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Alec Coles: I’ d like to begin obviously by acknowledging that we meet on Whadjuk Noongar
land, and the Whadjuk people are the traditional custodians of this land. I pay my respect
to their elders past and present, in the knowledge that where we meet and where we will build
the new museum was in deep history a wetland of great significance to Whadjuk people. Twenty
minutes is not long to speak on what I consider to be one of the most fundamental questions
facing museums today: what and how we should collect — and more importantly why. This
engraving is the earliest pictorial record of a natural history cabinet and probably
of a museum. It will be familiar to many of you. It’ s an engraving of Ferrante Imperato’
s Dell’ Historia Naturalein Naples in 1599. Now that’ s what I call a museum. It’
s a collection of, well, just about anything that might have been living at some point
but certainly wasn’ t by the time it made its way into the museum. It’ s tempting
to think that we’ ve moved on from this rather eclectic approach but the beautiful
and extremely successful re-modelling of Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow in Scotland, which I may
say is one of the most visited museums in the UK outside London, took almost exactly
the same approach, a cacophony of all kinds of things. Particularly the Spitfire swooping
over the giraffe there, I’ m not sure. People love it. At the risk of boring my colleagues
who’ ve seen this many times before, the little reminder of where we’ ve come to
in terms of developing the new museum here. This is the way we were. This was the mammal
gallery about 100 years ago and that was the mammal gallery about two weeks ago, and if
you take the colour out of it, it doesn’ t look terribly different. I should say, we
have moved on there because it’ s just been pulled out in preparation for the new museum,
literally last week. But it illustrates a really important point, it’ s one that’
s known to anybody in business, that if you keep doing the same thing don’ t expect
to get a different answer. I think the same thing is with collecting: if you keep collecting
the same things don’ t expect that you’ re going to change the way that you approach
your display. Of course one of the greatest challenges facing us is how to develop a credible
digital strategy. There’ s a touching naïve view amongst some that this is the answer
to everything. It is not. It provides an answer to some things but also many more questions.
I remember distinctly in the early days of discussion with treasury –and I do know
this is being filmed, by the way – the comments from the treasury saying, well why would you
need a museum cause everything’ s digital now? So it’ s quite good to be closing the
museum for development with some of the most extraordinary objects in the world. Now according
to ICOM, the International Council of Museums, a museum is “a non-profit permanent institution
in the service of society, and its development open to the public, which acquires, conserves,
researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity
and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.” Am I bothered? Not
really but I would like to just dissect that in one way, in terms of how the WA museum
matches up, but also hopefully how it goes beyond that. Is it non-profit? Well no problem
there, I can guarantee we’ re not profit. [audience laughter] Alec Coles: Are we a permanent
institution? Let’ s hope so. In the service of society and development? Can’ t argue
with that. Open to the public? Of course. Well that’ s good. Acquires, conserves,
absolutely. So we’ re five down. Tangible and intangible heritage? Just don’ t get
me started on that one because I actually have a particular and personal problem with
the term ‘ intangible heritage’ , which I might talk about in a few moments. Humanity
and its environment? That’ s a bit of an anthropomorphic view of the world, I feel,
and something that we might want to take into account. And yes, it does education, study
and enjoyment but it should do so much more as well. At the risk of sounding now self-righteous,
the WA museum is less concerned with what a museum is than what it does. I remember
some years ago when I worked in the UK we had a national program of funding for regional
museums called Renaissance in the Regions. Its strap-line was, ‘ Museums for Changing
Lives’ and that is what I believe museums should do. It should also drive our collecting
imperatives. With this in mind we developed a mission statement which I think describes
exactly what we should do, inspire people to explore and share their identity, culture,
environment and sense of place, and contribute to the diversity and creativity of our world.
It’ s not a sanctimonious and vanilla statement but an articulation of our values and an essential
commitment to change across the whole organisation. Not because it was broken or dysfunctional
but because not enough people understood what it was for or what it could do. And as James
has said, we are building a new museum right here right now. It’ s been a long time coming
and even now we cannot show you a picture of what it will look like. Give me four months
and we might be able to but for now this nebulous image of flensed marine mammals floating through
the ether as visitors in suits dice with death on unprotected balconies is, I’ m afraid,
the best that I can offer you. [audience laughter] Luckily we’ ve already completed two phases
of this 430 milliondollar project — refurbishment of the heritage buildings here, the exteriors,
but also the very exciting completion of new stores and laboratories at our collection
research centre in Welshpool. My curators are absolutely over the moon, people get excited
about different things and they love roller-racking like this compactus. So this latter achievement
is critical to the success, the development of the museum because it is home to the vast
majority of the 8.5 million items in the WA museum’ s collections that span many disciplines,
cultures and communities and the natural sciences. A collection of real things is surely what
defines a museum, or it should be. Certainly for the new project one of our touchstones
has been authenticity but that authenticity does not necessarily mean physical things,
it can mean many other things as well. It’ s worth remembering that the breadth of collections
and activity of the WA museum is that those real things are not all the result of human
activity. Those compactus shelving units and that store is for just a small proportion
of our zoological collections that at least in number dwarf the numbers of our culture
and community collections, but they’ re extremely important helping us understand
and manage, and indeed conserve, our environment. These biological collections have many contemporary
uses and many, I suspect, that we still do not know of. They provide environmental data,
cultural data, and in the case of the western rock lobster here a reference point for those
who think they may have been sold something less than authentic, we get a lot of queries
around that. The potential for biological material that we retain is limitless. Our
molecular laboratory is currently used for identifying organisms and sorting out evolutionary
relationships, but who knows in the future whether or not under appropriate ethical conditions
we will be able to recreate extinct species like the Tasmanian Tiger. And the power of
objects is beyond question. Extreme examples in our collection include the Second World
War prison camp suit in which a Polish migrant arrived here in Western Australia, these the
only clothes and possessions that he had at the time. And if we’ re talking about the
power of objects — we have to get Neil MacGregor in somewhere — this is my favourite ever
photograph of museum cultural diplomacy. Neil MacGregor in Tehran showing the Cyrus Cylinder
from the British Museum’ s collections to the then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad was not the most sympathetic person to western causes, it has to be said, and
when the British Museum lent this object it created a dialogue that could never have been
created by any other aspect of the British government at that time, and I think, Mat,
in terms of your political dimensions that was an extreme one. One of the key questions
of course is how to collect and indeed present Aboriginal cultural materials and the first
answer to that, of course, is working closely with Aboriginal people. And this is one of
those clear cases where it’ s not always appropriate to collect the actual material.
This by the way of course is some of the rock art on the Burrup Peninsula, something that
with only a touch of hyperbole I describe as a kind of human chronicle over just about
geological time, it is one of the most extraordinary places in the world. So much Aboriginal culture
is based upon oral tradition, and for that reason we collect stories, testimonies and
memories. These are equally authentic to the physical objects and this is where I have
that argument with the prejudicial term ‘ intangible cultural heritage’ . ‘ Intangible is a
western term that really reveals our own lack of understanding of those cultural paradigms.
How can you imagine something more tangible to an Aboriginal person than the Dreaming
story that might define their very being? I have to say, ‘ intangible cultural heritage’
is a term I’ m trying to dispense with at every turn. The next stage beyond that is
creating authentic contemporary and non-physical Aboriginal cultural expression and this is
why we work here at the WA museum so closely with Aboriginal performance company Yirra
Yaakin. This year we’ ll be commissioning a new work by Yirra Yaakin about the love
and understanding of country, that will actually tour regional WA. And in this sense what could
be more relevant than our ‘ Object 101’ and the relationship between traditional knowledge
and contemporary western science? This leads into a more general consideration of contemporary
collecting. How do we know what we should collect today? What will be important to help
future generations understand us? Samdok was an initiative that began in Sweden in 1973.
Its purpose was, and I quote, “preservation of an optimal stock of objects for the future”,
and, “furnishing objects with the necessary peripheral information”— I think we call
that ‘ metadata’ today, don’ t we? In 1973 the organisation was made up of five
national and regional museums which would rotate responsibility for collecting each
year. Researchers at each institution would choose a family that they felt was representative
of an area and carefully document their living spaces with photographs, usually focusing
on one room, and after in-situ documentation the researchers would attempt to acquire as
many of the objects from that room as the family was willing to donate –that kind
of gives you an interesting thought, it’ s kind of like the bailiffs coming in isn’
t it really — and all histories were recorded. It’ s a really interesting project, it actually
wrapped up in 2011 but it was certainly the museum sector followed it through with great
interest because we all struggled with this idea: what do we collect today? But it also
demonstrates another point that’ s come up several times today, this issue of objectivity
in museums. There is no such thing as objectivity; someone is always making a choice, someone
is always deciding what to collect, what to display, how to interpret it, so we shouldn’
t fool ourselves on that one. I suppose the other thing that we also — and that little
cartoon that came from one of the Samdok publications — is how we then communicate that idea that
it is important to collect today, because we still obviously get people coming to museums
saying, “well why are you collecting that? I used to have one of those.” Well, that’
s why we collected it, actually. I must admit, the other issue of Samdok is, if you were
one of those families being tracked would it affect the way you lived your life? Would
you actually buy healthier food than you might otherwise have bought? Would you have ordered
those kind of marital aids on the internet that you were saving up for if you knew that
somebody was going to document it and put it in a museum in perpetuity? I suspect not.
So where I was actually going with this, there’ s a slide missing out of here but was actually
showing the museum in Western Park in Sheffield in Yorkshire England where there’ s a gallery
which is called ‘ Your Gallery’ , and that’ s where you create your own memories,
your own messages. And I also had — which is very relevant to the Perth International
Arts Festival this year — something called ‘ Street Skate Style’ which was my favourite
ever project that I did in Newcastle upon Tyne which was working with skaters, with
skateboards, in Newcastle, to create a collection based around their lives, their equipment,
their costume, to form a permanent record of that. There’ s another dimension to this
as well, the idea of museums creating collections almost, I suppose, by subterfuge. These are
two installations, one in Kelvingrove on the left and one in Bristol on the right, where
art interventions—they weren’ t actually technically artistic interventions — but
they were interventions to really create a sense and a space that epitomised the place.
So for instance Bristol with the balloons, lots of people go hot air ballooning in Bristol
and it’ s a very common sight on the skyline. Glasgow, those faces are very famous hanging
faces to create expressions of all the different people of Glasgow. But when those museums
change their displays are they going to keep those as collections? And in a sense does
that mean the museum has intervened unfairly? I don’ t know. I also found this blog which
I thought captured a particularly Australian element, and this was where things were being
washed up on Chili Beach in Queensland. The blog from Dr Joe Wills here says, could some
of the thongs collected during the annual clean-up be considered significant and included
in contemporary collections and stories about tourism, environmental management, and community
on Eastern Cape York Peninsula? Now there is —we’ re back onto Doctor Who for some
reason—one of the ways that we can actually engage with collectors or collections is to
work with personal collections and personal collectors, but there are of course some dangers
in this. You sometimes might end up working with someone like Rob Hull who has 1,202 Daleks,
apparently. Apparently he’ s not even interested in Doctor Who. Nick Vermeulen of the Netherlands
has 6,290 air sick bags from 1,191 different airlines, that must be a lot of air miles.
Bring it back to home, I’ m not particularly sure I would want to give space to Australian
Graham Barker who’ s been collecting his own belly fluff since 1984, and apparently
has the largest collection in the world surprisingly enough, but there you go. I know what you’
re thinking, they’ re all mad and they’ re all men... [audience laughter] Alec Coles:
... but meet Nancy Hoffman from Peaks Island Maine who owns the largest umbrella cover
collection in the world, and if you visit the museum she will greet you by playing her
official song on her accordion, so watch out for that one. The V&A ran a very interesting
project called ‘ Every Object Tells a Story’ some years ago, which involved dispatching
a London taxi with a video booth installed to all corners of the United Kingdom. People
went along and brought along an object of particular importance to them and made a video
digital record of that. That again was a collection in perpetuity, the museum didn’ t acquire
the objects but it actually acquired the stories around them. That was my object by the way.
We talk a lot about emotions. We’ re also running out of time and I’ m going to get
a ding on the glass in any minute, but this was something that was brought when we did
a 70th anniversary of thesinking of HMAS Sydney seminar in Geraldton. This is an absolutely
extraordinary object but I’ m not going to tell you about it, you have to ask me about
it afterwards cause otherwise I’ m going to lose my time. Our own scaled down version
of capturing digital stories —somewhere, no doubt in a minute a slide will come up
of the Library of Congress when it announced that it was going to take a big stride towards
preserving the US’ s increasingly digital heritage by acquiring Twitter’ s entire
archive of tweets. That was in 2010 they said they were going to do that. More than five
years later the project is in limbo and the library is still grappling with how to manage
an archive that amounts to something like half amillion tweets. Our own scaled down
version of that is called ‘ WA Faces’ . It involves people making and providing
a portrait of themselves and their opinions of what makes WA. This is a live project,
we’ ve done a lot of face to face work on this, but it’ s also online and people can
actually make their own video online, and we’ ve now I think got about 3,000 of these,
which will all be part of the story of the new museum. There can be few more provocations
than the display of this vessel, the refugee and asylum seekers vessel, that arrived in
Geraldton in 2013, but that is exactly what we want to do in the new museum that will
be built here. It will provide an opportunity to build understanding of the plight of refugees,
of the political hysteria around this issue, an Australian psyche at the time that I found
particularly spiteful. But it will also provoke, to say the least, energetic debate about the
fate and the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in Australia. And this isn’ t alien
to museums, this is a display in Bristol that opened a few years ago, When does Violence
become a Justifiable Course of Action?We were looking at the history of the nuclear disarmament
movement in the UK. This is Puke Ariki in New Plymouth in New Zealand where they held
this exhibition called What If? where people again contributed their own views about New
Plymouth which very much actually affected the way that New Plymouth developed thereafter.
This I think is quite brilliant, appearing here as part of The Fringe. This is called,
as it says there, A Mile in My Shoes, and it’ s something run by the Empathy Museum
out of the UK where visitors are invited to walk a mile in somebody else’ s shoes. That
person might be anything from—it says here—a steelworker or a sex worker, even, and to
really uncover the stories, the different aspects of life, loss, grief, hope that those
people have, and I think that experiential and emotional experience is really interesting,
if you get a chance to check that out please do. So I had a little checklist at the end
of how the nature of collecting, I think, is changing. We’ re collecting more commonplace.
We previously collected the rare and the wonderful, we’ re now trying to collect the representative.
In the biological sciences it’ s more molecular, we don’ t actually need to collect as much
material now because that information is tied up in molecular data. More digital, more personal
— more personal objects and, as I say, more representative, maybe. More ephemeral and
more — bit of a typo there — opinion-driven. It’ s less expensive. One of the issues
that really affects museums, or public museums, today is their inability to cope and actually
compete in markets with private collectors. It’ s less curated and in a way maybe that
could be a good thing. It means that it’ s more, I guess, what people think from their
heart. It’ s less physical, there’ s more of those non-physical — that I won’ t
call intangible — cultural items. It’ s less fact-driven and there’ s definitely
less bling. One of the issues that we have to cope with, and that illustrated very much
by that library example, is it’ s less manageable. We’ ve got so much data that we can collect
these days we really have to be very focused about the way we go about it. And so I guess
the post-script of that is, what people or indeed things will think of us in the future,
because that’ s the real challenge of collecting for us. We might think of how we want to be
seen today but we have no idea what future generations will think from the museum collections
of today. Thank you very much. [audience applause]