The cultural landscape of the twenty-first century is in the midst of drastic change. This Special Issue on Globalization addresses the accelerating consequences of globalization that museums face all over the world. The issue calls for a global network to confront such questions as ownership and looting, international tourism, the advent of global funding sources, the tension between worldwide museum brands and localized museums, and the arrival of a truly global medium, the Web. In a unique Global Forum international Museum leaders share their perspectives on the repercussions of globalization for the cultural sector.
A NOTE FROM THE GUEST EDITOR
Klaus Mueller
A GLOBAL FORUM
The Concept of Universal Museums
Mikhail Piotrovsky
Why Save Art for the Nation?
Nicholas Serota
Museum Practices Crossing Borders
Elaine Heumann Gurian
American Museums in Global Communities: A Report from AAM/ICOM
Douglas Evelyn
The Importance of Space and Place
Gail Dexter Lord
Globalization and the Development of Museums in China
Shui-Yuen Yim
Ethics and Leadership
Philip Nowlen
What Is International about National Portrait Galleries?
Marc Pachter
Australian Museums and Social Inclusion
Carol Scott
Ghandi, Identity, and a Search for Truth: A Personal Journey
Amareswar Galla
ANOTHER VIEW
Global by Any Other Name
Andrew J. Pekarik
SUITCASE NOTES
That Old Deja-Vu
Tom L. Freudenheim
ARTICLES
Speaking English: A Dialogue with Eastern and Central European Museum Professionals
Klaus Mueller
Writing the History of Humanity: The Role of Museums in Defining Origins and Ancestors in a Transnational World
Monique Scott
A Pride of Museums in the Desert: Saudi Arabia and the Gift of Friendship Exhibition
John Coppola
Think Globally, Publish Virtually, Act Locally: A U.S.-Saudi International Museum Partnership
Paul Michael Taylor
READ THE INTRODUCTION BY KLAUS MUELLER
The cultural landscape of the twenty-first century is in the midst of drastic and accelerating change. Museums all over the world are facing the complex and as-yet-unclear consequences of globalization, and are feeling the need (as are other cultural institutions) to redefine their relevance. This cultural shift calls for leadership and vision to ensure not only economic survival but also imaginative responses to new circumstances. This Special Issue on Globalization addresses some of these concerns, beginning with a Global Forum consisting of ten essays by world museum directors and leaders, who offer their own experiences to provoke discussion and debate. They all share the understanding that answers cannot be found anymore in a regional or national frame alone. The museum community needs to grow into a global network to confront such issues as: questions of ownership; the problem of looting; international tourism; the advent of global funding sources; the tension between worldwide museum brands and localized museums; and the arrival of a truly global medium, the Web.
The four long feature articles present case studies of exhibiting conditions in three regions: the former Soviet bloc countries in central and eastern Europe; Africa (and museums in Europe and America that display “African origins” materials); and Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states. Although exchange characterizes this new world, the comprehension of cultural diversity needs time to be implemented. Working across borders and cultures proves itself in little steps.
Museums face special challenges from the global market and worldwide consumer culture of the twenty-first century. New forms of production, distribution and consumption are altering the context in which cultural institutions function. Transnational corporations can quickly shift their production facilities or outsource services to the most profitable low tax and wage locations. But globalization has had an unexpected effect on museums. De-localization, so characteristic of a global economy, does not seem to apply to them. Instead, they remain resolutely local entities. They look even more site-bound in their old and often impressive cathedrals of culture. Only their Web presence reaches out to the world.
BRANDS
A very few museums—the Guggenheim, the Hermitage, the Centre Pompidou—are experimenting with new distribution potentials, with mixed results. The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, has chosen to fund its $150 million renovation partially with the help of Hermitage satellite museums in London, Amsterdam, and Hiroshima. The Centre Pompidou in Paris has completed the architectural competition to design its first branch museum in a French province—the Centre Pompidou Metz (CPM). Will other national museums similarly use their rich collections as assets to spread out, turn themselves into chains, and use such extended distribution of their treasures as a source of revenue?
The investment costs might stop too-ambitious plans. The CPM in Metz is funded by a Euro 35-million investment from the city itself. The Guggenheim has offered to open a branch in Rio de Janeiro—if the city carries all the costs, which are reportedly four times the annual budget of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture. Taipei has already agreed to pay half of the estimated costs for its very own Guggenheim. A few large museums thus might be able to cash in on their name-power in a global economy that thrives on brands.
But for most museums, globalization means a rediscovery of their local environment: their visitors, their staff, their collections, their tools to reach out to larger audiences, their mission in a quickly changing world.
VISITORS
Museum visitors are traveling more than ever before, and are forcing museums of all kinds and sizes to adapt to their refined expectations. Tourism has become the world’s largest growth industry, according to the World Tourism Organization (WTO), and museums have become key partners. Heritage travel is one of the fastest-growing segments of domestic and international tourism. In 2002, the WTO reported that the number of international tourists exceeded the 700 million mark for the first time—despite a worldwide economic crisis and the continuous threat of terrorism. Four out of five of the top tourist attractions in the U.K. are museums, according to a manifesto endorsed by a united front of national, regional, and independent British museums, which were attempting to use their economic clout to urge long-term government investment in their future.1
Migration has changed the context in which museums operate. According to a United Nations International Migration Report in 2002, 56 million emigrants live in Europe, 50 million in Asia, and 41 million in Northern America. Urban centers have become transnational areas that are defined by the rich, ever-changing mix of permanent and temporary residents with widely diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Globalization is happening in our own neighborhoods. The rapid social changes add to rising expectations that museums will provide civic and community spaces that serve as inspiring and safe meeting grounds for visitors from all backgrounds. Will museums be able to match this call for healing spaces and social inclusion?
CORPORATE MODELS
The much-discussed transformation of museums from collections-based to audience-driven institutions has become an economic necessity. Outreach to migrant communities not only extends the future audience base, but it also helps museums become more inclusive places of learning. Content and language accessibility become even more vital. Museums discover the necessity of a more inclusive mission; diversification of staff, boards and membership; and a broader accessibility of artifacts presented in multi-layered exhibitions—qualities that will determine both the ethical signature and economic endurance of museums in a global world.
The corporate world is more advanced in communicating across lines of ethnicity, language, nationality, gender or religion. Museums can profit from this expertise as well as avoid the pitfalls of the often-superficial localization strategies that corporations use for their global products. The core assets of museums are original artifacts that cannot be mass-produced. Museums do not offer commercial merchandise, but cultural experiences. It is in this market of experiences that globalization challenges museums. Many businesses today sell their products in part by using museum display techniques in their overall strategies. Museums have to compete with many components in our economy of experiences without losing their distinctiveness and, especially, credibility.
INFORMATION
It isn’t just visitors who are thinking globally. So are museum professionals. Decreasing costs for communication and travel facilitate exchanges between museum professionals. Membership in the International Council of Museums (ICOM) has increased over 50 percent in the past decade, to more than 15,000 members, arrayed in 110 national committees. Access to information from all corners of the world has become part of the profession. Museum portals, Web sites and e-networks provide museum professionals with an unprecedented density of information. Museum consultants today work all over the world; so do exhibition designers, museum architects, and curators.
COLLECTIONS IN A GLOBAL WORLD
The proliferation of national museums in the nineteenth century was a consequence of the development of nation-states. So how will national collections be affected by the transnational networks of the twenty-first century? Could museums move to the forefront—as they did in defining a national consciousness in the nineteenth century—by guiding their audiences into a pluralistic and transnational understanding of culture? After all, museums know, maybe better than any other institution, that cultural artifacts are hybrid in nature: products of cross-cultural influences. Isn’t cultural diffusion as old as mankind? However, globalization in the twenty-first century has radically accelerated the scope, speed, and depth of cultural distribution. Some assume that this will turn a few into producers, many into consumers, and all of us into members of a McWorld with an American signature. Others embrace cross-cultural exchange as the breeding ground of new cultures. Will museums learn from best practices around the world while keeping their distinctiveness? Or will they merge into a globally indistinguishable model? The global museum—a copy-cat?
OWNERSHIP
As our frames of reference continue to expand, international standards—guidelines concerning looted artifacts, for example—are becoming widely accepted in the worldwide museum community. For many Western museums, this raises the extremely difficult question of ownership and colonial heritage.
At the initiative of the British Museum, 18 of the world’s leading collecting institutions signed a declaration in December 2002, in which they identified themselves as “universal museums… [that] serve not just the citizens of one nation but the people of every nation.” They also boldly stated that they would not return artifacts seized during colonial rule or during earlier periods of history. Is their self-designation as “universal museums” a solution, or just a self-serving pretext to reject any claims of ownership?
The declaration, not surprisingly, brought on a storm of protest. Critics claimed that these institutions were using the notion of the global museum to support an argument against repatriating objects to countries that claim original ownership. The 18 museums may indeed have a legal argument about their right to hold and display artifacts acquired in previous centuries under very different laws and standards. But they will still have to negotiate with ethnic groups and nation-states that assert a right to objects reflecting their cultural heritage.
The significance of First Nations in the cultural life of the world’s peoples is being brought into focus with the opening in September 2004 of the National Museum of the American Indian, adjacent to the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. Museums concentrating on indigenous peoples have already appeared in Australia and New Zealand and have led to a stronger consciousness of their material heritage within the respective museum communities. “Ownership” will become a major issue for all museums due to the increase in international travel, the accessibility of vast new amounts of historical records, and a changing awareness regarding the historical values of artifacts.
Cultural heritage looting—which contributed to many of the rich collections in European and American museums—is not a phenomenon of the past. In the last five years, 220,000 graves in China alone were plundered by thieves looking for antique objects to sell. The ICOM Red Lists of missing objects from Latin America, Africa and Iraq tell the same story. The growth of the illegal market in art and antiques from Asia, Latin America and Afghanistan is explosive; art is increasingly used by drug cartels to laundry money. Looting is a worldwide problem, and can only be contained through worldwide cooperation between museums. Will a clear provenance determine the ethical profile of museums in the future?
Modes of acquiring artifacts may change in other ways. In November 2002, the Tate Museum in London, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris announced a joint purchase of Five Angels for the Millennium, a video installation by Bill Viola—the first such cooperative effort between major museums from three different countries. The work will rotate each year between the three institutions; they explain that the partnership will alleviate their funding and space problems. Beyond practical considerations, the joint purchase poses far-reaching questions about the nature of museums, which traditionally have been defined by the permanence and uniqueness of their collections. Rotating collections turn museums into flexible—and possibly look-alike—places of cultural exchange. Will visitors—looking for the particular—find the same blend of global taste across the world’s art museums?
Other museums in the U.K. and U.S. have followed the joint-purchase model, or developed new variations on it. For instance, the Louvre and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta recently announced an agreement to send hundreds of works of art from the Louvre to the High Museum over a three-year period; the High in turn will send more than $10 million to the Louvre. The two museums will also institute exchanges of students, curators, educators, and other staff, such as marketers. The Louvre has emphasized its need to become more entrepreneurial, and the High is hoping to borrow French panache for its new galleries, opening in November 2005.
THE WEB
An increasing number of global visitors do not arrive on our doorstep, but access collections through museum Web sites. The digital transformation of museums is challenging traditional ideas about what museums are about. All over the world, digitization projects are turning hidden collections into visible global assets. Of course, in this context, “global” really means the First World: 72 percent of Internet users live in high-income countries, which are home to 14 percent of the world’s population. On the Web, museums are global virtual spaces, even when studies show that our virtual visitors, at least in the U.S., in large part still remain home-grown.
This digital transformation is changing museums and is inspiring new forms of preserving and displaying cultures both on- and off-line. The sheer volume of digitized collections that global audiences will be able to access is unprecedented. Will this access lead to significant changes in how we look at, consume, or produce cultural artifacts? Will museums engage in virtual collaborations with museums across the world in order to bring together artifacts that originally belonged together, but were fragmented geographically? Museums could jointly strengthen their profile as gateways for life-long learning, including distance learning and interactive communication with online visitors.
None of these dilemmas can be solved any longer in a regional or national context alone, since they concern global changes. Yet the museum’s place remains in the local environment, however altered. The site-bound character of museums could be both an opportunity and an obstacle in renewing their relevance for the twenty-first century. Museums, more than any other institution, have the potential to create real and lasting understanding between cultures as they preserve material evidence. For that reason they might be needed in their local environment more than ever. Museums at their best have the special ability to make us feel—wherever we come from—culturally “at home.”
NOTE
The manifesto, “Building Outstanding Museums for the Twenty-first Century,” March 2004, was signed by the directors of the national museums, the chairman of MLA (Museums, Archives and Libraries Council), the chairman of AIM (the Association of Independent Museums), the convenors of GLLAM (the Group of Large Local Authority Museums), the president of the Museums Association, and the chief executives of the Regional Agencies.