During the preparation of the exhibition “A MUSEUM THAT IS NOT”, I collected and studied some publications related to the history and theory of museums (galleries) at home and abroad. I found that relevant domestic publications mainly focused on the generalized history of museums, most of which have appeared after the introduction of Western modernist art theories and history. The critical theories about art museums are quite limited and tend to concentrate on the reference for technical management and the promotion of large international art museums. This preference for drawing on the history and practicality of major museums (galleries) has resulted in very little dissemination and discussion of a large number of most recent institution critiques and practical theories in the West. For a variety of reasons, our understanding of museums (galleries) at the practical level is still rooted in a certain kind of early modernism and remains stagnant at the peak of modernism (art); the theorists have turned a blind eye to the changes of the entire global political and economic environment in the 1990s and even after 2000, as well as to the stress reactions of theorists, artists, cultural producers and institution practitioners from all over the world in the on-going crisis. Facing the trend of rapid expansion of national art museums and the rises and falls of numerous private art museums, while having plenty of local opportunities, it is still felt the urgency of a global crisis. More important is how do we learn from failures and crises, how to have a crisis awareness at the very beginning of the establishment of art museums, institutions and their mechanisms, and learn to choose and construct a critical theory and practice that can respond to the local context.
Tony Bennet argued in his 1995 book The Birth of the Museum, “In thus rhetorically incorporating an undifferentiated citizenry into a set of power-knowledge relations which are represented to it as emanating from itself, the museum emerged as an important instrument for the self-display of bourgeois-democratic societies.” [1] This argument has become the core point of his discussion on the history and evolution of the museum. Through quoting Foucault’s ideas of punishment and discipline, knowledge-power relationship and other relevant concepts, Bennet has carried out an analysis and research on the political rationality of the museum. In order to pave the way for the critical theory and practice that emerged more recently in the West, this article will start from this point of view and try to articulate some constructive visions about China’s developing art institutions and their future. Before I begin, I would like to clarify a few key concepts that will be repeated in this article. The English term “museum” is translated as both “museum” and “art museum” in Chinese, but this article makes a difference in the use of the two. The “museum” is used when talking about history, because typologically speaking, art museums are a type of museum, and the history of art museums can only be included within the history of museums. However, there are two essential differences between early museums and modern and contemporary art museums: in terms of objects, museums display everything from a human-centric perspective, while modern and contemporary art museums primarily showcase art, and artefacts and histories in its related cultural fields. As for the time series of displays, museums were used to present the past –the name “Museum of Modern Art” was once questioned when the Museum of Modern Art in New York was founded, due to that traditional museums could hardly be regarded as modern (contemporary). Based on my individual research, practice and interest areas, the subject of this article mainly focuses on modern and contemporary art museums, and “art institution” is used when it comes to critical theory and practice. The value of critical theory lies not only in the reflection on artistic mechanisms and conventions, but also in its adoption and application by a wide range of small, medium and alternative organizations of varying scale and types, which will actually encourage boundary crossing within the existing art mechanism, as well as investigation of current art museum practices in a broader context.
Another word that needs clarification is “bourgeoisie”, which comes from French and is literally transliterated to Chinese by several domestic theoretical papers and publications. This article will follow the Chinese transliteration when discussing the history and rhetoric of Western museums, so as to retain the critical meaning of Marxism and leftist theories in this concept. It is worth stressing that “bourgeoisie” here refers to the “capitalist class” with capital and means of production, while the “middle class”, which is more general and represents a broader stratum in China, corresponds to the “petty bourgeoisie” with lower political and economic status. Compared with the infamous “petty bourgeoisie”, “middle class” appears more neutral. In China, “middle class” can also be called “intermediate stratum” –they are well-educated, own house property and engage in some managerial or professional works, yet still employed and make a living through selling their labor and services. I believe that this social class is still of positive influence on the improvement and progress of today’s society. There are different levels of blending and crossing about the above three concepts in theory and cognition, so I will directly use “middle class” when analyzing the current situation of Chinese art museums and institutions.
If tracing the history of Western museums back to the feudal period, the predecessor of the museum – “cabinet of curiosities” was only a storage room for representing the royal and noble powers as well as their colonial adventures. Such kind of prototype of museums was exclusive and could only be accessed and appreciated by the ruling class. With the rise of the bourgeoisie, the outbreak of the French revolution and the emergence of various modern technologies, museums, along with other emerging public ceremonies and organizations, gradually became a power field for the ruling class whose authority, however, was no longer oppressive as before, but showing a relatively moderate aspect. The main function and purpose of the museum at the time were to monitor, discipline and educate the public. In the early 19th century, part of the royal collection went public, and by the mid-19th century, museums in major Western countries had generally undergone progressive reforms and at least in theory, eventually opened to everyone. As a civil society in the modern sense was taking shape, the museum, as a public organization for the bourgeoisie exerting influence on the laboring class, had also achieved a consensus within the ruler and national government. Bennett gave a precise statement about the situation, “Rather than embodying an alien and coercive principle of power which aimed to cow the people into submission, the museum –addressing the people as a public, as citizens –aimed to inveigle the general populace into complicity with power by placing them on this side of a power which it represented to it as its own.” [2] This argument sounds a little paradoxical, as the author seems to question the principle of power behind museums but also gives some credit to their role in forming a civil society. Obviously, this contradiction has been the driving force of the evolution, reform and reflexivity of Western art and museum mechanism for hundreds of years. The resistance and attack against the state ideology, capital and money that stand with the power have served as the vanguard of the theory and practice of institution critiques.
Museology, which has developed at the same time, can be explicitly referred to as an organization theory about “the order of objects and man” within the museum. Influenced by Darwinian evolution and the development of various disciplines, museum displays have evolved from emphasizing individual “objects” to a systematic organization and statement of the hierarchy of everything on earth – the early ethnographic exoticism and fetishism were further weakened in favor of a perspective of anatomical classification and accuracy. Those who were once the objects of curiosity, discipline and education have finally become the protagonist and taken the center stage of the viewing pattern provided by the museum. However, the “man” could not be omniscient after all, and in order to organize and study the “object” more conveniently, the idea of linear time was introduced and thus glorified the history of art. Through art history, man has not only found the object embodying his free and adventurous spirit, but also the representative of his creativity: the artist. It should be said that this is the origin of autonomy in modernism and Avant-grade art theory.
Here, I would like to quote again the point made by the Filipino theorist and critic Patrick D. Flores in his essay “Curation in Southeast Asia” that the artistic autonomy that is worshiped by avant-garde art in Western metropolises has never really happened in these Asian areas. Not only has autonomy never really been realized, but everything related to the “evolution” of the museum before autonomy, such as colonization, adventure, anthropocentric vision and civil representative, has never had a chance to fully develop in these areas. As I point out in the preface of “A MUSEUM THAT IS NOT” exhibition, the “new world” and “new humans” have been “taken sample” before the late arrival of modernity, and modern art and its core idea “autonomy” have already been overwhelmed by the more aggressive market and ambitions for a catch-up prior to its flourishment could be made by those creative individuals in China (and Asia). For people who belong to the middle class and its representatives, it is a belated and unfulfilled adventure in art museums of these areas. The absence of autonomy has created a vacuum space for the direct invasion of power, ideology, capital and market, and also led to the delayed entry of its representatives – the concept of the public and the citizen –into the relevant narratives of art institutions and their political rationality. It is undeniable that an imagined adventure may be more exciting than a real one, which is the reason for the burgeoning “gallery fever” in China: If you can’t join the adventure, at least feed on the even bigger and beautiful illusions. As the government is increasingly aware of the role of large public cultural buildings in representing national image and power, museums and art galleries have become the most sought-after practice fields for famous architects from all over the world, and many such projects with a huge investment are planned in the next five years. However, can national power and monetary capital gathered behind these art institutions be effectively transformed into public, social and cultural capital? Most of today’s art museums and institutions are trying to catch up with the rise of the so-called “middle class” in the developed cities as well as their projected illusions, not knowing that they are only passive consumers of these impracticable and illusory ideas. Because even art museums and institutions themselves have failed to become active intermediaries with a sense of self-reflection. Any idea about liberation and education must first be filtered through the market, media, populism and ideology before it is introduced and involved by artists, curators, institutions and the public. This process should not be regarded as a trajectory that ascents and descents, but a powerful magnetic knot – it constantly draws subjects and objects around it randomly and collapses them toward its center.
To analyze such a rising and falling curve of Western museums’ advancement, it is necessary to study the early history and social-political context of museums together with the current pervading crisis faced by art museums and institutions. In the early stage of capitalism, when social mobility was still frequent and possible, even though museums were places for the ruling class and the bourgeoisie to self-reflect themselves and exert influence, the bourgeois group kept expanding out of economic growth, with its overall impact becoming central to the civil society. The current crisis facing Western art museums and institutions is indeed a direct blow from the relatively long economic crisis since 2008. This has already happened that the younger generation is not as well off as their parents, and the bourgeoisie reduced in number, which made art institutions under attack in terms of survivability and the number of the public. However, the shrinking of the welfare system in Northwestern Europe did not start after 2008, and the alert to the bourgeoisie and the attempt to attract a wider public have existed for a long time. The most essential problem of the crisis is due to the loss of faith in democratic politics among the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. Museums and art museums were once considered as the adequate representative body to solve this problem, but with the new generation’s rejection of the representative system and the emergence of different apolitical movements, not being represented is more indicative of a political stance than being represented. At the level of state power, art and its produced comfort zones are no longer sufficient for the public to vent grievances caused by the crisis, especially contemporary art, which has long fancied itself an opponent of populism and nationalism. The right-wing government that came to power in the midst of the crisis, on the one hand, played up to conservatives and the middle and lower-class; on the other hand, it adopted a more primitive form of control – “Politics of Fear” –to fight against all kinds of emeries causing internal and external problems. Looking back at this period of history and reality, we can see the essential functional contradiction of art museums and art intuitions: it swayed between the elite world and democratic education and ultimately led to the fatal weakness aggravated by social, political and economic oppression. Western museums and art museums that have developed around the rise of the bourgeoisie have long been trying to shape and imagine a homogenization of the public. In late capitalism and the post-Fordism era, the public was tamed as consumers of leisure economy and culture or portrayed as international citizens flying around the world. All these somehow idealistic or blind shaping and imagination eventually lost the response capability to deal with the crisis.
Of course, artists, theorists and practitioners in this context ceaselessly put forward questions, reflections and criticisms on art museums and the art mechanism during this period and made a lot of attempts to improve and reform. These criticisms and attempts have become the main driving forces for the development and continuance of art institutions. As early as 1976, Brian O’Doherty, an Irish artist and theorist living in the United States, began to question the “white box” as the dominant paradigm of modern galleries, believing that the seemingly neutral white walls and confined space are actually a kind of ideological imprisonment. When O’Doherty published this article, “white box” –called by him as an enclosed real estate –has survived the storm and stood still as an organizational space for art museums and art institutions, and it even spread to the world and further integrated with money. Some of the conceptual artists of O’Doherty’s age, including Hans Haacke, Robert Smithson, Daniel Buren and Marcel Broodthaers, became the first advocates of institutional critique. The artist and writer Andrea Fraser belongs to the second generation of institutional critique. Her Book What is Institutional Critique? makes a clear statement on the theoretical declaration and practice proposition of institutional critique – it not only points out that institutional critique aims to “expose the structures and logic of museums and art galleries”, but also emphasizes self-reflection on specific sites. She proposes that as artists, “we are the institution of art: the object of our critiques, and attacks”, which, in Boris Groys’s words, means “artists institutionalize themselves.” This declaration is extended in meaning by New Institutionalism, that is, the founders and managers (curators, art directors, etc.) represent the institution, the planning of projects and exhibitions should carry out the institution’s attitude, and the institution itself needs to constantly carry on the self-reflection and criticism. Nina Möntmann, a representative of New Institutionalism and a research curator, is directly involved in the theoretical construction and practice of the radical public gallery (Kunsthalle) [4] in Northwestern Europe. She defines such kind institutions founded and guided by curators as “active spaces that are part community center, part laboratory and part academy”, in which they are institutions of critique where “curators no longer just invited critical artists, but were themselves changing institutional structures, their hierarchies, and functions” [5] However, it was only a year after she wrote “The Enterprise of the Art Institution in Late Capitalism”, many representative institutions of New Institutionalism had to replace directors or merged into large national art museums, or even ceased to exist due to the lack of funds. Such critical institutions have been marginalized and absorbed in the new economy and large art museums turning to global operations, making it more difficult for critical theory and practice to move forward today. This is also related to the political art and actionism that were proposed by artists, the participatory art prevalent in relational aesthetics in the 1990s and the communitarianism appeared in recent years. In response to these initiative practices of artists and the loss of the public, curators in Western art museums and institutions have begun to re-emphasize the priority of enlightenment and education in project planning and curatorial practices.
In 2009, I participated in a ten-month curator project at De Appel Art Centre in the Netherland, during which I visited a large number of biennials, galleries and art institutions, and met with many museum directors, institutional or independent curators, as well as critics and theorists in the field of contemporary art. Today, two years later, I have become the curator of the Guangdong Times Museum. The history of the museum’s establishment and its unique site and geographic location have truly witnessed the urbanization course of the Pearl River Delta region. The institutional and curatorial theory I learned in Europe has experienced a new round of tests and learning in the local practice in China. Here are just my observation and thinking in this short period of less than a year, and more motivations, issues and possibilities need to be explored through future research exhibitions and projects. Distinguished from the development and institutional evolution of Western art museums, the rise of China’s middle class has coincided with the collapse of traditional agricultural society, the weakening of national ideology, and the rapid expansion of capital markets. This conflict and transformation make social mobility and integration possible, but also lead to the formation of a critical point I have mentioned above that collapses into themselves. The subject represented by art museums and institutions is still absent, while the institution itself is incarnated into power or some sort of capital, and the peer or audience they appeal is an imaginary, consumeristic, gentrified and homogeneous group, although this kind of imagination is less realistic in today’s context of globalization. The issues of how art museums and institutions can get rid of this self-imagination and imported history of bourgeoisie, engage in a certain degree of reflexivity and restraint in the presentation of power and capital, foster dialogue between different social groups, and promote education, enlightenment, self-organization and micro-political practice at all levels, so to speak, should be put on the agenda. It can be observed from the development history of Western museums, art museums and art institutions that, reform, enlightenment, criticism and self-examination cannot be one-off practices. Only when museums and art institutions take the initiative to attract, cultivate and maintain the public, and respond to and reflect, to some extent, the realistic social, political and economic context in project plans and institutional attitudes, can they keep the urgency and relevance of their practices.
By Cai Yingqian
Originally published in issue 3 , Universities and Art Museum
References:
1 Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, (Routledge, 1995), p.98.
2 ibid, p.95.
3 Boris Groys, ‘An Independent Artist’, Contemporary Art & Investment, Issue 39, March 2019, pp.90-91.
4 Kunsthalle was originally a German word meaning temporary exhibition, which is generally organized by each city’s Kunstverein (a membership institution of art mainly consisting of local collectors, artists and art lovers). Today’s Kunsthalle has become a synonym for independent art institutions and is commonly adopted by small and medium-sized public galleries or art museums in Northwestern Europe. Some Kunsthalle may not have a collection, and only archives of exhibitions and projects are kept. In the New Institutionalism pointed out by Nina Möntmann, Kunsthalle mainly refers to radical small and medium-sized public galleries that focus on the communication, exploration and research between curator and artist in the preparatory phase of a project. Most exhibitions are solo or group exhibitions of young or mid-career artists, with an emphasis on experimentation in terms of exhibition concepts and models. The formative stage of the exhibition is often complemented by public seminars and publications in the form of collected essays or artist’s book.
5 Nina Möntmann, ‘The Rise and Fall of New Institutionalism: Perspectives on a Possible Future’, August 2007, http://transversal/0407/moentmann/en
