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Genoways, Hugh H. (editor) (2006).

Museum Philosophy for the Twenty-First
Century
Jay Rounds & Catherine Riggs
Published online: 15 Apr 2008.

To cite this article: Jay Rounds & Catherine Riggs (2008) Genoways, Hugh H. (editor)
(2006). Museum Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century, Visitor Studies, 11:1, 112-115, DOI:
10.1080/10645570801938533

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 Visitor Studies,2008, 11(1), 112–115
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ISSN: 1064-5578 print / 1934-7715 online
DOI: 10.1080/10645570801938533

Book Review

Genoways, Hugh H. (editor) (2006). Museum Philosophy for the

Twenty-First Century. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press.
ISBN: 0-7591-0753-X/978-0-7591-0753-3 (hbk) USD $93.50;
ISBN: 0-7591-0754-8/978-0-7591-0754-0 (pbk) USD $31.50, 310 pages.
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We are now into our third decade of books about what museums will be like in the
21st century. One might have hoped that by now some clarity and unanimity would have
emerged, but the trend seems to be in the opposite direction.
The first major work in this line was AAM’s celebratory 1984 volume titled Museums
for a New Century. The product of a blue-ribbon commission of prominent museum di-
rectors, it exuded confidence that museums would be able “to retain their permanence
and authority while embracing a larger public role and responding to new social respon-
sibilities” (p. 18). Museums had been impacted by the turbulence that began sweeping
through American society in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but that very turbulence was inter-
preted to mean that “our times are creating a museum movement.” Society would need
museums more than ever, the authors argued, because “Museums represent certainty in
uncertain times” (pp. 17–18).
Thirteen years later that confidence had eroded dramatically. In Museums for the New
Millennium (AAM, 1997), Harold Skramstad announced that “The word museum has lost
its power to adequately define a coherent body of institutions that have similar missions,
goals and strategies” (p. 37). Stephen Weil warned of a pervasive sense that museums
“face a future in which many of them will be called upon to be very different” (p. 14).
To create Museum Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century, the latest offering in
this line, Hugh Genoways asked some two dozen contributors: “What underlying
philosophy/mission should museums pursue in the first half of the twenty-first century?”
Perhaps Genoways hoped that the writers would converge on a new philosophy—a
new way to see museums once again as “a coherent body of institutions that have
similar missions, goals and strategies.” In reality, the book exemplifies the increasing
fragmentation of the field and the continuing expansion of demands placed on struggling
museums. The essays tell us that museums in the new century will be very much like they
were in the old century, except better managed, more professional, more inclusive, more
educational, more creative, more diverse, more accountable, more responsive to the
needs of community, more numerous, and so on. They do not tell us how museums can
do all of these things with fixed or shrinking funding, nor how to prioritize among them.
Each author goes his or her own way. In the most contrarian contribution, Preziosi
starts his chapter with the declaration that “Everything of significance to museology has

112
 Book Review

already been said” (p. 69). Instead of a new vision, he argues, the field produces nothing
but “old w[h]ine in new bottles” (brackets in original).

It is notable that, in professional museum literature over the past few decades, there
has been virtually no projection of the institution’s future missions or philosophies that
has not been more of the same, or not simply better, versions of the safely familiar.
Its future continues to be conceived almost exclusively in an instrumental manner—as
technically more refined versions of public edutainment and infotainment, or as more
“responsive” and “representative” versions of whatever forms of social and cultural diver-
sity seem to be required in increasingly more diverse communities, cities, and countries.
(p. 70)

One need not share Preziosi’s radical prescription for the total demise of the traditional
“hegemonic” museum to note how well this passage describes the bulk of Museum Phi-
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losophy for the Twenty-First Century. In the most unabashedly conservative of the chap-
ters, Mares declares that the traditional museum is “sacred” (p. 96). Mares launches
an angry jeremiad against the “philistines” who seem to be incapable of properly ap-
preciating museums—especially those who should, but do not, provide museums with
adequate funding. He declares that “museums and collections must be maintained at all
costs. Permanently. Eliminating museums is not an option. That is the moral mandate”
(p. 92). Those who fail in this moral obligation will be held “accountable” (p. 96).
In “A Plea for Silence: Putting Art back into the Art Museum,” Maleuvre echoes Ben-
jamin Ives Gilman’s writings of a hundred years ago on the solitary aesthetic experience.
Suchy, in “Connection, Recollection, and Museum Missions,” declares that “relevance
is the museum’s mission for the twenty-first century,” a theme that was as prominent
in 1900 as in 2000. Throughout the book, the majority of the prescriptions, although
presented as innovations, in fact fit Preziosi’s depiction as “better versions of the safely
familiar.”
So what’s wrong with the safely familiar, with making a good thing even better? There
is no law of nature that demands that a new century deliver up a new museology that
differs radically from the old. Perhaps incremental refinements to existing technologies
are exactly what we need.
Nonetheless, if we set aside Preziosi’s call for a fundamental discontinuity in museum
philosophy and practice, there remains something problematic in piling up so many
virtuous prescriptions for museum philosophy and practice. Can museums really get
better in all these ways simultaneously? Even in the best of circumstances, every museum
has finite resources and has to make choices about which values to prioritize. Moreover,
some of these good ideas seem to suggest actions that are directly contrary to the actions
suggested by other good ideas.
Consider the challenges facing a museum that responds both to the chapters that
emphasize professional leadership and those that emphasize populism. Focusing on
zoos and aquaria, Maple and Mallavarapu (p. 177ff) argue that “the highest priority
of the next century will be leadership.” They advocate “a greater emphasis on formal,
MBA-type training for CEOs so future zoo and aquarium leaders will be equally adept
at ‘best business practices’ and the science of conservation” (p. 197). Genoways, in his
own chapter, argues more broadly that “professionalization of individuals working for

Visitor Studies, 11(1), 2008 113

 Book Review

museums” is essential (p. 221), and that “The entire museum profession must become
far more scholarly” (p. 231). Lewis and Martin (p. 107ff) see the future of science muse-
ums in professionalizing through alliances with “leading-edge academic and corporate
researchers” and corporate “business strategists” (p. 111).
Other writers call for making fundamental alterations in the decision making struc-
tures of museums in order to shift greater control to the external community that the
museum should serve. Archibald, for instance, argues for “ways to share authority that
far transcend the marketing surveys we currently use to gauge the public’s receptivity
to the choices we put before them” (p. 269). Coxall calls for “curators to relinquish their
hold on their exhibitions” so that interpretation of objects can be placed in the hands
of “the people who made, used and valued them before they arrived at the museum”
(pp. 145, 140).
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Perhaps professionalism can be reconceived in a way that would be consistent with

populism, but that does not seem to be what the writers cited above have in mind. As
traditionally conceived, professionals take their values and standards from professional
peer groups that are formally organized and that usually produce official statements
of standards. By contrast, the reference group for the populist is “the community,” a
relatively amorphous grouping that, however defined, is likely to stress values that reflect
the broader concerns of daily community life rather than the technological standards so
central to professionalism. If professionalism and populism have any meaning at all,
then they should lead to different decisions by the museum about what to do, about
what values should be given priority. It is hard to see how a museum could answer both
calls simultaneously, and none of the authors directly addresses how to reconcile these
competing demands.
There are several other sets of conflicting prescriptions running through the book. Most
notably, the authors offer conflicting advice regarding the audience that museums should
target. Genoways says that museums should serve “society as a whole,” and Coxall says
we must reach “all potential audiences.” Other authors (e.g., Patchen, Paris) advocate
a focus on “children and their families.” Maleuvre says that art museums must be for
those who are willing to undertake the hard work necessary for understanding works of
art. No one advocates “exclusiveness” per se, but there seems to be little agreement
on exactly what “inclusiveness” means. The authors give little or no attention to the
tradeoffs involved in any particular scheme for targeting specific audiences. Should the
prescriptions be applied to the field of museums as a whole, or to every individual museum
within the field? Will changes in practice to accommodate new audiences constitute a
“Pareto improvement,” a new state in which no one is worse off and at least one participant
(or group) is now better off? Or is this a zero-sum situation in which the benefits to new
audiences come at the expense of reduced satisfaction to old audiences? Is there a danger
that the museum might fragment into “separate but equal” experiences targeted to each
group? What will the implications of any policy change be for social justice, attendance
and funding?
Neither the format of the book, nor the question posed to the authors, lend themselves
to addressing the conflicts among values that are evident in Museum Philosophy for the
Twenty-First Century. In any case, it is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do, not just
for museums, but for all complex institutions. When addressing the future, we usually

114 Visitor Studies, 11(1), 2008

 Book Review

identify what we consider to be the critical deficiency in our current state, and then
imagine a future in which that fault is corrected, but all else stays the same. But things
usually don’t stay the same. Our efforts to correct one deficiency may set off a non-
linear chain of adjustments in other aspects of the technology, leading to something
that we did not at all anticipate. This is why many authorities recommend approaching
organizational change through incremental experimentation, or “muddling through,”
rather than grand-scale planning.
Thus, it is probably inevitable that this book proves to be a better guide to the frag-
mented state of the museum field today than a compelling vision for the museum of 2050.
We are now well supplied with virtues; the problem is to find a practical technology for
living with them all.

Reviewed by Jay Rounds and Catherine Riggs

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Jay Rounds, Ph.D. is the E. Desmond Lee Professor of Museum Studies and Com-
munity History in the Department of History, University of Missouri, St. Louis. Email:
rounds@umsl.edu.
Catherine Riggs is an archivist with the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis. Email:
ccriggs@yahoo.com.

Visitor Studies, 11(1), 2008 115