Museum Programming Blog

From “Museum Image Touted as End of Poverty in Africa” in the London Free Press:

Imagine a museum of poverty.There’s the last mosquito carrying malaria, the last foot-powered irrigation pump, the last home without electricity.It’s the building Parker Mitchell, co-CEO of Engineers Without Borders, hopes to one day construct, marking the end of poverty in Africa.

For much of the public, museums are still about the past, acting as glorified antique shops filled to the rafters with things we’d forget otherwise. Hence Parker Mitchell’s proposed view of a museum of poverty, meant to illustrate the things we hope to one day know only through exhibits.

Yet things have changed and are changing in the museum world, as we move beyond the static displays that dominated until now. Museums are no longer just about old things. Some museums may have foregone artefacts entirely, using reproductions, while others may be using their artefacts in unique ways.

While Mr. Mitchell’s suggestion came at a fundraising dinner to solicit donations, why not a museum on African solutions to everyday problems? Why not a museum that harks back to the earlier days of museums?

Having recently read Harold Skramstad’s article “An Agenda for American Museums in the Twenty-First Century” (from Daedalus Vol. 128, No. 3, Summer 1999), I was happily reminded that museums weren’t always temples of icons: the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and the Edison Institute (now the Henry Ford Museum) in Dearborn, Michigan looked to the technology of the every day. Both were industrial museums and both sought to inspire their audiences with contemporary American ingenuity.

Mr. Mitchell shares another story from his experience:

In Cameroon, on one of his trips to Africa, Mitchell stood and watched as three young boys sped down a hill on a bicycle — a universal childhood scene.

But this bike was made entirely out of wood. And the children made it themselves.

“It’s unbelievably humbling that in six years of primary school, in six years of secondary school and five of engineering education that I couldn’t even conceive of how to build a bike like that. And these kids had it working perfectly,” he said.

So why not a museum of African ingenuity? One showing off the wooden bikes, crocheted plastic bag purses, tire sandals and homemade helicopters? There’s already the Afrigadget blog devoted to the topic; hopefully a museum can’t be far behind.