Museum Curators Discuss Cultural Institutions and Global Citizenship

Curators from three of the country’s most prominent museums debated the role of cultural institutions in creating national and global citizens during the panel “Representing Americanness?: Museums, the Nation, and the Globe,” held February 16 at Harvard Kennedy School.

The museum panelists included Elliot Bostwick Davis, John Moors Cabot chair, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Timothy Anglin Burgard, the Ednah Root curator of American art and curator–in-charge, American Art Department, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and Kathleen A. Foster, the Robert L. McNeil, Jr., senior curator of American art and director, Center for American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The speakers drew upon the historical importance and traditions of museums as one of the key institutions that shape societies and as a place of civic pride. But how museums define and exhibit the concept of “Americanness” is a tricky question. Although traditionally American art may have been represented by art made in the United States, the panelists all cited examples of how their museums are redefining and diversifying this label to include art made in other areas of the Americas, by Native Americans, by women, African-Americans and art influenced by other areas of the world.

“At present, many American museums aspire to provide, both through diverse exhibits and increasingly diverse audiences, a common ground that acknowledges both equality and difference,” explained Burgard. “Yet, ironically, as world cultures become more homogeneous, museums may become historical artifacts or large-scale period rooms themselves, where cultural differences are preserved, exhibited, interpreted, and valued on equal terms, even as these differences disappear in the real world.”

But could a museum every truly be a global institution? Foster argued, “There is no such thing as a ‘universal museum,’ since even the greatest institutions have been formed by the taste of idiosyncratic founders and collectors—be they Louis XIV, Napoleon, or Andrew Carnegie--and shaped by local resources, historical opportunities, and deep-set prejudices about what is important.”

Peggy Levitt, professor, Department of Sociology, Wellesley College and co-director, Transnational Studies Initiative at Harvard University, moderated the panel and Ivan Gaskell, Margaret S. Winthrop curator, Fogg Art Museum and senior lecturer on history, Harvard University, responded to the panelists.

The presenters also discussed the reluctance by museums to challenge their own assumptions and those of the museum’s visitors. For example, the inherently limiting taxonomy and inconsistent labels used by museums to store and display art as “American Art” or “Asian Art,” does not easily allow a place for the richly nuanced art being made in the more globalized world. This art is often a hybrid of various locations, cultures, and influences.

Confronting traditional assumptions about what represents American art and challenging museum visitors to broaden their understanding and perception of this art may be the key to keeping museums vibrant and relevant at a local, national and global level.

The panel was co-sponsored by the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard University, the Office for the Arts at Harvard, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.