MAASA
CANNIBALISTIC EXPLANATIONS: THE ST. LOUIS ART MUSEUM
Cannibalistic Explanations
The St. Louis Art Museum 2005
M. Clara Núñez-Regueiro
April 2005
M. Clara Núñez-Regueiro MAASA Conference
“WORLDS WITHIN/WORLDS WITHOUT” MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
Panel: Representations
Key Words: Museums, Material Culture, Art, Discourse
ABSTRACT Through an examination of the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) as a case study, this paper argues that many American art museums, however, fail to adapt to the field’s changing paradigm. This style of institution still adheres to cannibalistic museological practices through a discourse that displays and interprets non-western art as exotic and primitive, which practice bespeaks of American intercultural relations of power because it perpetuates ethnic minorities’ position of social disadvantage.
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CANNIBALISTIC EXPLANATIONS: THE SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM
Museums are about cannibals and glass boxes, a fate they cannot seem to escape no matter how hard they try. -Michael Ames1
In the context of a world that is at once culturally pluralistic and economically connected, communities’ relationships with cultural Others are becoming progressively complex. Along with this shift in how inter-cultural exchanges and meanings are negotiated, many museums in the United States are currently experiencing a parallel transformation in terms of how they interpret and display history and culture. Consequently museums are increasingly abandoning their traditional function as mere repositories of authoritative scholarly knowledge. The ivory tower model of the old public museum with a focus on acquisition and conservation of large collections, continues to advance towards a more user-friendly cultural institution with a clear social role. Guided by this new social vision, institutions increasingly center their concerns on education, community outreach, and inclusion of multiple interpretations. American art museums, however, seem to find this new paradigm particularly problematic. Although they do offer an assortment of educational and programmatic activities, these are designed to teach the community what constitutes high art in a way that very often equates with western productions. The same ethno-centric lens colors exhibition practices, ensuing the continuing perception of cultural Others as primitive and capable of producing only art of lesser aesthetic value. Through an examination of display Michael M. Ames, Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1992), 3. 1
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practices utilized at the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) as a case study, this paper argues that, unlike their history counterparts, American art museums fail to adapt to the field’s changing practices. Art museums still adhere to cannibalistic exhibitry through a discourse that displays and interprets non-western art as exotic and primitive. Furthermore, this convention is the enactment of intercultural power dynamics and it perpetuates ethnic minorities’ position of social disadvantage. Reading museums as cultural artifacts uncovers how conversations about race and ethnicity take place openly through public display. This essay endeavors to shed some light on the role of art museums in the construction of intercultural perceptions in America in four ways. First, analytical tools from visual culture theory, museology, and anthropology provide helpful instruments for the exploration of associations between visual and written language, thought, and world views. A second section disarticulates the assumption that elevated art reflects a cultural group’s superior aesthetic achievement that is consistent with advanced civilizations. A third point looks at how SLAM perpetuates existing power dynamics, and explores the ways in which the differential treatment of diverse art categories perpetuates sociocultural inequality. Finally, the paper examines how SLAM maintains this disparity through classifications that are designed to heighten the value of western art while lessening the significance of non-western aesthetics. The essay focuses on the broad categories of Western and Primitive art, in that order, though this array does not reflect a personal judgment of the value, merit, or importance of one over the other. Rather, it emulates the path visitors must follow upon entering the museum on the main floor where the Western
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collections are displayed, above the Primitive collections, which are housed in the basement. Traditional Art History places western art at the pinnacle of a scale of aesthetic achievement. This taxonomy is so naturalized and engrained in mainstream American culture that museum visitors do not question the underlying message it carries; namely, that the aesthetic production of ethnic Others simply does not measure up to mainstream standards. The more serious implication of this narrative is that plastic values mirror an evolutionary conception of culture. Imposed by a dominant western voice through the linguistic medium of display, this illusory scale is artificial and must be challenged in order to afford all ethnic groups an equivalent space through which to express their identities. Incorporating new aesthetic categories would enrich American art while simultaneously deepening viewers’ understanding of the plurality of peoples and cultures that compose the United States. In a broad sense, language is not limited to speech and the written word; rather it is inclusive of all manner of human expression, all types of cultural creation. When Isadora Duncan stated “if I could say it-- I wouldn’t have to dance it,” she was recognizing that in her case, dance was as powerful a communication tool as verbal expression.2 Understood in this manner, language incorporates the artistic, literary, museological, and any media that utilize constructed meanings which are shared and understood among the members of a community. For the present analysis, it is useful to consider public display as a type of social discourse which conveys, and can uncover, important features of a social group’s
2
Isadora Duncan, My Life (New York: Liveright, 1955), 168.
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beliefs and values. Exhibitry narratives expose a dominant community’s world view and contribute to the perpetuation of cultural myths and stereotypes. Traditional classifications of art depend on the assumption that these categories reflect a universal reality: what is beautiful for the western art historian is universally beautiful. Although art is about subjectivity, it can be objectively recognized and assessed. These categories further assume that the aesthetic value of all art is measured with the same parameters. An art historian may have difficulty giving an exact definition of art, but she or he can certainly distinguish between art and artifact. As one challenges the art equals reality construct, it is useful to remember that knowledge is merely a particular society’s explanation for how its members understand the world. It is changing and heterogeneous; it varies across time and geography. Art scholarship is not an exception. What most Americans experience as visually stunning and sophisticated might seem unappealing and cold to a Latino or Nigerian viewer. Notions of what defines art, therefore, depend on constructed meanings which are dynamic and constantly changing. Primitive collections progressively enjoy greater inclusion in art exhibits, however, whereas fifty years ago they were relegated to museums of natural history or anthropology. American Indian art, for example, did not find its way into American art museums until the 1970s. Today, art museums all over the country include some of these indigenous collections because newer conceptions of art are coming into vogue.3 Political correctness may, in addition, partly account for these relatively recent inclusions. Yet non-western art is still not valued for its own aesthetic merits. The more a piece adapts to western standards of
There are numerous excellent histories of the museum; for a post-structuralist example see for instance, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge (New York: Routledge, 1992). 3
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beauty, the more highly regarded the style is in mainstream American museums. The treatment of space, accompanying labels, and descriptive tone of what the western art scholarship knows as Primitive attest to this fact. Although museums now often include non-mainstream works, the institutions are not ready to assign them the same value that benefits European and American art. Entering SLAM’s immense vestibule is almost a ritual experience. Cultural critics often have spoken about museums’ ritualistic character, to which museologist Carol Duncan refers as civilizing rituals. Borrowing from anthropology’s use of the term liminality which relates to the spiritual transformation individuals undergo during religious ceremonies, Duncan asserts that the museum visitor’s experience is often liminal in nature; visitors have repeatedly described this feeling as one that involves a sense of healing and restoration.4 In tacit concession of this argument, SLAM’s mission statement declares that this museum “collects, presents, and conserves works of art of the highest quality across time and cultures; educates, inspires discovery, and elevates the human spirit […] for the people of St. Louis and the world.” The announcement suggests that the institution is not oblivious to, and in fact capitalizes on, the transformative power of its environment.5 Stressing this museological feature, art museums provide a civic space where visitors can experience spiritual uplifting, but comfortably detached from religious implications. By this association between the secular and scared realms, art museums psychologically validate their discursive authority
Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (New York: and London: Routledge, 1995). 5 The Saint Louis Art Museum’s mission statement, which is not included in the literature available to the general public from the museum nor in the web site, can be accessed by requesting it at spatter@slam.org 4
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and prepare the viewer to accept the power structures that are reiterated throughout the exhibits.6 A spatial distribution that organizes High Art on the main level and Primitive and Ancient Art in the basement enforces the High art/Primitive art conceptual pair. Pieces are arranged following and organization of socialized power that seeks to appear legitimate, natural, and authoritative. The refined art of Western Europe and American and Modern Art, are exhibited on the main floor and displayed with special attention to the aesthetic value of the work. Spatial treatment is crucial for facilitating liminality and proper aesthetic contemplation. These visual experiences rely heavily on the sensitivity of the observer and therefore demand a sense of solitude, a feeling that the gaze and the work alone are in interaction. Ample spaces between western artworks reinforce this spirituality, ensuring that nothing muddles the visual field of the observer. The viewer can indulge in the contemplation of each individual piece without the interference of contextual clutter or glass cases; only air stands between the visitor’s gaze and the piece itself. Power differentials permeate through the museum’s location of its Primitive collections, which are housed in the basement level. Physically descending to this point, visitors are taken to far removed times or places. The remote location of these collections evokes less civilized times and peoples that today seem exotic. This art represents a point in human childhood from whence modern humans are expected to advance in order to rise up, quite literally in this case, since in order to see high art representations the visitor must take either the elevator or the stairs, to transcend above the ancient and primitive. The ultimate goal in this aesthetic development is achieving the degree of refinement evidenced
6
Duncan, Civilizing Rituals.
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by the European art of the main floor. Basement collections showcase pieces behind glass and lumped together, sometimes mixing various regions into one display. SLAM’s website exhibits a beautiful Navajo blanket, which not surprisingly, is included not in the museum’s American art section, but under the heading of Art of Oceania and the Americas. Conceptually then, Navajo (and by extension other American Indian) artists are incapable of artistic creations that compare with more highly valued American art. Placement of the work prevents the visual isolation of any one piece in particular. Pieces are rather crowded, which makes it difficult for visitors to admire the works for their plastic qualities. A viewer can hardly achieve liminality by observing a work that is jumbled together with various others in close proximity; the opportunity for spiritual stirring is muddled by an image information overload. In addition, glass or acrylic cases separate the visitor from the artwork. This arrangement further deters transcendence by adding yet other elements to the physical field – the glass itself and the viewer’s own reflection. SLAM’s treatment of the chronological space is also revealing. While western art narrates its own plastic development as a human journey of aesthetic improvement through history, non-western Others are relegated to the past, frozen in time. The museum’s Primitive art collections, on the other hand, tell the story of cultures that exist only as romantic images in the American imagination, or worse; if they have survived at all, they will remain forever primitive, static, unchanged and untamed. Thus, Primitive art is motionless; stripped of any right to be admired for its own merits or to move forward. It is doomed to group displays that merely illustrate a category and remind museum-goers of the remoteness of their primitive past.
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Grouping is also important in another way. According to material culture analyst Mieke Bal, individuality is the basis for high art recognition.7 In the museum’s western exhibits a guest can enjoy the work of artists of the caliber of Degas and Gauguin. Museumgoers can relate to these artists because as people with proper names, they share with the viewer their humanity and maybe even some of their passions. Their art is so important that when a great name is not available, the label reads “Unknown Artist,” suggesting that even the absence of identified authorship is worthy of attention and recognition, as striking as the presence of a notorious name. The labels that accompany western pieces make reference to plastic considerations such as composition, line, color, and form. The text that introduces Piero di Cosimo’s Madonna and Child on SLAM’s web site, for instance, describes how the “mastery of light and space is beautifully evident in this altarpiece […] marked by richness of color, clarity of form, and engaging naturalness of representation;” a wonderful example of plastic description.8 In these works, Christianity is often present with a marked tone of cultural approbation because it further encourages the ritual character of the space. In an eminently Christian nation like the United States, religious paintings are surrounded by an aura of reverence. Power is symbolized by the objects in these sections because of the meanings with which western society has agreed to endow them; the objects feel important and worthy of contemplation. Western conceptions of beauty and religion complement one another to achieve the desired uplifting effect. Active voice dominates descriptive labels, which adds importance to the pieces and turns them into purposeful creations. For an in-depth discussion of the discursive nature of visual culture see Mieke Bal, Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis (New York: Routledge, 1996). 8 All label texts in this paper are from the St. Louis Art Museum’s website: St. Louis Art Museum, http://www.slam.org.; accessed September 13, 2004. 7
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Primitive art, on the other hand, is deprived of individuality. Without it, the observer can hardly connect with the piece in the way she or he would if the work had an identified author. In this manner, the pieces are dispossessed of the humanity that the art upstairs enjoys. In this section of the museum, well-known names mutate into anonymity and so “a Van Gogh” or “a Matisse” yields to “the Navajo peoples” or “Mixtec cultures.” Primitive artists become unidentified masses of simple peoples, exotic conglomerates of backwardness. Moreover, Primitive art is conceptually treated as artifactual, that is, as objects of historical or archaeological interest. Aesthetic examinations give way to ethnographic descriptions as labels address the objects’ hypothetical cultural functions, rather than the plastic elements of this art. The text that accompanies a beautiful nineteenth-century reliquary figure from Zaire, for instance, explains that “[e]mpowered by the bones, such items protected the household from outside anger and insured its prosperity.” This anthropological representation strips the piece of its creative worth and moves it into the realm of studifiable objects of scientific value. In Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes, anthropologist Michael Ames declares that museums are cannibalistic in the sense that they appropriate the material culture and history of out-groups and impose their own western interpretations on them.9
9
Ames, Cannibal Tours, 3.
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In the museum setting, the cannibalism is not performed by those who are considered primitive, but by image-hungry viewers who devour narratives of mainstream dominance, which museum directors and curators have made digestible for western consumption. In addition, the certainty and uncontested beauty of western art is displayed in contrast with the best educated guess of the experts regarding the utilitarian functions of artifacts from Africa, Oceania, or the Americas. Phrases such as “would have been” or “may have been used as,” underscore the obscurity associated with the exotic. The use of the passive voice in Primitive art labels accentuates the remoteness and powerlessness of the objects they describe. Adding to the mystery of exotic Others, the dichotomies continue to develop through religious ideas that place the Christianity that lives upstairs in sharp opposition with the polytheistic religions of the cultures displayed in the basement. Texts hint at the existence of multiple deities; further markers of underdevelopment. The subliminal discourse insinuates an uncivilized belief in the power of magical forces as opposed to a sanctioned divine One, which signifies truth, wisdom, and supremacy. The presence of multiple gods is a sign of confusion, ignorance, and deserved cultural submission. The Western/Primitive contrast is an indispensable component of the art museum’s power; it attests to the uncontested excellence of western art. The absence of this binary scale would place the very validity of art history as a discipline in harm’s way. The dichotomy relies upon the uncontested judgment of art experts and museum curators, zealous keepers of the scale, who decide what value applies to any given category of art. This paper has argued that art museums embrace political systems that sustain western dominance through their display of cultural Others. The very power these MAASA 2005
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institutions enjoy can, if a museum is willing, open up an exciting dialogical arena for negotiating inter-cultural exchanges and perceptions. The Saint Louis Art Museum is emblematic of how similar cultural organizations in the United States participate in the perpetuation of ethnic out-groups. This particular brand of ethnocentrism recreates structures of power and exclusion. Through the differential treatment of Western and Primitive art in opposition with one another, museums marginalize non-western art and cultures. Simultaneously, this opposition envelops an entire chain of at least eight identifiable dichotomies that are also present in the narrative of the museum: art/artifact, civilizations/cultures, historifiable/ethnographiable, Christians/Polytheists, individual artists/ communal artifacts, active voice/passive voice, authorship/anonymity, and centrality of the object vs. emphasis on its function. Display practices in art museums hinder the opportunity non-mainstream communities have, to represent their own art and voice their identity. In addition, conventional art taxonomies should be reexamined and re-conceptualized. More than an abstract cultural critique, this paper is a call for American art museums to step up to the challenge of seeking alternative approaches to exhibition that are more inclusive. Museums hold a privileged position in western society, one that can allow them to positively affect intercultural understanding if they possess the courage to peruse this opportunity. As socio-cultural institutions of power, art museums must encourage conversations between cultural groups and become willing grounds for interpretative contestation and exchanges. In this role, museums can help visitors better understand the aesthetically rich and assorted complex that is American culture.
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Referencias
Ames, Michael M. Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1992. Bal, Mieke. Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis. New York: Routledge, 1996. Duncan, Carol. Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums. New York: and London: Routledge, 1995. Duncan, Isadora. My Life. New York: Liveright, 1955. Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge. New York: Routledge, 1992. St. Louis Art Museum. http://www.slam.org.
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