French Museums in the Digital Era — my thoughts in a nutshell. [PART 2]
This article is the retranscription of an interview by Elisa GRAVIL from Museovation for her upcoming thesis about the “IRL Museum VS the URL Museum”. I had the chance the get a glimpse from her thoughts and theories, and I highly advice you to follow her Twitter and stay tuned for her publications.
Is the problem really open data?
[EG] What is your view of open data? Is this an unavoidable stage for the evolution of museums or, on the contrary, a source of plunder of their resources, as French museums tend to think?
[DD] I remain convinced that the main mission of the museum is the sharing, the distribution of the heritage of which it is only a depositary. As such, it is essential that it opens its collections to the greatest number and open-data is obviously one of the most effective ways. It is a public service mission. The blockage vis-à-vis the open-data, perhaps comes from the way the museum approaches this opening. If the museum is not confined to the missions defined two hundred years ago, if it reflects on a new role in society, the current problem of open-data will become secondary.
The collections will be no more than a base to design something else, they will no longer be the center but the necessary periphery of the museum but still a tool among others. The museum’s value is no longer linked to its collections but to this new societal position. Thinking today the museum only through its collections is definitely reductive.
Nevertheless, the fact that there is not a clear national coalition in France in terms of open data does not help to reassure the museums. That Google Arts & Culture becomes their only interlocutor to make their collections visible on a global scale is indeed harmful.
[EG] Google Arts & Culture and Ubisoft have joined forces for business purposes (handwriting recognition and game design) to create the largest Egyptian hieroglyphic translation platform. They appealed to the community of Egyptologists for crowdsourcing. They responded enthusiastically without understanding that their knowledge had value for which they could ask for compensation. Is the museum and its skills not being looted without seeing it?
[DD] I share your point of view on this problem. Yes the creation, the preservation and the enrichment of a collection is obviously fundamental. To document, to create links, to understand what makes our humanity is a real work of substance which is very little known and therefore very badly valued. In order to be part of a new societal reflection, the collections must be thought by those who know them best, the curators.
[EG] But they must evolve, like some American museums that have removed from their walls today shocking works. Other museums have made the choice to maintain these works but by increasing explanations and re-contextualizing them to understand the steps society took.
[DD] The best way to value it is to engage in collaboration to speak with those who are interested in this knowledge and to negotiate income at the time of this interest. It is necessary to get out of this Manicheism, to be stripped of its economic value, without saying anything, by opening its collections, or to make abusive retention to protect its property. The third way of co-construction seems to me the most promising for all actors. We have to find a new economic model that values this intellectual work, which actually does not receive much or no real value.
To this end, museums build awareness campaigns to explain what a museum is, what it does, what it serves. The public only perceives the top of the iceberg without understanding the underlying dynamics. The true value of a museum lies in its research teams, in the understanding on the events that shake society, and not in the architecture of its building or blockbuster exhibitions in search of sensational, which we measure only the attendance. It is necessary to restore value to what has it and to stop giving value to what does not. It is necessary to promote the “dossier” exhibitions as much as the blockbuster ones. These exhibitions are the result of years of work and bring the real value of museums of our society by increasing the global knowledge of Humanity.
It’s time to value museum research
[EG] Could blockchain technology be a way in the future of remunerating the work of the “conservateurs”, the way we now pay each composer on a piece of music?
[DD] In principle, it would be possible but honestly at the moment I think we are very far. I do not see any museum really interested in the subject in this matter, for the valorisation of the work of its researchers. This sets a fundamental problem: how to remunerate an idea that can have an immense impact in forty or fifty years and that is seen like less valuable today?
The contribution of the blockchain for me lies in the work of analysis of the value of a working process, since it is necessary to dissect each task to remunerate it. As such, blockchain can actually start a very important debate in the museum industry: Who brings value? Which task is really useful for the museum’s mission? etc. It is a task quite difficult to do as we are talking about immaterial work, very little breakable, unlike a piece of music. Eventually, one could consider an integration of the patrons in the financial support to a research work of a museum. Currently, for instance, I would see it easier to apply the blockchain to the remuneration of the stakeholders of a traveling or virtual exhibition.
[EG] How do you see the future of museums? Is there not a risk for medium-sized museums, unable to participate in the race for blockbusters, to become empty shells of visitors once their collections are online? Do not you fear that there are only twenty or so major museums in the world?
[DD] In view of the number of museums that have opened in the last ten years, I think we are still far from it, but it is true that the museum of medium size, which does not live from tourism, must reinvent itself to engage with new audiences. The attention span of younger generations is over-solicited and the current museum can not compete with Netflix. It must therefore arouse interest differently from what it is doing now.
We need true people-centered museums and not just programmes. The museum should allow us to relax, to be a space to connect with others in the real world, to feel safe, to heal, to train, like a lung within cities more and more overcrowded and difficult to live in. This is why the notion of integration in a local ecosystem becomes fundamental. Each museum is unique and there should not be a single definition. It is a mistake to define identical missions for a large universal museum as for a local museum, on the pretext that they have the name of museum.
Museum?
[EG] What is your view of these institutions that have the name of a museum but which are very far from the educational missions of the museum? I’m thinking of the Museum of Ice Cream or Pizza in the United States or museums in shopping malls in China? Do not you fear that the word museum loses its substance and that its image is even more blurred in the eyes of visitors?
[DD] This kind of initiative brings a lot of entertainment, freshness, new ideas of interaction between people who would never have spoken to each other before. They meet basic but essential needs. As such they must challenge us, help us to transform, to understand the younger generations. That they use the name of “museum” does not bother, it’s actually the opposite. When you think about it, these initiatives also have a social value in their ability to bring lightness, carefree. I do not think this devalues the name “museum” but conversely I wonder about the fact that these two initiatives will be called “museum”. This proves that the museum in its classical form is in the midst of an identity crisis.
[EG] Are you seeing a bright future for physical museums?
[DD] It’s too early to say. Our current reflection on museums in Africa at We Are Museums provides us with interesting elements for reflection: rebalancing the weight of collections in the museum’s mission, the importance of more intangible and societal notions.
[EG] And some museums in northern Europe as in the United States have begun this fundamental reflection driven by migratory movements in Europe or movements such as #Metoo or #Blacklivesmatter.
[DD] I believe we will see a new form of museum within two to five years for the more advanced. For others, they may never change!
