Do Museums Still Need Objects?

by Steven Conn

"We live in a museum age," writes Steven Conn in Do Museums Still Need Objects? And indeed, at the turn of the twenty-first century, more people are visiting museums than ever before. There are now over 17,500 accredited museums in the United States, averaging approximately 865 million visits a year, more than two million visits a day. New museums have proliferated across the cultural landscape even as older ones have undergone transformational from the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan in New York to the High in Atlanta and the Getty in Los Angeles. If the golden age of museum-building came a century ago, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Field Museum of Natural History, and others were created, then it is fair to say that in the last generation we have witnessed a second golden age. By closely observing the cultural, intellectual, and political roles that museums play in contemporary society, while also delving deeply into their institutional histories, historian Steven Conn demonstrates that museums are no longer seen simply as houses for collections of objects. Conn ranges across a wide variety of museum types—from art and anthropology to science and commercial museums—asking questions about the relationship between museums and knowledge, about the connection between culture and politics, about the role of museums in representing non-Western societies, and about public institutions and the changing nature of their constituencies. Elegantly written and deeply researched, Do Museums Still Need Objects? is essential reading for historians, museum professionals, and those who love to visit museums.

Genres: Museums, History, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Academia, Art, Grad School

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Narr · Rating 2 out of 5]

A directionless blog in book form.

As I thought, the title relates less to the book's content and more to causing sufficient controversy to increase sales (among museum geeks). However, Conn's title is more compelling than the more appropriate title HOW MUSEUMS HAVE USED OBJECTS.

Conn is a "public history" flavored academic (for more on him see http://history.osu.edu/people/person....). His interest is in "how ideas are given physical form - in architecture, painting, museums and museum objects, landscapes and cities." An interest I and many museum professionals share.

I was glad to see that someone was paying attention to museum collections. It seems so many museums are in a rush to "move beyond the object," leaving collections to collect dust (and irrelevancy). When I first opened the book, I thought it was going to be a tour of where collecting museums have been, where we are, and where we could (should?) go from a sympathetic outsider's perspective.

Instead, I found what felt like a museum 101 textbook covering various facets of museum work, but written by someone who has only heard about museum work without having done any of it.

Not that the work is without merit - I felt his opening chapter and the chapter on Asian cultures were particularly good overviews. The rest felt more like op-ed pieces. Taken together the never answer the question he titled his book with.

The book is described as asking "illuminating questions about the relationship between museums and American cultural life." Any number of other blogs do that more successfully.

[Kristi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book may be the most valuable reading in the field of museum studies that I have completed. Conn references the other scholars I have read, and it is true that this reading might not have been as useful to me without knowledge of the scholarship he builds on. However, Conn brought the disparate theories together for me into a cohesive dialect on the status and nature of museums.
Conn sees a disconnect within museum studies, between the historic boom in museums and the downcast tone of those who write about museums. He finds fault the lack of distinction between culture and politics within the museum power paradigm, and discerns a need to remember the intellectual component of museums (as opposed to amusement). With attention to how architecture influences museum experiences, as well as an interest in how objects function in different museological contexts, concern for the rigidity of set disciplinary boundaries. Lastly, Conn examines the increased absence of objects (including reparation to cultures of origins), and the opposite problem of permanency and stagnation. Conn sees the substitution of museums and culture for politics, as well as the "business of culture" - using museums (and similar institutions) as an economic replacement for manufacturing, and the dilemmas of nostalgia and the need to forget, as the perils of the "museum age."

[Karin · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I had read this shortly after it was published, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more. Museums have so drastically changed in the past 14 years that some remarks and opinions sound woefully out of touch. But I love all the historical context. Museum retrospectives are so helpful in understanding how/why the field has changed.

[Amanda Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Museums are losing objects and replacing them with interactive lessons and long historical descriptions. The thesis argues that there are numerous consequences to this action that are already having effects on the public's historical and scientific knowledge.

[Allan Olley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an academic history of the museum there purpose as seen in the example of the history of various specific American museums and also trends in America's largest museums. There are chapters on things like way east Asian cultural artifacts had been displayed at various times in the 19th and early 20th century and the limited success of commercial museums (museums of commercial artifacts). Ultimately the book is an extended meditation on the way museums have reflected, enabled and constructed the public life of American cities at various times.

The arguments and evidence adduced are interesting. The way connections are made from the individual cases of the museums discussed are extended to the general trend are necessarily speculative but seem reasonable. The author while often demonstrating concern for a traditional left wing political bent the author is clearly skeptical of various initiatives and trends in leftward scholarship. I don't think these positions are particularly persuasive as I think some of the arguments are self-undermining, I don't think they come from bad faith takes on the issues.

The e-book worked without any issues on my Kobo e-reader. The format makes it easy to read endnotes.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Conn presents his arguments well and makes interesting points, I could not help but get annoyed by his tone throughout. He often verges on arrogance, unwilling to lend other views any validation. His chapter on repatriation was also slightly troubling. This book was overall very intriguing and moved quickly, but I wish Conn would be a little more sensitive in his arguments.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this for the first time in 2012 (see below). Although I probably got more out it this time through, I can’t say I enjoyed it any more. Seven years plus into a career working with objects has perhaps given me a different view of “objects” in museums. For starters, there are a lot of non-collection objects in museums that are completely ignored in Conn’s work. I do agree that objects or not, museums are for “someone” not about “something.” The audience must be central to museum work, objects serving them instead of the other way around. Granted I’m also distinctly aware that I do work in a museum that does not need “objects” in Conn’s sense of collections, so all kinds of mixed emotions about the whole concept of this one.



(Original review)
Short answer: Yes, museums still need objects. That's not necessarily the author's conclusion but as I read this that was certainly my conclusion. While I enjoyed the contemporary view of museum as "third space," there has to be something in that space for people to keep coming to. Preferably that space also needs to change periodically for people to keep coming back (but I am a fan of "unchanging" museums too).

What was most disappointing about the book was that the closest it came to a children's museum was the science museum, because science isn't for grown ups (?). The limited scope of which institutions have collections was laughable to me. Although the history of museums is clearly outlined, the author apparently missed this milestone in child-centric play and learning. Without buttons to press and interactive components, I got the sense visitors won't visit. But take the objects away--the collections--and all you are left with is an amusement park or arcade, a third space unto its own.

[Tamsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not that I didn't like this book, but I did think the author went off topic on too many occasions. Especially in the chapter "Where is the East". If I wanted all the historical background on how / why Asian objects made their way into the West, I'd read a book on Japanisme. He'd have done well to have kept his arguments tighter, and add a chapter on the digital object.

[KC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good points in the introduction and the last chapter. The bulk of the book however is a group of essays that do not directly seem to answer the question posed by the title of the book. The question is worth answering ... why not answer it fully?