5 / speaking culture
(originally written as part of a blog for a sociolinguistics undergraduate course)
Ever since I can remember, my parents took me to museums — art, history, science, whatever it was, my family loved it. We never got audio-guides, or tour guides, but my parents would patiently walk with me and discuss it all with me. In art and history museums, my mother would tell me the stories behind the objects, or encourage me to look at marvelous details in paintings and experience the sensations they instilled in me. My father would talk me through the ways phenomena or machines worked in science museums. The balance is now slightly shifted, and I impart knowledge with them too whenever we’re in museums. After years of trying out and learning about various things, I realised that what I liked had been a part of my life all along — museums. I’ve worked in one, am starting an internship in an exhibition space this summer, and planning on pursuing a Masters and a career in museums.
As opposed to the struggles of corporations and offices, the most scrutinised communication happening in a museum isn’t between its employees, but between the museum and the visitor because ultimately, one of the aims of museums is to transmit a message and a set of knowledge and experiences. Does the museum as an institution succeed in conveying messages properly, to an increasingly diverse audience? Well, most of the times, the answer is no; or at least not yet.
Language struggles- present and future
The art world is English-language-dominated, but for good reason. Of the world art trade, over 60% is taken up by the US and UK and about a quarter by the EU — English is clearly hegemonic in the money-circulating aspect of that sphere.
When you walk into any European museum, the displays and communication will definitely be in the local majority language and, should the institution be popular enough, English. Fliers will usually be found in French, Spanish, Italian, German, Mandarin, and Japanese, but the little plaques next to the exhibits will probably not include more than the local language and English. This shows a profound misunderstanding of the audience and its needs — if it cannot communicate to its visitors, the museum fails as an institution and becomes irrelevant as a workplace. Merely having multilingual guides is not a feasible solution in this day and age.
Overall societal digitalisation is proving to be a great advantage in this case and, if honed in properly, will increase accessibility in museums. With QR codes and bring-your-own-device policies, as long as museums provide facilities for its visitors, such as wifi and charging docks, this opens up a world of various languages and allows for inclusion of more visitors. Multilingual resources facilitate parents educating their children like mine did; such a practice includes and promotes bilingualism and is quintessential in areas with diverse populations and visitors. A digital shift, as long as museums can call on appropriate translations, would be a huge step towards language inclusion. My take is that the next decades will focus on visitor inclusion and immersion supported through digital means, and language practices will certainly be a part of that.
We know that there is no population speaking a homogenous version of a language. Digitalisation can also be a way to integrate different kinds of speakers — imagine a digital guide tailored to your needs. Introducing guides for children of different levels can help engage them with the museum’s contents, you could find out more about a painting depending on your level of expertise and knowledge, you could get this information in written form, audio, video, or even braille. Imagine catering a museum to the needs of people with disabilities beyond just wheelchair ramps but adapting to the wide spectrum museumgoers’ needs. I witnessed the most awe-inspiring example of this at the Orsay, where a guide was describing a Carpeaux statue to a girl with vision impairment. This shouldn’t be an exception — this should be a norm.
Language capital and culture
Museums, language, and culture are all intertwined; the choice of language communication that a museum makes ultimately reflects cultural and ideological decisions. I believe every language is highly dependent upon the cultural background that shaped it and that it shapes. There are therefore two dimensions to the linguistic capital issue — that of the individual themselves and that of the museum addressing the individual. English speakers are able to capitalise on this skill and have access to almost every museum in Europe; but it would objectively be a loss for museums to not try and reach as many people as possible by expanding their language guides.
I’ve been lucky enough to be able to read texts in almost every museum I’ve been to but I cannot describe my frustration when there are no English texts. Unless we translate exhibits in multiple languages, we are sending the message “your language is not important enough for you to access this information” and it causes significant cultural detriment for speakers of less “prestigious” languages. The more inclusive a museum is, the more both the visitor and the institution stand to gain. A positive example was my past workplace, a museum that had signage in Croatian and English but provided free guides and online booklets with full translations in over 10 global languages, expanding in accordance to the needs of the public.
Self-centred reflections
Since English is a primary language in the art and museum world, I think I’m doing well on the language qualification front. When I worked at the ticket desk of a museum in Croatia, it was sufficient to communicate with over 80% of its visitors, and my Croatian peers would take over when it came to communication with locals.
The future of museum work remains rooted in the language that most international communication and most scholarship exists in, which for a while will remain English. What is important is that, regardless of my own language competencies, museums evolve in such a way as to include more diverse audiences. I would love it if, through my work, I was able to open museums up to more people and increase the quality of their experience.
Tangents to go on:
A blog post from the Guggenheim sharing best practices regarding multilingualism from multiple museums.
A vlog from someone who visited the Museum of Languages in Leiden, interviewing the museum’s director.
