"In cooperation with the Shanti studio. In 10 sessions you will feel a difference; in 20 sessions you will see a difference and in 30 sessions you will have a whole new body. ... (Joseph Hubertus Pilates). A regenerative lunch break, exercise and art."
With this artless tone, Milan's Museo del Novecento and Diocesan Museum, respectively, are trying to beef up their attendance. Just visit their websites and see. A survey of museum education and special events programs reveals other similar gems. And many contradictions too. Here's one: during its first rounds, the Terna Prize held a competition for Italian museums to develop new public engagement projects. The entry rules were quite simple and good prize money was at stake. Despite the lack of funds that museums complain about incessantly, general interest in the competition was so lukewarm that new editions were suspended.
Yet it should be noted that, in many cases, museum education programs are interesting. They are also curated by agile teams of highly motivated professionals, and are, in fact, more vital and experimental than the exhibition programs themselves. The Museo del Novecento and the Diocesan Museum offer variegated and proactive programs. This year, the Education Department at Turin's Castello di Rivoli has added a Summer School to its tried-and-true roster of activities; it is geared towards adults, teachers, culture professionals, students, children and families. In recent years, Maga, Museo d'arte Gallarate (Gallarate Museum of Art), has developed excellent children's workshops, courses for schools and specialized courses for the IED (Istituto Europeo di Design). Programs at the Strozzina in Florence have very good attendance. It seems that, in some museums, these activities do not support, but rather compensate for, the fragility of their exhibition programs. In other cases, it seems that these programs exist "in spite of" the museum, rather than in conjunction with it.
The situation is complicated. But the bottom line is that these activities cannot be understood if they are isolated from the single museum structures. So talking about education and special events programs means asking a question: What is a participated museum? Because of current conditions in Italy, the question itself could be paradoxical.
In Italy today, there is an inexistent cultural policy, an ineffective institutional system, a total lack of clarity of purpose and no respect for specific roles and contexts. Expertise is exiled and replaced, if at all, by marketing strategies. Museums have no managerial structure or they are managed by directors nominated on political or administrative bases or through shady competition procedures. The curatorial role is systematically overlooked or ignored; exhibition programs are incoherent and fragmented. Public responsibility advocating meaningful, high-quality and important content is unimaginable. The result is an intermittent sequence of episodes, of self-referential choices later justified with specious motivations for the facile ease that renders museum content more accessible. Lack of meaning is compensated with relentless communications.
Today, while the perpetuation of this strategy of "easiness" generates forms of addiction, the kind of consensus being sought is achieved only by quantifying attendance. The public will be counted, but the public doesn't count (as opposed to how Anna Pironti at the Education Department of Castello di Rivoli sees it). This is so true that museum visitors are referred to as "users", "spectators" and "audiences:" mere consumers.
Going back to museum programs, it is clearly impossible to imagine that they can complement inexistent visions and goals. Quite another thing would be to imagine projects tied to programs based on continuity and vision.
Museums have so much to communicate. That is why today, the need is felt all over the world to move beyond the idea of passive contemplation towards direct learning and new ways of acquiring knowledge. In this sense, it is not surprising that museums want to expand their audiences and deploy different strategies to attract that large share of the public that is not particularly interested in the cultural institution itself. The result is that not only could the exhibitions be experienced and shared in different ways, but that the public might visit a museum not only to see an exhibition but also to enjoy a moment of pause, reflection, and social activity; to attend gatherings, screenings, concerts, and theatrical performances; or to browse and buy books or shop for a gift or enjoy a pleasant meal.
But we must ask ourselves some questions. When we invite the visitor to play a role at a museum, which role are we talking about? And why? If meaningful goals are established, projects and programs become their natural consequences. Interpreting them as isolated devices for achieving short-term goals, measurable only in terms of numbers, we risk forsaking culture's true opportunities. Why not make use of that huge repository of ideas and points of view that museums have to offer as stimuli for nurturing their programs? It is not a matter of making constant reference to art but rather keeping in touch with what generates artistic thought. It means understanding art as a source of ideas and values, emotions and imaginative energy regarding subjective topics as well as crucial current issues. In this sense, museums can become a tremendous enablers of thought. Revitalizing the experience of visiting art spaces and attracting a new and broader public means creating — over time — trust, and encouraging different forms of experimentation that can even be unorthodox and unconventional.
But this does not imply giving up an explicit cultural vision. The participated museum fosters involvement not only by consumers but also by cultural actors. The participated museum must be based on the wealth of ideas and projects that art provides.
The problem is upstream.
It is urgent that museums take stock of themselves once again. Gabi Scardi