What Can Museums Do? Beyond the Local-Global Dilemma

In cooperation with the University of Graz
Start of a series of lectures and talks in connection with the bicentenary of the Universalmuseum Joanneum

Lecture by Mieke Bal, with a commentary by Bettina Habsburg-Lothringen, head of the Museumsakademie Joanneum

What Can Museums Do? Beyond the Local-Global Dilemma

Museums are confronted with the same dilemma as the rest of us: what is universal, what is local, and how to deal with the distinction in the practice of everyday management of the museum, its collections, and its publics? The dilemma is anchored in a binary opposition that I seek to leave behind, in favour of alternative concepts that do justice to the fact that binary opposition seems deceptive coherent but is in fact, a simplification that dangerously obscures the complexity of our world. A museum that is called “universal” is first of all local; it is located in a specific place with its social, cultural, and economic context.

Underlying the study of museums is the implied notion that the institution has something to say to its visitors. Museums “speak” with the voice of their curators and staff. I will address the dilemma through an underlying issue: who is the subject of museological “speech”? I will replace this notion by a performative conception of speech, and ask: who is the subject of museological speech acts, and the subsequent question: what can museums do? First of all, the metaphor of a voice with a subject needs to be unpacked and pluralised. For, the publics are as active in constituting the museum’s speech acts as the museum’s decision makers. Therefore, and since museums are physical, localised institutions, I will propose the metaphor of “forking paths” (Borges) to understand how museums can deal with its mission beyond the local-global dilemma.

The metaphor of the path has two advantages over “voice”. First, it de-naturalizes the individual genius “behind” the work of art as the source, origin and authority of its meanings and effects. Second, it facilitates travel between the disciplinary fields involved, the text-based ones of catalogues, captions, an wall texts, and the visually-oriented ones represented by the objects on display. In this travel, I prefer to suspend answers we tend to desire too quickly, and instead propose to listen to representations where “speaking in tongues” is the standard and a single unified voice a particular, perhaps deviant, manifestation. For all cultures, including Western European culture, speak in many voices. This is a liberating universal. Its performativity is its empowering aspect. Attending to this multiplicity and it performances is a universalism I gladly endorse.
(Mieke Bal)

Lecture in English. Entrance free!

Mieke Bal, a cultural theorist and critic, is Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Professor (KNAW). She is based at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam. Her areas of interest range from biblical and classical antiquity to 17th century and contemporary art and modern literature, feminism and migratory culture. Her many books include A Mieke Bal Reader (2006), Travelling Concepts in the Humanities (2002) and Narratology (3rd edition 2009). Mieke Bal is also a video-artist; she makes experimental documentaries on migration. Her work is exhibited internationally. Occasionally she acts as an independent curator.