How was the Holocaust possible, and what role did ordinary people play? These are key questions of the travel exhibition Some Were Neighbors by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). I am excited to share our article ‘Working with the Exhibition Some Were Neighbors: USHMM and German Partners Co-Create New Holocaust Educational Models’ that reflects our pedagogical work with the museum’s travel exhibition in Germany since 2019. It is also accessible in German: “Arbeiten mit der Ausstellung »Einige waren Nachbarn«: Das USHMM und deutsche Partner entwickeln gemeinsam neue Holocaust-Bildungsmodelle“, both on the quarterly journal GedenkstättenRundbrief (nr. 211) which reflects the thematic work of memorial sites for victims of National Socialism.

[ABSTRACT: ‘The Men with the Pink Triangle: Voices lost, voices recovered’: In April 1993, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washing­ton opened its doors on the same weekend that the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation gathered one million LGBT people in the capital. That timely coincidence not only brought many LGBT people as visitors to the Holocaust museum on its first days: it also led to an unprecedented national discourse on gay victims of Nazi persecution — a victim group long excluded from Holocaust remembrance. In that discussion, survivor testimonies and archival records and photographs in the museum’s growing archival acquisitions took center stage. On the eve of one of the largest human rights protests in American history, they were perceived with a new public interest that raised critical and complex questions on LGBT history and present. In my article I reflect on this journey over the last 30 years. Today our remembrance is based on testimony and archival documentation that leads to new forms of remembrance and new narratives on ‘The Men with the Pink Triangle: Voices lost, voices recovered’.]

The Men with the Pink Triangle: Voices lost, voices recovered
The fragile remembrance of the destruction of the first LGBT movement worldwide

Klaus Mueller*

Representative Gerry E. Studds could hardly believe it. In April 1993, he and his colleagues from the House of Representatives visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington just days before its official opening. The museum, America’s national institution for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history, had invited all Members of Congress to a preview. Studds had been a Massachusetts delegate since 1973 and had become one of the foremost spokesmen for the American LGBT community after coming out in 1983 as the first openly gay member of Congress.

At the entrance to the exhibition that Monday evening, Studds received a so-called identity card telling the individual story of one individual victim. The museum developed these cards with a photo and a short biography to create empathy on a personal level within the larger narrative of the Holocaust. Visitors were offered these cards upon entrance; the cards were organized by age and gender. From the hundreds of cards, Studds coincidentally received the card on Willem Arondeus, a Dutch gay resistance fighter who had led a courageous attack on the Amsterdam population register in 1943 to halt its misuse by the German occupiers to trace Jews and forced laborers. After a short German show trial, Arondeus had been executed, but he was able to ask his lawyer to testify after the war that homosexual men like him had been part of the Dutch resistance.[1] In a New York Times interview, Studds later remembered:  “For me to get that card was just stunning. Of the many places we never existed, certainly the Holocaust was one, in most people’s minds. The supreme triumph in the last generation, in terms of the struggle of gay and lesbian people, is recognition of the simple fact that we exist.”[2]

In fact, Studds was so enthusiastic about this experience that he had the short biography of Arondeus included in the Congressional Records, the official documentation and historiography of the US Congress since 1789. Only members of Congress can contribute articles. In his contribution, Studds wrote that he was aware that someone like Arondeus can be quickly forgotten because his homosexuality is an almost “natural” obstacle to inclusion in collective memory. “Our memory of gay Nazi victims such as Willem Arondeus has special significance. Unlike those who were able to marry and have children, many homosexuals have died without anyone to remember them but us. We are their family and we will never forget them.”[3]

From abstraction to remembrance: survivor testimonies and archival evidence go center stage   

In the early 1980’s, the Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance had urged the Holocaust Museum to include gay victims, and the museum had decided to do so. But the search for archival documents had turned out to be difficult. Just one year before the opening of the Holocaust Museum, I was hired in 1992 as a research specialist to identify existing records in Europe for inclusion in the new permanent USHMM exhibition. Helped by my previous work on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals and a research project on homosexuality and emigration during the Holocaust, I was in contact with a broad network of gay and lesbian historians in Europe and the United States whose support was crucial. Additional archival research led me to a variety of archival repositories ranging from state archives and special collections in Gay and Lesbian Archives—such as the Gay Museum in Berlin and the archives of the Magnus Hirschfeld Society—to repositories in camp memorials across Europe and footage from filmmakers and especially private collections from survivors.

We were able in a few months to secure copies of police arrest records and photographs from Düsseldorf and mug shots of gay prisoners from Auschwitz, as well as documentation on the renowned Berlin Institute for Sexual Science, led by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. Pre-1933 documents and visuals from German lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities illuminated their astonishing scale, diversity and reach that was already emerging at the turn of the century but fully developed in the 1920’s of the Weimar Republic. There was a growing sense of freedom in this worldwide-first LGBT community before its destruction after 1933.

Based on archival records and conversations with survivors, I prepared short biographies on individual gay men and women. The identity cards of eight gay victims and one lesbian victim traced their individual lives—their voices—and became part of the museum’s new permanent exhibition, including the card on Willem Arondeus that Congressman Studds received.

On Thursday, April 22, 1993, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washing­ton was dedicated and started to receive its first visitors before being opened fully to the public on April 26. On the museum’s opening weekend, the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation gathered one million LGBT people in the capital. That timely coincidence not only brought many LGBT people as visitors to the Holocaust Museum on its first days: it also led to an unprecedented national discourse on gay victims of Nazi persecution—a victim group long excluded from Holocaust remembrance. In that discussion, the museum’s growing archival acquisitions—copied archival records and photographs, original artifacts and testimonies of survivors—took center stage. On the eve of one of the largest human rights protests in American history, they were perceived with a new public interest that raised critical and complex questions on LGBT history and present.

Based on the archival evidence presented and that renewed public interest, both mainstream and LGBT media confronted in the mid-1990s in detail the most extreme persecution of LGBT people in history. For the first time, the focus turned to LGBT survivors based on their testimonies and the historical records presented in the museum’s exhibition and public programs.[4]

The pink triangle—the Nazi marking for alleged homosexual prisoners in the camps—was deeply engrained in the community’s consciousness as a symbol for the worst expression of homophobic hate and violence. For many, the triangle also was a symbol of ‘never again’, a warning of the consequences of unchecked homophobia. At the 1993 March on Washington that demanded an end to the long history of discrimination, violence and murder against LGBT people, the symbol of the pink triangle spoke loudly. During the march, speakers like Urvashi Vaid linked the opening of the museum to the larger struggle for freedom and equality: “It is fitting that the Holocaust Museum was dedicated the same weekend as this March, for not only were gay people persecuted by the Nazi state, but gay people are indebted to the struggle of the Jewish people against bigotry and intolerance.”[5]

Barrett Brick, Executive Director of the World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations, stated: “We come together at a juxtaposition of events that are rightfully intertwined: the dedication of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the National March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. The March, a clarion call for justice. The Museum, described by one writer as ‘a place of terrible beauty,’ standing as a reminder of the consequences of the failure of justice—of cowardice, indifference, appeasement, and silence, the fertile soils in which evil can flourish.”[6]

The historical solidarity Representative Studds evoked in his text became palpable. The March on Washington and the timely coincidence of the Museum’s opening finally created the possibility of confronting a complex and painful history. An extraordinary, beautiful, dignified and widely visited memorial service of gay and lesbian victims was held on April 23, 1993, close to the Holocaust Museum, filling a void and silence that had dominated post-war decades.[7]

In 1993, the museum’s approach was not just an American but an international breakthrough to document the fate of gay men who were murdered in concentra­tion camps—a group that for nearly 50 years had been excluded from the memory of the Holo­caust. The inclusive approach by USHMM was a watershed moment and opened up a new view on the multitude of archival records and the lives inscribed in them.

“Beaten to death, silenced to death”

After 1933, gay men, lesbian women, and transgender people were deeply affected by homophobic Nazi ideology and the destruction of the LGBT culture that had developed in Germany since the turn of the 19th century.

Gay men were targeted by a state-sponsored persecution under the 1935 revised Nazi version of the sodomy law, paragraph 175, that was introduced to the German Criminal Code in 1871. Historians estimate that approximately 100,000 men were arrested as alleged homosexuals. Half of them were sentenced and sent to prison. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 of these men were deported to concentration camps, mainly in Germany and Austria. An estimated 60 percent of those men marked as alleged homosexuals were killed. Although several thousand survived, very few gay survivors dared to give testimony after the war due to ongoing persecution and legal discrimination and the lack of public empathy with their plight.

Lesbian women did not fall under paragraph 175 in Germany, while in annexed Austria, paragraph 219 did criminalize both homosexual men and lesbian women. In both countries, their meeting places were closed down, their journals forbidden, and taking part in social circles became dangerous. Although lesbian historians found only few cases of women in Nazi camp records who were deported due to being lesbian, lesbian women were deeply affected by Nazi racist propaganda to strengthen the population growth of the so-called ‘Aryan’ nation, the central role of motherhood to reach this goal, and denunciations by their neighbors or colleagues. They had to retreat into a closeted life. More research on state-instigated discrimination of lesbian women is needed.[8]

On the situation of transgender, transvestites or intersex people during the Nazi era, only first studies are available.[9] Like lesbian women and gay men, they lost their support network and partial legal protection they had established in the 1920’s. The first LGBT community worldwide that tasted a new freedom to live diverse lives, understood itself as a collective with an increasingly powerful voice, and took the liberty to expand and transgress gender roles and sexual orientations was destroyed in just a few years after Hitler’s rise to power.

How did gay survivors continue to live after 1945?

In the first decades after the end of the war, the former men with the pink triangle lacked any support network, as did lesbian women and transgender people. They received no recognition as victims of National Socialist persecution after 1945, neither by the Allies nor the subsequent two German states. The strong upsurge of homo- and transphobia in Europe in the late 1940s as well as in the United States with McCarthyism precluded public empathy with the plight of gay survivors.

Moreover, West Germany retained the National Socialist version of paragraph 175 that criminalized male homosexuality. In 1957, the West German Constitutional Court even defended this adoption of a Nazi law referencing population policies and ‘moral’ considerations, with some of the arguments closely echoing National Socialist ideas. East Germany abolished the tightened Nazi version of Paragraph 175 and went back to its previous form.

Gay men remained an easy target for denunciation. Persecution continued under the same Nazi Paragraph 175 which remained on the books in West Germany until 1969 and was only completely repealed in 1994. Between 1949 and 1969, a further estimated 100,000 gay men were charged under Paragraph 175. The German police continued to use police lists of suspected homosexual men, the so-called ‘pink lists’. Prior victims of Nazi persecution were particularly vulnerable as ‘previously convicted’ persons. German post-war history is marked not only by the lack of historical reappraisal, but this continuity of gay persecution.

Due to continuing and unchallenged discrimination and persecution after 1945 and the lack of any judicial and political recognition of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, historians avoided the subject. Historical knowledge remained sparse due to a lack of historical research. It was not a shortage of archival records; researchers mirrored the lack of empathy for gay survivors in post-war societies and did not look into these records. The silence was not the result of shame on the part of gay survivors, but of an outspoken refusal by their families, colleagues, and the public to acknowledge them as having been persecuted unjustly. Some gay survivors went to court to seek justice and compensation, only to find former Nazi justices ruling. Memorials and committees of former prisoners excluded gay survivors from yearly remembrances and fought against memorial plaques proposed by gay and lesbian groups.[10]

Their forced silence became a topic for the first small gay and lesbian initiatives that strived to include them in Holocaust remembrance. The world’s first memorial plaque in memory of gay victims was unveiled on December 9, 1984, in the former Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. The inscription states: “Beaten to death, silenced to death. The homosexual victims of National Socialism.”[11]

The reinterpretation of the pink triangle as a symbol of remembrance: But who do we remember?

With the development of the second LGBT movement in Germany from the late 1960’s onwards, a new generation also started to look back at the horrific past and began to ask itself: What do we know? Whom do we remember? How do we remember?

For a long time, Heinz Heger’s 1972 memoir, The Men With The Pink Triangle, was the first and only testimony and introduction to this history that historians avoided.[12] In the 1970’s, queer communities both in the United States and Europe started to adopt the Nazi invention of the pink triangle as their own symbol and code, wearing it as a sign of remembrance and linking it to contemporary discrimination. But how did gay survivors who were forced to wear a pink triangle in the camps as a sign of their dehumanization feel about this re-interpretation?

They remained invisible. Nobody asked them. The second LGBT movement in the 1970’s, after two long decades of relentless ostracizing and post-war silence, had become disconnected from their gay, lesbian, and transgender ‘grandparents’. Their story was lost, not because they did not want to share it, but because for decades after World War II, nobody wanted to hear it. In interviews I conducted with survivors, many describe this lack of empathy, this forced silence, as a second traumatization.

The pink triangle could become an international symbol of gay and lesbian pride because we were not haunted by concrete memories of those who were forced to wear them in the camps. No names, no faces; an empty memory.

The lack of research, the inaccessibility of archival documentation, and the shortage of testimonies turned gay survivors into an abstract and invisible victim group—the “men with the pink triangle”. Only in the 1990s, we began to learn more about the individuals who were deported to camps and their personal stories through rare survivor testimonies, oral history interviews, and film documentaries. Local historical research based on archival research provided for the first time more accurate documentation.[13] For the vast majority of gay survivors, however, this interest came too late. They did not witness the cautious inclusion of gay victims in memorial exhibitions that began in the 1990’s. They remained alone and died alone with their memories.

Because we did not learn more about the fate of gay victims and survivors, we easily compared their (unknown) tragedy with other forms of discrimination and persecution of queer people or to that of people with AIDS. In 1987, activists in New York City designed the powerful ‘Silence=Death’ poster campaign, using the pink triangle as a placeholder by turning it around above the key slogan, Silence = Death. Adapted by ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) only months later, it became a powerful political symbol in the fight against AIDS. The poster, however, did perpetuate the usage of the pink triangle as an abstract symbol: reminiscent of the persecution conducted under the pink triangle, not of those who were forced to wear it.

Did we understand AIDS better by linking it to the Nazi persecution of homosexuals? What did we gain, or lose, by comparing AIDS with the Holocaust? There are crucial differences between the inaction and hostility of American society and politics at that time towards people with AIDS and the intentio­nal systematic Nazi killing machine. From a gay European perspective, it seems startling eliminating these differences: we potentially minimize the distinctiveness of each event in exchange for a vague narrative of victimization.

Today, maybe due to a growing collective awareness of individual victims and their stories, the Nazi invention of the pink triangle has largely disappeared as a code and symbol of LGBT communities. It is replaced by a symbol developed by the community itself: the rainbow flag.

From Testimony over Archives to Remembrance

The exclusion of gay survivors from the memory of the Holocaust influenced their individual memories. We know that survivors need a safe space in order for them to share their story once they are ready to do that. But gay survivors had learned from their families and post-war society that their story did not matter and that made them very reluctant to be interviewed.

Over the years when I talked with them for the Holocaust Museum ID card project and later various independent film documentaries and exhibitions, they often suddenly stopped themselves telling their story because they believed “that no one is interested to hear that anyway.” It was hard for them to trust and even harder to believe that they would be acknowledged as a “survivor” and that their story was important enough to be documented in an exhibition by the Holocaust Museum.

When I let gay survivors know about the huge public interest their stories received, also due to the timely coincidence of the March on Washington and the museum’s opening, they felt recognized and heard for the first time.

Over the years, both public and media interest in the personal stories of gay survivors steadily continued and grew. USHMM public programs on the persecution of Gay and Lesbians and their role in the resistance reached a new generation that wanted to know exactly what had happened.[14] New archival acquisitions nurtured this interest. A successful $1.5 million LGBT campaign led to the acknowledgment of “American Gays & Lesbians, Families and Friends” as among the founders of the museum. Never before had the gay and lesbian community publicly contributed such large donations to a national museum. The museum travel exhibition on the Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933–1945 solidified an ongoing conversation.[15]

Sometimes survivors donated artifacts that we could preserve and that now help to tell the survivor’s story through a different angle. The Holocaust Museum’s early decision and willingness to collect and provide access to archival records on the men with the pink triangle over the years has nurtured new questions and research.

From archival evidence to new narratives

Looking back, these changes seem very unlikely even in the 1990’s, and earlier even impossible. How do you build an archive when for many years there wasn’t even the need to know these facts? How do you fill an absence when even survivors themselves stopped believing that their story matters to the world? How can we rethink relevance about who deserves to be documented and understand the significance of that documentation in the face of embarrassment, active resistance, and despair?

The second traumatization of gay and lesbian survivors, however, runs deep. When I worked in the late 1990s on the film documentary ‘Paragraph 175’[16] that profiles gay survivor’s experiences based on their testimonies, they initially were still hesitant due to their disappointment from decades of indifference.  Only when they saw the film did they feel vindicated and publicly embraced in a way they had never experienced before.

It was the courage and, ultimately, their willingness to share their story that guided me on these projects. Despite their hesitation to trust and their reluctance to talk, they cautiously allowed me to come into their world even when they did not fully understand why certain documents could mean so much in a museum collection, an exhibition, or a documentary film. They were men and women of their time: once they recognized the sincerity of the interest into their story, they guided me through their experiences. In the end, above all, it was their absolute need to tell their story and to be asked the questions they wanted to be asked that brought these projects to completion.[17] We owe our knowledge today to the courage and power of their testimonies. The remembrance of what happened to our generation of gay and lesbian grandparents is based on their courageous testimonies.

Research and remembrance expanded both through archival evidence becoming more accessible in this long-ignored chapter of Holocaust history. Over the next years, the Holocaust Museum acquired additional key collections relating to the Nazi persecution of homosexuals that allow recapturing the individual stories of gay and lesbian survivors:

• Collection Josef Kohout / Heinz Heger. – Heinz Heger’s The Men with the Pink Triangle (republished in English in 1994) had an enormous reach for past and new generations as the long-time only gay survivor testimony. Heger, a pseudonym for Josef Kohout, never learned how much he had changed history with his testimony that was published in 1972 by a small German publisher house (after years of searching a publisher). Today his testimony has been translated into all major European languages, as well as Japanese.  In 1995, I met with Kohout’s long-term partner Wilhelm Kröpfl and learned the full story of how Kohout’s memoir came into being. Kröpfl donated a unique collection of records documenting Kohout’s story to USHMM Archives, including letters by his parents during his years in the camp system; notes by Kohout during liberation and his pink triangle. The collection also helped to validate Kohout’s achievement.[18]

• Collection Pierre Seel. – In 1994 French survivor Pierre Seel published his memoir “Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel”. He found the courage to testify after hearing excerpts from Heinz Heger’s testimony during a reading. At the age of 17, Pierre Seel was arrested for alleged homosexuality and imprisoned in Schirmeck-Vorbrück internment camp. After his release, being traumatized by his experiences, his family forbade him to talk about his time in the camp. But his mother, at the end of her life, revealed to him a small object—a Mickey Mouse doll surrounded by the garland from her wedding veil—which she had made while he was in the camp. As Pierre shared with me, this artifact was a late revelation that his mother had prayed for his survival and return. In 2001 Pierre Seel entrusted this special object to the Museum.[19]

• Collection Frieda Belinfante. – A talented cellist educated by her Jewish father, one of the first female conductors in music history, a lesbian member of the Dutch resistance: The lives of Frieda Belinfante stretch over nine decades of the 20th century. Frieda was born on May 10, 1904, in Amsterdam and died on April 26, 1995, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Frieda became the first female conductor in prewar Amsterdam but retreated from a promising musical career after the German invasion of the Netherlands. She dissolved her orchestra and went underground, first working alone falsifying ID cards for Jews in hiding, later with gay writer Willem Arondeus (see above). Both participated in the preparations of the attack on the Amsterdam population registry in 1943. Frieda survived as one of the few members of the group, for months hiding in men’s clothing. On her own, she escaped via Belgium and France to Switzerland in the winter of 1944 and was interned in a Swiss refugee camp. After the war she returned to the Netherlands and emigrated to the United States in 1947. She founded the Orange County Philharmonic Orchestra in the early 1950’s and was its conductor for many years.

In May 1994, I had the unique chance to interview then 90-year-old Frieda Belinfante for the Holocaust Museum. The eight-and-a-half-hour interview, conducted over two days, became part of the Museum’s Oral History collection. During the hours of conversations, a special bond of trust developed between us, and Frieda shared her full story. She allowed me to ask honest questions about her life, willing to share her experience as a lesbian woman openly for the first time. A sense of recognition that we both were gay and had lived in the same neighborhood in Amsterdam connected us. Research based on her detailed testimony unearthed additional material on her work in the resistance, her escape to Switzerland in 1944, her emigration and successful career in the United States and allowed us to copy close to 100 photos documenting her life.[20]

I continued working on Frieda’s story in a documentary film, a biographical portrait, several exhibitions, and lectures. In 2021, I was honored to pay tribute to Lesbians and Gay men in the resistance with a special feature on Frieda in a USHMM Facebook Live Event called ‘Pride Month: Defying Nazi Persecution’.

• Collection Gad Beck. – Gad Beck and I met many times in which he shared his story of survival in Nazi Berlin while we walked through Berlin of today. Nearly sixty years after his friend and lover Manfred Lewin presented him with the gift of a small self-made booklet with poems and illustrations as a sign of their love, Gad Beck entrusted me with this fragile and intimate artifact as a gift for the Holocaust Museum’s collection. Eager to make this small booklet accessible to a larger audience, we decided to capture its story in the museum’s first exclusively online exhibition, Do you remember when. Telling the story of Gad and Manfred, it became evident how the meaning of this artifact was changed by Manfred’s deportation and death in Auschwitz and the passing years. The booklet, once only meaningful for Gad and Manfred, became a time capsule, a reminder of a friendship, of the daily life of Jewish youth group in Berlin in 1941/42, and of the events that destroyed most of them. The online exhibition Do you remember when narrates their story and that of their families and friends.[21]

• German Court, Police, Gestapo, and camp records. – German Court, Police, Gestapo, and camp records collections copied over the years (such as the General State Prosecutors Office of the State Court of Berlin records; the Duesseldorf police records; the Gestapo collection from Wurzburg) as well as records from across Europe open the potential of new research.

Records that were created as part of a process to oppress, torture, and dehumanize LGBT people today have become documents of their humanity in a situation of peril. The evidence gathered against them often contains private correspondences, forced testimonies, or denunciations by their neighbors or colleagues. This ‘evidence’ today enables us to reconstruct parts of their lives and voices. The police and camp mugshots taken of them in order to take away their individuality and humanity today remind us of the human beings they were.

• Oral History interviews. – Oral history interviews with gay survivors are scarce and will remain scarce. The USHMM Oral History Collection holds three interviews I conducted with gay survivors, one with lesbian Frieda Belinfante about her work in the Dutch resistance, and one with a Jewish-gay emigrant.[22] An equally small number of gay survivor interviews is part of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, some interviews with Jewish survivors provide additional information on fellow gay inmates.

Independent documentary films have added to this small number. Wir hatten einen grosses A am Bein (“We were marked with a big ‘A'”) by Joseph Weishaupt and Elke Jeanrond was based on three interviews with gay survivors in 1991. Based on my conversations with gay survivors, I developed the idea of the documentary film Paragraph 175 (USA 2000) for which I interviewed five gay survivors. The film, a collaboration with American directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, had its American premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and its European premiere at the Berlin film festival over the years reached a large global audience.

Today, the Holocaust Museum lists hundreds of collections containing partial information on the Nazi persecution of the LGBT community in Germany and German-occupied Europe. Information on these collections is accessible online, as are many photographs, artifacts, or interviews.

The power of testimonies, artefacts, and archival documents opens the potential to approach them from different perspectives, to look at them with new questions, and to realize connections to larger questions. As each generation explores its own questions looking back, archives can be powerful repositories. Over the years, some of the LGBT-related collections at the museum have generated strong interest and been presented in new curatorial and narrative features.[23]

The future of memory of the first LGBT movement worldwide

Archival evidence remains a fundamental resource for future research to fill the many gaps that remain. The growing accessibility of documents on the Nazi persecution of LGBT people and communities is especially important given the decades-long silence. Homosexual victims often were not publicly remembered by their families. Karl Gorath’s mother was so ashamed of her son being incarcerated in camps for many years due to paragraph 175 that she told everyone he had served in the German army. Pierre Seel’s family and children cut all connections with him when he published his memoir. Josef Kohout’s family did not partake in his struggle with Austrian authorities to be recognized as a victim of the Nazi regime. Frieda Belinfante’s family did not attempt to honor her contribution to the Dutch resistance. Gay survivors I interviewed all emphasized that ‘nobody wanted to hear their story’, neither their families nor their gay or lesbian friends who were engulfed, struggling with the oppressive post-war discrimination and persecution.

In regard to gay victims of the Nazi regime, we depend on archival records to reconstruct their story. The growing inclusion of gay victims in many Holocaust memorials started cautiously in the 1990s and is based on the power of testimonies, archival evidence, and historical research. 75 years after the end of the war, the fate of LGBT victims has become a focus of specified historical research, mostly by LGBT historians. While publications in this field have produced vital new historical knowledge, mainstream historiography often tends to disregard their relevance to analyze the many layers of Nazi doctrine and policies. Many questions still remain open, especially on the collaboration and complicity of non-state actors. This includes the Christian churches as well as by ordinary citizens: denouncing their fellow colleagues, their friends, or even their family members to the police and Gestapo as gay or lesbian set a machine in motion that for many would become deadly.

Future research will explore new questions as more archival records, once classified or restricted, are becoming accessible. While archival study often is conducted regionally, the research on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals has transnational relevance.[24] Increasingly, comparative research across borders is possible, leading to new research fields.

“We lacked the moral support and sympathy of the public”

In 1995—for the first and only time—a group of gay survivors issued a collective declaration 50 years after their liberation demanding recognition. Nazi persecution and post-war silence had individualized and fragmented their persecution: in interviews, survivors rarely claimed a sense of a collective voice as they never felt part of such a collective. I had worked with them on drafting the declaration which was published on May 29, 1995 during a program I developed for the Holocaust Museum. Eight gay survivors from four countries—Germany, France, Poland, and the Netherlands—signed. The declaration was widely reported upon, including in the New York Times.[25]

They started the declaration with these lines:

50 years ago, Allied troops did liberate us from Nazi concentration camps and prisons. But the world we had hoped for did not happen to come true.

We were forced to hide again and faced on-going persecution under the same Nazi-law that was on the books since 1935 and stayed on the books until 1969. Raids were frequent. Some of us – just tasting their new freedom – were even sentenced to long-term prison again.

Although some of us tried courageously to gain recognition by challenging the courts up to the West German Supreme Court, we were never acknowledged as being persecuted by the Nazi regime. We were excluded from financial compensations for the victims of the Nazi regime. We lacked the moral support and sympathy of the public.

Hearing their voices, narrating their stories based on archival evidence, preserving the few private collections that were not lost or destroyed as irrelevant or shameful by their families, has changed how we remember the men with the pink triangle: as people in their own right, as individuals, as human beings.

The future of memory of the men with the pink triangle and of the first LGBT movement worldwide will be defined by how each new generation develops its own questions and find new ways to narrate this darkest chapter of LGBT history.[26]

*Based in Berlin, Dr. Klaus Mueller works as an international consultant for a number of cultural institutions, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC for which he serves as the Museum’s Representative for Europe. During the conception of the Museum’s permanent exhibition, Dr. Mueller, an expert on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, served as a consultant, researching and contributing to the inclusion of records documenting the experiences of homosexuals under Nazism. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council or the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

[1] Compare Klaus Mueller: ‘Het is zoo licht om in liefde van het leven te scheiden’. Willem Arondéus, homoseksueel verzetsleider. In: Klaus Mueller en Judith Schuyf (Ed.): Het begint met nee zeggen. Biografieën rond verzet en homoseksualiteit 1940-194. Amsterdam, Schorer 2006. Compare also: Jan Rogier, ‘Lau Mazirel: “Ze hadden me gevraagd solidair te zijn”’, in: Seq, December 1970 nr. 8, pp. 13-18;  Also published in Vrij Nederland, December 19, 1970; Marco Entrop, Onbekwaam in het compromis. Willem Arondéus, kunstenaar en verzetsstrijder. Amsterdam 1993; Rudi van Dantzig, Het leven van Willem Arondéus, 1890-1943. Een documentaire. Amsterdam 2003.

[2] Compare interview in David Dunlap, ‘Personalizing Nazis’ homosexual victims’, in: New York Times, June 26, 1995.

[3] Gerry E. Studds text ‘Remembering Gay Victims of the Holocaust’ was entered into the Congressional Records on April 21, 1993. A copy can be found here. http://www.onearchives.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Remembering-Gay-Victims-of-the-Holocaust-by-Gerry-Studds-April-21-1993.pdf

[4] Compare: Hertum van, Aras: Museum rediscovering the ‘forgotten victims’ of Nazis. In: Washington Blade, No. 37, Vol. 23, 1992; Hart, Sara: “A Dark Past Revealed,” 10 Percent [San Francisco], vol. 1, no. 5 (Winter 1993): 37-39, 74; Hertum van, Aras: Survivors of Nazi camps begin to tell their stories. In: Washington Blade, No. 18, Vol. 24, 1993; Mueller, Klaus: A difficult relationship. In: Washington Jewish Week, April 22, 1993; Rios, Delia: Telling Story of Nazi persecution of gays. In: The Plain Dealer, May 15, 1993; Rose, Rick:  Museum of Pain. In: The Advocate, Issue 628, May 4, 1993; Mueller, Klaus: The Holocaust # Aids. In: The Advocate, Issue 628, May 4, 1993; E.J.Dionne Jr: The Austin Vote: It’s not all bigotry. In Washington Post, May 10, 1994; Englehart, Rachel: Films show Nazi war against gays. In San Francisco Examiner, May 14, 1994; Weinraub, Judith: “Trials of the Pink Triangle: Historian Klaus Müller, Documenting the Nazi Torment of Gays,” Washington Post (June 6, 1994): pp. D1, D4; Los Angeles Times interview Klaus Muller: Documenting Gay Life Under Nazis for Holocaust Museum and History, December 4, 1994 by Michael Bronski; Holland, Darrell: Museum visit a window on a time of hatred. In: The Plain Dealer, November 6, 1994; Dunlap, David W: “Personalizing Nazis’ Homosexual Victims,” New York Times (June 26, 1995): pp. A1, B4; Linenthal, Edward T.: The Boundaries of Memory: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In: American Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 3. (Sep., 1994), pp. 406-433; Linenthal, Edward T.: Preserving Memory. The struggle to create America’s Holocaust Museum. New York, Viking Pinguin 1995 (see pages 187-189); Interview with Wolf Blitzer, CNN, Gay Jewish survivor of Nazi Germany says he was never unlucky, May 5, 2000.

 [5] Urvashi Vaid spoke on April 25, 1993 at the March on Washington.” It is fitting that the Holocaust Museum was dedicated the same weekend as this March, for not only were gay people persecuted by the Nazi state, but gay people are indebted to the struggle of the Jewish people against bigotry and intolerance. It is fitting that the NAACP marches with us, that feminist leaders march with us, because we are indebted to those movements.” https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/scotts/bulgarians/vaid-mow.html

[6] Barrett Brick full speech can be found here: http://www.glaa.org/archive/1993/brickushmm0423.shtml.

[7] Please compare: Linenthal, Edward T.: The Boundaries of Memory: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In: American Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 3. (Sep., 1994), pp. 406-433. See p. 419. Compare also: Klaus Mueller: Whom do we remember?, Candlelight vigil in remembrance of gay and lesbian victims of the Holocaust, Washington DC, Apr 23, 1993.

[8] Compare Claudia Schoppmann: Nationalsozialistische Sexual­politik und weibliche Homosexualität, Pfaffenweiler 1991; Claudia Schoppmann (Ed.): Im Fluchtgepäck die Sprache, Berlin 1991; Ilse Kokula / Ulrike Boehmer: Die Welt gehört uns doch!, Zürich 1991; Claudia Schoppmann: Days of Masquerade: Life Stories of Lesbians During the Third Reich, New York 1996; Christa Schikorra: Kontinuitäten der Ausgrenzung. „Asoziale“ Häftlinge im Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück, Berlin 2001; Andreas Brunner, Ines Rieder, Nadja Schefzig, Hannes Sulzenbacher, Niko Wahl: geheimsache: leben – Schwule und Lesben im Wien des 20. Jahrhunderts, Wien 2005; Joachim Müller: Vergleichbarkeit der Lebenssituation lesbischer Frauen mit der Lebenssituation schwuler Männer im Nationalsozialismus (und nach 1945), Berlin 2007.

[9] Rainer Herrn describes the state of research in: Rainer Herrn: In der heutigen Staatsführung kann es nicht angehen, daß sich Männer in Frauenkleidung frei auf der Straße bewegen. Über den Forschungsstand zum Transvestitismus in der NS-Zeit. In: Michael Schwartz: Homosexuelle im Nationalsozialismus. München 2014.

[10] Compare Der Gedenkstein in Neuengamme. Eine Dokumentation der Unabhängigen Homosexuellen Alternative, Hamburg 1985; Klaus Mueller: Amnesien. Formen des Vergessens, Formen des Erinnerns, in: Der homosexuellen Opfer gedenken. Hg. von der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Berlin 1999, p. 56-69; Susanne zur Nieden: Er ist 175 (warmer Bruder). Ausgrenzungen verfolgter Homosexueller in Berlin 1945-1949, in: Joachim Müller, Andreas Sternweiler 2000, S. 338-351; Wolfgang Benz: Im Schatten des Holocaust, in:  Jellonek/Lautmann 2002, S. 27-40 (especially p. 35-38 about the memorial stone in Dachau)

[11] Compare also: Klaus Mueller: Totgeschlagen, totgeschwiegen? Das autobiographische Zeugnis homosexueller Ueberlebender. In: Jellonek/Lautmann 2002, S. 397-418. Gay memorial plaques, stones or sculptures were placed at the site of former camps in Mauthausen (1984), Neuengamme (1985), Dachau (1987), Sachsenhausen (1992), Buchenwald (2002), Risiera San Sabba, Trieste (2005). Memorials outside the site of former concentration camps: Amsterdam (1987), Nollendorfplatz, Berlin (1989), Bologna (1990), The Hague (1993), Frankfurt (1994), Cologne (1995), Anchorage, Alaska (1999), San Francisco (1999), Rome (2000), Sydney (2001), Laxton, Great Britain (2005), Montevideo, Uruguay (2005), Vienna (2007) and Barcelona (2011). So far, around 90 stumbling blocks – in a Europe-wide project by artist Gunter Demnig (who has been commemorating the victims of the Nazi era since 2000 by placing brass memorial plaques on the sidewalk in front of their last place of residence) remind of the individual fates of persecuted homosexuals across Europe.

[12] Martin Sherman’s 1979 play Bent used Heger’s testimony and was the first theater play on the topic.

[13] A few earlier, yet tremendously important publications presented archival records for the first time, most notable: Wolfgang Harthausen: Der Massenmord an Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich, in: W. Schlegel (ed.): Das große Tabu. Zeugnisse und Dokumente zum Problem der Homosexualität, München 1967; Harry Schulze-Wilde: Das Schicksal der Verfemten. Die Verfolgung der Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich und ihre Stellung in der heutigen Gesellschaft, Tübingen 1969; Rüdiger Lautmann, Winfried Grikschat and Egbert Schmidt: Der rosa Winkel in den nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern, in: Lautmann, Rüdiger: Seminar: Gesellschaft und Homosexualität, Frankfurt/M 1977; – Hans-Georg Stümke und Rudi Finkler: Rosa Listen, rosa Winkel, Reinbek 1981; – Richard Plant: The pink triangle. The Nazi war against homosexuals, New York 1986.

[14] The USHMM Public Programs and diverse lectures I conducted between 1993-2000 on homosexual life during the Nazi era reached large audiences and contributed to conversations LGBT communities were developing on this subject. Lecture: The exclusion of gay victims in Holocaust Memorial Culture, Opening Conference USHMM Holocaust Research Institute 1993; – Public Program: ‘We were marked with a big A’, Dec. 12, 1993, USHMM; Public Program and film series: Stories untold: Gays and Lesbians during the Holocaust, USHMM, May 15-19, 1994; – Lecture: Making history invisible. The exclusion of gays in Holocaust memorials as an example of representational problems of the so-called forgotten victims, Conference Memorials and Museums on the heritage of the Nazi past and the Holocaust in the United States and Germany: Similarities and Differences, USHMM, Sep 1994; – Lecture: The persecution of gay men in Nazi Germany and its relevance to contemporary politics concerns, Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association, Oct. 18, 1994; – Film program: ‘Survivors – Stories from the Holocaust’, Oct. 15, 1994, Reel Affirmations Washington DC; –  Public Program: “So I stood alone with my memories”: Gay survivors after 1945. USHMM, May 29, 1995; – Lecture: “Beyond the pink triangle”, May 7, 1996, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah New York; – Lecture: “Historical overview on lesbians and gay men during the Holocaust”, Apr. 1997, Washington DC, Gay and Lesbian Employees’ Association; – Lecture: “Resistance: The unknown story of Frieda Belinfante”, conference The Holocaust in the Netherlands: A Reevaluation, USHMM, May 1997; – Public Program and lecture: Gays and Lesbian under Nazi rule, American premiere of “But I was a girl”, USHMM 1999; – Lecture: ‘Gays and the Holocaust’, April 29, 1999, Philadelphia, PrideFest America 1999; – Lecture: Portraits of Gay Survivors and Their Lack of Profile in Memorial Culture, at Symposium ’Persecution of Homosexuals under The Nazi Regime’, USHMM 2000; – Lecture: A new constituency: Museums and their gay and lesbian visitors, Lecture at AAM,  Baltimore 2000.

[15] Please compare: https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/traveling-exhibitions/retired-exhibitions/nazi-persecution-of-homosexuals

[16] Having worked since the early 1990s on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, I came into contact with a small number of gay survivors and asked them if they would be willing to share their story with me. While they were hesitant in the beginning, we developed a bond of trust and I was able to learn about their ordeal before and after 1945 in their own words. Gay survivors never received legal recognition or support. Their voices are unique and part of our complex, yet largely undocumented history. Based on my conversations with gay survivors, I developed the idea for a documentary film to safeguard and document the diverse stories of those few known gay survivors still alive. For me, it was vital to learn about the Nazi persecution of homosexuals based on the individual voices of survivors and their experiences, instead of just reconstructing this dark chapter through the documents of their perpetrators alone. In January 1997, I reached out and proposed collaboration to American directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Three years later, ‘Paragraph 175’ was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and later at the Berlin film festival winning prestigious awards and reaching, in time, a global audience.  Gad Beck and Pierre Seel attended the premiere at the Berlin film festival in 2000.

[17] I am referring to my conversations, interviews and correspondence with gay survivors Pierre Seel, Tiemon Hofman, Dick Monster, Stefan Kosinski, Karl Gorath, Heinz Doermer, Heinz Fleischer, Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim, Kurt von Ruffin, Karl Lange, Georg Heck, Albrecht Becker, and Jewish-gay survivors or emigrants Gad Beck, Frieda Belinfante, Richard Plant, Alfons Silbermann and Rolf Hirschberg. As contemporary witnesses, Huub Jans, Ge Nabrink, George Havas, Wilhelm Kroepfl, Jizchak Schwersenz and Ernst Scholem gave me valuable insights.

[18] See description Josef Kohout/Wilhelm Kropefl collection at: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn723088. Please see the feature in the Museum’s online Curators Corner on the Heger collection:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj-wGkcyTL8&list=PLWQC3P4psZP7nM7QHKEvoXJaTPWAp0GCz&index=3.

[19] See description Pierre Seel collection at: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn519804. Please see also interview about collection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXsyq-2Qbts&list=PLWQC3P4psZP7nM7QHKEvoXJaTPWAp0GCz&index=4

[20] See description Frieda Belinfante collection at: https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/curators-corner/the-frieda-belinfante-collection Oral history video interview with Frieda Belinfante, 1994 May 31. The interview became the base for including her story in exhibitions and later a film documentary: “… but I was a girl” (The life of Frieda Belinfante, Netherlands 1999). Please see my biographical portrait of Frieda Belinfante: Klaus Mueller: Ik wilde het gevaar in het gezicht kijken. De levens van Frieda Belinfante. In: Klaus Mueller en Judith Schuyf (Ed.): Het begint met nee zeggen. Biografieën rond verzet en homoseksualiteit 1940-194. Amsterdam, Schorer 2006. In 2021, I am honored to pay tribute to Lesbians and Gay men in the resistance during Pride Month 2021 in a USHMM Facebook Live Event called Pride Month: Defying Nazi Persecution.

[21] See description Gad Beck collection at: Gad Beck papers; Gad Beck Oral History interview; Online exhibition Do you remember when (on artifact donated by Gad Beck)

[22] See named interviews at USHMM website:
Oral history video interview with Teofil Kosinski, 1995 Nov. 8.
Oral history video interview with Tiemon Hoffman, 1996 Jan. 2
Oral history video interview with Gad Beck, 1996 Feb. 16.
Oral history audio interview with Rolf Hirschberg, 1996 Oct. 14.
Oral history video interview with Frieda Belinfante, 1994 May 31.

[23] More videos on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals

[24] Early on there were distinctive American voices engaged, even when much of the research took place in German, Dutch, French, Italian and Spanish Archives.  Jewish-gay emigrants like Richard Plant who escaped Nazi Germany became in 1986 one of the early historians publishing on the men with the pink triangle. Fellow emigrants like Rudi Gernreich became a founding member of the Mattachine Society: informed by his European background, he understood how dangerous the foundation of LGBT organizations could be. Barrett Brick, Executive Director of the World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations from 1987 to 1993, was an early and decisive voice in demanding the acknowledgment of the Nazi persecution.

[25] DECLARATION OF GAY SURVIVORS 50 YEARS AFTER THEIR LIBERATION (May 29, 1995)
50 years ago, Allied troops did liberate us from Nazi concentration camps and prisons. But the world we had hoped for did not happen to come true.

We were forced to hide again and faced on-going persecution under the same Nazi-law that was on the books since 1935 and stayed on the books until 1969. Raids were frequent. Some of us – just tasting their new freedom – were even sentenced to long-term prison again.

Although some of us tried courageously to gain recognition by challenging the courts up to the West German Supreme Court, we were never acknowledged as being persecuted by the Nazi regime. We were excluded from financial compensations for the victims of the Nazi regime. We lacked the moral support and sympathy of the public.

No SS-man ever had to face a trial for the murder of a gay man in or outside the camps. But whereas they now enjoy a pension for their ‘work’ in the camps, our years in the camps are subtracted from our pension.

Today we are too old and tired to struggle for the recognition of the Nazi injustice we suffered. Many of us never dared to testify. Many of us died alone with their hunting memories. We waited long, but in vain for a clear political and financial gesture of the German government and courts.

We know that still very little is taught in schools and universities about our fate. Even Holocaust museums and memorials many times don’t mention the Nazi persecution of homosexuals.

Today, 50 years later, we turn to the young generation and to all of you who are not guided by hate and homophobia. Please support us in our struggle to memorize and document the Nazi atrocities against homosexual men and lesbian women. Let us never forget the Nazi atrocities against Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s witnesses, Freemasons, the disabled, Polish and Russian prisoners of war and homosexuals.

And let us learn from the past and let us support the young generation of lesbian women and gay men, girls and boys to lead unlike us a life in dignity and respect, with their loved ones, their friends and their families.

For further details compare the New York Times Article by David Dunlap on Personalizing Nazis’ Homosexual Victims, New York Times, June 26, 1995

[26] One example is the 2022 short documentary with Singer-songwriter Duncan Laurence who won the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest for the Netherlands. As part of the Dutch National Remembrance and Liberation Days, he was invited as its ambassador and chose to highlight the history of the LGBT* community in a short documentary. “I want attention to be paid to how these people fared in World War II. Unfortunately, it’s still more topical than ever.” Duncan reached out to me, and I invited him to come to Berlin. Together we undertook an emotional journey from the hopeful beginnings of Berlin’s LGBT community—the first of its kind worldwide—to its destruction by Nazi Germany in concentration camps like Sachsenhausen on the city’s outskirts. Freedom and equality for LGBT people again remained out of reach for decades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ3KspkvLiU&t=1s

Credit: Klaus Mueller: The Men with the Pink Triangle: Voices lost, voices recovered. The fragile remembrance of the destruction of the first LGBT movement worldwide. Carleton University 2022. Published at: Hear Our Voices: Holocaust Survivors Share their Stories of Trauma and Hate. The Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. (link to article here; link to book here)

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON HOLOCAUST EDUCATION: Trends, Patterns, and Practices, a publication of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum* and Salzburg Global Seminar, 2013
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Kofi Annan, Foreword, GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON HOLOCAUST EDUCATION
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Klaus Mueller, Preface, GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON HOLOCAUST EDUCATION
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The Salzburg Global Seminar’s Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention Initiative is a multi-year initiative that has been developed in cooperation with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Austrian Foreign Ministry to investigate the links between Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention.
Dr. Klaus Mueller, Representative for Europe of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, serves as its Chair since 2010. The Initiative has included a series of working group meetings as well as five larger international conferences (2010-2017).
Please see HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE EDUCATION INITIATIVE

*Views expressed on my website are my own and do not necessarily represent those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

De Nederlandse samenleving is sinds de jaren zestig vergaand veranderd. Als een van de weinigen landen in de wereld heeft Nederland gelijke rechten voor homoseksuelen goed geregeld. Maar Nederlandse musea en archieven gaan door alsof er niets is gebeurd: homoseksualiteit blijft er als vanouds onzichtbaar. Dont’ ask, don’t tell, don’t preserve. Hoe vergaand geïntegreerd zijn homoseksuelen daadwerkelijk in het Nederlandse collectieve geheugen? Is de homogeschiedenis deel van het nationale erfgoed geworden of verdwijnen wij daarin opnieuw haast als vanzelfsprekend?

In vergelijking met andere media – televisie, film, literatuur of theater – waarin homoseksualiteit al lang vanzelfsprekend deel uitmaakt lopen musea en archieven achter. Ze hebben hun collectie zelden vanuit dit perspectief bekeken. Terwijl musea wel, en terecht, een doelgericht beleid tegenover nieuwe bezoekers uit migranten gemeenschappen ontwikkelen, ontbreken vergelijkbare initiatieven bij dit thema.

“Wat voor de één een anekdote is, is voor de ander bittere realiteit. Hoeveel anekdotes hebben we nodig?”, vroeg Ayaan Hirsi Ali bij de opening van de tentoonstelling Wie kan ik nog vertrouwen? – homoseksueel in nazi Duitsland en Nederland in Westerbork op 21 april. Op 21 september opent de tentoonstelling in het Amsterdamse verzetsmuseum. Haar vraag raakt de kern van het collectief geheugen rond het thema homogeschiedenis. Hoe wordt uit een anekdote, interessant voor een moment, een verhaal dat wij het waard vinden om te vertellen en te bewaren? Hoe kunnen wij zeker stellen dat de homogeschiedenis een vanzelfsprekende deel van de nationale geschiedenis wordt?

De expositie Wie kan ik nog vertrouwen? toont het leven van lesbische vrouwen en homoseksuele mannen in Duitsland en Nederland tussen 1933 en 1945, met als zwaartepunt hun vervolging en verzet. Het is de eerste keer in Nederland dat deze ‘zwarte bladzijde van de homogeschiedenis’ zo duidelijk in beeld wordt gebracht.
Bij het maken van deze tentoonstelling viel mij opnieuw op hoe schaars het materiaal is. Over de homogeschiedenis in de 20ste eeuw, zowel de zwarte bladzijden als de successen vanaf de jaren zestig, is nauwelijks iets terug te vinden in Nederlandse musea of archieven. Ik kon vooral terecht bij private bronnen, particuliere archieven zoals het privé archief van Jan Carel Warffemius en het IHLIA archief voor foto’s, objecten en correspondenties. Zij proberen te redden en te bewaren, maar vanwege hun zeer beperkte middelen is dit vaak tevergeefs. Het gros van documenten uit de 20ste eeuw waarmee het leven van homoseksuelen gedocumenteerd zou kunnen worden, belandt op de vuilnis.
De musea en archieven staan vaak met lege handen. Ze hebben hun collectie haast nooit vanuit dit perspectief bekeken, er wordt niet doelgericht verzameld, en men kan dan ook geen expertise bieden.
Dit gebrek is vooral te wijten aan een hardnekkig vooroordeel. Homoseksualiteit wordt nog steeds gereduceerd tot een geschiedenis van seksualiteit en identiteit. Terwijl het begrepen en bestudeerd zou moeten worden als deel van een complexe sociale geschiedenis. De levens van lesbische vrouwen en homoseksuele mannen in de twintigste eeuw zijn niet zozeer gekenmerkt door hun seksuele gedrag, maar door hun maatschappelijke, medische, juridische en symbolische uitsluiting door de samenleving.
Homogeschiedenis is dus Nederlandse geschiedenis tot in de haarvaten. Het is een wezenlijk deel van het historische zelfbeeld van de gehele samenleving. Maar als dat zo is, waarom vinden wij er dan zoweinig over in onze musea en archieven?

Een samenleving definieert zich ook door wat ze bewaart en koestert. Het collectieve geheugen werkt als een filter. Waar komen wij vandaan, hoe zijn we zo geworden, waar gaan wij naartoe? Onze culturele instellingen helpen de beslissingen die wij in het verleden hebben genomen te bewaren en te verduidelijken voor komende generaties. Gebrek aan historische kennis en voorstellingsvermogen kan zich al snel vertalen in onverschilligheid. Zoals dit schrijnend werd getoond door het Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken wanneer het constateerde dat het voor homoseksuelen in Iran ´niet totaal onmogelijk is om op maatschappelijk en sociaal gebied te functioneren´ mits ze ´niet al te openlijk voor de seksuele geaardheid uitkomen`. Ook onze minister president liet zien dat hij in het buitenland onze normen en waarden, zoals de openstelling van het huwelijk voor homoseksuele mannen en vrouwen, niet zonder meer verdedigt. Balkenende had in Indonesië ook kunnen kiezen voor een reactie in de geest van de Spaanse premier Luis Rodriquez Zapatero. Die toonde aanmerkelijk meer oog voor de historische en maatschappelijke stap die werd gezet door de openstelling van het huwelijk voor homoseksuelen in Spanje: ´Wij maken deze wet niet voor mensen die ver weg zijn en onbekend. We verruimen de mogelijkheid van geluk voor onze buren, onze collega’s, onze vrienden en onze families. En tegelijkertijd scheppen wij een beschaafdere samenleving omdat een beschaafdere samenleving zijn leden niet vernedert.´
Homoseksuelen hebben in Nederland een lange strijd gevoerd om zich niet te moeten verbergen en zichtbaar en met respect hun leven te kunnen leiden. De gouden jaren van onbezorgdheid lijken echter voorbij. Ik heb deze onbezorgdheid van Nederlandse homoseksuelen altijd als historisch uniek en als een groot goed ervaren. Het verlies aan vertrouwen in een veilige omgeving is een pijnlijke stap terug.

Het is tijd voor een duidelijk beleidsplan dat musea en archieven stimuleert ook dit aspect van de Nederlandse geschiedenis te documenteren. Daarbij hoort, zoals bij andere doelgroepen ook, een directe communicatie. De discussie in de laatste jaren over een homomuseum binnen de Nederlandse museumwereld eindigde echter, voordat ze begon, vaak met een gemakkelijke ridiculisering. Berlijn heeft al jaren een ‘Schwules museum’, in het Verenigd Koninkrijk wordt de oprichting van een gay museum serieus overwogen, in Amerika bestaan er verschillende initiatieven. Maar het voormalige gidsland Nederland laat het afweten.
Ook homo Nederland zelf moet zich daadkrachtiger inspannen. De integratie van de homogeschiedenis in de culturele instellingen is niet vanzelfsprekend. Als wij ons niet sterk maken voor onze geschiedenis, wie dan?
Homoseksuelen en heteroseksuelen hebben samen een unieke ontwikkeling meegemaakt in de laatste eeuw, tenminste hier, in dit land. Deze verworvenheid moet deel van ons nationaal geheugen worden. Komende generaties hebben een recht erop dat dit deel van hun geschiedenis op een vanzelfsprekende manier wordt bewaard.

BIBLIOPGRAPHICAL REFERENCE ARTICLE
Klaus Mueller: Musea en archieven negeren homogeschiedenis. In: Gay Krant 560, 27e jaargang, Juli 2006, p. 20-21

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.

Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Central and Eastern European museums continue to go through demanding transitions. The former Eastern bloc has dissolved into many countries and cultures. Its cultural sector now openly displays a vivid diversity once hidden under Communism. In the last decade, probably no other region of the world has undergone such a rapid transformation, invigorated by strong contributions and interventions from outside the region. This article explores this vast landscape, through conversations with artists and museum professionals across Central and Eastern Europe. It gathers impressions and perspectives offered by many voices, revolving around the question of how a generation of museum professionals has adapted to the challenge. They have tasted the direct consequences, good and bad, of a free-market economy and borderless communications—and have reinvented themselves while doing so. Achieving much with little, they have had to learn to function within a dramatically changing local environment, and to speak “English” in a globalized world.

THE EAST

When the wall came down, we felt like immigrants in our own country as a whole culture fell apart. —Corina Suteu, president of ECUMEST (Europe Culture Management in the East).

In March 2004, the Salzburg Seminar—an American educational organization that has promoted global dialogue since 1947 through its multifaceted seminars—invited 30 cultural professionals from all over Central and Eastern Europe to convene in Salzburg. The retreat, titled “Central and Eastern Cultural Institutions in Transition,” offered a rare moment to reflect on the immense changes that had occurred in the cultural sector since 1989.
The setting presented an unlikely hybrid of warm, informal American hospitality and picturesque Central European grandeur. The retreat took place in an eighteenth-century Austrian fairytale castle that once served as the model for The Sound of Music. The castle’s interior was vamped up in the 1920s by German-Jewish theater director Max Reinhardt (1873–1940), a co-founder of the Salzburg Festival. There was a Venetian mirror room, a Swiss abbey library, and a Chinese tea room. A local swan and many Austrian cakes completed the frame.
This article owes much to the seminar’s discussions, as well as to subsequent conversations with colleagues across Europe, in large part conducted by email. (All quotations not otherwise referenced here are from these email interviews.) Additional insights come from this writer’s museum work and travel in Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Ukraine. These observations attempt to trace some of the impact of American and West-European museum concepts on this region after 1989. How did Eastern and Central European museum professionals react to the challenges presented to them by the fall of the Wall, and how did they translate this cross-cultural dialogue for their own purposes? What worked, and what didn’t, in this interplay between East and West?

Falling apart and coming together—“East, West—I don’t think these easy categories are very helpful after nearly 15 years,” stated Czech curator Iva Knobloch, the head of the print department at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. “Of course, in the beginning, Western museums seemed to be so much more professional. One easily felt inferior and took the West as a glamorous model. Western museums are better funded, of course. But once you start traveling and working with different institutions, you recognize that the West is as different as the East and at times can be as slow and unprofessional as the East. Plus, the notion of the East is outdated.”
In the Western perception, the “Eastern bloc” was simply one entity enclosed by an Iron Curtain. In the last 15 years, the region has been recognized as being much more complex, with many old and new borders. There is now a clearer picture of the divisions between Central and Eastern Europe, as well as an understanding that the Baltic countries constitute a region in their own right. The breakup of Yugoslavia has revived older regional names—such as the Balkans, a term that carries strong negative connotations. “South East Europe” is currently a more neutral designation. The enlarged European Union has brought new neighbors into view: Ukraine, Moldavia, Albania, Belarus, and of course—a force all by itself—Russia. Few Europeans or Americans could draw an accurate map of this new landscape of the former “East.” My colleagues at the Salzburg Seminar all seemed to have at least one anecdote of a Western museum consultant who complimented the great “Polish” food while being in Hungary, or expressed love for the Slovenian landscape while being in Slovakia.
The complexity of the region is not new, in the view of Corina Suteu, president of ECUMEST (Europe Culture Management in the East), a Romanian association she founded in 1998 to develop and professionalize the cultural sector. Suteu says:

Although the Iron Curtain had a potentially harmonizing effect, Communist countries were extremely different already during the Communist regime. Albania and Romania were controlled by totalitarian systems, while at the opposite pole, Yugoslavia was given freedoms unavailable to other Communist countries under Russian rule. It was only with the collapse of Yugoslavia that the situation reverted to the stereotypes of the Balkans: fragmentation, violent conflict, backwardness and misery. Baltic countries (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania) and Moldavia suffered from “Russification” or cultural colonization. In Hungary and Czechoslovakia, a strong opposition to Soviet ideological pressure—although it came at a high price—gave self-esteem. Poland recovered with difficulty after World War II: it was run by a conservative Communism, and the Polish spiritual resistance, influenced by the Catholic Church, was as conservative as the Communist power.1

After the fall of the Wall, older cultural and religious ties with the West also changed Western perceptions of the West-East division lines. Suteu points out that Catholicism was influential in realigning formerly Catholic countries in the East with their Catholic neighbors in the West.
Although development within the cultural sector now differs from country to country, the long-term effects of Communist rule still exist as a shared past and a burden. The alignment of state power with culture, so typical of all Communist countries, still poses long-term problems: the existence of large state museums, overstaffed and inefficient; the relative lack of independent cultural NGO’s to build new venues and initiatives; the necessary effort to reclaim national histories; the contrasting demands for a wider European and global orientation; and most significantly, the lack of funds and resources. Suteu says:

Even today, one would still consider the ministries of culture to be the guilty bodies for everything lacking in the cultural sector. It is this legacy that made a new beginning so hard. The fact that all cultural infrastructures were subsidized and promoted by the State undermined all kinds of autonomous art or cultural initiatives. The relationship between the artist and the public was alienated. Without understanding the past, one cannot understand the problems of transitions. All Communist governments had a strong cultural agenda based on large cultural state institutions.

The Communist utopia of a unified Communist internationalism—as expressed in the anthem of the International (“Arise, the wretched of the earth”)—informed cultural policy, at least on its surface. Milena Dragicevic-Šešic, professor in the Faculty of Art at Belgrade University, writes about the claim of internationalism in socialist cultural policies: “In their rhetoric, the socialist states used cultural policy to propagate internationalism: in reality, however, their cultural policies contributed toward the complete isolation of their arts from world trends in both artistic and managerial terms” (2000).2
A sense of artistic stagnation and isolation was the consequence, as Suteu explains with the example of so-called traditional art:

In Bulgaria and Romania, as well as in Communist countries under Russian occupation (Baltic states, Moldavia) so-called genuine folklore products were, in fact, artificially invented. Communism had erased all individual rural property and replaced it with community farms. Isolation had two dimensions in the Eastern Communist states: first from the Western world and Western values, and second, from the inner genuine values and traditions.

WEST TO EAST

After 1989, many museums and cultural initiatives looked towards Western Europe and the United States—rather than within their region—for approval of their cultural policies. The reasons were manifold: Funds were often more easily secured through Western “tutors” than through the respective governments. Many programs were developed by Western European and American sources: the Council of Europe; the cultural institutes of Western European nations (British Council, Goethe Institute and others); IPAM (International Partnerships Among Museums), administered through AAM; and as the biggest investor, the Soros Foundation. These groups attempted to jump-start and facilitate museum and wider cultural operations. A whole new generation of cultural operators passed through this circle of travel, applications, conferences, grants and artistic exchange. The Fondazione Fitzcarraldo has summarized the effects:

The task of internationalization is often achieved through informal, non-structural, almost “incidental” networking activities. This approach includes instances such as feedback provided by grant applicants, or agreeing on applications that are partly international in scope, or where the involvement of international players ends up having an impact on the foundation itself. Such informal approaches to international relations suggest the existence of quite adaptive behavior, which is not captured by specific evaluation processes, but still allows for a flexible case-by-case response (2003).

As Matei Bejenaru, president of the Romanian Vector Cultural Association, puts it, “I learned to understand the differences, to listen to the others, or better, to ‘speak English.’”3
Bypassing overstaffed and inefficient state institutions, new cultural foundations have been vital in developing new venues and larger cooperative frameworks. A wide array of smaller and larger Western European and American foundations and NGOs contributed to facilitating change and communication. To name just a few: Gulliver Connect (by the Dutch Felix Meritis Foundation); S.T.E.P beyond (European Cultural Foundation); Looking Inside (The Open Society Institute Arts and Culture Network Program in Budapest); the Silk Road Project—Artist in Residence (Siemens Corporation and Siemens Arts Program).
Jillian Poole founded the American Fund for Arts and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe in 1991. She explains:

Our nonprofit American Fund helps cultural institutions adjust to a free market economy. In our view, the largest help can come from Westerners listening and then responding to what they hear. One size definitely doesn’t fit all in any part of the world, and the post-totalitarian world is no different. What works in the West cannot be transplanted wholesale. But with careful listening, we in the West can offer ideas and links that our friends can adapt to their own needs.
Eastern European museums have changed in the last 14 years. They have established a wider range of contacts with other similar institutions in their own countries and abroad. The Internet has helped, although its use is still limited in many parts. Isolation, of course, was the challenge of totalitarian eras in all the countries that those regimes embraced. And with those regimes came thought dictation. Being told what to think and being instructed to think no further was inculcated into all parts of life for over 40 years. Breaking that isn’t easy. The legacy dies hard.4

Within the difficult accession negotiations prior to the enlargement of the European Union in May 2004, cultural self-representation of the accession countries in the European Union played an important role. “Between 1990 and 1994, no tours of theater companies or exchanges of exhibitions took place bilaterally East-East, unless initiated from the West. Even now, exclusive East-East artistic exchange is rare,” says Suteu. “It was a kind of ‘quick fix internationalization’—only what Western cultures accepted and appreciated was considered valuable.”

The Soros Foundations—No other foundation has had such an impact on post-Communist countries as the educational and cultural network developed in Eastern Europe by the Soros Foundations. Billionaire philanthropist George Soros—who was born in Hungary in 1930 and survived the Nazi occupation of Budapest before moving to the US in 1956—established the Open Society Institute-Hungary in 1984. Its $3 million budget rivaled that of the Hungarian Ministry of Culture. Soros expanded the Open Society Institute (OSI) in 1993, creating an umbrella organization for the work of his foundations in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, with additional funding from other governmental and non-governmental sources. OSI today supports foundations in more than 50 countries, with its main focus on Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. With an annual overall budget of nearly $500 million, the Soros Foundations develop and support an open society in diverse fields such as the arts, education, media, public health, and human rights as well as social, legal, and economic reform.5 George Soros has said:

The goal of the foundation network is to promote an open society. The concept of an open society is based on the recognition that people act on the basis of imperfect truth. This leads to a respect for the rule of law, to a society that is not dominated by the state, to the existence of democratic government, to a market economy, and above all, to respect for minorities and minority opinions. The key point that needs to be recognized is that an open society is more complex, more sophisticated than a closed society (Soros 1994, 83).

The foundation network’s Arts and Cultural Programs division serves a variety of needs, such as the promotion of contemporary art, professional capacity and regional network building, the development of cultural policies, and cross-border artistic exchange. OSI’s program of Centers for Contemporary Art, established since the mid-1990s in 17 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, created what were often the first independent cultural venues in their respective countries, with varying success. Throughout the 1990s, OSI Arts and Culture Programs strongly influenced the revival and future infrastructure of cultural institutions in post-Communist countries.
Solvita Krese, director of the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art, explains: “In Latvia, the Soros Center for Contemporary Art was an essential source of support for contemporary art. Actually, it was the only source of support. The main work has been and is the creation of a database of those Latvian artists active in the sphere of contemporary art, the organization of the annual exhibition and other contemporary art events, as well supporting the projects of individual artists. The articulation and expression forms of art have changed a lot. And the perception of art has changed as well.”6
Lidia Varbanova, former program director at the Arts and Culture Network of the Open Society Institute in Budapest, agrees: “The Soros Centers for Contemporary Arts were important when they started, as they supported artists and art forms that were ignored by the national Ministries of Culture. Some centers established themselves in time as important NGOs and international partners. They accumulated and disseminated much-needed information in the field, through case studies or good practices.”7
Due to their restructuring in 2000-2001, all Soros Centers for Contemporary Arts started to become independent, non-governmental organizations under the membership of the new association ICAN (International Contemporary Art Network). But the rapid transformation into supposedly self-sustainable public institutions with overall business plans and successful fundraising efforts might endanger the future of at least some of the former Soros art centers. A recent research report by Fondazione Fitzcarraldo (2003) observes that: “Most OSI/Soros Foundations art departments closed down activities between 2000 and 2001, with a dramatic financial downscaling, and radical departmental reorganization…. To help understand the impact of today’s reorganization phase and the entity of past initiatives, the Arts and Culture Network Program has collapsed from $2,700,000 in 2002 to $500,000 in 2003. Today the destiny of the program is still uncertain: For the year 2004, $500,000 was granted.” The broader donor base envisioned in at least some of the respective countries did not emerge, although some centers were able to secure both local and international funds.
Varbanova explains: “Mr. Soros wanted the Centers for Contemporary Arts to be less dependent on the Open Society Fund and to find, step by step, other sources of funding. Some of them succeeded, others did not. One reason might be the absence of enough management skills of the directors and staff of the centers, or the fact that the respective boards of the centers were not sufficiently used to the development of fundraising strategies. But in general it is very difficult for contemporary arts to rely on self-generated incomes. They need reliable subsidies from the government, sponsors, or foundations. In Central and Eastern Europe where only limited sources of funding for arts and culture exist, this task is not an easy one.”
The Latvian Soros Center, according to Krese, might be successful in its search for new partners: “In cooperation with the Riga City Council and the Latvian Ministry of Culture, a new institution is going to be established—the Latvian Center of Contemporary Art. Of course, due to our frequent changes of government, the situation is a potential object to change, too. The primary task of this new institution would be to work out the conceptual and development model of a Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art that continues and broadens the promotion of contemporary art in Latvia. Contemporary art has become the language of its time, reflecting the contradictions and problems of society today. It is the lingua franca of international communication.”

THREE EXAMPLES

While American and Western European programs and funds certainly helped to facilitate some of the transformations in the cultural sector, initiatives to create new cultural venues depended on artists, museum professionals, and cultural operators in the respective countries. Three examples might give an indication of the exchange and relation of these local initiatives to global resources and networks. (Each example consists of an email interview with a question-and-answer format.)

ROMANIA

Matei Bejenaru, artist by profession, heads the Vector Cultural Association and the yearly Periferic Biennial Exhibition of contemporary art in Iasi, Romania. The biennial is the largest contemporary art initiative in Romania after the fall of the Wall. Even if Romania is accepted into the European Union in 2007, Iasi still would mark the outermost distance from the center of the E.U., being situated at its future border with Moldavia and Ukraine.
Matei Bejenaru: When I decided to stay in Iasi, I knew that it would be a difficult thing to do contemporary art in the provincial cultural context of Iasi. Being an artist, I decided to build my own cultural network, because there is no infrastructure for contemporary art in Iasi. If you want to move faster from a place to another, you need a car, a machine. Art is such an accelerator. I understood that I needed to build a machine to “move faster.” Also, as a person, I can’t culturally exist in Iasi alone. We need an art scene and a public.
The Periferic Biennial Exhibition has grown a lot since 1997, because there is a strong motivation to do it. Our capital is sympathy, we play fair, and we always try to upgrade our knowledge in arts and culture. And… we respect people and they see this. In the last years, when we started to grow as an institution, we have more links to the art world and, of course, more visibility. Until 2003, foreign money played an important role—for example, from the German state foundation, the French-German Cultural Fund, Pro Helvetia or the British Council. In the last year, we tried to find more local money, especially from companies in Iasi.
Klaus Müller: What, for you, is the relation between the periphery and the center in a global world?
M. Bejenaru: The periphery always looks to the shining center, because it is poor, less sophisticated and less connected. But the center needs peripheries to legitimate itself and to export its model. A very interesting phenomenon is now the connection of peripheries that bypass traditional centers. For example, I am developing a project with a group of artists from Santiago de Chile, and it is fascinating to discover the differences and similarities between our post-totalitarian contexts.
K.M.: How do you use the Vector Cultural Association to change your local frame?
M. Bejenaru: Our Vector Cultural Association is changing the local context because we have the knowledge and the connections to bring new ideas and to adapt them. We work with professional foreign curators and have established an international board. Our global visibility and discourse can be seen like that: We use the “English language of arts” to talk about local problems. Of course, we try to analyze this by using global concepts. We do not work with museums. In Romania they are too traditional and unable to adapt to our demands. In previous years, we lost a lot of resources and energy, and the results were below our expectations. These old museums will die a natural death in the next 10 years. In five years I hope Vector will run the Turkish Bath of Iasi as an international contemporary art center and that the Periferic Biennial will be one of the respected art events in Europe, not because of its size, but of its ideas and content.

CROATIA

Tomislav Šola, professor of museology (he calls it “heritology”) and head of the Information Science Department at the University of Zagreb, developed the Best in Heritage Conference in Dubrovnik. Each year, in September, the conference brings together an impressive selection of awarded projects from the museum, heritage and conservation fields, and international museum professionals to discuss best practices. Best in Heritage is an unlikely event—with very little funding, it managed to attract a wide range of museum professionals from around the world. Although Šola is a pessimist about worldly matters, his event is all about the future.
Klaus Müller: Why did you decide to build your own cultural network?
Tomislav Šola: Out of spite. Wherever I proposed it internationally, it did not work, it was not accepted, and I was not given the chance…. Eastern European countries are disregarded. Most of the colleagues from the West have difficulties overcoming their misconceptions about that “barbarous” part of the world. Frankly, though provocatively, our wars were, cynically speaking, “internal.” They were fought because we live in an area where big political, economic, and religious interests meet. And they meet fiercely, throughout our history. But we never colonized nor enslaved nor killed industrially.
Small countries have little means to defend their “little” identities and their pride. In brief, I wanted to prove locally and internationally that this situation could be turned into something positive, both through creativity and courage, and against the prevailing subservient mentality.
K.M.: What are the goals of Best of Heritage?
T. Šola: Excellence. Every September we invite the best awarded museum, heritage, and conservation projects from all over the world to Dubrovnik. There they present their achievements to those who wish to become equally successful. Last year we had 27 projects and 112 participants from 29 countries. We offer a three-day intensive program in one of the most inspiring environments of the world, followed by a program about innovation and alternative practices. We want to become the place where the future is forged.
It was hard to get it funded, but the Ministry of Culture of Croatia accepted the challenge and financed it with Euro 20,000. On that money we have operated for two consecutive years. All other local help amounted to Euro 2,000. Tiny as we are, we tried to apply for money internationally, but without any success. We practically lost the hope and manage with what we have.
Now I do not search for recognition internationally any more, but wish to break the hardest barrier: local reticence and refusal. Small countries, especially when traumatized by transition or wars, readily accept subordination and second-class status. Their young mostly wish to emigrate and get rid of their deficient image. This emphasizes their provincialism and peripheral psychology. As a consequence, they never trust their own innovations or creative potential—be it people or anything else. Any change of administration may mean the end of subsidy, no matter what the program brings as local revenue. The ruling oligarchy is mediocre and visionless. The Best in Heritage operates on half of the necessary budget; the rest is earned through registration fees. To be clear, almost all our guests pay all their expenses themselves. The global frame is, however, impressive: We stand under the patronage of ICOM, ICOMOS, Europa Nostra, the City of Dubrovnik and, quite possibly in the future, of the regional UNESCO office.
K.M.: What is the relation between periphery and center in a global world?
T. Šola: My experience is that we have to be always exceptional to be acceptable, whereas some colleagues from Western countries profit much from the impeccable image of their shining institutions and powerful countries.

SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO

Zoran Pantelic, artist by profession, created his own network by founding APSOLUTNO, a collective artists’ group, and kuda.org (http://kuda.org/_kuda_info.htm), a new media center in Novi Sad, the country’s second largest city. NGOs do not find much support in Serbia; international contacts and resources are essential. Media pluralism and new media are high on the agenda of both initiatives in a country that not too long ago was ruled by Slobodan Milosevic.
Zoran Pantelic: When you look back at the last decade in Serbia, culture certainly has been a strong force in creating national illusions and a closed and xenophobic society. Mainstream culture, that is. All other forms of cultural expression were marginalized, without media, without authority…. After the recent political changes and the fall of Milosevic, things started to be much better, but not enough.
As an artist, I realized that we would need to educate the audience for new meanings, for new expressions of artistic presentations. For traditional state-sponsored art institutions and organizations, it is more difficult to follow the changes that now affect the whole planet. That’s why we started, in 1993, an independent artist group APSOLUTNO in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, focusing on interdisciplinary art work and media pluralism. Our work started in the field of fine arts. Gradually, it developed to include not only aesthetic, but also cultural, social and political aspects.
Klaus Müller: From an artist collective, you went on to found a non-profit organization, kuda.org, in the field of information and communication technology. How does kuda.org relate to international networks?
Z. Pantelic: kuda.org [http://kuda.org/_kuda_info.htm] encourages new ways of artistic production, as well as media literacy. We are applying to many international foundations—such as Pro Helvetia, the Dutch embassy, the Goethe Institute, and the European Cultural Foundation—that deal with this kind of work, as well as on the local and state level up to the ministry of culture. Our position is “in-between”—we largely depend on the political authorities in power. The present government, for example, does not regard the NGO sector as relevant, and only invests in mainstream national institutions. It is hard to develop something sustainable.
Kuda.org functions as a provider, as a sort of transmitter from the outside to the inside. In the last few years, we invited a lot of people from abroad, for example from the United States, France, or the Netherlands. Through this process we created a critical platform that deals with contemporary art and culture.
Many experts from abroad share their knowledge. They come to Novi Sad and help us with setting up our network. With their help we have been able to build our center, for example our library.
I also learned a lot from the Soros Foundations, especially in regard to self-promotion. Artists need to learn how to present their work. It gave me a better understanding of the problems that arose during the transition period and of the strong connections between economic, political, and social aspects in the arts.
K.M.: Do you work with museums?
Z. Pantelic: Yes, but the whole infrastructure in the cultural sector in Serbia is very rough, especially where it concerns human resources. Cooperation with museums, therefore, mostly means improvisation. Museums still promote mainstream culture. Their visibility is much better than that of NGOs like kuda.org. Depending on the idea, we are making progress, though. In 2003, we cooperated with the museum of contemporary art in Belgrade on the world-information.org exhibition that explored the complex sphere of information production, manipulation, control and distribution.
K.M.: Where are you in five years?
Z. Pantelic: Who knows?… This is a very open question and position…. In Serbia it is still an unclear situation…. We should keep our international network and at the same time try to develop our world here.

Change as a stable factor—Most of the colleagues interviewed from Central and Eastern Europe agree that the vast array of exchange programs, grants, conferences and consultancies offered by American and Western European foundations, museums and embassies helped to regenerate the cultural sector. These programs also helped them to reconnect to an international network of museums and cultural projects, and to import global models for their environments—or, as Matei Bejenaru put it, to learn to use the “English language of arts” to talk about local problems.
They also seem to agree that the image of a “golden Western solution” fades away. As Corina Suteu explains, “After having implemented, for example, the Dutch cultural policy model in Hungary, and having been inspired by a number of French laws on cultural heritage and decentralization in Romania and Poland, the organizations that were functioning within these borrowed patterns still had to adapt to the local context and to the economic limitations of transition, quite different from their potentials for efficiency in a Western context.”
Stability, a key element of a civil society, was often lacking in the transition period. Change was the only stable feature. Suteu adds, “In Romania, Ministries of Culture changed 10 times in 14 years, in Bulgaria eight times, and in Poland 16 times over the same period. No cultural policy outlived the mandate of a minister.”
How can one develop efficient management without reliable institutional infrastructures?
The outcomes of the transition period seem to depend, once again, on geographic divisions. Milena Dragicevic-Šešic states: “The countries of Central Europe, above all the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, and Hungary, as well as to a great extent the Baltic countries, have nearly completed the transition process even in the field of culture. That is to say that a new legislative system has been introduced, a multiparty democratic system is functioning, privatization is already underway, and the economy is making strides towards being market-driven and showing signs of growth again. These societies are open towards the world, and appear ready to be integrated into the global world cultural system” (2000).
Eastern and South Eastern European countries face a harder challenge, according to Maleševic: “An overall view of Eastern European societies reveals a picture of two different groups of values that go to make up, to a greater or lesser degree, the dominant cultural values of the populations living in this part of the world. The first group is related to those ideas and values which have their origin in the particular histories of each individual region and society, including the effects of 50 or more years of state socialism. The second group has to do with the impact of new ‘modernizing’ values that have their origin in the West or are the result of the contemporary trends of globalization, unification, the new information age, and so on. The influence of these two groups is something that is common to all post-Communist societies, while its extent differs for each individual case” (1997, 60).
While all countries of the former Eastern bloc gained a greater sovereignty with its abolition, some additionally gained national independence for the first time. Slovenia, Croatia, Ukraine, and the Baltic countries consequently have invested considerable resources and concepts into a newly defined national heritage. In the midst of this process, the European Union—as well as rising worldwide tourism—has pressured these countries to develop transnational and multicultural identities. Two countries, Slovenia and Estonia, and their solutions might illuminate this challenge. Their relatively small size also might have contributed to the successful introduction and implementation of new forms of museum management and decentralization that are still strong challenges for large countries such as Poland or Romania.

Slovenia—After gaining national independence for the first time in 1991, Slovenia invested substantially into its national cultural heritage—which for the longest time had substituted for its lacking state independence. With a population of close to two million, but with nearly 2.2 million domestic and foreign tourists coming to Slovenia every year, Slovenia seems—even more than other countries—to face one of the signatures of globalization, a rapidly growing worldwide tourism. With heritage travel as one of tourism’s fastest growing segments, Slovenian museums (like museums worldwide) need to find ways to be accessible and understandable to visitors from very different backgrounds.
There are many examples that succeed. The exhibition concept at the Museum of Recent History in Celje illustrates how to inform a Slovenian and international museum audience at the same time. The exhibition leads its visitors through the drastic and complex changes in twentieth-century Slovenia with a fictional “diary of three generations,” thus using a powerful but familiar narrative concept for Slovenes and tourists alike. The diary is translated into English and connects the displayed artifacts to a meaningful ensemble. Again, English functions as the lingua franca.
The wooden Franja Partisan Field Hospital near Cerkno, an amazing site of partisan activities during World War II, has been saved through intense international cooperative conservation efforts. The Salt-Pans Museum near Secovlje, consisting of the salt house itself and its shallow ponds, is a fascinating example of how traditional salt harvesting can be turned into a museum as well as a partially working small salt-production facility—a site accessible to both Slovenes and international visitors alike.
Since the early 1990s, Slovenian museums also promoted their institutions across borders, through a variety of art manifestations, biennials, or museum conferences such as the 2003 ICOM-3 conference that brought three ICOM commitees and hundreds of international museum professionals to the capital, Ljubljana.

Estonia—After 1989, the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania seemed to gravitate to another model—that of the Scandinavian countries. Their jump-start from neglected provinces of the former Soviet Union to fresh members of the European Union in May 2004 capitalized on their geographical vicinity to the Nordic countries, helped by their relatively small size of 1.4 million inhabitants (Estonia), 2.4 million (Latvia) and 3.5 million (Lithuania), and the highest growth rates (averaging five to six percent) of all new European member states. After these countries’ isolation under the Soviet regime, free and open communication was key to many of their projects. Today, the so-called “Baltic tigers” have implemented modern information and communication technologies and have integrated these new modes into their daily life to a degree that equals or surpasses the West. For instance, Estonian citizens, by law, are guaranteed free access to the Web through 700 public Internet access points throughout the country.
In the Estonian museum landscape, the resolve to change finds its strongest expression in the new Art Museum of Estonia and its spectacular building currently under construction in Tallinn. The new structure, designed by architect Pekka Vapaavuori, extends the exhibition space of the old art museum, founded in 1919, from 10,130 to 51,340 square feet. Tiina Abel, vice-director of research at the new museum, says: “The new building of the Art Museum of Estonia has a symbolic value for all Estonians. It is the first museum building ever purposely constructed by the state—an act of good will, intelligent behavior, and sacrifice, inspired by our newly attained political independence and a feeling of national pride. In the beginning of the 1990s we had to close our main building due to deterioration; essential parts of our collection were scattered to temporary premises all over Tallinn.”8
The plans for the new building, conceived two months after Estonia’s declaration of independence in August 1991, went through a long period of reorientation and discussion. “For the first time in our history,” says Abel, “we had to think seriously about our mission and our possibilities in the contemporary Estonian, Baltic, and global cultural field. Creating the mental space for our work within our society has been challenging. We also had to face the fact that—although we are very good critics, art historians, and museum professionals—we felt rather uncomfortable. We had operated on limited financial resources and without international contacts or a solid theoretical background for such a long time. We all had to learn. But we have learned indeed.”
Reaching out to both colleagues and potential donors outside the country was one key element of the project. Abel says: “In the beginning it was a very hard time for us. The museum was considered a threat to our limited public funds. There were constant discussions about the right site of the building, and the need to preserve the geologically valuable limestone bank and historically valuable barracks of the 1930s. Fortunately, all these discussions have come to an end. We are very happy that many common people are involved in creating the new institution, including Estonians who are living abroad. We got a lot of support from many institutions in Estonia, as well as from abroad, especially from museums that were newly founded or went through extensive reconstructions, such as the Ateneum and Kiasma in Helsinki, the Museumsquartier in Vienna, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm or the Dublin Museum of Modern Art.”
With the completion of the Art Museum, expected in 2005, both classical and contemporary Estonian art will be displayed in the new facilities. Tiina Abel hopes that it becomes a “multifunctional, alive and dynamic institution” both for Estonians and tourists alike, portraying Estonian art and cultural history.

EAST TO WEST

While Eastern and Central European museums might incorporate Western concepts, they—like all other museums—continue to function within their historical framework, culturally defined practices, and specific audiences. Eastern and Central European museum professionals share the experience of having gone through a complete overhaul of their institutions and culture. This experience of dramatic change, and the long-term effects of a totalitarian past, will inform cultural practices for a long time, and museums need to find ways to mediate both. Of course, they do not start at point zero, but benefit also from inheriting a rich cultural history that has to be disentangled from its once-tight embrace by Communist cultural politics. Their solutions have to be home-grown while at the same time accounting for the rapid changes of globalization. “Speaking English”—seen as a metaphor—bridges the tensions between local and global demands.
Tomislav Šola says: “This could mean that we might build smaller structures than the ones we see in the West—less big, but more feasible for long-term support within the financial resources given.” The challenge of limited resources will not only remain, but might increase in at least some countries. Both a worldwide economic depression and the integration into the European Union have put the young democracies under considerable pressure and could lead to a revival of separatist or totalitarian tendencies.
Another challenge will be the structural growth of cross-border cooperation, instead of the prior dominating orientation towards the West. “Fresh borders” do not make an easy situation to build on: Issues of trust, and in many occasions, reconciliation, have to be cleared first. The patchwork of ethnic minorities could complicate such necessary long-term initiatives.
But on the whole, many achievements have been made, and secured, in much less time than anybody probably expected in 1989. A new generation of cultural leaders developed during this overhaul. Some of their experiences on how to endure and shape such dramatic change might prove to be of great benefit for the cultural sector in Western countries, where state subsidies decline from year to year. Corina Suteu quotes Romanian Philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu, who explained that post-Communist societies have the luck to still live in a “potential” world, so different from the “saturated” western reality. But many in the cultural sector in the West have become familiar with a less-saturated cultural environment where funds are increasingly difficult to secure.
Jillian Poole, president of the Fund for Arts and Culture, says: “As with our Eastern friends, we too have changed over the last 14 years. We listen better. We are perhaps a little more creative in suggesting solutions to a larger variety of challenges. There are many more ways to skin a cat than we ever dreamed of! There is no ‘right’ way to do things.”

WEBSITES CONSULTED

Best in Heritage, Croatia
Soros Foundation
Soros Foundations Arts and Cultural Program
International Contemporary Art Network
Periferic Biennial, Iasi, Romania
Policy Resources for Culture in South East Europe
Europe Culture Management in East; Romania
European Cultural Foundation
Balkan Cultural Cooperation
Budapest Observatory on Financing Culture in East-Central Europe
Fund for Arts and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe
kuda.org, Novi Sad, Serbia

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I sincerely wish to thank the Salzburg Seminar for their generous invitation to this seminar and especially Program Director Susanna Seidl-Fox for all her support. I also want to express my gratitude to my colleagues from Eastern and Central Europe for their joyful help, advice, and patience with my lengthy email correspondence.

NOTES

1. These passages are quoted from Suteu (2003), in a slightly revised, shortened form prepared in cooperation with Corina Suteu. All further quotes from Suteu originate in this paper.
2. See also Yerkovich (2002).
3. Email interview with Matei Bejenaru.
4. Email interview with Jillian Poole.
5. In 2002 the Soros Foundations Network expenditures totaled $474,402 million. See Soros Foundations Network (2003).
6. Email interview with Solvita Krese.
7. Email interview with Lidia Varbanova.
8. Email interview with Tiina Abel.

REFERENCES

Dragicevic-Šešic, Milena. 2000. Cultural policy in the post-totalitarian period in Eastern and Central Europe—between local and global. The 2000 Reader of the Summer University Course: Innovative cultural policies and cultural management in societies in transition. Budapest: Central University Budapest.
Fondazione Fitzcarraldo. 2003. Cultural cooperation in Europe: What role for foundations? Research Report on Behalf of Network of European Foundations for Innovative Cooperation. http://www.fitzcarraldo.it/ricerca/pdf/Volume.pdf
Maleševic, S. 1997. The Czech Republic and Slovakia: Two different roads to cultural development. In: Culturelink, Special Issue, Zagreb: http://www.culturelink.org/review/s97/s97cont.html.
Soros Foundations Network. 2003. Building Open Societies: Soros Foundations Network 2002 Report. New York: The Open Society Institute. http://www.soros.org/resources/articles_publications/publications/sorosannual2002_20030801/a_complete_report.pdf
Soros, G. 1994. Build an educational and cultural network for Eastern Europe. In The Arts in the World Economy: Public Policy and Private Philanthropy for a Global Cultural Community, O. Robison, R. Freeman, and C. A. Riley II, eds. London: Salzburg Seminar.
Suteu, C. 2003. Overview on cultural policy in Central and Eastern Europe between 1990/2003. Policy paper, UNESCO.
Yerkovich, S. 2002. Destination Murmansk! Learning to speak a common language about museums miles above the Arctic Circle. Museum News (July/August): 42-45, 66-67, 69.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE ARTICLE

Klaus Mueller: “Speaking English”: A Dialogue with Eastern and Central European Museum Professionals. In: Curator. A special issue on Museums and Globalization. Vol. 48: No. 1, 2005

‘Globalisation’, according to the journalist Thomas Friedman ‘is the inexorable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before – in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before.’ As museums attempt to understand their changing roles at the beginning of the 21st century, they inevitably come up against the politically-charged debate on globalisation.
While some people praise the liberating effects of free trade and greater global communication, claiming that marginalised peoples are empowered as a result, others fear this will bring standardisation and forced assimilation into a Western-dominated world. When people focus on the economic, political, cultural or ecological consequences of globalisation, they see either disaster or potential, neo-colonialism or free trade, empowerment or despair.
Museums have benefited from aspects of the global market in recent years. Free trade, the internet and cheaper international travel have combined to help museums achieve recognition as places of communication between cultures. But at the same time market deregulation and free-trade principles are fostering an environment in which economically strong countries and corporations dominate local, national, and international business. Globalisation for many people means ‘Americanisation’.
But whether commentators are pro- or anti-globalisation, they tend to agree that culture always oscillates between the particular and the universal, between tradition and renewal. Cultural artifacts are hybrid in nature, and cultural diffusion is as old as mankind. But critics differ on how to judge this hybridity in today’s fast world: globalisation in the 21st century has radically accelerated the scope, speed, and depth of cultural distribution. While some assume that this will turn a few into producers and the many into consumers, others embrace cross-cultural exchange as the breeding ground of new cultures.

What role will museums play in this process? Can museums sustain a model that is different to the corporate model, which is largely based on profits and market penetration?

A GLOBAL AUDIENCE?
Transnational corporations like Microsoft, Nike or McDonald have come to symbolize the new world powers. But their expanding production and distribution networks hardly find an equivalent in the museum world. The Metropolitan Museum does not outsource services to cheaper work forces in the Third World; the Tate has not opened a chain of ‘Tate’ museums across Europe; and few, if any museums move out of their urban centres to avoid high rent and maintenance costs. If we are to except the internet, museums remain locally bound entities.
Only the Guggenheim has attempted to establish itself as a worldwide operating museum chain, opening up venues for its collection across and outside the United States. But after its recent closures in Las Vegas and partially, New York, many saw the ‘McGuggenheim’ ambition as a misunderstood adaptation of the corporate dot.com model of global expansion. As New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman said: ‘Bigger is not better; better is better.’
But migration and tourism – both effects of globalisation – are changing the framework in which museums operate. We might stick to the same building, but our visitors no longer from familiar places alone.
In a gradual reorientation, many museums today emphasize serving the public rather than augmenting their collections as their foremost responsibility. Children’s, neighborhood, and community-based museums were the first to adopt the view that, in the words of Stephen E Weil, museums should change ‘from being about something to being for somebody’.
But who is that ‘somebody’? As museums strive to determine their civic role and build partnerships with their constituents — often a local focus — they also are challenged to communicate with and serve wider national and international audiences — the global focus.
Tourism has become the world’s largest growth industry according to the World Tourism Organization (WTO). In 2002 the number of international tourists exceeded the 700-million mark for the first time – despite a worldwide economic crisis. In Slovenia, for example, domestic and foreign tourists, nearly 2.2 million, surpassed the number of its inhabitants of 1,9 million last year. So Slovenian museums (as museums worldwide) need to find ways to be increasingly understandable to visitors from very different backgrounds.
Migration has changed the ways museums operate as well. According to the 2002 International Migration Report by the United Nations, ‘most of the world’s migrants live in Europe (56 million), Asia (50 million), and Northern America (41 million).’ Urban centres 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. Globalisation is happening in our own neighborhoods.

BEST PRACTICES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
It isn’t just visitors who are thinking globally – museum professionals are too.
Decreasing costs for communication and travel facilitate exchanges between museum professionals. Membership in the International Council of Museums (ICOM) has increased over 50 per cent in the past eight years to more than 17,000 members in 142 countries.
Cultural tourism is greatly on the increase. The amount of museums and heritage sites has exploded worldwide after 1945. But the sustainability of many of these young institutions and increasing public expectations challenge museum professionals everywhere to come up with new ideas – or, time-saving, to copy them from already successful models.
The transformation from collection-based to audience-driven museums has become an economic necessity. Access to information from all corners of the world has become part of our profession. As our frames of reference continue to expand, international standards – for example, guidelines concerning Nazi loot – are becoming widely accepted around the world. For many Western museums, this raises the extremely difficult question of ownership.
In December 2002, initiated by the British Museum, 18 of the world’s leading collecting institutions signed a declaration identifying 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 artefacts seized during colonial rule or during similar earlier periods of history.
The result, not surprisingly, was a storm of protest. Critics claimed the museums 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 to make about their right to hold and display artefacts acquired in previous centuries under very different laws and standards. But they still will have to negotiate with ethnic groups and nation-states asserting their right to objects that reflect their cultural heritage.

THE WEB AS A GLOBAL MEDIUM
An increasing number of our global visitors, however, today do not arrive on our doorstep, but access collections through museum websites. The digital transformation of museums is challenging traditional ideas about what museums are about. Museums no longer are local physical buildings, but global virtual spaces. 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 per cent of Internet users live in high-income countries, which are home to 14 percent of the world’s population. When museums think about globalisation, it might be wise to keep things in perspective. Although the global economy affects all countries, not all of them profit from it. Nearly 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day. In 2002, the richest 1 percent had total income equal to the poorest 57 percent. Integration and fragmentation are the two sides of the globalisation coin.

THE MARKET OF EXPERIENCES
Within a global economy that thrives on mass production and consumerism, museums worldwide have proven to be remarkably resistant towards a standardisation of products and brands. The core asset for museums remains the original artieact that cannot be mass-produced. Museums do not offer commercial merchandise, but cultural experiences.
It is on this market of experiences that the global market challenges museums. Many businesses today sell their products through offering ‘experiences’ and have been very successful to brand their products, partially using museum display techniques and ideas in their overall strategies. But the corporate world is more advanced than museums in communicating their product across lines of ethnicity, language, nationality, gender or religion.
A more inclusive mission, diversification of staff, board and membership, and a broader accessibility of artefacts through multi-layered exhibitions will determine both the ethical signature and economic endurance of museums in a global world. Enhanced marketing strategies and diverse audience development not only are necessary, but welcome responses as they stimulate museums to reconsider their relation with their changing audience.
As globalisation takes us perhaps inevitably toward a standardized consumer culture, museums face some challenging questions. Just as museums have contributed to establish biodiversity policies that help to sustain the natural ecosystem, can they – or should they – also strive to safeguard the ‘cultural ecosystem’? How can museums preserve cultural heritage when culturally specific traditions merge with the mainstream – or simply disappear?
The fear of global cultural monopolies have led the French government to introduce the “cultural exception” concept during the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) negotiations, claiming the right to support its cultural specificity through government subsidies or other protection mechanisms. The ‘essential duality’ of cultural products as both commercial merchandise and cultural goods that express human diversity has been reinforced in consecutive agreements by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). But is protection the right or only answer?
Undoubtedly, museums will need to reflect the global scale of their topics and the provenance of their collections more fully. Permanent exhibitions at natural history museums already are informed by such global perspectives, no matter how local their focus. Many ethnological museums strive for open discussions with indigenous communities about ownership of objects or display techniques – to the benefit of the community and the museum. ‘Ownership’ will become a major issue for all museums due to the increase in international travel and the accessibility of vast new amounts of historical records and related data.
Museums have to compete in our economy of experiences without loosing their distinctiveness and, especially, credibility. But they have more to gain than to lose by thinking more broadly and reaching out to an increasingly diverse, transnational and virtual audience. With decreasing public funds, they have no chance but to embrace the global market and to both learn and distance themselves from corporate business models.

BIBILIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE ARTICLE
Klaus Mueller: World Service. In: Museumsjournal, Jan. 2004. Vol. 104, No. 1, British Museum Association

The digitisation of museum collections seems to be going through a Golden Age. The recent announcement by the New Opportunities Fund that it will spend £50m on the digitisation of the UK’s national heritage is impressive, but merely mirrors the tens of millions that are being spent worldwide on digital heritage initiatives.
Australian Museums Online (AMOL), the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), and numerous European (CORDIS), Latin American (ILAM) and North American (NINCH) museum networks are rapidly building up similar virtual collections.
In the years to come, museums worldwide, often under pressure from their respective governments, will make hundreds of thousands of digital replicas of artifacts and works of art accessible through the web as their showcase. The question is: to what end?
At first sight, the results seem remarkable. Digitisation already alters our ways of relating to and perceiving works of arts or historical artifacts. A simple Google image search, for instance, on ‘William Turner’ turns up as many as 3,400 images in as little as 0.43 seconds. Once you’ve excluded the photographs of people with the same name, the repeated images and other dubious search results, it still remains the most inclusive display of his work. Building your own digital gallery has thus become a commodity.
At the same time, our relationship to and knowledge of museums is changing as well: By the middle of this year, the 24-hourmuseum website provides access to over 2,500 museums and galleries online. With a click, opening hours, locations, and special exhibitions or information on collections are available. National Museum Portals worldwide offer an ever growing quantity of data, such as AMOL (400,000 collection records from 1100 Australian museums), CHIN (200,000 records from 700 Canadian museums) or the French JOCONDE (132,000 images from 75 museums). The supporting databases avoid the excessive hits we get through less specialized search machines such as Google. Therefore information on museums is no longer specialized knowledge, but transparent, (mostly) up-to-date and free of charge. Especially for tourists these portals are increasingly becoming the first step of their visit to the onsite museum.

FROM DATA TO CONTENT: MUSEUMS NEED A DIGITIZATION POLICY
Never before have museum audiences had access to so many resources. But what do we gain from these ever-growing sites? Knowledge, pleasure, experiences – or just the much praised ‘access’? The web has turned us into browsers of information (be it music, photos or documents of all kinds). The quantities already surpass our imagination. The egalitarian notion of ‘access’ to cultural resources is used as the main goal and justification of heritage projects. But access alone does not answer the bigger question of how these resources can be converted into meaningful digital content. How can museums curate virtual spaces which engage online museum visitors, encouraging them do more than browse, but to learn about and experience its artifacts?
Right now, museum online are not museums, but archives. We can browse for artifacts and basic information. But the database has become the dominant way that museums present their collections to online visitors. ‘Digitisation’ in this context really refers to the method used to process objects and information. Objects and descriptions from diverse institutions such as libraries, archives and museums are standardised and then presented through catalogues and inventories: a format that is hardly exciting. True enough databases help to search information. But they do not advance an appreciation of the artifact and its complex social, historical or symbolic context.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE AND SOCIAL SPACES
As a result, museum websites offer very little of the experience we gain from traditional museum spaces. Museums often do not present themselves as interpretive spaces on the net, but data storage facilities. On the Web, digitization has, at least temporarily, translated the onsite profile of museums from information interpreters into mere information providers. The social and civic space museums were able to develop through their buildings so far has not been matched by the Web. Why?
Physical space, as Tate Modern, the Jewish Museum in Berlin or the Guggenheim in Bilbao show, plays a crucial part in a museum’s profile. Museums regard themselves as showcases of material objects that visitors can physically experience on-location. They have been praised as new civic cathedrals, as renewing forces of run-down harbour fronts or agents of a new social consciousness: In all of these roles architecture has played an essential role. In their expansion to the web, museums lack such a profile. The virtuality of the Web is perceived as a distortion of this encounter.

THE FALSE DICHOTOMY BETWEEN REAL VERSUS VIRTUAL OBJECTS
One can hardly dispute the differences between real objects displayed in an onsite museum and their virtual reproductions in an online environment. But an exploration of museums and virtuality does not benefit much from the assumption of an apparent antithesis, whereas it gains from an investigation of common grounds and shared objectives between the two. The false dichotomy between real versus virtual (or ‘authentic’ versus ‘copied’) simplifies the multiple meanings objects acquire through cultural history.
By definition, museums are artificially constructed environments, designed for displaying objects that were not originally produced for this setting. Many objects now held in museum collections went through several ‘homes’ as, for instance, Rembrandt van Rijn’s early ‘Self-portrait as a young man’ (1630). Acquired by Sir Robert Kerr, it was presented to Charles I in the early 1630s and made its way to the palace at Whitehall in London. After the king’s execution in 1649, the royal collection was sold. Today, Rembrandt’s self-portrait has found a new home in the Walker Museum in Liverpool.
Seen from this angle, the virtual representation of objects on museum websites only mirrors and re-configures the earlier transfer of the object from its ‘authentic’ (original, historical, physical or emotional) context into the museum environment. Museums redefine the value and the meanings of an artifact by taking it into their collection: Its digital counterpart on the Web challenges the frame of reference one more time. Thus, re-location of objects is not new to museums: museums are experts in framing objects in ever new contexts, and the Web is just one of them.

DIGITIZATION AS CONVERSION
Digitization means a conversion of an object which is three dimensional into a two-dimensional electronic representation. But the transfer of digital replicas to the Web transcends mere reproduction technology. The Web as all other media creates a new experiential space. Media are tools to construct realities rather than just to represent reality. Like TV or film, like radio or photography, the Web does not only depict or mimic the existing world, but also composes new media realities (that in their way shape the existing world).
Online curating and content development departs from traditional display concepts because it takes place in a new medium. If the media is the message as Marshall McLuhan stated, how can museums translate their curatorial expertise to this new medium, the web?
The experience of space and time in a virtual environment departs from a tangible material architecture. But our language shows that we understand the Web as a spatial endeavour. We surf, we go to a website, we build one ourselves. It is a “place that has no soil, no boundaries, no near, no far” (Weinberger 2002). Simulations of the natural world conceal that the Web is an artificial world, as flexible as we want it to be.
Information architecture has just begun to explore its unmapped potentials. A new generation of online exhibitions has started to offer richer experiences of the objects by creating meaningful spaces. Online activities can offer educational interactives for younger visitors (like the exhibition on the breaking of the German enigma code by the Imperial War Museum, the climate change exhibition at the London Science Museum or the exploration of objects with interactive tools at the Natural History Museum Website).
Tate Britain experimented with less playful, more encyclopedic formats in its William Blake Online Exhibition. The Victoria and Albert Museum as early as 1997 used their Shamiana Exhibition as a platform for virtual cooperation in the creation of a unique collection of textile panels. A look at the award winners at the international ‘Best of the Web’ competition for heritage web design, show how fast the repertoire and language of virtual shows are evolving. Using a montage of images, sound, text, and design as well as various navigation strata, virtual exhibitions can become emotionally and intellectually stimulating environments.

ONLINE EXHIBITIONS
Online exhibitions nurture a plurality of voices through using diverse media. But the Web is a nervous medium, a cabinet of wonders and curiosities. Everything is just a click away. Time is interest-based: If we lose interest in a site, we do not hang around in an effort to be polite. We click on. Time spent on the Net is often discontinuous, stopped as easily as started again. Web semiotics make for faster consumption, and it is hard for museums to develop their own voice within this new environment. Online visitors do not necessarily have a shorter attention span, but a clearer determination about what they will spend their time on.
The Web is a social construction, designed, developed and sustained by millions of people. But how can museums develop their sites as more engaging social spaces?
Although the onsite visitor can not touch artifacts in traditional museums, she ‘interacts’ with them through being in the same space and approaching them from various angles. The online visitor lacks this experience, other forms of interactivity are therefore essential on the Web. The many ways to explore an object through technology-mediated layers (such as zooming in on the object, seeing it from various angles or even the inside as well as exploring its manufacture through links on its material composition or historical frame) allow new learning experiences. It is less what we see, but do with the object that characterizes the potential of the web as a medium. The current emphasis on the composition and ensemble of artifacts in physical museums might be changing to an open and interactive approach on the Web that permits visitors to become commentators, contributors or even co-producers. What works, what doesn’t?
Continuous evaluation and creative experiments are both decisive to determine how digital content can be developed. Software can help to monitor and analyze patterns of online visits. Evaluation software should be built into the structure of the website itself so that continuous data is available to reconsider or strengthen certain features (and can also be used to convince sponsors). But the Web is a new medium in constant change. Evaluation alone cannot provide the models and failures. Although the development of data standards and the digitisation of artifacts continue to be costly enterprises, online shows do not need to be. The Web thrives on ideas, but not necessarily on expansive displays. On the net, good ideas make their way to the surfer very fast. Working with digitized information is cheaper, faster, and more flexible. The low production costs of digital content makes it an interesting tool for small and large museums to experiment with concepts, to find new partners and to redefine themselves.
The web snuggled itself into our lives and institutions. Although our habits are increasingly challenged and changed by the Web, its potentials largely remain to be developed. The Web is still in its childhood years. Museums started to use it as a promotional vehicle, then as an interface to their stored collections. With both, museums assumed that their website is a subsection of their activity, part of the press, education or archives department. But the Web is neither just a technology nor a tool. It develops its own rhythm and rules that not necessarily need to be the traditional habits museums have already established. While spending considerable funds into digitization, many museums currently do not have a digitization policy at hand on how they want to turn data into content. Online exhibitions, guided tours of collection highlights, interactive and media-advanced displays of artifacts are some of the ways to create meaningful virtual spaces.
Long-term goals and openness to the new medium are instrumental to determine and sustain a digital profile. By definition regional, on the Web museums are turned into global institutions. As important as shared standards are (from the implementation of accessibility guidelines for disabled online visitors to the participation of all museums in national museum portals), different concepts are equally relevant. Some museums will improve regional cooperation with schools, libraries and archives through the Web; others might redefine themselves through collection-based networks beyond geographic borders. For some museums, their website will be an integrated part of their overall profile whereas for others their offsite and onsite locations may become distinctively different. ‘Digital objects’, ‘online visitors’ and ‘virtual communication’ re-define museological premises. Most museums have a mission statement for their physical space developed out of its physical restrictions. Now it is time to define their digital profile beyond mere reproduction.

REFERENCES
Imperial War Museum: Enigma
Science Museum
Natural History Museum London
Tate Britain
Victoria & Albert Museum

DIGITAL HERITAGE PROGRAMS
Australian Museums & Galleries Online
Canadian Heritage Information Network
European Commission Digital Heritage Information Society
Joconde Database
National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH)
Best of the Web 2002 awards, Museum and the Web 2002

BIBILIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE ARTICLE
Klaus Mueller: Digital Watch. In: Museumsjournal, Oct 2002. Vol. 102, No. 9, British Museum Association.

“The Walker Art Center has a million visitors per year. The Walker Web site has 2 million visitors per year. We are . . . trying to understand what this means.” – Steve Dietz, Curator of New Media, Walker Art Center

Technology has so permeated the museum field that it almost seems to grow out of the institutions’ walls. Originally museum databases, digitized collections, and online archives were meant only for staff and in-house visitors. Now, through the World Wide Web, museum resources can be accessed by a worldwide audience, many of whom may never walk through our doors.
If museums are to adhere to their mandate to educate and inform, they must take this online audience into account.
Today most museums use the Web to fulfill their traditional roles – to document, educate, and preserve – by transferring existing information and reproducing physical objects in an electronic form. A radically different approach is to use Web sites to present art and exhibitions that exist only in electronic form, thus turning the Web into a medium of original experience. Increasingly, the rest of the world is using digital versions of real-life activities; we inform and promote ourselves, shop, play, study, and produce online. Other industries have realized that they must think digitally if they are going to succeed. Shouldn’t museums?

Over the next few years, more and more museums will place digitized information on the Web. Digital heritage programs – ensuring integrated access to collections and materials held in institutions such as museums, libraries, and archives – are being sponsored by many governments and corporate and private sponsors. Guiding this process are professional organizations such as the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH), Australian Museums On-line (AMOL), the Canadian Heritage Information Network, and the Digital Heritage Initiative of the European Commission, among others, as well as early initiatives of the Getty Information Institute. (See page XX for the URLs of all the sites listed in this article.) The goal of these organizations is to link the resources held by various organizations, often using library catalogue and database standards. This is because libraries were among the first to use digital technology to disseminate information about their holdings, which is no surprise – accessibility has always been their main objective. Like libraries, museums collect, preserve, and provide access, but their mission also requires that they interpret and exhibit the unique objects entrusted to them. Thus far, however, this aspect of the museum’s mission has not made its way to the Web. Digitization has, at least temporarily, changed the profile of museums from information interpreters to information providers.

How can museums translate their curatorial expertise into a digital environment and encourage visitors to interpret objects online? What distinct role can museums play in the fusion of the “real” and the “virtual” that marks our modern existence?

A WONDERFUL MOMENT OF DISCOVERY
When it comes to online exhibitions, museums still have many questions. If everything can be downloaded, will museums lose their unique status as physical spaces of wondrous experience? Will our visitors still come to our buildings if we publish everything on the Internet? If museums are about real objects, why should we exhibit them in a virtual mode? Who should pay for this online development?
Many museums are struggling with their virtual extension, says Leonard Steinbach, chief information officer at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA): “We are in the process of exploring and defining what we mean by online tours and exhibitions, general access to collection images and information, how they should be approached, and what makes them effective. There are no simple answers.” Although he says that his museum has a long way to go, Steinbach has a clear vision for CMA’s online presence. “To claim that viewing a painting or a sculpture online is ‘purely information’ unfairly sterilizes what can still be a wonderful moment of discovery, inspiration, and illumination,” he says. “It is just different. It means more access to more art by more people than at any time in human history. This goes well beyond looking at objects. This is sharing culture and perspective.”

THINKING TWO-DIMENSIONALLY
The online exhibit resides in a medium that functions according to its own set of rules. The space and duration of an online exhibition as well as its composition, links, and production require a shift in the traditional curatorial approach.
An online exhibition is a two-dimensional display that lacks the physical experience of space. It neither offers viewers the possibility of moving physically closer to the objects on display nor allows someone to share an exhibition experience with others in the same place. In fact, an online exhibition resembles a book. It offers individual and private contemplation, is defined by its “pages” and organized in a linear or branched chronology, and has a hardback cover (its computer monitor). Readers and users share a similar spatial proximity; on one side sits the book/monitor; on the other, the reader/user. Like the book, the online exhibition is defined by intimacy; readers turn the pages and users tap on the keyboard. Finally, books can be read in a variety of surroundings, and online exhibitions can be accessed from any place with a computer that has an Internet connection.
Digital viewing does encourage viewers to look at things in new ways. Zooming allows for close inspection of details. Reproductions of physically distant objects can be united in one imaginative space. Virtual tours using video-stream images offer insights about real galleries. In addition, no matter how well they are publicized, traditional exhibitions are regional in scope. No matter how limited their subject, online exhibitions are global spaces. Still, like their three-dimensional counterparts, simulated spaces can take on all shapes and forms. Examples include the Virtual Guggenheim’s planned yet changeable architecture; the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MOCA) interactive digital gallery; Superbad.com, where each work of art is just a click away and presented without any textual guidance; and the moving forest of object descriptions and images in the “Revealing Things” exhibition on the Smithsonian Without Walls site.

TIME AND SOCIABILITY
Online exhibitions are never restricted by time. They do not open or close but are available 24 hours a day. Each user defines her own visiting hours and comes and goes without ever seeing staff, asking for immediate assistance, or paying an entrance fee. Visitors experience the exhibition alone; the online show cannot be considered a social experience. Even e-mail discussions, online guest books, chat rooms, and surveys do not do much to alter the visitor’s physical isolation. Though theoretically online exhibitions incorporate the mass medium that is most accessible to a worldwide audience, in practice they remain sources of individual and intimate contemplation. (It is true, though, that online communities have developed new forms of social life and communication. The next generation of museum visitors might find the difference between real and virtual communities a minor one.) Some museums are working to develop a more sociable virtual space, experimenting with two-way dialogues by encouraging e-mail communication between visitors and curators, creating online discussion forums (as MOCA did for a show featuring artist Douglas Gordon), and offering newsletters and downloadable screensavers featuring work by exhibited artists.

EVERYTHING LINKS TO EVERYTHING ELSE
“Showing now at a computer near you!” From an advertisement by the Cornell Heritage Access Information Network (CHAIN), United Kingdom
Like other new media, online exhibitions do not yet have established rules and practices. But because they are not substitutes for traditional displays, they should not be developed using only traditional curatorial criteria. Similar to everything else on the Net, online exhibitions are a succession of windows (or frames) and links. Just as each scene is part of a film, each window is part of the exhibition. The narrative basis of the online show centers on its montage – images, sound, text, and design united in a single composition. No element is neutral, but each conveys the tone and message of the entire exhibition.
While I was curating “Do You Remember, When”, an online exhibition for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the process of reconstructing the story behind the object added new layers to the show’s main artifact, a small, handmade booklet. It was originally an intimate gift between two Jewish friends in Berlin, c. 1941-42, but its meaning changed during the Holocaust and in subsequent decades. The booklet became a time capsule between the “then” and the “now”, and it was essential that the exhibition reflect this temporal dualism both in content and design. The hypertext structure of the online format enabled the museum to present such multi-layered narratives, including reflections on the making of the exhibition. Curatorial transparency was a natural and welcome effect of the medium.
However, excessive hypertext also can take the user’s attention away from the subject of the exhibition. Online activities are defined by the nervous energy of the World Wide Web, which lacks a center and is composed of a seemingly endless progression of links. Surfing the Web is more like watching T.V. than like visiting a museum – you’re always only a click away from another site/channel. Museums must learn to navigate this new environment, bearing in mind, however, that traditional notions of welcoming visitors and offering opportunities to rest still apply. If online exhibitions offer – through their composition, narrative, and design – a defined and meaningful environment, visitors will have the sense of “being somewhere” and will be less inclined to leave before they explore it.

INTERACTIVITY
“In general . . . what many institutions are afraid of is the open communication aspect of the Net. They want to reduce this new medium to ‘information’. . . . The Net could be a link between the ‘dead’ material and the living people outside of the museum walls.” – Geert Lovink, Net critic, Australia
Online accessibility, the main reason for digital heritage programs, is often seen as a democratization of museum culture. Access to information is no longer restricted to those who can afford travel and museum visits, but is available to anyone who has access to a computer with an Internet connection. Collections that museums often lacked the physical space to exhibit now can benefit from a virtually infinite space of display. Thus audiences can enjoy unprecedented access to cultural objects and information.
Ideally, such accessibility could lead to a density of information that might change people’s ways of seeing, interpreting, and researching. But on many sites the conversation resembles the traditional one-way dialogue in which museums – often, it is true, to the satisfaction of our audiences – offer interpretations for visitors to contemplate and digest. Conversely, open communication has been a part of the development of the Internet from its earliest days, with users relying on horizontal rather than vertical communication and participating in interactive networking. How can curators transfer their expertise to a new medium where visitors behave differently, where users interact, talk back, and develop and offer other interpretations?
A few online installations might serve as models: Stephen Vitiello’s sound installation, Tetrasomia, brings together non-musical sounds the artist collected. Vitiello organizes these audio samples in four color fields, which represent Earth, air, wind, and fire. By clicking on the sound files, visitors can listen to a fruit-fly courtship, an underwater volcano, poisonous frogs, and the fiery sounds of the Saturn 5 lift-off. No longer passive listeners, visitors can combine these sounds to create a variety of other compositions. The British Museum invites online visitors to learn about daily life in ancient Egypt by clicking on sections of tomb wall paintings and other objects. And the World of Escher site challenges visitors with a contest. In general, Net art seems to strive for interactivity as evidenced by many works submitted to the Whitney Biennial; MOCA’s Digital Galleries; the Walker Art Center’s Gallery 9, and the annual Art on the Net contests organized by the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, Tokyo.

THE CONVERGENCE OF THE REAL AND THE VIRTUAL
“All of the evidence we have is that spending time with the virtual version of works of art increases people’s desires to see the real thing.” – Sandy Nairne, Director of National Programmes, The Tate, London
Debates about the authenticity and physicality of objects are relevant to site-bound museums. But do they enhance our understanding of the virtual? Digital reproductions do not provide the same experience that one has in front of the original, but they can convey concepts, ideas, and emotions. Not as tied to the immediacy of the object, virtuality forces us to imagine narratives and spaces through which we can understand objects and their stories. Exhibitions have always taken objects out of their authentic context and displayed them in a new interpretive frame. In that sense, museums have been creating virtual environments all along.
Skepticism, questions, and ambitious expectations are inherent to the development of online exhibitions. However, a pro/contra argument does not do justice to the complex nature of the process. Site-bound museums must recognize that they now operate in an increasingly network-dominated world. As Sandy Nairne puts it, “We are now very aware that we do have a large number of virtual visitors who cannot, or will not, be able to get to any of the four Tate galleries. . . . But this is fine, because it matches with our mission, which is to extend knowledge and understanding of British, modern, and contemporary art.” In addition to commissioning artists, Tate Online experiments with digital extensions of contemporary artworks from the museum’s collections. The first in this series, says Nairne, is “a special feature with Damien Hirst, built with him, out of the work called Pharmacy.” The Tate site offers a 360-degree panorama view of Pharmacy with zoom capacity, visual documentation on how the three-dimensional version was displayed at other museums, an online discussion forum, and textual explanations from Hirst and the show’s curator.

CHEAPER AND FASTER?
“Bhutan: Fortress of the Gods” cost “approximately a seventh of the cost of a traditional exhibition.” – Christian Schicklgruber, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, Austria
“The fate of its $20-million Web site, guggenheim.com, is still unclear.” – New York Times, Nov. 20, 2001
From a production perspective, the benefits of online exhibitions are many. Objects can be seen from all sides – inside and out; viewers can even “turn” the pages of a book. Online exhibitions are excellent outlets for fragile objects that cannot be displayed due to conservation issues (and any other conservation issues will be limited to the exhibition’s development period). The established exhibition does not need more than technical maintenance. There are no costs associated with insurance or the shipping or installation of objects. Exhibition plans can be redesigned more easily; last minute factual corrections pose few problems; and staff can be limited to a small core team. It is true that the research and exhibition development process of an online show is similar to that of a traditional exhibition, but digitized information is cheaper, faster, and more flexible.
Potentially lower production costs would seem to make online exhibitions an ideal medium for smaller museums, allowing them to diversify outreach efforts, experiment with innovative displays, and develop a variety of advertising campaigns. However, online products can be expensive, and most museums will not have the $20 million the Guggenheim directed toward its Web site. But it is possible to develop a small-scale display that uses existing resources. Remember that while digitization is costly, online exhibitions don’t have to be. Institutions with small budgets can ask sponsors and pro-bono Web designers and programmers to help them with their projects.

ACCESS FOR ALL
Accessibility of online exhibitions is a complicated issue, says Jonathan Bowen, professor of computing at South Bank University, London: “Imagine a museum where the disabled are excluded because no thought has been given to facilities to enable them to access at least a portion of the museum’s resources. This is no longer acceptable in modern society, and may even be illegal in some countries as well. However, this is exactly what is happening online with many new museum Web sites around the world.” The guidelines for Web-site designers developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), part of the World Wide Web consortium, recommend various measures, including providing textual explanations for all visual images and transcripts of audio content, and thinking about how frames, tables, and other design templates will affect disabled visitors.
There’s another issue: “Blind Web users need some form of audio browser that automatically translates text in Web pages into an audible representation,” says Bowen. He believes that many problems can be solved with a little more consideration: “Some designers may claim that designing a Web site for wide access will mean that it will lose its impact for users with no disability. Do not believe them, and go elsewhere.” Remember, too, that working to make Web content more accessible to people with disabilities can only help us to reach other users, who represent a range of computer skills and equipment.

JOURNEYS THROUGH A VIRTUAL WORLD
Advancements in technology will enable unforeseen methods to create ever more meaningful and accessible experiences.” – Jan Schall, Sanders Sosland Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo.
“Museums today have to bridge and communicate between the real and virtual.” – Peter Weibel, Director, ZKM (Center for Art and Media), Karlsruhe, Germany
In 1998, a global survey of museums – conducted by the Japanese Internet Museum and Jonathan Bowen, who also is affiliated with the Virtual Library – indicated how slowly museums had ventured into online development: 53.7 percent of all museums had launched their Web sites after 1994; 70 percent were spending less than $1,000 per year (excluding personnel costs) on their sites; and 57 percent were running their Web departments with one staff person. However, a report on The Status of Technology and Digitization in the Nation’s Museums and Libraries, issued in May by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), indicates a rapid change, at least in American museums. According to the IMLS survey, today all large museums, 93 percent of mid-size museums, and 41 percent of small museums in the United States have a Web site. Fifteen percent of those institutions without a Web site plan to launch one in the next 12 months. Seventy-nine percent of all U.S. museums indicate that a lack of funding is the key obstacle to technological expansion, followed by a lack of expertise (a high 63 percent).

There are examples of Web-based exhibitions that can serve as models for the field. “Bhutan: Fortress of the Gods”, developed by the Museum für Völkerkunde, an ethnological museum in Vienna, Austria, offers diverse strata for experiencing the objects and topics. The visitor moves through its narrative layers as if on an expedition to a new land. Awarded Best Online Exhibition in the Best of the Web 2001 competition, “Bhutan” was developed by the museum, the Austrian Ministry of Science, and the Institute for Informatics in Vienna. Funded by the ministry, it was intended to be a blueprint for online exhibitions, accessible to all Austrian museums. It was the first online exhibition for curator Christian Schicklgruber, whose “first decision was to forget the real exhibition and develop an online concept.” Each organization handled a different aspect of the project. “In the beginning we tried to explain decisions to each other,” says Schicklgruber, “but after a while we simply accepted the work and language divide between curators and programmers.” Because much of the technological know-how was outsourced, however, the museum was unable to fully benefit from the collaborative experience.

At present, “Bhutan” is a precious entity that has not been broadly advertised to the public or influenced the design of the museum’s main Web site. Still, according to Schicklgruber, on average each visitor spends an astonishing 47 minutes at the site. Twenty-five percent of the approximately 25,000 visitors who visited the exhibition between November 2000 and May 2001 returned to see the show again. Many hits came from educational institutions in the United States.
The Web is particularly suited to the diverse aspects of museum work. Curators often present their favorite pieces online, and some museum Web sites allow visitors to build their own virtual collections. But much more could be accomplished. For example, the Nelson-Atkins Museum created “lab-like” sounds for the conservation section of its online exhibition, “Tempus Fugit.” The show presents the concept of time in different cultures, explored through selected artworks dating from 900 B.C. to the present. “Tempus Fugit” offers an elegant combination of objects projected on a world map as well as conservation information and research resources. “Developing the online form of ‘Tempus Fugit’ required that I learn a new language,” says curator Jan Schall. “Music and sound in general have an uncanny ability to evoke place and mood.” In this case, sound helped transport the visitor to the museum’s conservation lab, something that could not be accomplished by a traditional exhibition.

“Crossfade,” a curated space that explores sound as an artistic medium, utilizing network technology as an integral part of its production, illustrates another feature of online exhibitions: virtual cooperation. “The most important initializing phase was totally non-virtual; we met in person,” says Johannes Goebel, director of the ZKM Institute for Music and Acoustics. Organized by the Goethe-Institute in San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and ZKM (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe, Germany, the exhibition combines media essays with new artworks. “The artists are commissioned,” says Dieta Sixt, former director of the Goethe-Institute, San Francisco. “It is a process by which all of the original institutions can suggest names and we decide together – online, of course.” Thus far “Crossfade” has included 10 hours of Japanese music and works by Stephen Vitiello, Yoko Ono, Chris Chafe, and Greg Niemeyer next to essays about the “architecture of listening” and “music and the Net.” It has been established as a work in progress and has no time limitations (as long as funds remain available). “Museums . . . have the potential to juxtapose issues of context and longevity in ways that may prove useful,” says the Walker’s Steve Dietz. “Also, as sites of both offline and online culture visits, museums can be important venues for prototyping rich, hybrid experiences.”

ONLINE DOCUMENTATIONS
Many museums offer digitized versions of their collections, complete with captions and an introduction, under the title “online exhibition.” Digital databases are wonderful tools for highlighting objects from the collection or presenting a rich selection from the archives. But these online documentations will only disappoint those looking for an exhibition. Audiences have learned that exhibitions are carefully curated and designed efforts and expect no less from an online show. Digitized versions of objects with captions do not make an exhibition, but merely publicize visual information. They should be called “online documentations” and positioned within collections and archives areas. The Cleveland Museum of Art, for example, presents its Jonah Marbles, early Christian and Byzantine works, within a carefully designed online Curator’s Tour. “We experimented with placing the faces of our curators on the tour to help personalize it and add a sense of authority, which I think becomes an issue with material a museum places online,” says Steinbach. “Also, the objects and galleries described are well loved by our community and we wanted them to connect to the persons involved.”

CONCLUSION
Returning home from a trip to the Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, I was delighted to find out that I could re-enter the galleries I had just explored through their virtual tours. But is it enough to transfer “galleries” into the virtual world? Or should we avoid simulations of our site-based museums? Why replicate the conditions of a gallery space that is defined and limited by four walls? Furthermore, how do we respond to the challenges raised by interactivity, transparency, and the online presentation of the object? How do we protect unique voices from being watered down?
Online curators are entering a new and unmapped area where many traditional considerations do not apply. In the virtual world, conservation issues are limited to the digitization process; there is no architecture to influence the design; and linear writing does not suit the branched structure of most online exhibitions. And while site-based museums are tied to their local environments, their online activities have a global reach. These factors will shape the visual language of our online exhibitions and force us to question the universal accessibility of our concepts. The exploration of the social, artistic, and mnemonic dimensions of cyberspace has just begun, and curators will need to negotiate between newly familiar user-friendly interfaces and exhibiting cultures using new visual languages.
Still, many museums are realizing that their Web sites can be something more than storage areas for information on collections and activities. The available technology allows (funds permitting) curators to put objects on the Web’s center stage and illuminate them through exhibitions. In the end, exhibiting online is not about special effects or showing technological prowess. Online or off, it is still the object that dictates the format of the presentation.

REFERENCES

WEBSITES
DIGITAL HERITAGE PROGRAMS
Australian Museums & Galleries Online
National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH)
European Commission Digital Heritage Information Society
Canadian Heritage Information Network
Former Getty Information Institute
Stephen Vitiello’s Sound Installations
World of Escher contest pages
Superbad
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art
Art on the Net, Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, Tokyo
Artmuseum.net
Walker Art Center, New Media Initiatives

ONLINE EXHIBITIONS
British Museum
“Bhutan, Fortress of the Gods,” Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna
“Tempus Fugit,” Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo.
Curator’s Tour, Jonah Marbles, Cleveland Museum of Art
“Do You Remember, When,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Best of the Web 2001, Museum and the Web 2001
Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS): Status of Technology and
Digitization in the Nation’s Museums and Libraries 2002 Report
IThe World Wide Museum Survey on the Web
Crossfade
Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany
Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Guggenheim Virtual Museum
Smithsonian Without Walls
Tate

ACCESSIBILITY Guidelines
Guidelines Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

THANKS
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council or the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The author expresses his sincere thanks to the many colleagues who contributed to this article, the participants of the Salzburg Seminar’s 2001 session on “Museums in the 21st Century,” the Salzburg Seminar, and Ioan Nemes.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE ARTICLE
Klaus Mueller: Going Global: Reaching Out for the Online Visitor. In: Museum News, Sept/Oct 2002. Vol. 81, No. 5, American Association of Museums.

A Romanian translation of this article can be found in Romanian art and culture Journal Vector: SPRE O EXTINDERE GLOBALA: IN INTAMPINAREA VIZITATORULUI ONLINE. In: Vector, arta si cultura in context, 01, 2005.

Over de gehele wereld beleeft de digitalisering van museumcollecties een Gouden Eeuw. Musea besteden wereldwijd tientallen miljoenen dollars aan het virtualiseren van hun verzamelingen. Mede onder druk van regeringen zullen musea in de komende jaren digitale replica’s van hun artefacten en kunstwerken op het net presenteren.
Van de circa 900 Nederlandse musea is zo’n 400 aanwezig op het net. ‘Portals’ verbinden het museumveld, maar ook andere culturele instellingen zoals bibliotheken en archieven.
Waar leidt deze digitalisering toe? En – meer praktisch gezien – worden ermee inderdaad nieuwe bezoekersgroepen gewonnen?

Een recente studie van het Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau (SCP) naar sites van Nederlandse musea en theaters komt tot een aantal conclusies maar laat ook veel vragen open. Aangetoond wordt dat de huidige virtuele expansie van musea tot uiteenlopende resultaten leidt. Terwijl grotere musea al een tweede of derde versie van hun website ontwikkelen, worstelen kleine musea met het uitbouwen van hun site. Deze ontwikkeling vindt ook in andere landen plaats. Zo wees een Amerikaans onderzoek uit dat grotere Amerikaanse musea allemaal over een site beschikken, tegen 93% van de middelgrote en 41% van de kleinere musea. Hoe rijker het museum is hoe uitgebreider de website, wat je meteen van de illusie berooft dat het net een uiterst democratisch medium is.
Bezoekt het publiek de museumsites? Ja, maar de mate waarin verschilt. Uit Nederlandse onderzoeken blijkt dat culturele informatie via het net niet meer dan 3 tot 4 % van het publiek bereikt, een percentage dat vergelijkbar is met media zoals radio en tijdschriften. Een vergelijkende studie van de Europese Unie kwam tot meer hoopvolle percentages. De Internet aansluiting in Nederland hoort samen met de Scandinavische landen tot de koplopers: 18% van Nederlanders met een aansluiting thuis gaf aan in de laatste drie maanden een museum website te hebben bezocht (alleen de Fransen doen het beter). Maar ook dit onderzoek verandert het beeld niet. Ofschoon Nederlandse museumsites een groter bereik hebben dan de sites van de meeste andere Europese collega’s, de grote massa wist men nog niet te bereiken.

De studie van het Planbureau komt tot ambivalente conclusies. Statistieken wijzen uit dat een betere site tot een aanwas van ‘echte’ museumbezoekers leidt. Maar onduidelijk blijft of de verminderde interesse voor musea bij jongeren door een uitbreiding op het net verandert kan worden.
Toch wijst internationaal onderzoek uit dat echte en virtuele consumptiepatronen steeds meer synchroon lopen. De meest geavanceerde Australische (AMOL) en Canadese (CHIN) museumportals trekken steeds meer bezoekers: met name toeristen die een fysiek museumbezoek voorbereiden. Sommige grotere musea als het Tate, Louvre en het U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum ontvangen zelfs meer virtueel dan fysiek bezoek.

KENNIS DOORZICHTIG MAKEN
Het conceptualiseren van het net als marketinginstrument – in Nederland nog sterk in ontwikkeling – leidt echter gauw tot misverstanden, zeker wat betreft de mogelijkheden en consequenties rondom culturele ‘artefacten’. Het digitaliseren ervan verandert nu al onze vaste kijkgewoontes en ideëen over musea.
Een eenvoudige Google-zoekopdracht op bijvoorbeeld Van Gogh laat in minder dan 0,84 seconden 24.000 afbeeldingen verschijnen. Als je de foto’s van mensen met die achternaam, dubbele en dubieuze resultaten eruit haalt, resteert toch de meest volledige presentatie van zijn werk. Ooit moelijk toegangelijke werken zijn in hun geditaliseerde reproductie meteen beschikbaar; het maken van een eigen digitale verzameling is onder handbereik.
Onze verhouding met – en kennis over – musea verandert eveneens dankzij de bekende Nederlandse museumportals: museum.pagina.nl, museumserver.nl en museum.nl. Ze zijn tegelijkertijd tentoonstellingsagenda, Gouden Gids, interactief forum en prikbord. Deze portals richten zich op de institutionele identiteit van de deelnemende, individuele musea. Digitaal Erfgoed Nederland (DEN) ontwerpt daarentegen een cultureel platform dat dwars door instituten heenloopt. Haar cultuurwijzer.nl biedt een visueel aantrekkelijke gids door zo’n 2300 culturele instellingen waaronder musea, archieven, bibliotheken, archeologische organisaties en monumentenzorg. De site is ontworpen vanuit het gebruikersperspectief. Centraal staat de zoektocht naar objecten; institutionele begrenzingen worden hierbij secundair en verdwijnen gedeeltelijk.

Een belangrijke uitdaging vormt de manier waarop je de diverse documentaire talen uit verschillende tradities standaardiseert zonder daarbij de rijke informatiebron aan te tasten.
Het Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, een open forum dat zulke standaard interoperabele on-linemetadata ontwikkelt, fungeerde hiervoor als belangrijk voorbeeld van hoe je inhoudelijk verschillende stellingen – bibliotheken en musea – toch op één lijn krijgt.
Anders dan de gecentraliseerde JOCONDE (Frans) of de AMICO Hertiage projects (VS) treedt DEN niet op als eindredacteur maar veeleer als mediator en stimulator. De deelnemende instanties blijven hun eigen verantwoordelijkheid houden bij het genereren van hun data en keuzes. De Cultuurwijzer fungeert als aanvullend platform. ‘Hoe meer musea investeren, hoe zichtbaarder ze op de cultuurwijzer zijn’, stelt Janneke van Kersen van DEN. Voor kleine musea biedt DEN – zoals bekend – een starterspakket van zo’n € 180 aan. Op den duur zal DEN zijn diensten verbreden zoals het Britse 24-Hour Museum (met meer dan 2400 musea), AMOL (400.000 collectieonderdelen uit 1100 Australische musea) en CHIN (200.000 onderdelen uit 700 Canadese musea) deden. Informatie over musea en hun collecties ist niet langer beperkt tot specialisten, maar doorzichtig, geactualiseerd en gratis beschikbaar voor iederen.

VERKAPTE ARCHIEVEN
Nooit tevoren had een museumpubliek toegang tot zo veel bronnen. Maar wat is de meerwaarde van deze sites die onverstoorbaar uitgroeien? Meer kennis, plezier en ervaring -of gewoon een vergroting van de alom geprezen ‘toegankelijkheid’? Het net heeft ons in browsers, informatievergaarders verandert (of het nu om muziek, foto’s of allerlei documenten gaat). De hoeveelheid informatie gaat allang onze verbeelding te boven. ‘Toegangelijkheid’ van culturele bronnen is het centrale argument bij de digitalisering. Maar kunnen bronnen zo worden gepresenteerd dat hun digitale replica aan betekenis wint? En hoe kunnen musea virtuele ruimtes scheppen die on-linemuseumbezoekers uitnodigen tot meer als het snelle surfen van een object naar het andere?

Op dit moment lijken on-linemusea niet meer dan archieven te zijn. We zoeken naar basisinformatie en voorwerpen. Omdat de database uitgangspunt voor de presentatie op het net blijft, is deze vorm van collectiepresentatie niet bepaald opwindend voor bezoekers. Databases vergemakkelijken het zoeken naar informatie maar dragen nagenoeg niets bij tot de waardering voor een artefact en de complexe sociale, historische of symbolische context waarin het staat.

Op dit moment geven museumsites daarom weinig meerwaarde aan de getoonde objecten in vergelijking met de kijk- en leerervaring in traditionele museumruimtes. In plaats van informatie-interpretatie beperken zich veel musea op het net tot informatieverstrekking.
Dat een in het “echt” getoond voorwerp een ander effect heeft dan zijn gereproduceerde versie op het net valt amper te betwisten. Maar een exploratie van de mogelijkheden van museale presentaties op het net wordt niet geholpen door een simplistische tweedeling tussen ‘echt’ en ‘virtueel’. De culturele geschiedenis kent een rijke en complexe wisselwerking tussen het origineel en reproducties.

NIEUWE LEERERVARINGEN
Musea zijn per definitie kunstmatig geconstrueerde omgevingen, ontworpen om voorwerpen te tonen die oorspronkelijk niet voor musea bedoeld waren. Veel museumobjecten kwamen via allerlei doorgangshuizen op hun uiteindelijke plaats in de museale vitrine terecht. De virtuele representatie herhalt deze reinterpretatie van objecten alleen op een andere manier; in deze opzicht zal men van de monitor als een nieuwe vitrine kunnen spreken. Het net, op haar beurt, versterkt het referentiekader van een dergelijk – door collectionering opgewaardeerd – object.

Met deze overgang van de derde naar de tweede dimensie en de reproductietechnologie schept het web tevens een nieuwe experimentele ruimte. Technische mogelijkheden om een object te tonen (inzoomen, uit verschillende hoeken bekijken of via links de maakwijze bestuderen) bieden ook de mogelijkheid tot nieuwe leerervaringen. Klik bijvoorbeeld eens op de site van het Museum van Speelklok tot Pierement op ‘windkrachtorkest’ in spel 2 en je ziet de onvermoede mogelijkheden die het net biedt. Het web zoals als andere media verbeeldt niet zozeer de werkelijkheid, maar schept een nieuwe eigen realiteit. Het medium is de boodschap zoals Marshall McLuhan stelde. Het net confronteert traditionele musea daarom ook met nieuwe mogelijkheden om objecten te tonen en te contextualiseren alswel met hun bezoekers te communiceren.

De informatiearchitectuur is nog maar net begonnen haar potentieel te ontdekken. Nieuwe generaties on-linetentoonstellingen zetten voorwerpen in een andere betekenisvolle context. Hiervoor zorgen een filmische montage van beeld, geluid, tekst en ontwerp naast uiteraard verschillende navigatiemogelijkheden.Mooie voorbeelden hiervan zijn de bekroonde sites van het Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht en die bij de Gauguin/Van Gogh-tentoonstelling. Een virtuele tentoonstelling vindt plaats in een geheel andere omgeving dan de traditionele museale. Het web is een zenuwachtig medium, alles is met een klick te bereiken. Musea beginnen nu met de verschillen tussen hun reale en virtuele bezoekers rekening te houden.
De ontwikkeling van digitalisering en standaardisering is een kostbare zaak. Maar dat hoeft niet zo te zijn bij on-lineshows. Overtuigende nieuwe ideeën kunnen meer bereiken dan uitputtende tentoonstellingen die klassieke concepten imiteren. On-lineshows profiteren ook van het feit dat veel objecten reeds geditaliseerd zijn. Het werk met digitale informtie is goedkoper en flexibler. Zo kunnen ook kleine musea met een beperkt budget en site experimenteren en zich herdefiniëren.

LEESBARE LANDSCHAPPEN
Nou hoeven musea niet per se gebouwen te zijn, het mogen ook ‘leesbare landschappen’ zijn. Dat is het concept van de Identiteitsfabriek Zuidoost (IDZO). Staand in het Nederlands landschap kunnen we iets leren over artefacten die door musealisering losgerukt werden van het landschap waarin ze ooit werden aangetroffen. Digitale replica’s, oproepbaar via mobiele internetverbindingen, brengen ze weer dichter terug bij hun oorsprong.
‘Musea, archeologische vindplaatsen, monumenten en landschapen combineer je zo tot “gedachtevelden”. Op zo’n manier dat cultuur niet tot een vermusealiseerd product wordt gereduceerd’, zegt Gerard Rooijakkers van IDZO.
Een ander voorbeeld, net voorgesteld op een conferentie over Networked Virtual Museums and Memory Institutions van het Maastrichtse McLuhan Instituut, is het vierdimensionale model van de middeleeuwse binnenstad van Bologna dat door het Nuovo Museo Elettronico wordt ontwikkeld.

ONTDEKT POTENTIEEL
Musea begrepen het web eerst als promotiemiddel, en vervolgens als interface waarmee ze hun opgeslagen collectie kunnen tonen. In beide gevallen namen musea aan dat hun site een onderdeel van hun activiteiten is: het verstrekken van basis- en educatieve informatie aan publiek, pers en onderwijs. Maar digitale voorwerpen, on-linebezoekers en virtuele communicatie dwingen musea tot een herdefinitie van hun uitgangspunten. Veel musea ontlenen hun fysieke aanwezigheid aan hun bouwkundige beperkingen. Ofschoon ze de nodige fondsen investeren in digitalisatie ontbreekt het hun aan visie op een manier om de informatiedata in inhoud om te zetten. Het wordt hoog tijd dat musea beseffen dat ze hun digitale profiel moeten herdefiniëren tot een vorm die de reproductie overstijgt.

REFERENTIES NEDERLAND
Museumportals
Museumserver
DEN (Digitaal Erfgoed Nederland)
Cultuurwijzer
Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht
Van Gogh Gauguin experience
Identity Factory Southeast
Cultuur op het Web, Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau
Nationaal Museum van Speelklok tot Pierement
Muziekfabriek

BUITENLANDSE REFERENTIES
Australian Museums & Galleries Online
Canadian Heritage Information Network
Virtual Museum Canada
European Commission Digital Heritage Information Society
Joconde Database
National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH)
Latin American Museums
Best of the Web 2002 awards, Museum and the Web 2002
Nuovo Museo Elettronico
24-Hour Museum

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE ARTICLE
Klaus Mueller: Nederlandse Musea op het net: van data naar inhoud. De virtuele expansie. In: Museum Visie. 26ste jaargang, No. 4. December/Januari 2002.

An exploration of museums and virtuality benefits less from a statement of their differences than from an investigation of common grounds and shared objectives. Put simply, on-site museums and their online counterparts are merely two ways of exhibiting cultures. In this sense, “virtuality” is a fundamental exhibition practice.
The World Wide Web has become increasingly relevant to such core museum tasks as collecting, preserving, and exhibiting. The current digitization of objects in digital heritage programs has led to new forms of collections management and unparalleled access to replicas of museum artifacts. This transformation is changing museums as we know them and inspiring new forms of preserving and displaying cultures both on- and off-line. This article considers the diverse ways that museums are approaching virtuality today. A successful digital expansion will largely influence whether museums can sustain their cultural authority and position in the 21st century.

INTRODUCTION
Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper is one of the great paintings of European art history. Housed in Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, visitors can see it only in small groups, under tightly controlled conditions, including a limited time-slot and prior reservations. At least, that’s the theory. In real life the Last Supper has become a virtual painting, because few people ever really get to see it. You can visit the charming church of Santa Maria (and I did just that), but staff will tell you that you can make a reservation only by phone. If you call, the line is always busy. So there you are, in the middle of Milan, but da Vinci is as far away as ever. The air pollution we all generate has driven the painting into seclusion.
An ever-growing part of our cultural heritage is stored in museum archives and repositories, where visitors can neither see nor access it. Such collections are a hidden barrier to museums’ mission to “represent the world’s natural and cultural commonwealth” (as stated in the AAM Code of Ethics for Museums). In their efforts to preserve cultural heritage, museums are also placing it under lock and key. How often do visitors visit a museum to see a particular painting or artifact, only to find it not on display? In a library, at least, we can request to see and study the desired object; rarely is that possible in museums. But through the Web, a museum now has a way to provide public with access to its entire collection.
Digital heritage projects have reproduced large amounts of artifacts in collections databases. Despite such considerable efforts, few museums have fully embraced the diverse possibilities of having an unlimited space for display and communication. While other industries have expanded and reconfigured their business on the Web in recent years (or were forced to do so), museums have approached it with a mixture of caution and distance. In 1998, a survey of museums worldwide (by the Internet Museum) indicated how slowly museums ventured into online development: 53.7% indicated that they launched their Web sites in 1995 or after; 70% were spending less than $1,000 per year on the Web (not including personnel costs); and 57% had one-person Web departments. (See the bibliography for the URL for this survey and all the sites referred to in this article.)
However, The Status of Technology and Digitization in the Nation’s Museums and Libraries, issued in May 2002 by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), indicates that a rapid change has occurred in American museums. According to the report, all large museums in this country now have Web sites, followed by 93% of medium-sized and 41% of small museums. Fifteen percent of those without a Web site plan to add one in the coming year, and a majority of all American museums cited a need for additional funding (79%) and staff with greater expertise (63%) for their Web-based projects.
Many museum Web sites offer rudimentary information regarding location, hours, and services and general descriptions of collections. But are museums carrying their missions to the Web? It is the digitization of collections that dominates the digital profile of most museums (and the IMLS report shows that museums consider access to collections to be the main goal of digitization). Virtual collaborations with visitors or other museums, digital content development, handheld devices and wireless applications, distance learning, and interactive communication with online visitors may lead eventually to a broader role for museums. But that has not been achieved just yet. Despite heavy investments in digital heritage programs, museums still are struggling to find the connection between the “reality” of an artifact and its “virtual” representation.
Notions of virtuality usually have a technological basis. Digitization hereby refers to the transfer of existing information and the reproduction of physical objects in an electronic form. In such an understanding, virtual appears as the opposite of “real”. But do virtual reproductions simply mimic their real counterparts? I find that definition too restrictive; digitization is more than a reproduction technique. Etymologically speaking, virtuality comes from the Latin virtus, which has several meanings, including excellence, strength, power, and (in its plural form) mighty works. The word describes a modus of participation or potentiality. In this sense, virtual objects can be seen as illuminating the potential meanings of art and other objects. Virtual exhibitions and digital museum environments contextualize objects through narratives and links. Thus, virtuality should be understood as a complex cultural interpretation of objects that forces us to rethink the tangible and intangible imprints of our cultural history.

The present article is structured in four parts:
Virtuality. – The first part (I) explores the meaning of “virtuality” beyond a too narrow technological definition and illuminates it as a basic category of exhibiting practices of museums.
Reproduction. – Their online expansion clearly departs from being just an expansion: Online, museums function within a different, namely digital environment: The second part focuses on the reproduction of real objects into electronic representations through digital heritage projects.
Curating Online. – The usage of digital replicas beyond their mere conservation and archival functions can expand our understanding of exhibiting cultural artifacts. In the third part I suggest seven dimensions relevant to the development of online exhibitions.
Simulation. -The simulation of artifacts and experiences in virtual reality applications or installations goes beyond copying. The fourth part briefly outlines virtuality as a simulation of artifacts and their space.

VIRTUALITY IN ON-SITE MUSEUMS
Debates about whether museums are about objects or ideas seldom focus on the relevance of virtuality to the “museum experience.” As museums define themselves as showcases of material objects that visitors can experience on-location, the virtual display mode of the Web appears to be a distortion of this encounter. The most discussed museum endeavors in recent years – the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Tate Modern in London, the Jewish Museum in Berlin – all seem to underline the singular quality of space and spatial experience for an understanding of art and material culture. Many of our visitors see museums as civic spaces (and, at times, even sacred spaces), which speaks for the power of the museum as a physical site. That may contribute to the remarkable expectations that visitors have of museums-that they should present impartial and truthful voices. In a world where experiences are increasingly produced, translated, or shaped by media, the museum often seems to be the only place to find the “authentic.” But has the public chosen museums over schools, universities, and the media as the most trusted cultural institutions (as shown in the 1998 Rosensweig/Thelen study and the 2001 AAM survey) because they (mis)understand – or are (mis)lead – to understand the artifacts as such impartial material witnesses?

Artifacts may tell a story, but they do so within the curatorial and architectural framework created by the museum display. That is why “virtuality” is a fundamental exhibiting practice. The integration of objects into museum collections removes and alienates the object from its “authentic” (original, historical, physical, emotional) context and places it in a new and virtual “museum order.” New meanings are imposed on the artifact, ranging from its captions to its placement in the show. The artifact’s physical presence within its new curatorial context constitutes the “museum experience” that engages our visitors.
Of course, there is a difference between real objects displayed in an on-site museum and their virtual reproductions in an online environment. But the dichotomy between real and virtual is misleading and hides their commonalities, simplifying the multiple meanings objects acquire through cultural history.
Placing virtual reproductions on a Web site is similar to moving an object from its authentic context into the museum environment. Just as a museum collection redefines the value and meaning of a newly acquired artifact, the digital environment changes an object’s frame of reference once again. Museums have long been expert at framing objects in ever-new contexts, and the Web is just one of them.
The translation of museum objects into electronic representations renders both gains and losses. The much-praised social and civic space in which the object is experienced is lost. The digital reproduction appears foremost as visual (or aural) information, similar to a document. Although in galleries visitors experience the objects in a spatial order, they usually cannot touch the objects. Virtual programs eliminate the physical dimension altogether as well as the momentum created by the object’s physical presence; after all, bytes have no aura. But the digital copy can offer new venues for contextualizing the object and investigating its informational layers as well as interactive options for exploring its characteristics and history.
In recent years many museums have moved from object-centered to story-centered exhibitions, while still maintaining the importance of the real object experience. That is one reason museums rarely display reproductions. However, they often use technology and media to enhance the visitor experience. Lighting dramatizes the object’s presence; audio tours narrate its stories; and film and video introductions offer historical overviews. Careful installations identify all of these things as valuable exhibit components. Similarly, the object’s digital counterpart identifies it as an important part of our heritage; the quality of its presentation influences our comprehension; and virtual exhibitions and collection highlights recount its history. Because it is removed from a physical space, however, the digital experience might encourage a more rational reception of the artifact on display.
Today’s debates on virtuality recall those on art and reproduction technologies that took place in the first part of the 20th century. As early as 1934, philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: “[T]he technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.” Benjamin’s dictum, that art looses its aura and immediacy of experience through the possibility of its mechanical reproduction (its reproducibility), was written during the newly emerging development of mass culture, (e.g. film), and at the time of radical attacks on ‘authentic art’ by artists themselves, as in Dada or Surrealism.
Benjamin’s influential thesis was much quoted in the debate of ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction’ (1988), led by Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio and Stuart Hall. Praised by some for his sharp analysis of pre-modern art in a time of technological change, Benjamin is seen by others as a nostalgic apologist for a singular, elitist experience of art. “It’s worse when we insist-as Walter Benjamin insisted,” notes one critic “on the sacred ‘aura’ of the original. You must stand in front of the Mona Lisa or else. You can’t fall in love with her reproduction, no, no, no-that’s masturbation.” (Davis, 1991-95) But Benjamin wanted neither to go back in time nor to embrace technological progress for its own sake. Rather, he was exploring the impact of mass reproduction on our perception of art. The digitization of artifacts and their worldwide accessibility, via the Web, alters this perception once again. The transformation from the physical domain to the digital has blurred the distinction between authentic and virtual: They increasingly overlap.

VIRTUALITY AND CULTURAL HERITAGE
In the coming years, more and more museums will place digitized information on the Web. Digital heritage programs ensure integrated access to collections and materials held in memory institutions such as museums, libraries, and archives. They are guided by professional organizations around the world, including the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH), Australian Museums On-line (AMOL), the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), and the Digital Heritage Initiative of the European Commission, among others. Library catalogue and database standards often have been used as models for these works-in-progress. The sheer volume of digitized collections that audiences will be able to access is unprecedented, and will lead to significant changes in how we look at, consume, and interpret cultural artifacts.
For example, in the mid-1990s, AMOL was developed as the main gateway to Australian museums and galleries. The portal is supported as a collaborative project by the country’s national and local governments and the museum sector. After several pilots, the Web site was launched in 1998; it now has collection descriptions of more than 400,000 objects and images from nearly 1,100 Australian museums. Recognized in 2002 Best of the Web competition as the best Museum’s Professional Site, AMOL has set standards for digital collaborations among museums and for digital outreach to both museum professionals and audiences. Its Web site also features discussion forums, online journals, news items, and stories about objects and collections.
In 1995, under the guidance of the French Ministry of Culture, the French museum database, Joconde, began to make collections accessible through digitized reproductions on the Web. In 2001, more than 132,000 images from 75 museum collections could be searched. And the number of users is growing, from 52,000 hits in 1999 to 335,000 in 2001. Similar national (and European Community-supported) digital heritage initiatives are underway in most other European countries, often supported by substantial funds. In early 2002, for example, the U.K. New Opportunities Fund announced the creation of a £50-million (approximately $73 million) fund for the digitization of Britain’s national heritage. This European subsidy system has its advantages. Smaller museums, which often lack resources for technology, benefit from national initiatives that support digitization and Web-site development and give them a place in national museum portals, central points for both museum professionals and audiences. But there is a downside to these national initiatives: they can inhibit museums from defining their own needs and unique visions.
In contrast, American museums have been forced to find funding for their own technological expansions, though many have received logistical help from the former Getty Information Institute and NINCH. In addition, the aforementioned IMLS report lists many examples of digitization efforts that led to regional and/or collection-based cooperation among museums, libraries, archives, and historical societies, including research, training, technical support, and shared databases open for public access. But on the whole American museums have had to develop and define their own institutional and programmatic goals for potential funders. (Naturally, smaller museums, having less branding power, have struggled to attract such funding). The digital profile that many American museums developed and the know-how for finding non-government sponsors for technology are rarely found in the European museum field. The effects of economic liberalization and changing governance models make this a pressing dilemma for many European museums.

REPRODUCTIONS, REPLICAS AND AUTHENTICITY
What is a reproduction and how can it help us to understand our culture? Does the fact that an original work of art is digitally reproducible enhance or diminish its value? Three brief examples may be helpful to illuminate these questions.
Reproduction is nearly as old as the artistic process and often has been accepted as an original craft or even an artistic act. Today’s conventional notion of its inferiority to the original work disregards cultural history. Much of what we know about Greek culture comes from Roman reproductions. And the 15th- and 16th-century Renaissance of Greek and Roman antiquity was guided by replicas of the Roman copies. Reproductions have long shaped our perceptions about the “classical age.” As such, the original Greek works represent only one, often undocumented layer of this history.
Early 20th-century art questioned the excessive value given to “original” art works. Duchamp’s “ready-mades”-mass-produced objects displayed as art-attacked traditional notions of “uniqueness” and “authenticity.” His radical gesture was emulated throughout 20th-century art by various artists. Nevertheless, “authenticity” survived, and the cultural industry adapted and exploited its notion of originality. Today, museums offer replicas of Duchamp’s ready-mades, produced in limited editions with his permission.
Finally, late 19th- and early 20th-century reproduction technologies, such as photography and film, were met initially with disdain, characterized as mechanical enterprises, mere forms of documentation or entertainment. But in time, they became art forms in their own right. Now technology has brought us yet another dilemma. Digital and digitized photography and film now surpass a polarized ‘original’ versus ‘copy’ categorization. Whereas analogue duplication still leads to a loss of a ‘generation’ (as one coined the quality loss within each reproduction cycle), digital reproductions of photography and film seem identical with the original: What is what? In the case of the digital copy, degradation exists only on a theoretical, imperceptible level. The lines between “originals” and “copies” have been blurred and partially eliminated.
Much of our current knowledge of cultural history is informed by a mix of original and reproduced works. The moment of intense encounter with a work of art or a historical artifact can have a long-lasting influence on our emotional curiosity and our quest for knowledge. But, often, love for art and culture is nurtured by reproductions: book and catalogue illustrations; postcards; posters, and now, thumbnails. Shouldn’t museums find ways to use both the precious original and its precious reproductions?
While the singularity and presence of the artifact fades in its duplication, most of its informational layers stay intact. Education and understanding of culture is based on this information and not exclusively on the emphatic experience of the objects’ presence. The object’s materiality is translated into a sequence of zeros and ones. This transfer permits digital-advanced investigations and tests. Art-historical comparative research is greatly enhanced by the accessibility of digital copies. It is not the quality of the reproduction that constitutes the challenge of digitization but its quantity. Museums might be able to ensure access to databases of thousands or millions of images, but how do they help their online visitors wade through such an overwhelming amount of data?

EXHIBITING CULTURES ONLINE
Like libraries, museums collect, preserve, and provide access. In addition, their mission requires that they interpret and exhibit the unique objects entrusted to them. Thus far, this aspect of the museum’s mission has not made its way to the Web. At least temporarily, digitization has changed the profile of museums from information interpreters to information providers. How can museums translate their curatorial expertise to the digital environment and encourage visitors to interact with artifacts online?
I would like to suggest seven features necessary for the development of online exhibitions: space, time, links, storytelling, interactivity, production values and accessibility. (For more on this topic, please see my article in the September/October 2002 issue of Museum News, “Going Global: Reaching Out for the Online Visitor.”)

Space: An online show creates a two-dimensional display (comparable to film or television). The social and physical experience of space is reduced to the intimate interaction between the user and the monitor. It is an intimate and partially isolated space (comparable to reading a book), but it allows access from any connected computer worldwide. Online exhibitions are no longer regional, but speak to a global audience. Digital advanced viewing can challenge and expand our perception of works of art. The virtual display removes objects from the referential frame of a traditional museum space. Virtual museum “spaces” can take on any shape they want, but they lack the conventional authority and emotion a museum building evokes.
Time: Online exhibitions are defined by the time that visitors need to access them. This is a technological notion of time, counted in seconds and bandwidth. But these sites only close when the server is down. Otherwise, visitors can come and go whenever they want, without communicating with staff or other visitors, or waiting until the ticket office opens. Within such a space, users easily loose track of time while surfing. However, Web time is easily organized according to the user’s individual needs: Visitors can engage for a limited time, interrupt and mark the virtual show for a later return. Similar to a book, they decide when to open the page.
Links: Surfing illuminates the language of the Web as a series of windows (or frames) and links. An online show speaks through a montage of images, sound, text, and design and the navigation of its pages. Although books have trained us to perceive information in a linear way, online exhibitions could lead to multilayered exhibition structures in on-site museums that combine textual and visual information or sound with moving images. But the Web is a nervous medium, a cabinet of wonders and curiosities. Everything is just a click away. A visit to a virtual space might not be as intentional as a visit to the physical museum, where visitors wander dutifully through the galleries, even if they are not enchanted. Web semiotics make for rapid decision making, and museums are challenged to make their voices heard within this new environment.
Storytelling: Of the thousands of digitized museum images in existence, only a small percentage of them are immediately compelling or engaging. Most digital reproductions only gain depth when they are presented as part of a larger story. Multimedia can lead to a diversity of voices in an exhibition, whether on site or online. Storytelling creates a sense of space the Web deeply needs.
Interactivity: The information age has increased our access to resources in an unprecedented way. In future years digital heritage programs will place hundreds of thousands of images and other data on the Web, altering our visual memory and cultural perception in unknown ways. The information age also has changed the way we acquire information. The more accessible the information, the less likely hierarchical communication is to make sense.
Online exhibitions must find ways of nurturing interactivity and facilitating access by including such options as nonlinear but transparent navigation of informational resources; behind-the-scenes examinations of curatorial work; and open communication via e-mail and guest books. Such increased access might lead to a change from the current emphasis on the composition and arrangement of artifacts to an open and interactive approach that permits visitors to become commentators, contributors, or even coproducers. Learning and interpretation would be enriched by such a dialogue between curators and visitors. Several recent collective memory sites provide interesting models for visitor interactivity. One of the most poignant examples is the September 11 Digital Archive (http://911digitalarchive.org), where visitors can search for information, write comments, and submit family photographs.
Production values: The development of data standards and the digitization of artifacts continue to be costly enterprises. Online exhibitions, however, can benefit from the groundwork that others have done. Online curators do not have to worry about shipping, installation, conservation, or insurance issues. Working with digitized information is cheaper, faster, and more flexible. And the low production costs of online shows make them good tools for small and large museums to re-define and innovate themselves.
Accessibility: Online accessibility of museum resources, either through exhibitions or collections, is the main incentive of digital heritage programs. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), part of the World Wide Web consortium, developed guidelines to ensure that online environments do not create limitations for people with disabilities. Braille interfaces, transcripts of audio and video content, consistent navigation mechanisms, and screen magnifiers are typical enhancements. Of course, a transparent design improves a Web site’s usability for all visitors.

SIMULATED SPACES, VIRTUAL REALITIES
Some objects and environments are too fragile for people to visit. Simulated spaces, ranging from simple online tours to virtual reality (VR) installations, can recreate cultural heritage artifacts that physical visits might jeopardize and/or destroy. VR installations engage the user through an array of interactive devices-gloves, headsets, motion detectors, animated images-in a computer-generated environment. Segments of virtual reality technology are already being used in many areas, such as entertainment, architecture, medicine, and engineering.
Just like film and theater, VR applications broaden the way we perceive the world. However, in an VR environment the visitor becomes part of the virtual world and can change it through his actions. VR allows a person to use her mind, eyes, and hands to enter a place she may have otherwise only visited in her imagination. A few mainstream museums have used VR applications, mostly as online tours of their on-site galleries. In children’s museums, however, VR is old news. Following the lead of their video-game trained visitors, many youth museums already have implemented VR applications into their shows.
VR also allows us to go to places that are off limits to visitors because they are being restored or renovated, or because they no longer exist. The recent (and disputed) restoration of the Giotto fresco cycle of 100 biblical scenes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, commissioned some 700 years ago, used the most advanced techniques. But now only 25 people at a time can visit the fresco, and each group is allowed no more than 15 minutes. Although the entire chapel was scanned during the approximately $1.8-million restoration, the digitized images have not been used-with the exception of an online panorama-to offset the limitations placed on visitors. Like the Scrovegni Chapel, other sites face the dangers of pollution and temperature fluctuations caused by visitors. The cave paintings of Lascaux and Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, the latter “commissioned’ approximately 31,000 years ago, can tolerate only virtual visits. Only scientists are allowed to study the actual caves and must follow strict protocols.
Online panoramas and tours are, of course, very rudimentary forms of simulation. Archeological excavation sites like the Belgian Ename open-air museum use digital imagery to visualize a Benedictine abbey that dominated life in the Flemish Ardennes from 1063 to 1795. On-site kiosks transmit virtual reconstructions of the successive structures that stood on the spot and superimpose them on the excavated foundations. Thus a visit to the open-air museum becomes a time travel, enabling visitors to envision how the original structures appeared. Of course, turning to simulated spaces may blur the lines between museums and theme parks and speed up the “Disneyfication of culture”. This largely depends on the level of historical research and accuracy used for such simulations. But the desire to attract greater public support and visitation is already encouraging archeological sites, and some museums, to use virtual reconstruction as one tool.

THINKING ABOUT MUSEUMS FROM A NET PERSPECTIVE
Whereas in the above chapters Virtuality is discussed from a museum perspective and appears as an expansion of classical museum functions and objectives into the net, it can be explored from a different perspective, that of the net. Can the digital transformation lead to new forms of museology and new relationships between museums and their visitors? There are many open questions and good reasons to speculate.
A museum defines itself through its collection. But once information about that collection is transferred into a database, does it matter where the database originates or is accessed? How important is museum identity in a digital world, and how can it be sustained? Furthermore, although the ownership of intellectual property on the Internet is still being debated, it seems clear that many Web users do not concern themselves with the provenance of their downloads. What does this mean for museums?
From a net perspective, many of our habitual definitions no longer are self-evident. Museums no longer necessarily are buildings. With the DCS/ Digital Cellular System or the GSM/Global System for Mobile Communications, they could be readable landscapes – a status currently being planned by the Identity Factory Southeast in the South of the Netherlands. Standing in the middle of a Dutch landscape, we may learn about its often invisible historical layers through artifacts that once came from this landscape, but in time were taken out of context and placed in diverse museum collections. Now, we at least can see their digital replicas close to their original “home”.
Wireless applications will change our perceptions of museums as restricted spaces and return artifacts (in their digitized version) to their ‘authentic’ provenance. The Nuovo Museo Elettronico (NUME) in Bologna has turned the old part of the city into a virtual museum by developing a three-dimensional historical model that allows a visitor to walk through 1,000 years of Bologna’s history. In both projects, visitors do not go to an actual museum, but they visit an environment that becomes readable, through a PAD device, a Web site, or a virtual theater. However, it is too early to know whether this and other similar experiments will lead to successful hybrid spaces in museums that allow visitors to move between real and virtual sensory experiences. It might very well be that they share the limited success of earlier 3-d experiments such as stereoscopic photography, 3-D movies or holographic images.
Does virtual cooperation between museums alter the notion of a traditional museum space? “Crossfade,” a curated virtual space exploring sound as an artistic medium, was developed through the virtual cooperation of four institutions: the Goethe-Institute in San Francisco; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and ZKM (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Accessible through the Web sites of all four partner institutions, the work-in-progress has developed its own identity. Once a user bookmarks it as a favorite, “Crossfade” departs from its institutional origins. How can a museum define its space in a digital environment without becoming fragmented or transitory? How often do we “find things” on the Net and then cannot remember where we first saw them?
While established museums are moving cautiously to the Net, new museums often are going the other way and starting their initiatives with a Web site. The Gay Museum and the International Museum of Women are just two examples; both institutions challenge our ideas of how to develop a museum and its audience. It is still too early to predict if exclusively virtual museums will be successful. In fact, there are no standards for measuring success in a digital environment, although research into online visitors and evaluations of their experiences are the focus of the “What Clicks?” study of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and a two-year survey by Soren/Lemelin, among others.
Less than ten years ago most of us did not have e-mail. Less than five years ago most museums did not have a Website. Both now are seen as essential and integral tools for museums. Increasingly, contemporary life is being characterized by a merger of the real and the virtual. The digital transformation of museums is challenging traditional ideas about what they are about. Digital objects, online visitors, and virtual communication are redefining the museum, both online and on site. I predict that museums will continue to reinvent themselves in the virtual world, to ensure that they fulfill their mission to help people explore culture, memory and identity in the 21st century.

REFERENCES

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bandelli, Andrea: Virtual Spaces and Museums. In: Journal of Museum Education, Volume 24, numbers 1 and 2, 1999, “The museum as a public space, pg. 20.
Jean Baudrillard, Stuart Hall, Paul Virilio: ” The Work of Art in the Electronic Age”, Block, No.14, 1988, pp.3-14 (Interview from La Sept (Société d’édition de programme de Television) television program “L’objet de l’art à l’âge électronique”, May 8, 1987).
Walter Benjamin: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. In: Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, New York 1969.
Bowen, Jonathan: Virtual Visits to virtual museums. In: Museums and the Web, Toronto, April 1998.
Bronner, Stephen: Reclaiming the Fragments: On the Messianic Materialism of Walter Benjamin.
Castells, Manuel: The Internet Galaxy. Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford 2001.
MacDonald, George /Alsford, Stephen: The Digital Museum. In: The Wired Museum. Emerging Technology and Changing Paradigms, Washington: American Association of Museums, 1997.
Davis, Ben: Digital Museums. In: Aperture Magazine, Fall, 1994.
Davis, Douglas: The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (An Evolving Thesis: 1991-1995)”, Leonardo, Vol.28, No. 5, 1995, pp. 381-386.
Himanen, Pekka: The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age. New York 2001.
Johnson, Steven: Interface Culture. San Francisco 1977.
Kenderdine, Sarah: Inside the meta-center: a wonder cabinet. June 1998.
Mannoni, Bruno: Bringing Museums On Line. In: Communications of the ACM, June 1996.
Schlesinger, Marissa: Digital Information and the Future of Museums. In: Spectra 24.4. (1997), 17-20.
Schweibenz, Werner: The “Virtual Museum”: New Perspectives For Museums to Present Objects and Information Using the Internet as a Knowledge Base and Communication System. 1998.

MUSEUM WEBSITES
Cave paintings of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc
Cave paintings of Lascaux
Crossfade
Ename Project
The Identity Factory Southeast
International Museum of Gay and Lesbian History
International Museum of Women
Nuovo Museo Elettronico
Scrovegni Chapel and http://www.giottoagliscrovegni.it/ita/visita/mappa_a.htm
September 11 Digital Archive

DIGITAL HERITAGE PROGRAMS AND PORTALS
Archives & Museum Informatics (Many papers from the ‘Museum and the Web’ conferences since 1997 are online and rich resources)
Australian Museums & Galleries Online
Best of the Web 2002 awards, Museum and the Web 2002
Canadian Heritage Information Network
European Commission Digital Heritage Information Society
Former Getty Information Institute
Joconde Database
National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH)
Sumption, Kevin: Meta-centers: do they work and what might the future hold. A case study of Australian Museums On-Line. 2000

SURVEYS AND EVALUATIONS
Douma, Michael: Lessons learned from WebExhibits.org: Practical suggestions for good design. Archives & Museum Informatics: Museums and the Web 2000: Papers
Eduweb Survey on education websites
Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS): Status of Technology and Digitization in the Nation’s Museums and Libraries 2002 Report
Kravchyna, Victoria and Sam Hastings: Informational Value of Museum Web Sites. First Monday, volume 7, number 2, February 2002
Minneapolis Institute of Arts “What Clicks?”
Rosenzweig, Roy and David Thelen: The presence of the past. Popular uses of the history in American life. Columbia University Press 1998
Soren, B. J., & Lemelin, N. (2002). Cyberpals: A look at on-line museum visitor experiences. Unpublished manuscript, The Imperial Oil Centre for Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, OISE/UT, University of Toronto.
Internet Museum, The World Wide Museum Survey on the Web

ACCESSIBILITY GUIDELINES
Guidelines Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE ARTICLE
Klaus Mueller: Museums and Virtuality. In: Curator. The Museums Journal. Vol. 45, No. 1, 2002

This article has been reprinted in: Ross Parry (ed.) Museums in a Digital Age. Leicester Readers in Museum Studies (Abingdon and New York: Routledge: 2010).

Last year, at the AAM Annual Meeting in Baltimore, I signed up for the AAM Diversity Coalition’s Diversity Workshop, expecting a rather debate-loaded enterprise. After all, “diversity” is a serious political subject. To my surprise, the sessions were extremely enjoyable. Could diversity possibly be so much fun? What brought the participants together (ethnic heritage, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, disability) refreshed our main goal: to be better museum professionals.

Discussions on how museums can broaden their audiences have been lumped into a catchall: “diversity” has become a morally charged umbrella term, similar to “change” or “community.” All three terms indicate a new awareness in museums of social changes within their institutions and constituencies. The resulting discourse tends to be framed as a “problem to be solved” (the lack of diversity) and triggers declarations of best intentions.
Could it be that we talk so much about diversity because so little is really changing? Clearly, the frequent references to diversity in museum discourses do not necessarily indicate progress in daily museum operations. In “Museums, Racism, and the Inclusiveness Chasm” (Museum News, November/December 2000) Carlos Tortolero asserts that the effort to integrate the museum field with staff members of color has failed. But whereas people of color, along with people with disabilities, and other minority groups are visibly underrepresented in the American museum profession, lesbian and gay staff and visitors face a different problem. They are invisible.
Over the last two decades, the relationship between museums and their lesbian and gay audiences has followed a complex pattern. The AIDS crisis made visible the impact of gay and lesbian artists on American culture, which led to the first collective response within the art community and the museum world to a gay-related topic: the establishment in 1989 of a Day Without Art in conjunction with World AIDS Day (December 1). The AIDS Memorial Quilt became the largest ongoing community arts project in the world as well as a tool for education. Science museums developed teacher resources and online historical information. The Estate Project for Artists with AIDS and Visual Aid are two of several art projects reflecting the impact of AIDS on the cultural community. This year’s digital Day With(out) Art indicates the impact of the Internet on the increasing number of AIDS-related art and museum events developed to mark World AIDS Day.

Early attempts to display gay-related art were met with fierce resistance by Rev. Donald Wildmon’s conservative American Family Association and Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), among others. The 1989 retrospective exhibition of the work of Robert Mapplethorpe at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, partly funded by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), was cancelled (though it was later shown by the Washington Project for the Arts). The controversy led to a debate about government subsidies, provoked Congress in 1990 to enact restrictions on future NEA grants, and resulted in the arrest of the director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, a venue for the exhibition, though he was later acquitted of obscenity charges. The 1990 David Wojnarowicz exhibition “Tongues of Flame” at Illinois State University also spurred a national debate. In the public’s mind, both controversies reinforced the idea that gay and lesbian history and culture belong in the realm of sexuality and obscenity. The complexity of the community’s aesthetic, historical, and cultural experience was lost.
Despite the highly politicised atmosphere, many art and history museums and their permanent exhibitions seemed unaffected. Though educational institutions, museums did not react to the larger educational questions raised by the controversies. In their label texts, museums often struggle with a language that hides as much as it indicates. Rarely do curators include references to lesbian and gay history in mainstream exhibitions, though extensive historical studies on the topic have been produced in recent decades. Homophobia, one of the most aggressive but most tolerated forms of bigotry and hate in contemporary society, is not on the radar screen of most American museums and their educational divisions.
However, given the increased interest in lesbian and gay historiography and the community’s growing visibility in other public realms, the mainstreaming of gay and lesbian history seems imminent. How will the inclusion of this history affect American museums? What are the potential conflicts?

WHAT’S NEW IS OLD: VISIBILITY AND HISTORY
Often when we investigate a “new” topic, we discover that it has a long history. And, in fact, there is no vacuum of knowledge when it comes to the relationship between museums and their lesbian and gay visitors. It is not new for gay men and lesbians to urge the documentation of their lives and their history within a public context. Nor have museums suddenly discovered the existence of these visitors. Rather, what has happened is a general social and cultural shift in the approach toward homosexuality in the public arena, which only now, rather late, has reached museums.
In the United States, this process started after 1945 with the emergence of small gay and lesbian human rights groups. Today, at the turn of the millennium, the gay and lesbian community has growing political influence and is aware of its economic and fund-raising potential. This community has set out to reclaim its history and change the cultural and political institutions that traditionally have ignored its presence. As a result, the gay and lesbian audience is being recognized by mainstream society. Madison Avenue has developed clear-cut marketing strategies for gay and lesbian consumers. Politicians have learned to profit from the “gay vote.” Many universities and publishing houses have established lesbian and gay study programs. Lesbian and gay topics and characters have attained a new visibility in film, theater, and television.
These changes have taken place only in recent decades. But the relationship between a gay and/or lesbian identity and its public perception has been discussed since the mid-19th century. Referencing the homoerotic poetry of Ancient Greece, the German Karl Heinrich Ulrichs-the leading gay voice in the second part of the19th century-stressed the importance of visibility and history to the establishment of a homosexual identity. The call for a documentation of gays and lesbians within history, science, and art united many diverse voices-art historians, cultural critics and groups, historians, artists, and activists-some openly, others less so. In the first decades of the 20th century, Germany was at the center of this international debate, but that changed as Hitler rose to power. Magnus Hirschfeld’s famous museum in his Institute for Sexual Science, the first institution to contain many gay-, lesbian-, and transgender-related artifacts, was looted by Nazi students in May 1933. Post-war homophobia in Europe and the United States marginalized or “closeted” discussions on gay and lesbian cultural representation until the June 1969 Stonewall riots in New York. For the first time, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) Americans protested openly and successfully against police harassment. But it wasn’t until the end of the 20th century that gays and lesbians became visible in established cultural and public institutions.
For most of the 20th century, museums functioned not only as educational agents of Western society, but also as schools for mainstream respectability and manners. For the most part, museums were (and are) observers, not agents, of cultural change. Only in recent decades have museums begun to re-evaluate their social function, though they have long been aware of their gay and lesbian visitors. In the 20th century, the sphere of culture and art served many gays and lesbians as a safe haven within a hostile world. But they were silent visitors. And as such, they were welcome in museums.
The current cultural shift marks the end of the closeted relationship. So far, few museums have viewed the gay and lesbian community as a potential new constituency, a specific audience, or an important source of funding. The question museums now face is how to transfer this silent relationship into an open and more mutually beneficial alliance.

A SUCCESSFUL EXAMPLE
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C., is one institution that has attempted to do so. I have worked for the museum (and other institutions) as a consultant on gay-related research and documentation for a number of years and believe that its work in this field can serve as an example.
USHMM’s mission states that the museum will document the suffering of the primary victims of the Nazis-Jewish people-as well as other groups that were targeted for racial, ethnic, or national reasons, including Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), people with disabilities, Polish people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents, and homosexuals. Nevertheless, no one could have predicted that only few years after the museum’s opening “American Gays & Lesbians, Families and Friends” would be acknowledged as among the founders of the museum. Never before had the gay and lesbian community publicly contributed such large donations to a national museum; never before had the community been recognized as a museum founder.
In fact, in the years before the museum opened in 1993, some members of the gay and lesbian community doubted that the Nazi persecution of homosexuals would be addressed within USHMM’s permanent exhibition, despite the museum’s stated goal to include all victims. At that time, the museum’s collections held few related photos and artifacts. USHMM hired me to obtain such items as well as to serve for a shorter period as a link to the lesbian and gay community. The late Jeshajahu Weinberg, the museum’s founding director, and then-Deputy Director Elaine Heumann Gurian were the driving forces behind the institution’s attention to this subject. For the first time, a Holocaust museum’s staff began to implement gay-related research, documentation, and acquisition projects within their regular tasks.
It was a coincidence that the museum opened on the weekend of the Gay and Lesbian March on Washington in 1993. But from the start, USHMM welcomed gay and lesbian visitors as a significant audience. In 1996, USHMM organized the $1.5 Million Gay and Lesbian Campaign, the first such campaign organized by an American museum. Several bonds link gays and lesbians to the museum. Due to the AIDS crisis, this is a community dealing with death and remembrance, central topics at USHMM, though in a different context. Furthermore, gays and lesbians are in search of their history. And the pink triangle, the Nazis’ mark for homosexual men in the concentration camps, has become a prominent, if increasingly controversial, symbol for the community.

SUGGESTIONS AND PERSPECTIVES

1. LESBIAN AND GAY MATERIAL CULTURE
The gay and lesbian community has a strong interest in its history and, increasingly, is turning to public institutions to gather information. Discrimination and repression of homosexuality in the 19th and 20th century often led to its detailed description in police, medical, and legal documents. The “love that dared not speak its name” was discussed by writers and psychiatrists, art and cultural critics, military personnel, journalists, and self-appointed guardians of morality. Today, such documents projecting the homosexual as “other” are rich material sources: autobiographical documents, photographs, journals, and artworks depicting gay and lesbian life in the 19th and 20th century can be re-interpreted outside their historical frame. And existing museum collections can be reviewed for gay and lesbian content.
Museums can help in the search for important resources and material culture within the gay and lesbian community itself. Marginalized groups often do not believe that they could hold objects of interest to others. GLBT historical societies and their growing collections; published historical studies; the strong presence of gay and lesbian resources on the Internet; and international GLBT archives and museums facilitate access and research.

2. OUTREACH/IN-REACH
Communicating with a new audience segment should be an open process. Both communities and museums have their sensitive points; coming together is a learning experience for both sides. The GLBT organizational profile has expanded over the last decade, from local to national, from volunteer to professional groups. To reach this audience, museums could send to both local GLBT groups and the media-particularly GLBT-focused online news outlets such as Planet Out-information about specific gay-related as well as general museum activities on a regular basis. October, Lesbian & Gay History Month, or Gay and Lesbian Pride Days, which often are scheduled between May and July, are opportune times for making contact or scheduling programs.
Outreach to diverse constituencies often leads to changes within museums themselves: the so-called “in-reach.” Eventually, this in-reach will extend to all divisions in the institution, from exhibits to education to development.
Lesbian and gay museum staff members may or may not choose to participate in this process. They work in museums not because they are gay or lesbian, but because they are qualified professionals. Deciding whether to come out in the workplace is an individual decision, but GLBT affinity groups can raise awareness and provide a safer atmosphere. However, openly gay and lesbian staff members are not necessarily experts on GLBT history. It is not their responsibility, but that of the museum’s leadership and division heads, to guide the institution through any changes in approach. Gay and lesbian-related exhibitions, research projects, and acquisitions can be initiated by experts and consultants in this field. Once their work is done, however, this knowledge and expertise should be absorbed and implemented as a regular task of the appropriate museum division.

3. A SAFE WORKPLACE
Museums are reflections of society. Anti-discrimination policies, domestic partner benefits, and clear leadership all can help gay and lesbian staff feel safe and appreciated. Museums should confront homophobia both externally and internally. Some members of the corporate world have strived to recognize a diverse workforce and may be able to provide successful examples of staff training programs and/or help in understanding legal requirements.

4. DIVERSITY AND DOLLARS
According to a recent study by MarketResearch.com, the gay and lesbian community will have an estimated buying power of $444 billion by 2004. But if museums want gay and lesbian financial support, museums must offer results. Curatorial responsibility demands not just the development of outreach activities for a specific audience, but a thorough examination of gay and lesbian history, including its place in, and characterization by, mainstream society.
Museums should strive to recognize and address all segments of the GLBT community, which includes people with disabilities and represents all ethnic, religious, social, and economic backgrounds. The community works hard to adequately represent and acknowledge this diversity. For example, the 2000 Gay and Lesbian March on Washington was organized by a predominantly non-white and non-male group.
Museums are public institutions. Addressing gay and lesbian topics may lead to conflicts with other audiences. However, museums must understand that diversity means not just enrichment but also dealing with social conflict and mediation between potentially hostile groups. Eminently qualified to conduct the art of peaceful negotiation, museums do not have a choice about whether to deal with issues of diversity and social conflict. They simply must, every day.

5. MUSEUMS AND GLBT YOUTH
“I think it would be wonderful if there was some kind of museum out there that had displays that actually pertained to GLBT history. . . . Many [gays] grow up feeling like [they] have never done anything worthwhile or that they’re the only person like this around. That is not true, and somehow, they have to have some way, or somewhere, that they can learn that without the fear of being chastised for asking questions [or] punished. . . .” (GLBT youth from Alaska)

Museums cannot solve social conflict. But they can provide, if they choose to do so, a civic space that allows for a reexamination of a culture marked not only by beauty and human achievements, but also by violence and hate. Such an effort might be particularly appreciated by an important group that museums almost never consider: GLBT youth. Most of us are aware of the vulnerable position of members of this group within their families and schools. Educational programs for young people have always been an important museum function. What role, if any, do museums play in the lives of GLBT youth?
In February 2000, I developed a survey on museums and GLBT youth and distributed it to Youth Guardian Services, an Internet-based GLBT youth group with a membership of approximately 1,100. Between Feb. 10 and March 21, 2000, 218 people responded. Here is a brief summary of the survey’s findings:
Most the respondents were high school students between the ages of 14 and 19. Fifty-eight percent were male, 40 percent were female. Seventy-eight percent were white, 8 percent were Hispanic, 5 percent were African American, 5 percent were Asian American, and 2 percent were Native American. Sixty-eight percent lived with their families; 47 percent in cities and 29 percent in the suburbs.
Nearly two-thirds of the respondents visited a museum several times a year. Eighty-eight percent indicated an interest in learning about GLBT history.

However, museums were seen as the worst source of that information. Only 4 percent of the respondents said they learned about GLBT history from museums. Other sources included the Internet (89 percent), books (65 percent), gay and lesbian media (54 percent), and friends (53 percent).
Where did you learn what you currently know about GLBT history? (Check all that apply)

In answer to the question, “If you could describe your favorite GLBT exhibit, what would it be?” most respondents answered, “never seen one.” Many suggested topics for possible exhibits, including: gay civil rights history; science as it relates to GLBT issues; the impact of AIDS during the 1980s; gays who have been “erased” from history; Stonewall; the marches on Washington; homosexuality and the Holocaust; family life; and sexual harassment. Some respondents mentioned that exhibitions also have the potential of endangering their visitors: a visit to a gay exhibition could be interpreted as evidence of the visitor’s sexual orientation and consequently lead to harassment, another reminder of the vulnerable position of GLBT youth, even in their local surroundings. “Anyone closeted will avoid special GLBT exhibits for fear of being exposed,” wrote one respondent. “Perhaps . . . these exhibits [should be incorporated] with another exhibit featuring a different minority that may have faced similar problems/attitudes.”
What do GLBT youth think about museums? Seventy-three percent of those responding to the survey agreed that “museums are important institutions for educating GLBT youth.” The “mass media is the only link that gay people have with each other and the world,” wrote one respondent. “Unfortunately it is this media which usually perpetuates negative stereotypes and false images. Museums are meant to be meccas of truth and history. . . . So, were there to be more GLBT exhibits at museums, this would give an alienated community, especially the youth, the opportunity to see more about those who [came] before them to make our lives more comfortable and accepted in the future.”
“Museums are one of the few kinds of places where you don’t have to have an excuse to go,” wrote another. “GLBT stuff in museums would be good for the entire community, even non-GLBT. Museums are for the purpose of education and awareness and appreciation of all cultures and types of people.”
Half of the respondents felt “safe being openly GLBT in a museum environment.” Only 5 percent reported that they had “been intimidated, harassed or discriminated in a museum.” Still, 36 percent said they did “not feel comfortable asking museum staff members about GLBT-related objects or topics in their exhibitions.” And only 16 percent said that “museums I have visited contribute positively to my life as a GLBT youth.”

The doors are not closed. More than half of the survey respondents agreed that their “youth groups should contact museums for help in setting up GLBT educational outreach and public programs.” Sixty-eight percent supported targeted gay and lesbian fund raising “for museum programs if those museums improve our understanding of GLBT history and life.”
It is an astonishing contrast: Despite the lack of information and encouragement the respondents experienced, they still have considerable faith in the current and future role of museums. How can we reward this trust? I have three suggestions:

1. Museums should start to acknowledge the diversity of the young people in their communities and reflect this diversity in their general outreach programs.
2. The first introduction to a museum for GLBT youth is frequently the institution’s Web site. Providing information on gay and lesbian history on your Web site is a first step toward engaging GLBT youth.
3. Remember that in the future GLBT youth will be an important constituency for museums, but not a silent one. As one survey respondent put it, museums should “show more, be more open, accept, and be accepted.”

OVERVIEW GAY AND LESBIAN ARCHIVES
LGBT Archives and Libraries List, US:
New York Public Library
ONE Institute & Archives, US
GLBT Historical Society of Northern California
Kinsey Institute, US
June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives, US
Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives:
Homodok-Lesbian Archive, Amsterdam
Fonds Suzan Daniel, Belgium:
Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa
Gay History on the Web
LGBT People of African Descent, US:
Online Guide to LGBT History

GAY AND LESBIAN MUSEUM INITIATIVES
AAM Alliance for Lesbian and Gay Concerns Professional Interest Committee
Gay Museum, Berlin
International Museum of Gay and Lesbian History
Magnus Hirschfeld Society, Berlin
National Museum of Lesbian & Gay History, New York:
Northwest  Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project

THANKS
The author expresses his sincere thanks to Youth Guardian Services Board Member Caitlin Ryan and Executive Director Jason Hungerford for their generous advice and support with the survey.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE ARTICLE
Klaus Mueller: The Invisible Visitor: Museums and the Gay and Lesbian Community. In: Museum News, Sep/Oct 2001. Vol. 80, No. 5, American Association of Museums.