२० फेब्रुवारी, २०२३

"Founded at the pinnacle of the British Empire, the [Manchester Museum] is now undergoing a rethink..."

"... led by its director Esme Ward. In her post since 2018, Ward wants to make the free-of-charge institution more inclusive, imaginative and caring. She has repatriated 43 ceremonial and sacred objects to Aboriginal communities in Australia, and appointed a curator to re-examine the collections from an Indigenous perspective.... 'All of us in museums have a responsibility to really think about who they are for, not just what they are for,' Ward said in a recent interview in her office, which has a velvet sofa and a framed poster reading 'No Sexists, No Racists, No Fascists.' Calling museums 'empathy machines,' she said their mission extended beyond caring for objects and collections to 'caring for beliefs and ideas and relationships,' and being 'a space that brings people together.'"


Empathy machines.

Empathy machines.

Empathy machines.

What if there were a machine that could manufacture empathy? It would be a torture device! What did your literal mind — if you have one — picture? I thought first of the machine in Kafka's "Penal Colony," then of the device strapped to Malcolm McDowell's head in "A Clockwork Orange."

But, you may say, a museum that's an empathy machine cannot be a torture device because nobody is forced to go to the museum or to stay there, but that's not true. Kids are forced. 

Why would someone who loves art — does Ms. Ward love art?! — think of the museum as a machine? To help you think about her thinking, here's art about a machine, Paul Klee's "Twittering Machine":


Extra background:
Originally displayed in Germany, the image was declared "degenerate art" by Adolf Hitler in 1933 and sold by the Nazi Party to an art dealer in 1939, whence it made its way to New York.... 
The picture depicts a group of birds, largely line drawings; all save the first are shackled on a wire or, according to The Washington Post, a "sine-wave branch" over a blue and purple background which the MoMA equates with the "misty cool blue of night giving way to the pink flow of dawn." Each of the birds is open-beaked, with a jagged or rounded shape emerging from its mouth, widely interpreted as its protruding tongue. The end of the perch dips into a crank.... 
"Perhaps no other artist of the 20th century matched Klee's subtlety as he deftly created a world of ambiguity and understatement that draws each viewer into finding a unique interpretation of the work."... 
Sometimes, the image is perceived as quite dark. MoMA suggests that, while evocative of an "abbreviated pastoral", the painting inspires "an uneasy sensation of looming menace" as the birds themselves "appear closer to deformations of nature". 
They speculate that the "twittering machine" may in fact be a music box that produces a "fiendish cacophony" as it "lure[s] victims to the pit over which the machine hovers". 
Kay Larson of New York magazine (1987), too, found menace in the image, which she describes as "a fierce parable of the artist's life among the philistines": "Like Charles Chaplin caught in the gears of Modern Times, they [the birds] whir helplessly, their heads flopping in exhaustion and pathos. One bird's tongue flies up out of its beak, an exclamation point punctuating its grim fate—to chirp under compulsion." 
Arthur Danto, who does not see the birds as deformed mechanical creatures but instead as separate living elements, speculates in Encounters & Reflections (1997) that "Klee is making some kind of point about the futility of machines, almost humanizing machines into things from which nothing great is to be hoped or feared, and the futility in this case is underscored by the silly project of bringing forth by mechanical means what nature in any case provides in abundance."... 
Since a characteristic of chirping birds is that their racket resumes as soon as it seems to be ending, the bird in the center droops with lolling tongue, while another begins to falter in song; both birds will come up again full blast as soon as the machine's crank is turned.

५१ टिप्पण्या:

Aggie म्हणाले...

You mean to say, a machine that manufactures and spits out human emotion and feeling? But isn't that an oxymoron, 'Empathy Machine?' The story lost me when it started spitting out the Vocabulary of Virtue, 'more inclusive,' which is to say, less inclusive for some people and more inclusive for a minority of others. Progressives: Empathy machines.

gilbar म्हणाले...

so, she wants to make it "more" inclusive.. By Getting RID of things made by non whites?

"this native art.. You can have it back; it's got NO PLACE in our museum.. Our museum is about WHITES"

Owen म्हणाले...

Why hasn’t this empathetic genius just shipped the entire contents of the museum back to its original owners or their nearest kin? All of it was, by definition, stolen; even (especially!) the stuff donated by old rich white people coasting on the surplus of an Empire achieved by murderous racists.

Give it all back, and if owners can’t be found (or refuse to take it) then just put it in the street in a disordered heap. Your white imperialist taxonomies rest on a false narrative, an imposed meaning. It has to end.

And then please just shut up and go the hell away.

hawkeyedjb म्हणाले...

Once again, an institution becomes more "inclusive" by getting rid of things and inevitably, people.

Kai Akker म्हणाले...

---Ward said in a recent interview in her office, which has a velvet sofa and a framed poster reading 'No Sexists, No Racists, No Fascists.'

She left out "I am not a crook."

retail lawyer म्हणाले...

'caring for beliefs and ideas and relationships,' and being 'a space that brings people together.' Really? Is that what museums are for? How long before they have safe spaces days to exclude white people? We need a museum to show what museums were like before they got woke.

Bob Boyd म्हणाले...

Calling museums 'empathy machines,' she said their mission extended beyond caring for objects and collections to 'caring for beliefs and ideas and relationships,' and being 'a space that brings people together.'"

So a church then...for the new political religion.

RideSpaceMountain म्हणाले...

"Why would someone who loves art — does Ms. Ward love art?! — think of the museum as a machine?"

She does not. You wouldn't be able to and still think of the museum as a vehicle for more cultist dialectic.

Darkisland म्हणाले...

Not to knock the Manchester or any other museum of art but some of us think of machines as works of art in themselves.

John Henry

Lloyd W. Robertson म्हणाले...

Does Jack Dorsey know anything about art? I looked up "how did Twitter get its name?"


Dorsey has explained the origin of the "Twitter" title: ...we came across the word "twitter", and it was just perfect. The definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information", and "chirps from birds". And that's exactly what the product was.

MadisonMan म्हणाले...

does Ms. Ward love art?!
My opinion is that she loves the feeling of being a savior of the oppressed (N.B.: Not actually being a savior) far more than she loves art.

Jeff Gee म्हणाले...

One of Gunther Schiller's "Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee" is "The Twittering Machine." It's the most fun of the seven. It's the only one with jazzy parts. If I'd been running RCA Red Seal when they released the version conducted by Eric Leinsdorf way back when, I'd have put out "Twittering Machine" as a single with "The Little Blue Devil" on the B Side. It wouldn't have cracked the top ten, but it might have swanked up the outer edges of the top 200.

guitar joe म्हणाले...

God, I hate this crap. Could she cram more stupid buzz words into her brain? 'No Sexists, No Racists, No Fascists.' Fine. Agreed. Please, quit hitting me over the head with the obvious.

I was looking for something to watch on Saturday and clicked on a show on Netflix called "Kath & Kim 20th Anniversary Specials." Apparently the comedy duo is popular in Australia. The opening of the show, before the first skit: "The producers acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which this program was produced. We pay our respects to all First Nations people and acknowledge elders past and present." I watched a few minutes. Amusing, but I couldn't get that preachy intro out of my head. And, really, if you're so broken up about exploitation of these folks, build houses for them, give them food--hell, move out and give them back their land. I'm willing to bet that the activism stops with that virtue signaling statement.

My biggest problem with woke progressives, as opposed to traditional libs, is this godawful, treacly self righteous, self promoting preachiness. How is it any different from being accosted by someone who wants to know if I've accepted Jesus as my personal saviour?

robother म्हणाले...

I'm seeing a design drawing for a patent office. Jack Dorsey ripped off Klee's idea for a Twitter Machine (even the name!). At least there's a trademark case.

Sydney म्हणाले...

That painting could be the logo for Twitter.

Cappy म्हणाले...

Report to Ministry of Love, Room 100 immediately.

Kevin म्हणाले...

'No Sexists, No Racists, No Fascists.'

Communists welcome!

rhhardin म्हणाले...

That was when Hitler was starving in Vienna and started political theorizing. The Marxists tied him in knots:

"The more I argued with them, the more I got to know their dialectics. First they counted on the ignorance of their adversary; then, when there was no way out, they themselves pretended stupidity. If all this was of no avail, they refused to understand or they changed the subject when driven into a corner; they brought up truisms, but they immediately transferred their acceptance to quite different subjects, and, if attacked again, they gave way and pretended to know nothing exactly. Wherever one attacked one of these prophets, one's hands seized slimy jelly; it slipped through one's fingers only to collect again in the next moment. If one smote one of them so thoroughly that, with the bystanders watching, he could but agree, and if one thus thought he had advanced at least one step, one was greatly astonished the following day. The Jew did not in the least remember the day before, he continued to talk in the same old strain as if nothing had happened, and if indignantly confronted, he pretended to be astonished and could not remember anything except that his assertions had already been proved true the day before. Often I was stunned. One did not know what to admire more: their glibness of tongue or their skill in lying.

I gradually began to hate them." (Mein Kampf)

Kirk Parker म्हणाले...

Would make the perfect logo for Twitter.

TosaGuy म्हणाले...

Those who run museums have one responsibility—ensuring that people want to visit them.

Museums do change and generally that is a good thing. Yet, white people approaching everything like they committed a the Holocaust everywhere they go will not invite people from any demographic except that small subset of the curator’s connected friends. Their money will be there for a time, but it won’t last and the museum will have lost its connection to society.

Bob Wilson म्हणाले...

Lord, please make this silliness stop. Don't let it permeate the social, political, cultural fabric of the land. Please replace fools in positions of authority with people who have
good, old-fashioned common sense matched with decency. And, Lord, please remove the
artificial halos worn so ostentatiously by the intelligentsia so they can rejoin regular
folks and learn what wasn't taught in a building encrusted with ivy.

Sebastian म्हणाले...

'caring for beliefs and ideas and relationships'

This is true, in the sense that "caring" here means "imposing," only correct beliefs, ideas and relationships, of course.

"being 'a space that brings people together.'"

This is also true, in the sense that progs mean to bring us together in their very own penal colony.

Pragmatic question: how does removing objects that convey the beliefs and ideas of distant others, and forge a sense of relationship with them, "bring people together"?

Nancy म्हणाले...

I recently stumbled across "The Penal Colony" in an anthology. AAAAAGH!

Wince म्हणाले...

You will be made to care.

BarrySanders20 म्हणाले...

Sebastian said...

"being 'a space that brings people together.'"
This is also true, in the sense that progs mean to bring us together in their very own penal colony.

Yes, it concentrates people together. Like a camp. Where they can learn the right ideas.

Michael म्हणाले...

Those you wish to include don’t come to museums regardless of what is in them They are not staying away for the reason you think. They aren’t interested.

ccscientist म्हणाले...

Any ceremonial objects held by native peoples 100 years ago would be long gone by now. Native people do not have museums nor the ability to preserve history. A museum enables empathy because it holds objects from diverse people, just like a zoo enables us to appreciate animals by having animals rather than just photos.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

Apparently, we are going to have to put our great museums of the past into future museums of museums.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

And when you prompted me to think of "empathy machines", I immediately thought of "A Clockwork Orange".

guitar joe म्हणाले...

Can someone explain the point of rhhardin's post?

William म्हणाले...

The early Jacobins and Bolsheviks were both equally convinced that they had made a great leap forward and were poised to eliminate all the old prejudices of mankind. Didn't work out as planned though.......Art appropriation: Napoleon in his wars of conquest harvested the great art in those countries he conquered. After his defeat, a lot of it had to be given back but much of it remains in the Louvre. It's pretty much okay to confiscate art from aristocrats but not from indigenous peoples.......Noted in passing: When the Bolsheviks first attained power, they gained much need hard currency by selling off the art collections of various Romanovs, aristocrats, and wealthy merchants. This art was outright confiscated from its owners. Some of the wealthy merchants were Jewish. I wonder why no one has ever sued for the return of these collections.

RNB म्हणाले...

"...a museum that's an empathy machine cannot be a torture device because nobody is forced to go to the museum..." No, the citizenry are just forced to pay for it. And to submit to the hectoring of the museum functionaries whose salaries they fund.

Owen म्हणाले...

TosaGuy @ 8:24:”… the museum will have lost its connection to society.”

Word. Covid has made it worse but the accelerating pace of cultural change (collapse?) has been undermining museums of all kinds for quite a while. Never mind their management coming down with a bad case of Woke, they face a public increasingly impatient with the dusty old displays that require literacy and respectful curiosity. It’s all about touch and feel and fun rides, with dumbed-down content and lots of places to eat and get the T-shirt.

IMHO.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
Like a worm on a hook
Like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee

If I, if I have been unkind
I hope that you can just let it go by
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you

Oh, like a baby, stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me
But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee



- Leonard Cohen

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

He is responding to the "extra background", Joe.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

Can someone explain the point of rhhardin's post?

@guitar joe, I suspect he meant to post his comment on the Tom Stoppard thread.

Big Mike म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
n.n म्हणाले...

"Mein Kampf"

Critical Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) Theory

liberal (i.e. divergent) ideology

color quotas

political congruence ("=")

hate symbolism (e.g. albinophobia)

affirmative discrimination

"Jew privilege"

Mengele mandates and personal affirmation

A progressive (i.e. monotonic) path and grade.

"Mein Kampf" was an empathetic progenitor of modern Woke "secular" religion. #HateLovesAbortion

n.n म्हणाले...

The NitTwitter evolution.

n.n म्हणाले...

DIEversity

Biff म्हणाले...

I googled Esme Ward. I was struck by the number of carefully posed, well-photographed portraits that accompanied the listed articles. There definitely was a style to them. Collectively, they appeared to combine into a curated exhibit of heroic narcissism. Then again, I find the photographic style of many pieces to be unbearably clichéd: depending on the subject's political affiliation, either demonized or hagiographic.

I also noticed a curious obliqueness to the descriptions of her career history, with a near total absence of references to her educational background. It took some digging to find references to her degrees. Her undergrad work was in history, and she has an MA in French Revolutionary Culture and Theory. Not that there is anything wrong with either, it's just unusual how the customary educational references are absent from nearly all of her bio blurbs.

My own career has followed an eclectic, somewhat non-traditional path, so I hesitate to cast stones, but something is activating my "spidey sense." If the matter were more related to my professional interests, I'd be keen to find out more about her.

Ice Nine म्हणाले...

>Ward said in a recent interview in her office, which has a velvet sofa and a framed poster reading 'No Sexists, No Racists, No Fascists.' Calling museums 'empathy machines,' she said their mission extended beyond caring for objects and collections to 'caring for beliefs and ideas and relationships,' and being 'a space that brings people together.'"<

Caring for beliefs and ideas, well...except for those that might be sexist, racist, fascist - which many of her apparently revered aboriginal and indigenous people, as we know, most certainly possess.
Brings people together except for sexist, racist, fascist people, that is.
Hmm, gonna have to call bullshit on this twit.

(Or perhaps her office "space" isn't in the museum "space" she directs...)

Heartless Aztec म्हणाले...

She left out Communists.

motorrad म्हणाले...

Fascists. I don't think that word means what she thinks it means. Not in that context anyway.

Rusty म्हणाले...

They could have saved everyone a lot of heartache and just become a Starbucks.

effinayright म्हणाले...

Someone wanna 'splain to me why millions of South Asians moved to the homeland of their colonial oppressors?

effinayright म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Narr म्हणाले...

The Klee reminds me a bit of Jean Tinguely's fountain in Basel, Schweiz.

typingtalker म्हणाले...

" ... the museum as a machine?" Like a car wash or Disneyland ... enjoy the ride, keep your hands inside and take lots of pictures.

Leora म्हणाले...

I always thought the Twitter Machine was a comment on the visitors to the galleries where art is displayed. Their speech is like bird song, not unattractive but no basis to it but the turn of the machinery of criticism.

mutecypher म्हणाले...

I imagine that Ms. Ward is familiar with Roger Ebert's description of film as "a machine that generates empathy."

So maybe just make a movie of what's in the museum and people can just watch the movie whenever they are in the mood?