Time was when museums were staid, dusty institutions. Those days are long gone. Now the focus is on making visiting a museum a positive, inclusive, meaningful experience for everyone who comes through the door – or visits online. It sounds good in principle, but how to do it in practice?
That question is at the heart of the latest title to join the What Is It For series, What are Museums for? by Jon Sleigh. Jon is an arts and heritage engagement consultant who specialises in connecting audiences with artworks and collections, and in this episode of the podcast, he tells George Miller why he structured the book around conversations with museum professionals about specific exhibits in a wide range of institutions. He also talks about his childhood fascination with a museum tyrannosaurus …
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Scroll down for shownotes and transcript.
Jon Sleigh is a freelance arts and heritage Learning Curator, working nationally connecting audiences with artworks and collections for their advocacy. Follow him on Twitter: @jon_sleigh
What Are Museums For? is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £8.99.
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SHOWNOTES
Timestamps:
2:18 – What were your first encounters with museums like?
9:45 – In what terms and for what reason did you come back to the world of the museum?
13:11 – If we were in a museum today how might we encounter you?
15:47 – Why is the question of ‘who is the museum is for?’ so central to addressing the question in your title?
19:53 – How did you decide where to go and who to talk to?
25:14 – How difficult was it to choose the actual objects?
35:29 – What things in your conversations pointed to a bright future for museums?
Transcript:
(Please note this transcript is autogenerated and may have minor inaccuracies.)
George Miller: But I really thought because the book as I say is a personal book it might be interesting to go all the way back to your own first encounters with museums because for so many people school trips or parents or grandparents or whatever childhood is the time when we first encounter museums and for some people it may become a lifelong relationship for others that may be all that they experience in museums in their lifetimes. But I do think it’s a really formative experience and formative time. You’ve obviously had a long and evolving I’m still a young man but you’ve had a long and evolving relationship with museums. So can you begin today just by taking us all the way back and telling us what museums meant to you how you experienced how you felt that because museums for you very much are a sort of felt experience there. That’s absolutely core. So tell us what age you are tell us where you are tell us who’s taking you give us some sort of flavour of that initial encounter.
Jon Sleigh: I’m definitely under 10 I would suggest I’m about six or seven and one of the big highlights for me was going to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and I had the pleasure and privilege of working there later on as an adult so it gave me a very strange emotional resonance to know that I’d once inhabited that space with wonder and joy and then I got to go back and experience it with adult social consciousness and working with people and full people. My first and fundamental experience was being lost both literally and emotionally. I was surrounded by objects that were beautiful and strange and dangerous and boring and curious all in one go and a strange level of multiplicity that I’d never experienced before. It wasn’t just one pot or one vase it was ten. But curiously devoid of any sensory interaction I remember them being a series of corridors with cases behind glass and for me the most exciting part was knowing that I was going to meet Tyrannosaurus Rex. That was the big exciting point for me. It wasn’t a real T-Rex it wasn’t a large enormous series of bones it was a giant maquette and it was surrounded by other fossils but it was a T-Rex for me. It was incredible and it roared and there was movement and there was oleage and there was life and I would not get to that space fast enough. I remember repeated visits where when I knew I was getting closer to it I would start sprinting. I didn’t know where I was sprinting to I didn’t know the direction I was going in. I just remember screaming with absolute joy and excitement and tearing past objects that were curious and beautiful but didn’t really have an emotional impact on me because I thought they were things that my nan would like that my dad would like. And I was constantly being told to slow down slow down by my family slow down by the staff. The staff were really good natured about it because they knew where I was going and they knew why I was going there. So I was never scolded but it was always oh slow down have you seen this? Slow down have you seen this? But it was transcendent. It was an escape from everything I knew everything around me and everything I was and it felt like just for a couple of moments life was paused and I could access it on my terms and in my time.
GM: That’s really interesting and I was just thinking as you were talking if you compare it to another civic building such as a library where children if they’re fortunate also sometimes have kind of quite profound encounters into a different world. What you’ve described though with the museum is a kind of like a different level of intensity isn’t it? Where the encounter is really intense and not as sort of diffuse as it might be in a library. And that sense of the encounter but also the emotion that goes into it is something that is a thread that runs through the book isn’t it? So it’s not something I’m guessing that you would say we leave behind in childhood and we replace with something more in inverted commas sort of grown up. It’s something that’s kind of intrinsic to the museum experience.
JS: I was operating on pure adrenaline and snacks as well. I remember who loops and pop but it was an incredible because in operating on such emotion and adrenaline and instinct and something that made me run without consciously deciding I was going to run in the first place was really eye opening for me because it wasn’t necessarily an intellectual experience. That happened afterwards as I was digesting and processing it. And my parents very diligently said “Oh have you read that label? Do you know what that word means?” And they kind of would walk me back. It was sensory. It was visceral. It was happening. And it was a place where I could throw large amounts of energy and emotion. And it was not only appropriate it was welcomed. And that was the difference for me for other civic institutions where I was constantly being shushed. I was constantly being heard or told what to do. It was my first experience of genuine autonomy where I got to make decisions about me for me based on emotion and need.
GM: And again you’ve got that tension that persists that you mentioned there your parents sort of saying “Hang on a minute. Have you read the label? They’ve got some kind of educational imperative at work there.” And that again is something which persists isn’t it? Whether the museum is about education if it’s about the center of expertise communicating knowledge to the grateful or ungrateful populace versus the sort of sense of this actual personal encounter with something that is special because here it is in a special building in a special case presented in special lighting. Again things that we might think of as characteristic of the childhood encounter are things there’s a tension there which persists well into adulthood.
JS: Hugely. And I think one of the incredible things about that encounter was that it was on my terms was something I cared about and it was a built up encounter as well. I knew a week in advance we were going to go to the museum. I was so excited. I got to wear my dinosaur t-shirt. There was such complex sociology. It was bound up in my relationship with family. It was bound up with my relationship in terms of travel and movement around the area. It was pride. It was excitement. But I think one of the things that I’m also conscious of is that these spaces are not representative for some people. And the early dynamism I experienced gave way to a series of encounters I think at school that I found quite riddled in inertia. It was conversations about other people that I wasn’t engaged with. They weren’t on my terms. They weren’t interesting to me. They weren’t emotional. They were positioned as you say with such academic and educational rigor it denied the emotional encounter and the emotional experience of what it was that I was looking for in the first place. And there was a counterintuitive to that. It’s a space that makes — and museums I would suggest are spaces that make you feel and think so much. And your heart travels far faster than your head does in terms of these spaces. But then I was constantly being reminded to stop feeling to start thinking to analyze more. That didn’t seem intuitive to me. And I followed that with other people to places of disempowerment joy discrimination erasure. It’s an incredible opportunity to engage with people.
GM: So you’ve just described there a kind of feeling of estrangement from museums as you get older thinking oh well it’s about education or it’s about this sort of particular view of the world or our roles and our identities. So what brings you back to it? Because a lot of people I guess might go through that initial childhood excitement and then a feeling of this isn’t really for me for whatever reason. But you’ve clearly come back to it in a big way. So tell me about that coming back to it. In what terms and for what reason did you come back to the world of the museum?
JS: What a beautiful question. Equity curiosity and a magnetism that was stronger than a lot of the other emotional things happening around me. And I think I’ve tried to explore that as well in terms of the book. There’s a very curious thread with people that they may have experienced disenfranchisement in these spaces. There might have been negative experiences neutral experiences framed as quite boring encounters or encounters that they weren’t in control of. But yet a number of us still keep going back to this. They are such huge moments in our lives whether we’re conscious or unconscious of it. Even if we’ve never been to a museum consciously never engage with a museum. Most of us know what one is or has encountered one in pop culture or externally through somebody else. There is a draw I would suggest about the unexpected survival. Not only that but also that these spaces are curated to be about our lives but not living in a strange sense. There’s a disassociation there. I think they’re spaces in which we can and do have incredibly powerful conversations about ourselves with other people whether we articulate that out loud or not. And I think drawing back to those spaces for me one of the things — the curious thing I found about it for me was that these were spaces of solace. If the world was moving too quickly for me if I needed to process things if I needed to hold a mirror up against myself or an experience I just had I would go and sit in a museum or art gallery very much not necessarily in a sense of spirituality but very much in a sense of pause reflect mindfulness kind of sit and find myself. And I found myself doing that consciously or unconsciously across my young adult life as I was growing up. They weren’t just places to occupy a rainy afternoon for me. They weren’t just a useful toilet stop in a busy town or city. It was pause. It was sanctuary. It nourished me in a way that I didn’t understand or could articulate until I started doing so on behalf and with other people through my curation. I was so pulled to the magnetism of these places and the emotion of these places. I didn’t understand why until I started doing so with people for people and in tune with people. And suddenly it made sense because it was a way for me to articulate care both to myself and civically and to ideas and identities that are far greater than me.
GM: That gives me a really good segue then to my next question which is if we were in a museum today how might we encounter you? How would you be presenting yourself? What would you be presenting? What would you be and what would you actually be doing? So we come into a gallery and at the other end of the gallery who do we see?
JS: Oh you’d hear me before you see all me. I think one of the biggest manifestations of me is tours. I think there’s so much work I do with communities curators researchers academics building ethics making decisions pulling ideas together challenging ideas seeing what works supporting people during that process. There’s a big iceberg underneath of involvement both emotionally and academically thematically in how spaces are built how they operate how we engage with people. The top of the iceberg the most visible part is me in a bow tie and a really cool shirt doing a tour. And I think that’s one of the interfaces that people find with museums that is often one of the most human I would suggest because we’re not explaining we’re advocating and we’re emoting next to these pieces. And I think what’s really curious is that when people encounter me in those situations and perspectives there’s two very different versions of me happening in that space. There’s me the proxy body to the organisation and to the pieces. And some people will very much treat me as a spokesperson for what I’m standing next to. If they really love a piece they will enthuse me and they’ll say oh congratulations. I was like well thank you but it wasn’t me. Thank you so much. If they hate a piece they will be very irate with me. And they’ll be like this drives me mad. And I’m so angry and I’m so hurt. And I’m like I hear you. Again I’m not the object but I can have this conversation with you. I get to be the interface for so many different emotions. My aim and ambition in having tours and engaging with people isn’t the conveyance of facts. It’s the realisation of emotion and connection within that. I think the label is brilliant. I think to understand to have greater depth to have a gatekeeper that will give you that little extra piece of knowledge in a very human way is brilliant and can sometimes make the moment. One of the things I advocate for is that if you’re standing in front of a museum exhibition or an art exhibition you already know everything you need to know regardless of what’s the label regardless of any detail because you know in your heart and you know in your head what you like. And I think everything on top of that’s a bonus.
GM: And one of the things Jon which I think came through from our very first conversation about this book was that answering the question what are museums for? You really have to answer the question who are museums for? Because that’s really at the heart of it because your book isn’t about you know the air conditioning systems or the security systems or you know and it’s not about assembling national collections and it’s not about timelines of art history or whatever. It’s about as we’ve sort of touched on it’s about the encounter it’s about the emotion it’s about the human connection and therefore who the museum is for is absolutely fundamental to that because it’s so easy to you know imagine a stereotypical visitor and in doing that and imagine their needs and their interests and in doing that inadvertently exclude large sections of the population. So can you talk a little bit about why this question of who the museum is for is so central to addressing the question in your title?
JS: I think the presupposition with museums historically and sometimes in actuality today is presumptive. Presumptive trust presumptive interest presumptive welcome that they purport to be able to tell everybody’s story with a level of authority and integrity. Actually when you start to expose and explore that they are very good at asking questions not necessarily posing answers. And I think how we ask that question I think is absolutely central. And with it the autonomy that we carry within those spaces. So if we reference me for example on a tour and I’m all dressed up and you can hear my heels clicking on the marble and I look very museumy that’s offset by sometimes I go in and I’m wearing a tracksuit or a hoodie and I’m a bit wet on my way to the gym but I just want to kind of stop by and spend some time with something that I really care about. And most of the time I’m treated with absolute respect and kindness and welcome but very occasionally I’m profiled dressed like that based on how I look. And one time someone assumed I was trouble or causing trouble because I was sat there in a tracksuit. And it was fascinating because I thought well if I come back dressed in professional version of me I would be treated and afforded huge levels of privilege and treated very very differently. It was a reminder to me that how we present in these spaces is important and powerful and there are consequences. And I think finding equity finding spaces because these are sites for me of social care and social service. They are a benefit to other people. They function for people. Museums without visitors are just elaborate storage. They exist to be for people on their terms. And I think how we present in these spaces I think is crucial to understanding how we can articulate in these spaces and recognizing that these are for me in my opinion one of the few spaces of social democracy that are really powerful and palpable. And you can come and invest yourself as yourself in these spaces which should be inequity. I think the really interesting giveaway for me is in a society in a world that is so noisy and is moving so quickly with so much sensory bombardment electronically and physically it’s one of the few spaces where you can just sit down and not do anything. And there’s no social backlash to that. No one would think it would be strange or suspicious that you’re just sitting and thinking in these spaces. We’re just daydreaming. I think that’s the magic of these spaces. And I think how we present and how some people have been very welcome in these spaces and arguably some people have been very much excluded from these spaces I think is the powerful conversation about how they move forward.
GM: Talking of conversations you came up with a very clever concept for this book of making each chapter based not just around a theme but around a museum and an object in the museum. But I think critically around a conversation or a series of conversations. So it’s not just you going into the museum and giving your impressions or you reading the academic literature and sort of digesting that. You’re actually talking to people who are like you on the front line day in daily dealing with these sorts of questions working through the practicalities you know with these issues in mind. How do you actually organise a museum show and engage with the people who come through its doors? So tell me a little bit about how you how you decided where to go and who to talk to.
JS: Oh as subjective as the book title itself I would suggest I think one of the things I wanted to root the experience in is truth and vulnerability and transparency. So the opportunity to write this book was the opportunity to meet and go on experiences and go to different places not necessarily for the first time because I had a connection with a number of the people and number of the pieces previously but with a new agenda with new eyes with new experiences. And I think one of the things that museums and people that work in museums do really really well is that the concept of engaging with in togetherness and warmth. I think there’s a real key component in the museum identity there. I wanted the experience to feel like being on a tour with me in a museum but a museum with amalgam ideas. They’re not talking about the pieces because the pieces exist talking about the pieces because they make us feel and they make us think. And it’s another facet of asking the question which is massively important in balancing the level of equity and privilege that these institutions have that culture is up here and we are somehow down there. Museums need communities. They need them to exist. They need them to function. And I wanted it to feel like not only they’re on a tour with me but also that they got to sit down with the people that invest so much time energy and emotion and creativity in bringing these spaces alive and giving them purpose and equity and kindness themselves. I wanted to feel like you were sat down having a cup of tea with us and having a conversation because I think the humanity of that is more useful than the institutional magnitude of what museums are which is quite daunting. Museums for me are a series of very pointed emotional encounters and a really lovely warm drink afterwards. I had a chance to talk to somebody that cares about this. And that was my position of how I wanted to build it.
GM: And you give a kind of behind the scenes insight into museums maybe not sort of literally in the sort of digging through boxes or you know dusty artifacts but behind the scenes in the sense of the thinking that goes in to the way that museums present themselves and the way that they engage with people which may not be obvious to the person who you know who’s just visiting the gallery space but you bring home there’s a lot of hard thinking going on about the very question in your title you know what museums are for how they evolve how they meet needs better how they address these themes of care and so on. And I think that’s the kind of insight that would be very hard to get from any other you know from any other source.
JS: There are so few people on the ground footfall that work in museums versus people that visit museums. You think about the millions of people that go to museums versus a core staff sometimes a 50 20 10 one or two that run these institutions and make these decisions. I think one of the things that I’m conscious of is that there is such a privilege in having those conversations and those conversations happening every day both practically and emotionally to kind of to operate in that space. And I think including as many people as possible not only in the conversation but also the emotion that goes into that conversation I think really humanises places that some people haven’t found to be human encounters before. One of the things I was so chuffed about with everybody that joined in the conversation all the expert activists artists curators educators that kind of took part in this book in conversation with me was that they gave so generously both in terms of their ideas but also in terms of how they felt during those encounters. And I think there was something really kind about that something really useful about that. And I think what I take away most from museums are the conversations around museums not necessarily the details and the vast tracks of information. I don’t care if that was made in 1850. I do care that it made someone cry. And I think those were the kind of conversations I wanted to have.
GM: How difficult was it to choose the actual objects?
JS: Excruciatingly difficult. I think part of that was not following a narcissistic thread of I know a lot about this piece I’m just going to stand on my hill and I’m going to shout about it and demonstrate what I know. I deliberately chose works that I’d never encountered or worked with before so I can deep dive into them and explore them. Some of the choices were very rigorous. They felt useful they felt thematic in following journeys and people pieces that connected two different colleagues in two different countries for example. But it was less so about the piece more so about the connection that it brought by having that conversation. Some of the pieces though were based on pure emotion just wow this is an incredible object that is so far removed from my lived experience but gives me so much empathy. It wasn’t necessarily about choosing pieces that I liked it was choosing pieces that were useful and also people suggesting pieces to me. Some pieces that I’d decided oh I’d like to start the conversation with this. I’ve had colleagues turn around to me during the course of the book and turn around and say look actually knowing you knowing the aim of this book knowing what you’re reacting to have you considered this piece instead? And I’m like oh amazing thank you so much. So it was a collaborative decision in some cases. In some cases the pieces had already decided themselves because I cared so much about them although they were so pivotal to how I understand my career.
GM: Maybe we should say something about the range of objects in case people are thinking you’ve chosen sort of old master paintings or something. Give a sense give a sort of flavour you don’t have to list them all but give a sort of flavour of the kind of things which made it in and maybe a sense of why.
JS: So the television set at Northern Ireland National Museums Northern Ireland was an incredible example. It’s a 1960s television that is quite damaged and battered but actually the story behind it is so intrinsic to the lives and the experiences of people in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. And something so domestic and ordinary and gentle by how it looks is such a powerful lightning rod of connectivity and emotion to lives and experiences that many people may have only seen in the media. But there was a humanism and a personal nature about that that was so incredible. I think museums have the power to elevate the ordinary to the extraordinary but with that they also have the opportunity and also just by being in museums they elevate the danger and the intensity of some of these objects. And I think there’s a powerful way of taking something so domestic and having a conversation about something that is so huge. Another one is the Angela Palmer sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It’s a reimagining of an Egyptian child’s mummification and their human remains but in glass and ink so that you have on one side the actual human remains and the mummified child and then next to it you have an artist’s reimagining of this which is painstakingly taken from CT scans of the remains. But instead of seeing the outside through glass and ink you see inside to the anatomy of this child and literally the mummy is unbound without unwrapping the child. It’s the most incredible extraordinary intervention for me on museums and their power to see what is recognisable as a standard sometimes what people would expect within a museum which is Egyptian mummified remains next to a piece of contemporary art that asks challenges and makes me feel white there in the first place and reintroduces and rechallenges the notion of the humanity of this burial right next to it. Objects like that continue to fascinate and amaze me. One of my favourites was the Matt Smith sculpture in Liverpool Museum and the Walker Art Gallery. It’s an incredible testament to the Marriage Equality Act and Matt reimagining queer joy and pain and resistance in a very ornate 18th century looking sculpture that wouldn’t be out of place in a pub or your nan’s mantlepiece but tells a powerful story of equity and queer joy.
GM: Yeah and making visible what has long been invisible in museums and that’s another important theme isn’t it? If people go to museums and don’t find themselves in any sense you know either in the institution or the artefacts or the presentation then they’re going to feel alienated so there is this challenge because museums their collections often originated in the collections of wealthy you know mainly men who wanted a particular kind of thing to say a particular thing about them and about their wealth and about you know British power in the case of Britain. So there’s this not necessarily mismatch with this challenge of how do you enable people to see themselves in a museum given their long history and that’s something I know you’re interested in and you talk about.
JS: I think it’s because it really hurts not to see yourself represented on a collection or a stage that ought to be a national story whose story on whose terms and I think communities are revitalising themselves and this shift where communities are able to tell their own stories using their own material culture on their own terms within these spaces I think is absolutely vital to that conversation but it really hurts not to see yourself included in stories about where you live and where you’re from and who you are or your story is told by somebody else on their terms and you feel an absence within that. I’m conscious of that within my practice and I’m conscious of that within these spaces and I think having and holding space with discourse is vital because you can’t tell a happy story without sadness and you can’t tell a sad story without happiness. There needs to be spaces for duality there needs to be spaces for joy and I think the challenge in museums is how to do so how to do so with integrity how to do so with plasticity because whilst we have a shared past we have many different perceptions of that past and how it feels and how it lands with us. I think these are sites of discord they’re sites of disharmony they can be sites of disruption they can be sites of huge warmth and I’ve never wanted to deny anyone the emotions that I feel within these spaces but they are spaces to come and find yourself or to be challenged within yourself or to express yourself and I think that historically wasn’t always an option for us but it very much is now and I think it’s one of the things that I embrace with huge relief but simultaneously a number of the institutions that serve us are acts of parliament they are publicly funded we are stakeholders within these conversations and one of the things I’m really conscious of in my practice is reminding people that this isn’t a privilege it’s a right in some cases and that gratitude can only go so far actually we are stakeholders within these spaces we need to exercise our rights our identities our legal standing within these spaces. It’s not an act of kindness to see ourselves we should be able to see ourselves.
GM: I wondered you spoke to people from different continents from very different kinds of institutions great variety of objects I wondered did you feel though that the basic challenge that all these fellow professionals are responding to comes down to the same sort of things however different the local circumstances might be or the particular focus of a museum do you feel that it sort of boils down to the same fundamental challenge?
JS: I think one of the commonalities is that all of our stories overlap and our stories can be so much bigger than us identity inclusion how we operate in spaces environmentalism for example is something that affects every museum how do they function and operate how do they visit other countries how do they contact other people how do they bring people in what’s their carbon footprint how much does it cost to keep these objects in preservation how much does it cost to stop the roof leaking they are conversations that are so intrinsically tied to huge meta-narratives that are so enormous they’re hard to see the edge of the event horizon of these stories I think museums are really good in that they focus our attention on the material culture of how we operate and who we are so that rather than be deluged by a million stories perhaps we can choose two or three stories that really connect with us and use those as bridging points to connect with other people but I think you’re absolutely right the challenge is in a society in a world that is moving so quickly and so much is happening and changing our societal movements are amazing and brilliant but also very challenging museums don’t follow in the wake of those conversations museums are part of those conversations they’re reflecting today whilst the objects from the past sit in their own context they live in our contemporary world and I think museums are a reflection of where we are where we could be where we’re going they’re active agents within change rather than immutable forces that just talk about where we were.
GM: Jon there are lots more things we could talk about today but I’m really keen that people should go and discover the book and really get a flavour of the texture of those discussions that you had you know things like the virtual museum electronic museums restitution representation all those sort of things. But I just wanted to end today you’ve done a lot of thinking about museums a lot of visiting museums a lot of conversations with museums can you just pick out some things that really give you hope that make you think yeah this really sort of points to a bright future for your museums things that maybe you that were unexpected serendipitous but things that keep you motivated?
JS: I think all museums for me contain hope and joy in so many different ways. How they articulate it in backdrops of pain and challenge I think is a unique ongoing conversation per institution but one institution that I’m constantly drawn to in the UK which I care about so much is the Museum of Homelessness which has just opened and is available now as a physical place that you can access as well as a touring and intellectual piece that kind of pops up within communities. They make active change they formulate future by collating new heritage and new ideas together they are active as social agents in change both in terms of people’s lives but also in terms of legislation. They exist to support they exist with emotion and purpose and that purpose is clear and ethical and kind and useful and amplifies voices that are often hidden or misrepresented. When I think about the work that they do in pop-up exhibitions in streets in communities sometimes in people’s homes but then also in founding and housing themselves in the first purpose-made museum for the collection and for what they do as activists as thinkers as intellectuals as agents within the community of care they inspire me and remind me why it matters so much why these institutions matter so much because they have the power to literally change lives.
GM: Thank you very much indeed.