18 Art & Ethics 7: Museums
Some notes for this lesson come from this article from Kahn Academy, this video from Crash Course Art History, with Sarah Green, this article about Peter Higgs from the Associated Press, and an episode of Last Week Tonight, with John Oliver.
What's a Museum?
Museums are institutions that preserve precious artifacts, conserving and preserving them for future generations, so that we can better understand our world. The purpose of a museum is to educate the public, which is why museums must be open to the public. They catalog and categorize artifacts according to geographic location, time period, cultural significance, and various themes.
Why Do Museums Matter?
Museums protect our cultural heritage. Museums are the living memory of our many vibrant cultures. By saving and showcasing our best works, our masterpieces, they present us with our best selves - they inspire us. At the same time, they also confront us with unpleasant facts from our past, raising important questions as to how we should address past wrongs and grievances.
How Did Museums Start?
Art collecting began more or less with the Romans who hired artists to copy Greek statues and other treasures. Most original Greek sculpture is lost, and what we know of them comes from Roman copies. During the High Renaissance, starting around 1500, wealthy Europeans began building similar collections called "cabinets of curiosities".
They collected items from their travels around the world, including great works of art. Over time, these collections grew. Some wealthy individuals wanted to keep their collections together after their deaths, and so they planned to put them into something like a museum, with a fund to maintain them. Other rich individuals either lost their money and could no longer afford to keep all the art - or their bloodline was coming to an end, with no one to inherit it - and so they gave it to their city, or country, to create the first museums.
The first, and one of the largest is the British Museum in London, which was founded in 1753 and opened to the public in 1759:
The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, which had long existed for private viewing, opened to the public in 1769:
The Louvre in Paris used to be the king's palace. For most of the 18th century it was used for the Royal Academy of Painting & Sculpture. In 1793, during the French Revolution, it was converted into a national museum:
In 1798, The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam was opened,
then in 1819 Madrid, Spain opened El Prado:
Russia opened The Hermitage collection in St. Petersburg in 1852:
In 1870, America opened The Metropolitan Museum in NYC:
and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston:
In 1879 Chicago opened the Art Institute:
The National Gallery in DC opened in 1937:
and a Portrait Gallery was added in DC in 1962:
These are some of the major art museums in the world.
Why Are Museums Controversial?
Museums are controversial for many reasons. Because great art is rare and precious, it naturally becomes expensive - something only the rich can afford. Remember, there are still a great many artworks that are true masterpieces, and of great historic value, owned privately, away from the eyes of the public. Museums seek to correct this, raising funds to add to their collection, as an educational resource for the world. It's a very noble endeavor. But, when these museums are founded and created by the wealthy - especially (white) men of previous centuries, the collection inevitably reflects their values, their point of view. Any one point of view is always limited, and can lead to misrepresentation - showing people, not as they really were.
Colonization, Looting & Repatriation
Museums were created at a time when certain countries, like England and France, were major world powers. Through their influence (and oppression), they were able to obtain national treasures from countries around the world, often through nefarious means. For example, Greece was once ruled by the Turkish Ottoman Empire. In 1806 this empire (debatably) gave Britain permission to break up and loot Greek sculptures at the Parthenon in Athens - taking them to the British Museum. Greece, long rivals to the Turks, had no say in the matter. In similar ways, the British Museum took treasures from Asia, Africa, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and even Ireland and Wales. Many other museums followed the same practices - they'd take whatever the government gave them. The effects of this are astonishing. A 2018 report in France found that between 90-95% of all Africa's cultural artifacts reside in museums outside Africa.
One of the worst cases came in 1896, when the Oba (king) of Benin (in Nigeria) slaughtered around 200 men, 6 or 7 of them British, who had come to negotiate a trade deal - based on a treaty the Oba had signed in 1892, guaranteeing free trade. The Oba had since changed his mind, wanting to levy customs taxes on palm oil. A year later, the British sent a "punitive expedition" that leveled the entire Kingdom. Soldiers in the British army claimed that the Oba and his government had held mass human sacrifices, killing their own people to "appease the gods" as the British fought their way to the capital. This is disputed by some historians who feel the British were exaggerating the barbarity of the Benin people to justify their own slaughtering and razing of the city. How many were killed during this invasion is unknown, but certainly in the thousands. In the aftermath, the British broke up and looted everything they could, from ivory tusks to the famed Benin Bronzes, that tell the history of the nation - estimates run as high as 10,000 artifacts stolen.
During WWII (1940's), the Gestapo went around Europe stealing all the art and treasure they could find - especially from Jewish families, but also from the museums and churches of other nations. After the allies won the war, many of these treasures were returned, not to their respective owners, but to major allied museums. It's estimated around 30% of the drawings held by the British Museum were seized during WWII.
Looted artwork is often damaged and disorganized. Paintings get rolled up in ways that make them crack. Some are cut from their frames. Statues are often broken off at the feet. The Benin bronzes, that were placed in order, to tell the history of their people, are now in hopeless disarray.
Because so many artifacts are still held in private hands, the art market is swamped with them - often the provenance is impossible to guess, with museums and others still buying and trading in stolen goods. There are very few cases where theft can be proven, and the treasure sent back to its rightful owner. What's worse, there have been highly violent dictatorships like the Khmer Rouge and the Islamic State in Iraq that seize looted items and sell them on the black market to fund themselves.
For hundreds of years, nations have been calling on museums to repatriate their collection - sending looted treasures back to their countries of origin. Britain, the Louvre, and other museums have begun this process in some cases, but are still hesitant to give up their greatest possessions.
But Museums Protect the Art, Right?
Yes, in general. For all their faults, museums are why we can still enjoy so many great works of art and history in the present day. But, it is worth asking which museums are safest. In my lifetime, I have seen major museums in unstable nations experience catastrophic looting - the Iraq Museum in Baghdad during the 2nd Gulf War (thanks America!). And, then, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo was looted during the overthrow of its dictator in 2011. Then, in 2018 the National Museum of Brazil lost over 92% of its collection in a fire, due to neglect of the building. It makes you wonder if returning prized artifacts is really a good idea. At present, Nigeria, for example is ranked 140th in the world by the Corruption Perception Index, tied with Uganda, Mexico, and Iraq.
But then, destabilization can happen anywhere at any time. It's hard to predict. Furthermore, European museums don't have a spotless track record. The British museum, for example, has experienced theft from it's collection, over 2000 items over the last 30 years - a lot of it stolen (allegedly) by its own curator, Peter Higgs, who sold them on Ebay.
Sexism & Discrimination
Another issue in art museums has to do with the lack of representation for women and people of color in the arts. The Guerilla Girls, a protest group, has staged many protests, complaining, for example of how the MET Museum shows less than 4% women artists, while 85% of the paintings with women show them nude:
Even modern and contemporary museums suffer from bias, although, Sarah Green points out, the situation is changing. Museums are hiring more women and people of color to curate their collections, and to sit in leadership roles - but it's slow transition.
Deaccession
This is when a museum - or someone in it - decides to sell an artwork or artifact. It can be very unpopular - it shows that artworks in a museum aren't always so safe as you might think. The Detroit Institute of Art got in trouble trying to sell of its masterpieces to resolve some government debts of the city. Public outcry prevented it. Numerous universities have considered selling off their collections as well - it's always a temptation.
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