I have named this newsletter “In Crampons to the Museum” since usually spending my leisure time either in crampons on the mountain or in the galleries of museums I assumed that this is what I would be able to write about. However, this year visiting either became preposterous. Before the world shut down for the pandemic I have visited MOMA. In March New York becomes the stage for the jamboree of the art world known as Armory Week. Every year MOMA hosts “The Armory Party” where it converts the lobby into the dancing floor at guests are allowed to wander through galleries with champagne glasses. I have frequently reminisced this party in the middle of spring lockdowns.
This fall the city museums cautiously opened their doors. Or to be more correct, they gently gaped their doors to socially distant, timed, masked visitors. And while I have hesitated to join the art-starved first wave visitors, this weekend I dawned my Sunday best and went to the Brooklyn Museum.
The experience was remarkable. Not enough time has passed to make the experience sufficiently bizarre, but I was reminded why I would always prefer to meet a friend next to Brancussi instead of Balthazar’s. Mentally electrified by the visit I was reminded that a museum is not just a collection of objects on display.
What is a museum? The American Association of Museums (AAM) defines a museum as *an organized and permanent nonprofit institution, essentially educational or esthetic in purpose, with professional staff, which owns and utilizes tangible objects, cares for them, and exhibits them to the public on some regular schedule*. I am not going to go into a topological discussion of the definition, but I will rail that museums are so much more. They are the paragons of the cities culture, the tourism magnets, the bastions of ideas, the visual manifestation of history, and the urban aesthetic sanctuaries. Even though most of the museum collections are viewable online, the exploration and experience of the works in physical presence is incomparable.
Right now the timed tickets restrict visitation to only a quarter of the capacity. I imagine museum snobs and elitist residence rejoice while visiting significantly airy galleries. But I have always found the people being a crucial component of making museums. Despite mild irritation and noise of the crowds, seeing how and what the other people experience makes museums magnificent. I am sure I will complain again about strollers blocking me from my favorite Miro at Guggenheim, but a part of me was nostalgic for weekend hustling. Looking forward to going to more museums soon, so far only in snickers.
Further reading:
* in Season 5 Slate Podcast “Working” has interviewed a lot of crucial people who work at MOMA about their job and gives a glimpse behind museum operations. This is one of my favorites: [How MoMA’s building operations manager does his job.
* “Merchants and Masterpieces” is one of my favorite books that covers the complexity of museums, their origins and maintenance through the example of the MET in NYC [Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Calvin Tomkins](s)
* American Alliance of Museums - because I did not know they existed.
* New Yorker about the reopening of the museums: The Met Is Back, and So Are We | The New Yorker
* New York Times about the reopening of the museums: [The Met Is Reopening: Grab Your Timed Ticket and Give Your Bike to the Valet
*A View of the Two Lakes and Mountain House, Catskill Mountains, Morning* by Thomas Cole. Thomas Cole was a famous American painter who has started Hudson River School art movement. You can hike a mountain named after him in Catskills
Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space. >
Orhan Pamuk
A MODEST MANIFESTO FOR MUSEUMS
I love museums and I am not alone in finding that they make me happier with each passing day. I take museums very seriously, and that sometimes leads me to angry, forceful thoughts. But I do not have it in me to speak about museums with anger. In my childhood there were very few museums in Istanbul. Most of these were historical monuments or, quite rare outside the Western world, they were places with an air of a government office about them. Later, the small museums in the backstreets of European cities led me to realize that museums—just like novels—can also speak for individuals. That is not to understate the importance of the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Topkapı Palace, the British Museum, the Prado, the Vatican Museums—all veritable treasures of humankind. But I am against these precious monumental institutions being used as blueprints for future museums. Museums should explore and uncover the universe and humanity of the new and modern man emerging from increasingly wealthy non-Western nations. The aim of big, state-sponsored museums, on the other hand, is to represent the state. This is neither a good nor an innocent objective.
1. Large national museums such as the Louvre and the Hermitage took shape and turned into essential tourist destinations alongside the opening of royal and imperial palaces to the public. These institutions, now national symbols, present the story of the nation—history, in a word—as being far more important than the stories of individuals. This is unfortunate because the stories of individuals are much better suited to displaying the depths of our humanity.
2. We can see that the transitions from palaces to national museums and from epics to novels are parallel processes. Epics are like palaces and speak of the heroic exploits of the old kings who lived in them. National museums, then, should be like novels; but they are not.
3. We don’t need more museums that try to construct the historical narratives of a society, community, team, nation, state, tribe, company, or species. We all know that the ordinary, everyday stories of individuals are richer, more humane, and much more joyful.
4. Demonstrating the wealth of Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Iranian, or Turkish history and culture is not an issue—it must be done, of course, but it is not difficult to do. The real challenge is to use museums to tell, with the same brilliance, depth, and power, the stories of the individual human beings living in these countries.
5. The measure of a museum’s success should not be its ability to represent a state, a nation or company, or a particular history. It should be its capacity to reveal the humanity of individuals.
6. It is imperative that museums become smaller, more individualistic, and cheaper. This is the only way that they will ever tell stories on a human scale. Big museums with their wide doors call upon us to forget our humanity and embrace the state and its human masses. This is why millions outside the Western world are afraid of going to museums.
7. The aim of present and future museums must not be to represent the state, but to re-create the world of single human beings—the same human beings who have labored under ruthless oppression for hundreds of years.
8. The resources that are channeled into monumental, symbolic museums should be diverted to smaller museums that tell the stories of individuals. These resources should also be used to encourage and support people in turning their own small homes and stories into “exhibition” spaces.
9. If objects are not uprooted from their environs and their streets, but are situated with care and ingenuity in their natural homes, they will already portray their own stories.
10. Monumental buildings that dominate neighborhoods and entire cities do not bring out our humanity; on the contrary, they quash it. Instead, we need modest museums that honor the neighborhoods and streets and the homes and shops nearby, and turn them into elements of their exhibitions.
11. The future of museums is inside our own homes.
The picture is, in fact, very simple;
WE HADWE NEEDEPICSNOVELSREPRESENTATIONEXPRESSIONMONUMENTSHOMESHISTORIESSTORIESNATIONSPERSONSGROUPS AND TEAMSINDIVIDUALSLARGE AND EXPENSIVESMALL AND CHEAP
Orhan Pamuk