Dear Vincent Berjot, Director General of Heritage,
Dear Marie-Christine Labourdette, Director of Museums of France,
Ladies and gentlemen museum directors,
Ladies and gentlemen professors,
Ladies and gentlemen Conservatives,
Madam Mission Coordinator Museums of the XXIth century, dear Jacqueline Eidelman,
In 2014, art historian Laurence Bertrand Dorléac wrote: At a time when interest in the world of representations is growing, it is necessary to deploy all the means to develop knowledge and sensitivities from school, college or high school, where we learn to read, but not enough to see. The museum has a role to play (…). The collections or exhibitions are objects of emotion but also of meditation and reflection, closer to the works».
From here, perspectives that interest us: the exhibition, and therefore the museum, as a place of research and emotions, of reflection and discoveries, the need to make the works travel and, finally, the epistemological opening that must constitute the adventure of the museum in the XXIth century.
Dear friends,
What will be the museums of the XXIth century? Rather, how do we want them in the 21st centuryth century?
This is the question to which your mission must provide answers that I hope will be innovative and committed.
From the point of view of the subjects proposed, the objects presented and the public concerned, the environment of museums is constantly changing.
The latter face new challenges and try new proposals.
Better: it is the museum’s very vocation that is changing, in a world that is itself changing and where audiences, works and ideas circulate.
What museum to enable dialogue between cultures, to contribute to civic education and to bring us together?
What kind of museum to include citizens' questions, take into account the digital revolution and promote developments in the fields of curatorial, reception, mediation and surveillance, to name a few?
That’s the general framework.
I would like to begin by thanking:
A Jacqueline Eidelman: sociologist, researcher, you came to work at the Ministry and take the direction of the department of public policy of the Directorate General of Heritage; today - I find it hard to say that I think you have rarely worked so hard - you are retired, but you have been willing to continue to work alongside us in a different context to coordinate this mission on the future of museums;
Then to Blandine Chavanne, Deputy Director of Museum Policy of France, who accompanies you in this adventure;
To the services of the Directorate-General for Heritage and in particular the French Museum Service and the Public Policy Department;
Of course, the Director General and the Director in charge of Museums in France must also be thanked for having willingly committed themselves to this mission, adding to their day-to-day work the conduct of a major construction site that requires energy and enthusiasm – which they do not lack.
The responsibilities of the museum world have long exceeded the traditional mission of conservation and research.
Today the museum is also a conduit of memory, a producer of aesthetic emotion, a mediator between disciplines, a foundation of civic education, a producer of collective link through this common heritage.
Many countries do this, not just western countries.
The Recommendation of UNESCO of 27 May 2015 “on the protection and promotion of museums, their diversity and their role in society” provided a remarkable framework for this reflection.
I note that this reflection comes at a time when we are celebrating the anniversaries of many museums: in the coming months we will be celebrating the forty years of the Centre Pompidou, the thirty years of the Cité des sciences et de l'industrie and those of the Musée d'Orsay, the 20th anniversary of the Museum of Decorative Arts and the 10th anniversary of the Quai Branly Museum.
An era in which works of art are threatened: destruction of the Buddhas of Basel in 2000, and, between the beginning of the XXIth century and today: destruction of the treasures of Timbuktu, the museum of Mosul and the remains of the thousand-year-old city of Nimrud, not to mention the temples of Palmyra. Threatened because at the heart of the culture that some would like uniforms, univocal, sanitized.
In Europe, in France, last year’s attacks had a direct negative impact on museum attendance.
Beyond this difficult context, while some museums are, at times, perhaps too crowded, and there are questions about the management of flows and time slot entries, other museums are too little known and too little frequented. The issues raised by hyper or, let’s also say, the under-use of some of our museums must be addressed. Schedules also affect the nature of the audience.
Finally, the museum of the XXIth century must not turn a blind eye to the 21st centuryth century.
I had the opportunity to say this, in front of some of you ten days ago, when Maurice Dreyfus' drawing of Degas from the recovery of the national museums, known as MNR, was returned to the rights holders. We still have work to do to deal with this sad issue inherited from the last century.
These national, historical and geopolitical contexts inform a society that more than ever needs to come together, connect to its memory and find meaning.
Four dimensions should be particularly addressed during this mission: the ethical and citizen museum; the protean museum (in situ, outside the walls, virtual...); the inclusive and collaborative museum; the museum as a professional ecosystem.
We can mention the building, the museum building, its physical and material evolution.
Many museums have now launched a phase of restoration and, often, expansion. We know of several recent examples of a happy marriage between heritage of yesterday and architecture of today. In Colmar with the Unterlinden museum, in Pont-Aven, two museums have been transformed, modernized, renewing the approach of the works they exhibit.
Sometimes the museum itself becomes a work of art. From the Pompidou Centre to the museums of Frank Gehry, we know this evolution, which is a source of reflection: what relationship to the collection? Is there a complementarity, or a rivalry? How to show the museum? What is shown? The envelope or what it envelops?
The museum is a zone of contact and exchange, a mechanism of mediation between the works of culture and the whole society.
It is on this dimension that I would like to draw your attention today.
The museum brings together the career of objects and that of the visitor.
If we take the time to listen to the curators, they tell us of the same surprise, the same discovery: the works produce their context, they do not illustrate anything, they whisper among themselves until they produce a deafening dialogue.
On the other side, if I may say so, each visitor also comes with a different story: a faithful or eclipsed visitor, a confident or uncomfortable visitor, a conquering visitor or a visitor whose visit to the museum jeopardizes self-esteem: more than one Frenchman in two hesitates to take the risk of putting himself in danger, or, dare I say it, to lose face by going to the museum.
The museum of the XXIth century can then be conceived as the laboratory of the effects of these encounters between the work and the viewer.
I believe that it is this human, social or societal dimension that must be the major dimension of your questioning.
Think about objects. Think about visitors. Think about officers.
The reflection on the professional ecosystem is major. How to evolve the job of surveillance officers? What relations with mediation. How do these museum staff welcome the visitor?
How do they confront the crowd of visitors, or their absence? Working in a room full or empty is not the same thing.
To render service, to explain, to supervise, to control engage in various relations with visitors.
Let’s also not forget the other professions that are changing, such as cultural programming, patronage, with the privatization of venues, marketing, community managers…
As such, you will certainly include in your reflections those concerning other ways of visiting the museum.
I am thinking of the Nuit des musées and the accompanying artistic and cultural programming, or the Nuit blanche de la Mairie de Paris. So, for the Nuit des musées, at the Henner Museum, which I will inaugurate later on on the occasion of its reopening, dancers from the Paris Opera will accompany the evening visitors.
This is an exciting project because it concerns once again the whole of society, the way in which society operates.
Finally, a word on the form and timing of your mission.
One point that I would like to emphasize: the mission will interest all the museums in France, all the museums labeled «museums of France», they are 1220. I am pleased to note that your steering committee, which brings together the chairmen, facilitators, rapporteurs and observers of the four working groups, gives pride of place to territorial museums. We want to focus on all museums and all audiences.
The mission relies on experts from abroad, directors of major museums, who can help us broaden our perspective and inspire us. I know that relationships already exist through museum networks, through the circulation of works and loans.
I think the international dimension of reflection is absolutely necessary. I thank all four of you for making this commitment to us, from Montreal, Oslo, Mons and Milan.
I also want to thank the academics, researchers and teachers who joined this committee. You will share your work in museology, museography, art history and cultural policy. Fortunately, it is not necessary to work in the museum to know it, to know its audiences.
Why not, moreover, audition historians, sociologists, philosophers, but also architects and curators, in this context, and if it is possible in your working time?
Finally, the timetable.
From June to October, the four working groups dedicated to the four projects – the Ethical and Citizen Museum; the Protean Museum; the Inclusive and Collaborative Museum; and the Museum as an Economic Ecosystem – will meet throughout the country: in Roubaix, Paris, Lyon, Strasbourg, Nancy, Bordeaux and Rennes and other cities.
At the same time, two exercises must be conducted: first, during the summer, a round table with professional organizations; then, this fall, a national online consultation.
Finally, in November, a closing forum will precede the presentation of your report.
At the beginning of 1965, Le Corbusier was asked by André Malraux to elaborate the project of a museum of the XXIth century. The workshop of the rue de Sèvres was actively involved in the preliminary projects - then came the summer holidays and the tragic end of the Master at the seaside, which interrupted the project.
Among the tasks of the artistic life of France, the Musée du XXIth It was said that the first place was undoubtedly occupied by the century.
Le Corbusier was thinking of a museum set on stilts ten metres or more above the level of streets and squares; he even thought of covering the Seine up to the Quai d'Orsay… We wonder if the Musée du Quai Branly has not taken over Le Corbusier’s boxes… In short.
Your mission is major. Make the museum of the XXIth This is the place of the other, of the reception of the other.
Thank you.