“Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of
significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the
analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but
an interpretive one in search of meaning.”
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretations of Cultures.
“Art is one of the means of unifying people”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom.
SUMMARY.
Many North American museums have collections from
different areas of the world, but no unifying theme to the collections. Most
museums originated in the 19th or first half of the 20th
century with outdated concepts about geography and cultures. But
Anthropological and Geographical concepts changed rapidly in the 20th
century. My proposal introduces aesthetics and anthropological definitions of
culture as unifying concepts for visitors of museums, while recognizing
different cultures and geographical realities.
INTRODUCTION.
The museums that best describe outdated concepts of geography
are the general museums about Asia; these organizations have collections form different areas of Asia, but many of the geographical regions of Asia are culturally different. The former perception of Asia was either as a single culture or as
societies with many common cultural characteristics. The modern reality is that
Asia is culturally more diverse than Europe. Both Asia and Europe are parts of
the continent of Eurasia.
Museums of Asian societies are not the only institutions
with collections from different cultural areas. For example, the De Young Museum, in San
Francisco, includes Art from New World societies with
traditional cultural objects from Africa and Oceania. If many museums
do not have a unifying cultural theme, what is the best way for visitors to understand a diverse collection? Specifically, how does a visitor understand a different culture?
PROGRAM PROPOSAL.
My proposal includes aesthetics and
definitions of culture as unifying
themes. The aesthetics and definitions
of culture are comparisons guides for visitors to comprehend different cultures
and their objects. I also add a third
theme: Parallel experiences in the life of all human beings.
FIRST THEME:
AESTHETICS.
Aesthetics
appreciation is a universal experience. But art objects are specific to a time,
culture, and style. Is there an abstract concept or idea of beauty that
provides understanding to a diverse collection? George Santayana defines beauty as an ideal (1). Every style of art
has common concepts and ideas that unify artistic creation and are specific to
a style.
An ideal implies a relativity of experience, since in the
visual arts there are no specific universal concepts. Beauty is a point of view
subject to a concept or ideal. For example, the concept of dog does not exist
as a perfect representation in the world, but the concept is obvious in the
different races of dogs.
The aesthetics theme starts with Santayana’s concept of
Aesthetics, the abstract definition of an ideal; the visitor uses this concept
as a comparison guide between art styles in modern American society and objects
from another culture. For each of the groupings or geographical areas in the
collection, the visitor learns the specific cultural ideals of one object and
uses these concepts to view similar stylistic objects in the collection. At the
end of the visit the viewer has an intellectual understanding about the
aesthetics or ideals of different cultures.
SECOND THEME: DEFINITIONS OF CULTURE.
The second theme
is anthropological definitions of
culture to intellectually digest the diversity of cultural areas. There is
a book with more than 100 definitions of cultures: Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kuckhohn,
“Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions” (2). Below is a
selection of these definitions of cultures from the book by Kroeber and
Kuckhohn. I include 20 definitions of cultures, since there are different
anthropological views of culture.
1. Page 43, from Tylor, 1871: 1.
Culture, or civilization, . . . is that
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and
any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of a society.
2. Page 43, from Boas, 1930: 79.
Culture embraces all the manifestations of
social habits of a community, the reactions of the individual as affected by
the habits of a community, the reactions of the individual as affected by the
habits of the group in which he lives, and the products of human activities as
determined by these habits.
3. Page 47, from Sapir, 1921: 221.
. .
. culture, that is, . . . the socially inherited assemblage of practices and
beliefs that determines the texture of our lives . . . .
4. Page 47, from Sutherland and Woodward, 1940: 19.
Culture includes everything that can be
communicated from one generation to another. The culture of a people is their
social heritage, a “complex whole” which
includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law techniques of tool fabrication
and use, and method of communication.
5. Page 50, from Bogardus, 1930: 336.
Culture is the sum total of the ways of
doing and thinking, past and present, of a social group. It is the sum of the
traditions, or handed-down beliefs, and of customs, or handed-down procedures.
6. Page 53, from Bidney, 1946: 535.
An integral or holistic concept of culture
comprises the acquired or cultivated behavior, feeling, and thought of
individuals within a society as well as the patterns of forms of intellectual,
social, and artistic ideals which human societies have professed historically.
7. Page 55, from Dawson 1928: xiii-xiv.
A culture is a common way of life – a
particular adjustment of man to his natural surroundings and his economic needs.
8. Page 58, from Hoebel, 1949: 3, 4.
Culture is the sum total of learned
behavior patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society and
which are, therefore, not the result of biological inheritance.
9. Page 60, from Tozzer, n. d. (but pre-1930).
Culture is the rationalization of habit.
10. Page 60, from Roheim, 1934: 216.
By culture we shall understand the sum of
all sublimations, all substitutes, or reaction formations, in short, everything
in society that inhibits impulses or permits their distorted satisfaction.
11. Page 60, from Katz and Schanck, 1938: 551.
Society refers to the common objective
relationships (non-attitudinal) between man and man and between men and their
material world. It is often confused with culture, the attitudinal relationship
between men . . . Culture is to society what personality is to the organism.
Culture sums up the particular institutional content of a society. Culture is
what happens to individuals within the context of a particular society, and . .
. these happenings are personal changes.
12. Page 61, from Willey, 1929: 207.
A culture is a system of interrelated and
interdependent habit patterns of response.
13. Page 61, from Kluckhohn and Kelly, 1945a: 98.
A culture is a
historically derived system of explicit and implicit designs for living, which
tends to be shared by all or specially designated members of a group.
14. Page 64, from Willey, 1927b: 500.
. . . that part of the environment which
man has himself created and to which he must adjust himself.
15. Page 64, from Folsom, 1931: 476-477.
Culture is not any part of man or his
inborn equipment. It is the sum total of all that man has produced: tools,
symbols, most organizations, common activities, attitudes, and beliefs. It includes
both physical products and immaterial products. It is everything of a
relatively permanent character that we call artificial, everything which is
passed down from one generation to the next rather than acquired by each
generation for itself: it is, in short, civilization.
16. Page 66, from Ward, 1903: 235.
A culture is a social structure, a social
organism, if any one prefers, and ideas are its germs.
17. Page 69, from Bain, 1942: 87.
Culture is all behavior mediated by
symbols.
18. Pages 69-70, from White, 1949b: 15.
The cultural category, or order, of
phenomena is made up of events that are dependent upon a faculty peculiar to
the human species, namely, the ability to use symbols. These events are the
ideas, beliefs, languages, tools, utensils, customs, sentiments, and
institutions that made up the civilization – or culture, to use the
anthropological term – of any people regardless of time, place, or degree of
development.
19. Page 70, from Davis, 1949: 3-4.
. . . it (culture) embraces all modes of
thought and behavior that are handed down by communicative interaction – i.e.,
by symbolic transmission – rather than by genetic inheritance.
20. Page 70, from Ostwald, 1907: 510.
That which distinguishes men from animals
we call culture.
SECOND THEME: APPLICATION.
Understanding other cultures is very difficult. A definition
of culture is a point of reference that helps with the intellectual
understanding of a different society. A definition of culture is also a tool
for comparing different cultures.
A visitor to the museum starts with an abstract concept of
culture. As the visitor moves through different groupings or geographical areas,
a single object from each region illustrates the cultural ideals of
each region. The visitor can make comparisons about beliefs, technology, and
traditions from different regions. At the end of the visit the viewer has a
basic cultural understanding about the different cultures and geographical
areas.
Museum's collections are usually large with different
styles in each grouping. My proposal at the beginning is simple, since only one
art object per grouping is necessary to illustrate a cultural point. With time
geographical areas will have more than one art object as cultural examples.
THIRD THEME.
Human beings do not always recognize the humanity in peoples
from different cultures. I propose a third
theme on parallel experiences of
humanity, for example: The life of women in different Asian cultures; or
games, board games, and entertainment in different societies of the world. For
each geographical area, the visitor sees one object that defines a parallel
human experience. At the end of the visit, a visitor has an intellectual grasp
of the humanity of different peoples from different regions of the world. A
visitor sees a reflection of personal life in other cultures.
PRESENTATION.
A visitor buys a general entrance ticket, with the addition
of a small fee for a theme. The presentation of a theme is through a recording,
a guided tour, or a small leaflet plan. The presentation is basic, but
additional references or written information can be provided for free if a
patron wants to learn more.
QUALIFICATIONS/EXPERIENCES.
Bachelor degree: History; University of California, Los
Angeles. In graduate school I studied Anthropology and Aesthetics, University
of California, Los Angeles. Technical Writing: California State University,
Dominguez Hills, 2011. I am an Artist.
BUDGET.
Use current personnel/experts as a source of information.
This proposal does not require additional work from personnel/experts, but only
a change of priorities. Include me as a resource; the museum will only need
between two to four weeks of my consulting work, and my fees are negotiable.
TIME.
Most museums have large number of experts that can
easily make my proposal a reality. The inclusion of new themes comes with the
rotation of the collection. The implementation of the new idea is subject to
the schedule of the museum.
REVENUE.
This proposal generates additional income for the museum,
since a visitor can visit the museum more than once and use a different theme
to view the collection. New themes and exhibits are always news worthy and of
interest to the public. These proposals are of value to corporations seeking to
learn more about other cultures. For public schools, this is a learning
environment.
NORTH AMERICAN MUSEUMS.
The following are some museums that would benefit from my
proposal: De Young Museum, Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), Asian Society Gallery
(New York), Seattle Asian Art Museum (Seattle Art Museum), The Freer Gallery of
Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian Institution), The Rubin
Museum of Art (New York), Museum of Fine Art (Boston), The Metropolitan Museum
of Art (New York), The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago,
The New Orleans Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Detroit
Institute of Art, Cincinnati Art Museum, Denver Museum of Art, Newark Museum
(New Jersey), Baltimore Museum of Art, and Royal Ontario Museum of Art
(Toronto, Canada).
REVIEW.
The aesthetic experience is universal; this is an
intellectual and emotional experience that unites people across cultures. My
proposal makes aesthetic appreciation and cultural understanding an accessible
experience in a multicultural world.
REFERENCES.
1. George Santayana, The Sense
of Beauty, Being the Outline of Aesthetics Theory.
Dover Publications, Inc., New York.
2. Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kuckhohn with the Assistance of
Wayne Untereiner and Appendices by Alfred G. Meyer, Culture:
A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Published by The Museum, 1952.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Clifford Geertz, The
Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books,
1973.
Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kuckhohn with the Assistance of
Wayne Untereiner and Appendices by Alfred G. Meyer, Culture:
A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Published by The Museum, 1952.
Thomas Munro, Oriental
Aesthetics. Cleveland, Ohio: Press of Western Reserve University,
1965.
George Santayana, The Sense
of Beauty, Being the Outline of Aesthetics Theory.
New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
