Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND DEMOCRACY
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To be sure, there are any number of critics who will contest what gets classified
as ‘culture’ and ‘education’ (Britain’s imperial past, the celebration of
Empire, the tidiness of a good deal of military history, high-class portraiture), but
we ought not to forget in all this the deep Enlightenment roots of the museum
and art gallery movement. These roots are not to be lightly dismissed. They
stressed the gathering and display of knowledge so that people might be able to
know themselves and their world the better to exercise some leverage over it.
David M. Wilson (1989), then director of the British Museum, noted that on its
foundation by Act of Parliament in 1753 its collections aspired to contain the
‘sum of human knowledge’ (p. 13). Today it is fashionable to observe the fatuity
of such an aspiration, but we should not forget that consonant with it is the
principle of free access to everyone to what is stored so that they might benefit
from being enlightened. Accordingly, Wilson continues: ‘Our collections are completely
open to scholar and amateur alike and . . . only the most frivolous enquirer
will be politely sent away’ (p. 69).
Second, funding for museums and galleries, if originally from wealthy benefactors,
now comes overwhelmingly from the public purse. Because of this, the
collections are independent of partisan economic and political interests.
Third, an ethos of public service pervades museums and art galleries, with
curators and other staff upholding a professional commitment to provide and
protect the collections in the interests of the general public. It has to be admitted
that the ‘general public’ here may be a concept some distance from everyday
practice, perhaps even an excuse to pursue the ambition of collecting everything
thought valuable to the ‘human condition’ or a nation’s past. Yet whatever room
for interpretation there may be here, high among the professional ideals of
curators is a non-pecuniary interest in developing collections in service of dispassionate
scholarship that will be preserved for public edification.
Though in principle museums can act as arenas for critical debate, in practice
they have not done much to stimulate it (Walsh, 1992). Frequently they have
reflected the class prejudices of their originators and patrons, offering up images,
for instance, of Britain’s past which may easily be viewed as partial and even
distorting. In addition, many galleries have shown representations of art and an
ambience of display which are often of an exclusionary ‘high culture’, the exhibits
and aura of the locations easily deterring those groups not equipped with the
competences appropriately to ‘appreciate’. For these reasons visitors are by no
means a cross-section of the public, fully 60 per cent of those going to the British
Museum having a university degree or equivalent and three out of four museum
and gallery visitors coming from the top three social classes (A, B and C1).
But, having conceded this, we surely cannot conclude that all there is to
museums and galleries is class prejudices. Their cultural contribution entails this,
but it goes further. They are highly significant, probably essential, ways of
displaying a nation’s past and present; in doing this they present us with a vision
of ourselves as we were and, even if only by implication of ‘what we once were’,
as we might be in the future. Further, Matthew Arnold’s concern for the ‘best
that is known and thought’ is not wholly the conceit of the privileged. We
may disagree about what qualifies for the ‘best’, but pursuit of the ideal ensures
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