Shaking Off Modern-Day Museums Hypocrisy: A review of James Cuno’s book Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust
by Christopher Holtby, July 23, 2021
Cuno, James, Whose Muse? Art Museums and The Public Trust. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
In James Cuno’s book, Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust (MUSE), the window shades are raised, showing the current hypocrisy of modern-day museums and presenting the rough sketch to solve this dilemma. The MUSE, a collection of essays, resulted from a lectures series organized by the Harvard University Art Museums and the Harvard Program for Art Museum Directors. These lectures, given by current and former curators of leading global museums, discussed how the public views and trusts art museums. These men and women have and will continue to influence public interaction and trust with art museums. The MUSE has three parts: (1) raising awareness of the public trust issues affecting museums (i.e., the Introduction), (2) six essays by curators from world-renowned global museums that address the issues raised in the Introduction, and (3) an open, honest and vulnerable roundtable discussion between the curators on the issues of public trust and modern-day museums. A note of caution — a reader needs patience with this book as the writing can feel, at times, like a long, deary dark Russian winter (e.g., the essays). The MUSE springs to action with a vibrant ending found in the roundtable discussion as though a light switch was turned on. An impatient reader, such as this reviewer, found ample reward for Cuno’s slow build-up to the rough sketch of how modern-day museums will solve their current hypocrisy of eroding public trust.
A museum’s goals for delivering experiences to its visitors cover a wide range of possibilities, yet with thin degrees for success. To narrow down those possibilities, different participants (e.g., curators, scholars, board of trustees, and significant monetary donors) compete to influence a museum’s priorities. Taking a step back, a museum exists to provide an experience to the general public on historical or contemporary topics. Entering a museum should invoke a sense of calm. Curators, such as one of the essayists in the MUSE, Glenn Lowry, work to offer an “authentic experience” on the museum’s permanent collection or via a special exhibition. The tricky part, described in excellent detail throughout the MUSE, rests on the curator’s shoulders to provide visitors that “authentic experience.” An important question raised throughout the MUSE — how does a curator give an “authentic experience” with the competing influences without decreasing public trust in a museum? Unlike the sciences, there are no binary answers to these qualitative questions. However, the MUSE leads the reader to what this reviewer terms rough sketch solutions. The MUSE answers these questions on the “good” that a visitor finds in a museum’s collection, the museum’s responsibility of promoting this “good,” and how these parts enhance or detract from the public trust in a museum’s efforts. As the MUSE infers through the essays and roundtable discussion, a curator’s responsibility to its visitors resembles a tight rope walker.
An important distinguishing feature of the MUSE essayists — current and former curators — gives readers context around modern-day museums’ dilemmas. The lone retired curator from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, John Walsh, informs us with a very distinct write-up on “authentic experiences” within a museum. He provides an almost remorseful review of the experience modern-day museums offer visitors. One could surmise by an example in Walsh’s lecture that unlike the “sheer concentrated grip” that the lion has in Gianfranco Susni’s sculpture, Lion Attacking a Horse, visitors cannot mimic Susni’s lion grip on modern-day museum’s collections/exhibits due to distractions. Those distractions — restaurants, shopping galleries, an overwhelming number of objects to see, and the massive crowds — hold visitors back from experiencing the “good” of art objects or, as Lowry describes, “offer authentic experiences.” Walsh raises the question of time when viewing works of art. Not giving art the appropriate time and space to envelope our emotions can distract from the museum experience and thus the museum’s goal of enhancing public trust. A curator utilizing the correct “authentic” time and space could offer a type of non-sexual aphrodisiac to promote the “good” of art. Read Walsh’s essay first, starting on page 77. The remaining essayists, all current curators at the time of the MUSE’s printing, provide a public-facing discussion to maintain public trust in art museums.
The five remaining essays from current curators — Neil MacGregor, James Cuno, James N. Wood, Glenn D. Lowry, and Philippe de Montebello — raise important questions around how museums should maintain and/or protect the public’s trust. As the lone non-American curator, MacGregor exists under what John Henry Merryman calls the European “art system” and falls under a different directorate than his American counterparts. These public trust issues raised in MacGregor’s essay on a museum’s visitor experience neatly follow Cuno’s essay on museums’ approach to displaying their art objects. Cuno gives the reader an unintended insight as his professional career has straddled the American and European “art systems.” He raises the issue of less is more (aka, presented art objects) for promoting public trust in a museum’s collections using the successful example of the British National Gallery during World War II. The remaining essayists, Wood and Lowry, discuss and bring to light the importance of the museum providing visitors learning and experiential moments. Wood uses the phrase “secular cathedral” to describe the importance of a museum to provide those moments. The participants — curators, scholars, board of trustees, and significant donors — responsible for creating and maintaining this “secular cathedral” have competing goals. A typical pattern for those competing goals is public recognition of their respective efforts. As an example, Lowry describes how the demand for extra money (e.g., donations, museum ticket sales) creates what Montebello calls a “vicious cycle” of needing ever more money. These essayists describe the afflictions affecting modern-day museums and set the stage for potential solutions.
The last part of the MUSE offers a roundtable discussion bringing together five of the essayists and Anne d’Harnoncourt from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This section sees everyone in an open, honest, and vulnerable position and sketching out the rough solution to the hypocrisy of modern-day museums. The resolution follows the words from The Notorious B.I.G. song, “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems.” During the roundtable, the curators discussed the modern-day museum challenge of bringing in visitors for their permanent and special exhibitions. This dilemma was captured by The Notorious B.I.G. song when he asked, “Whose jewels got rocks?” The “rocks” for a museum rest within its permanent collection. However, the curators admitted that their “rocks” lack the pizzazz for their trustees and significant donors. The unintended consequence has forced the modern-day curator on a constant merry-go-around one-upmanship of special exhibitions between museums. The curators discussed the problem with these special exhibitions that create an almost Pavlovian response from visitors — no special exhibit; then, there is no point going to a museum. Within the same song comes a question, “I Know you thinking now, “When all the ballin’ stops?” mirrors an issue Wood recognizes. He sees modern-day museums focus on shiny new objects (aka, special exhibitions, new buildings) affecting the publics’ trust on a museums “secular cathedral” standing. Even Montebello notes that the public does not appear to value significant museum acquisitions as much as the special exhibits. These frank admissions by these curators set the stage for solving modern-day museums’ hypocrisy. The most critical first step, influencing every step afterward, to sketching out a rough solution — admitting a problem exists. The roundtable discussions admitted to the hypocrisy created by growing museum annual budgets requiring large annual cash infusions and maintaining public trust. The roundtable discussion provides hope, not discounting the daunting tasks faced by museums, to reverse modern-day museums’ hypocrisy and move towards the “secular cathedral” of yesteryear.
James Cuno in the MUSE brings together a robust collection of acting and former curators from some of the world’s leading museums. Their essays provide the traditional response on how to maintain public trust in a museum. The roundtable discussion offers insights into the honest opinions of a modern-day museum’s task and position of defending the public trust of the “good” of art while promoting that “good” of the art itself. Museums have two choices to remove the hypocrisy: (1) take the courageous and short-term painful decision to stop with the competitive frenzy of exhibitions and money raises, or (2) admit to playing the wild competitive game of one-upmanship. Publicly announcing one of these choices increases the transparency and public trust of a museum. You will not be disappointed reading James Cuno’s book, Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust, as he respectfully leads us on a journey of learning and awareness as our “secular cathedrals” work towards regaining our trust.
