Tuesday, April 28, 2009

CULTURAL PROPERTY AND LAYERS OF OWNERSHIP

In the 1970s it was fashionable to start to consider “stakeholders” in planning and management processes. Back then it was intended to be an inclusive notion but very quickly some of these stakeholders began to assert precedence over others – they demanded ranking and privileges to match. Very quickly their concerns were accommodated and as a consequence before anyone could be considered a stakeholder they needed to demonstrate a ‘legitimate interest’ – a pecuniary interest, an ownership, a potential loss of something, whatever. Stakeholdership quite quickly became at once an elastic concept and then an idea in retreat – more often than not, one that was intended to served some more than others.

Rarely does the idea of ‘obligation’ come into the stakeholder equation but ‘rights’ are regularly asserted – albeit so often self defined. Stakeholdership is an untidy and contentious idea to say the least! It is especially so if you are left out of the loop.

However there is another way, and more inclusive way, to think about all this. If we think about museums as having Communities of Ownership and Interestlayers of cognitive owners including stakeholders – we might then begin an interesting conversation with each other with ‘The Museum’ as the facilitator.

We do not need to invent and then market this idea as if it were some new idea as clearly museums have an extraordinary Communities of Ownership and Interest (COI). All that really needs to be done is identify the COI, acknowledge its presence and begin the conversation! That might seem to be a job for a consultant but not really. It isn’t rocket science! It is simply about making a list and being prepared to continually add to it and act upon it.

Acknowledging a COI is a cultural mindset. It is not a bureaucratic process – rather it is a participatory process. Mapping the ‘ownerships’ shared in museum enriches them rather than diluting or downgrading them. Nonetheless the tensions between Intellectual Property, Cultural Property and the Public Domain will not dissolve but they may be managed in more productive ways when these ‘owners’ are acknowledged in the cognitive ownership layering.

Do museums shape culture or do our cultural realities shape our museums?

The cognitive ownership model demonstrates the richness of places – museums here – as an alternative to the poverty of perspective embedded in adversarial bureaucratic planning processes.

An audit of cognitive ownership would reveal the confluences and conflicts in ownership claims. If we abandon the notion that there can be a hierarchical structure to the ownership of place, – museums here again – it is possible that managers of cultural property can begin:
To work towards accommodating claims in the context of coexistent cognitive ownerships;
To resolve conflicts and tensions over usage and access; and
To establish appropriate marketing plans and management systems.

Who are these cognitive owners? The simple answer is almost everyone but a list of those that come immediately to mind is useful just so long as it is an ‘open list’:
Curators and others who have worked within the museum
Citizens and ratepayers of the place it is located
Enthusiasts of all kinds, local community historians and other historians
Researchers and academics
Tourism operators and a range of entrepreneurs
Government –L ocals State & Federal
Ethicists, auditors, sponsors
People almost anywhere

Alert to the listing process, and with its purpose in mind, the list is ever likely to grow over time.

It is worth remembering that in Australia most museums depend upon ‘the public purse’ for their existence. Self-generated income, as important as it is, is at best the icing on the cake. Nonetheless, this income by and large comes from ‘the public’ loyal to the institution – taxpayers. After that there are the benefactors – private and corporate – with ‘cultural capital’ invested in a museum and its collections. In the end, one way or another, it is the public who pays the salaries, builds the infrastructure, acquires the objects in their collections, pays for the conservation and so on.

Given that museums do not exist to generate cash surpluses the public might well ask, were is our social dividend? If they are not engaging with the organization, what might this be telling us? Museums are simultaneously like banks and mines. Museums store and accumulate the wealth then others take it away and use it in a multitude of ways. Mostly, any interest and royalties that might be due have been paid for in advance.

Museums operate under a social licence. Yet there are some museums that imagine themselves as being somehow independent of or isolated and insulated from all of this – and on the odd occasion, as some kind of fiefdom. This is possibly something handed down from the 16th Century when the Wunderkammer catalogued nobility’s precedence and power gifted by God as a divine right.
CONTENTS: Click on a heading
CONTEXT
INTRODUCING THE WUNDERKAMMER & KUNSTKAMMER TO THE 21ST C & THE WORLD WIDE WEB
CULTURAL PROPERTY AND LAYERS OF OWNERSHIP
IDENTIFYING A MUSEUM’S COMMUNITIES OF OWNERSHIP & INTEREST – Their Cognitive Owners

1 comment:

  1. Dear Eleventhings, I remember many years ago (1958) in another place (London) - a museum (Museum of Mankind) opened it's collected archive to an artist, Eduardo Paolozzi (heaven forbid)! With grants from the Trustees of the British Museum + a generous donation to produce the catalogue by the Henry Moore Foundation, Paolozzi selected several hundreds of items and created his "lost magic kingdons" - "powerful realms of the imagination" that stimulated new directions of thought and creation. ISBN 0-7141-1579-7

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