35. On Museums

What do we learn from a museum? What knowledge is conveyed when you look at an object? Put a bunch of school children in the Egypt room at the British Museum… are they gaining any propositional knowledge about Ancient Egypt? Or are they actually gaining something more valuable, more visceral?

Inspired by a recent day out wandering around some of Oxford’s more random museums (Museum of the History of Science! The Weston Library! The Pitt Rivers!), our co-host proposes that a well-curated museum can epistemologically produce more than the sum of its parts through good presentation and the juxtaposition of different objects. Being confronted by an object is completely different to reading a book. It’s a vibe, it’s inspiring, it’s an aesthetic experience. The muse descends in a museum.

The Weston Library had an interesting exhibition on oracles and soothsaying, very minimalist - an old papyrus, an astrological almanac and an iPhone lined up side by side, all the same size, and the thing was that this was different ways that people have interacted with astrology over time. Make u think. The picture they had of a chicken oracle, and the story of Evans Pritchard using it for several years as his primary decision-making method with a good amount of success, makes one think.

This is in contrast to the Pitt Rivers, which is a small dark room completely packed with random objects from around the world, grouping exhibits by what they’re for rather than geography or time. A Hawaiian spear next to a Macedonian spear, two objects far apart in space and time, have similarities and differences - something you only see by having them side by side. Why are they similar, why are they different? It’s not scientific, but you get the germ of a thought that can flourish into philosophy. We should Return - but why don’t we?

We also spend a lot of time rhapsodising about a 10,000 year old handaxe one of us found in the Eye of the Sahara in Mauritania. It’s still sharp, still as useful as the day it was crafted by a human being long turned to dust by the desert wind.

Here’s a link for the David Abulafia article we mention on the Benin Bronzes: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-danger-of-returning-the-ghanaian-crown-jewels/