REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE PRESENTATION OF THE MUSEUM OF THE YEAR AWARDS HOUSE OF LORDS
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE PRESENTATION OF THE MUSEUM OF THE YEAR AWARDS HOUSE OF LORDS, BANK OF IRELAND
Tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo libh tráthnóna ar an ócáid speisialta seo. Míle bhuíochas díbh as an bhfáilte a thug sibh dom.
Good afternoon everyone. I am very happy to have this opportunity to be with you at the Museum of the Year Awards.
Outside the Federal Parliament Building in Switzerland stand two statues by the sculptor Maurice Raymond (1862-1936). Representing the ‘Historian of the Past’ and the ‘Historian of the Present’ they symbolize the importance of history for the past the present and the future. Our dialogue with the past takes many forms but few are as warm and welcoming as our museums. They are, in the words of the celebrated French historian Pierre Nora, Lieux de Memoires - realms of memory. Charting, scrutinising and showcasing those realms of memory is the business of museums and we are gathered to celebrate those who do this complex task particularly well.
In every word we speak we call upon the languages of ancient Rome, the tribes of Northern Europe, the Norse of Scandinavia and the Irish of our distant ancestors. We also call upon the languages of every culture with which we interact. We ourselves are living museums. We are a history making species unable to relive the past but so shaped by it that neither can we cut ourselves completely adrift from it nor should we for unless we understand our predecessors we run the risk of only poorly understanding ourselves. What is more in a world so often characterised by ignorance and fear of the otherness of others, all attempts at intelligent understanding of that very otherness are doomed to fail if we do not look back to the historical forces which have given them their very particularity.
Most of our museums are made up of object-based collections, from collections of Greek, Roman and Irish antiquities, or paintings and fine art as in the collections of the National Gallery and Chester Beatty Library, to collections of everyday memorabilia found in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum or the Muckross Park Farms in Co. Kerry. As every parent who ever cleaned a teenager’s bedroom knows we are serial collectors. Museums are manifestations of this same tendency but with a commendable urge towards the tidiness, order and discipline that eludes most of our homes. Memory is often elusive. It can play tricks on us. Truths and facts can become distorted or obliterated in the mind but not so easily in the museum with its open door, its high visibility, its demanding visitors.
Museums, as with the societies and cultures which produce them, are subject to change and evolution. They are no longer merely collecting and conserving materials. Forces of globalisation, technological innovation, change in leisure practice, previously well established patterns of behaviour (religious, social, political) continue to undergo significant transformations. The museums within our communities, large and small, help us to interrogate the nature of such change and are themselves changed by that very interrogation process.
Our museums are among the vital guardians of our shared past, custodians of our collective cultural assets, our collective patrimony. They form the link in what has been called our inter-generational equity. They contribute to learning, promote understanding and bring much enjoyment but above all they cause us to wonder. I am reminded of the words of Albert Einstein who said:
‘The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion, which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not have it can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead and his eyes are dimmed’.
Museums are places for the curious, for those interested in pursuing the mystery even if unravelling it leaves only more mystery. The ongoing International Council of Museums debate, on the definition of what a museum is, highlights the hugely diverse and dynamic roles played by museums today, from the simplest showcasing and archiving of local history to the museum as a global cultural crossroads, as a centre of life-long learning, as a place of reconciliation, as a place of grim historic warning.
The very best museums not only answer important questions which visitors may have but, possibly more importantly, they build on those answers to raise more, and deeper, questions. They present the information and permit the public to generate for themselves the interconnections of significance between the various items on display and between the display and their own lives. To do this in a way that does not leave visitors more confused than before they went in is probably one of the greatest challenges you face! Human curiosity is your biggest asset and your biggest challenge.
Museums, then, can confront us with the best and the worst of lived lives, with wonderful artistry, with heart-stopping cruelty, with the genius of nature, the genius of science, with amazing events and the historic figures who were at their centre, with the everyday man, woman and child who lived through all sorts of times and experiences and through whose lives we see both the courage and the frailty of humanity itself. A good museum or exhibition makes us ask ourselves important questions about the items on display and the societies in which they were made.
Museums do not just happen, they require immense effort on the part of all concerned with them. And as museums become less rarefied, the kind of people who work in them is changing too. As a lawyer I am particularly conscious that today is the feast day of St Catherine of Alexandria, the patron of lawyers and librarians. When Ptolemy built his library at Alexandria he also built a museum. While he put wise old books into the Library into the museum he put wise old men. As I look around me I see that, in some regards at least, museums have changed over the last couple of millennia or so. Museums now employ people for skills and competencies that extend to activities that the ancients could never have imagined. Their staff are no longer as old as their artefacts and indeed not all of them are men either. On the other hand I have no doubt that all of you are wise. You have to be for the public of today is constantly demanding more and expecting more. These awards are deserved recognition of the considerable efforts you make to be careful but imaginative custodians of the past, astute observers of the present and accessible, credible bridge-builders between peoples, times and places. Long gone are the days of museum as simply mausoleum, a place where live human beings were only barely tolerated and even then only a certain elite. Thanks to you the word museum today means a door held wide open, a smile of welcome, an opportunity to be inspired, educated, humbled, excited, awestricken, corrected, connected… all in an afternoon.
Congratulations to the Award recipients and to everyone associated with today’s event. Congratulations also to the Heritage Council and the Northern Ireland Museums Council for making this day happen.
Go raibh maith agaibh.