Soliman Exhibition at the Wien Museum, Vienna

I finally made it to the Angelo Soliman exhibition today at the Vienna City Museum. I was right to be excited. The exhibition is the closest I’ve ever seen in Austria to my ideal of what museums are and what they should do. 

By way of background, Angelo Soliman (c.1721 - 1796) was an African (exact details of his early life are unknown beyond that) who came to Europe as an enslaved child. After reaching pubescence the “Coffee Moors” - as young African boys who served in aristocratic houses were called - were often left to a life of destitution. Angelo Soliman became a soldier and eventually reached Vienna, where he served in the house of Liechtenstein, receiving a wage. After secretly marrying and contravening the rules for servants in the home, he went on to live with his life and daughter, becoming a prominent member of Viennese Society and a Freemason, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Mozart (the exhibition has proof of their meeting in the form of a guestbook for a Lodge that shows they attended at least one meeting together). However, after his death his body was desecrated by the director of the Emperor’s private museum, who removed his skin and displayed him wearing feathers, disregarding his life and achievements and making him an exotic specimen. Despite his daughter Josephine’s protests, his remains were displayed until destroyed by fire in the October Revolution of 1848. 

However, the exhibition is not a simple retelling of his life. Instead, the curators have used Soliman as the focal point in describing the depiction of Africans in Austria and how they have been perceived over time. Beginning with how Europeans thought of Africa in the Middle Ages and leading right through to the present day treatment of immigrants and people of African descent. Paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries are thoughtfully displayed alongside information about the life of the African children depicted, whose names have been lost to history, rather than the illustrious people the portraits are meant to glorify. The slave shackles could have been better used as a way to bring in how many enslaved Africans were mistreated, even after their initial capture and to balance the paintings, were the children are shown well-dressed and healthy looking. 

Disappointingly, the articles on loan from the Ethnographic Museum to show the likely place of Soliman’s birth and West African material culture at the time, were in their own enclave, separate from all the otherwise European objects, and serving to reinforce a sense of ‘otherness’. 

The most exciting thing about this exhibition was the was that the themes of racism, prejudice and the treatment of people of African descent are continued post 1800. In Austria still, chocolate cake with whipped cream is called “Mohr im Hemd” (Moor in a shirt) and it’s not uncommon to find paprika based dishes described as “Zigeuner” (Gypsy). The exhibition draws attention to some of these everyday references, as well as cases of great injustice against the African community, including police brutality in the 1990s. Also interesting were the details of various projects that have sought to reexamine history and expland the established narrative of ‘Vienna’s history’. 

The exhibition finishes with a multimedia installation. Visitors can listen to the reactions of people of African descent in Vienna - both immigrants and born-and-bred Viennese - to Soliman’s story and to questions such as “is Vienna today an open society?”. Their answers are honest and insightful. They also echoed some of my own experiences of being non-Austrian in Vienna, particularly the change that takes place during elections. As soon as the posters for the further Right parties (looking at you, FPÖ and BZÖ) go up, people are suddenly much more willing to call you out on public transport for speaking a language other than German, or embarrass themselves by conspiratively passing a comment about others nearby, not realising they have picked altogether the wrong audience. 

The Soliman exhibition is so exciting, not only because of the subject and specific themes it has chosen to address, but because it shows an exciting direction I hope other Austrian museum will follow about the role of the museum in society. 

The decline of Britain’s public museums (?) cont…

Some of you might remember the blog entry/rant I had in response to an infuriating article in the Independant by Alexander Hamilton. Feel free to refresh you memory with the links above, as the rant continued in the comments section:

“Your Majesty” replied to the 1st paragraph of the blog which I posted in teh comments section with:

Oh, dispense with the melodrama already. The article raises a very sensible concern about the commercialisation of museums and how they’re becoming hosts to spectacles rather than guardians of our precious cultural heritage. Museums aren’t entertainment venues, and they oughtn’t be treated as if they are—appealing to wider and diverse audiences is best left to television stations and the cinema, where these audiences are called “markets.”

You’ll forgive me if I find that sort of attitude reprehensible when held by museum boards obsessed with making their institutions profitable. From the anti-intellectual libertarian rightists we hear that museums are unprofitable and should be let go, and from the ever insecure left, we hear that they’re élitist when done properly. How about we leave aside the tired pandering and let museums do what they’re supposed to, eh?

My reply - should you still be reading - read as follows:

But, can I ask what you mean by being done ‘properly’? Presumably as ‘guardians of our precious cultural heritage’ they shouldn’t be displaying items where there is the chance they might degrade through light, moisture, touch etc. etc. And what might you mean when you say ‘our’? Presumably, if you mean humanity (and you must, as museums like the British Museum, Natural History Museum, V&A etc have relatively small collections of British things in comparison to all ‘other’, and that is primarily the sort of institution this article refers to) then the museums should be as accessible as possible. Even when you mean British, that means the whole spectrum of British identity - not just white, middle-class people, but also people of African-Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese (the list goes on) descent and yes, people of all backgrounds who don’t show up at the museum door equipped with the relevant knowledge and skills to appreciate their precious heritage as much as they would like. People go for so many different reasons, but you ask most and they will say to learn, not to study.

And rather than blame museums for commercialisation, perhaps you should look at the wider picture? The current govt which has asked museums to brace themselves for wideranging cuts, for instance? Maintaining, displaying and insuring priceless treasures is no cheap business and museums can’t just sell stuff (be it artefacts or postcards) to tide them over.

We both agree that museums are important and their collections are vital and should be preserved, I think our disagreement is for whom. Universities are the places where academic content can be communicated to those who have gained entry and while museums shouldn’t be dumbing down their content, it should be layered so that as a public space - a public institution - it can be enjoyed and appreciated by the most people possible.

It is difficult to justify the amount of public money museums cost if they aren’t accessible to those who fund it. Take away the public, take away the public funding. Then you are in a big mess.

The comment didn’t surprise me, rather the lack of comments. Five comments in all (2 of which were me…), one “Your Majesty”, “Wagmamma” (who also argues that museums should be free and are doing a sterling job - I paraphrase) and one flippant comment from a commenter with a history of flippant comments (click his/her picture for an overview). Do people really care so little about the way we run our museums? And whether they are accessible?

And, what arguments/points did I miss out? This isn’t the first or last time I’ve had this discussion and if anyone has further ammunition for my cause (or indeed arguments against that “Your Majesty” didn’t bring up), please let me know!

Social Inclusion Museum trip to London and Who does the Kunsthistorisches Museum belong to?

As a card carrying member of the Austrian Museums Association, I will be taking part in a trip to London which is being organised in conjunction with the Joanneum Museumsakademie and the Reinwardt Academie Amsterdam.

Simply called “Museum and Social Inclusion” we will be visiting The Museums Association HQ, the V&A, Horniman, Museum of Croydon, Natural History Museum/Darwin Centre, and the British Museum, as well as taking part in a “museological city walk”.

I’m looking forward to meeting some Austrian museum people and getting an idea of what the current mood is in museums about social inclusion (it is really only very recently that the idea seems to have gained some momentum in Austria) and what form and direction it is taking.

I attended a discussion on Friday night, held at the Die Angewandte entitled “Who does the Kunsthistorisches Museum belong to?” (the KHM is the former Royal art collection). Sabine Haag, the new Director (since January 2009) was there discussing some of the developments that have taken place since she took up the post. It was interesting to hear about some of the new initiatives aimed at widening participation in one of Austria’s largest, most well-known and prestigious museums. However, I couldn’t help but feel that there was no solid strategy or understanding of what Social Inclusion really meant, and she kept repeating “If people want to come and are interested, they can”, and bringing up the matter of entrance fee, rather than some of the deeper issues of:

• Which groups aren’t coming and why? What barriers exist to people coming and bringing their families?
• What can we do to change that: exhibitions, methods, classes, outreach, community consultation?
• Is the museum exclusive? (until a museum can admit that it is - at least in part or unintentionally - exclusive, they can’t make a whole-hearted commitment to inclusion)

The issue of interest kept coming up, ‘if people are interested’, ‘interested people’ but there seemed to be no self-reflection about whether or not the museum was doing enough to develop exhibitions to appeal to wider, more diverse groups.

Some outreach work mentioned by Dr. Haag included taking copies of famous paintings from the museum into the streets of Vienna with frames and having the interpretation team deliver short talks and answer questions to interested passers by. However, they were located on busy, city centre streets - avoided by locals unless they absolutely have to go that way, because it inevitably means having to barge through large groups of tourists. Wouldn’t this have been a more interesting - and more challenging - exercise if those paintings had been taken into districts with a higher percentage of people with an immigration background? And if the talks had been delivered in languages other than German, say, Turkish (Vienna has a large Turkish minority) or Arabic?

Another aspect - which I think again shows a misunderstanding of what social inclusion is in its broader form - was the response to the question by fellow panelist Martin Fritz, of whether they museum could perhaps use it’s collections - Mr. Fritz used the example of the Ancient Egyptian artefacts - to draw links to Egyptians living in Vienna and as a way to celebrate and involve the communities in the museum and create a more dynamic interaction with the collections for all visitors? Dr. Haag responded that she felt that was more within the realm of the Ethnology Museum (which is a satellite museum of the KHM, located just across the road). I would argue however that this does nothing for the cause of social inclusion, rather it continues to represent minority communities and cultures within Vienna as “other” and defined in opposition to what Viennese is, rather than as an integral part. 

So, I’m really looking forward to meeting people from other institutions and seeing what other museums are doing and getting reactions to the British approach.