ASK AAM

ASK AAM

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Q:
A thought occurred to me while reading the Center for the Future of Museums’ (CFM) report Museums & Society 2034: What are the implications—ethical and practical—of all of these predictions for how museums will operate in the future?

By Elizabeth E. Merritt and Erik Ledbetter

Elizabeth E. Merritt is founding director, AAM’s Center for the Future of Museums, and Erik Ledbetter is director, AAM’s international programs.

A:
Funny you should mention it—this issue of Museum features an article summarizing that very report, and we were just mulling over it ourselves and previewing the questions we may receive in letters to “Ask AAM” in coming years. Here is a summary of our predictions, but bear in mind that our crystal ball is a factory second, and though it resembles a real crystal ball it may nevertheless have certain imperfections—caveat emptor.

Generational Equity
The Reach Advisors report drives home an undisputed demographic truth: The United States is aging. Baby Boomers are entering their retirement years in large numbers and robust health but with shriveled or nonexistent retirement savings. Economic necessity motivates them to stay in the workforce, and the law offers them strong protections from discrimination based on age. However, if these experienced, talented and energetic workers don’t retire, what room will be left for the next generation? What are the risks of losing a generation or more of talented individuals from employment in museums? This dilemma is particularly acute when the existing, largely Caucasian museum workforce is cross-indexed against an increasingly diverse society. If things continue along this path, museums will be even more out of step with our audiences—in addition to blocking the career path of the next wave of museum professionals.

Accessible Design
This report describes a future in which museums emphasize universal design. In an aging America it’s clearer than ever that there are two categories of audience—the disabled and the temporarily able bodied. Instead of designing exhibits primarily for the able bodied, and considering how to make them accessible, the default assumption in museum design may become that everything must be accessible. Will this forestall the development of potentially awesome experiences that only some can take advantage of? We already see the beginnings of this debate. Some installation artists create works that invite audience interaction but that have not been designed with accessibility in mind. Organizations that conserve and care for wild lands are having to choose between access that presumes bipedal mobility and good balance or paths that have an unacceptably high impact on fragile habitats. In the future, how much of a museum’s audience must be able to interact fully with an exhibit in order to justify its installation or is anything less than 100 percent accessible unethical, as some already argue?

Will the Virtual Supplant the Real?
When museum people discuss the future, sooner rather than later we turn to the fate of the “real thing.” The authors of this column feel the virtual will never supplant people’s desire for the real. However, the costs of storing collections are high and rising, and digitization technology is becoming more sophisticated and less expensive. There will be growing financial, political and managerial pressure to consider preserving virtual copies of some collections materials and disposing of the originals. In the Alternate Reality Game Superstruct, run by the Institute for the Future last fall, one player predicted that museums in 2019 will be digitizing archival documents and selling the originals in order to stay afloat. Putting aside the question of whether digitization is a viable alternative to physical preservation in terms of risk or cost, would this be ethical? Could a museum fulfill its obligation to hold material in trust for the public by keeping the inherent information but letting go of the object itself?

Museums and Sustainability
The report paints a sobering picture of the United States facing increasing energy costs, a fragile ecology and a volatile economy. Superstruct suggests vast human migrations may be driven by these factors. This may lead us to reexamine our assumptions regarding where we build museums and how we operate them. Museums are energy hogs: We must figure out the balance between our obligations to preserve our collections in trust for the public and contributing as little as possible towards global warming. Museums also need to consider: Should we invest millions of dollars in new buildings sited in communities that in time residents may leave to avoid unfavorable climate changes and economic circumstances? Before we commission trendy bespoke buildings, should we think about how our community would repurpose the building if the museum closes, moves or downsizes?

Museums as Citadels
Museums & Society 2034 portrays the U.S. as more diverse yet also more fragmented. People will self-select whom to interact with and whom to get their news from. The report cheerily points out that there is a role for museums as places of cultural exchange among these groups. But these trends could equally lead to a backlash of ethnocentric nostalgia. Some groups will resent losing traditional positions of power. In the past, such feelings have led to the creation of organizations like the Confederate Relic Room and Museum and the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum. While these two particular institutions have struggled consciously to become more inclusive, they were originally regarded by many as inherently exclusionary, even offensive. Sometimes as a field we speak as if we universally value promoting civil discourse and inclusiveness. Our more diverse future could bring a bulge of revanchist museums celebrating a mythic monochromatic past. Is that okay? If not, why not, and what will we, as a field, do about it?

Museums as Soup Kitchens
In a recent Museum 3.0 blog post Elaine Gurian asked a provocative question: In a serious economic downturn, should museums turn to providing social services if that is what their community needs? Or should they hew narrowly to their primary mission of preservation and interpretation? Museums & Society 2034 suggests that there are parallels between the current economic downturn and the Japanese “lost decade” of the 1990s. Perhaps the U.S. economy will substantively recover in a year or so, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke suggests. But the current crisis may last ten years or more. In that case, the question becomes acute: is it ethical for a museum to focus solely on mission when social needs are going unmet? Is it meaningful (or even possible) to be a great museum in a broken city?

These are only a few of the questions museums will grapple with in the future, based on the ideas presented in Museums & Society 2034. Whether you consider the report to be conservative or extremist (and we have heard both opinions, from various readers) it is clear that the United States is entering an era of profound and rapid change. The best way museums and museum people can prepare is to explore these ideas now and decide as individuals, institutions and as a field how we want to shape this future. You can keep the discussion going by contributing your ideas at the CFM website, www.futureofmuseums.