Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Rachel Lim

 Note: Diary of an NUS Museum Intern is a series of blog posts written by our interns about their experiences during the course of their internships. Working alongside their mentors, our interns have waded through tons of historical research, assisted in curatorial work, pitched in during exhibition installations and organised outreach events! If you would like to become our next intern, visit our internship page for more information! 

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Rachel Lim is a third-year English Literature major at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Science. As a research assistant for the forthcoming Anniversary Lecture 2020, Rachel is involved in the research of the circumstances surrounding the 1959 donation of artworks to the university by the Indian Government.

Five weeks, four off-site field trips, two museum definitions, and countless cups of tea later, and I’m writing from the other side of the NUS Museum (NUSM) winter internship! If you want to find out about the internship experience, read on, and if you’re interested in the International Council of Museums’ (ICOM) definition debate, read, unfortunately, much further on...

Either way, however, this was an experience I’m very grateful for and (despite all the holiday craziness) a productive way to spend the winter break. 

I. The internship experience

NUSM Intern Survival Tips:

- Since we can’t get into the main office on our own, you’ll have to knock (don’t be too shy about it!) ...or strategically wait for someone else to go in.
- Chipping in to buy snacks for the pantry is a good way to build solidarity.
- Drink water and eat well—you’ll need the energy!
- Get to know your fellow interns (and go to the holiday party if you want to meet some former ones).
- + It can be exhausting to work during your term break, but keep at it! It’s only five weeks (with breaks for Christmas and New Year’s), and a fantastic opportunity for learning!

What did I do as an NUSM intern? Honestly, as a research assistant to my professor for the anniversary lecture, I was rather disconnected from the rest of the workings of the museum. I spent my time catching up on archival materials, procuring books and audio recordings, compiling lists of publications, intensely Googling things, annotating book chapters, scanning yellowed papers from the 1950s, and delving into topics I never expected myself to properly pursue. (I’ll probably continue to do similar things, because it’s an option to extend your internship part-time through the semester!) However, conversations with the other interns revealed that they were doing other kinds of interesting work, such as planning film programming, organising the library, and translating materials; reading their blog posts will offer a fuller picture of the possibilities.

We all united, though, for our group presentations, workshops, weekly readings, and field trips to the Baba House, Asian Civilisations Museum, Golden Mile Complex, and Science Centre, which were not only an opportunity to get out of the office and experience new things, but also to think about museums on a higher, museological level. This brings me to the overarching academic theme of the internship: with ICOM’s proposed rewriting of their museum definition making waves in the global museum community, we were tasked with contributing our own ideas to the discussion. 

II. The museum definition

For reference, the current and proposed definitions are as follows:

Current

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.

Proposed

Museums are democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people.

Museums are not for profit. They are participatory and transparent, and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the world, aiming to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing.

Despite visiting museums frequently, I had never really sat down and thought about what a museum actually was, so this was a good exercise which helped to both expand and solidify my personal idea of a museum.

a. Inadequate definitions

I soon came to the conclusion that both definitions are inadequate (and I think many of the other interns did as well). They each include some would-be museums and exclude others. While the first might alienate certain less traditional museums, the second risks excluding well-established institutions which fail to meet these more abstract criteria. Participants in the ICOM discussion rightly pointed out that the proposed definition was less of a definition and more of a “statement of...values.” While I believe the goals in the proposed definition are noble ones, it is a bit of a tall order for a museum to fulfil all at once. For instance, while museums as a whole certainly should “safeguard diverse memories,” is an individual museum, which may be focused on a highly specific demographic, expected to do so? Or, doesn’t the very imposition of an entrance fee, a common practice, threaten “equal access to heritage for all people?” Furthermore, it is not at all clear how many of these goals a museum must accomplish to be considered one—just one or two, in which case perhaps all the fuss is unnecessary, or all or most of them?

Initially, I thought perhaps we should aim for something between the two definitions, some combination of traditional definition and value statement. But I had very little idea how to execute such a thing. Eventually, I veered into a rather different direction: what if the problem lies in trying to definitively define what a museum is at all?

b. Can we define “museum”?

The proposed definition is a valiant attempt to respond to a changed and changing world. But definitions, though they give the illusion of objectivity and immutability, are slippery, and some slipperier than others. Even definitions for scientific words like “kilogram” or “insect” might provoke some dispute—but what about words like “art,” “beauty,” or “love”? And what kind of word is “museum”?

Definition also often means reduction. I am not sure a definition exists out there to capture the unique identity of every single museum. Perhaps a first step, then, is to acknowledge that whatever definition we conjure will be inadequate. Some museums—the Cupnoodles Museum, for instance, or the Chinsekikan (Hall of Curious Rocks)—will still fall through the cracks.

Furthermore, ICOM is not the only one talking about “democratising” the museum. Both Ahmad Mashadi and Karen Cordero Reiman, discussing museums in Singapore and Mexico respectively, call for museums to become less one-sided and more participatory, welcoming visitors’ contributions and, as Cordero Reiman writes, the “possibility of multiple ways of seeing and reading...a more complex and fragmented view of reality.” If each individual has a distinct experience of any given museum, isn’t it also possible that each individual has a distinct idea of what a museum is at all? And if everybody has a slightly different definition of “museum,” doesn’t that make ICOM’s quest to arrive at a single definition rather difficult—perhaps even futile?

Just because everyone’s museum definition is different, however, doesn’t mean we won’t fight about them. Such a realisation shouldn’t prevent disagreement, debate, and dialogue, as we seek to persuade others but also allow their ideas to shape our own. With this caveat, I now move on to the next part of this post: my personal, however nebulous, idea of a museum.

c. What does “museum” mean to me?

“Museum” as experience

As I mentioned earlier, this internship helped me to both expand and solidify my personal understanding of the museum—expand in the sense that, for instance, one of our field trips was to Golden Mile Complex, a site seldom considered a museum. Another pivotal moment in my extension of the museum concept was when I read a 2001 ICOM definition which explicitly included “botanical and zoological gardens, aquaria and vivaria”; “science centres and planetaria,” and “nature reserves,” among other things. These institutions aren’t instinctively what we would think of when thinking of museums, and yet, to me at least, classifying them as such doesn’t seem like a huge stretch—why?

A key idea for me is the museum as an experience. Botanical gardens and zoos may not have the same kinds of climate control or collections as museums, but there are similarities in the experiences of moving, looking, absorbing, and learning. Gillman Barracks, as a constellation of commercial art galleries, may not qualify as a museum under either definition, but, for the visitor, going from gallery to gallery is not necessarily all that different from exploring an art museum. When I visited the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth’s Many Beliefs, One Future, a pop-up exhibition at Raffles City, I experienced it as a museum not because its themes of religious harmony aligned perfectly with ICOM’s proposed definition, but because I recognised the trappings of white walls, artefacts, and vitrines. While acknowledging the importance of high-level academic and professional discussions, I value museums as experiences—ones which bring delight and satisfaction in learning new and seeing beautiful things and a respite from the stresses of the day-to-day. Similarly, Cordero Reiman lyrically describes the past as experienced through the museum as an “evocation,” and Ahmad Mashadi writes, quoting Michael Sullivan, the NUSM’s founding curator: “The Museum shall provide the student a ‘spiritual and emotional experience that will help to bring meaning and illumination into the rest of his life.’”

Other components

Thus, a museum is somewhere one visits (and pays, if applicable) primarily for an experience, not a product. But what might this experience more precisely entail?

- For me, a museum ought to engage the senses and through them the mind.
- It should facilitate learning about “the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment” (a part of the current definition I find worth retaining, since it seems to encompass just about every subject one could imagine).
- The first point also highlights the importance of the object or what Cordero Reiman calls the “corporeal experience.” In our digitally dominated, often alienating world, museums can help ground us, providing the kind of experience for which digital media or “written language” would fall short.

All these are components of my idea of a museum, which further examples and case studies can help to refine. For instance, when faced with Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, I decided it was not so much a museum as a personal art project, even if others might disagree. Thus I discover that to me a museum is, generally, collaborative, bigger than a single person and idea. To all this I would add another element, which relieves in its simplicity: the museum is a place of inspiration—a “seat of the Muses.”

d. “Museum” as approach

But beyond the museum as an experience, there is another possibility I’m interested in: the idea of the museum as an approach, a particular way of taking in and thinking about things—the museum as a “state of mind.” This is once again informed by the interns’ trip to Golden Mile Complex, which, though historic, is a shopping mall, not what most would consider a museum. Yet, by approaching it with such a possibility in mind, as part of a museum internship, by seeking to observe, learn, and understand its aesthetic properties, historical context, and contemporary issues, did we not in some sense have a museum experience? The visit also resonates with an Indian Heritage Centre field trip I joined last summer, which took us out of the Centre into the broader Little India area, with stops such as the Jothi Store and Flower Shop and Banana Leaf Apolo restaurant—these surrounding areas, according to our guide, could also be considered an extension of the museum.

Is it possible, then, that if I go into a site intending to have a museum experience I can have one, even if that isn’t the site’s primary function? The Singapore Heritage Society’s write-up of Golden Mile Complex, Pearl Bank Apartments, and People’s Park Complex notes that many architectural UNESCO World Heritage sites have been “adapted” into “museums,” supporting the idea that a site’s functions can change over time depending on how society generally perceives it. It is also quite natural, however, for a site to have multiple functions at the same time for different people. A student learning about plants at the Botanic Gardens may be having a museum experience while a family nearby plays frisbee or picnics. Even a formally designated museum may not be one to someone going there to meet friends for lunch. On the flip side, if we approach a place like Golden Mile Complex in a certain way (and of course the danger of “museumifying” an active site and lifestyle is there), perhaps we create, on some level, a museum in the mind.

At this point, I suggest a kind of “sliding scale” of museums, in which conventionally recognised museums best facilitate such approaches of looking and learning. To borrow the ICOM phrase, “sites of a museum nature,” from 2001, some sites simply have a stronger “museum nature” than others. But perhaps other sites can also become museums if we as individuals make them so. 

e. Potential issues

There are, of course, some problems with these ideas. Firstly, they are not that helpful when it comes to ICOM’s more practical concerns in fixing a museum definition, like funding and other such matters. For this, I would suggest that instead of a universal museum definition, ICOM could work towards crafting a set of “criteria” or “guidelines”—criteria to be the kind of museum under ICOM or the kind to receive funding, not to qualify as a museum at all. We could make use of existing classifications such as “state” or “national” and “independent” or “private” to try and understand the scope of what might be considered a museum. Museums should be, as far as possible, assessed on a case-by-case basis by their individual merits. In this way, perhaps museums deemed most broadly beneficial to society could receive the support they need without excluding more niche and obscure museums from a universal museum ideal. This is not to deny the vital importance of the spirit and values laid out in ICOM’s proposed definition—for they are, indeed, vitally important—but can we find a way to encourage museums to espouse these values without limiting what a museum is?

Another potential problem might be that these possibilities broaden the idea of “museum” too much, allowing too many experiential sites, such as amusement parks, movie theatres, and random shopping malls, to become museums. Components of my personal idea of the museum, like the emphasis on learning and the “corporeal experience,” might help narrow the field slightly. I could refine it further, for instance, to stress the importance of active learning and movement, rather than seated, passive reception of images on a screen. While this is admittedly a roundabout way of arriving at a useful idea of the museum, there is another possible solution—to have a little more faith in people and their good sense, to trust that they will not immediately start calling everything under the sun a museum, and to accept that even if they do, it might still be better than protecting museums behind an intellectually elitist glass case.

I wrap up this section with a quote from J.M. Coetzee’s novel, The Childhood of Jesus, in which a boy has gathered a miscellaneous bunch of shabby objects, to an adult’s disapproval (emphasis mine):

“It’s my museum,” says the boy.
“A load of old rubbish is not a museum. Things need to have some value before they find a place in a museum.”
“What is value?” 
“If things have value it means that people in general prize them, agree that 
they are valuable. An old broken cup has no value. No one prizes it.
“I prize it. It’s my museum, not yours.”

f. Conclusion

I want to conclude by thanking my fellow interns, whom I got to know better over the five weeks of field trips and lunches; the NUSM staff, for welcoming us into their office and making us feel like part of the museum; my professor, for allowing me this opportunity; and of course our supervisor, Michelle, for her efforts in creating an enriching internship. Museums, after all, are more than just sites and their contents. They are also the people, on both sides of the experience, who make them.

Readings:

Cordero Reiman, Karen. “A Museum or a Center for Mexican Contemporaneity?” Contemporary Art and the Museum: A Global Perspective, edited by Peter Weibel and Andrea Buddensieg, Hatje Cantz, 2007.

Mashadi, Ahmad. “A University Museum: Contexts and Practice.” Camping and Tramping Through the Colonial Archive: The Museum in Malaya, NUS Museum, 2011, pp. 6-13.

Timur Ogut, Sebnem. “The Struggle of Objects and Meaning: Design, Representation and Material Culture in the Everyday Objects of Orhan Pamuk’s ‘Museum of Innocence.’” The Design Journal, vol. 20, no. 1, 2017, pp. 45-66, DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2016.1206721.

“Too Young to Die: Giving New Lease of Life to Singapore’s Modernist Icons.” Singapore Heritage Society, 2018, https://www.singaporeheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/SHS-Position-Paper-Too-Young-To-Die-Aug-2018.pdf.