[Speech remark at symposium of the Lost Dhow exhibition
program, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Feb 28th 2015]
Museums in the 21st century is transforming its
mission and purpose to be more public-open and public-facing institutes with
multi-platform venues for exhibition, programs, and educations. Museum engagement
to the public is the key nowadays to museum’s survivals financially but also reputably. However, it is easily said than done. The
challenge is how we can have a hard look on what we do to find a common ground
with our visitors to be engaged.
Among many things, archaeology and museum share one thing:
that is – preserving cultural heritage on behalf of the public. Professionals
in both field of archaeology and museum take it for granted that the public
would be equally excited about, and care for, cultural heritages, as much as we
do. But as a matter of fact, they don’t. At least not show in general their
enthusiasms towards preserving cultural heritage as much as we do.
So a question for us who are doing archaeological fieldwork
and who are curating the exhibition is – what cultural heritage means to our
public? Why cultural heritage matters to the public who should care come and
visit museums. It is my believe that without clear understanding what cultural
heritage means to the public, and what the museum can do for them, then the public
will stay away from museums and instead stay tuned with youtube and facebooks.
Really this question in particular is why the public care
for coming to the Aga Khan Museum to see the exhibition of “the Lost Dhow”; and
what we have done or can do so that people are consciously knowing that the story
told in the exhibition matters to them, via which they would care a bit more
about heritage after they walked out of the door?
Cultural heritage in many ways are intangible, it is more
about the memory of their past and re-experience their past. But the past are
pleasantly accessed, viewed and learned effectively in its tangible forms. Artefacts
and remains of the past have a distance to our life today, as people’s life nowadays
is inundated with virtue technologies. The
reason people are enjoying the life of social networking is because they can be
connected in common grounds. And in particular, social networking provides a
connection for people who live in different spaces, who may never meet, because
they share feelings and memories of tangible substances. The fact is that they
care for their feelings, not the substances.
Therefore, preserving cultural heritage and educating
cultural heritage in today’s museum is to find a substance that people can
share the feeling with the past. Telling the story and providing experience in
the exhibition are something we can do, but what is more to this is to make the
story more relevant to our life today, and to have public experience what could
be the same feeling in the past.
And such experience and such substances are in the Lost
Dhow, as far as I am concerned.
For example, many of us are afraid to talk about the moral
values and ethics in archaeological practices behind the discovery of the
Belitung shipwreck. We as professional in archaeology and museum always
position ourselves in political correctness because we want to tell the public
what is right from wrong. Ironically, I find that is exactly what the public
dismay about the exhibition, because they don’t want to be treated as
non-brainers.
What the public wants is to participate in the debate,
offering their experience of practice and judging from their own point of view,
regardless right or wrong. At the end of the day, both sides would learn a
great deal about why cultural heritage matters, and then they would find our coming
to see Belitung shipwreck exhibition is more than just viewing treasures
recovered within. Now they know there are different points of views regarding
the discovery of the treasures. Speaking of education, learning preservation of
cultural heritage, this is the best case that we can use for publication
education and learning.
In this case, the learning is not just about the
archaeological discovery, but learning how to discovery and why to discovery,
at the bottom-line, that is for the preservation of cultural heritage.
Then, my next question about the cultural heritage, as I
mentioned above, is how we raise the visitor’s interests in shared feeling that
connect the past and the present?
By that I am asking what today’s visitors can feel what the
people did in the 9th century that would have some meaningful matters
to people today. In the Lost Dhow, I see
“trade and commodity”, a daily life and social-economic phenomena that lasted
as long as human can move around on global. Trade needs goods, trade needs
products, trade needs consumption, trade needs contact, and much more. Trade is
all about desire of people, which we have today.
The exhibition tells that desire for the trading in distance
and commodity in consumption stay the same way as today, and tragedy and scarifying
to make a living are still in the same way that we can feel today. This
phenomena provide shared feeling and memories that today’s population may be
easily connect to the past.
What is more fascinating about the trade and commodity, like
it or not, is due to the fact that post-discovery has led to sells of a substantial
amount of remains. Therefore 1200 years old commodity become modern commodity
again traded in art-market. That is what meant about the connection of
intangibles. Regardless the disagreement in the field of professionals, we are
responsible for telling the facts to the public, what happened in 1200 year
ago, as well as what happened 15 years ago to the commodity with the story. We
are living a world of trade and commodity, all of our visitors know that before
they know about the discovery of Belitung shipwreck. “It’s the Economy，Stupid”!
My last question concerning about cultural heritage is:
whose heritage the treasures from the Belitung shipwreck are presenting? It is again another classic case that our
professional take the answer for grant, but the public has their own opinion,
sometimes very strong ones. Whatever they treasures, they will link about the
past of their own. In some cases, it is black and white clear, but in case of trade
and commodity, the boundary never can be drawn. And the latter is the case for
the Last Dhow exhibition. To me it is a perfect case to bring up this question
for public engagement. Asking our visitors, whose cultural heritage that belongs
to? Answering the question is a course of learning.
The ship was made Arabic, products were made in China;
trading posts happened in both Tang and Abbasid empires? And the owner of the
boat might be Arabic but the crew were likely international, And now both
shipwrack and products belong to different nations and states including public
and private institutes and collectors everywhere in the world.
Allow me to use analogy, - iPhone! It is product of USA, but
made in China, distributed worldwide, and used in everyday households. Imaging,
in another 1000 hundred years, if a cargo of unpacked iPhone were found in North
Korea, that presumably was smuggled into and abounded by a group of brave North
Korean. So whose heritages are represented by these iphone story?
Clearly in the year of 3000, iPhones being 1000 years old
are remains of human past, but the heritage is about a group of brave North
Korean and their untold story.
And imaging again, if the cargo ship found near the Belitung
island did not sink and successfully sailed to its supposed destination, we
would never know this part of history. It is gone with monsoon winds. So whose
heritage that may represent? The questions would not be answered, but trying to
answer questions like this is in fact to engage in our visitors who may be
aware that they indeed find something that are lost in the Lost Dhow treasures.
Therefore I would argue that museum engagement is not just
to make story better told, but to create a platform for dialogue with our
visitors and among ourselves, like what we do now.
