Art and Culture the Passive Article Critique

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He finds an especially poignant example of this in the collection of American Aboriginal art. While the collection of art and artifacts from these cultures is important, it is not nearly as important for Hill as the discourse that can be brought about in society as a result of these collections. The most valuable attribute of a collection, and the most valuable service of a museum, is the ability to "cause productive trouble" in the form of human conversation and reflection (195). In the case of Aboriginal art, the collection should, if offered sensitively and intelligently, instigate public discourse on the inequities between the honor and respect heaped upon the artifacts of Aboriginal cultures and the neglect and disrespect offered to the cultures themselves.

While Clifford offered a highly analytical examination of the interconnectedness of art and culture, and the value of the art-culture system in understanding collections themselves as artifacts, his system in the end is only a system -- a method for observation, rational understanding, and categorization. Collections for Clifford are a product of culture only, and therefore offer value only to the present and only as a vision of the past.

For Hill, however, collections have the power to be not only a product of culture, but a producer of culture. By stimulating "a lively and potentially untidy public discourse" (194), collections and the museums that house them have the power to shape the society that creates them, beyond just reflecting that society.

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In this way, Hill's vision of collection is one that takes an active interest not only in the past and present of human endeavors, but in the future as well.

Perhaps Hill would read the poem by Fenton differently than Clifford. Perhaps Hill would invite us to enter that "forbidden woods" (Clifford 51) of intimate personal engagement with collections, breaking through the "taboo" and opening up not only new ways of seeing ourselves but also new ways of engaging with each other.

Outline

I. Thesis -- Clifford analyzes the past and present value of collections in his "art-culture system," but does not extend the value of collections into the future.

II. Clifford shies away from the individual experience of collections and instead focuses on the cultural and even metacultural existence of collections.

a. Clifford's reference to Fenton's "taboo" personal experience.

b. Clifford's map of art-culture interactions.

c. Clifford's vision of collections as specimens of a chronotope.

III. Some, like Hill, see a more active and far-reaching potential for collections.

a. Hill speaks from experience, and takes a more engaged approach.

b. Hill sees the ability of collections to stimulate public discourse not just as a potential but as a moral duty of public museums.

IV. If one takes an analytical approach like Clifford, one is limited to seeing collections as artifacts of past and present. If one takes Hill's more engaged view, the active potential of collections is revealed......

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