Productivity of Culture

Eugenides Foundation

The full title of the presentation is "The Role of Museums, Foundations, Institutions"

Angelos Delivorias is Director of the Benaki Museum in Athens

further contents - CV

Presentation

(Note: As he could not be personally presented, his paper was read out.)

The role of museums in contemporary societies – at least as this is set out by the most ground-breaking international examples – has long since ceased to suffocate between outmoded ideas about treasuries of the past and excusive alibis about safekeeping the past for the needs of the future. Among the parameters that compose, or rather that ought to compose, the aims of museums today the present now carries decisive weight, enhancing primarily the social dimension and consequently the social obligation of museum organizations. And this not only in relation to the complementary function of museums to education, which is in any case well-known, but also in relation to the educational demand of recreation, which is essentially alien to the prevailing educational systems.

As our ancient ancestors, who were liberated from the complexes of pomposity and hypocrisy that depress us daily, used to say, Education and Recreation – Paideia and Paidia in Greek – are two homologues, equal and absolutely equivalent factors in the integration of social life in a utopian, if your like, State. Because they bisect vertically the systems of managing human fate, surpassing the bounds of age and touching on the deeper reasons of existence, the very essence of the community: namely, the perpetual improvement of the qualitative parameters that ensure its cohesion.

Thousands of pages have been written on these issues, and there have been countless fertile discussions, volatile oppositions and serious deliberations. Thus, I would not want it to be thought that my views bring new proposals of revolutionary content, just as I would not want it to be thought that they are kindled with the usual intellectualist propensity for originality. Because in effect they do no more than summarize thoughts diffuse in the museum world, which torment many of those who are aware of the task it is their duty to perform, but who are very often tied by oppressive terms of employment that are inhibitive for completing their mission. After all, we should not forget that most of the museum foundations worldwide, as state organizations, are inevitably governed by the spirit and substance of the State in which they have to survive. That is by the same nexus of legislation that safeguards ad hoc domestic and foreign policy, either by reproducing disguised natinalistic ideals, or by resurrecting colonial memories, or by perpetuating inexorable convictions and dogmatic conceptions.

For all the above reasons, and for many others too, which I have no time to develop thoroughly here, when we speak about museums in general it would be a good thing to refer back dialectically to a dynamic of a theoretical nature, independent of its partial applications in time and place. Seen from this perspective, museums can of course offer continually their protective roof to whatever is covered directly or indirectly by the concept of human progress – because that is what Culture is. Not, however, like well-protected storehouses and with the logic of Noah’s Ark, but like those banks which know how to invest profitably the citizens’ savings. I refer metaphorically to a rather complex mechanism of depositing, managing, financing, collecting returns, investing and reinvesting, the ultimate objective of which is not some private pockets but a common fund for promoting and disseminating these deposits, that is the property holdings of the community. In other words, that mechanism which will function like an initiating centre, introducing, processing and transmitting a message of seminal importance: that the history of man is the history of his culture.

In an age when much is said about Culture but very little is done about it, I feel the need to delimit as succinctly as possible, how its meaning is conceived. Culture is an extremely composite concept, which could be compared to the double helix of DNA, exactly because like the chromosomes it determines man’s consciousness hereditarily. When we refer generally and vaguely to culture today, we mainly mean music, indeed overwhelmingly popular music and from the New World, and to a far lesser extent classical. We also mean exhibitions, major or minor, dedicated to the art of various periods, with far more weight placed on European art and as far as contemporary art is concerned, the transatlantic idioms predominating once again over the expressions of other traditions. I would say the same about theatre, cinema and dance, and even more so about the circulation of poetry, literature and philosophy, not of course with the book in the bestsellers’ list in newspapers and magazines. But culture is also something else: it is scientific research and theoretical deliberation; it is awareness of the importance of the environment and of social responsibility; it is fertile dialogue and apparently trivial manifestations of everyday life; the quality of behavior; the sense of what being a citizens means and what obligations emanate from this; it is the conquest and the experience of a great truth: that each individual is counted among the fundamental components of the vast global family that makes up the Ecumene.

In order for museums to respond to such an extensive mesh of obligations and objectives, a network, if you like, of demands of such quality and quantity, they must first believe in their internal unity, which only the universal enhancement of their significance can guarantee. At the same time, they must lay claim to their intellectual, administrative and economic independence. In other words, the policy of their ethic, as well as the right to chart their own strategy, freed from the dictates of every unilateral, inflexible and unyielding attitude imposed from above. This is the only way they can ensure their disengagement from bureaucratic restrictions, state or otherwise, in order to serve not established disciplines but higher aims. This does not necessarily mean that they will reject the appropriate funding from the state, which in any case finances with largesse a host of minimally or completely non-productive sectors. However, it does mean that they are duty-bound to exhaust all available self-financing possibilities, in accordance with the logic of every organization that is aware of the true value of its property. That is, it means a totally different perception of the economic worth of the material it manages, as well as a totally different attitude to its productive power.

The economic dimension of cultural products, in other words the productivity of cultural goods, is conditional on their generous supply and continuous circulation in the market. This – as we all know – comes up against the reservations of those who defend the supposed humanistic mission of Culture. However, this stance conceals isolationism, very often insufferable arrogance, the inaction and in the final analysis the appropriation of a good that rightfully belongs to the community. The liberation of the circulation of this good automatically brings the circulation of the public around it: With the proliferation of related publications and the marketing of either replicas or works inspired by the primary material, in such a way that museums and artists are more directly linked. With the organization of diverse events, exhibitions, concerts, book presentations, all manner of theatrical and dance performances, discussions, conferences, even receptions or other social gatherings. With the creation of cafeterias and restaurants, in order to extend the time spent by visitors in the museum and to create an atmosphere of comfort in their relationship with it. Last, with the systematic preparation of the visitors of the future, by designing educational programmes, promoting life learning, holding regular courses, guided tours, specialist seminars, and so on.

There is of course no doubt that what I have referred to so far, as well as what I have forgotten to note, has to do with an investment policy whose returns can never be immediate. The same is true, however, more generally about securing a ‘market’. That is also why basic factor in promoting museum productivity is advertising, with all that its success entails. And even cultivating sponsorship sensitivity, forming associations and societies of members and friends, reassessing the relationship between the museum and tourism, continuous international communication, sociability. That is, the active and imaginative presence of each museum foundation within the social tissue and not the standoffishness of the connoisseurs who consider that what I have tried to summarize is beneath their mission. But the unforgivable entrenched placidity of the civil-servant mentality, even if this is sometimes articulated with seemingly scholarly demands, essentially perpetuates a prevailing state of slumber, securing only the unhindered flow of the monthly salaries to the museum personnel.

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Official Information about the Benaki Museum as found on its website:

"The Benaki Museum was founded in 1930 by Antonis Benakis (1873-1954), member of a pre-eminent Greek family in Alexandria, which made an invaluable contribution to the political, social and cultural life of Greece. Benakis began forming his collections whilst still in Egypt and donated them to the Greek State in 1926, when he settled permanently in Athens. These collections are housed in his paternal home, one of the handsomest Neoclassical buildings in the capital, which was converted into the first private museum in Greece.

The public responded immediately to Antonis Benakis’s initiative and as a result of its exceptional impact the Museum’s treasures quickly proliferated. Thanks to the constantly increasing number of benefactors and donors, the Museum continues to be endowed daily with valuable properties and independent ensembles of artworks which fill in the gaps in individual collections. Concurrently, the acquisition of new exhibits reinforces the research role of the Museum, namely the study of Hellenic as well as other cultures, important pieces from which are kept on its premises.

The rapid growth of the Museum’s holdings and activities necessitated the enlargement of its facilities, the hiving off of certain sections and their re-housing in new annexes; this entailed the overall review of the museological thinking behind the foundation.

The central building re-opened to the public in the summer of 2000 and in it is presented the historical and cultural development of Hellenism. Exhibits span the Neolithic Age to the twentieth century. Many of them are masterpieces of Greek art or are of seminal significance for Greek history: from Antiquity and the Roman era to the Byzantine Age, from the Fall of Constantinople (1453), the period of Frankish rule and the Ottoman Occupation, to the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence (1821), and from the time of the formation of the Modern Greek State until the Asia Minor Catastrophe (1922).

The temporary exhibition gallery hosts exhibitions and diverse other events each year, thus enriching the visitor’s image of Hellenic civilization. The Museum’s educational role is enhanced by the educational programmes for schoolchildren, the first to be organized in a Greek museum. The Museum shop offers high quality replicas of exhibits, while the cafeteria on the Museum terrace has become a very popular venue.
Two new buildings were inaugurated in the summer of 2004. The Museum of Islamic Art – one of the few in the West –, in a Neoclassical building complex in the Kerameikos neighbourhood, hosts one of the most internationally important collections of Islamic art, covering 13 centuries of creativity with many representative works of exquisite quality.

The Cultural Centre at 138 Pireos Street is housed in an industrial building of the 1960s, which has been transformed into a modern museum space designed to accommodate multiple events. The building includes a central atrium, also suitable for holding events, and a 400-seat amphitheatre.

Part of the Benaki Museum’s decentralization programme is the establishment of specialist annexes to house its major archival units, such as the Photographic Archives (15 Filikis Eterias Square), the Historical Archives (S. Delta and 38 E. Benaki Streets, Kifisia, in the house of Penelope Delta) and the Archives of Neohellenic Architecture (138 Peiraios St). Among the Museum’s future plans for expansion are the remodelling of the Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Art Gallery (3 Kriezotou St) and the organizing of a Museum of Toys and Childhood in the Koulouras Mansion (1 Tritonos St, Paleo Faliro)."

Source:

http://www.benaki.gr/index-en.htm