The exalted cultural tourist
Chapter 4
The exalted cultural tourist
Gazing on culture
… it was the opening of the Museum of Slavery in the new Albert Dock tourism complex that had the greatest symbolic and spiritual impact. This award-winning museum shows how Liverpool was central to the slave trade. It graphically depicts the whole process of slavery, and names the many established Liverpool families who made their fortunes from slavery. Here is a case where the telling of a buried story provides some grounds for healing a divided city, and, in so doing, acts as a catalyst for regeneration and growth.
(Leonie Sandercock, Mongrel City, London, Continuum, 2003, p. 213)
The point of the exalted tourist is to present tourism as a noble pursuit. A Global Code of Ethics outlines this construction of tourism and the redefining of tourism as ‘sustainable’ reinforces this view of the place of tourism. Indeed, tourism is not only eco-friendly, it is cast in terms which makes it essential if the environment is to be preserved. Within the urban landscape the tourist is exalted for all the benefits he or she brings to the city and its inhabitants. Tourists are seen as a necessity for the regeneration of cities. Tourism is likewise presented as the means by which heritage is preserved for future generations.
Of course, we question much of this framework. This discourse of tourism is often self-justifying and more particularly when cast in these terms can lead to a redefining of cities as sites of consumption which remove citizenship rights from local people and raise the consuming tourist to such an exalted status that their needs override all others. Law can also be harnessed to reinforce this process at various points, or even if not the formal law, then a discourse that borrows heavily from law in its style and language.
In the last chapter we discussed the material world of the city and how tourism has acted to recast the city. The patchwork of heritage, public order and special-event laws support this process, even though most of these laws rarely refer to tourism. However, many official documents and reports do explicitly connect the processes of these laws with tourism and together they construct the discourse to which we refer. In this chapter we examine the notion of culture within tourism particularly as it first applies to movable culture. This is spatial regulation of a different kind and illustrates the contradictory impulses within law to which we referred at the end of the last chapter. For example, are antiquities plundered from another time to be retained as the property of one country, or repatriated as stolen artefacts? Which stories of a city are to be kept in our museums, our memories?
The tourist that travels for cultural purposes is often exalted to a higher degree than the ‘pleasure seeker’ tourist. To travel to visit a museum is often presented as more worthy than travel for sport or sunbathing. The question we ask is whether the cultural tourist is actually more dangerous than the ‘pleasure seeking’ tourist, as the former’s appetite for more and more ‘culture’ requires the commodification of new objects in museums around the globe. Does the cultural tourist sow the seeds of the destruction of culture rather than assist in its preservation? We also explore in this chapter some aspects of the connection between Indigenous culture and tourism. Again, is the respect for other cultures that is called for in the Global Code of Ethics the protector of Indigenous culture, or does it implicitly create an acceptance that Indigenous culture too is ‘for sale’. In telling the story of Indigenous people, is it to be packaged for tourist consumption by those who control the museums and other urban theme parks, or do we allow Indigenous people to speak for themselves and let the past haunt the present?
Cultural property and tourism
The cultural tourist will gravitate to the city to embrace the opportunity to consume those major sites of culture which are heavily promoted as part of the ‘must see’ places on the tourism map. Art galleries and museums are the usual cultural venues which are high on the priority list of tourists, and to that end the museum has undergone radical change in the past decade or so to accommodate tourist expectations. One also has to bear in mind the extent to which museums are now, in effect, competing with other parts of the urban scene for customers. As we discussed in the previous chapter the city generally has remade itself to attract tourism. Museums, as the holders of key items of cultural heritage, are part of that landscape. As Shaw and Williams say of Las Vegas:
The city is one large fantasy space, comprising a series of theme parks, each of which offers varying elements to the visitor, such as hotels, casinos, art galleries, museums, tourist attractions and shopping malls. These, in turn, are a complex series of overlapping symbolic spaces, which have different orders of meaning.1
The extent to which the museum has become a ‘theme park’ is also evident in the literature. New technology is now used in many museums to explain the past2 and the location of local museums, as Shaw and Williams note, within shopping centres ‘represent new forms of competition, and often involve significant public–private collaboration in the context of new forms of governance’.3 Thus in defining which forms of heritage will be displayed in such spaces, one can see that cultural artefacts, which might tell stories that are contradictory to the centrality of capital to the way of life, could be marginalised or disposed of altogether.
Cultural institutions and the city: the museum and art gallery
The example of the blockbuster exhibition
Is the modern museum today thus saving cultural heritage or commodifying the past? The museum is now seen to be in competition with other fields of entertainment and leisure and accordingly we have seen a new type of museum emerge which focuses on the ‘museum experience’ where consumptive ‘infotainment’ is the primary focus. This shift in the role of the museum occurred as government funding declined in the 1990s and museums came under pressure to seek private funding and so to regard their role as a business in the market place. Pitman succinctly described the situation in Britain at the time:
Anyone with a taste for commercial absurdity and kitsch pop culture will find much to admire in the more ‘advanced’ enclaves of the museum world today. A new breed of museum directors, curators and historians by name but more like management consultants by nature is revamping and refocusing museum collections and exhibitions to lure the ever-growing hordes of fee-paying, gift buying visitors required to make ends meet.4
Pitman’s comments could equally apply to Australian museums as they underwent a similar transformation in the 1990s. For example, museums would sometimes appoint marketing managers to their boards, to participate directly in decision making about which exhibitions to run. As a result we now often see the ‘blockbuster’ exhibition being held as a means of attracting visitors. Such exhibitions may be seen to bring new visitors into museums and so assist in their ongoing commercial viability. But it is also this need for commercial viability that calls into question the manner in which decisions are made about which cultural heritage should be preserved and displayed.
The museum and the marketplace
With the dominant government ideology of economic rationalism the change in museum policy reflected this approach. The new corporate model was seen as the way forward in an increasingly financially strapped institution. Thus the fundamental role of the museum as a keeping place was challenged.5 The result of this new policy direction saw a resulting tension between the traditional scholastic approach of the museum and the new-look museum which emphasises ‘mega’ exhibitions and other forms of entertainment which have the broadest popular ‘market’ appeal.
With an eye to the tourist consumer the Victoria and Albert Museum in London entered into a commercial arrangement whereby it would market an exclusive range of products, such as wallpaper and fabrics based on items in the Museum’s collection. It has further been described by a leading British advertising firm as ‘an ace café with a museum attached’.6 It is no accident that the museum café and the gift shop have become an increasingly important part of the profit-making aspect of the museum ‘business’.
There is now a generation of budding tourists who have only ever known the large state museums and galleries as places of consumption where you will find a specially created shopping area at the completion of your blockbuster tour. Not only will you find glossy catalogues of the exhibition but anything from erasures, pencils, silk scarves and mugs all featuring some identification with the blockbuster you have just been to see. These exhibition shops are usually created solely for the purpose of selling merchandise of the exhibition. The museum or gallery still has a permanent store for you to purchase other ‘knick knacks’ to take home from your tour.
The pressure for museums to compromise their role as educator in order to provide entertainment has become increasingly difficult with the business of museums being focused on tourist numbers. The tourist dollar is the benchmark for gauging success and with that the exhibition which will have the broadest appeal to the mass market. The ‘safe exhibit’ and ‘infotainment’ are sure ways of satisfying the largest possible number of consumers. It has also been argued that corporate sponsorship will ensure that radical exhibitions which challenge important social history themes will either be sufficiently tamed or overlooked all together in the chase for corporate sponsorship.7
An example of the pressure placed on museums to sway towards the ‘safe exhibit’ was witnessed with the closing of the Serrano exhibition at the National Gallery in Victoria. It was suggested at the time that the notorious Serrano painting Piss Christ was removed primarily because of its disruption to the blockbuster Rembrandt exhibition and not because of the perceived danger to staff and other works of art at the National Gallery. The demonstrations held at the Gallery of the Serrano exhibition led to a significant drop in attendance numbers for the Rembrandt exhibition. If these numbers continued to decline there would be serious financial implications for the Art Exhibitions Australia company who were responsible for bringing the exhibition to Australia. The Australian newspaper summarised the financial position of the company as follows:
AEA has more riding on the Rembrandt exhibition show than any it has ever been involved in, having invested its entire reserves of around $5million in making up the short fall between the total budget of $7million and sponsorship of $2.78 million. To break even it needs 2500 plus visitors a day. If anything detracts from this target claimed by some gallery watchers as optimistic the organization would be in severe trouble.8
With the amount of money tied up in the ‘business’ of the Rembrandt exhibition the expectation is that there would be considerable pressure placed on Timothy Potts the Director of the National Gallery at the time to take whatever steps were necessary to ensure the success of the exhibition.
The enormous cost of mounting ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions ensures that the visitor must have the greatest number of enticements to spend, to enable the recouping of the initial cost of mounting the exhibition. This is not to suggest that the blockbuster exhibit is completely devoid of cultural importance but rather that the nature of the exhibit has as its simplistic aim the obtaining of the largest amount of paying visitors possible passing through the gallery doors. The whole exercise begins to be formulaic and has been succinctly summarised as follows:
These frankly commercial exercises are potentially hugely profitable and they more-or-less follow the formula invented by Thomas Hoving at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York combining high-profile museum objects, glamorous design and ruthless marketing to attract the public in large numbers and sell them vast quantities of goods specially created for the purpose. The scholarly content can be minimal or non-existent, but a few of the objects must always seem exceptionally eye catching and carefully selected for systematic exploitation by those marketing the goods being sold alongside the exhibition as well as advertising the exhibit itself.9
The Rembrandt example
‘Rembrandt: A Genius and His Impact’ was staged in Melbourne at a cost of $7million, with the works insured for more than $1 billion dollars.10 On the first day of the exhibition, 2000 people had viewed the exhibition by 3pm. At a cost of $18.00 per person and $44.00 for a family consisting of 2 children and 2 adults, it is to be assumed that it is aimed at the tourist, the families of the middle-class and the affluent. With the expected visitor rate at 350 persons per hour to view 28 paintings by Rembrandt, 44 paintings by his pupils and another 50 drawings and etchings on display,11 one can only guess at what might have been effectively viewed. But to ‘experience’ the event would be another matter altogether. The promotion of the Rembrandt exhibition also made mention of a Rembrandt Family Day and Christmas party which would provide free entertainment such as Twister the clown, Artie mouse, Dutch dance groups in traditional costume and other musical entertainment with a Dutch flavour.12 Whether you see much of the exhibition may be irrelevant in the final analysis as long as you can say you have ‘been there’, and have some mementos purchased on the day to savour the memory.
The blockbuster by and large relies on large collections of cultural property being collated on a theme and packaged in a glossy fashion. The preparation for such exhibitions can take years of careful planning and involves considerable negotiation between galleries as well as legal commitments to ensure safe travel and return of cultural property to its original destination. The cost of the process as we have seen is very great especially with changes in the economy today which sees the cultural tourist considering carefully where the tourist dollar will be spent. In recent times some blockbuster exhibitions are becoming too expensive for galleries to consider. Australia, for instance, has already indicated it is not in the position to host the travelling Egyptian exhibition Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs which could have been shown in Australia from 2012. The Director of the Australian Museum, Frank Howarth, has indicated that Egypt had set a loan price of the collection at $10million for every six months the exhibition was on display.13 In comparison with the large cost of the Rembrandt blockbuster in the early 1990s it is clear that the larger Australian galleries are re-thinking where and how to best capture the cultural tourist.
In contrast, Munro and Koutsoukis point out that in Los Angeles:
Since the opening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2005 Tutankamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, which is co-produced by the National Geographic Society, has attracted more than 6 million visitors and earned more than $US110 million in sales.14
The cultural tourist within Australia is offered package deals covering flights, accommodation, meal vouchers all as part of the consumption of the cultural event. Australia simply does not have the number of tourists or the density of population to carry the high cost of such an exhibition. What Australia does have, however, that is highly sought after as a tourist experience is the unique cultural heritage of the Indigenous population as well as a thriving art market for Indigenous art.
The exalted tourist and the Indigenous dollar
Australian governments have seen the tourist value of promoting Indigenous cultural heritage. Under the Keating Labor government in 1994 Australia received its first formal cultural policy which was detailed in the Creative Nation report.15 In that document the report of a survey of international travellers to Australia revealed the following:
Forty eight per cent of international tourists to Australia were interested in seeing and learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture.
Over a third of visitors to Australia undertook an activity related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture; for example, visiting a gallery or museum, or taking a tour involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.
The value of purchases of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts and souvenirs by international visitors was estimated at $446 million a year in 1991, and an increase from $30 million in 1990.16
It is not surprising that there would be considerable competition between various state museums in displaying their wealth of Aboriginal heritage as the interest of the cultural tourist has continued to remain high. The South Australian Museum, in recognition of this trend, decided in the late 1990s to redevelop the museum making a feature of a new Aboriginal Gallery. The South Australian Museum is reported to hold the largest collection of Aboriginal artefacts in Australia and, consistent with government policy, sought to raise the profile of Indigenous heritage by exhibiting as much of the collection as possible. At the time it was not a viable option due to lack of exhibition space. The museum also housed a large exhibit of Pacific cultures. The Pacific cultures exhibit dated back to the nineteenth century and was very popular with the local community. There was much discussion at the time with the community and the director of the museum over whether the Pacific Cultures exhibition should be dismantled to make way for an expanded new Aboriginal gallery.
One member of the community was so concerned that the Pacific gallery would be dismantled to make way for new displays, specifically more space for Aboriginal displays that he took the unusual step of seeking to have the exhibit nominated as a place to be protected. An application was lodged to the heritage committee under Heritage Act (SA) 1993. The Act aimed to preserve, protect and enhance the physical, social and cultural heritage of South Australia. The requirement for registration under the Act is that a ‘place’ should be of heritage value (s16) and had to satisfy one or more of the listed criteria. In the Morrow application for inclusion of the collection in the State Heritage Register, the exhibit was described as that which ‘Comprises the built-in display cases of wood and glass and the displays of items from the Pacific Collection of the South Australian Museum placed upon and in front of a construction wire of corrugated metal.’17 It was also stated that ‘heritage significance of the exhibit met the criteria of aesthetic, historical and cultural interest’.18
The usual matters coming before the Heritage Committee would be dealing with built heritage such as public buildings thought to have historic importance to the people of South Australia. Advice at the time from the Crown Solicitor to the Heritage Committee suggested that an exhibit could not be considered a ‘place’ under the Act and as a result the application failed. The community concern about the intention to remove the exhibit was further demonstrated by correspondence to the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper as well as national daily The Australian. It had been reported at the time that the then Museum Director, Dr Chris Anderson, was committed to retaining the traditional values of the exhibit and to displaying Pacific culture in the museum and that this could still be achieved with a smaller-sized exhibit relocated elsewhere in the museum.19 Those who wished the exhibit to be retained in its original manner had focused on the unique nature of the exhibit. The Adelaide Advertiser quoted the views of the local community who were concerned for the welfare of the exhibit:
Mr Steve Ronayne of Adelaide’s Aptos Cruz Galleries, said the Pacific Islands Gallery was of national and international significance. He supported increasing the exhibition space for the Museum’s Aboriginal collection but not at the expense of the Pacific Island’s Gallery. All the other Australian museums have removed their Victorian turn of the century exhibitions: they no longer exist he said …
and