American Museums in Crisis: A New Thing?

A recent Washington Postarticle written by Robert Sullivan, a former associate director for public programs of the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum and the current vice president of Chora, a museum consulting firm in Washington accused the Smithsonian Institution of failing on many fronts over the course of the past decade.  Terms used by Sullivan in the Washington Post to describe the growing problems at the Smithsonian include commercialism, Disneyfication and over-politicization.  Recent attendance and income projections appear to have been inflated, causing the institution overall financial strain. The institution’s National Museum of the American Indian’s attendance has sunk by fifty percent since the museum opened in 2004 and the new American Art Museum opened two years behind schedule and was roughly $30 million over budget.  Sullivan’s Washington Post article points the blame square at the Smithsonian’s top brass, “This past decade has not been a clash of cultures, but a crisis of competence at the top of the Smithsonian.” 

Sullivan seeks to find lessons for the Smithsonian’s leadership within the institution’s genesis. “The Smithsonian needs to get back to basics,” the April 1st headline reads. His article quotes Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian, in a manner that echoes the political wrangling over the words of America’s Founding Fathers.  In examining Henry’s goals for the institution, Sullivan argues, we might find answers for contemporary problems.  While Sullivan’s historicism might prove to be valuable to an institution seeking to meditate on its current milieu, the examination of the history of American museums should attempt to move past the somewhat reflexive study of institutional foundations and look to other periods in American history to draw what could prove to be more useful parallels.  Those who have studied the history of American or even European museums will recognize that the museum is described using the terms, “crisis” and “transition” almost to the point of cliché.  That said, museums, as with other cultural institutions, have indeed undergone multiple periods of true crisis and transition.  If the goal is understanding how a museum, in this case the multiple branches of the Smithsonian Institution, might successfully approach its current problems, perhaps dusting off the original mission statement is not the only way to tease out lessons or ideas from history.

Commercialism, Disneyfication, and political hand-wringing certainly are not the first problems that American museums have faced.  One of the many major problems that American museums needed to address in the 20th century was the exodus of many of American museum’s top scholars to the academy that took place following the turn of the century and into the 1920s.  While significant scholars, such as Franz Boas, had left the museum setting well before the 1920s, the American museum continued to be the locale for much of the serious thinking that took place in disciplines such as anthropology and archaeology for several years and continues to this day. A majority of the production of knowledge in fields of natural history and social sciences had shifted over to American universities, yet the museum brain drain in the first quarter of the twentieth century did not mean an end to weighty or high profile scholars and scholarship associated with American museums.  Continuing with the example of anthropology we can follow at least two of Boas’s students into the continuing history of American museums. Margaret Mead joined the American Museum of Natural History in 1926 and stayed until her death in 1978 and Alfred Kroeber was affiliated with the University of California Museum of Anthropology (later the Lowie Museum of Anthropology and Hearst Museum of Anthropology) until his death in 1960.  While a majority of Kroeber’s students at Berkeley sought academic appointments, a number of them pursued careers outside the academy, including jobs as museum curators. Few would question that influential scholars working in fields such as paleontology, biology and art history continue to work in museums and produce significant scholarship.

Museums faced yet another “crisis” during the Great Depression and Second World War.  This period of museum history is marked by some of the most difficult challenges faced by museums in the 20th century, yet it also marks many of the most successful initiatives that museums have ever attempted.  The Works Progress Administration (WPA) undertook a number of projects in museums across the country; a fact that has long been recognized by plaques in exhibition halls, yet not by those writing about the history of American museum crises.  Before the close of the Second World War, several major American museums appear to have witnessed a significant attendance boom, breaking a number of long-standing records, another fact not exactly congruent with the concept of the museum in crisis during this period.

Again, a number of museum specialists and cultural critics bemoaned the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) when it passed in 1990.  The law, which governs the return of culturally sensitive material from museums, caused many to predict the end of American museum collections.  Many argued that museums had begun a path down a slippery slope in which all objects would be returned to their culture of origin.  And while a significant number of objects have indeed been returned, the number of Native American tribes requesting the return of material that might be considered culturally sensitive is currently nowhere near the initial estimates of many of these critics.  Moreover, the increased dialogue between museums and Native American tribal representatives has, in general, greatly benefited all parties involved.  Museum professionals have learned much from visiting tribal delegations and vice-versa since the passage of NAGPRA in 1990. 

Sullivan’s conception of the Smithsonian Institution’s castle as being in “disrepair” might well be an accurate one.  It is important to recognize, however, that museums have faced difficult challenges before, and they have perhaps come out of these challenges stronger and more dynamic than ever before. While the Smithsonian might well be in disrepair, we might learn from history that it is certainly not irreparable.  Looking to the past for inspiration in addressing contemporary problems is a wise idea, but Sullivan and others might be advised to look beyond the museum’s genesis to a rich history of “crisis” that has followed the museum ever since its foundations.