The Macho Museum Model

Tom Flynn writes further on his approach to the universal museum question (see my earlier "Tom Flynn Blames the Museums") taking as his starting point the recent Madrid/Medici pot discussion by Fabio Isman in The Art Newspaper. He notes that the claim used to absolve them that the objects acquired by museums "in centuries past" were acquired exclusively "during wars and conquests" is simply factually incorrect (besides which Flynn cogently observes that this is "implying that war and military conquest represent legitimate circumstances in which to loot countries of their material heritage"). Flynn is forthright:

Anyone caring to scrutinize the circumstances in which most of the great encyclopedic collections were formed would have to conclude that very significant quantities of objects in those collections were acquired unethically (whether one judges one's ethics by 19th century or 21st century standards).

Flynn reiterates his point that I earlier queried. There are problems inherent in the treating of so-called "repatriation" issues concerning pre- and post-1970 museum acquisitions in the same manner, Flynn agrees but points out that:

Nineteenth-century acquisitions are too hot a potato to handle and condemning them probably doesn't help clarify the more pressing and demonstrably unethical post-1970 acquisitions of the kind Isman refers to. But like an oncologist looking to your family DNA for the cause of your illness, I have good reason to continue conflating these issues. [...] European and North American museums remain locked in the same competitive race towards an encyclopedic embrace of the world's material culture, no matter what the consequences might be for archaeology. That is why I continue to focus on the underlying modus operandi of our museums — namely the Enlightenment-born idée fixe that seeks to place the whole universe "'neath one roof". And as I said in my earlier piece, that macho museum model is what inspires the private collectors to do what they do. We won't beat the looting and the private collecting of illicitly acquired antiquities until we reform the museums.

He is of course right. Museums have to get their act together and stop being the destination of increasing numbers of objects which have "surfaced" (from underground) and of poorly documented and unknown provenance. the basis of a good museum is a well-considered and ethical acquisitions policy and excellent documentation (inventorisation and research documentation on the items held).

Tom Flynn has a paper ("Encyclopaedic museums and the 'Primitive Accumulation' of cultural heritage") coming out in October as part of an event exploring current thinking on 'encyclopaedic' or 'universal' museums. From the preview, it looks like his paper will be very much to the taste of the fraction in the no-questions-asked collecting world who call themselves "Internationalists", as it quotes Marx.