Taking an ethnographic approach to museums, P. Levitt explains how, as a crucial link between past and present, local and global, they play a political role in addressing questions of nationalism and cosmopolitanism.
What role do museums play in promoting national and cosmopolitan identities, but also in preserving historical memory narratives and crafting narratives of the future? These questions arise throughout Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display (Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Display the Nation and the World) and seem particularly urgent in the era of Brexit, Donald Trump, and growing nationalist sentiment in Europe. Indeed, Levitt’s emphasis on the idealized cosmopolitanism that many contemporary museums favor seems singularly relevant in a world where free trade, borderless travel, and identity politics are under increasing scrutiny: “Where do we learn what we have in common, and where do we learn to feel responsibility for groups and problems that are not our own? How do we learn to live in increasingly diverse neighborhoods and relate that experience to people who live half a world away? How and where can museums foster this?” (p. 6). This academic work is not only very well documented (the footnotes and bibliography take up 70 pages), but P. Levitt addresses it admirably to the general public “so that museum professionals, colleagues, students and my 95-year-old father will all want to read it” (p. 12).
Exposing Identity Politics
The development of museums in the nationalist contexts of the end of the XVIIIe century and the beginning of the XIXe has been widely covered in the scholarly literature, particularly in work on European and Middle Eastern institutions. Levitt instead adopts an ethnographic, even sociological, approach in her study: rather than contextualizing the origins of museums and the continuing importance of these founding moments for the core missions of museum institutions (as any historically oriented study would do), she explores the current dispositions, opinions, and self-perceptions of the institutions’ staff and core audiences. Levitt also moves away from historical analyses by adopting a comparative, cross-cultural approach based on case studies in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia. Her diachronic and synchronic analyses take into account both the local histories of the selected institutions and their broader contemporary contexts. Indeed, her desire to understand museums contemporaries makes the book particularly appealing to both the general public and specialist readers. P. Levitt demonstrates that museums, far from being innocent exhibition spaces, are in reality places where identity politics are played out both locally and internationally.
For example, her first comparative chapter studies ethnographic exhibitions on immigration in Sweden and Denmark in order to grasp how museums in these countries present national narratives (“Chapter 1: The Bog and the Beast: The View of the Nation and the World from Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Gothenburg “). Levitt argues that the complex colonial histories of these countries, their different attitudes toward immigration, and the way their respective governments conceive of their roles on the international stage have influenced permanent and temporary exhibitions, hiring decisions, and public programming. Drawing on rich ethnographic collections assembled at the height of Sweden’s colonial enterprise, Swedish museums, she argues, attempt to express both a responsibility to the past on display and a commitment to presenting the country’s international political role today. In this way, Swedish museums can emphasize “the deep connections with the world beyond their borders” (p. 41). Levitt, by contrast, argues that Danish museums look inward to “celebrate Danishness,” as part of the small country’s efforts to grasp the meaning of Danish ethnicity and identity (p. 42).
Chapter 2 (“ The Legislator and the Priest: Cosmopolitan Nationalism in Boston and New York “) looks to American museums to understand how similar issues of cosmopolitanism and nationalism play out in a country of immigrants. Levitt first argues that the emergence of the first museums in the United States in XIXe century set very different benchmarks for the spectrum from cosmopolitanism to nationalism on display in these institutions. As civic foundations dedicated to promoting equality and educating the general public, the missions of American museums have from the beginning reflected Americans’ conscious representations of their national identity. Levitt argues, however, that institutions in different cities approach “American” identity in different ways, reflecting the particularities of each city’s history and culture. New York institutions such as El Museo del Barrio and the Brooklyn Museum see themselves as reflecting the cultural melting pot of the city’s populations, with a strong emphasis on ethnic identity. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, by contrast, must be understood within the more conservative and cerebral cultural landscape of a city dominated by universities.
New cultural institutions: a global future
P. Levitt’s third chapter focuses on newly established museums in the Middle East and Asia. While the collections explored in the previous chapters reflect the legacy of centuries of collecting and exhibiting, those in Doha and Singapore evolved in the late 19th century. XXe century and at the beginning of the XXIealongside the rapid evolution of their respective cities and nations. Levitt argues, for example, that the acquisition of collections and the construction of museums in Qatar over the past twenty-five years reflect the government’s conscious efforts to integrate museums “into a strategic master plan to reposition the country as a regional, and even global, player through cultural institutions” (p. 91). Qatari museums such as the Mathaf and the Museum of Islamic Arts are recruiting foreign specialists with transnational expertise, as part of the government’s deliberate efforts to bring these new institutions up to par with the more established collections of Europe and the United States. Levitt notes, however, that museums have yet to forge strong ties with local populations, largely because Qatari audiences were not accustomed to visiting them until recently (p. 114). In contrast, Singapore’s institutions draw directly on the city’s local history as a colonial entrepôt where British definitions of citizenship and ethnicity (Chinese, Malay, Indian, and “other”) still exert influence. According to Levitt, Singapore’s institutions uphold these identities while attempting to define the common values that all citizens should embrace: Singapore’s museums thus focus on a distinct local identity, which has always been and continues to be “eclectic” and “multi-ethnic” (p. 106). By creating a cosmopolitan narrative avant la lettre and by making cultural hybridity an asset in the global marketplace, the government “sees museums as an important vehicle for transmitting an official version of the past that translates easily into the Singapore it needs for the future” (p. 132).
Conclusion
Levitt’s book is multifaceted, opening up new avenues for anyone interested in museology, the history of collecting, and the connections between politics and culture. Her examples explore museums’ self-understandings across the spectrum from nationalism to cosmopolitanism, in a refreshing approach rarely found in work in this field. Interestingly, Levitt’s positioning as an outsider to museums is both a strength and a weakness of the book. For example, she does not delve into the day-to-day operational activities of museums, a point that is particularly apparent in her assessments of museums’ permanent and temporary exhibitions. While Levitt relies primarily on the making of exhibitions to make her case about museums’ attitudes to the local and the global, it is equally arguable that exhibitions are in fact very poor reflections of their broader or systemic ideologies. Thus, temporary exhibitions are best viewed as idiosyncratic negotiations between individual curatorial visions (aesthetic, intellectual, or ideological) and the practical needs of museums (limits of time and money, and limits of collections), rather than as strictly social statements intended to shape public discourse. The development of permanent exhibitions, which requires years of research, curatorial work, and funding, is a slow process and thus can hardly be compared to the rapid evolution of conceptions of cosmopolitanism. Nevertheless, objectivity about institutional missions is rare in large institutions such as museums, and so Levitt’s observations on the self-perception of selected institutions are particularly valuable.
The role that museums play in fostering social activism is perhaps the most fascinating of the themes that underlie this nuanced book. After decades in which globalism, free movement, and cultural connections were seen as overwhelmingly positive attributes, a growing sense of nationalism, isolationism, and tribalism has emerged in the West: elections in Europe and the United States in recent years have amply demonstrated this, with communities turning inward and ignoring the expertise of elites. Levitt’s book is timely, as museums consider their ability to promote inclusive and empathetic thinking by exposing visitors to other periods, cultures, and communities through exhibitions, public programming, and publications. Rather than seeing themselves as transparent repositories of knowledge or collections of materials, museums of all sizes and types might begin to see themselves as agents of cultural critique and social activism, fostering encounters between diverse individuals and groups to come together, engage, and learn from one another. If Levitt’s book asks the questions “Where do we come from?” and “Who are we?” it is up to museum directors, curators, educators, and staff to answer the question, “Where are we going?”