But as society transformed, with museums proliferating and developing an institutionalized status as purveyors of truth, they began to confront different kinds of crises altogether, injecting large doses of politics and culture wars into their operations. In earlier eras, the crises that predominated among museums tended to be the likes of fires that destroyed buildings and priceless artifacts, or wars and economic upheaval that shuttered society and sapped its resources.
One of the fascinating insights of The Museum is that as museums have become more long-lived institutions in American cultural life, their crises have become more existential and inward-focused. The Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan, in this 2020 picture. Overall, Redman judges that museums have done relatively well in meeting crisis moments, proving to be very resilient institutions that have stood the test of time while other fixtures of 19th-century life have long been forgotten. Redman judges that the Smithsonian fire and the Great Depression instigated fundamental changes in how museums operate, whereas the 1918 pandemic and the 1970s art strike – a New York–based artists’ movement against racism, sexism and the Vietnam war – failed to inspire much lasting change or self-reflection. When it comes to these pivot points, not all are of the same usefulness. They suddenly go from being abstract questions to being very concrete and real.”
“One of the reasons I became so interested in crisis is because these periods make acute questions about what museums should be. “During crises, museums ask questions about power and who gets to determine what stories are told or foregrounded, who gets to determine how those things are exhibited, framed, and talked about,” he said. For Redman, emergencies are the perfect moment to name these elusive qualities, as they are times when museums are forced to confront basic questions about their priorities, their core constituencies and their essential tasks. In addition to the Smithsonian fire and the Spanish flu, Redman also looks at cataclysms like the Great Depression, the second world war, the coronavirus and the national protests following the death of George Floyd, as well as more existential crises like the culture wars of the 1980s and 90s and museums’ own legacies as agents of colonialism and exploitation.Īcross the sweep of these various pivot points, The Museum distills the core values and unique contributions that have allowed this institution to stay vital – and relatively consistent – throughout decades of transformation. What emerged from that moment is a slender, taut work of scholarship that explores how museums have responded to crises both external and internal, beginning with the massive 1865 fire at the Smithsonian.
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