Contenu du sommaire : Les musées au prisme de la communication

A time for history, a time for heritage
The history of museums is closely tied to the history of heritage building, which began in the late 18th century with the advent of the Nation. As the summons went out for popular incarnations of the national, the emphasis was on collections that could evoke the collective origins of the imaginary new community. The history museums would then serve as a workshop for historians and would mirror a vanished world to which a claim could be made, and which needed to be convincingly portrayed. The contradictions inherent in these aims and approaches became obvious during the 20th century, nourishing controversy over the role of museums and the manipulation of heritage.

Managing museums: an uneasy transition
The world of museums has changed considerably in recent years, with concerns for tourist and economic development, or performance, largely overshadowing social and even heritage conservation concerns. Following the logic of globalisation, a few “superstar museums”, like the Guggenheim in Bilbao, have been imposing their own modus operandi to the overall detriment of more modest establishments. The particular role of the State, in France, has contributed to the development of an outstanding museum infrastructure, in part to sustain a dominant position in terms of incoming tourist flows. However, this new perspective on heritage has also brought a change in the culture of museum organisation. As scientific staff are replaced by purely administrative staff at management level, the interests of the public authorities and the economy are increasingly liable to outweigh the interests of science and heritage.

The semiotic power of exhibition spaces
The status of spaces is a question that lies at the very heart of the semiotics of exhibitions. This article offers a review of the changing technology of exhibition design – especially as applied in a museum's approaches to points of view – to address the importance given to space in the design some of today's exhibitions and, in particular, to understand how spaces are used to make them meaningful. Two exhibitions that are emblematic in terms of the use of space – of the Quai Branly museum collections and the opening exhibition for the Centre Pompidou-Metz – are analysed here to highlight the communicational issues underlying their uses of space.

Scripting an exhibition
This article charts the changing course of museum design, from classic displays of objects to be looked at and exhibitions that seek to bring understanding, through to discursive exhibitions that offer theories – about the objects displayed and then with those objects. Taking these developments still further, exhibitions can even take on a life and expression of their own, through the meta-discourses that develop in the different and significant forms of exhibition design. The recently deployed hypertext approach appears at different levels, intermingling and playing on different levels of discourse. Exhibitions are becoming more complex, but also more fascinating thanks to the variety of design methods used and the different stances that visitors are brought to adopt.

The sociology of democratisation in the world of museums
The many studies undertaken on museum visitors in the last quarter of a century in France clearly show that museums are as widely diverse as their visitors. They show how far the characteristics of museum visits have changed, whether in terms of context, organisation, or the nature and experience of a museum visit and its aftermath. They also bring a more relative perspective to the idea that interest in museums, and therefore types of museum visitors, are mechanically reproduced in society. Scepticism on this point nevertheless remains, and this study brings in three new analytical criteria to help overcome this : free access to museum collections, the company of the visitor and the social moments of museum visits.

Museums for contemporary art installations
Museums of contemporary art have appeared everywhere in the Western world and beyond in recent years, and they are constantly increasing in number. Any tourist visiting a major city today expects to find a museum of contemporary art, just as they expect to find an Italian restaurant or a cinema. In most cases, this is indeed what they find. At the very least, tourists will find that the city's museum of contemporary art is still under construction and will open the following year. Whatever the case, the ready acceptance of the “museum of contemporary art” in today's culture is significant. Traditionally, an art museum was a place where the art of the past could be collected, curated and displayed right in the heart of the contemporary world. But what does creating a museum of contemporary art really mean? In other words, what does it mean “to make a museum exhibit” of contemporaneity itself?

The museum as a protagonist in contemporary art
In our time of proliferating artistic creation, but also of accelerating change and an all-pervading consumer culture, museums are trawling though the vast, sprawling breaker's yard of post-modernism to select the material or immaterial items they consider significant enough to be preserved for future generations as reflections of the culture of our time. We argue that in the field of contemporary art, museums have an essential role that adds an aura of the sublime to works of art. The essential question then becomes epistemological. Over and above the impassioned debates between those for and those against what is officially labelled as contemporary art, two essential questions remain: what are the processes through which the museum as an institution constructs aesthetic truth, and what are the processes whereby artists attain the sacrament of a museum exhibition?

Contemporary art, the Internet and museums
This article explores the use made in certain museums of the very latest advances in communication and technology. Drawing on primarily North-American theories and examples, we examine the presentation of a particular work of contemporary art, Chris Ofili's No Woman, No Cry, selected by Tate Britain from the Google Art Project. Our study of this recent case shows how museums apply the same principles of practice on the web as those they have applied for years in their exhibitions and their messages to the public.

Museums, from display cases to objects in themselves
Contemporary museums are rapidly evolving from “temples of art and culture” to providers of cultural and recreational activities. Although supposed to be instructive, they are embarking on a controversial policy of pleasing the public in order to exist, the ultimate aim being to draw as many “customers” as possible to secure their future. And in pursuing these aims, they have been exporting themselves, just like any commercial brand, to nation-cities seeking a “place” on the globalised map. The Abu Dhabi Louvre is a striking example of this global trend, as is the Guggenheim, which has now become a movable landmark in the arts and culture landscape. This phenomenon of “existence through architecture” is turning architectural works into objects as well as tools to enhance communication and notoriety, a development that has more to do with marketing than with culture. But given this new status, where the building itself guarantees the museum's existence and contemporaneity, how much interest is there in its collections? And to what extent is every museum's share of public responsibility for collective cultural development likely to compromised by “market forces”?

Social museums: a tipping point towards social integration?
How do social museums view societies? Museums are one of the main structural elements of any society, in particular because of their role in creating and sharing knowledge: in this sense, they are both a mirror and a critique of society. Because of their concern for contemporary issues such as cultural diversity, digitisation, globalisation, the development of cultural activities and even sustainable development, social museums have to constantly adapt, create and innovate while dealing with the inherent paradoxes of any society. Through examples from France and Quebec, this article offers a critical perspective on the issues and challenges arising from current developments in social museums, from discourses on cultural diversity, designing exhibitions on other cultures and ways of presenting the material and immaterial heritage, to the increasingly popularity of these museums among the public. Given their mission and their dynamics, could the social museum be a tipping point in the advent of an integrated interpretation of society? If so, what kind of world does it aim to build? What is the world it aims to reflect?

Corporate or social? Two long-established utility companies and their museums EDF and Orange
This article investigates two museums which, although established by utility companies, were not intended as corporate museums: EDF's Electropolis museum at Mulhouse and the Cité des Télécoms at Pleumeur-Bodou. Behind these museums are two companies with a parallel though not entirely contemporaneous history: EDF and France Telecom (soon to become Orange). Both were established as public utility companies, with their own specific methods of operation, and thus formed part of the national heritage. On becoming state-owned, they effectively exercised a monopoly until the change in their status forced them into a competitive environment – which necessarily raised the issue of their identity as well as new questions on their support to museums that were partly, but not exclusively, dedicated to them.

Museology and the challenge of portraying the post-industrial heritage
The questions raised by post-industrial museums and their different forms challenge the idea of “heritage” taken as meaning an “inheritance”. They are an invitation to consider the traces of an industry – mining in this case – as part of an unfinished process of conservation, interpretation and creation, which is driven by more than a passion for collection or even the need to attract the interest of tourists in a heritage collection intended as a showcase for a region. A research and accompaniment project in 2002-2003 for the Nord – Pas-de-Calais region was our starting point for this investigation into the forms of communication and the treatment of heritage in this mining area, which was aiming, in particular, to achieve recognition as a Unesco world heritage. Here, the economic conversion issue takes on particular significance in the active forms of cultural – and especially artistic and environmental - interpretation that stem from new ways of envisaging economic and social activities past and present.

Creating a museum, representing immigration: France's National Centre of Immigration History
From the beginning, the Cité nationale de l'Histoire de l'immigration (CNHI) project was plagued by both political and symbolic difficulties. Nancy L. Green discusses the choices made and the politics surrounding the choice of the building, a former colonial arts museum. How successful is the idea of using an old symbol of France's hubris at the height of her colonial empire to highlight the historical irony of her former colonies arriving to live in France? In analysing the multiple meanings of immigration itself and the different “options” available to represent a history of immigration in France – a chronological view of successive waves of immigrants, displays highlighting different groups – Green discusses the tensions between researchers and exhibition designers, between art and history as modes of representation, and the idea of the thematic approach, which was the option eventually chosen. While this approach brings out similarities in experiences of migration, it can also detract from an understanding of specific circumstances. The CNHI itself reflects a specific moment in the representation of immigrants in French history.

Museums and exhibitions in the debate on immigration in France
This article compares two exhibitions on immigration in French museums: Repères [Landmarks] and D'Isère et du Maghreb: Mémoires d'immigrés [Memories of immigration – from the Isère and from the Maghreb]. Our analysis shows how the world of museums actively contributes to the recurrent debate on immigration in French society, with each exhibition putting forward a view of immigration through the design choices made.

Museums in Namibia at the heart of a changing society
This article investigates the dynamics of museums in the context of identity building. A study in Namibia on the different types of museums scattered across the country brings out two different patterns. The first is unifying and centralising and represented by the national museum, which publicly promotes the official representation of Namibia as a “rainbow nation”. This, the traditional pattern for museums, is dominant and structurally centralised. The second pattern, which tends towards diversification and a territorial focus, is seen in the museums established by the many different communities in Namibia. This territorial and omnicentric pattern stems from the way communities perceive themselves. These two patterns have become the two main strands in the fabric of Namibia's museums and are integral to the way communication is orchestrated.

How museums and science centres become exposed to socio-scientific controversy
In this article, we offer a communicational analysis of the different stances taken by museums in their treatment of socio-scientific controversies, in order to explore their significance in terms of changing patterns in scientific education and citizens' empowerment. Several studies have shown that some science centres tend to adopt a distanced stance by confining controversies to their scientific dimensions. Here, we discuss alternative approaches in which the controversial issues are included. Whether explicitly taking up their stance as protagonists, organisers or witnesses to a public debate, science centres display a strong tendency towards mediation, thereby acknowledging contemporary reconfigurations in the governance of science in society. We believe that the experiences reported on here reflect awareness of a change in the balance of legitimating powers in terms of scientific and technical choices, and have effectively distanced themselves from the original idea of highlighting the value of science.

Environment and participation in museums: different cultural expressions of science
Since the support given to eco-museums by the first Ministry for the Environment and the emergence of environmental crisis and sustainable development as an exhibition theme, science museums and social museums have treated the environment at different times and in different ways. Considerable differences can be discerned in areas such as participatory dynamics, the political dimensions of knowledge on relationships between humans and nature and the development of social engineering technologies. Museums in this sense increasingly appear to be no longer places for disseminating science, but places for cultural expressions of science, natural sciences and social sciences.

Science, political contexts and museums in Latin America
This article focuses on two aspects: the strong links between political context and museum creation in Latin America, and the development of centres of scientific, technical and industrial culture to remedy the gap in high-quality scientific education. Our argument here is built up from four main angles: the context in which the first natural history museums were created, the emergence of scientific communities, the acknowledged need for science popularisation during the transition to democracy and the development, since 1978, of centres of scientific, technical and industrial culture.

Social interaction in Life Sciences museums: mission impossible or collective amnesia?
Through a comparative analysis of theoretical advances in museology in the 1980-1990 period and several analyses of life sciences exhibitions in the decade starting in 2000, we highlight the obstacles inhibiting the expression of a museum's mission of social interaction. Inertia, though well identified, seems to be the major stumbling block, whether at the disciplinary level (where it is a factor of citizens' disinterest and neutralises debates) or the institutional level (where it suppresses participation). We therefore argue that what is needed to overcome this type of passive resistance is not further clarification of museum theory and practice, but a profoundly societal and political reappraisal capable of challenging the immobility of a desperately positivist, elitist, security-obsessed and behaviourist society.

Scholarly museums for the modern age: Turin's Museum of Anatomy rises to the challenge
The University of Turin's Museum of Human Anatomy, founded in 1739, was transferred in 1898 to the building it still occupies, which is notable for its monumental style of architecture. It was recently restored to the atmosphere of its day, but during the project, careful consideration was given to possibilities for transforming this scholarly establishment into a communicational museum. It is one of those included in Turin's new museums project, alongside the Museum of Fruit and the Cesare Lombroso Museum of Criminal Anthropology. All three museums, which have about 200 visitors a day, offer valuable insights into scientific positivism, which was particularly influential in Turin.

Are tweets the stuff of revolution?
Does the use of Twitter and social networks sites during the Arab revolts in early 2011 amount to a revolution 2.0? Or would it be more relevant to analyse the role and importance of communication tools generally in the awakening of populations silenced for so many years by authoritarian regimes?

The Arab Awakening: from imaginings to real life
This article shows how, in the sudden “Arab Awakening” and its domino effect as it spread from country to country, means of information and communication in an age of transparency and simultaneity opened up a sphere for action that could potentially trigger an uprising against dictatorship. But although the social networking sites – especially Facebook –, text messaging and emails gave citizens the means to revolt, there is also the question of the imagination that created that terrain. The 24-hour news channels in the Arab world, especially Al Jazeera, nourished the revolutionary imagination with telegenic images and especially a “friendly” and often protective informational discourse that, in parallel, inspired people with courage and ideas after decades of slumber, galvanising them into action.