Beyond Engagement: How Museums can Become Social Activists
It was a beautiful sunny day in Amsterdam. I cycled to the Museum Quarter after a light lunch. I had decided to spend my summer break touring the Netherlands and its beautiful museums. So, there I was, headed to the Stedelijk Museum.
I entered it from the new wing: I could see that work on the layout was still in progress, but I immediately appreciated the lean, minimalistic, direct approach to visitors that they had decided to have. I usually start visiting a museum from its permanent collections, rather than its temporary exhibitions, so I began to stroll around the rooms, savoring the museum’s collection of contemporary art.
As I kept visiting, I eventually started to notice something different about the display: uncommonly, the presence of female artists was pretty considerable, compared to most museums I had visited around the world. I told myself it was just my marked sensibility to the issue of gender equality that made me spot that, even discarding it as over-attention and blaming myself of not focusing enough on the works. The visit went pretty well, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and so I decided to move on and check the temporary exhibitions on the first floor.
And there, a pattern, that I had just glimpsed, started to emerge distinctively: the curatorial choices made by the museum — the decision to have many female artists represented in their permanent display included— were engaging with me, reverberating with issues and ideas that were already in my mind, as part of the social and political debate. So, when I took a look at the different temporary exhibitions proposed by the museum, I understood that my perception was not personal and casual. A specific strategy was displayed in front of me in the form of the cultural offer: by curating its collections and exhibitions with a specific angle, the museum was framing contemporary social issues, translating them into cultural form.
Take for example the Zanele Muholi’s exhibition: the choice of displaying the works of a female, black artist could have been enough in terms of political correctness but, instead of gloating over its open-mindedness, the museum decided to push the agenda, proposing a selection of her works on lesbian and trans communities persecuted in South-Africa. The importance of exhibiting a self-aware, fully engaged artist considered as a representative of multiple minorities (woman, black, African) then, comes from the choice of avoiding institutional paternalism. By showcasing her artistic commentary over social injustices, the museum has acknowledged the cultural maturity of communities and groups that still suffer from unequal treatment and discrimination all around the world, the Western one included.
I could observe the same curatorial coherence when visiting another exhibition on display, the “Solution or Utopia?” one: there, you could find different practical solutions designed to help the over 65 million refugees displaced around the world today. Instead of approaching the issue in a passive, patronizing way, the museum decided to engage with the problem by giving it all the necessary analytical relevance, supporting an in-depth investigation with the use of its own cultural framework.
All in all, from the “subtle” choice of exhibiting more female artists in their permanent display, to the decision of tackling pressing social issues through its temporary exhibitions, the Stedelijk has shown me how a museum can operate as a social activist.
Through collection management, it has operated to balance the persistence of female under-representation in many professional fields. Through exhibition programming, it has entered the social debate, unpacking the most pressing social issues, providing visitors with new cognitive and cultural tools to tackle them. In general, by strategically managing its core practices, the institution has taken a stand, fueling the debate, offering a different perspective over major social problems. The example of the Stedelijk, then, is crucial to understand that cultural institutions can go beyond their role of “mirrors of society”, taking their rightful place as social activists, as catalysts of possible solutions to the problems that distress communities.
In a time when the usefulness of museums is put into doubt (and the necessity of public financial support with it) and where social issues are becoming more and more pressing and complex (immigration, globalization, over-population, revamped nationalism), cultural organizations must take advantage from the possibilities offered by their primary assets, focusing on their interpretative skills as sense-makers.
The issue is not a recent one: advocation over the necessity to enter the political debate and to become interpretative members of society have been discussed widely. However, results have been variable and for a distinct reason: the very idea of operating as social activists has not been explicitly made part of most museums’ strategy. What need to be changed, then, is the strategic approach to pursuing their new role. “The transformation of society for the better” must become part of a museum’s vision, so that its resources — collections, staff, expertise — can be managed with the precise purpose of promoting activities destined to achieve that goal.
Only by making social activism not only an objective, but also a managing approach to its physical and immaterial resources, in fact, a museum will be able to restate its importance for society, to secure the support of its community, thus helping its very survival in a more and more complex and uncertain environment.
(Check the examples of the Oakland Museum of California or of National Museums Liverpool).
