A Shot of Culture

Having just got to my computer after the launch event of ‘Culture Shot’, an initiative between the University of Manchester’s teaching hospitals, art gallery and museum, a quick bit of blogging seems appropriate.

‘Culture Shot’ is a week of events running from the 6^th-10^th of February based in the University hospitals. It involves museums from all over Manchester, not just those associated with the University; I, for instance, went because of the work I am doing with the Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archive.  The basic idea is that culture can be used to aid with recovery by enriching the lives of those who are ill. However, it is not limited to patients; the focus of much of next week’s work is on the staff in hospitals and giving them a chance to take a short time out of their busy working day to appreciate Manchester’s cultural heritage.

Further to this the idea of bringing culture to the hospitals, most of the collections being used are very tactile: from the Mary Greg collection to archaeological collections of Manchester Museum. This is to spark interest and to make people feel comfortable with the collections. This in turn should make people feel more comfortable within the hospital environment, which can be daunting for patients, staff and visitors.

All these aims seem very noble and important in demonstrating the beneficial impact arts and culture can have on people’s lives. It also shows that universities can do great work when departments work together.

What do you think? Is the initiative useful? Will it really help people next week and in the future?

Now for some good news, apparently spending time looking at art may have been proven to make you live longer.

http://www.healthandculture.org.uk/

Museum of Liverpool: Some Emotional Reactions

Should museums aim to make people angry?

The new Museum of Liverpool has received a lot of press since it’s opening, both good and bad. Ten years and millions of pounds in the making, it was always going to inspire a range of feelings. What was interesting was that on our tour we were told that in the brief for the People’s Republic Gallery ‘emotional specifications’ had been included. They wanted to shock people; make people laugh, cry, and most interestingly, angry.

These emotions have certainly been achieved in and through the varied displays. Noticeably the statistics on the sides of the large display cases, not all of which show Liverpool in the best light, have provoked angry responses. This anger may be because of the issues raised, or it may be directed at the museum for giving them such a prominent position.  

This emotional specification idea seems to make the visitor more active rather than passive. Of course the museum has done this in a number of other ways too; through consultation with the community, interactivties, and community display cases. However evoking strong emotion is a sure way of opening dialogue between the visitor, the display and the museum; a shift toward the forum and away from the temple, as Duncan Cameron may have it. It seems rather brave to accept that in exciting strong emotion the institution should not shy away from creating anger along with any other feelings.

Hopefully it will largely be the sort of anger that will drive social change rather than anger directed toward the museum.

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/mol/

Reinterpretation and the Pitt Rivers Museum

Before our visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford last week I did have some reservations about how close to the original layout, and hence how close to Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers’ cultural evolution ideologies (nowadays considered fairly un-PC), it would have kept.

However I need not have worried, as the museum’s staff have cleverly managed to reinterpret and reappropriate the museum’s topographical organisation thanks to a grant from ESRC and the resultant project which ran between 2002 and 2006.

The idea of reinterpreting an existing framework in a museum is one I find really interesting.  Obviously each object or collection can be placed in many different narratives and used in a number of ways and most museums try to approach their existing collections from interesting new angles when redoing a display or creating an exhibition. At Pitt Rivers they have gone one step further and adapted the thesis around which the whole museum is based.

Instead of hierarchical assemblages the museum now uses the topographical display system to highlight how people the world over develop different material objects to deal with the same problem. Thus it celebrates human initiative. It has also resulted in juxtaposing different cultural ideas and highlighting the similarities between aspects in our own society, that are widely accepted, and those of others, that seem grotesque.  For example the case on body modification contains a silicone breast implant.

The Pitt Rivers Museum needed to re-evaluate its collection to maintain its relevance to anthropological and ethnographic study and to become less about ‘us’ studying ‘them’, a view which is now seen as outmoded. However, in more recent years there has generally been more importance placed on reinterpreting collections in interesting ways. This may be a symptom of the increasing need of the museum to entertain and shock to maintain visitor interest. It may also be due to the ever growing number of discourses that need to be positioned in the public’s consciousness, in which cultural institutions play a central role; global warming, healthy eating, the ‘big society’, sports and the Olympics are all concerns that can be incorporated into either temporary or permanent displays.

Perhaps, then, it is important to ask ‘why?’ a museum reinterpreted as well as ‘how?’,  especially as a visitor, because then you can clearly recognise the agenda behind a new display. By looking at what went before and what new ideas are being projected now, we may gain a more interesting perspective on the museum’s development as well as the change in wider social ideals. It defiantly added an extra element to my own enjoyable visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum.

Sadly, my photos didn’t come out brilliantly from the visit but there are a few on Flicker and more info at the Pitt Rivers Museum and History of the PRM websites.