Some reflections on the first week

The museum of the Vietnamese Revolution has much interesting information and some small snippets of history that get little if any mention outside of Vietnam. However, the whole display simply says this is 'our' story with no room for alternative interpretation. There is no 'Why?' certain things happened. The Vietnamese people had a single minded objective and this is how it was achieved. That is fine as a statement but life and history is much messier than that. As a museum it fails, in my view, to interact with the visitor. This material may fare much better if the proposed merger with the National History Museum goes ahead and it is seen in a larger context.
If I understand it correctly such a proposal would free up space for contemporary art. An art form barely understood or represented in the Fine Art museum. A collection with some wonderful pieces, but is it budgetary constraints or mind set that make some of the lesser spaces dull and unimaginative?
This first week has shown that this mutual learning experience is a successful format and some genuine collaborative connections have been made, it is a privilege to be involved.
Part 2 to follow.

Fluid and Changing Histories

Today we visited the military history museum in Hanoi.  I am not by any means a war history enthusiast, but I found this museum extremely interesting.  The story of the battles with the French and the Americans were told through a large display of models and artefacts and even included a number of tanks and aircraft in an outdoor display.  I felt that the illuminated model and accompanying film of important battles was a great way to show the battle tactics used - especially for someone like me with no understanding of these things.  Our visit was enhanced by our very knowledgable guide whose pride in the achievements of her country was obvious.  In fact pride in the achievements and cleverness of the Vietnamese people, both military and everyday people, was a strong theme throughout the exhibition.

This museum struck me as being a great example of the discussion we had on day one about history.  We talked about history as a fluid, changing thing, rather than as a collection of static facts about the past.  History changes depending on who is telling the story, and when, where and why they are telling it.  It is not just the facts, but the context, the feelings, the emotions and the experiences, which are different for everyone, and this is what makes it fluid.  
The story of the war told in this museum would obviously be different if told in a French or American museum, or by women, or by another country not involved in the war.  The story that the elderly Vietnamese man, whom Jo spoke of in an earlier post, would tell to his grandson would be different from the one told in the museum - even though the facts remain the same.
I think there are some implications of this idea for us as museum professionals.
I think we need to be aware that the story we tell is never the whole story or the definitive description of events.
The negative side of this is that we are never going to be able to tell the story from every point of view - it is just not practical for us to be able to share everyone's history.  There are always going to be decisions made which result in some histories being included and some being excluded.  The implication of this is that what we choose to exhibit will be questioned or contested, and although this is often a worthwhile thing, there is no denying that it can be an uncomfortable position for museum staff to be in.
On the positive side, this means that there are always more stories out there for us to discover, different histories to explore, and new communities to reach out to.  Acknowledgement of the fluid nature of history, and loosening our hold on our role as the definitive keeper of facts, will create opportunities for museums.  By doing this, the museum also becomes a fluid, changing thing, and this can lead to a new  and exciting vibrancy within our organisations, and hopefully throughout the whole community.

When museums come alive!

I am a day late in finishing my first blog reflection but I came away from our second day of the field school bursting with ideas and struggled to collate them into one piece. So here goes…

The question I was asking myself this morning is ‘what can a Vietnamese Fine Arts Museum teach me (someone very passionate about natural history and science) about engaging with communities… for my work in Australia’? The answer to my question was much more thought-provoking and valuable than I could have predicted.

In the world of public engagement and community outreach, there is a high premium on museums to connect with their communities in a meaningful, engaging, collaborative and sustainable manner. Today it became clear to me that that this task is near impossible to perfect.

Museum communities are diverse, unpredictable and hard to define. In a similar fashion so too are their needs and expectations of museums, museum collections and staff, and public programs. Our organisations invest ample time and resources to try to understand our audiences and I have read much research on this topic, however questions of how to best engage with our communities still continues to flood my mind.

One of the principal questions I have is what to do we mean by a ‘museum community’, as the term community itself is almost as difficult to describe. So who then are these people that museums are here to serve, who is it we want to connect with, and importantly why… why do we want to create these engaging and sustainable relationships?

One of the principle reasons I am interested in museums is for their capacity to act as institutions promoting and supporting life-long learning. To borrow a phrase from the Deputy Head, Department of Organisation, Administration and External Relations at the Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts, I love that community engagement and public programming can ‘bring museums to life’. The story of an object, its importance, value and worth is much, much more fun to understand when its biography is brought alive! This is why I get excited by public programming and museum education, to see the reactions, hear the stories and share memories between people, all triggered by an object in our museums and a connection with people.

I learnt three important things today;

Firstly, art museums can be interesting.

Secondly, that Vietnamese museum education departments are challenged by similar constraints that I have found in Australia and within the UK, in regards to resourcing, finding time in busy school curriculums to connect with younger audiences and in developing creative, valuable programs that audiences want.

Thirdly, that a museum community is as difficult to define as our audiences own motivations and expectations of our museums.

I am far from being able to answer these questions bubbling away in my head but I look forward to more days like today. I hope to learn many more techniques for how to strategically, meaningfully and sustainably engage with audiences to be able to bring our museums to life!

The Museum of Revolution

View of Gallery, Museum of Revolution

Monday afternoon, the first day of the Field School, our group visited the Museum of Revolution, just across the road from the National Museum of History.

The Museum is an old French colonial building set out on two floors.

The galleries set out the twentieth century struggle for Vietnamese independence and contained many artefacts, photographs and relics from the Revolution.

Our discussion focused on the use of voice in the museum -- the active and authoritative museum voice verses the passive museum visitor. We asked: What possibilities would a community-driven approach bring to the galleries? This raised some interesting questions about resources, re-display, labelling and oral history projects, and how debates around community voice raise questions about a surfeit of memory (or potential crisis). How could these voices be brought to be bear on a new generation of Vietnamese to capture the spirit of their forefathers?

Graeme Were

At the Museum of Military History

I had a very memorable experience today sitting next to this elderly gentleman as we watched the battle unfolding in the extraordinary, multi-sensory display at the Museum of Military History - the Battle of Dien Bien Phu I believe it was. As the lights glowed in the mountainous terrain, he was on the edge of his seat - following it all intently, anticipating the next stages of the battle, pointing, filming with his camera and gesturing to his companion, who could have been his grandson. It was very emotionally charged. Afterwards, he gestured to Clive and I that he had been in the battle and we shook hands with him. It was very moving, a powerful instance of memory at work as the past was recalled vividly in the present by this man who participated in what was a crucial moment in the fight for independence from colonialism in Vietnam. Clearly, this history is alive and well in the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. The battle took place in 1954, so I am guessing this man could be somewhere around 80. He is part of a generation now passing on. Capturing their voices seems to me to be an important task but I sense that oral history is not necessarily an easy process in Vietnam. Shonel raised this question today and the guide's answer seemed to indicate that the archival process is complex and subject to official sanction. I would like to understand more about how memory is being captured in Vietnam - recording on smartphones is now very easy, I wonder whether any families or communities are informally recording their elders' memories? I have to admit that I am not usually particularly attracted to 'military history', but I found this museum, particularly the handmade weapons, the Cu Chi tunnel diorama and the jungle display, very emotionally engaging. To me, these conveyed the intensity of feeling of the fight for independence and the incredible tenacity of the Vietnamese people.   

Jo Besley

At the National Museum of Fine Arts

Today at the National Museum of Fine Arts we started to discuss ways that we can work with communities on public programs. As always happens when museum people get together, there was lots of energy and animation around ideas for all the things we'd like to do, together with communities, in our museums. A trickier issue that we touched on, but perhaps need to think and talk about more, is how we reach out to communities. How do we actually get people to come and participate? We may be convinced of the benefits that can come about through communities and museums working together, but do people 'out there' share this conviction and see tangible benefits for them and their communities, enough that they will be motivated to actually take part in a project? How do we break down barriers, like perceptions about who has expertise, or who belongs in museums? How do we actually find communities and start forming meaningful relationships?

Graeme spoke about the dangers of making assumptions in our approaches to communities - I fear that we are often not even aware of when we are making assumptions. So, I've been reflecting on the importance of taking time, of listening and of asking questions. The most exciting thing about today was seeing everybody do these things in the group work this afternoon. If we think of our Vietnamese colleagues as a new community we are working with - the community of workers that make up the very vibrant museum culture we are encountering here in Hanoi - then I think we are all finding that listening and asking questions are the essential first steps in establishing relationships. Having to take time to hear each other, establish common ground, check that we understand each other, not expecting that we all think and feel the same are all heightened in the situation of not speaking the same language. It's a powerful experience to feel unsettled, even disorientated and reminds us of the value in entering into community engagement activities with open minds.

Jo Besley

 

  

Arriving in Ha Noi

The Field School is assembling and a few of us have already arrived in Hanoi in the hotel in the old quarter of the city. This is the view from my hotel window. The Field School starts tomorrow at 9am sharp at the National Museum of History.

View from the hotel room