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Marzia Varutti reading - strategies for promoting national unity

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Marzia Varutti reading - strategies for promoting national unity

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'It is paradoxical that this framing of objects as masterpieces, rather than as cultural relics, produces a flattening of history...the past is thus re-actualised in an aseptic, unproblematic form and the national museum can distance itself from the object's historicity and obviate potentially contentious issues that might undermine or threaten authoritative narratives, such as those centred on the unity of the Chinese nation'. pp. 620-621

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Many new museum professionals nurture a vision of a more enlightened museology, not grounded in further encyclopaedic accumulation, ownership and confrontation but in collaboration, co-operation and exchange. This could endow museums with a new function – to use the exchange of material culture to help build up social cohesion.

- Tom Flynn, The Universal Museum – a valid model for the 21st century?, 2004

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https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/visit/exhibitions/phar-lap

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https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments

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https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/quiz

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https://www.nma.gov.au/explore/blog/defining-moments-videos

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Imagine that you have international friends coming to visit you in your home country - your have planned to take them to your local national museum as a means of filling them in on your country's national history/identity - how would you do this in the museum? What things would you highlight? Is the museum helpful - or not - in informing your friends about your country's history/identity?

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Imagine that you have international friends coming to visit you in your home country - your have planned to take them to your local national museum as a means of filling them in on your country's national history/identity - how would you do this in the museum? What things would you highlight? Is the museum helpful - or not - in informing your friends about your country's history/identity?

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[Note - of course you may feel free to critique the basis of this question - e.g. whose 'country' are we speaking of? Do you need to be 'Australian' or 'Chinese' to understand the essence of that country's national museum? etc....]

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MacDonald, 2003: “A crucial question for museums today concerns their role in a world in which nation-statist identities are being challenged. Are they too inextricably entangled in ‘old’ forms of identity to be able to express ‘new’ ones?” 

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MacDonald, 2003: “A crucial question for museums today concerns their role in a world in which nation-statist identities are being challenged. Are they too inextricably entangled in ‘old’ forms of identity to be able to express ‘new’ ones?” 

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Can you think of any museums/exhibitions that are actually grappling with this question?

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Ø  Analyse the architecture and installations of the National Museum of China and National Museum of Australia in Google Art Project and on their websites  – are they effective/appealing? How do they compare with the Shanghai Museum?

National Museum of Australia
https://artsandculture.google.com/streetview/national-museum-of-australia-galleries/5wF161fenKUT5w?sv_h=0&sv_p=0&sv_pid=hjUXZlgZMgha7_LQ7II1tA&sv_lid=13174458512189543304&sv_lng=149.12097762781764&sv_lat=-35.29390114312458&sv_z=1.8364850016658516

National Museum of China, Beijing
http://en.chnmuseum.cn
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m047d5yv

Shanghai Museum
https://www.shanghaimuseum.net/museum/frontend/en/index.action

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Ø  How can museums represent national ‘identity’? What is the best way to express this in a museum? And to what extent is it possible, for example, to tackle contentious or political issues?

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Ø  How do national museums differ/relate to other kinds of museums – e.g. state/regional/other national museums/galleries – and how have they changed over time?

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Ø  What should be the key features and roles of the contemporary national museum?

Ø  How should these specific roles be reflected in the nature of its collections/programs? (e.g. specific programs/areas/exhibitions)