The Impact of Global Wicked Problems on Foundations of Museum Work

Kirjoittajat

• Katriina Siivonen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6302-1146

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.163961

Abstrakti

The theme of Mari Viita-aho’s doctoral thesis, the ongoing change in the societal role of museums in relation to global problems, is topical both in terms of museum work and the global situation. In particular, Viita-aho examines participation, colonialism, and interpretations of climate change. She discusses these in relation to how museums have changed from those who preserve and safeguard cultural heritage to those who solve global problems. Viita-aho’s focus is on both art and cultural history museums, with an emphasis on art museums, while natural history museums have been excluded from her thesis.

 

The dissertation consists of four articles and an introduction. In her first article, Viita-aho examines different forms of participation and their reinterpretations in a Nordic context, along with their consequences to museum work, as the focus shifts from museum collections to people visiting museums and their participation in museum activities. The focus is on the opportunities provided to those involved to define the cultural heritage that will be displayed in museums. 

 

In the second and third articles, co-written by Viita-aho and Johanna Turunen, the authors examine colonialism by analysing the presentation of Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s so-called ‘African period’ in the exhibitions of the Gallen-Kallela Museum in Espoo. They present a view of colonialism as a deep-rooted part of Finnish society and nationally oriented museum activities, and discuss the possibilities of decolonising museums.

 

In her fourth article, Viita-aho discusses climate change in the exhibitions of three Finnish art museums. Through these, she highlights the difficulty of processing natural sciences-based knowledge in museum work that is based on humanistic knowledge. In her earliest example from the early 2000s, it led to the avoidance of discussing climate change in an exhibition due to its perceived political character. This neglected the scientific evidence of climate change, which is urgently needed as an argument for its mitigation.

 

The material of the thesis centres around the attempt of museums to focus complex, wicked problems within their practical work. Methodologically, the work is a triangulation of different materials that is well suited for the study of multifaceted phenomena. The analysis presented in the thesis includes scientific articles on involving people in the activities of Nordic museums, archival documents on the planning and display of exhibitions, and related supplementary semi-structured interviews. In one exhibition, Viita-aho collected materials by observing and documenting the exhibition itself. The analysis methods presented in the thesis include critical close reading, object analysis, and a discursive approach. The thesis does not consider the methodological choices of data collection, as it contains no references to the relevant scientific literature. In addition, with regard to the thesis’s analysis methods, there is little discussion about their nature with relevant references. These are clear shortcomings in the work. The principles of research ethics are described well, in accordance with current practices.

 

Based on the empirical observations and clear, lucid analyses presented in the articles, Viita-aho demonstrates that participation, colonialism, and climate change are difficult, multidimensional and interconnected questions in practical museum work. In the theoretical examination section of her introductory text, Viita-aho analyses the different perspectives of the articles and raises the discussion to a more theoretically abstract level. She combines the concepts of wicked problems and difficult, dark cultural heritage into the concept of wicked cultural heritage problems.

 

The theoretical framework of the thesis comes from critical cultural heritage research, where the use of cultural heritage is regarded as more central than its existence itself. The descriptions and theoretical bases of the concepts related to this are clearly presented. This theoretical background and the related reflection resulted in the crystallisation of the concept of wicked cultural heritage problems, which is the undeniable merit of the work. The insight into this concept is both the result of the work and the analytical concept created and used in the introduction. It helps to bring agency and the use of cultural heritage to the centre of the thesis. The concept is excellently derived from the previous theory of critical cultural heritage research.

 

Viita-aho links the current tension in museums to the birth of modern society and the sense of dualism that dates back to the Age of Enlightenment, according to which the human perspective is primary in art and cultural history museums, which can easily come into conflict with nature and scientifically perceived ecological problems or in the attempts to intervene in them. The transformation brought about by modern society can also be compared to the transformation caused by the Industrial Age and the emergence of nation states, which involves, for example, the establishment of national museums in different countries, and the current global transformation, which can be described with the help of megatrends. Key examples of such megatrends include the fragmentation of organisations and international networking, the strengthening of global interdependence, accelerating urbanisation, radical new technologies, and the global environmental crisis. These represent the underlying problems of participation, colonialism, and climate change, which are analysed in the dissertation and visible in contemporary museum work. The role of the current global transformation could have been strengthened with the help of megatrends, as the effect of the phenomena they describe on the concept of wicked cultural heritage problems is strong.

 

The analysis of how participation has been understood in museums highlights a wide range of different perspectives on participation in museum operations through different practices towards social participation and democratic decision-making. The thesis pays primary attention to practical methods for involving people in museum activities and the impact of these methods on the role of museums in society. However, this raises another question: are museums asking people to participate in museum work and the definition of cultural heritage and its value, or in solving the wicked global problems that museums face in the current era of transformation? This difference and its partial lack of specification is evident throughout the thesis. Focusing on museums as actors in the current transformation, as described by various megatrends, would have helped to structure and specify the current context of museum activities and how museums participate and involve people through their activities.

 

In addition, the use of the concept of wicked cultural heritage problems in the work’s analysis could have been deepened. Critical research on cultural heritage discusses the use of cultural heritage. From this perspective, it is essential to look at the terms used in the dissertation for those involved in museums. Terms such as ‘visitor’, ‘the public’ and ‘specialist’ are used, but no reference is made to the ‘users’ of museums and cultural heritage. Leena Paaskoski (Paaskoski et al. 2022) talks about ‘museum users’ when defining the dynamic museum, i.e. a museum that is active in society and builds the future in a goal-oriented manner together with its stakeholders, i.e. users. From the point of view of the theme of the dissertation, it would have been beneficial to include the idea of the ‘users’ of museums and cultural heritage and the model of the dynamic museum in its analysis, as the thesis deals with how museums can involve people in their work and use their involvement to influence the processing of current wicked problems in society.

Participation is about power. In the case of museums, it is not merely the democratic power of electing representatives to representative decision-making bodies, but the power to define cultural symbols and values. Human rights, as defined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, are associated with power. These rights include, for example, the freedom of expression and opinion of the individual. Viita-aho defines human rights as a legal issue. However, the Declaration is not essentially a legal document, but an ethical statement and declaration that many countries have ratified. Freedom of expression and opinion are central when people are involved in cultural heritage work. It is a question of who has the right to determine what cultural heritage is important – the people involved or cultural heritage experts – and this question is also central to Viita-aho’s thesis. A more in-depth recognition of the importance of human rights in the power to define cultural heritage would have benefited the work.

 

The core message of Mari Viita-aho's doctoral thesis is that the change in the social role of museums, or the transformation of museum work, starts from within museums, i.e. from museum employees who have the power to determine how to change their own work. This is an important observation, and it demonstrates how the concept of wicked cultural heritage problems captures something essential and respectful in relation to the museum work carried out in the current global era.

Author

Katriina Siivonen is an Adjunct Professor of Cultural Heritage Research and a Senior University Lecturer in Futures Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. Her work focuses on a transdisciplinary combination of futures research, cultural heritage research, and sustainability science. Over the course of more than 25 years of research, she has developed the study of cultural sustainability transformation and heritage futures into a thematic research area that can be integrated into society. She has led numerous participatory futures research projects over the last 20 years. She is a member of the Expert Panel for Sustainable Development in Finland, and she has served as the chair of the Advisory Board for the implementation of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in Finland (2014–2022).