New Approaches to Museum

Ethics: Codes, Values and

Case Studies

Dr. Janet Marstine

School of Museum Studies

University of Leicester

New Museum Ethics: Ethics as

Discourse

• Central to all areas of museum work

• Contingent upon changing social,

political, technological and economic

terrain

• Intellectual inquiry

• Social practice

21st-Century Museum Ethics:

Ordinary Ethics

• Embraces ‘ordinary’ ethics

– We all engage with ethics on a daily basis

– Leverages this experience so ethics not

just purview of ‘experts’ but participatory,

consultative

– Allows for divergent viewpoints of diverse

stakeholders to be heard

New Museum Ethics

• Influence of post-modern theory;

applied ethics; critical museology

• Transparency, self-reflexivity towards

processes and authority of museums

• Deconstructing issues of power and

the distribution of resources

• Social responsibility at heart

New Museum Ethics

• Ethics codes function in conjunction

with values and principles and with

interdisciplinary case studies to create

ethics discourse

Christie’s auction of Northampton Museum Egyptian sculpture Sekhemka, July 2014, for £15 million

Picketing outside Science Museum,

London, protesting budget cuts to education and visitor services

20st-Century Museum Ethics as a

Code-Driven Approach

• Rules for individual conduct in

professional practice

• Skill development and standard

setting

• Distinguishes public service from

personal gain and political interests

•

20st-Century Museum Ethics as a

Code-Driven Approach

• Echoes legal documents in tone and

intent

• Focuses on decrees, prohibitions to

control behavior

• Static, fixed

• Authoritarian; voice of moral certainty

• Reactive: ‘do no harm’ sensibility

• Based on ‘consensus’ by ‘experts’

Codes: Complexities and Contradictions

• Speak in universal terms with little acknowledgment of

– Diverse and ever-shifting cultural and international contexts

– Conflicting codes and conventions (national, international, museum, governing body, discipline-based)

MA Code of Ethics (last revised

2007)

• Not organic: with analysis can see

ghosts of earlier iterations

– Trace back to original Code of Conduct

for Museum Curators

• Impact: focus on collections over

people

– Property over relationships

MA Code of Ethics (last revised

2007)

Dominated by language of coercion:

– Account

– Avoid

– Adhere

– Comply

– Decline

– Refuse

– Reject

– Report

Museums Association Code of

Ethics

• 24 pages

• Requires glossary

• Encourages passive approach to ethics – Go-to resource when hit major trouble

– Does not provide the kind of resource practitioners need to recognize and analyse the ethical dimensions of issues they encounter on a routine basis

Rethinking the MA Ethics Code:

Addressing the Social Role of

Museums • Recognise moral

agency of museums

• Shaped by MA policy

document ‘Museums

Change Lives’

• Museums have

capacity and

responsibility to be

socially purposeful

The 3 spheres of ethics discourse

Ethics

discourse

Values

and

principles

Case

studies

Ethics

codes

Ethics Codes: A Prescriptive Set

of Rules for How to Behave Benefits

• Provides clear

guidelines in

specific situations

• Distinguish public

service from

personal gain and

political interest

Challenges

• Reliance on jargon

• Does not address ‘why’;

• Rules formed by the few

on the many

• Defines practice as

unchanging and

universal

• Focuses on collections

over people

• Tends to be used in

extreme one-off

situations and forgotten

A Living, Breathing Ethics Code?

• Informed by:

– on-going processes of revision;

– participatory practices leveraging

ordinary ethics;

– principles of moral agency

Values/Principles: Set of Ideals to

Aspire to (eg Integrity, Fairness)

Benefits

• Positive and

inclusive

• Can provide

guidance for action

• Challenges

common

assumptions and

status quo

Challenges

• Abstraction makes them

difficult to translate into

practice and contested

in terms of implications

• Do not reflect the

complexities of the

application of these

ideals in diverse cultural

and international

contexts

Case Studies: Analysing a

Specific Ethics Issue in Context Benefits

• Invites discourse on how to resolve the dilemma

• Practical and relevant: connected to ordinary ethics

• Can generate diverse interdisciplinary perspectives and understandings

• Constructive conflict helps overcome polarised positions

Challenges

• Can lack clear

guidance, frameworks

or structure

• How they may apply to

other circumstances

may not be apparent

Case Studies: Analysing a

Specific Ethics Issue in Context Benefits

• Invites discourse on how to resolve the dilemma

• Practical and relevant

• Accessible to diverse stakeholders

• Can generate diverse interdisciplinary perspectives and understandings

• Constructive conflict helps overcome polarised positions

Challenges

• Can lack clear

guidance, frameworks

or structure

• How they may apply to

other circumstances

may not be apparent

Artists interventions as an ethics

strategy

• Attempt to change existing conditions

in museums

• Whether outside museum as guerrilla

tactic

• Or inside museum as commission

• Exploit tensions of margin/core to

advance ethics discourse

The threat of destruction: Anapheles mosquito, as

photographed for Ansuman Biswas’ Manchester

Hermit, 2009

Visitor-Generated Content, Ordinary Ethics

and Museum Policy/Practice

• Visitor generated content captures the beauty and power of ordinary ethics through collective conversations

• Ordinary ethics as expressed through social media can help shape museum ethics policy and practice

Relational Collecting at the Manchester

Museum: Trees, 2013