Can We Fix It? — Yes We Can!. Museum Rethinks and the Bob-the-Builder…
By: Sandro Debono
Tags: Culture, Digital, Art, Museums, Social Media

Can We Fix It? — Yes We Can!

Museum Rethinks and the Bob-the-Builder Mindset

Of course we can! That is the mindset I have been sharing with museum colleagues on social media and beyond.

There are certainly things to fix in the museum institution, now more than ever before. The tools are there too, readily available and in hand. Equipped with the necessary knowledge to understand what these challenges are, and aware of the right tools to choose in order to effectively address these challenges shall certainly be making the difference. The fundamental priority would undoubtedly be a positive mindset but there is also the needed to let go of old ways and habits that have been considered essential for the purpose of istitutional ethos. A new museology in the making? That could well be the case.

The positive mindset and can-do attitude required in such times of change reminds me of Bob the Builder, a late 1990s children animated UK television show which has now become international, also thanks to other media including books and food. The concept features a building contractor and his world, including a motley crew of anthropomorphised work-vehicles and equipment, that come foreword the solve the umptieth challenge. Bob’s problem solving skills emphasise conflict resolution, co-operation, socialisation and other learning skills. It is the mindset with which he would approach his problem solving needs and requirements that makes all the difference.

When seen through the Bob the Builder perspective, the digital revival and the ambition to create the right and necessary synergies between the physical and the virtual is going to depend overwhelmingly on the will to make it happen. Besides having the tools and the talent a ‘Yes We Can!’ attitude shall be the game changer.

Photo by Vanessa Bucceri on Unsplash

To fix with the right mindset

Seb Chan, Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, recently posted a most interesting article on twitter which, to a certain extent, got me to write this blog. One of the interviewees, a prominent Australian arts manager, clearly spoke his mind about the digital revival brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The better we make the digital experience, particularly at a time when people are going to be nervous about going back into performances, the bigger problem we’re creating for ourselves as well. There is nothing like sitting in a hall with 2000 strangers that are all having different emotional experiences that are very personal. I really worry if we make the digital experience so engaging and so wonderful, what’s going to happen to the live shows?

That this happened to be the CEO of Opera Australia matters relatively little, for the simple reason that this mindset is more common than one would expect it to be — even at this point in time. I have given my reaction to such a concern in blogposts on Transmedia Thinking and the Harry Potter Universe elsewhere in this blog publication. I think it is perhaps time to understand why such concerns keep surfacing.

Let me take art curators for my case study. The academic formation of an art curator and his practice is informed by the need to recognised value in the works of art within his care and this, oftentimes, touches upon the economic value. There is a paradox of sorts in the fact that this dialectic between economic and cultural value is a necessity for museums — collections are valued for insurance purposes, and material culture is acquired on the art and antiques market at a price. In the art world, the dialectic between the art market and the art museum runs deep into the very essence and historical development of the discipline. Ivan Gaskell’s essay Tradesmen as Scholars — Interdependencies in the study and exchange of art is a good synthesis to go by. The origional is a desired acquisition, the authentic is valued when recognised and the copy oftentimes relegated to relative oblivion.

This is the ethos of an object-centred museum institution, and that does not just include the art museum. For many museums, and not just those collecting art, the digital is a mere copy of the material origional. We rarely think of museums as experiences without a material collection but the argument that there is nothing like the origional is increasingly coming across as comparing chalk to cheese, akin to comparing books to films or websites.

But do we really miss on the museum experience when we opt to go for digital instead of physical?

The answer comes from a ten month joint study by MIT and Cuseum, the museum engagement platform, on the emotive responses of subjects when shown original artworks versus their digital equivalents. Rather than missing the aura of the origional when viewing digital, to quote Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay Art in the Age of the Mechanical Reproduction, the digital experience actually improves the magnitude of brain activity. Noah Charney’s article on the observer sums it up nicely

“In short: our brains appear to be more stimulated when looking at augmented reality and virtual reality digital reproductions of art when compared to looking at the real thing”.

Noah Charney urges caution nevertheless, rightly claiming that such statements need to be ‘ …unpacked, as there are a number of considerations surrounding it’. There is one thing that nevetheless comes across rather clear. It would be a mistake to continue considering the digital as secondary to the physical experience. Peak Experience Lab have flagged this need a few years back in 2017. I choose to quote the 2011 well-known article by museum consultant Rainey Tisdale which they also feature

“Museums now rely on all sort of interpretive tools to tell their stories

– we need everything in the arsenal to do our job well. . .”

What held water a decade ago still does today, perhaps now recognised as a need more than ever before in response to the challenges brought forth by the COVID19 pandemic.

Photo by Vanessa Bucceri on Unsplash

By accepting that objects control the museum narrative, and by stopping short of acknowledging the museum as a plurality of forms that can be reached across a broad range of media, museums risk loosing relevance now more than ever before.

The origional, the authentic and the unique may now relate much more to the quality, relevance and authenticity of the museum experience. The approach to collections can certainly be fixed, and this can happen without letting go of the unique value which the origional holds. Museums experiences can equally be recognised for their value and that includes the digital. Yes, we can!