City Museums & Park Museums

National Art Education Association

City Museums &Park MuseumsAuthor(s): Mark FenechSource: Art Education, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Jan., 2003), pp. 46-51Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3194032 .

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IN

and the'going' in the teq-u equation of visiting

the art museum?" <.

A rt museums are important arenas of discourse and cultural activity in contempo- ary society. They are widely

regarded by their communities as institutions of learning and cultural knowledge; they are store-houses of publicly sanctioned artistic treasures and, increasingly, they are tourist venues and theatres of "infotainment." However, as places to go to, how often do we consider the "place" and the "going" in the equation of visiting the art museum? The geographical location of art museums can be a telling character- istic of their institutional and civic missions and a revealing feature of their cultural "personalities." As part of research in progress, this paper looks at The Art Institute of Chicago as a "city museum" and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia as a "park museum" in an investigation of the potential for location to construct experiences and guide educational and curatorial programs for the museum visitor.

The Physical Setting of Art Museums Art museums are popular places. The American Association of Museums (AAM) identifies museums as the most popular cultural institution visited by Americans today.' In the decade up to the Year 2000, AAM asserts, museum visitorship increased by over 200 million. Yet the physical setting of art museums can easily be overlooked by visitors as an unimportant feature in an increasingly seductive milieu of infotainment and cultural glamour.

There seems to be a great deal that is left undisclosed when we visit art museums, including the physical engagement that we have with them as "places." I contend that despite their educational mission to enlighten, art museums can unwittingly coerce visitors in their construction of knowledge by a system that packages culture as a commodity. Art museums present as places of reflection, but how aware are

we of the subtle imperatives that steer museums to function as tourist sites or theatres of thoughtless entertainment? Unless art educators act as aware and critical subjects in connecting with art museums, then claims of the liberating and egalitarian uniqueness that these sites offer us educationally become hollow and unfulfilled.

The two types of physical settings of art museums discussed here are the city museum and the park museum. The Art Institute of Chicago is used as an illus- tration of the city museum form. It is characterised by a close geographic and symbolic proximity to the city as a bustling metropolis. The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, is used as a typical example of the park museum, a form modelled from the private galleries of the 19th century, which emphasized the sublime and idyllic pursuit of reflective contemplation associated with aesthetics, taste, and ownership of the high arts.

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The Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) is a world-renowned art museum in terms of the scale and depth of its collections and the strength and diversity of its curatorial and educational programs. As Illinois' major art museum, it is located on South Michigan Avenue at Adams, in close proximity, both in a visual and practical sense, to the financial and retail hub of the city. Architecturally, it is a temple form, typical of late 19th-century classical revivalist architecture that growing cities across the Western world at the time reserved for their places of civic importance, such as institutions of learning and theatres of high culture.

The Art Institute has had a strong educational mission from its beginning. The intention of accessibility of artworks to its publics motivated the museum to publish catalogues and handbooks and to sponsor popular lectures from as early as 1895. It was in this year that W. M. R. French, then Director of the Art Institute, appointed special gallery lecturers to fulfil the educational mission of the Art Institute. Zeller (1989) says "in 1916 the Art Institute of Chicago established an Extension Department which organized exhibitions and related programming...

[and that] in cooperation with the Woman's City Club gave noon hour programs to factory employees" (p. 68). The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is attached to the museum and continues today as one of the first rank of art schools in the United States.

Chicago's Art Museum: A City Museum The AIC is a museum with a character shaped by the dynamic and modem landscape that is the city of Chicago. The Art Institute resonates an affinity with its locale, presence, and symbolic communication with its publics. Neil Harris, Professor of History at the University of Chicago, has used the term "city museum" in describing the Art Institute.2 The acuteness of his description evokes the cultural envi- ronment and social mindset in which the Art Institute functions. Harris implies the art museum is a busy and active place, a venue where individuals and communities coalesce dynami- cally, where there is noise and hustle and bustle, as one would expect in a large city. There is also the notion that the pavement extends into the museum space and that the dimen- sions of business activity common to metropolitan life extend the character of the city art museum. This is in

contrast with what Harris describes as the park museum model-a respite, a recreational place for quite contemplation. The park museum, for example the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is situated on the perimeter of the central commercial strip, idyllic and picturesque in its own right. It is like a grand country manor, panoramically placed on the ridge of open parkland and groomed botanic gardens.

Harris's connotation of a "city museum" alludes to the character of the Art Institute as a public place. Chicago has a reputation as a city of great architecture, home of master architects like Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mies van der Rohe. The AIC collection of architectural drawings, documents, and fragments occupies a significant place within the museum and is one way that the museum embodies the strong architectural heritage of the city as a whole.3 Originally designed as part of the Columbian Exposition of 1893, it was built at a time when Chicago had re- established itself as a modem city of the American Midwest after the devastating fire of 1871. Phipps (1986) observes that, in administering Chicago's growing cultural organizations, the city's wealthy businessmen were able to make important decisions regarding architectural patronage. That the physical appearance of their city reflected indirectly on its most powerful residents, the adoption of academic classi- cism by the Art Institute Trustees for their museum signaled Chicago's assumption of its rightful place among the cultivated cities of the world.4

Trains pass under the AIC.5 Rorimer in Pointon (1994) describes this as a "visible intersection of commercial and cultural activity" (p. 255). How apt also that Chicago's central train terminal, the famous Union Station, adopted the same classical architectural features that cultural centers like the Art Institute, the Field Museum, and the Museum of Science and Industry had already established.6

The Art Institute of Chicago on busy South Michigan Avenue. Above left: The old wing of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

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Harris is not alone in his articulation of the 'city museum' as a description for the AIC. Ronne Hartfield, the Art Institutes's former Director of Museum Education, further delineates Harris's idea of the "city" museum. Hartfield says that:

...we are bound together, for better or for worse, the city and the museum, and in order for us to consider an appropriate role for a museum within a city, we need to consider that city as carefully as we consider the museum itself. (p. I)7

Hartfield's words are realized, if only partially, in the character of the Art Institute's 500-member volunteer corps, 60% of whom are residents of the city of Chicago.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) is Sydney's principal museum of fine arts, a public institution in a bureaucratic sense, being administered and funded by the government of the State of New South Wales on behalf of its citizens.8 The Art Gallery is situated on State land, and its collections 'belong' to the people of New South Wales.

The collections held by Art Gallery are primarily Australian artworks from the colonial era (mainly 1788 to early 19th century) to the present. Acquisitions have traditionally been made curatorially rather than through the personal bequests of a wealthy public. The AGNSW has recently established and housed impressive collections of Asian art and indigenous Australian art. The latter has been restructured into a new exhibition in a gallery renovation and renamed as the Yiribana Gallery. The renovation primarily involved the movement away from a largely hidden, ethnographic collection of native artifacts towards a thematic and aesthetically coherent collection of artistically significant objects reflecting a living material culture. The museolog- ical shifts expressed in Yiribana have occurred at a time when contemporary Australian society is negotiating avenues of reconciliation with a dispossessed and alienated indigenous people.9 Visitors to Yiribana now approach indigenous artworks within the same contemplative space as in the rest of the museum. It is also interesting that Yiribana enjoys the corporate sponsorship of the national airline, Qantas, hinting at the corporate engagement of business and museum through cultural tourism. The sponsorship was conve-

niently timed to coincide with the build up to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

Sydney's Gallery of Art: A Park Museum The only way to arrive at the Art Gallery of New South Wales is to move through a series of open park spaces on the perimeter of Sydney's central business district. There is a cathedral of leafy Morton Bay Fig trees that line Art Gallery Road, providing a peaceful stroll through the Royal Botanical Gardens, with the picturesque harbor as backdrop. It is a most pleasant approach to Sydney's major public art museum.

The visitor is prepared for the quiet and meditative mood of the Art Gallery of New South Wales by its location in The Domain. An apron of green sepa- rating State Parliament House and the State Library from the Art Gallery, The Domain is a much-used recreational area today with activities ranging from inter-corporate lunchtime sporting activities to open-air concerts and performances. This was not always the case. The Domain's history, particularly during the 1930s, was as a forum for soap-box lectures where bush lawyers and would-be politicians would draw crowds keen on any argument. The Domain has always been a gathering

The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and its leafy surrounds.

ART EDUCATION / JANUARY 2003



Laurie Mungatopi, Bob One Apuatimi, Big Jack Yarunga, Don Burakmadjua, Charlie Quiet, unknown artist. Tutini (Pukamani grave posts), 1958. Natural pigment on ironwood, 147.3 x 29.2 cm to 274.2 x 30.5 cm. Gift of Dr. Stuart Scougall, 1959. Art Gallery of New South Wales. ? Jilamara Arts and Craft, reproduced with permission. Photo by Diana Panuccio for AGNSW.

place of people. The Art Gallery of New South Wales is perfectly positioned there as a site where people come to think, reflect, and make judgments.

The reflective character of the AGNSW is also discernible in the collection and display practices of its art works. Although there is a chrono- logical and geographical arrangement to the permanent collections of the AGNSW, the minimal labeling of works adds to the meditative, rather than instructional, character of this institution. Despite its historical links with the institutional bodies of education in New South Wales and its early use as an art school, the Art Gallery, following the British convention, has always been a "gallery" and not a "museum." The title "museum" leans towards historical instruction, while a "gallery" has tended to be a place of browsing and aesthetic contemplation.10 The current image of the AGNSW is one of an enjoyable place

The hang of the Colonial Australian art collection al Gallery of New South Wales.

to visit with a relatively dynamic position in the public mind.1I

The classical revivalist architecture of the Art Gallery, complete with Ionic portico, adds to the lyrical setting. Inside, the older wings of the Art Gallery that house the Colonial Australian, 19th Century Australian and pre- Modern European art collections are spacious and grand in their architecture. These galleries greet the visitor with original wooden floors, an absence of electrical light fittings, and high walls elegantly painted in traditional Victorian colors. Paintings are hung above and below others. These spaces have a church-like atmosphere as visitors glide through these courts speaking in whispers and where works can be experienced from close up or from the central benches from

which the viewer may survey the whole room. (Art Gallery of NSW Trust, 1996)

Kunny (1997) observes that the gallery talks that are part of the educational practices at the AGNSW are reflective of a dialogue that occurs on the public space of the gallery floor, shared by the work, the individual, and the museum itself. She says

t the Art that:

[Floor talk] implies the exposed position of the lecturer and indicates that the speaker and the audience share the floor. No longer behind the podium, or on the stage, the lecturer is able to share the viewers' immediate response to art but also brings to bear an informed view based on humane letters. (p. 38) While the Art Gallery presents as a

cultural institution of great educational importance in Australia, the primary engagement that it looks to offer to its visitors is an aesthetic experience and contemplative encounter.

What City and Park Museums Offer Art Educators The characteristics of city and park museums that have been illustrated here in the examples of the AIC and the AGNSW describe horizons of experience that educators can engage with in both conceptual and practical ways. Educators can effectively deconstruct the experience of visiting city and park museums by observing and analyzing these characteristics of context and drawing upon what would otherwise be opaque educational relationships between the institution and the individual. Such a delineation recognizes the individual as an aware subject who is less open to the tacit manipulation of systematic imperatives such as a blind respect for institutional authority or the seduction of material culture that is carefully promoted by infotainment and merchandising.

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Educators are already equipped at both these institutions with programming initiatives that recognize the position of the audience in their engagement with the museum in the "city" and "park" contexts described here. Many museum-community partnerships co-ordinated by the Art Institute's Department of Museum Education continue to reflect a closeness with the city. "Art Express" is an initiative of the Art Institute, begun in May 1993, to take the museum to the corporate frontline of the city. Museum professionals present lectures and visual reproduc- tions of artworks, either from the collection or on temporary exhibition, to employees during their lunch hours. The presentations are on the employees' worksite and are funded by their employers. The "Art Express" program enacts an important strategy in the coalescing of private and civic life- worlds and corporate-public and civic- public milieus. Other programming initiatives at the Art Institute such as the "UPPs Corps" (Urban Professional Partners Corps) and the "After Hours" program aim at bringing young urban professionals into the museum and recognize the "city" character of the museum. 1

School visitors to the AGNSW are conceptually equipped to interrogate the site and deconstruct experiences of their field trips as much as to engage with the objects of culture that are carefully presented to them as works of art. The Art Gallery's annual exhibition of selected works of final year high school students, coincidently called Artexpress, is a major draw, bringing thousands of visitors to the museum each February.

The New South Wales Visual Arts Syllabus (2000) for Years 11 and 12 stresses "audience" and "world" as two conceptual frameworks for educators to provide learning experiences and critical analyses of contexts as well as objects. This syllabus builds upon Years 7 to 10 experiences of deconstructing artistic and cultural contexts using a post-moder frame of critical analysis where new meanings can be explored. There is scope within the structured

educational program to investigate the place of art museums in the world of art and art history and the engagement of visitors with exhibitions through case studies.

Gallery talks are an active way of presenting works to students in the context of their exhibited spaces, and most school lectures occur at the AGNSW in such scenarios. Lacking a separate specialized area for studio practices by students who visit the Art Gallery, the Public Programs division has organized studio sessions in the old wings of the Gallery where students have engaged in life drawing exercises, bringing a practical dimension to the aesthetics of reflection promoted by the installation. Documenting the journey to the art museum through sketches, photographs, or video is another way that students have consid- ered the physical contexts of art museums and how they may shape their learning experiences.

Conclusion The exhibitions and objects inside art museums will always be at the fore- front of our minds as art educators. Their rarity, beauty, skilfulness, or simplicity take our focus and are, for most of us, the reasons that we go to art museums. The journey to the museum and the physical location and the character of city and park museums offer food for thought for those of us ready to consider their subtleties in the complete educational equation of engaging with these cultural institutions. As these cultural centers become more and more medi- ated by the systematic imperatives of institutions and businesses, and as culture transforms seamlessly into entertainment and tourism, the seduc- tiveness of art museums can construct experiences that disengage visitors as thoughtless and coerced subjects.

If visiting art museums is to be part of our educational repertoire as art teachers-and of course it should be- then we must engage with them as reflective and aware subjects if the educational potential of our relation- ship is to be authentically fulfilled.

There is great opportunity for educators in promoting reflection in this regard. Teachers are visiting art museums with students in greater numbers than ever before, and the services offered by these institutions cater for experiences much broader than the historical narra- tive of artworks. The consciousness of the young audiences that we bring to the museums, while sometimes inexpe- rienced in the world of art, are perhaps more sharply attuned to the visual culture and politics of their own world than ever before. Engaging students with the physical contexts of art museums can broaden understanding and equip them with alert and inquiring minds, helping them to deconstruct the intended and accidental meanings of the experience of visiting these arenas of cultural knowledge.

Mark Fenech is a doctoral candidate at the University of New South Wales, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

REFERENCES Art Gallery of New South Wales Trust. (1996,

May 6). Minutes: Trustees strategies meeting at Elizabeth Bay House. Sydney: Author. pp. 2-6.

Habermas, J. (1981/1984). The theory of communicative action. Vol 1. Reason and the rationalisation of society. [Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns, Band 1: Handlungsrationalitat und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung. (1981)]. (T.McCarthy, Trans., 1984). Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

Habermas, J. (1981/1984). The theory of communicative action. Vol 2. Lifeworld and system: A critique offunctionalist reason. [Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns, Band 2: Zur Kritik der funktional- istischenVernunft. (1981)]. (T.McCarthy, Trans., 1984). Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

Harris, N. (1993). Chicago's dream: A world's treasure. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago.

Hartfield, R. (1991). The City Museum and Communitas. Unpublished proceedings of City Life and the Future Museum Series of Lectures. (October 23.).University of Illinois.

Kunny, C. (1997, February).Taking the tour: How a museum lecturer looks at the museum. The New Art Examiner, pp. 36-38.

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Far left Students at work in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Left. School students engaging with works at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

National Endowment for the Arts. (1997). Survey ofpublic participation in the arts. Washington, DC: Author.

Phipps, L. S. (1986). The Art Institute of Chicago 1890-97Patrons and architects. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison.

Pointon, M. (Ed.). (1994). Art apart; Art institutions and ideology across England and North America. Manchester University Press: Manchester.

Railway Age, July 4,1925, Vol. 79, No. 1. p. 25. Anne Rorimer (1994). Questioning the struc-

ture: Museum context as content. In M. Pointon, (Ed.). Art apart; Art institutions and ideology across England and North America. Manchester University Press: Manchester. p. 255.

Zeller, T. (1989). The historical and philosoph- ical foundations of art museum education in America. (p. 10-89). In N. Berry & S. Mayer (Eds.), Museum education: History, theory and practice. Reston: National Art Education Association.

FOOTNOTES 1National Endowment for the Arts, 1997 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Arts, 1998.

2Neil Harris is author of Chicago's Dream: A World's Treasure (1993), a publication commemorating the centenary of the Art Institute. His reference to 'city museum' came through an interview with me as part of the doctoral investigation from which this paper emerges.

3The Art Institute of Chicago has collected architectural drawings, models and fragments since the opening of the Burnham Library of Architecture in 1919. The art museum has held

architectural exhibitions since 1894. The historic Trade Room of Louis Sullivan's Chicago Stock Exchange, demolished inl971, was salvaged and then reconstructed in the Art Institute between 1976 and 1977. In 1981, the establishment of the Department of Architecture as a curatorial section of the Art Institute "solidified Chicago's position as one of the centers of architectural research in the United States." (Harris, 1993, p. 55)

4(Phipps, 1986, p. 134)

5 Chicago's commercial history makes for a city defined by movement and trade. As settle- ment spread westward across the United States in the mid to late 19th century, Chicago was established as a center for transported goods.

6The journal, Railway Age, July 4,1925, Vol. 79, No. 1, says "the Chicago Union Station evidences in a magnificent way the avowed purpose ... to modernize [and represent] the harmonious coordination of the aims and ideals of the city of Chicago" (Railway Age, 1925, p. 25). The grand classical architectural renovations to Chicago's Union Station were completed on May 15, 1924 at a cost of $75,000,000. The eastern elevation facing the Chicago River comprised 16 massive arches and the Canal Street side comprises a colon- nade of Roman-Doric columns 39ft. high. It superseded the railway station built in 1880.

7Ronnie Hartfield speaking at the City Life and the Future of Museums symposium, a series of lectures at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1991.

8General admission to the Art Gallery of NSW is free of charge. While publicly funded through the State budget of New South Wales, the Art Gallery does also enjoy minimal corporate sponsorship for special exhibitions and single collections such as the Qantas spon-

sored Yiribana Gallery of Aboriginal art. Private bequests have also been made to the Art Gallery's collections and financial assis- tance from individuals have supported programs of conservation such as in the 1988 exhibition "The Artist and the Patron."

9"Yiribana" is the name given to the Art Gallery of New South Wales gallery of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art that opened in November, 1994. It is an Aboriginal name meaning "this way" and was the title of the first exhibition in this restructured space. "Yiribana" has commonly been adopted to refer in general to the indigenous collection at the Art Gallery of NSW.

10Between 1872 and 1877 the Academy organized exhibitions of art and as early as 1871 it conducted lectures on art and classes in painting and sculpture. 1 (Art Gallery of NSW Trust, 6th May, 1996. p. 6.)

12The UPPs Corps initiative provides lecture- type activities on a thematic basis directed at young urban professionals, particularly from the Afro-American community. The adminis- trators of this program within the Department of Museum Education see this target group as "cultural ambassadors" to the urban community. The After Hours initiative at The Art Institute of Chicago is a monthly social evening in which young urban professionals enjoy programmed activities and drinks in the art museum after regular hours. The program aims to encourage a cultural/social behavior amongst the younger city set.

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City Museums & Park Museums