City Museums and Dynamic Heritage
In a provocative way, David Fleming, Director of the National Museums of Liverpool, has criticized the object-driven focus of museum curators in city museums. He speaks of “object worship almost to the point of fetishism.” 7 Although these curators may have acknowledged the limitations of tangible collections in telling city histories, the object-oriented approach has remained the standard of museum professionalism for a very long time.8 These collections, however, do not reflect urban history in general very well and most visitors lack the contextual information needed to link the objects to the urban historical context. Besides, most city museums have difficulties collecting the recent history. Nowadays, though, most city museums have become aware of the limits of an object-oriented paradigm and have accepted that intangible heritage, traditions, values and beliefs are all part of the heritage spectrum. A dynamic and social-cultural meaning of heritage has become the standard in some parts of the world. Dynamic heritage in an urban historical context is, then, the “working memory of a city.” 9 This dynamic urban heritage approach helps us to overcome the limitations of nostalgic heritage, in particular in fast-moving transnational cities. These transnational places reveal an urban dynamic; self-awareness and representation are shaped by the existence of a diverse population whose socio-cultural and economic relationships are not necessarily confined to the nation or city of residence.10 When we accept the stimulating thought that urban heritage might be a resource for creating the future, a nostalgic approach limits the possibilities of involvement of transnational populations; in particular, because nostalgia for a place or particular monuments is not something that people from elsewhere, with a different cultural background, might feel.
City museums need to acknowledge that their future stakeholders are a mixture of minority groups and a diverse population. In less than 20 years’ time, the majority of people living in the port city of Rotterdam, for instance, will be of non-Dutch origin. Newcomers do not share the same subjective experiences of communities with a strong lobby for celebrating Rotterdam’s nostalgic heritage. For them, Rotterdam’s distant past has less meaning than for inhabitants who are formed in Dutch and Rotterdam society.11 Nostalgic heritage inadvertently excludes those citizens with different ethnic or cultural backgrounds, unless they are able to share memories with these heritage communities. City museums embracing a modern concept of heritage should stress the importance of its dynamic interpretation. This will enable citizens — and this makes it especially relevant for transnational cities — to have access to the “working memory” of the city and afford them a reinterpretation of the historical city canon. In fact, the new approach boils down to what may be called “bonding heritage.” This concept is not based on romanticizing the past, but on heritage as a collective purpose of community building, a serious form of new urban human and cultural capital. The awareness of “bonding heritage” calls for new urban research strategies. A city museum should not give up its scholarship, but should ensure instead “that it engages in research that has resonance for the communities it serves.” 12 City museums need to enlarge and stimulate their research opportunities. Their focus should not, however, be collection-driven but contextdriven, exploring the present city from a contemporary heritage point of view. In this respect, city museums can learn a lot from the expertise of urban anthropologists. The ethnographic method, participant observation, and other empirical, qualitative close observation models are to be mentioned, in particular. These methods have proven to be both versatile and successful in urban social and cultural programs. The American non-profit organization UrBaN (urban & anthropology) speaks of public anthropology as “an effort to use anthropological theory, methods and research to help the public understand urban cultures, constructively address their problems, and celebrate their achievements.” 13