The
Sustainable Museum
April, 2020
Ljubljana
—
zdenka badovinac
Drawing by Nika Ham
In September 2018, I wrote “My Post-Catastrophic Glossary” ( [My Post-catastrophic Glossary, 305–326]), which was in essence a kind of glossary of memory relating to my professional work. At the time, I never dreamed that, a year or so later, a pandemic would force museums into a situation not unlike what I was describing in my glossary.
The key questions that stand behind the entries in the glossary, which were illustrated by the artist (and Moderna galerija museum guard) Nika Ham, are: How should museums function in times of extreme limitations? and, How can we create fairer and more equal cultural exchanges on the global scale?
The impact of the pandemic is already apparent: museums all over the world are reporting enormous losses. The world’s major museums are facing huge drops in revenues, in some cases as much as several hundred thousand euros a week. Big international exhibitions are being cancelled, because, given insurance issues, the redistribution of public funds, and scheduling conflicts, preparations are too risky for these times. A museum’s revenue losses are nominally proportional to its financial strength: institutions with an annual budget of €10 million or more are seeing losses of several millions, while the Moderna galerija, which receives €2 million annually, foresees in one month “only” some €18,000 less than in “normal” times. Despite these numbers, institutions with smaller budgets will draw the short straw. Not only are museum activities affected, but, everywhere, so are the people who work at museums, both salaried employees and, most severely, their external co-workers, who almost overnight are finding themselves out of work. Small-budget institutions, which themselves are barely able to breathe, cannot do very much to help such workers. But at the Moderna galerija, we are at least drawing attention to the ever more precarious position of our external co-workers through the project Several Flies at One Blow, in which we have continued to employ a number of our museum guards/students for a while longer by having them deliver food and other necessities to artists infected with the coronavirus and our pensioners. Also, like many other museums, we quickly developed several online projects, most of which link to our collections and archives but there are some that also respond to the current situation.
Of course, everyone is wondering how long the pandemic will last and what its long-term consequences will be. Museums will undoubtedly have to operate under greatly altered conditions. It will be probably be some time before we are again able to go to openings, greet each other with friendly hugs, and exchange our impressions face to face. And almost certainly, we will be working under worse conditions than we did before; even now our funders are advising us to focus primarily on our collections and archives, in other words, what we have under our own roof. And what about artists? How in the future will we be able to support them and other threatened groups – not only professionals such as writers, translators, and designers, but also refugees, the homeless, and other marginalized communities?
For a long time now, museums have been more than just places for housing and presenting art; they have become important sites for critical discourse, social sensitivity and solidarity, and the imagining of a better future. Certainly, the catastrophe in which we now find ourselves is also an opportunity to think about an even stronger social role for the museum. At a time when public space is reduced to balconies and windows and we are increasingly becoming captives of the virtual world, museums should be contemplating an even more active social role for themselves. The fact that the economic aspect of our work will only become more difficult obliges us to think about and propose an alternative economy, an economy of solidarity, one that is based not primarily on a market economy but on the direct exchange of services and the results of work, as well as donations. Museum associations throughout the world are warning governments that funds must be made available for the revitalization of museums after the present crisis. Italy’s museums, for example, have recently asked the Italian government to establish a National Fund for Culture. It is also incumbent on us to refocus the priorities within our existing programmes. Living artists must come first; we must develop acquisition funds intended primarily for working artists and in this way help them to survive.
It is necessary to respect our resources, not just in terms of our collections and archives but also in terms of people – everyone with whom we collaborate and together produce meaning for our work. For the most part, these are people from our own environment, from the environment in which our museum is situated, but also from the environments of our “trans-situatedness”, by which I mean all the spaces where people work with whom we join in the effort to respond to the dilemmas of the global world. Through our “trans-situatedness” we can develop more equitable exchanges of ideas on the global level.
All these things are conditions of the “sustainable museum”, which, indeed, is one of the entries in “My Post-Catastrophic Glossary”. But I first wrote about the sustainable museum in connection with the exhibition Low-Budget Utopias, which was drawn from the Moderna galerija’s own collections. Among other things, I presented a diagram showing four museum models (besides the sustainable museum, there was also the universal museum, the global museum, and the meta-museum). The essence of the sustainable museum is that it actively operates within the framework of a certain community and does this by working with others – with artists, various kinds of stakeholders, and socially engaged groups, individuals, and organizations – people who, in the L’Internationale confederation of museums, we refer to as “constituencies”. The constituencies of a museum are those resources without whom the museum, as a museum of its time, could no longer survive today. It goes without saying that the sustainable museum is also a “green” museum, but more than this, it is first and foremost a museum of its constituencies, for whom and with whom it is continually transforming. The sustainable museum, therefore, lives the same life as its community, who are shaped by a multitude of constantly changing relationships and interests. The sustainable museum is grounded in the resources of its environment, in people and their work, and in nature, and as such it connects with other environments. It does not address its public from any exalted position of expertise with only the “weapons” of its collections and archives; on the contrary, it is open to interaction.
In “My Post-Catastrophic Glossary” I describe a situation in which all museums have been destroyed, along with their collections and archives. Only people and their memories remain. And these are not just the memories of the experts, but also those of museum guards, visitors, and everyone else. Maybe one of the priorities of the post-pandemic museum should be work on developing a future collective memory that will include all of the museum’s constituencies.
Translated by Rawley Grau
click to read slovenian version
Trajnostni muzej
V začetku leta 2019 sem napisala »Moj postkatastrofični slovar« , ki je v bistvu nekakšen slovar spomina na moje poklicno delo. Takrat seveda nisem še niti slutila, da nas bo dobro leto zatem doletela pandemija, ki bo muzeje porinila v podobno situacijo, kot jo opisujem v svojem slovarju.
Bistveni vprašanji, ki stojita za pojmi mojega slovarja − te je ilustrirala umetnica in čuvajka v Moderni galeriji Nika Ham −, sta, kako naj muzeji delajo v zelo restriktivnih pogojih in kako naj vzpostavimo pravičnejše in enakopravnejše kulturne izmenjave v globalnem prostoru.
Posledice pandemije so že očitne: muzeji z različnih koncev sveta poročajo o velikih izgubah. Osrednji svetovni muzeji so že zdaj soočeni z ogromnimi izpadi dohodkov, ki štejejo tudi po nekaj sto tisoč evrov na teden. Velike mednarodne razstave se odpovedujejo, saj so njihove priprave zaradi zavarovalnih politik, prerazporejanja javnih sredstev in terminskih usklajevanj postale preveč tvegano početje za te čase. Izgube so nominalno sorazmerne s finančno močjo muzejev: tisti muzeji, ki imajo po deset milijonov evrov in več letnega proračuna, bodo imeli nekajmilijonske izgube, Moderna galerija, ki dobi letno dva milijona evrov, pa predvideva za en mesec »samo« nekaj več kot osemnajst tisoč manj kot v »normalnih« časih. Kljub tem številkam bodo nizkoproračunske institucije potegnile krajši konec. Prizadete pa niso samo muzejske dejavnosti, ampak povsod tudi delavci muzeja, tako tisti stalno zaposleni kot − in predvsem − njihovi zunanji sodelavci, ki so ostali tako rekoč čez noč brez dela. Institucije, ki tudi sicer komaj dihajo zaradi nizkih proračunov, svojim prekarnim sodelavcem ne morejo kaj dosti pomagati. V Moderni galeriji smo na vse bolj prekarni položaj naših zunanjih sodelavcev v času pandemije vsaj opozorili s projektom »Več muh na en mah«, v sklopu katerega smo nekaj naših čuvajev študentov zadržali zaposlenih še za nekaj časa, tako da zdaj z raznašanjem hrane ipd. pomagajo za korono obolelim umetnikom in našim upokojencem. Kot mnogi drugi muzeji smo tudi mi na hitro oblikovali nekaj spletnih projektov, ki se pretežno vežejo na naše zbirke in arhive, nekaj pa je tudi takšnih, ki reagirajo na aktualno situacijo.
Seveda se vsi sprašujemo, kako dolgo bo pandemija trajala in kakšne bodo njene dolgoročne posledice. Muzeji bodo gotovo delovali v močno spremenjenih okoliščinah. Verjetno še lep čas ne bomo hodili na otvoritve, se prijateljsko objemali in si od blizu izmenjevali vtise. Nedvomno bomo delali v še slabših pogojih, pa nam že zdaj financerji svetujejo, naj se prioritetno posvečamo svojim zbirkam in arhivom, skratka temu, kar že imamo v hiši. Kaj pa umetnikom? Kako se bomo lahko v prihodnje posvečali njim in tudi drugim ogroženim skupinam, intelektualcem, prevajalcem, oblikovalcem, beguncem, brezposelnim …?
Muzeji že dolgo niso več zgolj hiše hranjenja in prezentiranja umetnosti, ampak so postali pomembni prostori kritičnega diskurza, družbene občutljivosti in solidarnosti ter tudi zamišljanja boljše prihodnosti. Prav gotovo je katastrofa, v kateri smo se znašli, tudi priložnost za razmislek o še močnejši družbeni vlogi muzeja. V času, ko je naš javni prostor skrčen na balkone in okna in ko vse bolj postajamo ujetniki virtualnega sveta, morajo muzeji razmišljati o svoji še aktivnejši družbeni vlogi. Ker bo ekonomski vidik našega dela vse težji, je treba razmisliti in predlagati drugačno ekonomijo, ekonomijo solidarnosti, ki ne temelji zgolj na tržni ekonomiji, ampak tudi na neposredni menjavi uslug in rezultatov dela ter na donacijah. Muzejske mreže po vsem svetu opozarjajo svoje vlade, da je treba omogočiti fonde za njihovo rehabilitacijo; italijanski muzeji so nedavno od svoje vlade zahtevali, naj ustanovi nacionalni fond za kulturo. Nujno je treba spremeniti tudi prioritete znotraj obstoječih programov. Prednost morajo dobiti živi umetniki, oblikovati se morajo fondi za odkupe, namenjeni predvsem zdaj delujočim umetnikom, in tudi na ta način pomagati njihovemu preživetju.
Treba je upoštevati lastne vire, ne le zbirke in arhive, ampak tudi ljudi, vse tiste, s katerimi sodelujemo in s katerimi skupaj ustvarjamo smisel svojega dela. To so pretežno ljudje iz našega okolja, okolja, kjer je naš muzej situiran, in tudi iz okolij naše »transsituiranosti«, se pravi, iz prostorov, kjer delujejo ljudje, s katerimi poskušamo skupaj odgovarjati na zagate globalnega sveta. Preko »transsituiranosti« lahko oblikujemo tudi bolj enakovredne izmenjave idej na globalni ravni.
Vse to so pogoji trajnostnega muzeja, ki predstavlja eno od gesel v »Mojem postkatastrofičnem slovarju«. O trajnostnem muzeju sem sicer prvič pisala ob razstavi iz naših zbirk Nizkoproračunske utopije, kjer sem tudi predstavila posebno shemo štirih modelov muzeja. (Poleg trajnostnega so tu še univerzalni in globalni muzej ter metamuzej.) Bistvo trajnostnega muzeja je, da aktivno deluje znotraj neke skupnosti, in to v spregi z drugimi akterji, z umetniki, z različnimi zainteresiranimi in družbeno angažiranimi skupinami, posamezniki in organizacijami, ki jih v konfederaciji muzejev Internacionala imenujemo konstituence (constituencies). Konstituence muzeja so torej tisti viri, brez katerih muzej kot muzej svojega časa danes ne more več preživeti. Trajnostni muzej je seveda tudi »zeleni« muzej, vendar je na prvem mestu muzej svojih konstituenc, zaradi katerih in s katerimi se neprestano preoblikuje. Muzej torej živi isto življenje kot njegova skupnost, ki jo zaznamuje mnoštvo neprestano spreminjajočih se odnosov in interesov. Trajnostni muzej temelji na virih svojega okolja, na ljudeh, njihovem delu in naravi, in se kot tak povezuje z drugimi okolji. Ne nagovarja javnosti z vzvišene ekspertne pozicije in zgolj z »orožjem« svojih zbirk in arhivov, ampak je odprt za interakcijo.
»Moj postkatastrofični slovar« opisuje stanje po tem, ko so bili fizično uničeni vsi muzeji s svojimi zbirkami in arhivi vred, ostali so samo ljudje in njihovi spomini, in to ne samo spomini strokovnjakov, ampak tudi muzejskih čuvajev, obiskovalcev in vseh drugih. Mogoče mora postati ena od prioritetnih nalog muzeja v časih po pandemiji delo na prihodnjem kolektivnem spominu, ki bo vključeval vse muzejske konstituence.
Zdenka Badovinac is a curator and writer, who has served since 1993 as Director of the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana.
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