Exhibiting Culture: Innovative DisplayTechniques in the Brooklyn Museum’s

Connecting Cultures Exhibition

Lesleyanne DrakeMuseum Anthropology Master’s Thesis

October 2013

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Figure 1. Introductory text panel for Connecting Cultures: A World InBrooklyn.

By the very virtue of its removal from its original context,

an object undergoes a transformation when it enters the museum

setting. The process of re-contextualization involves weaving a

new story for the object through labels, lighting, text panels,

graphics, and arrangement. These frameworks and visual cues

communicate a message to visitors about the culture on display.

However, they also convey unintentional messages, hiding the

transformative process that takes place and engendering certain

expectations and assumptions. The project of this paper is to

explore what happens when these traditional museum frameworks and

visual cues are defied or subverted, exposing the holes and

shattering the visitors’ expectations. By undertaking an

analysis of the Brooklyn Museum’s Connecting Cultures exhibit, I will

seek to answer the question, how can non-traditional display techniques help

museums represent culture more effectively? It is my contention that

Connecting Cultures purposely breaks boundaries and subverts

expectation to create a bold, non-traditional method of

displaying culture that exemplifies how museums can revitalize

traditional exhibits and foster new ways of seeing.

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First, it is important to define what constitutes a

“traditional” cultural exhibit. Generally speaking, natural

history and anthropological museums contextualize objects by

displaying them within a clearly defined geographic and temporal

context. Objects are arranged in cases or hung on walls so that

they are easily viewable, and they are typically ordered by

theme, type, or chronology. The exhibit text is written in the

authoritative voice of a nameless, faceless curator and often

fails to address the multiplicity of meanings an object carries

beyond its original context. Issues of how the object was

collected and how it entered the museum setting are ignored,

erasing a piece of the object’s history and the transformative

process that has taken place. In this way, museum objects are

viewed as dead objects, cut off from the culture that created

them and, thus, the only life that is imbued with meaning and

importance in the museum setting. Although certainly not every

cultural exhibit shares these characteristics, they are

foundational elements in many major cultural institutions around

the world, and they set the standard for what visitors expect to

see in such institutions.

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Art museums, on the other hand, display cultural objects in

a way that highlights their aesthetic qualities. During the

twentieth century, art museums developed into sites of aesthetic

contemplation and spiritual communion with the art. This ideal

of the aesthetic museum continues to hold in art museums today

such as the Tate Gallery in London. Pieces are placed far apart

on the wall so that they can be visually isolated and

contemplated individually, apart from any wider historical or

educational scheme that might undercut the pure, aesthetic beauty

and wonder of the object. Information in such museums is

provided in anterooms or kiosks at a distance from the art

(Duncan 1995:17). Everything from the minimal label text to the

benches is designed to fade into the background, providing the

perfect contemplative setting. In art museums, visitors are used

to seeing objects from ancient cultures and complex civilizations

displayed alongside European masterworks. Other cultural objects

such as those from Africa have made the transition into art

museums more recently, increasing in prevalence throughout the

1900s (Vogel 1989:12). In this way, art museums like the

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Brooklyn Museum condition visitors to experience objects of

culture from a primarily aesthetic standpoint.

However, there is also a history of subverting expectations

in the museum setting. Though it is more commonly found in art

museums than history or anthropology museums, there is a growing

trend of exhibits designed to surprise visitors. For example, in

recent decades, artists have become interested in staging

exhibitions that force visitors to reflect on the nature of

museums themselves. One such artist is Fred Wilson, who in 1990

staged an exhibit at the highly conservative Maryland Historical

Society called Mining the Museum. The opening display featured a

silver globe from 1870 next to an empty display case labeled

“Plastic display mounts made ca 1960s, maker unknown” (Pearce

1999:31). Beside that were two sets of pedestals. The first set

displayed busts of famous Maryland heroes, and the second set,

which was supposed to feature well-known Maryland African

Americans, was empty. But perhaps the best remembered display in

the exhibition was a case labeled “Metalwork 1793-1880,” which

juxtaposed a grouping of lovely silver vessels with a pair of

iron slave shackles (31). In this way, Wilson used the power of

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the museum context, especially object arrangement and labels, to

shatter Western beliefs about museums as bastions of truth and

expose the constructedness and biases of knowledge production in

the museum.

In another exhibition at the Seattle Museum of Art, Wilson

simply rearranged the objects in the Seattle late 20th-century

gallery. In one area, he used the museum’s Mies van der Rohe

tables and chairs along with a Morris Louis painting and some

props to create a diorama of “the collector’s home,” pointing the

anthropological gaze at the usually invisible modern collector

(Pearce 1999:31). In another room, Wilson arranged the art into

jumbled clusters so that the objects “seemed to be struggling to

breathe” (32). When visitors asked about the strange, slightly

disturbing layout, museum staff would explain that this was how

the Native American and African collections were displayed

downstairs. Again, Wilson used the museological approach of

object arrangement to attack the flawed ideological underpinnings

of museum displays. Other artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi,

Nikolaus Lang, and Christian Boltanski have also put on

exhibitions that challenge museum practices (30-2). As Pearce

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observes, “These artists are not old-speak iconoclasts, who think

all museums should be burnt as the best way of coping with the

corpses of dead yesterday; they are bricoleurs who are curious

about the categories of received knowledge, which museums show

more clearly perhaps than many other institutions by virtue of

the physicality of their holdings and the concrete patterns into

which it can be formed” (30). Thus, Wilson’s exhibits can be

read as interventions in the process of truth production that

museumgoers usually take for granted.

By subverting traditional museum display methods, Fred

Wilson uses the visitor’s surprise to access a deeper truth and

new way of seeing the museum process. But this technique does

not always work, especially in the context of anthropology

museums. In a 1989 exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum in

Toronto called Into The Heart of Africa, the curator attempted to use

irony to convey a critical message about the colonization of

Africa, only to result in complete disaster (Schildkrout

1991:16). Public protests eventually escalated from complaints

to demonstrations to violent encounters with the police, and the

exhibit closed after only two years. This case raises an

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important question about the use of irony in cultural

exhibitions: was it ineffective because the exhibit was poorly

executed or because, in contrast to an art museum, the context of

an anthropological museum does not allow for unexpected,

ambiguous interpretations? According to Schildkrout (1991), it

may be a mixture of both. Not only was the exhibit unclear in

its portrayal of colonialism, but perhaps it also had the wrong

audience. Visitors walk into an anthropology museum expecting

“presentations of ‘facts’ (22). As Schildkrout (1991:22) notes,

“The protesters in Toronto clearly wanted a major cultural

institution like the ROM to ‘tell the truth.’” If the exhibit

had been staged in an art museum or gallery, would the response

have been different? Through an analysis of Fred Wilson’s

display The Other Museum at the Washington Project for the Arts

Gallery, Schildkrout (1991:22) concludes that irony can be an

effective method of communication, but only in the appropriate

context. Into the Heart of Africa is one example of how a non-

traditional museum exhibit can be unsuccessful, and it

illustrates the fine line museum curators must walk when choosing

non-traditional methods of displaying culture.

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However, history has shown that the Brooklyn Museum curators

are not afraid of taking risks. The 1999 exhibition Sensation

garnered controversy mainly due to Chis Ofili’s painting The Holy

Virgin Mary, which was made out of elephant dung. Mayor Rudolph

Giuliani condemned the piece as obscene and sacrilegious and

tried to cut off city funding for the Brooklyn Museum (Mitchell

2005:130). An offended Catholic defaced the artwork with white

paint. Connecting Cultures is not nearly as inflammatory an

exhibition as Sensation, but it illustrates a similar willingness

to take risks and try innovative techniques that might invite

controversy. Although it is, arguably, easier to take risks in

the context of an art museum, history and anthropology museums

have been also been getting more creative in recent years. The

British Museum, for example, invited contemporary artist Andy

Goldsworthy to create an installation for the 1994 exhibition

Time Machine: Ancient Egypt and Contemporary Art (Putnam 2001:155). His

massive piece Sandwork, made of 30 tons of hand-compacted sand,

wove throughout the gallery and was on display for three days

even though it restricted public access to the other objects on

display. By marrying art and ethnography in a surprising, new

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way, the exhibit helped visitors experience the objects

differently than they normally would in the British Museum.

Similarly, Fred Wilson’s exhibit at the Maryland Historical

Society is another instance of a more traditional cultural

institution embracing a contemporary artist. By undertaking an

analysis of Connecting Cultures, it is my hope that a few of the

riskier, non-traditional display techniques might also be

successfully brought from the art museum into the ethnographic

museum, revitalizing outdated or mundane exhibits. After

describing the basic premise and layout of the exhibit, I will

examine Connecting Cultures from four different perspectives:

framework, design, museum history and authority, and visitor

engagement.

Exhibit Overview

Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn is located in one, large

gallery space in the Brooklyn Museum’s Great Hall. It is the

first exhibit visitors encounter when they enter the museum and

may be entered through one of four openings, one in each corner

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of the space. On the wall next to each entryway is an

introductory text panel (Figure 1), which reads:

Museums bring the world's treasures to the public. Like many other museums, the Brooklyn Museum collects works of art in order to inspire, uplift, and inform.

Museums carefully organize and present these works of art inways that make them more understandable. Traditionally, gallery presentations have been organized in several ways: by geography, or by medium, or by chronology, or sometimes acombination of these. Such categories are useful because they allow the viewer to make important comparisons within agroup of closely related works. At the same time, however, those traditional categories can be limiting, because they do not offer an opportunity to make larger comparisons – across different cultures, mediums, or time periods.

This gallery challenges those traditional approaches and offers an alternative option meant to augment other organizational themes in the Museum. Here, works of different places, types, and times across the Museum’s collections are gathered into broad themes, emphasizing connections across cultures, which allow us to see the ways in which art reflects our shared humanity.

This introductory gallery represents only one approach to regrouping works of art and the ideas they embody. Using this gallery as a springboard, we invite you to make your own connections by exploring the rich collections in the rest of the Museum.

Thus, the main goal of the exhibit is to make broad, cross-

cultural comparisons that demonstrate how art reflects our shared

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human experiences. A secondary goal is to introduce visitors to

the Brooklyn Museum’s diverse collection.

After entering the gallery, visitors encounter an open room

crowded with objects of all of different kinds, styles, cultures,

and time periods. However, if one looks closer, it becomes clear

that three walls of the gallery are dedicated to three different

themes, each with their own introductory text panel: connecting

people, connecting places, and connecting things. “Connecting

People” centers on how the human image has been conceived of and

represented across cultures and times, while “Connecting Places”

focuses on various impressions and ideas about the world around

us. Although technically everything in the exhibit is a “thing,”

the “Connecting Things” section is devoted specifically to the

design and cultural significance of everyday, man-made objects.

These broad themes relate to the objects along the walls and the

cases that fill the room, though there is no clear path for

visitors to follow. Text labels for each object (usually about a

paragraph in length) provide contextual information and reinforce

and expand on the major themes of the exhibit. Several videos

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displayed on small, flat-screen monitors are scattered throughout

the exhibit, supplementing the textual information.

The center of the room features a circular area around which

several cases are arranged. A text panel titled “Connecting

Cultures: An Illustration” explains, “When works of art enter a

museum, they take on new meanings and can be understood in new

ways. In a gallery setting, we can compare objects from

different cultures in ways that were not possible before they

were gathered together, leading into new insights into what

cultures share and what makes them different.” The cases in the

central area serve to illustrate this point, bringing together

objects with similar form, purpose, or value in the cultures they

come from.

The exhibit design utilizes the height of the space to the

fullest extent. Some text labels are almost on the floor, while

objects are stacked or hung all the way to top of the walls.

Visitors must constantly look up or turn their head to view the

objects, and the sense of being towered-over may be slightly

overwhelming to some. Indeed, the exhibit may even be perceived

as cluttered due to the lack of space between objects. There is,

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however, an aesthetic unity throughout the gallery. The white

walls covered in large, grey graphics complement the simple,

black labels. The black-and-white color scheme also carries over

to the cases and pedestals, forming a consistent, unobtrusive

backdrop for the artwork. In regard to conservation, many of the

objects are not behind glass but have small signs next to them

warning visitors not to touch. The most delicate, light-

sensitive pieces such as books and textiles are contained in dark

cases that can be dimly illuminated by the touch of a button.

For two of the taller cases, on the other hand, the objects are

bathed in white light, brightly illuminating the items at the

top.

Framework

First, let us examine how movement is structured in Connect

Cultures. When museum visitors walk through rooms and exhibits in a

particular order, they encounter objects in the way the museum’s

organization dictates. This creates a framework for the

visitor’s experience and constructs a particular aesthetic and

historical narrative. Even when visitors choose to not follow

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the path laid out or only view certain objects, they still must

navigate the framework of the space. The way visitors move

through museums is similar to worshippers in a medieval

cathedral. Pilgrims would move through the cathedral by

following a structured narrative such as the life of Christ,

stopping at prescribed points to pray and contemplate the message

being presented (Duncan 1995:12). In the same way, the museum’s

framework presents a narrative, both within each gallery and

throughout the entire museum. Take, for example, the conversion

of the Louvre Palace into a national museum. By turning the

king’s lavish residence into a public space, open to everyone

free of charge, the Louvre became a powerful symbol of equality

and freedom (Duncan 1991:93). The ideology and values of the new

republic were reflected through the museum’s narrative structure,

which reclassified art as the history of Civilization, beginning

with Egypt and Greece, then moving into the Italian Renaissance,

and ending with nineteenth century France. The arrangement of

art in the Louvre clearly situated these four groupings as the

high points of art, including France as the last of the great

artistic traditions in the story being represented (Duncan

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1991:96). Thus, the museum narrative invoked national pride and

presented a particular Eurocentric view of the world. Other

museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were greatly

influenced by the Louvre’s “ceremonial program,” though most have

now been rearranged so as not to project the traditional,

Western-oriented view of the progression of civilization (Duncan

1991:99).

Although it is not the project of this paper to analyze the

narrative structure of the Brooklyn Museum as a whole, it is

important to note the significance of Connecting Cultures as an

introductory gallery to the museum. This is the first exhibit

visitors see when they enter, the starting point in the narrative

the Brooklyn Museum is trying to tell. On the one hand,

Connecting Cultures simply serves as a preview of the museum’s vast

holdings, getting visitors interested and excited to see the

other galleries. The subtitle on the introductory panel, “A

World in Brooklyn,” evokes the idea that the exhibit is a

microcosm not only of the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, but also

of the entire world’s material culture, situating the museum as a

crossroads of culture. This concept is emphasized further within

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the exhibit by references to the museum’s history, which I

discuss later in the section “Museum History and Authority.” I

attribute this emphasis on the Brooklyn Museum’s diversity of

collections to the rise of museums as tourist destinations and

the increasing pressure to raise attendance (Kirshenblatt-

Gimblett 1998:132, 137). As Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

(1998:132) observes, “While the museum collection itself is an

undrawn map of all places from which the materials have come, the

floor plan, which determines where people walk, also delineates

conceptual paths through what becomes a virtual space of travel.”

Connecting Cultures tells visitors that the Brooklyn Museum is a

destination as well as a “surrogate for travel” (Kirshenblatt-

Gimblett 1998:132). In a world where permanent collections do

not draw crowds like special exhibitions, the curators of

Connecting Cultures may also be attempting to generate excitement and

renewed interest in the museum’s permanent halls (137).

On the other hand, by placing Connecting Cultures at the very

start of the museum’s narrative structure, the exhibit sets the

tone for the visitors’ experience, lending credence to the main

idea of the exhibit and informing the way people view the rest of

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the museum’s collection. The main idea of the exhibit is that

traditional museum frameworks are limiting and that breaking out

of these frameworks allows us to make broad, cross-cultural

comparisons that illustrate our shared humanity. Chief Curator

Kevin Stayton (2012a) said, “I hope that the new installation

will do two things – first, introduce the visitor to the wide

range of riches available at the Brooklyn Museum, and, second,

stimulate some thinking about how to make connections between the

museum galleries, as well as within them.” His vision is that

visitors will draw cross-cultural connections between concepts,

aesthetic values, and art forms, linking artworks in different

galleries mentally despite the objects’ physical separation in

the museum’s geo-temporal organization. In order to best achieve

this goal, the Connecting Cultures exhibit must come first, setting

up the idea in visitors’ minds that such linkages can and should

be made.

This idea is further reinforced by the structure of the

exhibit itself. While there is no narrative in the sense of a

story with a beginning, middle, and end, there is a universal,

human story being told. The multiple entrances – multiple

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starting points depending on where the visitor chooses to enter –

emphasize this theme. Visitors can enter from any direction and

understand what the exhibit is about, the physical freedom of

access to the gallery mimicking the freedom of access to its

theme of the universal, human experience. There is a loose flow

to the exhibit, but visitors can wander throughout the space,

encountering the objects in any order they choose. I think that

this freedom of movement is an intentional choice that reinforces

the overall message that there are multiplicities of connections

that can be made between the objects on display. Moreover, it is

in the visitor’s power to make their own connections, not just

those made explicit by the museum’s arrangement.

But what is most surprising about the exhibit’s framework is

not the order (or lack of order) in which visitors encounter the

objects but the arrangement of objects without regard to time or

geography. Instead, items from different cultures and time

periods are grouped by type or by the ideas they represent. For

example, the painting The Sketcher: A Portrait of Mlle Rosina, a Jewess by

Daniel Huntington hangs on the wall next to Kavat Mask from a

Central Baining community in Papua New Guinea (Figure 2),

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presumably because both objects illustrate different conceptions

of the human form. In another case, four chairs of similar shape

sit side by side to illustrate the similarities between the

cultures they come from – the Asante people of Ghana, the Atiu of

New Zealand, the Ngombe of the Congo, and the French (Figure 3).

Additionally, the exhibit makes connections not only across

cultures but also across time. For instance, the silver, 18th

century Festival Hat, Part of a Curaca Costume from Potosí, Bolivia is

paired with a 2012 Reuters article about the rescue of trapped

miners from a cave-in in Peru (Figure 4). The museum labels do

not offer any connections between the object and the article,

only stating, “Art helps us interpret our world. What connections

do you see between this article and the works on display?”

Evidently, the curators wanted visitors to see a relationship

between mining in South America in the 18th century versus

present day even though they leave it up to the visitor to figure

out the particulars of that relationship. Other contemporary

articles accompanying objects in the exhibit include: “Ashley

Judd: Stop the body image ‘insanity’” from USA Today with statues

of female figures from France, Mali, and Papua New Guinea; and

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“Instagram’s Instant Nostalgia” from The New Yorker paired with

mirrors from China, America, and Iran. Overall, these

juxtapositions, unbounded by time or space, paint a picture of

humanity as a whole.

Figure 2. The Sketcher: A Portrait of Mlle Rosina, a Jewess hangs on the wallnext to Kavat Mask. Woman in Gray by Pablo Picasso and a test plate

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for Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party are displayed above and below theThe Sketcher.

Figure 3. The case on the left displays stools from the Asantepeople of Ghana, the Atiu of New Zealand, the Ngombe of the

Congo, and the French. The central case contains a 17th centuryAmerican chair, and the right case a 19th century Asante chair.

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Figure 4. Festival Hat, Part of a Curaca Costume from Potosí, Bolivia ispaired with a 2012 Reuters article titled, “Nine workers trappedinside a wildcat mine in southern Peru were rescued and broughtto daylight early on Wednesday after spending almost a week

underground.”

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The Grand Narrative

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The tendency to try to fit everything into a grand

narrative, creating an overall picture of humanity, can be a very

dangerous prospect in the museum setting. The quest to build a

comprehensive collection and use it to demonstrate the universal

order of the world is what drove museum collectors and

anthropologists in the early days of museum history. Most

notably, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford organized its displays

typographically to reflect the belief that every culture can be

categorized hierarchically on a scale from primitive to

civilized. This evolutionary approach to anthropology was

prevalent at the time, and museum collectors like Pitt Rivers

thought that the best way to illustrate humanity’s progress was

to group material culture by typological category such as

“cookware” (Gosden and Larson 2007:9). The display would then

feature “primitive” objects from native tribes all over the

world, gradually progressing in sophistication and complexity

until reaching a modern, Western-made object. The goal was

educate visitors about the evolution of human thought, which is

why these museums were also called “psychological museums” (Boas

1989:61). But, as Franz Boas (1989) argued, grouping objects by

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purpose or technology does not illustrate anything meaningful

about the culture they come from. In addition to erasing the

unique environmental and historical factors that influenced the

form and function of the object, the typographical arrangement

can be misleading (Boas 1989:64). What if an object belongs in

more than one category, like a rattle that serves a ritual

function? If it is placed with all the other musical

instruments, part of its significance is lost. Moreover,

comparing similar rattles from two different cultures does not

mean that they served the same purpose or that the cultures have

similar characteristics. As Boas (1989:66) states, “Though like

causes have like effects, like effects have not like causes.”

Instead of the typographic arrangement, Boas advocated

organizing museum objects geographically. The goal was to

present each culture as the product of particular geographical

and historical circumstances that should be understood not in

comparison to Western society but on its own terms (Boas 1989).

To Boas (1989:66), “the main goal of ethnographical collections

should be the dissemination of the fact that civilization is not

absolute, but that it is relative, and that out ideas and

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conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes.”

However, even Boas believed that a museum collection could, and

should, be comprehensive. In his tenure at the American Museum

of Natural History, much of Boas’ time was spent developing the

collection and filling in what he perceived as gaps in the

exhibits (Cole 1995). For instance, he would request that his

collectors gather specific objects missing from the collection

such as towels, canoe building implements, or monumental

sculpture (Cole 1995:153). Like the other collectors of his day,

Boas labored under the impression that he could create a museum

collection that totally encapsulated a particular culture. But

this pursuit is perhaps just as flawed as Pitt River’s quest to

create a museum of the world; no collection can become a perfect

stand-in for culture. Indeed, “objects can be obstinate. … Some

things simply do not fit our plans for them” (Gosden and Larson

2007:7). Eventually, Boas shifted away from the view that

studying objects was the best way to study people, and his

departure from the American Museum of Natural History marked a

turning point in the discipline of anthropology (Jacknis

1985:108). It was not until almost a century later that

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anthropologists once again became interested in material culture,

but Boas’ legacy has continued, with the geographical arrangement

still the primary method of organization in museums today.

Clearly, Boas was right to point out the problems inherent

in typological displays, and anthropology museums have since

shied away from the tendency to universalize (despite clinging to

the notion of “world heritage” whenever a historic monument is

threatened). Exhibits in these institutions are usually culture-

specific, and cross-cultural comparisons are carefully

constructed to communicate an educational, nonhierarchical

message about a particular historical moment. Art museums,

however, have always been more concerned with the universal human

experience. As museum audiences grew dramatically in nineteenth

century, it became an ingrained belief in Western culture that

visits to art museums should be transformative (Duncan 1995).

Set apart from the ordinary, wearisome, everyday world, art

museums existed in a “liminal” space where practical concerns

could be suspended in favor of an uplifting, spiritually

nourishing aesthetic experience (Duncan 1995:11). Everyone could

share in the personal, spiritual transformation because art

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transcends culture to engage people on a fundamental, human

level. It is this belief in the universal, human experience of

art that pervades Connecting Cultures.

So how does Connecting Cultures not fall into the trap of the

Pitt River’s Museum even though it eschews the geographical

arrangement in favor of universalizing principles and

typographical arrangements? The answer is that the framework of

the exhibit lacks a grand narrative. Even though there is an

emphasis on our shared humanity, there is no attempt to fit the

story of humans into a specific narrative with a beginning,

middle, and end. Instead, the exhibit does just the opposite,

allowing for the creation of many different narratives. Visitors

are encouraged to form their own linkages between objects across

time, space, and mediums, and there is no limit to the number of

different stories that can be told. The typological arrangements

such as the chair display mentioned earlier do not convey the

notion of progress or evolution. Instead, they demonstrate

shared artistic values cross-culturally, raising important

questions about the relationship between art and culture.

Furthermore, the large, typological displays of mirrors and

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pitchers (Figure 5) celebrate difference as well as similarity.

The danger of decontextualization is avoided through the use of

ethnographic label explanations, describing the individual

significance of each object within its unique cultural context.

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Figure 5. Pitchers representing many different cultures and time

periods.

Although visitors do not walk away from Connecting Cultures with

a deep understanding of any particular culture on display, they

are able to perceive broader connections that are often hidden in

traditional, geographically arranged exhibits. By using

generalized themes in a loose, not rigid, framework, Connecting

Cultures is able to combine the idea that art reflects universal,

human experiences with the cultural sensitivity of an

anthropology exhibit. I believe that this method can

successfully be brought into the natural history and anthropology

museum setting in small doses. After all, this technique is not

intended as a replacement for the geographical arrangement but as

a supplement. The introductory text states that this gallery

“represents only one approach to regrouping works of art and the

ideas they embody.” But it is a revealing and educational

approach that can work in concert with more traditional museum

arrangements.

Design

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While the framework of the exhibit is a fundamental

component of its design, it is also fruitful to examine how more

specific aspects of design such as lighting, aesthetics, text,

and use of space also affect the message of the exhibition and

subvert visitor expectations. These elements are important

because they set the objects “in context,” providing the viewer

with a frame of reference (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998:21).

Indeed, most visitors are unaware of how much their experience of

museum objects is “conditioned,” subliminally or otherwise, by

the way the objects are installed (Vogel 1989:11). In Connecting

Cultures, the placement of objects is highly significant, not just

in relation to each other, but in relation to the space itself.

Objects cover the walls, rising far above visitors’ heads so that

they have to look up to see everything. In fact, the space is so

crowded full of objects that it may overwhelm some visitors. It

is difficult to view one object at a time, a design choice I

believe is intentional. The goal of the exhibit, after all, is

to make connections between these objects, a concept that is

reinforced by not separating them visually.

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More importantly, the crowded arrangement completely

contradicts the typical design of art museums, which tend to

place objects far apart in order to provide the ideal environment

for aesthetic contemplation. Art museums have traditionally been

interested in unique objects, distinguished by originality and

innovation (Vogel 1989:13). Art objects can stand on their own,

divorced from their cultural context, and still be appreciated as

art. This is reflected in the minimalist design of many art

exhibits, which display single objects on isolated pedestals,

with very little suggestion of cultural meaning or functionality.

In contrast, the placement of objects in Connecting Cultures more

closely resembles “the crowded presentation of the old-fashioned

natural history museum [which] grew out of a desire to show many

typical examples” (Vogel 1989:13). Unlike art museums, natural

history and anthropology museums collected what was typical of a

culture rather than what was unique or aesthetically appealing

and exhibited large quantities of similar objects, often arranged

typologically. Connecting Cultures applies a style of object

arrangement typical of a natural history museum to a collection

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of unique, beautiful objects typical of an art museum. Vogel

(1989:13) observes:

During the four or five decades that art museums have been dealing with ethnographic art, however, the separation between the anthropological and the art historical approaches has narrowed. Anthropologists are increasingly sensitive to the aesthetic dimension of the objects in theircare, as art historians have become alive to the vast amountof anthropological information that they can use to understand art. This has tended to make their respective museums’ installations resemble each other more than ever before.

I believe that this is what is happening in the Brooklyn Museum’s

Connecting Cultures exhibit. It is not clear whether the objects are

displayed as art or ethnographic objects, but the design of the

exhibit indicates that it is a mixture of both.

Connecting Cultures combines objects that people are used to

seeing displayed in art museums with objects that have,

historically, been more commonly found in natural history and

anthropology museums. It would not be surprising to see a mid-

19th century painting by American artist Daniel Huntington

hanging in an art museum, but it might be quite a shock to see it

hanging next to a late 19th or early 20th century mask from Papua

New Guinea. European scientists and amateurs had been collecting

34

African cultural objects in “curiosity rooms” since the

Renaissance, along with exotic natural and manmade wonders (Vogel

1989:12). Later, in the 19th century, African cultural heritage

was displayed in natural history museums as specimens

illustrating the prevailing theories of culture. It was not

until the mid-20th century that African objects began to be

exhibited in art museums. Today, nearly all of the African

artworks displayed in art museums were once categorized as

ethnographic artifacts (Vogel 1989:12). A painting by Daniel

Huntington, in contrast, has always been considered art and has

probably never shared a gallery space with non-Western objects,

much less hung next to an African mask.

So what happens when Western artworks are intertwined with

indigenous artworks (formerly artifacts) in the same exhibit

space? Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998) suggests that there may be

two simultaneous affects. First, when ethnographic artifacts are

displayed as art, they are “elevated” to a higher level because

“in the hierarchy of material manifestations the fine arts reign

supreme” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998:57). Fine art objects are

indeed more highly valued (monetarily, at least) in Western

35

culture than artifacts, and displaying indigenous art in the same

gallery as American and European painters would have been unheard

of only a few decades ago. In this way, Connecting Cultures breaks

the boundary between Western and non-Western art, allowing for

the appreciation of both on equal terms. In addition, the

placement of Western and non-Western art side-by-side in

Connecting Cultures is jarring because it makes the familiar

unfamiliar. This is the second affect Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

(1998:48) describes. It is taken for granted that we will see

European paintings in an art museum, but it is not taken for

granted that we will encounter indigenous art, which was

reclassified from “artifact” to “art” only relatively recently.

By placing the ordinary and expected next to the more exotic and

unexpected, the exhibit “forces us to make comparisons that

pierce the membrane of our own quotidian world, allowing us for a

brief moment to be spectators of ourselves” (Kirshenblatt-

Gimblett 1998:48). In the section “Collecting Things,” for

example, one case contains an American-manufactured, steel meat

slicer made in the mid-1930s along with an 18th-19th century

Japanese pothook hanger made out of iron and wood (Figure 6).

36

Suddenly, the forced comparison between these two, very different

food preparation implements emphasizes the strangeness of the

American meat slicer, turning it into something foreign. Thus,

the gaze with which we view the “other” is temporarily turned

back on ourselves.

Figure 6. An American-made, steel meat slicer from the mid-1930sand an 18th-19th century iron and wood Japanese pothook hanger.

It is still not clear, however, whether the objects in

Connecting Cultures are displayed as art or artifacts. They

represent the collection of an art museum, yet the crowded

arrangement reflects design principles more common in natural

37

history and anthropology museums. Moreover, the juxtaposition of

Western and non-Western objects allows for both the conversion of

ethnographic objects into art and the transformation of familiar,

Western artwork into exotic artifacts. In order to gain a deeper

understanding of this tension, let us take a brief look at what

characterizes “art” in the museum setting in comparison to

“artifacts.” According to Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998:25):

The litmus test of art seems to be whether an object can be stripped of its contingency and still hold up. The universalizing rhetoric of “art,” the insistence that great works are universal, that they transcend space and time, is predicated on the irrelevance of contingency. But the ability to stand alone says less about the nature of the object than about our categories and attitudes, which may account for the minimalist installation style of exhibitionsof “primitive art.” By suppressing contingency and presenting the objects on their own, such installations lay claims to the universality of the exhibited objects as worksof art.

We have already established that Connecting Cultures is predicated on

the idea of the universality of art, and, in some ways, the

design reinforces that concept. There are no informational

graphics that draw attention away from the art, and the lighting,

color scheme, and other elements of the space are clearly

designed to maximize the aesthetic value of the objects. It

38

would appear the focus of the exhibition is on experiencing the

objects as art, not as resources for education.

But by reading the object labels, it becomes clear that

there is an ethnographic aspect to the exhibit as well.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998:18) defines artifacts, or

ethnographic objects, as objects “defined, segmented, detached,

and carried away by ethnographers.” This has less to do with

where an object comes from than it does with how an object enters

the museum setting. Artifacts, in contrast to artworks, are

extracted from a particular site, brought into the museum, and

contextualized as fragments of culture. They are set in context

using charts, diagrams, videos, lectures, tours, pamphlets, and a

host of other interpretive strategies for the purpose of

education (21). In Connecting Cultures, the objects are

contextualized through labels containing fairly detailed

ethnographic information. In a typical art exhibit, the labels

may simply state what an object is without explaining its

cultural significance. But Connecting Cultures “textualizes objects”

in a way that is clearly intended to educate the visitor (33).

As a collector, Franz Boas stressed the necessity of knowing the

39

meaning of objects that were brought into the museum. He

insisted that the amateur ethnologists collecting for him in the

field gather stories about each object they obtained rather than

gathering them up without knowing their cultural significance

(Cole 1995:152). It was not enough to simply identify the object

because “classification is not explanation” (Boas 1989:62). This

is a foundational principle of ethnography.

In short, the design of the exhibit reinforces its main

message: that cross-cultural comparisons demonstrate how art

reflects our shared humanity. In order to make those

connections, visitors must be able to view the objects as

artifacts representative of individual cultures. Therefore, the

objects must be visually linked and accompanied by explanatory

text, not isolated and decontextualized. But in order to draw

out questions and ideas concerning the universal human

experience, visitors must also be able to view the objects as

art, with design elements that maximize their aesthetic

qualities. Thus, Connecting Cultures successfully combines elements

of art installations and natural history displays to create an

art/artifact hybrid exhibition that allows visitors to view the

40

objects in multiple ways. This process exposes not only our

expectations for art exhibits versus anthropological exhibits,

but also the ethnocentric tendency to view indigenous objects as

belonging in a different museum space than Western art.

Museum History and Authority

The meaning of objects is continually being transformed

before, during, and after museum contextualization. Just

selecting an object to become a museum piece changes its meaning

(Dudley 2010:8). David Lowenthal (1999) argues that objects are

also fundamentally altered through identification,

classification, display, preservation, restoration,

transportation, and all other museum processes including more

obscure, invisible, or indirect practices such as readapting an

object for a new purpose, duplicating, copying, or reenacting.

Each of these moments adds a new layer of meaning to an object.

Indeed, “every act of recognition” alters objects from the past

(Lowenthal 1999:263). However, these alterations are usually

hidden from the museum visitor who only sees the “finished

41

product,” the end result of the process of transforming an object

into a museum object.

In some cases, the meaning constructed in the museum is very

different from the meaning an object would have had in its

original context. Take, for instance, two obeah (broom-like

Surinamese ritual objects) in the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam

(Legêne 1998). A Dutch plantation owner collected them from his

slaves in Suriname and brought them back to Europe in 1824 (37).

To him, the obeah were simply brushes that the Slaves used to

sweep the yard. Although he observed the slaves drawing flower

motifs and caricatures with the obeah, the plantation owner did

not explicitly associate the objects with religion; they were

simply curious slave artifacts in his collection (43). The

meaning of these objects changed yet again when they entered the

museum in 1873. During this time, Dutch missionaries were

engaged in a campaign to Christianize the slaves, forcing them to

destroy their “fetishes.” Thus, when the museum staff created

documentation cards for the obeah, they were reimagined as

fetishes of a wicked religion, exemplifying the Christian

salvation of the Suriname workers. There was no mention at all

42

of slavery. In this way, the museum labels were the objects’

“birth certificates,” inventing for them a very different meaning

than the one they would have had within the Suriname slave

community (51).

Knowing about the history of a museum’s collection can help

uncover objects’ hidden meanings. However, major institutions

(excepting historic houses and other such sites) usually do not

put their history prominently on display for the public. In this

sense, Connecting Cultures is not groundbreaking. The one display

about the museum history is in an awkward location that would be

easy for visitors to miss, and the copious amount of text would

probably deter most visitors from reading it anyway. But the

series of moveable text panels do provide a detailed timeline of

the history of the Brooklyn Museum from 1823 to present day

(Figure 7). Although it could certainly be more effective, the

display evidences a belief on the part of the curators that the

museum’s history is important for understanding the collection.

My question is, what work is being done through this display?

First of all, it serves as an introduction to the museum – a way

of saying, “This is who we are.” Or, perhaps, it would be more

43

accurate to say, “This who we want to be.” The text portrays the

museum as cutting edge, diverse, innovative, and concerned not

only with art but also education, research, and ethnography.

Shining moments such as this one are emphasized: “Masterpieces of

African Art opens in 1953. With this groundbreaking exhibition, the

Brooklyn Museum is the first museum to apply the term masterpiece

to African art. Up to this time, the Museum had remained the

only public repository in New York to display African works as

art rather than as ethnography.” Sensation, on the other hand,

received only a brief mention: “The exhibition Sensation: Young British

Artists from the Saatchi Collection opens in 1999 and draws international

attention.” This emphasis on the museum’s long, proud history

and the downplaying of its controversies is part of the museum’s

branding and, perhaps, a reflection of what the curators value

about the Brooklyn Museum and what they hope for the future.

44

Figure 7. Timeline of the history of the Brooklyn Museum.

But what I think is most notable and surprising about this

small, unobtrusive display is that it portrays the Brooklyn

Museum as an ever evolving institution made up many individual

people. The view of museums as bastions of truth and knowledge

that are slow to change is not completely compatible with the

reality reflected in this display. Instead, the timeline shows

an institution whose goals and priorities have changed many times

since its founding and one that will continue to adapt and grow

45

as its goes forward. Moreover, many individuals are named and

some pictured in the timeline, including curators, trustees,

donors, and architects who have been integral to the museum’s

development. This personalization is contrary to the perception

of museums as made up of nameless, faceless experts who make

unified decisions about the official history. Instead, the

timeline points to the individual actions of real people, giving

visitors a much more accurate view of how the museum functions.

In short, this display on the Brooklyn Museum’s history is an

unexpected and much needed step towards increased transparency in

the museum setting, allowing visitors to gain a better

understanding of the collection and a glimpse of the past lives

of the objects therein.

The reason I believe that transparency is important is

because most visitors are unaware of how museum exhibits produce

truth and knowledge. Susan A. Crane (2000) offers an interesting

example that demonstrates how it works – and how it can be

manipulated. The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles

displays rare specimens of the natural world including the

Cameroonian stink ant, the prong-horned antelope, and the world’s

46

only recording of the Deprong Mori, an elusive South American bat

capable of flying through solid walls (60). When Crane (2000:62)

visited the museum, she found herself “confounded” and became

“more and more uncertain, lost in a Borgesian labyrinth,” because

she could not tell if the exhibits (or which parts of the

exhibits) were true. It was not until the “Sonnabend/Delani

Halls” that Crane “began to have disturbing, fascinating

intimations of mendacity” (62). These halls tell about the life

of “neurophysiologist” Geoffrey Sonnabend and his supposedly

well-known book about memory inspired by German opera singer

Madelina Delani, who had a memory disorder (62). Sonnbend

happened to see Delani’s last performance before she was killed

in a car accident in South America, and that night he formulated

his famous theory that memory is the decay of experience. The

exhibit outlines the theory using audio and video presentations

along with scientific diagrams. “This delights me,” recalled

Crane, “and, temporarily cured of doubts by curiosity, I am eager

to find Sonnabend’s book” (63). On the way out of the exhibit,

Crane told the museum’s collector David Wilson about her

excitement and intention of reading Sonnbend’s book. He merely

47

handed her a pamphlet about the massive three-volume work and

offered a sincere smile (63).

As it happens, the book does not exist, and neither do

Sonnabend or Delani. The Museum of Jurassic Technology is an

“imaginary” museum; it is a real place, but its contents are

fictional (Crane 2000:65). Upon making this discovery, Crane

felt both extreme disappointment that the Sonnbend story was fake

and embarrassment at having been fooled (64). But when she

returned to the museum to speak with Wilson, she did not confront

him with her knowledge of the museum’s falsehood. She recounts,

“[I] forbore to ask the question that was pounding in my brain, a

plea to be let in on the secret. But I didn’t really want to

know. Had I been in Oz with Dorothy, I would never have let Toto

pull the curtain from the little man operating the machine” (64).

Her words suggest a desire to cling to her faith in museums,

which has been shaken by the Sonnabend experience. After all, if

this fake museum can dupe a museum scholar, someone who has

studied how museums produce knowledge, then the narratives

constructed in every museum can be called into question. This

idea that history can be entirely fabricated is profoundly

48

uncomfortable (some would say terrifying) (66). By using all the

“usual cues” like text panels, organized exhibits, and

spotlighting, visitors are made to believe in the existence of

animals and scientific theories that they have never heard of and

that, in fact, do not even exist (62). As Crane suggests,

perhaps “the ‘natural’ in natural history implies the commonplace

acceptance of the representation of the physical world in

museums” (63-4). Indeed, the Museum of Jurassic Technology is

the ultimate testament to the power of museums to produce

knowledge and construct a particular worldview. Exhibits like

Connecting Cultures that integrate some degree of transparency are,

therefore, extremely important.

In addition to the timeline in Connecting Cultures, the Brooklyn

Museum has made other efforts to be transparent. A new exhibit

of African art called African Innovations is located directly adjacent

to Connecting Cultures. The introduction to the exhibit features a

brief wall text titled “Provenance: Histories of Ownership,”

which reads in part, “After their transfer to Western

collections, African art objects went on to have new histories of

ownership (or provenance) that reveal the changing circumstances

49

in which they were understood.” The text asks visitors to look

for specific notes about the provenance next to some of the

objects in the exhibit. Another wall text grapples with the

multiplicity of reasons why the creator of an African art object

may be unknown. These are just two small text panels, but they

go a long way toward revealing what has been too often been

hidden in museums – the complex, messy, ambiguous, and changing

histories of objects over time. Ultimately, Connecting Cultures and

African Innovations demonstrate ways to convey the behind-the-scenes

transformation of objects into museum objects, or at least the

most important aspects of that transition such as the

circumstances under which the objects were collected and brought

into the museum. These small displays, while not particularly

creative, represent an effort on the part of the museum staff to

reveal part of process of knowledge production in a museum, a

process that I believe visitors need to be more aware of and

understand.

Interestingly, the Brooklyn Museum timeline is the only part

of the exhibit that stands as a counterpoint to its overall anti-

narrative theme. The timeline does tell a story, bringing

50

visitors on a journey from the museum’s earliest beginnings to

the present. In this way, the story can be read as one of

progress with the collection slowly growing over time from a

small public library to a world-renown institution. The timeline

is written as if to say, “Look how far we have come.” Connecting

Cultures is, therefore, part of a larger meta-narrative of

progress. By subverting the typical geographical and temporal

arrangements of the past, Connecting Cultures exemplifies the

ultimate “enlightened” exhibit. Paradoxically, the techniques

used to demonstrate this progress, like the typological displays,

harken back to Pitt Rivers and the crowded natural history

museums of the last century, exhibits based on the same

ideologies Connecting Cultures is designed to push against. The

question we must ask is where can cultural exhibits progress from

here? According to the Brooklyn Museum’s website, Connecting

Cultures is a “long-term” exhibition. If it continues for several

decades, will it lose its power and edginess, becoming a normal,

unsurprising museum fixture, the very thing it was designed to

refute? There may be some danger of Connecting Cultures losing its

element of surprise, especially if other museums integrate

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similar techniques into their more traditional exhibits as I am

suggesting, but I do not think that exhibits like Connecting Cultures

will ever become the norm. Although the curators are rebelling

against the traditional, they have not dismissed it, defining

Connecting Cultures as an alternative, connection-oriented approach

designed to supplement, not replace, the mainstream, object-

oriented approach. Their point is that one cannot learn

everything about culture either from objects alone or from

connections alone; instead, knowledge is gained through moving

back and forth between these two separate approaches.

52

Visitor Engagement

Another way that Connecting Cultures breaks boundaries is by

engaging visitors through text, technology, and face-to-face

encounters with museum staff. It is the last one of these

techniques is most surprising; who would expect to walk into a

large institution like the Brooklyn Museum and be greeted in-

person by its director? But that is exactly what some people

experienced when they visited Connecting Cultures. Kicking off a new

initiative, Director Arnold Leheman sat a desk in Connecting Cultures

for two hours, welcoming visitors and interacting with them

(Stayton 2012b). Stayton (2012b) writes:

Whether the conversation is as simple as getting directions to the cafe or as complex as discussing favorite works of art in the collection, the point is to provide a human connection between the visitor and the Brooklyn Museum. The conversation goes both ways. Not only can the visitor learn about the Museum, but the staff members, or “connectors,” can learn what it is the public needs to know, and what theyare thinking about, so that we can better tailor what we provide to meet those needs.

In this way, visitors have an opportunity to look behind the

curtain that few museums offer. Stayton (2012b) reports that

people were “impressed to find our Director greeting visitors in

the galleries, and they took full advantage of the opportunity to

53

learn more about the institution,” leaving the encounter

“astonished at the friendly and open spirit of the Brooklyn

Museum.” Following Arnold Leheman, diverse museum staff members

have been rotating shifts in the exhibit so that visitors never

know whom they might meet. Not only is this program good PR for

the museum, but it also helps to further break down the myth of

the faceless expert behind the museum voice.

Another unexpected twist in Connecting Cultures is the way

visitors are engaged through text. Typically, the didactic text

in an ethnographic exhibit delivers the facts authoritatively,

not leaving room for visitor interpretation. But the tone of the

writing in Connecting Cultures is different. The introductory text

states, “We invite you to make your own connections,” and that

sentiment is reinforced throughout the rest of the labels and

text panels. On the introductory panel for each of the three

major themes, the text asks, “What connections do you see between

these works? With other works in the gallery?” By asking a

direct question, the curators momentarily step out of their role

as the experts to give visitors an opportunity to engage in the

narrative being constructed. Instead of simply receiving

54

knowledge and being told what is true, visitors can take an

active part in the production of knowledge and truth by creating

their own linkages between the objects on display. Moreover, I

believe that this encourages visitors to do the same throughout

the museum. Since Connecting Cultures is an introductory gallery,

setting the tone for a person’s visit, it implants the idea that

visitors can play a role in the museum’s process of truth

production in the other galleries as well, giving them a tool to

access and shape the meaning of what they see in the museum for

themselves. While this may not be a revolutionary concept for an

art museum, it is surprising for an ethnographic exhibit.

Lastly, the museum engages visitors through technology. An

iPad in the exhibit (Figure 8) asks, “What do you think about the

Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn exhibit?” People can

type their response into a text box, and their comment is then

posted on the museum’s website. They can also scroll through and

read comments others have made. To date, visitors have left over

300 responses. This seems like an effective method of collecting

visitor feedback, but it is not an appropriate forum for

discussion because there is no way to reply to people’s comments.

55

If a visitor had a question, for example, a museum staff member

could not address it using this medium. Still, the ability for

people to let not only museum staff but also other visitors hear

their thoughts on Connecting Cultures is an interesting method of

engaging them in the exhibit content.

56

Figure 8. An iPad in the exhibit allows visitors to voice theirreactions to Connecting Cultures as well as read others’ reactions.

57

Additionally, the feedback provides a way to gauge the

success of the exhibit and possible ways of improving it. The

responses are overwhelmingly positive, with people calling the

exhibit “fascinating,” “brilliant,” “thought-provoking,” and

“entertaining.” They recognized how different Connecting Cultures is

from a traditional museum exhibit, and they appreciated its

uniqueness. Indeed, this was my own first impression of the

exhibit. I was struck by the thought that it was made

specifically for people like me – people who have an intimate

knowledge of the “rules” and would instantly recognize the

ingenious ways in which Connecting Cultures breaks them. In fact, I

doubt visitors who are not regular museumgoers would be able to

share my depth of appreciation, which is founded upon having seen

hundreds of exhibits that employ the same techniques over and

over again. In comparison to these traditional exhibits,

Connecting Cultures felt exciting and fresh, and I delighted in its

rebelliousness.

On the other hand, perhaps one out of every ten online

responses is critical. There are a variety of reasons people

give for not liking the exhibit, including that it is

58

“pretentious” or that the high displays are too difficult to

view. By far the most common criticism, however, is that it

lacks organization. People called the exhibit

“discombobulating,” “too eclectic,” “hodgepodge,” “confusing,”

and “not cohesive.” They wanted more “order” and a clearer

“story.” It seems as if the very qualities that make the exhibit

so fascinating for some visitors are the same characteristics

that turned others off. Clearly, Connecting Cultures did not work

for everyone, but if the exhibit were more structured, it would

defeat its whole purpose and message. It is meant to illustrate

that there is no single, cohesive, human story, but many;

connections can be found everywhere, not just where traditional,

geographically organized exhibits draw them. Some critics

claimed that they understood what the exhibit was trying to do,

but they still felt put off by its strange mixture of objects.

Maybe there could be a way of adding clarity to the exhibit’s

message without subverting it, but I am at a loss to think of

one.

Overall, the visitor responses tended to reflect either one

extreme or the other. The vast majority of them are completely

59

positive or completely negative with nothing in between. I

suspect, however, that many visitors had some mixture of positive

and negative reactions. At least one person said that she

initially felt confused, but midway through the exhibit she had a

moment of revelation and finally “got it.” Based on these

responses, did Connecting Cultures effectively communicate its

message? I believe the answer is yes. Many visitors came away

with a sense that even the most diverse artworks can reflect the

shared, human experience. To a much lesser extent, people saw

the exhibit as a microcosm of the Brooklyn Museum and even

Brooklyn itself. There is no way to tell if visitors continued

to see connections throughout the rest of the museum’s galleries,

as Stayton (2012a) hoped, but it is clear that they grasped the

main idea. The data collected by the museum through visitor

surveys and interviews supports this conclusion with 85% of

visitors saying that they understood the exhibit’s message

(Devine 2013).

As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998:138) notes, museums today are

more focused on the visitor “experience” than ever before, a term

that “indexes an engagement of the senses, emotions, and

60

imagination.” Whereas museums were once defined by their

relationship to objects, they are now defined by their

relationship to visitors. Museums are constantly trying to

increase attendance and become more popular tourist destinations,

which is why mounting exhibitions has become their primary

activity. Exhibitions are how museums produce experience,

repackaging the “museum product” in new, exciting ways so its

“customers” keep coming back (138-9). This effect of the tourist

economy is clearly visible in the way Connecting Cultures engages

visitors. Part of the purpose for talking to visitors and

getting their feedback is so the museum can “better tailor what

[they] provide to meet [visitors’] needs” (Stayton 2012b).

Connecting Cultures also serves as a way to renew interest in the

Brooklyn Museum’s permanent collection. By drawing visitors in

with a fresh, exciting introductory gallery, the curators can

show objects from the collection in a new light and hopefully

generate a desire to see the rest of the museum’s galleries.

61

Conclusion

62

My analysis reveals that Connecting Cultures breaks boundaries

and subverts expectations in a variety of ways. It transgresses

geographic and temporal boundaries, removing objects from their

individual cultural stories in order to place them into a broader

cross-cultural story about humanity; its design blurs the line

between art and artifact, breaking down ethnocentric assumptions

about these constructed categories; it draws attention to the

transformation of an object into a museum object and the

typically invisible process of amassing a collection; and it

engages visitors in the process of knowledge production instead

of simply communicating information authoritatively. While not

every cultural exhibit can or should be just like Connecting

Cultures, its unusual style provides a much-needed supplement to

more traditional museum exhibits. I believe that by using one or

several of these techniques, museums can revitalize traditional

exhibits, making them more multidimensional and engaging. Take,

for example, the exhibit African Innovations. Even though it is

organized chronologically and geographically like a typical

cultural exhibition, African Innovations integrates similar elements

as Connecting Cultures. Wall texts explain the importance of

63

provenance and why many objects have an unknown artist, and an

iPad allows visitors to offer their thoughts and feedback. These

are small changes, but they have a powerful affect. Not only do

visitors walk away from the exhibit with a deeper understanding

of the objects on display, but they also have a place where their

voice can be heard and their own story added to the one the

museum is telling. Likewise, other exhibits in other

institutions – art museums and natural history museums alike –

can adapt the methods used in Connecting Cultures for their own

purposes.

Ultimately, Connecting Cultures is significant not only because

of how it communicates its message, but also because the message

itself. Instead of taking for granted the stories museums tell,

Connecting Cultures makes us question how those stories are

constructed. The message is that there are multiple, valid ways

to make meaning out of objects beyond what we are used to seeing.

Furthermore, I would argue that making broad, cross-cultural

connections is both valuable and necessary. Kirshenblatt-

Gimblett (1998:51) observes, “The museum experience … becomes a

model for experiencing life outside its walls.” If that is true,

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then Connecting Cultures is training visitors to become cultural

diplomats. By teaching people how to find points of commonality

between themselves and others while simultaneously appreciating

cultural differences, the exhibit helps create better citizens of

the world.

65

References

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OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Crane, Susan A. 2000. “Curious Cabinets and Imaginary Museums.” In Museums and Memory,

edited by Susan A. Crane, 60-81.

Devine, Sara. 2013. “Armed with Input.” Brooklyn Museum Blog, January8.

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/2013/01/08/armed-with-input.

Dudley, Sandra H. 2010. “Museum Materialities: Objects, sense andfeeling.” In Museum

Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations, edited by Sandra H.Dudley, 1-17.

London: Routledge.

Duncan, Carol. 1991. “Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship.”In Exhibiting Cultures: The

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