Lisa C. Roberts - From Knowledge to Narrative: Educators and the Changing Museum

Smithsonian Books
Washington

1997 by the Smithsonian Institution
All rights reserved

Editor: Jenelle Walthour
Designer: Martha Sewall

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roberts, Lisa C.

From knowledge to narrative : educators and the changing museum / Lisa C. Roberts.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-56098-706-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
eBook ISBN: 978-1-58834-448-9
1. MuseumsEducational aspectsUnited StatesCase studies. 2. Museum exhibitsUnited StatesCase studies. 3. Chicago Botanic Garden. 4. Museum exhibitsIllinoisChicago. I. Title.
AM11.R63 1997
069.0973dc21

96-37617

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available

v3.1

For museum educators

This book marks the culmination of a train of thought that began some twenty years ago. Over the years, it has taken shape with the help of a great many people.

Perhaps more than anyone else, I wish to acknowledge my teachers. Jim Farrell, Neil Harris, and Jonathan Z. Smith all gave more to me than they will ever know.

I am indebted to several people for their careful reading of chapter drafts. Deborah Howes, Carmen MacDougall, Britt Raphling, Danielle Rice, and Beverly Serrell made many insightful contributions to these pages. Numerous other friends and colleagues gave generously when input and direction were needed.

Throughout the course of this study Sue Brogdon, my supervisor at the Chicago Botanic Garden, provided unfailing support that, in many ways, made possible its completion.

Also from the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Linnaeus exhibit-team members deserve acknowledgment for their subjection in these pages to such intensely close, public scrutiny. Each, in their own way, has earned my deepest regard for their respective professional endeavors.

Finally, I wish to thank my family, who stood by me no matter where this train of thought seemed to lead. It is with special gratitude that I acknowledge the one person who was there through thick and thinmy husband and favorite museum companion, John.

O ne summer day in 1988, six museum staff members at the Chicago Botanic Garden met to discuss the creation of an upcoming exhibit. What made the occasion noteworthy was that a group had been given responsibility for the exhibits development. What made it historic was that an educator was a part of the group.

Once the sole purview of curators or designers, museum exhibits throughout the country have begun to be opened to a new kind of expertisethat of educators. The 1980s were watershed years, as increasing numbers of educators began to sit at exhibit-development tables. How they came to be there and what their presence means is a story about the transformation of the museum institution.

Histories of museums have typically focused on collectors, founders, and visionaries. Although education has been a cornerstone of many institutions, it has never received an adequate place in the historical record. It is only in this century, after all, that staff and departments devoted solely to education have begun to appear in museums. Even then, education has often remained the poor stepchild to such other museum operations as collection, research, and display.

That situation has begun to change. Growing professionalismalong with a climate whose watchwords include accountability, customer service, and educational reformhas made education a serious and central function in museums. It has also increased the pressure on educators to prove that they can rise to their task, which has itself become a complicated matter. Todays museum educators do more than educate. They are involved in a whole host of activities that relate broadly to education and audiences: for example, program and exhibit development, school field trips, teacher training, continuing education, community outreach, volunteer management, visitor studies, and fundraising.

Despite this expansion of activities, professional-training requirements have lagged far behind. Museum educators come from every background imaginable. The typical career track begins with a foot in the door, usually volunteering or doing low-level work and then gradually moving up the ladder. Until certification requirements are established, this trend will likely continue. In the meantime, the number of educators and their influence continue to grow.

This book tells the story of education in museums. It is a story about the emergence of a new profession, and it is the story of a revolutionin values, knowledge, and power. Museum educators are charged with a responsibility that, on the surface, appears straightforward but actually holds radical implications for what a museum is. Educators have brought visitors perspectives to bear on the treatment of collections: how they are displayed, what is said about them, and who does the saying. In doing so, they have raised questions about such core tenets as the sanctity of objects and the authority of curators. By insisting on more shared authority over objects and what they represent, educators have given visitors a voice in determining the significance of collections that as a public trust belong to them and to their communities. As a result, traditional scholarly definitions of objects are beginning to be accompanied by or replaced with alternative interpretations based on different criteria of meaning.

The significance of these changes is considerable. They mark the occurrence in museums of a major shift in thought, one that has touched nearly everyone in the business of knowledge. The once prevalent view that knowledge is objective and verifiable has been widely challenged by the notion that knowledge is socially constructed and shaped by individuals particular interests and values. Language about facts and certainties has been replaced by language about context, meaning, and discourse. Reactions to this shift in perspective have been predictably divisive: where proponents see the inclusion of marginalized voices, critics find the erosion and the politicization of standards.

This shift has important implications for what museums are and do. It would appear that these onetime Towers of Babel comprise, as foretold, not a synopsis of wisdom but a multitude of voices. Theirs is an enterprise that is concerned less with knowledge than with narrative. Indeed, in museums it has become fashionable to speak of the making of meaning by staff, by visitors, or by anyone who holds a relationship to museum collections. Objects, it follows, hold multiple stories and meanings, and, depending on the context, all of those stories and meanings are potentially valid.

The problem with this thinking is that it opens the arena of knowledge to a kind of rampant relativism, where standards of truth become subject to the vagaries of experience. It also calls into question the role of museum educators, whose responsibility traditionally has been to help interpret collections to visitors: if no one meaning is privileged over another, why not just let visitors be and experience our collections as they will?

That question is not an easy one. It has to do with the role of education in a world where knowledge is not transmitted but produced. Far from eradicating the need for education, however, new views of knowledge have rendered it more acute. Now, the task of education is about not just interpreting objects but also deciphering interpretationsin other words, anticipating and negotiating between the meanings constructed by visitors and the meanings constructed by museums. This may be a rather unorthodox definition of education, but it is one that accounts for the existence and the legitimacy of multiple meanings.