Curatorial Conversations IX: Challenging History

Our ongoing post series, Curatorial Conversations, has addressed a number of the challenging aspects of displaying and interpreting psychiatric collections. The notion of a challenge incorporates both the concern that such histories are difficult in and of themselves, but also that any interpretation should challenge received ideas of mental health history. The recent Challenging History conference at City University spoke to similar themes, arising from a previous network on the topic. Papers, workshops and keynote speakers addressed a variety of “difficult” histories, as well as sparking debate over the nature of the role held by museums in delivering ideas.

The conference opened to an inspiring address from David Fleming, Director of National Museums Liverpool, questioning the notion that the educational nature of museums requires them both to avoid difficult subjects and concentrate on intellectual ideas. Fleming, drawing on examples of museums as monuments to genocide, political turmoil and war, proposed that challenging subjects open up the opportunity to engage the emotions of audiences. Emotions, he argued, not objects, are at the heart of social history museums: why would any museum desire to be neutral and dispassionate, even if such an approach were possible? Of course, such an ideology contains further concerns. As one participant in the discussion pointed out, emotions can be divisive as well as shared, while attempts to invoke feeling might easily be viewed as manipulative or propagandist. Nonetheless, Fleming’s was an interesting reminder that the idea that a museum might present an entirely “objective” view of history is a widely held myth.  The museum, created by staff, governors and associated organisations and communities with social and political agendas, will certainly reflect the context in which it is created. Opening up discussion of this context, as we have aimed to do around the Bethlem Museum, becomes an important element of determining the content and message of the museum itself.

But who, ultimately, decides on this message? In the most thought-provoking talk of the conference, museum consultant Bernadette Lynch addressed the topic of community participation and consultation in the heritage sector. One interesting analogy, stemming from her recent report for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Whose Cake Is It Anyway?, was that of the “wheels on the bus” model, an easy trap to fall into in museum consultation. In this example, a museum worker designing an exhibition involves a local community group in consultation, asking them to contribute their own designs, adding wheels and windows to the existing bus outline. Such a task clearly leaves little room for interpretation and choice – it is obvious where wheels and windows should be placed. Nonetheless, the group attempt to contribute alternative ideas, which the museum worker receives with some trepidation. Ultimately, however, she discards all those contributions which don’t fit her initial idea, retaining only the few that do: a process that frequently, Dr Lynch argued, leaves external groups with a feeling of having contributed to their own marginalisation. The museum sets the limits of engagement from the outset, disempowering those whose voices it claims to champion.

This picture may seem unduly negative but, incorporated into the overall debate of the conference, it becomes a very positive reminder. It is all too easy, particularly for those working within “challenging” historical fields, to assume that their work is unquestionably worthy, due simply to its subject matter. Challenging History reminds us that what we ultimately need to challenge is ourselves: our opinions, ideas and - most importantly - our practice.

You can join the new Challenging History discussion list here. A forthcoming book will also further address the themes of the conference.

Curatorial Conversations VIII

( continued from a previous post )

Instances of exhibits that function in the way described by Wright and Flis are given not only by them – we will return to their commentary in a future post in this series of conversations – but also by other contributors to the Exhibiting Madness volume. Bronwyn Labrum highlights two antipodean examples of displays that seem to fit Wright and Flis’ description of the “ubiquitous asylum museum”.  In Labrum’s account, these displays are centred on late nineteenth-century ‘seclusion rooms’ and are interpreted by museum labels written from the point of view of the staff who used them to manage patient (mis)behaviour.

“Visitors arrive at the dramatic isolation cell with its peephole, after proceeding through several rooms…It creates an aura of secrecy and dread, and reinforces the stereotypes about lunatics and confinement…The detailed description of the seclusion room continues to resonate… Seclusion Room – used right up until the late 1960’s [sic]. A shutter was placed over the window to prevent violent people from harming themselves. The mattress on the bed and blanket are made of heavy canvas to prevent them from being torn up..” ¹

It seems to us that the common failing of these kind of displays – whether inculcating a “psychiatric establishment” perspective on the history of mental health treatment (as in Labrum’s examples), or an “anti-psychiatric survivor” perspective (which, as we will see when we come to the examples offered by Wright and Flis, is equally vulnerable to the temptation of voyeurism) – lies precisely in their tendency to inculcate. We conceive of the Archives & Museum here at Bethlem as being something other than the “ubiquitous asylum museum”, and to assist in the discharge of the task we have assumed of “recording the lives and experience, and celebrating the achievements of people with mental health problems”, we want our new displays (still only in the planning stage at the moment) to inform, engage, provoke and question…but certainly not to inculcate.

¹ B. Labrum, ‘Always Distinguishable From Outsiders: Materialising Cultures of Clothing from Psychiatric Institutions’, in Catherine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon, Exhibiting Madness in Museums: Remembering Psychiatry through Collections and Display (Routledge, 2011), pages 71 and 73.

Curatorial Conversations VII

We are keen to sustain an online conversation about the intended shape of our new museum as far as we can into 2012, responding to and inviting response from those involved in workshops held as part of our recent community consultation, those who have recently published relevant reflections – particularly the contributors to Coleborne and MacKinnon’s 2011 volume Exhibiting Madness in Museums – and as many of our blog readers as are willing and able to participate.

In Exhibiting Madness, David Wright and Nathan Flis write of contemporary “commemoration rituals” inspired by a shift towards “historicising the mental hospital” in ways that “differ in fundamental ways from previous methods of remembering the lunatic asylum, such as scholarly books on individual hospitals or the ubiquitous asylum museum run by volunteer staff and patients”.

They argue that these rituals are inspired, at least in part, by the embrace of “what might be seen as a subtle new form of anti-psychiatry, where motifs borrowed from memorialisations of the Holocaust, the First World War and American slavery are adapted to the political aspirations of ‘psychiatric survivors’ organisations.”

“Aided by a sympathetic press eager to write about the ‘gothic’ conditions in institutions”, they continue, these initiatives “are notable for the inclusion of senior figures of the psychiatric establishment who, for reasons of fundraising and political sensitivities, have paradoxically embraced problematic narratives of their own profession’s past…The ‘dark past’ of institutional psychiatry is then repackaged by the psychiatric elite to show how far the psychiatric profession has progressed.”¹

[to be continued]

¹ D. Wright and N. Flis, ‘A Grave Injustice: The Mental Hospital and Shifting Sites of Memory’, in Catherine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon eds., Exhibiting Madness in Museums: Remembering Psychiatry through Collections and Display (Routledge, 2011), page 102.

Curatorial Conversations VI

How might visitors, a high proportion of whose lives are likely to have been touched by the topic, be greeted at a museum of psychiatry? Who might staff the front desk on such a museum, to ensure that visitors feel welcome? At one consultation session on the relocation project, attendees suggested that, as service users, they would feel most comfortable if they knew that front of house staff and volunteers were service users (or former service users) themselves. Indeed, one would hope that a museum of mental health would encourage the involvement of service users at every level. Nonetheless, there are a number of issues around this topic.

First, of course, one must ask whether staff would want their background (whatever it is) to be known or highlighted. While sharing individual stories and memories has often been identified as a way of engaging and inspiring audiences, such personal engagement must be the decision of the individual concerned. In addition, the nature of volunteering in museums may itself be seen as sensitive. While voluntary work has been shown to have a positive effect on mental health, and may also help to bridge a difficult transition between hospital and community for some, unpaid work can also lead (fairly or otherwise) to perceptions of exploitation, or the assumption that people must participate whether or not they wish to, or are even able to. In order to successfully develop a volunteering scheme that is useful to all, we need first to explore exactly how such a scheme would benefit people, and how it can be adapted to fit individual circumstances. What sort of roles would people want to experience? What would they want to learn? What courses might benefit them? And how can we ensure that volunteers feel valued, and that their important contribution towards the museum is recognised? We welcome comment on any of these topics, as well as further involvement at any level  in the development of a volunteering scheme.

Curatorial Conversations V

During a recent consultation held in conjunction with our proposed museum relocation project, staff and consultants have spoken to a wide range of people, including current and former mental health service users, hospital staff, carers and local interest groups, about their ideas for the new museum. One session with a peer-led ‘Hearing Voices’ group was particularly inspirational, indicating just how creative a ‘museum of the mind’ might be, as well as the value that such a museum might hold for some service users: a chance to increase understanding of their condition by sharing their experiences.

The discussion indicated many of the ways in which perceptions of museums have altered in the past decades. The group (many of whom often visited art galleries) preferred interactive exhibits within a clean, modern, welcoming building to traditional display cases and period buildings. Sound and video installations were regarded as vital, and the best means of portraying ‘hearing voices’ to those who had never had such experiences was discussed.

One of the most challenging issues a ‘hearing voices’ display would have to confront is how to effectively portray an ‘average’ experience, at the same time making it clear that the experience of every mental health service user is unique. Perhaps an interactive exhibit could confront this issue? Shared experiences might be viewed through a large-screen video installation, for example, in which the viewer follows the path of a camera around a locked in-patient ward on a journey through the hospital from locked door to meds hatch. A lack of dialogue would suggest the common nature of such a journey. Yet to add a sense of the unique nature of patient experiences, visitors might remove headphones from the model of a head in order to listen to a recording of ‘voices’. Taking up headphones would suggest to visitors that they are sharing the experience of one of many individuals, among whom even similar symptoms may vary considerably.