Museum of Fictions: Fabrication of Authenticity and Institutional Critique in Imaginary Museums
MA Museum Studies Thesis by Jean Carlo Medina Zavala Universiteit van Amsterdam 2019
“We accept reality so readily - perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.”
-Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph
Museum of Fictions: Fabrication of Authenticity and Institutional Critique in Imaginary Museums ______MA Museum Studies Thesis Jean Carlo Medina Zavala University of Amsterdam UvA ID: 11607564
Supervisor: Mirjam Hoijtink Second Reader: Christa-Maria Lerm-Hayes
Submission date: January 31, 2019 Word Count: 20’623 ______Abstract: Imaginary museums abound in the world, stemming from novels, ilms, and conjecture. Amongst these, however, are cases of museums that arose from ictional sources and eventually materialized into real, tangible institutions. These ‘museums of ictions’ inconspicuously present apocryphal collections through carefully constructed yet ictive narratives, often attempting to engage audiences in their play of make-believe. How do imaginary museums relate to real museums in their fabrication of authenticity? Furthermore, to what extent are imaginary museums successful as a form of institutional critique, and challenging narrative (re)presentations? Through a detailed analysis of three recent museums of ictions, this thesis aims to encourage a reconsideration of imaginary museums as helpful tools in challenging perceptions of authenticity in established institutions, as well as contesting traditional representations of truth, history, and identity
Keywords: Imaginary museum, ictional museum, authenticity, institutional critique
Table of Contents
Preface
1 Introduction
15 I. A Fictional Museum / The Museum of Innocence
35 II. Artist Apocrypha / Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable
55 III. (In)Authentic Storytelling / The Making of Modern Art
75 Conclusion & Epilogue
82 Bibliography & References
90 Annex
Preface
It is increasingly dif icult to pinpoint where the inspiration for this thesis came from. Like an upturned tree, the origin is dispersed— although some past events have sparked my interest in the topic of imaginary museums, it has only been through conversation with colleagues, friends, and supervisors that I decided to pursue this interest and expand it into a thesis.
A conversation full of anecdotes and literary references during the Museum Concepts and Narratives seminar at the Universiteit van Amsterdam certainly stuck in my head, and reminded me that museums go far beyond tangible institutions and factual reality. I am especially grateful with Mirjam Hoijtink, who from the start welcomed my research and supervised me with keen interest and a good doze of humor. I owe much to Natalia Martinez for her contagious enthusiasm and constant help, as well as to Marju Tajur and Valeria Ferrari for their insightful conversations on reality, iction, literature and nostalgia. I also want to point out Jvlie Ganem’s illustrations, which adorn the start of each chapter with a mysterious, monochrome atmosphere that brings to mind the chaotic nature of memory.
Finally, this text would have not been written without the profound in luence of two writers: Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges. Their supreme understanding of iction allowed them to construct impossible cities and in inite libraries— sites that, in their capacities of re lecting the universe through synecdoches and signs, have close ties to museums. I like to think that, had one author not been a librarian, and the other not died so young, perhaps they would have extended their literary reach into museums.
Museum of Fictions Introduction Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis A Non-Fictional Conundrum
As we exited the museum, I was left dumbfounded and amazed by the comments of my unintentional companion. The visit had been thoroughly enjoyable, as re lected by the bag full of souvenirs hanging from her shoulder. Conversation made it clear that this museum was one of her main interests for visiting London, as it was held in the historical house of one of her idols. When asked about what she found most enjoyable about her visit, she singled out the impression left by seeing a smoking pipe belonging to this man, carefully preserved and displayed along with walking canes, hunting hats, and magnifying glasses. “It is so incredible to imagine” she told me, “that this pipe actually belonged to the Sherlock Holmes”.
My face couldn’t hide a reaction of utter bewilderment, as I found myself facing a conundrum. How could I possibly break it to her that Sherlock Holmes was a ictional character? And perhaps more importantly: what had led her to believe that what she had seen in the museum was entirely real?
Indeed, without external references, one would be led to believe that the contents of The Sherlock Holmes Museum are all authentic. Hosted at Holmes’ famous address at 221B Baker Street, the house is decorated with Victorian furniture and objects making reference to the different cases, enemies, and adventures encountered by the famous, yet ictional, detective1. For someone who had either not read or misread the original stories, or who had only been introduced to Sherlock Holmes through one of his various incarnations in popular media, it would make sense to think that he was indeed a real person—especially when stepping inside his house, and going through what seemed to be his personal belongings. In the imagination of this young woman, Sherlock Holmes was —and perhaps still is— real.
1 The museum is actually hosted at 237-239 Baker Street, but has been given permission by the City of Westminster to bear the number 221B (see “Sherlock Holmes 101”, The Washington Post). To further the confusion, the building also displays a (forged) blue plaque commemorating Holme’s years residing at the street, an honor usually given by the English Heritage foundation, reserved for non- ictional people.
2 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis This interaction left a mark in my memory. The Sherlock Holmes Museum is but one of several instances of ictional or imaginary works becoming ‘real’ through a museum framework. Further interest in the topic showed that imaginary museums have long existed as a starting point and a re lection of real ones, in more recent times being used by artists and curators as a strategy for institutional critique, as will be seen in the following pages. The play between real and imaginary poses the key questions: How do imaginary museums relate to real museums with respect to authenticity? Furthermore, to what extent are imaginary museums successful as a form of institutional critique, and challenging narrative (re)presentations?
A Brief and Incomplete History of Fictional Museums
There is a case to say that iction is only truly effective when it is persuading enough to be, at least momentarily, believable. To be pulled into a ictional world, engaging with imaginary landscapes and characters, plots and drama, is one of the main reasons the public looks for literature and entertainment. This necessity has been thoroughly examined, however Samuel T. Coleridge’s description of the “willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith” might be the best-known, as the term “suspension of disbelief” has entered the public imaginary2. While it is common to ind this term applied to ictional works such as novels, theater plays, and ilms, it is no so common to ind it associated with museums3. After all, museums as institutions historically rely on the presentation of original artifacts and research— as presenters of knowledge, these institutions are not traditionally in need of a “willing suspension of disbelief”, or at least are not expected to do so from their audience.
Although now presumed to be institutions dedicated to safeguard and preserve history, or present art in as a neutral environment as possible, it should be remembered that all museums, to a different degree, start out as imaginary. This is a pretty straightforward proposition: all museums, before being built or even written down, had to be imagined,
2 Coleridge, S. T. [1817] (1960). Biographia literaria or biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions. London: J. M. Dent. p. 169.
3 Böcking, Saskia. (2008) “Suspension of Disbelief ”. In The International Encyclopedia of Communication. Wolfgang Donsbach, ed. John Wiley & Sons: USA. p. 1-2
3 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis thought of, conceptualized. Indeed, going back in history one can ind examples of proto- museums and private collections that were not strangers to housing fantastic artifacts, based on the often wild imaginations of their owners and the society around them.
Although there is no canonized compendium of imaginary museums, it can be asserted that they predate the institution of modern public collections and displays. As their name implies, imaginary museums have irst of all existed as speculative devices, conceived by creatives through the ages. Cases abound in the collections housed inside Cabinets of Curiosity or wunderkammers, such as the famous Museum Kircherianum in Rome ( ig.1). These early collections clearly had a thread of playful imagination running through them, as fig.1 the Museum Kircherianum. Image: 1679. Das Kirchen Museum im Collegium Romanum. they would present anything from naturalia, Reproduced in Roos, Alexander. 2007. Alchemie & Mystik, 576 S. Köln u.a.: TASCHEN architectural models, and scienti ic devices to the skulls of unicorns, the tools of witchcraft, and documents attributed to the occult. Strikingly, there were even accounts of ictional cabinets of curiosities, as expressed in Sir Thomas Browne’s Musæum Clausum, a tract describing the (alleged) fantastic contents of a long-lost collection4. Wunderkammers are perhaps a common ancestor of modern and imaginary museums: where modern museums ind the origin of systematic collecting and scienti ic classifying, ictional museums ind their inspiration for apocrypha, playful mysticism and hermetic knowledge. The presence of improbable artifacts in these premodern collections didn’t detract from their overall quest for wonders.
4 Browne, Thomas. (1683). “Tract XIII: Musæum Clausum”. In Certain Miscellany Tracts. Retrieved from http://penelope.uchicago.edu/misctracts/museum.html#note1 Accessed on January 2nd, 2019.
4 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis Throughout history one can ind examples of imaginary museums, from those described in a couple of sentences and conjectures to others that have found their way into literature, pop culture, and artworks. In literature, museum-like structures and devices can be found from the civilization-spanning symbols in the mythical shield of Achilles, to the in inite libraries and impossible encyclopedias conjectured by Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. Indeed, novels have been compared to museums in that, when thought of as texts, they both present readers with collections of memory; the difference lies in that a novel unfolds through the abstract realm of time, while a museum often does so through the tactile, concrete realm of space5. Along with representations of museums in other media, these museums that originally appeared on paper or ilm are what we may call ictional museums6.
The emphasis of this research, however, is in those museums that don’t fully belong to either complete historical reality, neither to the con ines of a book or an illustration. The Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, from a novel by Orhan Pamuk, showcases the objects of an obsessive love, simultaneously telling a larger story of class and con lict set in modern Turkey; Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable traces the story of an improbable vessel and its impossible contents, stemming from the imagination of one Damien Hirst; inally, The Making of Modern Art exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, relies on copies and reproductions to re-imagine the canon of modern art. These museums can be found in concrete spaces, hosted in galleries, museum buildings, and former homes. They also have collections that, to the unsuspecting eye, might seem completely real. Alas, to borrow Roland Barthes’ term, a ‘perverse reader’ will notice that the objects and stories in these museums are not quite real, yet still choose to suspend their disbelief within their walls7. Hence a speci icity of terms used: those
5 see Xing, Yin. (2013) “The Novel as Museum: Curating Memory in Ohran Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence”. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 01 April 2013, Vol.54(2), p.198-210 6 Writing from the perspective of cultural marketing, L. V. Prokopovich makes an opposite but insightful analysis: how have representations of real museums in iction (especially the Night at the Museum Series and Dan Brown’s thrillers) affected visitor numbers, attention to speci ic artworks, or even tourism on a regional level. See L.V. Prokopovich. (2014). “Art Literature about Museums as Alternative to Museum Guides”. Proceedings of the Odessa Polytechnic University, 1 (43). 7 see Barthes, Roland. (1975). The Pleasure of the Text. trans. by Richard Miller. Hill and Wang: New York. p. 46-47
5 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis museums that walk the ine line between reality and iction, that inconspicuously show fabrication as factuality, are not ictional museums but instead museums of ictions.
Challenging Modern Myths
Following the French Revolution of 1789, a shift in social composition assigned new power and meaning to public museums, granting them their still popular standing as keepers of history, knowledge, and art. This particular understanding of what a museum is also assigns utmost importance to the availability of original artifacts and artworks, a topic that to this day causes much controversy, especially in collections pro iting from imperialist projects and colonial plunder8. With the move from iction to reality, museums of ictions are usually composed of objects that are either completely fabricated, faked, or reproduced. In this sense they contest modern museums by challenging still popular notions of museums as holders of authenticity and pursuers of truth, institutions housing only original objects and presenting only facts9. The employment of both imaginary and real museums as part of museum practice helps in reminding that “artifacts are the product of arti ice… when arti icially placed within the con ines of a museum”10.
Artifacts and artworks inside a museum of ictions can come from a variety of sources and needs. Sometimes these objects might be procured to ful ill an entirely ictional narrative, while in other cases the lack of access to original artworks can lead to the use of fakes and reproductions. The latter case has been proposed by French art theorist André Malraux in his Le Musée Imaginaire (1949), translated into english as the “museum without walls”. Since most major collections are divided amongst public and private collectors around the globe, Malraux called for the use of these ‘virtual’
8 see Anderson, Maxwell. L. (2018, December 3rd). “Should we relinquish our insistence on privileging original works of art?” The Art Newspaper. retrieved from https:// www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/should-we-relinquish-our-insistence-on-privileging- original-works-of-art Accessed January 4, 2019. 9 See MuseumNext (2017) “Should Museums be Activists?” MuseumNext. Retrieved from https://www.museumnext.com/2017/04/should-museums-be-activists/ Accessed 11th January 2019. 10 Pine II, Joseph & Gilmore, James. (2007). “Museums & Authenticity”. Museum News, May/ June, p. 78
6 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis museums, composed of replicas, reproductions and photographs, argumenting that there was no need for originals when the prime focus of an exhibition would be narrative11. What is more, an imaginary museum, even when presenting copies, is not necessarily fake. It is on this understanding that Le Musée Imaginaire tackles one of the main concerns of this paper: authenticity. Or rather, what happens when the fetish for ‘original’ or ‘authentic’ objects is shifted towards a main interest in narrative and storytelling.
A museum of ictions is not necessarily a fake one. As Pine and Gilmore explain in Museums & Authenticity, even a museum whose collection is entirely composed of replicas and forgeries can be experienced as honest, as long as the museum renders itself, phenomenologically, as authentic12. As such, it is possible for a museum to be both ictional and perceived as authentic— an apparent paradox, which is nevertheless the main interest of this research. The case studies to be analyzed use the concept of ‘museum’ as a device to frame and present ictional stories, often to the bewilderment of public and critics alike. These are museums that, in a conscious effort, move from the realm of iction to reality, and which have a distinct thread of imagination running through them. Inside their exhibitions, pre-conceived notions regarding where reality ends and iction begins are blurred, purposefully inciting debate over museum narratives and the fabrication of authenticity.
Indeed, the making of imaginary museums has been used as a tool for institutional critique during the twentieth century. While criticism towards artistic aura and a fetish for original artworks in an environment of mass production had already been developed in the theoretical works of Walter Benjamin and the readymade oeuvre of Marcel Duchamp, a direct stab at museum frameworks came from Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers. In 1968, the artist opened the Musée d’art, Département des Aigles inside his own studio, using art transport crates, photographs, and a plaque labelling the installation as a ‘museum’. Noticing that it wasn’t necessary to have a collection or
11 Allan, Derek. (2010) “André Malraux, the Art Museum, and the Digital Musée Imaginaire”. Lecture delivered at Imaging Identity, at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra July 15-17, 2010. 12 Pine & Gilmore, 2007, p. 78
7 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis institutional structure, the artist started using the concept of ‘museum’ as a frame. Later Broodthaers would describe his actions:
“The ictitious museum tries to steal from the of icial, the real museum, in order to lend its lies more power and credibility. […] What is also important is to ascertain whether the ictitious museum sheds new light on the mechanisms of art, artistic life, and society.”13
By creating a ictional museum that rendered all artifacts within it as part of the art institution, Broodthaers implicitly made use of what would later be described as the “museum effect”, while critiquing the logic of exhibitionary structures14. His actions led to questions pertaining not only how museums come into being, but also who are the stakeholders behind these institutions and how collections are amassed15. Through the medium of institutional critique, following Broodthaer’s example, many artists would go on to use museum frameworks, displays, and structures to comment on how institutions work and use their power.
Three Fictions
This thesis is structured as a comparative analysis of three case studies: The Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, authored by Orhan Pamuk; the Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable exhibition by Damien Hirst, presented during the 2017 Venice Biennale; and The Making of Modern Art at the Van Abbemuseum, in Eindhoven. These studies were selected because they are neither completely ictional— which would require a thesis written from the perspective of literary studies or semiology—, nor completely real— hence requiring a more traditional museological interpretation. Instead, these
13 Broodthaers, Marcel (1972) “Musée d’Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles” in Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artist’s Writings. The MIT Press: Massachusetts. p.139 14 The “museum effect” refers to the semiotic transformation that objects go through when inserted into a museum. Removed from their context and denied of their original use, objects turn into artifacts or art simply by being displayed in a museum-like context that privileges “attentive looking”. See Alpers, Svetlana. (1991) "The Museum as a Way of Seeing" In I. Karp & S. Lavine (Eds.) Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Smithsonian Institution Press: Washington. pp. 25–32 15 Alberro, A. and Stimson, B. (Eds.). (2009) Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artist’s Writings. The MIT Press: Massachusetts. p. 5
8 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis projects represent different degrees of ictionality being materialized into reality through a museum framework. What is more, while the irst two cases stem from the works of individual creative minds, the third one arises from an established institution, serving as a contrast in how ictionality is approached from the standing points of artists, authors, and institutions. It is worthwhile mentioning that, due to the museums analyzed existing as fabrications, and thus not conforming to traditional museum- making, this research will be dedicated to analyzing them ‘from the ground-up’. Any and all materials, from artifacts to architecture, labels, and catalogues, are taken into account since they contribute to each project’s make-believe. Authenticity is rendered by a coherent balance between how a museum constructs itself and how it is perceived. This entails taking into consideration the very same texts, allusions, and objectives set forth by the authors, artists, and curators behind each museum, in order to critique them through their own terms. Furthermore each case has been analyzed through relevant academic literature, empirical notes, and comments based on in situ analysis where applicable.
At the same time, it is necessary to mention the relevance of New Cultural History in the development of these museums and the theoretical framework of this research. The revitalization of museology and cultural/memory studies in the late 1980’s and 1990’s is inextricably linked to the development of New Cultural History— it doesn’t seem as a coincidence that the origin of the museums of ictions researched goes back to these decades, and a renewed interest on the production of ‘truth’, ‘history’, and ‘reality’ by means of representations16. Inspecting the cases of real and imagined museums and exhibitions, each chapter will tackle further questions, such as: How do museums consciously use elements of iction to develop new narratives and exhibitions? How successful can the jump from imaginary to “real” museums be in shifting the emphasis from the presentation of ‘authentic’ artifacts towards pure narrative?
The irst chapter, The Fictional Museum, delves into museums that originally appeared in works of iction and literature, and which have made a leap into reality. The introductory anecdote at The Sherlock Holmes Museum is telling of the way literary museums can be confused for non- ictional narratives. However, for my main analysis I
16 Burke, Peter. (2008) What is Cultural History? Polity: England. p.77
9 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis have turned towards The Museum of Innocence in Istanbul. Based on the novel of the same name by Orhan Pamuk, this site is particularly thought-provoking due to the semantic complexities behind its realization. The museum is composed by a collection of vintage objects gathered by the author, both inspiring and determining the events happening in the novel. The literary work, set in Istanbul from 1975 until the year 2000, follows the story of upper-class Kemal Basmaci as he falls in love with Füsun Keskin, a distant cousin from a lower-class family.
The collection at the Museum of Innocence, which is hosted in a house in the Cukurcuma street of Istanbul, is presented as belonging to Kemal’s, rather than being an assemblage by Pamuk. Indeed, the thread that holds together the assortment of everyday objects in the museum is the tragic love story between Kemal and Füsun. Within the museum all elements of the novel, including characters, events, and the origin of hundreds of items, are shown as real. The opening of the museum in 2012 has led to much discussion regarding questions of legitimacy and value inside a collection which “conspicuously represents fabricated reality”17. To what extent is the Museum of Innocence successful in ‘suspending disbelief’ and fabricating authenticity? To consider this, the chapter will also be dedicated to discussing the relationship between novels and museums, and the role of a writer as a collector.
In Artist Apocrypha, the second chapter, ponders over instances of artists creating their own ictional exhibitions and museums. Although some cases predate the term itself, the core analysis in this section will be done through the framework of Institutional Critique, looking at how artists use the museum as a conceptual and physical device to criticize art institutions and markets, as well as playing with the limits and possibilities of museum-making. While examples abound, the main case studied is a contemporary artwork: Damien Hirst’s Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, originally presented as part of the 2017 Venice Biennale. The massive exhibition, which occupied the entirety of the Punta de la Dollagna and Palazzo Grassi, saw the artist exhibiting the alleged archaeological indings of a second-century shipwreck off the east-African coast.
17 Tekgül, Duygu. (2016) “Fact, fiction and value in the Museum of Innocence”. European Journal of Cultural Studies. Vol. 19(4) p.388
10 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis Monumental sculptures of ancient myths and civilizations, half-covered in coral and rust and reproduced in copies of marble, gold, and silver, created a sense of lavish wonder in the biennale’s public. The photographs and accompanying documentary showing divers retrieving the artifacts from the ocean loor gave way to incipient signs of fakery— an ‘ancient bust’ looking suspiciously like the artist himself, smaller sculptures with the shape of Transformers, barbie dolls, and Mickey Mouse— were all part of an enormous play between reality, iction, and make-believe18. This case study was selected precisely because of its unprecedented scale and playfulness, coming from an artist that has already been legitimized by artistic institutions. How is Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable related to previous instances of artists using institutional critique through ictional museums? What are the implications of such artwork not only for contemporary art, but also for the traditionally artifact-based area of archaeology?
Finally, (In)Authentic Storytelling focuses on a reversal of the iction-to-non- iction strategy. While the case studies examined in the irst chapters deal with completely ictional works that are rendered authentic through institutional framing, this chapter will focus on the reverse scenario: museums making use of ictive elements and strategies to tell factual histories. This not only takes the shape of using stories, but more importantly of giving more importance to narratives than to objects. Artifacts take a back seat, and claims of authenticity, originality, or chronology all become secondary to the main narrative the museum is trying to push. The semi-permanent exhibition The Making of Modern Art at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven proves to be an intriguing case study in this respect. Curated by Steven ten Thije, the exhibition aims to showcase the development of the modern art canon on an international scale, heavily based on the in luence that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York had over early directorships in the Van Abbemuseum. Not only does the museum exhibit factual history, but it also tries to ‘step outside’ its own institutional framework in order to comment on its own history, displays, and acquisitions. Featuring a playful weaving of factual history with facsimile documents, original artworks with naive reproductions, and even a model-within-a-model of a MoMA gallery, The Making of Modern Art is
18 Cumming, Laura. (2017, April 16) “Damien Hirst: Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable review – beautiful and monstrous”. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2017/apr/16/damien-hirst-treasures-from-the-wreck-of-the-unbelievable-review-venice Accessed on October 1st 2018.
11 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis effectively an exhibition about exhibitions: a meta-museum. The thick intertextual and art historical web of the exhibition, as well as the logic and objectives behind a rather unorthodox display methodology, are to be examined trough an empirical analysis. How effective can the presentation of factual history be when done through the lens of iction? In how far is the Van Abbemuseum able to engage in meta-commentary as a museum institution?
Examining imaginary museums compels us to ask what we mean by a museum, as well as considering broader de initions for this kind of institution. The act of imagination required to come up with a theme, and fabricating the necessary stories and artifacts to render the museum authentic, constitute an exercise in deconstruction that can inform and expand the possibilities of what a museum can be. Interestingly, one of the inal rooms at The Making of Modern Art consists of an exercise of imagination: how would a museum for Western art look like if it was to open in the ictional land of Thomas More’s Utopia? The question is telling of how any work of iction is, at the same time, a work of speculation. Furthermore, the use of iction has consequences for how time and space are understood and experienced: while non- iction relies on chronology and lineal history, iction allows for multiple temporalities, anachronisms, and ahistoricity. Many of the imaginary museums of today might be the of icial museums of tomorrow; this nosedive into the contents and reasons behind a lovelorn collection, an impossible shipwreck, and a meta-museum, may give us clues into what direction the museums of the future may take.
12 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
13
I. A Fictional Museum The Museum of Innocence Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
“If a man could pass thro’ Paradise in a Dream, and have a lower presented to him as a pledge that his Soul had really been there, and found that lower in his hand when he awoke – Aye? And what then?”
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria19
As repositories of memory, novels can be conceived of as museums whose artifacts are composed of language. Both tend to the encyclopedic, as each object is only a gateway to a world of meaning and interpretation. The fragment of a mosaic displayed in Amsterdam can lead us to the story of a long-lost synagogue in Apamea, a history of ight and ires20; it is also how the simple mention of a madeleine can become a symbol for the tragic passage of time and memory in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Nevertheless, tradition dictates that the experience of visiting a museum and reading a novel must be different in one key regard: while the former is popularly expected to be grounded in historical truth, the latter is not. This harsh divide between fact and iction still informs a lot of museum work and audience expectations. The speci ic questions I aim to explore in this chapter include: What if, upon reading a vivid description of an object in a iction novel, we were to look over the book in our hands only to ind that very object lying in front of us? To what extent can a narrative rather than object- oriented museum be able to suspend the disbelief of its audience? It is telling, then, that
19 Coleridge, S. T. [1817] (1960). Biographia literaria or biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions. London: J. M. Dent. p. 169.
20 Hoijtink, Mirjam (lecturer). “For the Welfare of My Children: Stories of a Jewish Mosaic in Syria” Museums and the Mobility of Artifacts Lecture, from University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2018.
16 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis Coleridge’s words, cited above, are to be found at the very beginning of The Museum of Innocence21. Perhaps because of its single-handed dedication to narrative, Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence provides a fascinating case study for its existence as both a real and a ictional museum at once. Originally appearing as a novel in 2008, The Museum of Innocence tells the story of Kemal Basmaci, an upper-class heir from Istanbul who falls in love with lower-class shopgirl and distant relation Füsun Keskin22. From the moment they meet in 1975 and up until Kemal’s death in 2000, the protagonist gathered objects that are linked to his love and memories of Füsun— each chapter in the book carefully describes these intimate items, which eventually amount to a collection. In what amounts to a real-life twist, the Museum of Innocence opened its doors in the Çukurcuma neighborhood of Istanbul in 2012, featuring the objects, settings, and references introduced in the novel — an especially astounding event since the story of the star-crossed lovers is entirely ictional.
It is important to note that The Museum of Innocence is not inspired by the novel of the same name; instead, both the novel and the museum were inspired and created through a collection of real objects. As Pamuk details in interviews and in the museum catalogue, The Innocence of Objects (2012), he personally started acquiring items for the museum in the early 1990’s, combing for objects that might prove helpful to his narrative in antique shops, lea markets, and houses of friends and family in Istanbul. The nostalgic amassing of objects also had to do with the author’s own concerns regarding Turkish identity and memory, especially in relation to the clash between Western and Eastern cultures in the city of Istanbul. Soon, Pamuk’s studio was over lowing with trinkets that informed and inspired the chapters of the story, effectively turning into a bricolage of reminisced memories, invented characters, and real artifacts.
The collection housed in the museum has the distinction of striving for make-believe while being simultaneously real and ictitious. That is to say, while the amassed artifacts are neither completely illegitimate — the vast majority of objects are real antiques and
21 From this point on, mentions referring to the novel The Museum of Innocence will be in italics, while mentions referring to the museum in Çukurcuma are in regular text.
22 The Museum of Innocence was visited twice, on the 9th and the 11th of November, 2018.
17 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis products from 1970’s-80’s Istanbul—, nor traditionally authentic — many objects are replicas or fabrications—they are all inconspicuously presented as real. This presentation is a far cry from the de inition of authenticity favored by modern museums for most of their history, where “the presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity”23. Instead, the Museum of Innocence values narrative and suspension of disbelief over the legitimacy of artifacts. Indeed, Pamuk’s novel only came about as a way to gather all objects within a narrative, and originally was planned to act as the collection’s catalogue ( ig.2).
This chapter looks at several of the factors that help rendering the Museum of Innocence as authentic. Based on literary devices, the museum is endowed authenticity through the intertwined igures of Orhan Pamuk, acting as owner of the property, writer, collector, and curator, and his character Kemal Basmaci, who serves as the ictional red thread that holds the narrative together. The close relationship that the author has with the setting, history, and objects on display, as well as Pamuk’s inquisitive visits to hundreds of house and literary museums across the globe, gives the entire museum verisimilitude— the appearance, as opposed to the factuality, of being real24. In addition, a couple of visits to the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul were enlightening for analyzing how exhibition displays, architecture, and carefully designed education materials allow for an augmented experience of Pamuk’s narrative. Altogether, these characteristics allow for the willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience, who act as co-constructors of their own museum experience through imagination and nostalgia.
The successful presentation of the Museum of Innocence as authentic proves that it is not only an exercise in narrative and museum-making, but part of a larger statement on how museums work, and how narratives could be applied in the future. The conception of the museum in the 1990’s is also tied to a general trend towards cultural/memory studies in Europe during that decade, leading to Pamuk’s nostalgic re lections on the
23 Benjamin, Walter [1936] (1969) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In Illuminations. trans. Zohn, Harry, Arendt, Hannah ed. Schoken Books: New York. p. 220
24 Tekgül, Duygu. (2016) Fact, fiction and value in the Museum of Innocence. European Journal of Cultural Studies. Vol. 19(4) p. 389
18 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis effects of Western modernization in Turkey. Pamuk has been open regarding the creation of the Museum of Innocence, as well as his intentions behind it: the collection is not only about Füsun and Kemal, but about life in Istanbul during the second half of the twentieth century. For the author, the ictional narrative intertwined between collection, novel, and museum, serves a grander purpose— representing a city and fig.2 The Museum of Innocence in Çukurcuma street. Image: Medina, Jean. 2018. Museum of Innocence at Çukurcuma Street. its people, as well as a Amsterdam: personal collection. national (and spiritual) struggle between East and West. Hence, I consider this case particularly illustrative of how iction can inform reality in a museum setting, especially through the lens of nostalgia. Further questions tackled include to what extent does the display of objects in the museum augment the novel’s play on iction, and vice-versa? What was the intention of building such museum? In how far is the Museum of Innocence successful in the representation of a grander narrative of Istanbul?
19 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
The Novel as Museum / The Writer as Collector
“Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.”
-Unpacking My Library, Walter Benjamin25
As Walter Benjamin unpacks his personal library, he invites the reader to consider several aspects not on the content of collections, but on the nature of collecting itself. Firstly, Benjamin stresses that collecting is often not about the physical aspects of an object, but about the way an object might be integrated into the collector’s personal narrative. This entails the establishing of a sentimental relationship with the object, a move from objectivity to subjectivity in which objects act as carriers of memories26. Secondly, Benjamin asserts that of all the ways of collecting books, “writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method”. He adds that “writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatis ied with the books which they could buy but do not like”27.
Ringing true to Benjamin’s words, Pamuk himself relates the endeavor of writing and collecting to a similar feeling of “insuf iciency” left by novels. While reading a good novel, the author explains, a reader may be able to fully immerse into the narrative, which may feel even more authentic than life itself. The “insuf iciency” appears when, upon inishing the book, the reader has to come to terms with the imaginary nature of the novel against the real world28. For the Turkish author, the cognitive dissonance provoked by the “insuf iciency” of literature represents an opportunity to close the gap between iction and reality, in this case by materializing iction. Readers of The Museum
25 Benjamin, Walter [1931] (1969) “Unpacking My library: A Talk About Collecting”. In Illuminations. trans. Zohn, Harry, Arendt, Hannah ed. Schoken Books: New York. p.60
26 Morris, Rachel. (2014). “Imaginary Museums: What mainstream museums can learn from them?” MIDAS [Online], 2 | 2014. http://midas.revues.org/643 Accessed 08 August 2018. p. 3
27 Benjamin, Walter, 1931, p.61
28 Pamuk, Ohran. (2010) The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist. Trans. Dikbas, Nazim. Harvard University Press: Massachusetts. pp. 123-124
20 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis of Innocence might ind solace in visiting the museum located in Çukurcuma street, and inding the objects they imagined while reading, with enough gaps left in the narrative for them to co-construct with their own imaginations. Through the process of co- construction, the readers also satiate the “insuf iciency” of reading.
Within the novel, the position of collector is illed and re lected on by Kemal Basmaci. Towards the end of the novel the character makes a distinction between two kinds of collectors: the ‘Proud’ ones, who consider collecting an “enterprise intended for proud display in a museum”, and the ‘Bashful’, who collect for the sake of collecting and are resentful about their mania29. Interestingly, while Pamuk himself might fall into the category of a ‘proud’ collector who assembled his collection with a inal objective in mind, Kemal describes himself as a ‘bashful’ one, collecting in order to heal the wound left behind by Füsun’s absence30. Both men compensate for a lack— the ‘insuf iciency’ of novels in the case of the author, and the ache of lost love in the case of Kemal.
Indeed, the mere act of collecting involves singularizing and detaching objects from a practical commodity sphere and elevating them as ‘sacred’ artifacts with their very own ‘aura’31. The objects thus gathered by writer and character across Istanbul go “from objective to semiotic, from thing to sign […] from presence to absence”32. Combs, garments, and ticket stubs change from mass-produced commodities with a particular yet banal history, to being inserted into the subjective narrative perspective of both writer and protagonist— always as objects connected in one way or another to Füsun.
Any process of collecting is fetishistic in nature. Kemal’s obsessive accumulation of objects belonging or coming into contact with Füsun involves a semiotic process of domination and de-personi ication, through which objects are “abducted [and] denuded
29 Pamuk, Ohran. (2009) The Museum of Innocence. trans. Freely, Maureen. Faber and Faber: London. p. 691
30 Pamuk, 2009, p.692
31 Belk, Russell W. [1988] (1994) Collectors and Collecting. In Interpreting Objects and Collections. Susan M. Pearce, ed. Routledge: London. p.320; also see Tekgül, 2016, p.391
32 Bal, Mieke. (1994). “Telling Objects: A Narrative Perspective on Collecting”. In The Cultures of Collecting. John Elsmer and Roger Cardinal (eds.). London: Reaktion Books, p. 97
21 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis to be available for use a sign”33. This fetishization, with its heavy sexual undertones, is evident in Chapter 28, aptly titled “The Consolation of Objects”. The episode inds the lovesick protagonist laying in the apartment where the lovers used to meet. Surrounded by intimate objects that trigger his memories, Kemal re lects how he might seize upon an object ‘bearing Füsuns essence’ and stroke, smell, or even put it inside his mouth, reducing his pain while “imagining perhaps for a moment that by loving her so, I had become her”34. Interestingly, Kemal both dominates and is de-personalized by the objects he collects; the intense, erotic emotions invoked by the protagonist might provoke the reader, who becomes compliant in the narrative.
Value is thus assigned to the objects by the collector, in what amounts to a personal, if fetishistic, relationship. It is through de-contextualization that objects are reinserted into a ictive narrative, or in this case, a literary one. It is also the way in which everyday objects, found as junk or antiques throughout Istanbul, are detached from their reality and inserted into a iction, augmenting their symbolic value. In his analysis of the novel, Xing rightly asserts that “the signi icance of collecting objects lies not in the storing of the object itself but in the invisible value embodied in the object; the memory, the lived experiences, and the stories dear to the heart of a person or a nation at certain times”35.
The separate narratives of Pamuk as writer and Kemal as literary character come together and dissolve in the role of collector. Stemming from an interest in the history and motivations behind collections, Mieke Bal makes a compelling point relating narratology to the semiotics of collecting. Her analysis exalts how the tension between the physical accessibility of objects and the subjectivity of narratives found in collections “makes ictionality a matter of degree”36. It is not the objects themselves, but the relationship between collector and collectibles that give verisimilitude to the stories behind The Museum of Innocence, and thus bring it closer to authenticity. Actively writing and collecting as a means of atoning for a certain lack also inds a parallel in the
33 Bal, 1994, p. 97
34 Pamuk, 2009, p. 215
35 Xing, 2013, p.198
36 Bal, 1994, p.85
22 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis role of the reader and the museum visitor. Through imagining the events described in the novel, a reader effectively detaches and resigni ies meaning in his or her mind. As a witness to material objects in the museum, the reader might now ‘complete’ the text by endowing both with his or her own belief, and thus complying with the process of legitimization through co-construction.
And so, the parallel established between writers and collectors can be expanded to the medium through which they express their memories: novels and museums. As Xing writes, “encyclopedists, museum curators, photographers, and novelists all have something in common; […] to represent their personal understandings of the objects through the process of cataloguing, assembling them according to their signi icance, endowing the world of objects with structure, order, and readability”37. Jumping from printed pages to the halls of a museum, the assemblage of intimate objects gathered by Kemal faces the challenge of communicating a story and seeming authentic not only through written words, but through the actual presentation and display of artifacts. How does The Museum of Innocence materialize iction in its physical location? How is credibility fabricated through means of architecture, display, and exhibition narrative devices?
Inside the Museum of Innocence
Walking past the antique shops, cafes, and old houses that dominate the street of Çukurcuma, I started wondering if any visitors to the museum, like so many tourists visiting Juliet’s balcony in Verona, might believe that Kemal and Füsun’s love story was real. I didn’t need to wait long for an answer38. While presenting my copy of The Museum of Innocence for a free admission — Pamuk cleverly included a single-entrance ticket within Chapter 83 of the novel—, I witnessed another visitor, an older woman with an
37 Xing, 2013, p. 203.
38 Casa di Giulietta, in Verona, is a building from the XII century that has been turned into a touristic site, presented as Juliet Capuleti’s house, from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The building was rebuilt in the twentieth century, now featuring the balcony where Juliet would meet her lover at night. The site, although fictional, remains one of Verona’s top tourist attractions. See “Casa di Giulietta”, Verona Guide. Retrieved from https://verona.com/en/verona/casa-di-giulietta/ Accessed December 28th 2018.
23 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis American accent, approaching a member of the museum staff and quietly asking: “But is the story of Kemal real?”.
While a novel may present a iction set in the real world, with believable characters and events—very much like The Museum of Innocence does—, it is an altogether different claim to present real objects as belonging to ictional characters. The former, as a printed book (or e-book), has only an iconic relationship to its narrative, that is, it only claims to represent events through prose, and as such maintains a certain distance from facts. Objects inside a museum, however, are claimed to have had an immediate, indexical connection with history. To present real objects as belonging to ictional characters is walking a semiotic tightrope, especially since the fabrication of indexicality can easily be seen as uncanny or kitsch, and therefore as completely inauthentic39.
The Museum of Innocence fashions itself in such a way that its guests can suspend their disbelief throughout their visit. From the moment one steps inside its wooden doors there is a constant reliance on (alleged) indexicality to present the museum’s story as authentic and real. With the exception of some slips, the exhibition materials describe all artifacts, characters, and events as genuine; the very irst wall-text welcoming visitors declares that the Çukurcuma house where the museum is hosted was once the Keskin family home, later becoming the place where Kemal Basmaci lived for the last years of his life40. Indeed, Pamuk’s museum is heavily indebted to the living spaces of house and literary museums around the world. Indeed, Kemal cites the Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris as a key in luence for his own: originally the French painter’s house, Moreau started planning on it becoming a museum after his death, showing not only his works and illustrations but also his personal effects and the original architecture of his dwellings. Within the novel Kemal praises this museum for being a “house of memories, a ‘sentimental museum’ in which every object shimmered with meaning”41.
39 Hede, Anne-Marie, & Thyne, Maree. (2010) “A journey to the authentic: Museum visitors and their negotiation of the inauthentic”, Journal of Marketing Management, p. 688.
40 Although it is carefully phrased throughout, the exhibition booklet does mention that the museum “is at once a fictional museum, and a museum of ‘Istanbul life in the second half of the 20th century’”. Besides this one phrase, the exhibition materials are careful to never acknowledge the museum’s status as fictional.
41 Pamuk, 2009, p. 682
24 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
The Museum of Innocence’s architecture certainly embraces being a “sentimental museum”. Windows are kept closed, providing darkness; on instructions given by Kemal in the novel, no more than 50 visitors are allowed into the museum at any one time; the low light, the wooden loors, and the loving displays draw the audience into an intimate ambience. Videos projected on the walls show black-and-white archival footage of Istanbul and clips from old Turkish ilms. Many of these photographs come from Ara Güler, considered “the greatest photographer of modern Istanbul”, with whom Pamuk has collaborated before. Güler’s pictures, always in black and white, are known for depicting not only the monumental side of Istanbul but also focusing on the individuals, usually from lower and working classes, who move through the city’s narrow streets on a day to day basis42. The photographs are also effective in showing the rapid change of the urban landscape, with concrete buildings and paved streets taking the place of wooden houses and muddy streets that were common in Istanbul throughout the twentieth century. These images recall both Pamuk and Kemal’s childhood, and further envelop the museum’s public into a nostalgic atmosphere. Sounds of rain, birdsong, and the River Bosphorus accentuate the silence and enforce liminality.
The main exhibition spans three loors, following the 83-chapter structure of Pamuk’s novel. The vast majority of chapters are given individual display boxes, each one showing diverse objects and images referenced in the novel. Information labels are for the most part absent; the novel serves as the guidebook for the exhibition, with many attendees holding and constantly checking their copies of The Museum of Innocence for information43. In addition to this, an audio guide narrated both by Pamuk and Kemal is recommended for those visitors who have not read the novel. As the narrator of the text and the audio tour, Kemal constantly directs the public’s attention towards the contents of each vitrine, while Pamuk takes the role of curator, explaining the logic and
42 Pamuk, Ohran. (2018, November 1) “I Like Your Photographs Because They Are Beautiful”. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/opinion/orhan-pamuk- ara-guler-istanbul.html. Accessed on January 2nd, 2019.
43 Two volumes of the novel— one in Turkish and one in English— are present in each floor as resource material. It is worth noting that these editions have also become de facto visitor books, with audiences from all around the world scribbling messages for the author in a variety of languages, with dates and signatures, all over the text’s pages.
25 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis arrangements behind each display. While all displays relate to the novel’s chapters, their approach to representation is sometimes different and not strictly based on the object’s indexicality to Füsun, i.e. not all objects were necessarily ‘touched’ or directly related to her. As explained by the author “each box needed its own structure and aura; each should have its own particular soul”44.
The ‘regular’ display of Chapter 2,”The Sanzelize Boutique”, showcases how most of the vitrines work ( ig. 3). The wooden box shows a yellow shoe alongside a leather Jenny Colon bag. Both objects lay underneath a metal signboard painted black, with big stylized letters spelling out “Sanzelize Butik”. All these elements are tied together through the novel’s narrative: chapter two details how the yellow shoe used to belong to Füsun, while the bag fig.3 Chapter 2 display box. was seen through the window of the Image: Pamuk, Orhan. 2012. 2. The Sanzelize Boutique. Istanbul: The Museum of Innocence. © Google Arts Sanzelize Boutique by Kemal while Project. walking down the streets of upper class neighborhood Nisantasi. Kemal’s visit to the store later that week turns into his very irst meeting with Füsun, signaling the moment that kickstarts the lover’s affair and the beginning of the story.
44 Pamuk, Ohran. (2012) The Innocence of Objects. Trans. Oklap, Ekin. Abrams: New York. p. 61
26 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis While the display case neatly ties the visual elements of the chapter together, the coming-about of the artifacts is eclectic. The yellow shoe and shop signboard comes from Pamuk’s collection of antique objects, gathered around lea markets and antique shops in Istanbul; the handbag was commissioned especially for the museum, as it is supposed to be a Turkish knock-off of a well known European brand45. Since the object is ictional, Pamuk recruited Istanbul craftsmen to make a handbag with the appropriate knock-off style46.
Chapter 2’s diorama-like display is representative of how objects with disparate origins are brought together inside the Museum of Innocence. Artifacts with different pasts, which previously existed as commodities, ind their provenance replaced by a new ‘aura’ that grants them a certain uniqueness. This effect is exacerbated in each carefully constructed box, which recalls a particular set and setting, but also a sensation. The chapter displays function as small windows through which the audience can see the world through Kemal’s and Pamuk’s eyes.
Interspersed amongst the cabinets are displays that rely on literary elements, jumping from indexicality to iconicity and symbolism. Such is the case of Chapter 23 (“Silence") and Chapter 29 (“By Now There Was Hardly a Moment When I Wasn't Thinking About Her”). These boxes rely on metaphors conjured up by Kemal while describing kissing Füsun —“…like a ravenous bird taking a ig into its beak”47—, or feeling jealous about Füsun’s past lover — “…as if a black lamp were burning eternally inside me, radiating darkness.”48. In both instances, Kemal’s visual metaphor is literally shown. In the former, the metaphor is presented as a painting of two seagulls ighting over a ig, commissioned for the exhibition by Pamuk ( ig. 4). The latter display shows a ‘Black Lamp’ built by the author from the pieces of other artifacts ( ig.5).
45 Jenny Colon, the so-called Paris fashion house, is actually an allusion to French poet Gérard de Nerval’s lover.
46 Pamuk, 2012, p.61
47 Pamuk, 2009, p.139
48 Pamuk, 2009, p.219
27 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis These pastiches are outwardly justi ied by Pamuk in the audio tour, describing Kemal’s words as being “so precise that they can be represented as objects”, further insisting that “similes and metaphors are too objects of thorough scrutiny”49. The presentation of illegitimate and fabricated objects along with depictions of visual metaphors would, under a traditional object- oriented museum, be a perfect formula for claims of inauthenticity. fig.4 Chapter 29 display box. Image: Pamuk, Orhan. 2012. 29. By Now There Was Hardly However, the Museum of Innocence is a Moment When I Wasn't Thinking About Her. Istanbul: The Museum of Innocence. © Google Arts Project. clearly unconcerned with simply presenting ‘factual history’. Instead, the exhibition aims to create a sensitive atmosphere that fully surrounds and immerses the audience into the narrative. The museum seems well aware that, in lieu of indexical authenticity, visitors will rely more on their own memories and imagination, the museum materials (including the audio tour and handout), and previous knowledge of the novel. These instruments allow for a co-construction of the visitor’s experience, where by means of “associations and imaginings as well as […] immediate sensation” a feeling of authenticity can be provoked50.
Fabricating Indexicality
The apex of the museum’s play with reality and iction comes with the third and last loor of the Çukurcuma house. Dedicated to the last three chapters of the novel, the
49 Pamuk, 2012, p.144
50 Prentice, R., 2001. Experiential cultural tourism: museums and the marketing of the New Romanticism of evoked authenticity. Museum Management and Curatorship 19 (1), p. 22; also Thyne et al, 2010, p. 2
28 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis audience is brought directly in contact with the protagonist’s history. Facing the untimely death of Füsun, Kemal decides to open a museum in her honor, featuring his collection, at her family’s old house. As visitors climbs the stairs into the attic they are confronted with Kemal’s bedroom, where he lived for the last 7 years of his life. Humbly arranged in a corner of the attic are the protagonist’s bed, bedside table, slippers, pajama, and a small collection of photographs and objects. The room is presented fig.5 Chapter 23 display box. Image: Pamuk, Orhan. 2012. 23. Silence. Istanbul: The as a lived-in space, akin to the Museum of Innocence. © Google Arts Project. living spaces displayed in house museums and palaces. Without any warning, the audience is effectively brought inside one last inconspicuously built display; the irst two loors of the museum maintained a certain distance between audience and artifacts through wood and glass boxes, but the lack of such presentation makes the attic more intimate, private, and without distance. Visitors enter the frame, activating the last loor with their presence.
Kemal’s room in the Museum of Innocence represents the moment in which fact and iction are well and truly blurred. This moment also happens in the last chapter of the novel: as Kemal gathers his collection, he realizes he wants someone to write down and publish his memories as a guide for the museum. The aging collector meets and befriends local writer Orhan Pamuk, whom he selects for his fame and similar background. Introducing himself into the narrative, the last chapter of the novel features Pamuk meeting Kemal and establishing a friendly relationship over seven years, during which the writer would spend long nights interviewing Kemal. Unlike the chapter boxes
29 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis that dominate the rest of the house, which keep a certain separation between objects and visitors, the attic room is presented “as-is”. Only a cordon stands between the visitor and Kemal’s lodgings; while the displays from chapter one to seventy-nine seem carefully built and borderline theatrical in their attention to detail, Kemal’s room doesn’t look particularly staged or fabricated. Beside the bed lies a wooden chair, where Pamuk would sit while listening to Kemal’s story. In the closing narration of the audio tour, Pamuk explains:
“Once or twice, Kemal noticed that I was tired, and we switched places. He sat on my chair and I lay down on the bed; suddenly I was looking at the world through his eyes, unnerved. I could easily be Kemal. I could tell my story as if it were his, and his as if it were mine […] I felt that it didn’t matter too much which voice was Kemal’s and which was mine. Did the objects not remind us both of the very same things?” 51.
Audiences may listen to this narration while sitting on the only bench in the attic, which gives a similar view of Kemal’s bed as from the chair mentioned by Pamuk ( ig. 6). At this moment the igures of the author and the protagonist of the novel merge, through sheer bodily identi ication and perspective, with the gaze of the viewer. Left for the conclusion of the visit, the apparent indexicality of the room legitimizes the authenticity of the entire collection. As Thyne, Hede, and White conclude in their study of literary house museums, “indexicality must also be present in some form” in order for inauthentic artifacts to “become a legitimate resource for the co-construction of the visitor experience”52. In this degree Kemal’s room is successful in convincing the audience that everything they just saw was real, as well as throwing skeptics off-balance by the sudden shift in representation.
It would be easy to ascribe the Museum of Innocence’s successful presentation of authenticity to its selection of objects, carefully built displays, and nuanced presentation
51 Pamuk, 2012, p. 251. This quote also appears towards the end of the audio tour, in the attic. The phrase becomes knowingly ironic since, in the Turkish version of the audio tour, Orhan Pamuk voices both himself and Kemal.
52 Thyne et al, 2010, p.5
30 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis of iction as fact through the so-called “museum effect”53. This, however, would be over- simplifying. In terms of exhibition design, Pamuk is invested in creating a nostalgic “sentimental museum”. As a consequence, understanding that the museum doesn’t need
fig.6 View of Kemal’s room. Image: Medina, Jean. 2018. Kemal’s bed. Amsterdam: personal collection. to be ‘fact’-based allows for the active use of metaphors, similes, and theatrical elements that create an immersive experience rather than an encyclopedic one. Secondly, both the novel and the author legitimize the existence of the museum. As a respected novelist, Pamuk’s closeness to the museum predisposes the audience to let their disbelief be suspended— very much in the same way that a reader might before diving into a work of iction. In this way Pamuk’s understanding of a museum comes closer to what one would expect of a novel: not just as a repository of historical information, but as a narrative device that can take a reader into an imaginary journey, while still informing his or her reality.
53 see Alpers, Svetlana. (1991) "The Museum as a Way of Seeing" In I. Karp & S. Lavine (Eds.) Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Smithsonian Institution Press: Washington. pp. 25–32
31 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis A Lie that Brings Us Closer to the Truth(s)
There is a further element in addition to the objects and setting that plays an important role in the authenticity of the Museum of Innocence. In addition to collecting cigarette stubs, watches, and glasses of raki, Pamuk and Kemal avidly visited thousands of museums of all shapes and sizes around the world. For more than twenty years the collectors became quite knowledgeable amateur museologists, being able to recognize patterns, shortfalls, and gather inspiration for the establishment of their own museum. A large discussion on the more than 1’700 museums visited by Kemal can be found in Chapters 81 and 82 of the novel. The evident museum knowledge of the character legitimates the Museum of Innocence through intertextuality — it acknowledges the in luence that “backstreet” house and literary museums, eclectic exhibitions, and humble yet passionate collectors have had over its own creation.
Harking back to Pamuk’s feeling of “insuf iciency” in iction, as well as Benjamin’s claim about a writer’s proclivity to write about that which they haven’t found, it is clear that by creating his own ideal museum Pamuk is addressing his personal views and politics. Tellingly, upon entering through the narrow doorway of the Museum of Innocence, one inds a copy of “A Modest Manifesto for Museums” displayed on the very irst wall beside the entrance54. This short text functions as a statement by the author, explaining his vision for future museums and adding a slight political charge to the proceedings; Pamuk notices one more parallel between novels and museums, seeing how “the transitions from palaces to national museums and from epics to novels are parallel processes… National museums should be like novels; but they are not”55. In the eleven points of the manifesto, the author states his belief on museums going from grand national narratives to smaller, individual stories; from being hosted in spectacular and expensive buildings to the homes and neighborhoods of common people; from detached and representational to personal and expressive.
The dynamic relationship between fact and iction inside the Museum of Innocence, aided by the use of literary devices like metaphors and similes, challenges traditional
54 see Annex, fig. 1
55 Pamuk, 2012, p.55
32 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis displays and any view or claim of “clear-cut sources of value”56. Nevertheless, this play between categories is merely a device used by Pamuk to address larger concerns. Singularizing national museums as out-of-touch with social reality, Pamuk emphasizes how “the stories of individuals are much better suited to displaying the depths of our humanity”57. The disputed existence of Kemal and Füsun is not the point of the Museum of Innocence: what’s important is that they could exist, and that their story would one way or the other be representative of the struggles of the lower and upper classes in Istanbul during the second half of the twentieth century. What is more, the small, ordinary moments in the lives of Kemal and Füsun— such as watching television after dinner for countless evenings, inside the Çukurcuma house—, can be relatable not only to Turkish culture but to a wider middle-class experience, which Pamuk relates to other places— China, India, Russia, Mexico—, where there is a clash between local tradition and Western modernity58.
The quote referenced in the section heading, “Art is a lie that brings us closer to the truth”, has been attributed to Pablo Picasso. Whether this attribution is real or not, I mention it here for its alikeness and difference to Pamuk’s work. Making a museum out of iction could be considered deceptive, and in the era of “fake news”, ethically wrong. Nevertheless, and in contrast to Picasso’s (alleged) claim, Pamuk doesn’t seek to bring us closer to the truth, but to a truth. The author’s emphasis on individual stories advocates plurality and heteroglossia. The Museum of Innocence is thus a plea and an example in how museums can be scaled back, rethought, and presented. The use of iction in narrative comes naturally in this process, for it allows museum visitors to suspend their disbelief and engage on a deeper level with the co-construction of meaning and sensations in the museum.
56 Tekgül, 2016, p.399
57 Pamuk, 2012, p.55
58 Gardels, Nathan. (2009, November 11) “To solve Turkey’s Culture Clash, Old Elite must yield to Free Speech”. The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved from https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/ Opinion/2009/1111/p09s01-coop.html Accessed on January 2nd 2019.
33 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
34 II. Artist Apocrypha Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis An Unbelievable Museum
“Are we justi ied in calling this innate habit of mind, this tendency to create an imaginary world of living beings (or perhaps: a world of animate ideas), a playing of the mind, a mental game?” —John Huizinga, Homo Ludens
In the quest for the suspension of disbelief, an author might take diverging paths based on genre. The previous chapter dealt with Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, a museum and novel in which iction and reality are interweaved. After all, Pamuk’s oeuvre has been written under the literary genre of realist iction, and so is his museum: both the novel and the exhibition in Çukurcuma are grounded on real, found objects, which are inherently tied to the history of Istanbul. Pamuk merely created a ictive storyline to connect these artifacts, which overall is realist enough to be believable. This chapter starts by considering what happens, then, when a ictional museum is inherently unbelievable? How would a museum with a completely fabricated collection and backstory tackle the suspension of disbelief? And to what extent can this deeper play between iction and non- iction work as institutional critique?
As with many wondrous things, a prime example of an unbelievable museum can be found in the Baroque era. In 1684, Sir Thomas Browne published a tract by the name of Musæum Clausum, also known as Biblioteca Absconditha. Drawing from the popularity of cabinets of curiosities and esoteric collections in Europe at the time, Browne’s text lists a compilation of “remarkable Books, Antiquities, Pictures and Rarities of several kinds, scarce or never seen by any man now living”. Allegedly based on knowledge passed on to him by contemporaries, the museum described contained fantastical objects, such as ‘A large Ostrich’s Egg, whereon is neatly and fully wrought that famous battle of Alcazar, in which three Kings lost their lives’ and ‘A Glass of Spirits made of Ethereal Salt, Hermetically sealed up, kept continually in Quick Silver and so volatile a
36 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis nature that it will scarcely endure the Light’”59. On the pages of this ‘hidden’ or ‘unknown’ museum, Browne encouraged speculation about lost artifacts and improbable treasures, depending on the belief that a reader might put into the text.
A museum in the same vein as Browne’s, illed to the brim with fanciful and astonishing artifacts albeit not only in paper, was to be found in Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable60, an exhibition by English artist Damien Hirst presented at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Taking the entirety of the Punta Della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi, the exhibition contained hundreds of mythological sculptures of all shapes and sizes. Included amongst the artifacts were a Head of Medusa cast in gold, with fourteen highly detailed snakes on its head; busts of unknown Pharaohs and Egyptian goddesses; and the skulls of a cyclops and a unicorn, respectively cast in marble and white crystal. Added to these were vases, coins, and fantastic naturalia made out of precious materials such as bronze, marble, lapis lazuli, gold, and silver, all in all illing the halls of the Venetian galleries. Like Browne’s Musæum Clausum, most of the items on display were thought to be only lights of fancy, objects that had only been described in legend or otherwise never before seen by mankind.
The seemingly impossible artifacts in Treasures correspond to the indings of a submarine archaeological expedition inanced and supported by Damien Hirst, which took place off the East-African coast since 2010. The eccentric collection, according to exhibition materials and press releases, belonged to one Cif Amotan II, a freed slave from Antyoch who went on to become a massively rich tradesman and collector with a knack for the occult, the mythical, and the strange. Unful illed by life in Rome, Amotan sought to move his entire collection to a newly built temple somewhere in India or the Middle East. To carry out this enterprise he commended the construction of the Apistos —the largest sea vessel ever built at the time—, nevertheless the ship did not reach its destination, and met its ultimate fate sinking to the depths of the ocean sometime in the early second century.
59 see Browne, Thomas. (1683). “Tract XIII: Musæum Clausum”. In Certain Miscellany Tracts. Retrieved from http://penelope.uchicago.edu/misctracts/museum.html#note1 Accessed on January 2nd, 2019.
60 From this mention on referred to as Treasures. The exhibition was not visited directly: research was performed based on exhibition materials, catalogues, reviews, and the accompanying documentary.
37 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
fig. 7 An underwater photograph of divers exploring the Apistos wreckage. Image: Hirst, Damien [Photo by Gerigk, Christoph]. 2017. Hydra and Kali Discovered by Four Divers. Damien Hirst and Science LTD All Rights Reserved DACS/SIAE 2017
And so, the entire contents of Amotan’s collection rested on the sea loor for millennia, covered in sand and merging with the aquatic life. The discovery of the wreckage site was deemed as perhaps one of the most important archaeological indings in recent memory: had the Apistos reached its inal destination, it would have “represented the contents of the irst encyclopaedic museum, the direct ancestor of the British Museum and the Louvre”61. Presented as newly discovered salvages, deformed by the extravagant shapes and colors of coral, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable renders itself as a protean museum, a shadow from the time before museums even existed ( ig. 7). One is led to see Treasures not only as a collection of mythological sculptures, but as a mythical museum in itself. How come then this millenary legend not been heard of before? The answer lies in the name. Apistos, the mythical ship, whose name literally translates as “unbelievable”, but also as “not to be trusted; per idious”. It is with this impish wink that
61 Loyrette in Hirst, Damien (2017). Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable. Foreword by François Pinault. Other Criteria: London. p.16
38 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis we are irst signaled that the entire story, with its antique collector, ship, and magni icent artifacts, are all an exercise in myth-making conceived by Damien Hirst.
In this sense Treasures and the Musæum Clausum share another quality: both are deliberate inventions by their respective authors, which show the construction of ictional museums as a creative task with a “strong thread of playful pleasure running through [them]”62. Indeed, playfulness is closely associated to similar acts of artistic production, and can be a path towards the suspension of disbelief. In his seminal work Homo Ludens, John Huizinga proposes that play inherently requires its participants to “step out of the real” and into a ‘magic circle’. This move implies that ordinary rules are suspended and replaced by the game’s own, in a speci ic place and time63. In the scenarios discussed in this paper, museums of ictions effectively use a museum-like framework as a threshold for this ‘magic circle’, inside which audiences are invited to play along ictive narratives through continuous make-believe. The spatial and conceptual frame given by the museum serves as a device, which allows players to ‘not be serious’, while simultaneously being thoroughly and intensely absorbed by storytelling.
Treasures was selected as a second case study precisely for its substantial difference to Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence. While the Istanbul museum is small, intimate, and inconspicuous about its use of narrative and iction, Treasures sits on opposite side of the scale: it is an extravagant, unashamed blockbuster of an exhibition, which consciously (and at times self-mockingly) plays with audiences’ expectations of fact and iction. Secondly, while both museums cement their narrative through the igure of an individual collector, the collections of objects displayed were produced in widely differing ways. While Pamuk’s objects are for the most part real antiques coming from lea markets, shops, and houses in Istanbul, which were merely threaded into a ictional narrative, the collection in Treasures was completely fabricated inside the factory-like studios of the British artist over a period of more than ten years by a group of sculptors, painters, and artist assistants. Nevertheless, as museums of iction these cases hold
62 Morris, Rachel. (2014). “Imaginary Museums: What mainstream museums can learn from them?" MIDAS [Online], 2 | 2014. http://midas.revues.org/643 Accessed 08 August 2018. p. 4
63 Huizinga, J. (1955) Homo Ludens: The Play Element in Culture. Beacon Press, Massachussetts. pp.13-14
39 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis similarities in their construction, since both rely on elaborate make-believe narratives, literary devices, and intertextual references to legitimize themselves. A comparative analysis between them helps to understand how different authors and artists approach creating a museum of ictions, with particular objectives and degrees of success.
Analysis for Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable is performed on the basis of the exhibition and its accompanying materials, including catalogues, loorplans, reviews, and a documentary of the same name released internationally through streaming services. All of these materials combined give a comprehensive panorama of Hirst’s exhibition, its contents and narratives. Questions threaded upon in the following sections include: What is Hirst’s objective with the creation of this museum? How are the artifacts and textual narrative behind it legitimized? To what extent is Treasures successful as institutional critique?
The Making of a Wreckage
The main narrative of Treasures is based around the igure of one collector: Cif Amotan II64. The story behind the character is leshed out along the exhibition, showing a man whose position in life is elevated from a lower class —a slave— to an upper echelon, turning into a free man with an astounding fortune. With second-century Rome as a backdrop, the character’s intentions and historical context provide information, always speculative, as to the start of his collection. Texts made for the exhibition describe the collector as an able merchant and traveller, interested in faraway lands. Regarding the start of the freed man’s collection, the story holds that Amotan was persuaded to build a temple in honor of the Sun god, Apollo, after having a premonitory dream. This experience eventually leads him to amass treasures from the Old World as part of his worship. Like Coleridge’s lower, discussed in previous chapters, the collection aboard the Apistos amounted to the materialization of a fantasy— a dream that pushes the limits of an audience’s belief.
64 The first of many anagrams found in Treasures: the letters in “Cif Amotan II” also spell “I Am Fiction”.
40 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis Within the narrative of the exhibition, Hirst acts as an ‘enabler’ and curator, in a sense similar to Pamuk’s position in Innocence. Separated by millennia from Amotan, however, Hirst doesn’t have a direct, indexical link to his character. Instead, the artist claims a personal feeling of connection to the collector of antiquity, which led him to become the primary investor for the archaeological expedition lifting the Apistos’ treasures from the sea loor. A lifelong interest in the wondrous, as well as childhood memories of watching adventure
fig.8 Bust of the Collector. ilms and walking through the halls Image: Hirst, Damien. 2017. Bust of the Collector. of archaeological museums are also ArtStack. Retrieved from https://theartstack.com/artist/ damien-hirst/bust-collector-treasu Accessed 12 January cited as in luences for the artist’s 2019. involvement in the project. As was the case with Orhan Pamuk and his character Kemal Basmaci, a streak of Hirst’s auto- biography can be found in the character of Cif Amotan II.
In their critical review of the exhibition, Greene and Leidwanger point out the dif iculty in separating the artist and the ictive collector’s’s shared “conspicuous consumption, fetishization, and conscious rejection of elite norms”65, their shared interest in the grotesque informing the collection as an extension of the author’s self66. The dual personality of the collector is further hinted at by ictional archaeologist Daniel Beder, who in a fake review speculates that Amotan, with his interest in sculptural pairs, travel,
65 Greene, Elizabeth and Leidwanger, Justin. (2017) “Damien Hirst's Tale of Shipwreck and Salvaged Treasure". American Journal of Archaeology, Volume 122, Number 1. p.8
66 Belk, Russell W. [1988] (1994) “Collectors and Collecting.” In Interpreting Objects and Collections. Susan M. Pearce, ed. Routledge: London. p. 321
41 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis and mythology, must have been born under the sign of Gemini; coincidentally sharing an astrological house with Damien Hirst67. In a self-conscious wink, Hirst describes Amotan as someone who probably was “arrogant and foolish”, but nevertheless “driven to amass this collection”68. Overtaken by his own excess, the Bust of the Collector shown amongst the artworks portrays Amotan in bronze, half-covered and deformed by coral, bearing a striking resemblance to Hirst ( ig.8).
The ‘salvaged’ collection presents damage to varying degrees, from scratches and cracks in golden pieces to pervasive growths of coral covering large sections of bronze statues, some of which are also broken or heavily eroded. All these damages correspond to deterioration provoked by water and salt corrosion, and add a certain gravitas to the objects. Indeed, Hirst mentions that upon seeing the irst salvaged artifact—a headless Demon with Bowl— the broken-off part and corroded material may have contributed to his believing in the piece’s antique origin69. This fabricated ‘patina of age’ is key for the make-believe within the exhibition, as it makes the objects stand out while also realistically conveying the illusion that they had spent two millennia submerged in the Indian Ocean. The distance of time makes the entire fabrication more plausible: Amotan’s collection depends as much on narrative as it does in the gaps and holes found in historical records. Suspension of disbelief in Treasures is based on a visitor’s view of the past as a ‘foreign country’, a fragmented entity upon whose gaps, according to the artist, lies belief70.
In terms of content, the more than eighty different artworks presented in Palazzo Grassi and Punta Della Dogana are fascinating for an often elaborate weaving of all kinds of myths, legends, contemporary pop culture, and meta references to the ictional nature of the exhibition itself. In this sense one of the most intriguing artifacts in Amotan’s collection is The Shield of Achilles ( ig. 9). The mythical shield was described originally in Homer’s Iliad as being made in secrecy by the god Hephaistos for the hero Achilles. On
67 Loyrette in Hirst, 2017, p. 14
68 Hirst in Hobkinson, Sam (director), Kent, Nicolas (producer). (2017) Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable [Motion Picture]. England: The Oxford Film Company.
69 Hirst in Hobkinson, 2017.
70 Hirst in Hobkinson, 2017.
42 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
fig. 9 Shield of Achilles. Image: Romero, Fred. 17 August 2017. Shield of Achilles. Retrieved from https:// www.flickr.com/photos/129231073@N06/38864781382/in/photostream/ Accessed 12 january 2019. Used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ legalcode the front of his creation Hephaistos depicted the earth, the sea and the heavens, the sun, the moon and all the stars, as well as scenes of human experience such as marriage, war, farming, dancing, and feasting. Interestingly, the exhibition guidebook acknowledges that the shield on display cannot possibly be real; unlike the Apistos, the guide suggests that “Homer’s shield is – by its very nature – a iction, an exercise in artistic invention that exceeds anything a human craftsman should be capable of producing”, naively acquired by Amotan as a historical object71.
The shield is furthermore presented as an example of ekphrasis— the verbal representation of a work of art. This implies that “the description of the Shield shares with museums the feeling of being a miniature world, an entire universe shrunk down
71 Palazzo Grassi & Punta Della Dogana (2017). Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable [Exhibition Guidebook]. Palazzo Grassi: Venice, 2017. p.25
43 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis and recreated in microcosm.”72. Indeed, ekphrasis can be thought of as the most elemental variety of ictional museum as presented through the guise of literature: it can be found as the list of fantastic artifacts in the Musæum Clausum, as well as in Kemal’s vivid descriptions of Füsun’s objects in The Museum of Innocence. The inclusion of The Shield of Achilles in Treasures provides a kind of meta-commentary on the Venice exhibition: with its engravings of the Old World and contested legitimacy between myth and reality, it is conceptually a small-scale model for the Apistos treasures to follow.
The exhibition guide constantly makes allusion to other works and legends that play with fact and iction. The remarkable detail of Reclining Woman is compared to the legend of Pygmalion and cases of agalmatophilia, in which the realism of a sculpture reached the level of “blurring the distinction between art and life, mimesis and simulacrum”73. Likewise, the Calendar Stone, an anachronic bronze Aztec calendar that the guide relates to William S. Burroughs’ The Soft Machine, in which a time-traveling trip to prehispanic Mexico made out of cut-up fragments serves to “suggest the constructed nature of reality”74. These phrases, scattered throughout the text, hint at the ictionality of the whole enterprise.
Falsi ication of photographic evidence is also used in two sculptural groups. Pair of Slaves Bound for Execution, based on a bronze found in the wreck (Children of a Dead King), are described as a contemporaneous copy that ended up being used for target practice by soldiers during the Second World War, with a black-and-white photograph shown as evidence. Furthermore, a sepia-toned picture inds Five Antique Torsos displayed in the International Surrealist Exhibition of London, in 1936, giving a sense of historicity to the artworks75. For the weary viewer, these are not just collages of references, but puzzles of intertextuality waiting to be unpacked, with a by-line of humor prevalent throughout.
72 Morris, Rachel. (2014). “Imaginary Museums: What mainstream museums can learn from them?" MIDAS [Online], 2 | 2014. http://midas.revues.org/643 Accessed 08 August 2018. p. 3
73 Palazzo Grassi, 2017, p.15
74 Palazzo Grassi, 2017, p.16
75 Palazzo Grassi, 2017, p.10
44 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis In addition to the recovered artworks, the narrative of the shipwreck is supported with the use of (fabricated) photographic documentation. Large light boxes featuring scenes from the underwater excavation are interspersed amongst the sculptural works, providing what appears to be indexical testimony of the Apistos’ wreckage. The pictures add to the atmosphere of wonder and discovery, showing the artworks submerged and half-buried in sand, surrounded by coral formations and schools of ish, and being measured and manipulated by divers in bright red neoprene suits. Often photographed in a dramatic lighting that emphasizes the fantastic silhouettes against the dark ocean loor, these images are also testament to the extremes reached by Hirst in order to fabricate a plausible outline around his artworks.
In the end, however, the inclusion of evidently anachronic artworks in Treasures shatters any possible illusion of legitimacy. Falling for his old habits, Hirst cannot resist to include grotesquely over-the-top imagery and some super luous puns: gold Transformer toys, explicit sexual scenes, and a legend reading “Made in China” in what otherwise is a well-disguised Barbie doll bust take are enough to make any disbelief that was suspended to come crashing back into the ground. Unlike other museums of iction, it is highly improbable that any visitor would leave thinking the artifacts or the Apistos were real— even the documentary, which manages to retain plausibility throughout its running time, ends with a shot of a coral-encrusted sculpture of Mickey Mouse being lifted to the surface by divers.
Was Hirst’s intention to fool the public, or merely to engage with them in a play of expectations and disbelief? The latter possibility would be more in line with Huizinga’s de inition of play: once the game is over, the players step out of the magic circle and back into reality. Furthermore, the game that Hirst plays consists on pushing the disbelief of audiences to an extreme, with the added value that in the end the visitors might start questioning not only the exhibition but the framework— museological, academic, commercial— upon which it is presented.
45 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis Fabricating Myths, Fabricating Sources
“Perhaps the only possibility for me to be an artist is to be a liar because ultimately all economic products, all trade, all communication, are lies.” —Marcel Broodthaers76
For any myth to survive the test of time it needs a panoply of sources. While the sculptures salvaged from the Apistos might be unbelievable, the story of the vessel and its owner are backed through channels that go beyond the Venice exhibition. Most succinctly, the project relies on two accompanying works to give credibility to its indings: a catalogue with essays by recognized experts, and a documentary that follows the archaeological expedition that found and recovered the artifacts. The documentary might indeed be considered an artwork in itself: since the artworks in Hirst’s exhibition were sold and dispersed around the world after the Venice Biennale, the ilm, released internationally through streaming services, is now the most accessible source of information for Treasures.
One of the main strategies used to feign authenticity is deploying the authority of ‘experts’ from several ields, who endorse the tale of the Apistos and even elaborate on its historical references. This is the case with Henri Loyrette, former director of the Louvre Museum in Paris, who cross-references the Apistos in the Deipnosophistae, a third-century work by Athenaeus Naucratis, inserting the ictive vessel into a real text77; Simon Schama, renowned historian and writer, who details an encounter in an antique shop in The Hague, where he found a testimony regarding the ships’s construction, attributed to the ictitious Lucius Longinus, as a transcript of a “medieval copy of an ancient manuscript”, the latter of which is never identi ied78. Similarly, expert marine archaeologist Frank Goddio, who in 2000 discovered the submerged remains of the city of Thonis-Heracleion, re lects on the French expression inventer une épave—'to invent a wreck’—, cheekily mentioning that, since a wreck comes into being in the instant of its
76 Broodthaers, Marcel (1972) “Musée d’Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles” in Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artist’s Writings. The MIT Press: Massachusetts. p.139
77 Loyrette in Hirst, 2017, p.13
78 Schama in Hirst, 2017, pp.18-23
46 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis discovery, every wreck is originally a “ igment of the imagination”79. Each writer convincingly speaks of his previous knowledge of Amotan and the Apistos, giving credence to the discovery of the site as “a cultural milestone of paramount importance”80.
The documentary offers the most consistent retelling of the Apistos’ story81. Presented as a ‘behind-the-scenes’ of the archaeological discovery and the exhibition at Venice, the feature makes use of ilm techniques associated with the documentary genre. As such, it gathers archive footage, ‘talking heads’-style interviews, and video material recorded by the divers during their underwater search. Like the printed catalogue, the ilm features several experts in the ields of archaeology, mythology, and art history; unlike the catalogue, however, most of the experts featured in the documentary are fake, with even their academic and professional institutions being a fabrication. This is the case of Prof. Andrew Lerner, leader of the archaeological expedition, who introduces himself by claiming he has “doing [archaeology] for more than 30 years” ( ig. 10); Piotr Klimek, maritime archaeologist and diver with “immense experience”; and Peter Weiss, an expert from the ( ictional) Tecnische Universität Heidelber, who in the ilm is the irst to propose that the found wreckage belongs to the legendary Apistos82. These characters drive the salvage mission, their voices —along with half a dozen other real and invented academic experts— giving historical credence to the legend while further absorbing the viewer into the narrative.
All in all, the expert voices cited in these materials continuously refer to sources old and new, factual and ictitious, with the catalogue going as far as to make reference to fake reviews of the expedition— predicting its own reception. Going against any academic ethics, Hirst not only made up the artworks or the story behind them, but also manufactured texts, authors, and references that to an unwitting eye would appear as
79 Goddio in Hirst, 2017, p. 24
80 Goddio in Hirst, 2017, p. 26
81 In reality, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable would fall under the category of mockumentary , a genre that uses the framework and tools of documentary filmmaking to mock both the genre and whichever issues it covers.
82 Weiss in Hobkinson, 2017
47 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis authentically academic. This is furthered throughout the catalogue and the documentary, which use the language of academia and science to convince and confuse the public. The continuous stream of real and fake references, experts, and events, end up muddling preconceptions of factuality and iction; this would be an instance of suspension of disbelief brought around by an overabundance of information. Treasures aims to provoke a line of questioning, not regarding the reality of the exhibition, but the legitimacy of academic, archaeological, and historical research and presentations. Thus, this is not only a critique of museums, but a critique of academia and scholarship.
fig. 10 Screenshot from Treasures documentary. Notice the “talking head” framing of a fictional expert. Image: Hobkinson, Sam (director), Kent, Nicolas (producer). (2017) Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable [Motion Picture]. England: The Oxford Film Company.
The intertextual play between Classic myths and pop culture references, and plausible narratives with kitsch imagery, aligns Treasures with Foucault’s criticism of historians for what he called their “impoverished idea of the real”, which left no space for the social imaginary83. In this sense, the exhibition leads back to the practice of New Cultural Theory, and its interest on the production of reality by means of representation84. On one level of institutional critique, Treasures presents iction with different degrees of plausibility with the intent of undermining institutions that historically rely on presenting ‘truth’, including history and archaeological museums, documentaries, and
83 Foucault in Burke, Peter. (2008) What is Cultural History? Polity: England. p.64
84 Burke, 2008, p.77
48 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis academic texts. Parallel to this Hirst extols the primordial need for storytelling and wonder, once again leading back to Huizinga’s consideration of play and make-believe as a fundamental aspect of culture.
In one of the closing statements for the documentary, the artist re lects that the contested history of the Apistos and the past in general show “there is no absolute truth”85. While this statement rings true from the postmodern stance shared by the artist and his contemporaries, this creation of ‘imaginary facts’ is not without its issues. As a cat-and-mouse game between artist and audience, Treasures is a fascinatingly elaborate multi-media ruse in the era of ‘post-truth’. Nevertheless, while Hirst’s fabrications try to mock the rigidity of institutions, they fails to acknowledge issues faced by contemporary archaeology and museums with a colonial past.
Plunder and Plagiarism
Like a mythical vessel sinking under its own weight, the massive size and pretensions of Treasures end up undermining any claims the exhibition might have towards authenticity. One of the biggest issues regarding the legitimacy of Treasures comes from Hirst’s association to his own exhibition. While in the Museum of Innocence Pamuk’s name helped in giving credibility to the collection, perhaps one of the biggest setbacks for Treasures is Hirst’s name, displayed in all publicity materials.
Known for shocking audiences and acting as a ‘trickster’ of the art world, Hirst’s name detracts rather than adds authority to the exhibition. At the Venice Biennale, the vast majority of artworks were presented in three versions: the ‘original’ historical artworks covered in coral, shown ‘before undergoing restoration’; reproductions in marble and bronze, showing how the artworks might look once restored, and inally reproductions in gold, silver, and other precious materials showing the artifacts as they might have looked before the shipwreck, sometime around the late irst century. While the reproductions are justi ied by the curator as visualizations, it is also evident that they are part of a market strategy by Hirst, who is known to produce series of his works in luxury materials. Adding three different publications with a hefty price tag tending to
85 Hirst in Hobkinson, 2017
49 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis the market has been criticized as one of the main reasons for which the exhibition ends up seeming kitschy or in bad taste, a “showroom for oligarchs”86. In other words, Hirst’s relation (and knack for using his name as a brand) may actually be detrimental for the narrative he pursues in Treasures.
Owing to the artist’s reputation, it is no wonder that many of the usual criticisms aimed at his oeuvre were once again found in reviews and critiques of Treasures. As a decidedly postmodern producer, and as evidenced by the dense fabric of references and allusions found in the Venice exhibition, Hirst continuously makes use of intertextuality in his artworks—usually demonstrating many of the shortfalls and controversies surrounding the concept. Prevalent amongst these claims is the debate concerning the thin line between the use of allusion, references, and plagiarism. In the case of Hirst, these arguments are directed at the ethics of his practice, as well as contemporary forms of cultural appropriation.
Clearly modeled on a Nigerian artifact, the artwork labelled Golden Heads (Female) in Treasures has been accused by artist Victor Ehikhamenor of appropriating the Head of Ife, a well-known ancient Nigerian brass artwork found in 1938 in Ife, Nigeria87 ( ig. 11). After criticism aimed at this piece gained traction through social media, representatives of the British artist released a statement:
“The Treasures are a collection of works in luenced by a wide range of cultures and stories from across the globe and throughout history — indeed many of the works celebrate original and important artworks from the past,”88.
However, as originally denounced by artist Victor Ehikhamenor, the work was not visibly labelled as in luenced by the original Nigerian artifact in the exhibition. As a
86 Morgan, Tiernan. (2017, August 10) “Damien Hirst’s Shipwreck Fantasy Sinks in Venice”. Hyperallergic. Retrieved from https://hyperallergic.com/391158/damien-hirst-treasures-from-the- wreck-of-the-unbelievable-venice-punta-della-dogana-palazzo-grassi/ Accessed 14 December 2018.
87 Bowley, Graham. (2017, May 10) “Damien Hist Controversy at Venice Biennale". The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/arts/design/damien-hirst-controversy- at-venice-biennale.html Accessed November 29th 2018.
88 Bowley, 2017.
50 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis matter of fact, Hirst’s “exhilaration as a child in the British Museum” has been cited as one of the artist’s main in luences for the kind of displays and the tone of the labels in Treasures89. Indeed, the title of the exhibition already conveys the issue: the artifacts are presented as treasures, implying that the ictional expedition was closer to a treasure
fig. 11 Instagram post by Victor Ehikhamenor, accusing Hirst of plagiarism. Image: Ehikhamenor, Victor. 2019. “Photo of Head of Ife at Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable.” Instagram phot, May 8, 2017. https://www.instagram.com/p/BT0zLHhgksJ/?utm_source=ig_embed Accessed 12 January 2019. hunt than a scienti ic exploration. In this sense, the playful tone in which scholarship is criticized in the catalogue and documentary also falls short, unable and unwilling to comment on more recent advances in the ield of archaeology.
Greene and Leidwanger suggest that in Treasures “archaeology is used as a framework to exploit, collect, or sell off artistic works in the guise of, but with disregard for, diverse cultural heritage. Such a neocolonial paradigm plays into the imperialist and exploitative
89 Cumming, Laura. (2017, April 16) “Damien Hirst: Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable review – beautiful and monstrous”. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2017/apr/16/damien-hirst-treasures-from-the-wreck-of-the-unbelievable-review-venice Accessed on October 1st 2018.
51 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis relationship in which archaeology once developed as a dilettante’s hobby rather than the inclusive science it has since become”90. Even if the artifacts in case are all reproductions or fakes, the entire narrative can be put under question for replicating colonial power structures present in the history of European collections and museums. Hirst’s evocation of child-like wonder at archaeological museums is unfortunately short sighted about the British Museums’s colonial plundering.
There is, however, a silver lining in Hirst’s archaeological facsimiles: there is a point to be made about how different (hi)stories can be told using the same historical artifacts, whether or not they are original. Treasures shows that it is indeed possible to tell a compelling story with completely fabricated objects. This has repercussions in the ield of archaeology and museums that have bene ited from colonial plunder, especially in the face of ongoing discussions regarding the repatriation of sculptures, monuments and other objects to decolonized countries. If anything, Hirst’s copies give credence to proposals about replacing contested objects with high-quality replicas without facing any backlash from cultural audiences91.
For all its degrees of ictionality and elaborate premise, Treasures is irmly rooted in the past. The institutions it references, and the archaeological academic methodology it proposes belongs to the early twentieth century. As exciting as the intertextual puzzle of Treasures might be to decipher, it falls short of proposing a forward-looking collection that truly celebrates the implied diverse origin of its featured artifacts— where did the sculptures come from? How were they produced? What are the stories of their creators in the wider context of second-century Rome? This would require a change of focus from the egotistical igure of the collector, and towards the individual stories and possible contexts behind each fabricated sculpture. In the end, the show becomes too self-indulgent. Although a wondrous and complex iction, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable remains super icial in its potential to speak of the origin of similar
90 Greene and Leidwanger, 2017, p.10
91 see Anderson, Maxwell. L. (2018, December 3rd). “Should we relinquish our insistence on privileging original works of art?” The Art Newspaper. retrieved from https:// www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/should-we-relinquish-our-insistence-on-privileging-original- works-of-art Accessed January 4, 2019.
52 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis collections, plunders, and ‘treasures’ in national museums. Phrased best by Greene and Leidwanger, “artistic license demands artistic responsibility”92.
92 Greene and Leidwanger, 2017, p.11
53 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
54 III.
(In)Authentic
Storytelling The Making of Modern Art at the Van Abbemuseum Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis A Museum Folding Unto Itself
Previous chapters have discussed ictional museums that ind their origin in literary texts and artist studios, only becoming real through the calculated fabrication of ‘authentic’ objects, displays, and museum structures. The case studies analyzed so far, Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Istanbul and Damien Hirst’s Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable exhibition in Venice, show not only how artifacts can be faked, copied, and given new stories, but also how the mere act of imagining and realizing a ictional museum implies an act of institutional critique. Nevertheless, while the creative voices behind these cases may be connected or in luenced by real museums, they still represent an ‘outsider’ voice, their museums of ictions being made up from scratch, out of ictive collections. A complementary story is told from the side of institutions. The rise of museology in the 1990’s was both a cause and a direct consequence of museums becoming conscious of themselves, and the role they played in exercising power over history, arts, and culture. In this sense, museum policy and exhibition making based on so-called “New Institutionalism” has a propensity for meta- iction: museums actively referring to their own history and practices. What happens when an established museum decides to re-imagine itself? How can a museum engage in institutional critique through the use of ictional elements? In answering these questions, the third and inal case study selected for this examination of ictionality is the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, established in 1936.
As an actual institution that in recent years has experimented with the way it approaches its own history, the Van Abbemuseum is particular in its willingness to re- imagine not only its own collection, but the standards of how a museum can work and what a museum can be. Through a series of directorships, amongst them Edy de Wilde’s interest in modern art and internationalism in the 1950’s, as well as Jean Leering’s experimental approach to acquisitions and museum-making in the early 1970’s, the Van Abbe has consistently dedicated itself to the collection and exhibition of modern and contemporary art that set it as one of the most cutting-edge art museums in The Netherlands. On April 2017, the museum opened a new display for its permanent collection entitled The Making of Modern Art, curated by Christiane Berndes, Charles
56 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis Esche, and Steven ten Thije93. This presentation is particular since it not only showcases several of the Van Abbe’s modern masterpieces, but also sets on narrating the “making of” the modern art canon94. For this, the Eindhoven museum collaborated with the Museum of American Art, Berlin (MoAA) in order to address how in luential collectors, artists, and museums have been responsible for the creation of institutions and ‘myths’ in the art world. Relying on art-historical documents, and using facsimiles and replicas of both artworks and photographs to illustrate its case, the presentation can be seen as an ‘exhibition of exhibitions’, focusing more on the wider historical narrative of modern art than on the authenticity of Van Abbe’s collection. For this purpose, artworks are turned into artifacts and exhibition rooms into “Atmosphere Rooms”: spaces modeled after famous exhibitions and collections from the twentieth century, which invite the viewer to “step into” history, akin to walking into a large-scale diorama95. This particular approach inds the Van Abbe undermining or subverting preconceptions of the museum as a keeper of knowledge, as well as the museum-experience as based on the originality of objects, to the point where it brings into question the value of the museum’s own modern art collection.
The Museum of Innocence and Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable are ictional museums based around the collection of an individual character. In the eyes of their authors, each collection is representative of a grander narrative— the former represents the struggles between classes and social life in Istanbul, while the latter is focused on the larger-than-life narratives of Classic mythology and contemporary post-truth. As a point of contrast, The Making of Modern Art makes use of a real collection to speak of a different, historical narrative: the origin and development of Modern Art during the irst half of the twentieth century. Indeed, the Van Abbemuseum collection is tied with this history, and speci ically with the directorships of Alfred H. Barr Jr. at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and Alexander Dorner at the Provinzialmuseum Hannover. After the second World War, the young director of the Van Abbemuseum, Edy
93 The Making of Modern Art was visited three times for research: once in spring 2018, and later on the 8th and 15th of December.
94 note that the museum uses the term “masterpieces” in its own exhibition materials.
95 Athanasiadis, Efthymis. (2017, June 27) “The Making of Modern Art: Thinking Outside the Box”. VU Art and Culture. Retrieved from https://vuartandculture.com/2017/06/27/the-making-of-modern- art-thinking-outside-the-box/ Accessed on January 3rd, 2019.
57 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis de Wilde, used Barr Jr.’s diagram on Cubism and Abstract Art to persuade the Eindhoven council to invest on international modern art masters, leading to the acquisition of artworks by Picasso, Braque, Chagall and Kandinsky96 ( ig. 12).
The following sections are dedicated to an analysis of The Making of Modern Art as an exhibition that tries to encompass factual history through copies, reproductions, and speculative devices. Although the project isn’t itself a ictional or imaginary fig. 12 Alfred H. Barr Jr’s poster for “Cubism and Abstract museum, the idea of ‘stepping Art”. Image: Barr Jr., Alfred H. 1936. Cubism and Abstract Art. Hyperallergic. Retrieved from: https:// out’ from institutional and art hyperallergic.com/57599/amazing-new-graph-drawing- history requires a degree of charts-the-invention-of-abstraction/ Accessed 12 January 2019. ictionality, and constitutes on itself an exercise of imagination. Interestingly, this presentation also recalls speci ic kinds of imaginary museums proposed in the past: the use of reproductions to tell a ‘full’ story make it similar to the ‘museum without walls’, a virtual museum proposed by André Malraux in 1936, which will be analyzed in the discussed in the next section. Furthermore, the self-re lectivity expressed in the exhibition, which often inds the museum trying to take a step back and see the ‘whole image’ gives it a certain tendency for meta-commentary. This is especially true in Atmosphere Rooms that show diorama-like presentations of historical exhibitions, giving the impression of a museum-within-a-museum, especially seen in the Van Abbemuseum’s collaboration with the Museum of American Art, Berlin.
96 ten Thije, Steven (2017) The Emancipated Museum. Mondriaan Fonds: Amsterdam. pp. 41-42
58 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis There is a certain literary pleasure on deciphering the references, semiotic games, and devices featured in The Making of Modern Art. However, it must be added that in this case the museum works as a puzzle-essay rather than a novel. Unlike the previous study cases, The Making of Modern Art does not attempt to suspend the disbelief of its audience through a narrative, but to outwardly make them question the constructed nature of history and art in the West. In this sense, the Van Abbe case runs contrary to the Museum of Innocence and Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable: while the previous museums start from a position of ictionality and try to fabricate ‘truth’ through various devices, the Van Abbe starts from an institutional position of legitimacy and consciously tries to undermine perceptions of authenticity, history, and Western bias. These threads are brought together at the end of the exhibition, where the public is brought inside an Atmosphere Room that imagines a museum of Western Art in the ictional land of Thomas More’s Utopia.
From the Virtual Museum to the Meta-Museum
The acquisition history of the Van Abbemuseum since 1936 reveals a continuous interest in internationalism and the avant-garde. Since the opening of the museum under the directorship of W. J. Visser, the collection was often expanded in an effort to show advances in contemporary art around the world, while establishing dialogues between artists, styles, and movements97. Nevertheless, a municipal museum like Van Abbe only has a limited capacity to acquire artworks, and thus would rely on telling partial stories. As is often the case, a couple of artworks— say, the Femme en Vert by Picasso— would act as symbolic representatives of larger movements— Cubism—, and geographical zones —Europe—. How, then, can a museum properly show the history of modern art with an insuf icient selection of artworks? The Making of Modern Art tackles this issue by being at the same time a virtual museum— close to André Malraux’s “museum without walls”— and a meta-museum: a museum that is able to comment upon itself by means of its own text.
97 see Van Abbemuseum (2016) “1936-1946: W.J.A. VISSER”. Van Abbemuseum website. Retrieved from https://vanabbemuseum.nl/en/about-the-museum/building-and-history/ 1936-1946-wja-visser/. Accessed Jan. 3rd 2019.
59 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis It is impossible to speak about imaginary museums without referencing André Malraux’s seminal work, Le Musée Imaginaire. Published in 1949, Le Musée Imaginaire argues that, with an overabundance of artworks and artifacts dispersed all around the world, the only place an ideal dialogue of art history could take place is within an imaginary museum—or ‘the museum without walls’, as translated to English98. This museum would host a collection of all major works of art represented in the collective imagination, a collection that may vary between individuals, but nonetheless far outreach the capacities of any physical museum, through the use of facsimiles and replicas99.
Malraux’s de inition of imaginary museum was prescient in the virtualization of museums through the reproducible medium of photography, later deriving into museum postcards, catalogues, and further on in digital images and the internet. The ‘museum without walls’ is now more closely discussed in relation to the virtual museums that abound in the age of digital reproduction. However, in The Reticent Object, Peter Vergo rightly reminds us that Malraux “not only pursued a shift from real to virtual space, but also exchanged objects or originals for their photographic substitutes […] the ‘imaginary museum’ was a total museum containing all the works of art in the world…”100. Unlike real museums, Malraux’s imaginary museum is capable of presenting complete narratives with the help of replicas and reproductions — thus avoiding the limitations set by restricted access to original artworks and artifacts. What is more, a virtual museum, even when presenting copies, is not necessarily fake.
As pointed out by Marcén Guillen, the kind of virtual museum pointed out by Malraux not only exists in the imagination or through photographic mediums. A precursor of Malraux that effectively toyed with a physical and virtual museum, albeit only featuring
98 see Malraux, André. (1974) “I. Museum Without Walls”. In Voices of Silence trans. Stuart Gilbert. Paladin: Herts, England. pp. 13-127
99 Allan, Derek. (2010) “André Malraux, the Art Museum, and the Digital Musée Imaginaire”. Lecture delivered at Imaging Identity, at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra July 15-17, 2010.
100 Vergo, Peter. (1989). “The Reticent Object”. In The New Museology. Peter Vergo (ed.). London: Reaktion Books. p. 74.
60 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis his own artworks, was Marcel Duchamp with his series of Boîtes-en-valise101. As a way to work around the preservation of his readymades, the French artist started making miniature reproductions of his own artworks, contained within a suitcase. The tiny readymade copies, along with photographs of Duchamp’s paintings, could also be assembled as a small gallery once taken out of the suitcase; in this sense, it was not only a physical virtual museum, but a portable one too. The Boîtes-en-valise series, which ended up rounding 300 copies, furthered Duchamp’s critique of originality and the artist’s aura, very much in line with Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. It is no wonder that The Making of Modern Art at Van Abbe features both characters in its narrative; furthermore, the exhibition openly plays with the presentation of originals and reproductions along its narrative, mainly through its association with the Museum of American Art, Berlin.
As will be discussed in the following pages, the MoAA has collaborated with the Van Abbemuseum by lending its copies and sharing its theoretical framework with the Eindhoven exhibition. The Museum of American Art, Berlin (MoAA), renders itself as an educational organization “dedicated to assembling, preserving and exhibiting memories on the MoMA International Program”102. Ran anonymously, the MoAA gathers documents regarding the New York Museum of Modern Art’s programs and exhibitions, providing a timeline of events, stakeholders, and iconic artworks that constituted the American institution and the canon of modern art. Like Malraux’s museum without walls, the MoAA has avoided the need for original artworks or documents by having reproductions made. What is striking however is that both documents and artworks are reproduced as oil paintings— even sculptures and prints. The painted copies have a “deliberately dilettantish” quality, and none is attributed to an individual artist or curator, but only to the MoAA itself103. At the latter, the faux artworks and documents
101 Marcén Guillén, Elena. (2013). “Real Museum, Imaginary Museum: Reflections on the Concept of the Museum as a Stage for Metamorphosis”. Revista Espacio, Tiempo, y Forma Serie VII, Historia del Arte (n. época) 1. p. 141.
102 See “About” at the Museum of American Art, Berlin website. http://museum-of-american-art.org/ index.php/moaa-2/ Accessed December 28, 2018.
103 ten Thije, Steven. (2014) “The Joy of the Meta: On the Museum of American Art.” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry. Issue 37 (Autumn/Winter 2014), p. 75
61 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis are aptly accompanied by texts attributed to Walter Benjamin. Upon closer inspection however, even Benjamin’s quotes reveal a playful anachronism.
On Benjamin’s Recent Writings, the author differentiates between a fake and a copy:
“…a fake (deceptively) wants to be the original, a copy (overtly) tries only to imitate it. Thus the purpose of a fake is to conceal, whereas a copy proposes to reveal. A fake is essentially opportunistic—it does not question the system. … On the other hand, a copy is out in the open, obvious and blunt; once it is incorporated into the system, it starts questioning everything.”104
Hence, the copy relies on the existence and knowledge of the original, simultaneously con irming and undermining its legitimacy. Since imaginary and ictional museums are indebted to real ones, they can also be thought as copy museums that help in questioning and reimagining the concept of “museum” as a whole, just as a copy reveals much about an original. What is peculiar about Benjamin’s quote is that it was written and published, along with a number of essays and articles, in 2013— sixty-three years after the death of the author. Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped him from commenting on later pieces by Mondrian, or Kosolapov’s 1980 Lenin Coca-Cola. Of course, these texts do not mean that Benjamin had premonitory powers or found the key to resurrection. In reality an anonymous author, also working as a consultant for the Museum of American Art, has taken Benjamin’s identity to keep publishing on the subjects and idiosyncratic style of the deceased philosopher. Rather cleverly, the mere existence of a contemporary Walter Benjamin is itself a comment on the relationship between original authorship and copies: it is this character, who from now on I will call meta-Benjamin, contemporary, who informs and to a degree narrates The Making of Modern Art at the Van Abbemuseum.
In a twist of Malraux’s imaginary museum, the MoAA not only builds a full art-historical narrative through the use of copies and reproductions, but furthers this conjecture by using these devices to make a museum about a museum. By presenting copies of MoMA
104 Benjamin cited in Martin, Clancy (2014, July 15). “Walter Benjamin: Recent Writing’s". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved from https://brooklynrail.org/2014/07/art_books/walter-benjamin-recent- writings Accessed 16 December 2018.
62 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis documents and artworks, the Museum of Modern Art, Berlin effectively becomes a miniaturized version of the New York museum— albeit a version that also, playfully, is able to turn the gaze unto itself and undermine the very notions of authenticity and aura that helped cement the MoMA as an international institution. Although not a museum of ictions per se, the museum does not settle on any traditional conceptions of authenticity, and as such elicits a conversation on its own terms.
Deciphering The Making of Modern Art
Each of the eight rooms in The Making of Modern Art is presented as a different ‘Atmosphere Room’, which for the most part recreate particular museum displays either used or conceptualized during the twentieth century105. These displays include a room preserved in the style of the Van Abbemuseum’s architecture at the time it opened in 1936, as well as a white cube-like gallery and a room mixing eight different presentation styles. Throughout the exhibition, artworks from the Van Abbe collection are interspersed with copies and reproductions from the Museum of American Art, Berlin, as well as texts explaining the in luence behind each atmosphere room. Furthermore, the voice of meta-Benjamin is constantly quoted or referred to.
The Making of Modern Art starts off by citing Montesquieu’s epistolary novel Lettres Persanes (1721), in which the French writer describes the experience of two Persian noblemen traveling through France. Presented as correspondence written from the perspective of noblemen Usbek and Rica, the text comments on Western politics and social life, often by parodying the life lived in salons, cafés and theatres. The exhibition at Van Abbe states its objective in this way: just like Montesquieu showed his countrymen their own world as strange and amazing, The Making of Modern Art attempts to do the same with the history of avant-garde. This strategy assumes that most of the public belongs or is familiar with what has historically been termed “Western art”, while asking visitors to try and envision this history from an outsider
105 The “Atmosphere rooms” were especially in luenced by Alexander Dorner’s Kabinett der Abstrakten at the Provinzialmuseum Hannover, in which collaborated with artists and designers to present artworks in speci ically designed rooms that would enhance their qualities. This can also be seen as a reaction to the “period rooms” and subsequent “white cube” aesthetic favored by American museums.
63 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis perspective. As such, the introductory room takes the form of a Persian tea room, with carpets and low tables dominating the center of the space. Surrounding this one inds glass cabinets, behind which is displayed a brief history of art and museums through images, most of them reproductions from the MoAA. The portraits and scenes depicted make reference to a number of players in the history of museum-making, from Pope Julius II’s sculpture gardens in Rome to the Louvre museum, placing especial emphasis in the developments at the Provinzialmuseum Hannover led by Alexander Dorner, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) led by Alfred H. Barr Junior. From the start, even while trying to take an outsider’s perspective, the exhibition goes all the way back to the humanism of the sixteenth century to explain the modern cannon, attaining to a strict chronology. These references are introduced here, and remain prevalent throughout the exhibition since they are considered to be some of the main in luences during the irst decades of the Van Abbemuseum.
The main narrative of The Making of Modern Art relies heavily on two concepts that explain the symbolic metamorphosis of objects within institutions: desacralization and deartization. In order to show how the same objects can tell different stories throughout history, the exhibition explains how, after the French Revolution in 1789, many paintings and statues belonging to the Church lost their original meaning in a newly secular society. This process, through which religious items changed to be appreciated for their aesthetic qualities, is called desacralization. The second atmosphere room, brightly colored, is based on a gallery commissioned by Alexander Dorner, which was originally designed to show Medieval statues by facilitating desacralization. The exhibition voice speculates that a similar process could happen with artworks that were originally created as aesthetic pieces, once they are inserted into historical or political labels that go beyond the realm of art. In this case, artworks would become artifacts under a process called deartization, coined by meta-Benjamin106. The curators use deartization as a device to imagine modern art from an ‘outsider’ perspective— a process that involves asking the public to change their expectations concerning the use of original artworks and traditional museum displays.
106 Exhibition material. See Annex, ig. 2.
64 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
fig. 13 Mondrian’s Composition in Black and White II, original and Copy in The Making of Modern Art. Image: Medina, Jean. 2018. Composition in White and Black II, original and copy. Amsterdam: personal collection.
After the ‘Persian Letters’ introductory room, the curatorship dives straight into re lecting on Van Abbe’s own collection and role as an institution. A display by the entrance of the ‘Desacralization’ room consists of not one but two “Composition in Black and White II” (1930) by Piet Mondriaan ( ig. 13). This is one of the staples of the Van Abbemuseum collection, but historically has been a single one: the knack lies in that one of the paintings is the original, while the other is a copy of recent making. A nearby label cites meta-Benjamin’s 2002 article “On Copy”:
“Is a copy of an abstract painting, an abstract painting? In the copy we still see the original, thus it should be an abstract painting; on the other hand, being a faithful reproduction… it should also be a realistic painting”107.
The complex semiotics of real and reproduction are further examined with a neighboring artwork: Super lex’s FREESOLLEWITT, in which the Danish art collective made a reproduction of an untitled Sol Lewitt wall structure, on the Conceptual Art basis that concept goes over form. From the get-go, the exhibition is intent on questioning the idea of aura and authenticity with objects from its own collection. This
107 Benjamin, Walter (2002) “On Copy” in What is Modern Art? (Group Show), ed. by Inke Arns / Walter Benjamin, Frankfurt am Main: Revolver – Archiv für aktuelle Kunst 2006, Vol. 1
65 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis Atmosphere Room also includes a mention of the origins of Van Abbe collections, the colonial past behind some acquisitions, and the story of Picasso’s Femme en Vert (1909), an artwork acquired in 1954 that stirred controversy for its price tag, also considered one of Van Abbemuseum’s most important items. All in all, the irst Atmosphere Room strikes as ambitious, if also potentially overwhelming— deartization, desacralization, the existence of a meta-Benjamin, postcolonial critique, and museum biography are all introduced in a couple of small yet very dense texts.
A further room makes direct reference to the creation of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and its in luence on the early Van Abbemuseum collection. Inside a white cube gallery, the walls are covered in real and reproduced artworks by modern painters, including originals by Kandinsky, Braque, and Leger, as well as copies of artworks by Mondriaan (a second copy of “Composition in Black and White II”), Malevich, Cezanne, and even, in a rather subversive gesture, a copy of the Picasso exhibited in the previous room. An entire wall is dedicated to Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s poster for the Cubism and Abstract Art exhibition at the MoMA: a diagram detailing the stylistic development of modern art since the 1890’s and up until 1935. The diagram, like a mantra, is an element repeated over and over throughout the exhibition, as it provides a schema that joins several of the players and institutions of modern art— painted reproductions of the diagram in several languages can be found as a motif in other rooms.
Most amusingly however, the middle of the room inds a geometric model of a gallery, reminiscent of the MoMA’s white cube aesthetic— and thus of the very same atmospheric room one is already standing in. The model recreates a gallery full of miniaturized modern paintings, some being the same as the ones surrounding the spectator at that very moment. At the center of this diorama, an even smaller geometric white room is adorned with tinier reproductions of more modern paintings. This model has the effect of a Russian-doll’s nest, a model-within-a-model that once again inds the audience “stepping out” of their own position, while looking down on the same position they are in. This “mini-MoMA” shows the narrative of Cubism and Abstract Art in a scale model of an imagined square building, and links Van Abbe’s early interest on collecting international avant-garde with Barr’s post-war emphasis on style rather than national
66 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis academies108. In terms of exhibition design, the play with miniatures and scale are also emblematic of the meta-museum condition of the Museum of Modern Art, Berlin.
A different atmosphere room shows eight different exhibition displays taken from iconic moments of the twentieth century — the presence of all eight mini- exhibitions within one undivided room makes it seem almost encyclopedic. These displays include two areas destined to collectors Peggy Guggenheim and Gertrude Stein, showing their connection to Alfred H. Barr’s MoMA directorship; a section dedicated to the International Exhibition of Modern Art by Société Anonyme,; two counter-narrative exhibitions that ironically
fig. 14 The white cube model in The Making of Modern cemented the position of avant- Art. A museum within a museum. Images: Medina, Jean. garde, the Bourgeois Art 2018. Meta-Museum of Modern Art. Amsterdam: personal collection. exhibitions in the USSR (1931-1933) and the Degenerate Art (1937) exhibition in Nazi Germany; inally, the Neoplastic Room and Cabinet der Abstrakten developed by Alexander Dorner at the Provinzialmuseum Hanover, which also served as inspirations for the Atmosphere Room displays at the Van Abbemuseum.
108 ten Thije, 2014, p.79.
67 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis Walls are painted according to the colors used in original presentations, and covered in reproductions from the MoAA.
The use of reproduction reaches a whole other level in the “Eight Exhibitions” room. In this case, a large number of painted reproductions do not only copy artworks, but also copy photographs of the historic exhibitions, as well as painted copies of portraits and exhibition posters. In other words, paintings of photographs of paintings in exhibitions. An additional room, titled “Room for the Now”, is also modeled after a room designed for the Provinzialmuseum Hannover by Lazslo Moholy-Nagy, however unrealized. The overall presentation elicits comparisons between exhibitions, while also laying out the threads that connected them.
While the described Atmosphere Rooms try to step out and comment on the Western canon, they still do so from a decidedly art-historical viewpoint. The overabundance of academic concepts (deartization, desacralization, etc.) and references (twentieth- century personalities, displays, and institutions), make it a dense experience. The reliance on the voice of the contemporary meta-Benjamin, although clever, can only be understood with previous knowledge about the original Benjamin— and indeed this may be one of the main issues of the exhibition at the VanAbbemuseum. By using the MoAA’s exhibition style, which eschews the use of labels describing the copies, or even proper texts explaining the logic behind the use of reproductions, the exhibition is quite unapproachable for anyone who doesn’t have previous knowledge about modern art history and concepts. It is interesting then that the inal two Atmosphere Rooms take a slightly different approach, even if they still use the ‘stepping out’ device prevalent in the rest of the exhibition. In “Western Art” and “Not-Now”, the public is taken to displays that imagine the museum in a faraway place and time, more akin to a literary exercise.
Once Upon a Time in Utopia…
The end of the permanent exhibition takes a step away from the Museum of American Art, Berlin by using as a starting point Thomas More’s Utopia. Published in 1516, More’s text depicted the social, political, and religious customs of an imaginary island off the South American coast, which in many ways functioned in diametrical opposition to
68 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis European monarchies at the time. The book is narrated by Raphael Hythlodaeus, a ictional traveler who in his letters to More praises the faraway island, while discussing the traditions and customs practiced by its inhabitants. Utopia, which literally translates as “nowhere”, has entered the cultural imaginary as the description of an ideal and often futuristic country. Nevertheless, the exhibition is based around More’s text, and functions as a way to again ‘step outside’ of the canon of Western art in an attempt to understand it from an alternative perspective.
Entitled “Western Art”, this Atmosphere room imagines how artworks from the Van Abbemuseum collection would be interpreted and displayed in a museum from Utopia, perhaps in the future. The narrative is markedly more playful than in previous Atmosphere rooms: display cases are painted orange, with exhibition labels dated according to the Utopian calendar and written in the island’s own language. After the initial shock of inding labels in an unknown script, visitors can only understand the contents of the vitrines by consulting a ‘cheat sheet’ handout, translated into Dutch and English by a real translator, Menno Grootveld —ironically, one of the featured artworks, hanging from the ceiling, is Mladen Stilinovic’s An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist (1992).
The small text accompanying the Utopia room is written by an anonymous collective from the island, declaring:
“We, from the island of Utopia, are honored and proud to present to you this unique collection of Western Art […] the Art of the West speaks to us, and it gives us great joy to show all these artworks together, even if we perhaps cannot know whether these works would have been shown in Eindhoven”109
The visitor to Van Abbe is faced with an exhibition in an incomprehensible language, with a display aimed at showing art as artifacts from a remote land and time ( ig. 15). As the closing room of the exhibition, it once again relates to the concepts of deartization inserted since the irst room, with the Utopia display designed as an exercise to envision
109 Exhibition material. See Annex, fig. 3.
69 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
fig. 15. “Western Art” room at The Making of Modern Art. Notice the colorful, ‘foreign’ display cases. Image: Cox, Peter. 2016. The Making of Modern Art. Retrieved from https://vanabbemuseum.nl/ programma/programma/the-making-of-modern-art/ Accessed January 12 2019. ©Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven 2016. artworks as they would be shown if they were artifacts in an ethnographic exhibition. But how effective is this approach?
Thomas More’s book is a prime example of iction-writing, with the author mixing in references to real places and people, as well as his own correspondence that, in its original time, might have led to a suspension of disbelief. Besides using Utopia’s dating and language, the intertextual play with More’s book appears at the most super icial in The Making of Modern Art. Artworks by Lucio Fontana, Jenny Holzer, and Qiu Zhijie among others, are shown in vitrines that recall the way ethnographic artifacts are displayed in Anthropological museums. This small and literal change of framing is more effective at conveying the ‘deartization’ process than previous rooms, by showing contemporary artworks exhibited as historical rather than aesthetic objects. The impression of a foreign culture trying to understand how Western Art works seems
70 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis convincing enough. Ultimately, though, the narrative in the Utopia room doesn’t delve to deeply into its own make-believe.
A Thought for Not-Now
The Van Abbemuseum seems open to play with its own history and collection, suggesting a tendency for malleability rather than the rigid structure and bureaucracy of institutions. However, the voice of the museum is always present. The museum does show that an exhibition narrative can be successfully aided with the use of reproductions, and not even good ones at that. However, the curating is heavy-handed in trying to make a point about the use of copies and facsimiles; there is an over-reliance on meta-Benjamin and the Museum of American Art, Berlin. This makes The Making of Modern Art an astoundingly clever, if unapproachable and self-indulging, exhibition. This is especially con lictive in the Utopia section: the narrative experiment is fascinating and could potentially lead to deeper conversations where, instead of just explaining the making of modern art, the audience could be invited to speculate on how Western art and history might be seen from distant points of view— actively engaging in an act of imagination and speculative iction. The Lettres Persanes approach is not effective in that, while trying to see things from a ‘foreign’ point of view, the curating still goes back to the humanist approach to museums of sixteenth-century Europe— to an extent reiterating the same Western bias the exhibition sets out to critique. While Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable conspicuously reproduced and faked archaeological indings in order to make a completely ictional narrative seem real, the Van Abbe doesn’t quite take that step. It is also telling that the only room that doesn’t make use of reproductions from the MoAA is the Utopia room—perhaps a sign that showing a ictional narrative with ictional artifacts might be one step too much for the museum.
Upon exiting the ‘Western Art’ room, one is confronted by a mirror re lecting artworks from across Western history: from medieval religious paintings to Kandinsky and Mondriaan.
71 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis This is the last Atmosphere Room, titled “Not-Now”. Set over a recording of a person reciting one million years into the past and the future110, this last room considers a stepping-out of history; an exercise in anachronism and a-historicity that asks the audience to consider all art as artifacts stemming from a past or future that seem to be disappearing and fusing into one same ‘meta-time’, referred to by the contemporary Benjamin as the not-now. This serves as a good reminder that, in imagining museums as an act of iction or myth-making, one is allowed to take a certain distance from the present and look back at it from a meta-perspective. Along with the exercise of imagination that is the Utopia room, Not-Now tries to take distance from modern art and modern museums through an imaginary setting in both space and time. Placing the museum in the impossible country of Utopia also raises questions about how museums are constructed in the present, and helps in projecting them into the future. This game implies a certain degree of speculation, which in turn means that every museum of ictions, besides being a critique, can also be considered a model for future museums. The question then opens: To what extent do the case studies analyzed serve in creating an imagination of the future for museums?
110 The sound work is One Million Years (Past and Future) No. 9-24 (2002) by Japanese artist On Kawara.
72 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
73 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
74 Conclusion & Epilogue Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis A Tale of Three Museums
In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino imagines a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, with the Venetian tradesman describing 55 cities from his travels to the aging conqueror. Each city, poetically described, sounds as implausible as the previous one: some seem completely displaced in time, populated by absurd peoples, accustomed to odd or seemingly illogical traditions. Nevertheless, when the emperor asks the merchant about the one city he hasn’t described— Venice—, Marco Polo replies “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice”111. It doesn’t take much to extrapolate this statement from cities to the topic of this document: just like Marco Polo’s descriptions of improbable cities all end up being a comment and description of his own, we might say that any imaginary museum, and to that extent any museum of ictions, is both a description of an unreal museum and an alternative de inition of the concept of “museum” itself. Based on this conjecture, which slowly blurs the distinction between reality and arti ice, the previous chapters have been dedicated to analyzing museums of ictions under the framework of authenticity and critique, emphasizing the fabrication of the former through narrative, and the degree of success of the latter.
An examination of the materials and history behind each case study reveals different strategies deployed in order to render illegitimate objects and artifacts authentic. Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, as well as Damien Hirst’s Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable made use of completely ictional narratives as a thread to authenticate artifacts that were either assembled from existing objects or made from scratch in a studio. Likewise, both projects rely on accompanying works to further their own ictions: Pamuk’s novel acts as a written guide and memoir for the Çukurcuma museum, while Hirst’s exhibition uses a catalogue and a documentary to further the illusion of reality. In this sense both projects are in luenced by Samuel Coleridge’s ideas on the willing suspension of disbelief by a ‘reader’, and a postmodern inclination for fabricating sources and playing with memory and allusions. As a contrast, The Making of Modern Art at the Van Abbemuseum started from an institutional position, which by itself grants the project a certain legitimacy. Notwithstanding, the museum playfully undermines itself
111 see Calvino, Italo. (1998) Las Ciudades Invisibles. trans. Aurora Bernárdez. Ed. Siruela: Spain.
76 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis through the use of replicas, meta-commentary, and exercises in hypothetical thinking, imagining a museum in the far future or in the distant land of Utopia. All in all, these enterprises consistently remind us that “artifacts are the product of arti ice… when arti icially placed within the con ines of a museum”, 112; it is not so much about how these museums fabricate their own authenticity, but about how they can challenge the perceived authority of ‘real’, established museum institutions.
Relieved from the burden of institutional weight and stakeholders, ictional museums can take risks and adopt presentation strategies that established museums wouldn’t be comfortable with. Not even the possibility of a museum being revealed as a complete fabrication is troublesome: on the contrary, the public’s realization that the Museum of Innocence or similar projects are ictive can allow for a retroactive analysis of how established museums work. One of the recurring motifs found throughout the research is the decreasing importance of presenting original artifacts, with narrative and storytelling taking the spotlight. Furthermore, the use of reproductions instead of original objects has consequences for modern art collections, but more so for anthropological and ethnographic museums. As collections with imperial origins exponentially face claims of repatriation, the use of high-quality reproductions has become an increasingly real possibility for museums in the West. While The Making of Modern Art shows how a ‘full’ narrative can be presented through facsimiles, it is Hirst’s Treasures that shows the potential that compelling storytelling has to legitimize full- blown fakes and fabrications, while thoroughly holding the attention of the public.
This also raises questions about how the museum-going public might relate to these projects. Perhaps what is needed is not the overly self-conscious approach of the Van Abbemuseum, but an open and more relatable invitation to suspend disbelief within the walls of a museum. The latter approach has the advantage that it neither epitomizes nor overlooks the use of replicas and fakes, but rather considers them as neutral signs that work towards a larger narrative arc. This path is favored by Pamuk in his Modest manifesto for Museums, as the author argues for smaller museums that encapsulate the human experience of everyday life, as opposed to the larger-than-life narratives of nations and states. The success of the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul lies in its
112 Pine and Gilmore, 2007, p.78
77 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis capacity to elicit nostalgia through an intimate presentation, made the more relatable by revolving around a love story. Even though Treasures sets its story in the ancient past of Roman collectors, and is presented in a grandiose (and to some, grotesque) manner, it is attractive because of the sense of childlike wonder that fueled the project from its conception, and which museum-goers might be keen to dive into. Treasures may not be a perfect exhibition, but in its vast scope and pretension it drew a spotlight to issues of historiography, archaeological work, and cultural appropriation.
Each museum analyzed steps out of a modern idea of progress and historical continuity, be it in Pamuk’s proposal to make smaller, more personal museums of the human experience, or Hirst’s appropriation of myth and ‘fake news’ to comment on the impossibility of facts, history, and the perpetual construction of truth and history. These are museums that in their very core —and some might call it a gimmick— question the role of what a museum can be, and how such an institution might move forward. Indeed, as Marcel Broodthraers pointed out when he opened the Museum of Eagles, any act of imagining a museum from scratch implies an act of critique. These case studies do not point only at a critique of institutions of truth, or even at the concept of authenticity linked to original artifacts and legitimate academic research. Added to this, each case shows further intentions from their authors. Just like the novelist who only writes a novel when he or she is not suf iced with the novels they can read, these artists, authors and curators imagine alternative museums as a reaction to existing ones. The active use of imagination to come up not only with a museum but with a full narrative, sustained with a panoply of characters and artifacts, sets up the museum institution as luid and subjective, implying the idea that “there is more than one ‘science’, more than one ‘truth’, more than one set of ‘facts’”113, and thus that museums are not necessarily institutions where ‘knowledge is transmitted’, but where ‘genuine communication… inspires a form of poetic experience’114.
A Speculative Museum?
113 Harrison, Julia D. (1994). “Ideas of Museums in the 1990s”. Museum Management and Curatorship 13, p.172 114 Sola, Tomislav (1987), 'The Concept and Nature of Museology', Museum, 153, 39, 1. p.49
78 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis In the end, this thesis is only a irst dig into museums of ictions— it serves the function of bringing together different key concepts, analyzing mechanisms in a selection of case studies to legitimate and critique, and propose looking at these projects as more than gimmicks or mere indulgences. One of the main dif iculties in developing this research came with the relative lack of academic work regarding imaginary or ictional museums. Because of the nature of these museums of arti ice, they could be tackled from the perspective of literary studies, semiotics, or marketing. However, stemming from a masters in museum studies, I decided to ground my analysis on the use of the ‘museum’ concept and framework in each case. In this sense, one of the main challenges was inding an appropriate language to delve and write about these projects; hence, each museum was read as its own ‘text’, with a myriad of allusions, in luences, and poetic voices. In this regard I ind it necessary to develop a wider language with which to speak about both real and imaginary museums, understanding that both are key to understand how museums are conceived of in the social imaginary. Understanding the triadic relationship between iction, reality, and speculation points to stronger connections between the ields of museum studies, semiotics, and the burgeoning ield of futurology115. There exist many reviews, analysis, and projects linked to imaginary and ictional museums, nevertheless they seem to be on the fringe of academia. Such an operation has been undertaken by projects like Bernard Tschumi’s On the Museum of the Twenty-First Century, in which the architect, based on Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, ponders the nature of any and all contemporary museums. Similarly, curator Judy Freya Sibayan’s growing collection of whispered exhibition concepts and ideas has led to the creation of the Museum of Mental Objects, which encloses the museum within the memory of a few individuals, while the Museum of Marco Polo, initiated by Rachel Morris and hosted online, gathers information on other imaginary museums at the same time as it writes its own ictional history— simultaneously informing Morris’ role as a museum professional specialized in rethinking and redesigning museums and heritage sites116.
115 Sola, Tomislav (1992). “The Future of Museums and the Role of Museology”, Museum management and Curatorship, 11. pp. 393-394 116 See “What We Believe” Museum of Marco Polo. https://www.momarcopolo.com/what-we- believe/ Accessed 01 October 2018.
79 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis While some answers to key questions were formulated during the research, it also opened several new questions and paths of thought. A further, more conceptual pathway opens up when considering the use and experience of time in ictive museums. While it is no longer true that historical museums operate in strictly chronological, historic order, it is also true that museums of ictions rely much more on alternative timelines, non-linear narratives and anachronism. They suggest off-path ways of looking at the world, or even completely fabricated viewpoints that contest traditional representations of truth, history, and identity. The consequences of this shift go from the whimsical — a world of possibilities, where museums are not constrained by fact and institutional history—, to the political— what role do ictional museums have in the era of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’? What are the ethical implications of such a project under this larger social and political scope? If museums re lect the way in which society and knowledge work, Hirst’s unbelievable wreckage successfully takes advantage of the prevalence of fake news, post-truth, and the accelerated media cycle to make claims about history and storytelling itself. The act of critique involved in museums of ictions also implies an act of projection, and as such can lay the groundwork for future imagination— for writing the novels we haven’t read, or building the museums we haven’t found. Like a labyrinth of labyrinths, the concepts and narratives involved in museums of ictions branch out not only into the future, but also into parallel timelines and, perhaps most importantly, the future of our past and the experience of humanity. To close with the words of Sola, “we do not speak any more about the past as an accumulation of objects which are natural or arti icial remnants of time… we are more concerned with human experience, collective experience, and sublime memory, that is memoria vitalis.”117(394).
117 Sola, 1992, 394.
80 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
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The illustrations used for the cover of the Introduction, chapters I-III, and Conclusion & Epilogue are the work of Jvlie Ganem, especially commissioned for this text.
89 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis ANNEX
Fig. 1- “A Modest Manifesto for Museums” by Orhan Pamuk:
I love museums and I am not alone in finding that they make me happier with each passing day. I take museums very seriously, and that sometimes leads me to angry, forceful thoughts. But I do not have it in me to speak about museums with anger. In my childhood there were very few museums in Istanbul. Most of these were historical monuments or, quite rare outside the Western world, they were places with an air of a government office about them. Later, the small museums in the backstreets of European cities led me to realize that museums— just like novels—can also speak for individuals. That is not to understate the importance of the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Topkapı Palace, the British Museum, the Prado, the Vatican Museums—all veritable treasures of humankind. But I am against these precious monumental institutions being used as blueprints for future museums. Museums should explore and uncover the universe and humanity of the new and modern man emerging from increasingly wealthy non-Western nations. The aim of big, state-sponsored museums, on the other hand, is to represent the state. This is neither a good nor an innocent objective.
1. Large national museums such as the Louvre and the Hermitage took shape and turned into essential tourist destinations alongside the opening of royal and imperial palaces to the public. These institutions, now national symbols, present the story of the nation—history, in a word—as being far more important than the stories of individuals. This is unfortunate because the stories of individuals are much better suited to displaying the depths of our humanity.
2. We can see that the transitions from palaces to national museums and from epics to novels are parallel processes. Epics are like palaces and speak of the heroic exploits of the old kings who lived in them. National museums, then, should be like novels; but they are not.
3. We don’t need more museums that try to construct the historical narratives of a society, community, team, nation, state, tribe, company, or species. We all know that the ordinary, everyday stories of individuals are richer, more humane, and much more joyful.
4. Demonstrating the wealth of Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Iranian, or Turkish history and culture is not an issue—it must be done, of course, but it is not
90 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis difficult to do. The real challenge is to use museums to tell, with the same brilliance, depth, and power, the stories of the individual human beings living in these countries.
5. The measure of a museum’s success should not be its ability to represent a state, a nation or company, or a particular history. It should be its capacity to reveal the humanity of individuals.
6. It is imperative that museums become smaller, more individualistic, and cheaper. This is the only way that they will ever tell stories on a human scale. Big museums with their wide doors call upon us to forget our humanity and embrace the state and its human masses. This is why millions outside the Western world are afraid of going to museums.
7. The aim of present and future museums must not be to represent the state, but to re-create the world of single human beings—the same human beings who have labored under ruthless oppression for hundreds of years.
8. The resources that are channeled into monumental, symbolic museums should be diverted to smaller museums that tell the stories of individuals. These resources should also be used to encourage and support people in turning their own small homes and stories into “exhibition” spaces.
9. If objects are not uprooted from their environs and their streets, but are situated with care and ingenuity in their natural homes, they will already portray their own stories.
10. Monumental buildings that dominate neighborhoods and entire cities do not bring out our humanity; on the contrary, they quash it. Instead, we need modest museums that honor the neighborhoods and streets and the homes and shops nearby, and turn them into elements of their exhibitions.
11. The future of museums is inside our own homes.
The picture is, in fact, very simple;
91 Museum of Fictions Jean Carlo Medina Zavala MA Museum Studies Thesis
WE HAD WE NEED
EPICS NOVELS
REPRESENTATION EXPRESSION
MONUMENTS HOMES
HISTORIES STORIES
NATIONS PERSONS
GROUPS AND TEAMS INDIVIDUALS
LARGE AND EXPENSIVE SMALL AND CHEAP
Orhan Pamuk
Reference: Pamuk, Ohran. (2012) The Innocence of Objects. Trans. Oklap, Ekin. Abrams: New York. pp. 54-60
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ANNEX- Fig. 2
“A Story of Deartization” label at The Making of Modern Art exhibition. Note meta-Benjamin reference.
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ANNEX- Fig. 3
Example of a “Utopian” label at The Making of Modern Art exhibition.
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