Admiration, denigration and insufficient knowledge

“I decided to go to Dahlem. … They wanted to exhibit Berlin’s most expressive picture collections together in a new museum in the Tiergarten quarter. Until then, however, you could view them in one of the sections of Dahlem’s extensive museum complex, in a large low building with smoked glass windows, which in style and with its construction materials, its large, empty, impersonal spaces, its entrance hall and stairways, appeared more like the headquarters of an international organisation than a museum. The picture gallery was in the oldest part of the building, as was the East Asia Museum, the Museum of Islamic Arts and the Museum of Ethnography, where in the semi-darkness the visitor was confronted with silhouettes of sometimes brittle and weather-beaten statuettes from the pre-Columbus era. Whenever I visited Dahlem, I always went in through the main entrance, not via the picture gallery’s special entrance. Then I immediately stumbled upon some of these pre-Columbus beauties slumbering in glass cabinets. I didn’t get stuck in front of these wonders, but quickly left the Museum of Ethnography and went through a hidden door I was familiar with at the end of one of the rooms and, leaving behind me the treasures of several thousands of years, I hurried to the picture gallery where I started to make my way across the centuries backwards towards the Renaissance, cutting through without stopping in a number of rooms where only 18th century French and English paintings were hanging on the walls … which I only quickly glanced at, without forming any opinions. That is to say, my opinion was that our admiration can be absolute, while we had to hold back with our denigration. We cannot make a dogma of our insufficient knowledge, our mistakes, or our incapacity for seduction or taking pleasure …” [From Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s novel Television]

I quote these words at length not only because they are amusing, but also because they contain the type of observations, interactions and conclusions I examine below. The protagonist in the Dahlem escapade is a dithering scholar who has spent several months in Berlin on a scholarship sometime, it seems, during the second half of the 90s. For the author, Berlin is an exciting place. In addition to the cafés, restaurants and shops, he describes two memorable occasions. One involved a pleasure flight, in the course of which he could take a sweeping scan of the city with a bird’s-eye view. The other was the quoted museum visit, in which somewhat ceremoniously he almost sniffs out with his nose a painting he finds exciting. The novel is a satirical description of intellectual existence (thinking, research, writing) and reading the book is truly entertaining. One day the hero visits Dahlem, the former museum complex of West Berlin, where he unsuspectingly steps into the almost empty museum. The purpose of his visit is to examine with scholarly eyes a number of Dürer paintings for a study he is preparing, though in order to reach them he has to cross the ‘ethnographic’, for him less interesting halls containing 18th-century works.

I first read the book in 2000, when I knew much less about the inner mechanisms of Berlin’s museum structure, its conflicts and its major expansion. Nevertheless, it had a great effect on me and I used the book as a sort of Baedeker when I first visited Dahlem in 2002.

What is this Dahlem museum complex? You take the metro for a good half hour away from Berlin’s most famous museum centre, Museum Island. The connection between the places, however, is not only formed by metro lines. Even before the First World War, the general director of the Imperial and Royal Museums, Wilhelm von Bode, had a plan for establishing a museum for non-European civilisations and Asian collections. From this initiative a building, today’s old building of Museumscentrum Dahlem, was constructed between 1914 and 1917, which from 1921 functioned only as an ethnographic depository, since the exhibition space was the Museum für Völkerkunde, next to the Martin-Gropius-Bau not far from today’s Potsdamer Platz. The Second World War put a temporary stop to development. The city-centre building was destroyed and the Dahlem depositories ended up in West Berlin. The museum centre which can be visited today was recreated only between 1964 and 1973, when the Dahlem museum quarter was established. Currently there are three museological institutes in Dahlem: the Ethnologisches Museum, with its ethnographic objects of non-European civilisations, the Museum für Aisatisches Museum, with its Asian arts collection, and since 2005 the Museum Europäischer Kulturen, which has ethnographic collections of European cultures. The centre with its three different, independent collections, each with their own exhibition strategy, doesn’t make it easy for visitors who are less versed in the branches of museology. As professionals we know the difference between Volkskunde and Völkerkunde, how, from the 60s in the course of ideological critiques and changes of language vis-à-vis social and cultural studies, ethnography (Volkskunde) became European ethnology in German language speaking areas, and in the 1990s and 2000s how the fever for changing names that swept across the whole of Europe transformed museums of ethnography into museums of cultures, world cultures and European cultures. Yet visitors cannot be expected to follow these philological changes. Hence Dahlem is still not in an easy situation – thanks not only to its disturbed historical fate, but also the effects of the broad scholarly changes. Despite the guidebooks and museum professionals regarding Dahlem as Berlin’s third largest museum attraction – after Museumsinsel and the Kulturforum – the significance attached to it and everyday reality are far from each other. The story continues with the Humboldtforum plan, which will mean moving for two of the museums.

When Jean-Philippe Toussaint visited Dahlem at the end of the 90s the situation was even more complicated. The city-centre Museum Island had not yet been revitalised and thus the works of the picture gallery could be seen in Dahlem (the Museum of European Culture replaced the picture gallery in 2005). Toussaint’s hero went to Dahlem in order to examine some Dürer works in the tucked away room. You can tell from his adventures that he found a very different setup than he would find today. The picture gallery has moved out of the building, though the architectural and exhibiting arrangement of the ethnology and Asian arts rooms has remained virtually unchanged. Collating Toussaint’s literary text with everyday reality may give cause for criticism: it is clear that what appears is not ‘reality’ but literary fiction. Nevertheless, this isn’t the only point of the novel, whose literary text can be used as a sort of guidebook. Another critical point is that the author cannot be regarded as a museum specialist and thus his depiction is that of a layperson. However, in the case of Toussaint it’s more than just about an intellectual visiting a museum. In 2012 he himself staged an exhibition at the Louvre with the title Livre / Louvre, which involved art photos, videos, installations and performances. The exhibition was based on two central sources: the original manuscripts of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Dante’s Divine Comedy. He compared these with contemporary artistic reflections. Thus he arranged the layers of meaning of literature, the arts, historical eras and contemporary culture, not in a rear section of a provincial gallery but in the Louvre’s wing devoted to contemporary projects. Hence his Dahlem adventure, although humorous, ironic and not a little satirical, nevertheless is perceptibly closer to reality than the guidebooks and texts popularising Berlin’s attractions.

With the literary example I am trying to show how many uncertainties, changes, ideas, skills, temptations and mistakes, as well as insufficient knowledge, are involved with every major museum concept, with the alteration of museums, their moving, naming and renaming, their merging and separation. From this perspective, below I take a look at some renowned museums which use the tools of ethnography. I do not give complete answers to the questions involved, yet I consider it important to raise them, such as: in what way do the social sciences and the museum profession react and create space, for example, for socially critical concepts; in the case of ethnography museums, whether the by now compulsory critique of ‘classical’ canons embedded in the cultural policy discourse present a sufficient and an attractive alternative for cultural policy, museum makers and visitors. Furthermore, is there a real demand on behalf of society for the integration of critical discourse in institutes – in Hungary and across Europe? In what way and how are museums of ethnography ‘different’? What ways of speaking can they help visitors in the arts museum discourse? Is there a special language for ethnology, ethnography and anthropology museums for presenting and making accessible their own themes? Are they able to, for example, shape the expectations of visitors in connection with the exotic? Do they effect and influence the public, while not changing into an amusement or cultural centre, a theme park or migration office? Is there a social and scientific medium in Hungary to address these questions?

The lexicon of ethnography is not a fanciful piece of fiction. The science of ethnography born at the same time as 19th-century national awakening, and the lexicon and terminology of cultural anthropology institutionalised in parallel with the colonial discourse displayed different patterns in different countries. Despite the fact that the research and presentation of difference, both within and outside its own culture is accompanied by a well-defined methodology, developed theory and the use of concepts, the shift in ideological criticism and the crisis of methodology of the social sciences and humanities experienced from the 60s resulted in a fundamental linguistic and conceptual transformation and clarification of concepts. The changes, however, didn’t stop there, since – for example – as could be experienced from the 80s, the post-colonial critical discourse, pointing beyond the social sciences, relativised almost to the extreme the notions of ‘culture’ and the ‘world’.

I am not against diversity. In fact, this terminological richness often shows that museums which pertain to the notion of ‘ethnography’ are good in different ways, were institutionalised according to different scientific traditions, operated in different conceptual fields and were effected by different changes. For example, in post-war Germany the prefix ‘Volk’ wasn’t acceptable as a critical concept for the social sciences and for museums. Hence ‘Volkskunde’ was practically banned and what became more widespread was ‘European ethnology’, by means of which instead of (or possibly in addition to) ‘the people’ and ‘the nation’ some kind of broader reference could be made to a cultural context spanning national borders. However, the term ‘European’ still preserved something of the geographical characteristics of science. Completely new institutions could be established around the tension of borders and borderlessness. For example, the Museum of European and Mediterranean (whatever that might mean) Civilisations, which opened in Marseille last year, decided to opt for a long descriptive name, but provided an easily pronounceable abbreviation, which can be formed into a brand. In this case the locality points beyond the country’s borders and refers to the European and Mediterranean cultural context. The new institute is a result of the transformation and fusion of earlier collections and museums, which was accompanied by no little conflict and criticism.

In the field of ethnography, perhaps the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris is the most successful example from this perspective. At first sight it is a museum, at second sight an anthropology or ethnology museum, but on third sight in fact neither. In its mission the institute clearly doesn’t claim to have a museum or ethnological identity, yet it is highly successful with a rising number of visitors and it is able to compete with arts museums. It receives most criticism from ethnographers, ethnologists and anthropologists. However, its scientific position and name – derived from the embankment where it stands – clearly show that it is working within a different paradigm. However, if it once worked, is it working again, and is it worth regarding atypical examples as models, or does the approach have to be developed from the cultural, scientific and social environment in which the institutes function? The question is, of course, a pseudo one.

At the same time, in Europe you can find plenty of ethnographic museums with significant non-European collections and traditions of exhibiting, which look for answers in a completely different way. In their mission and practice Hamburg’s Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg and Munich’s Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, two ethnology/anthropology museums, both employ the concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘the arts’. In their permanent exhibitions, what is at the forefront is the mode of displaying with an emphasis on the artistic form of the objects, while little is learnt about the use and social context of the particular cultures. Meanwhile, their temporary exhibitions characteristically involve a fine framework of interpretation drawn around the chosen themes. The constancy of major structures (permanent exhibition) and the mobility of the small ones (temporary exhibitions and experimental projects) create a certain tension in the presentation of the collection, which at once draws from the viewers criticism, wonder or simply incomprehension and lack of interest. The displays built on geographical and thematic questions, the artistic and social contexts of the objects, and the stories and generalisations in one space are not without their dangers, but neither are they without lessons. But however we look at these museums, it is important to note that they have their place and role in a properly understood, comprehensive museum system. They possess such heritage and knowledge, which doesn’t mean depositories of famous artists, crowd-pullers, styles and eras, but generators and parts of a several centuries old cognitive process, in which the alterations, the otherness, the similarity and difference and the understanding of the exotic are linked with the acquisition of knowledge and learning – or not rarely with the absence of knowledge. Therefore in addition to the aesthetic categories, the understanding and the presentation of these concepts, knowledge and experiences provide the essence of the mission for these collections and museums, as well as convey the idea that culture is not simply based on admiration, but on understanding. But this is a slow process.

Critical analysis of one’s own past is today a basic criterion, although it does not necessarily ensure a secure future for an institute.

From all this it is clear that museology involves a slow process. And it happens that the constraints of commodification and the accelerated world of cultural consumption cannot cope with waiting for transformation. Yet there are working examples of rationalisation and amalgamation. In the mid 1990s Sweden, which has a strong economy and relatively stable financing of culture, saw four museums dealing with international, mainly non-European subjects, merge. The museums of ethnography, Mediterranean cultures and East Asia in Stockholm, and the ethnography museum in Gothenburg (closed for a long time due to lack of resources and low visitor numbers) were fused into a larger unit, the National Museums of World Culture, with the umbrella organisation undertaking guarantees for different research projects. In 2004 a new building opened in Gothenburg under the rubric of ‘world culture’. Beyond rationalisation, the reorganisation and construction had social and political reasons – partly since the discourse about migration, multiculturalism, cultural identity and postcolonialism intensified in Sweden in the 90s. There were attempts to channel this into museum culture, for which a radically new type of museum was required, one where the earlier strategies of presentation were revitalised, not only in approach but also in visual terms. These few examples show that the space for social history museums has widened across Europe, but where the relevant questions and answers are posed not only in terms of financial problems and visitor numbers. Indeed, perhaps least in those fields. In this discourse ethnography could be in a winning position, since there will never be any shortage of social conflicts. However change doesn’t necessarily depend on swift and spectacular reactions. Rather for any institute it involves long, knowledge-based, critical discourse, and thus it is drawn into the arena of science and society. But in this discourse the key issue is no longer only a critical approach to the scientific canons, but a substantial, dialogue-based relationship formed with the wider environment. Colourful, exotic and attractive spectacles and true-to-life presentations always attract numerous visitors, but are not capable of holding lasting attention. An institute is made ephemeral in the manner of a place of consumer culture operating with cultural knowledge and products.