The recent publicity for the ASEAN Museum Directors Symposium reminded me of a book I read. The symposium presumably is a formal discussion of museum work and the future of museums from the Director’s perspective but how do the other people in the museum view it?

Museum: Behind the scenes of the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Danny Danziger presents this famous museum through stories of the people who work there: curators, cleaners, volunteers, florists etc.

Through a somewhat unconventional approach, the many stories give us a sense of the huge efforts that are required to maintain a Museum. It also gives us insight into the lives of the people we often take for granted eg. security, sales staff and makes us aware that they are human too! It is heartwarming to note that a common thread of the stories is their shared enthusiasm for their jobs and the Museum.

Click here for a detailed review.

…the mob.

Yup, sin city Las Vegas is apparently planning to build a museum dedicated to the underworld. As LV Mayor Oscar Goodman said, visitors will be more interested to look at what is embedded in the history of the city – in this case, crime and the mob – rather than, say, watercolour paintings of the city.

He’s right. Nothing is more interesting than something “real”, ie, part of a community’s history, no matter how unpalatable. Cleaned up histories just do not make much impact.

Will we see a Museum of Singapore’s Secret Societies, and all its appended vices like prostitution, drug dealing and organised crime? Unlikely. But I will sure like to visit it if and when it opens.

It is not uncommon for every leader to want to leave a legacy of some sort. Recently, the Guardian reported French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s grand plan for a museum of the history of France.

Sarkozy said the museum would be “all-encompassing” to reinforce French identity (would that include le Cordon Bleu? It’s very French). It will be a really HUGE museum to be able to be all-encompassing. The French leader also said that the museum would not seek to create an “official” history (will the Basque, the Catalan, Corsican, and Breton separatists be allowed to contribute their versions of their story?).

The best response to this idea came from historian Alain Decaux (himself a controversial figure) at the end of the article:

I don’t see the use, quite simply, because Paris is one immense museum of the history of France

Part of his plan to stimulate the culture sector also includes more funding (100 million euros annually) and free entry for those under 25yo to the museums.

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Sarkozy plan for history museum fails to stir France

from Guardian Unlimited by Angelique Chrisafis

French presidents have rushed to build a great cultural monument by which to be remembered, from Georges Pompidou’s art centre and François Mitterrand’s Louvre glass pyramid to Jacques Chirac’s museum of indigenous art. Now Nicolas Sarkozy wants his own project: a museum of the history of France.

The president, whose emphasis on French pride and “national identity” has already caused controversy, declared this week that an all-encompassing
history museum would reinforce “French identity”. His museum would not seek to create “an official history”, but a pluralistic approach, he told leading arts figures. “There are several ideas, there must be a debate, an argument,” he said.

The museum would be built in a “symbolic place” yet to be decided, but Sarkozy’s declared passion for bold architecture and praise for Mitterrand suggests that he plans to leave a mark on the landscape.

He is also keen to move away from his image as the first French president unversed in the arts. On official journeys, he has recently sat pointedly reading work by the Nobel-prizewinning French novelist Jean Marie Gustave Le Clézio. He visited the Grand Palais Picasso exhibition and yesterday Le Parisien reported that he had just discovered the Stanley Kubrick films 2001 Space Odyssey and The Shining.

But Sarkozy’s use of French history has already rankled with some historians. After his election, he stressed that France – still struggling to come to terms with its second world war collaboration and colonial legacy in Africa – should stop its “repentance”. Last year he was forced to drop a controversial proposal that every school child should “adopt” a Jewish child victim of the Holocaust to raise awareness.

Sarkozy first mooted his idea for a French history museum when he took office. A report was commissioned by the curator Hervé Lemoine, who suggested that the museum could be located at Les Invalides, the vast military hospital complex that houses Napoleon’s tomb and various museums including the army museum. But the Elysée has not acted on the proposals.

This week, the head of the Musée de l’Armée at Invalides regretted that the breathtaking site was the only suggestion, warning against giving the impression that the armed forces would have a hand in telling the history of France.

Sarkozy is not the first French leader to have grand plans for his nation’s history. In 1837 Louis-Philippe, the last king of France, set aside part of the palace of Versailles as a tribute to the “great glories” of the nation, with paintings telling the story of French history, including the crusades and great wars.

“Since the 19th century, there have been lots of attempts at this, it has never worked,” said the historian Pierre Nora, who did not oppose the project, but said there would be a fight for funding.

The historian Henry Rousso was concerned by the president’s concept of national identity and France’s pride in its history. “A national history museum could have a tendency to stress “us” and “them”. A history museum at the beginning of the 21st century should be more orientated towards an international community and shared history,” he told the Guardian.

Alain Decaux, a historian famous for his television programmes, told French radio: “I don’t see the use, quite simply, because Paris is one immense museum of the history of France.”

Vanity projects

Georges Pompidou
The Centre Georges Pompidou for modern art was opened in 1977 to compete with the modern art power-houses of the US. Designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, it is one of France’s most visited attractions

Giscard d’Estaing
Musée d’Orsay. The transformation of the former Orsay railway station, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900, into a museum for art from 1848 to 1914

François Mitterrand
IM Pei’s glass pyramid at the Musée du Louvre. The project, inaugurated in 1989, created a storm of controversy but has become the defining feature of modern Paris.

The Grande Arche at La Défense was designed to complete the axis of the Louvre, Champs-Elysees and Arc de Triomphe. A third project was the modern opera house at Bastille, beset by architectural failings, but whose shows have been a commercial success.

The Bibliotheque François Mitterrand – the controversial four stark towers in the east of Paris – have been beset by building problems.

Jacques Chirac
The Quai Branly museum of indigenous art, which opened in 2007, was inspired by his interest in African and Asian art.

One of the most frequent questions I used to get asked was: are there really ghosts in the national museum?

Just shortly before I joined in Nov 1998, the museum had launched a series of ghost tours to promote its extended opening hours to 9pm on Friday nights, and to capitalise on Singaporeans’ love of creepy tales. We started off with volunteer guides as tour leaders. As demand for the tours increased, we eventually hired and trained theatre students. One of our most popular guide was Terrence who later achieved minor stardom as the son of Billy Bong (Samuel Chong) in the Channel 5 sitcom Living with Lydia.

On these tours, guides shared spooky stories of the museum and brought to the darkest corners and up the spiral staircase. The stories were rumours and anecdotes gathered from long-time staff and visitors, of course with some measure of exaggeration. However, after the tours started, there arose even more unexplainable situations.

One evening, shortly after the launch of the tours, one of the glass panels in the dome dislodged and fell in the rotunda where the tour usually began. As this incident happened after the museum was closed to the public, no one was injured. Subsequently, a fire broke out in one of the galleries, it was said that there were problems with the electrical wiring. A few weeks later a long crack appeared on the tall windows of the newly renovated conference room.

While most of these ‘accidents’ can be explained by the age of the building which was badly in need of renovation, there were whispers, especially among the ground staff, that the spirits were unhappy with the tours. I heard that some of them asked for a Taoist priest to come to make offerings and ‘clean’ the building but I did not see it myself. Subsequently there were no major problems.

However, there were always sightings, so much so that even if we have not seen anything we would err on the side of caution. I remember that before going into our dark storeroom, our ticketing officer would clear his throat and apologise to the spirits for the intrusion. Some of the staff would do something similar if they had to stay late in the office.

Although I have not seen any spirits, some gallery attendants swore that they saw a young boy in pigtails running around in the Jade gallery and a Japanese soldier marching up and down the back of the auditorium. One of the scariest incident happened when two students came to the museum to take photographs for a school project. One of the girls wanted to take a photograph of the Peranakan bed in the Rumah Baba exhibition. She claimed that every time she looked into the camera’s viewfinder, she saw a women in white sitting on the bed who was not there if she was not looking in the camera. The two girls were so terrified that they cried non-stop and had to be comforted by one of our staff. To this day, I do not know whether it was mould on their camera lens or really a ghost.

The Singapore Story at SHM

I was in charge of education at the Singapore History Museum (SMH) between Nov 1998 and Feb 2005. Having no real precedent at the Museum was both exciting and intimidating. It was exciting as I was free to do practically whatever I wanted (within reasonable boundaries) but intimidating as I was unsure what would work and wouldn’t, so I developed programmes very much based on trial and error. The environment at the time was however quite relaxed and co-operative. We had a small set-up at that time, everyone knew everyone else, and most people were very encouraging and collaborative.
The first project I did was related to the Singapore Story: 3D show. The Singapore Story was a multi-million dollar exhibition, show and theme park ride which had a 6-week run at Suntec City exhibition hall in 1998. Because of the success of the “exhibition”, it was decided that the show would be converted into a 3D film to be screened at the Museum for future generations of school children who needed to be taught the official national narrative.

I remember the director of the Museum then, Lim How Seng, calling me into his office and giving me my first assignment to do a worksheet for the show. “A worksheet?” I questioned. I was puzzled. How could the students complete a worksheet in the dark and when they were concentrating on the film? I tried to explain that a worksheet might not be the best educational material to support the show but he was not interested what I saying. He kept on telling me that every exhibition in the museum had a worksheet, and so this show, which to him was like an exhibition, should have a worksheet. Furthermore, the schools want it, he added.

So I was in a quandary. The director wanted a worksheet but I knew a worksheet would not be the best complement for the show, nor would it enhance any sort of learning. I decided to consult my colleagues, and finally I came to solution of sorts.

Instead of a worksheet, I produced a brochure for the show to send to the schools. While the brochure advertised the show and related programmes such as tours which combined the show and a guided tour of an exhibition, it also gave teachers tips on how to integrate the show into their National Education programme.

One of the pre-visit activities I listed was for teachers to ask students “thinking questions” to help them mentally prepare for the show, and later to use those questions as the basis for a post-show discussion.

The solution worked well. The director had some sort of educational material for the show, and I saved the students from doing one more dreaded worksheet.

Since its launch in 1999, the show proved popular with the schools and even tourists (despite the nationalistic feel of the show). The children generally loved the 3D effects of Japanese planes flying into their faces and roaring tigers jumping out of the screen. While I am not sure how much “history” they remembered, the show did help change school children’s attitude towards Singapore’s past. Because of its popularity, the show was screened up till 2005, even after the Museum moved to temporary premises in Riverside point. It is not however a part of the new National Museum which opened in 2006.