Déjà vu

So I was reading along in The New Museum and I had a funny feeling that I had already read this chapter. After rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and looking more carefully at the chapter called “A Museum Of, For and By Newak” I realized that I had in fact not read it – I was just experiencing that maddening sensation of déjà vu. Phrases and ideas raised by Dana were calling to my mind a fuzzy familiarity – I had definitely read something similar before. I hastily thumbed through my syllabi for my classes this semester and came across an article title that sparked a connection – Stephen Weil’s “From Being about Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum.”*

The title of Dana’s chapter and Weil’s article even convey a similar sentiment. Throughout The New Museum Dana asserts that museums should think about their communities, and In this chapter he details how the Newark Museum is striving to be for somebody. The Newark Museum lends objects to schools and other community organizations for the purpose of study, but also to inspire local designers. With Newark’s rich history in manufacturing, the museum has tried to create exhibits about manufacturing on a local and national level, even highlighting the work of Newark craftsmen. The Newark Museum does all of this because, as Dana notes the Newark Museum is trying to be an “assistant to all educational activity throughout the city” (p. 174).

Weil also writes about providing educational services to the community as a benchmark of the contemporary museum (p. 229). Weil’s article is really a review of the history of American Museums, so there is much discussion of before and after in a effort to demonstrate where we are now. He discusses how museums of today are in “marketing mode” whereby they find out what their public needs or wants, and then try to deliver what the public wants (p. 233). The way that Dana describes the work of the Newark Museum, seems to fit in in with Weil’s description of the marketing mode.

My favorite part of Weil’s article, after having read Dana, is the very beginning where he describes the post World War II museum as collections focused. 50 years later, he asserts, we are beginning to think more about the public (p. 229). Later he mentions Michael Spock’s idea circa the 1960’s that museums should be focused on the public. But Dana was writing these things in the early part of the 20^th Century!

It just continues to amaze me that Dana was writing these things so many years ago, and yet his ideas and musings feel so contemporary. It makes me think that we may never quite be as far along as we would like in figuring out the role of museums in our society.