyer area of the building there is a giant projection wall. This is not an exhibit, per se, and yet it is certainly not just a normal wall. In this instance, the architecture and the content of the museum really begin to merge together into one. Within the museum exhibits themselves, the architecture and decorative touches never allow the patron to disengage or to forget where they are.

The EMP is a very unusual example; the vast majority of museums never dream of approaching its scope. However, it is representative of how architecture can impact a museum experience when that is a direct goal.

Essay #4

I believe that in spite of Weil's best attempts to quantify the “quality” of a museum, the perception of quality is still primarily governed by personal opinion. An individual who places more value on, say, community involvement and education is not necessarily going to rate the “quality” of any given museum the same as someone who places more value on the preservation and restoration of rare artifacts, for example. I often find myself highly skeptical of those who would create or even take seriously models of the sort that Weil presents in this article, because I feel that they create an artificial and contrived distortion of reality, all the while patting themselves on the back for being “objective” and utilizing “quantitative data.”

To respond more directly to this week's essay prompt, however, I would say that, though I have been to many quality museums in my lifetime, one that stands out for this purpose is the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. The Historical Center is actually comprised of five museums dedicated to discrete specific topics pertinent to the region (the Buffalo Bill Museum, the Whitney Gallery of Western Art, the Plains Indian Museum, the Cody Firearms Museum, and the Draper Museum of Natural History), however since visitors only pay one admission fee and each of the five museums is housed under one roof, I always thought of the Historical Center as one large museum with five specific exhibits, which is how I will be referring to it for these purposes. What made the Buffalo Bill Historical Center stand out to me is how though each of these small museums could hypothetically stand alone and be entirely successful, they are amalgamated into a single cohesive unit, which provides visitors with both significant depth and breadth of knowledge about that region of the United States. Because the cultural and natural history of that region is discussed so thoroughly, and no room is wasted on exhibits that “do not belong,” so to speak, the museum is able to serve a multitude of different purposes. It works both for tourism and to boost local pride. It works as a casual destination and for research purposes. It is, simply put, a quality museum.