Jason Luckerhoff

Public et non-public du patrimoine culturel : deux enquêtes sur les manifestations différenciées de l’intérêt et du désintérêt

Résumé L’histoire des publics de la culture « cultivée » est singulière en ce qu’elle est directement liée à une préoccupation permanente des responsables de la culture : comment attirer dans les institutions culturelles un très large public allant bien au-delà d’une élite déjà convaincue et avertie ? Cette attention portée au non public comparativement au public déjà convaincu correspond explicitement au grand projet de démocratisation de la culture qui est le leitmotiv de la plupart des politiques culturelles. Que signifie au juste être public ? Pour le cas du patrimoine culturel, comment se constitue l’opposition entre public et non public ? Deux études de cas, tirées d’enquêtes récentes conduites de part et d’autre de l’Atlantique, nous permettent d’interroger cette opposition.

Written signage and reading practices of the public in a major fine arts museum

Abstract Among the accepted ideas on the subject of the museography of fine arts, there is one that constantly recurs: visitors almost never read displayed texts. What is worse, their presence tends to distract visitors from the contemplation of masterpieces. Does the systematic observation of public behavior in a very large museum in Paris and interviews with small groups of French and foreign visitors confirm this suspicion? To answer this question, our team undertook two parallel series of investigations: one on the techniques employed in written signage design within this museum, and the other using observation and semi-directed interviews conducted with a random sample that distinguished between French and foreign visitors. Many categories of comments emerge from this research, all of which concern types of relationships between written signage and activities the public may undertake to appreciate works of art. This inquiry allows us to: (1) identify the elements of complexity in the museums written materials; (2) describe the way these materials are used; and (3) understand the role they play in the social aspects of the museum visit.

Visiting art museums: adding values and constraints to socio-economic status.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to refine the analysis and extend the scope of the capital concept from Bourdieu and Darbel (1969) with respect to art museum visits by examining what values push an individual to visit an art museum and what constraints can prevent one from doing so. In all, 794 valid participants took part in this study and results from comparisons between individuals who visited an art museum and those who did not visit such a cultural institution in the past three years show that the various forms of capital proposed by Bourdieu can be better understood when one considers values and constraints. Results from this study are discussed in light of Schwartz’s research on values, Crawford, Jackson and Godbey’s (1991) model of leisure constraints and Bourdieu’s theory of power and practice that is conceptualised with the use of habitus, capital and field.

Technology and demographics: Are cultural habits mutating?

Abstract Surveys on cultural practices and habits (conducted every five years since 1979 by the Québec Ministère de la Culture, des Communications et de la Condition Féminine [MCCCF]), government statistics on the production and dissemination of cultural products, and research in this field all foresee significant changes that may question the pertinence of government intervention in cultural affairs in Quebec. The aging of Quebecs population, its increasingly multi‐ethnic makeup, and the emergence of digital culture without borders favour a market model of culture management that is incompatible with cultural policy geared towards access to and assistance for creative activities. The emphasis has therefore been shifting from cultural values to market values. Utilizing data from the ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec surveys, and especially data from a complementary survey, conducted at Université Laval in March 2007 by a cultural development research group (Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture [FQRSC]/concerted action initiative), the authors attempt, in particular, to evaluate the influence of technology and demographics on the production and dissemination of Quebecs cultural products, and to sketch the outlines of an “emerging model” of cultural habits.

L’apport de la revue Loisir et Société dans le champ culturel

The editorial committee of Loisir et Société/Society and Leisure, which was first published in Prague, sought to present sociological research as well as other disciplines. The committee wanted the journal to have a broader vision and be different from American and British journals. It aimed to publish issues and articles dealing with communication, public policy, intergenerational relationships, recreation management and gambling, for example. It is the authors’ contributions and the development of the field of leisure, inextricably linked to culture, that have made Society and Leisure a privileged place for the publication of cultural researchers. Forty years later, we set ourselves the task of determining the journal’s contribution to the field of culture. We analyzed 118 articles on culture, published between 1978 and 2016, to evaluate the contribution of the journal to the cultural field.

Are art museums static, unchanging institutions?

This study pertains to the analysis of the annual reports of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec from 1933 to 2010. This analysis is added to other official documents in order to describe the mutations of the image the museum has of itself. These mutations are similar to those shaking museums around the world. They are also linked to the specificity of this museum’s history. In fact, the museum’s mission has evolved in tandem with Quebec society. This analysis examines the tension between museums’ search for excellence when conceiving exhibitions for an informed, cultured, and demanding public on the one hand, and the necessity to reach as many people as possible by widening their public and therefore educating it so that it can develop a taste for art and eventually revel in it, on the other hand.

Museum education in a changing public landscape

Increasingly, museum educators find themselves trying to balance the need to attract the broadest possible audiences to their institutions, with all the hype and trappings of popular culture that come with this kind of effort, against the desire to create truly meaningful experiences that intellectually engage and challenge audiences, as required by many of the social, environmental, and political issues facing our time. At the same time, cultural organization administrators continually juggle the seemingly contradictory goals of creatively supporting public education and running a fiscally sound organization. This issue aims to explore some of these problems, tensions, and transformations. How did we get to this place? Are there deeper, theoretical approaches to understanding these changes that might provide insights into the current dilemmas? Are these challenges truly either-or propositions or are there ways to move beyond the dichotomies to meaningful both-and solutions? Do museum educators and museum administrators see these challenges differently? Are there examples of museum efforts – either exhibitions or programs – that provide a vision of a future without conflict? Collectively, these tensions are indicative of what Bourdieu referred to when he discussed cultural enhancement through cultural criteria on the one hand, and market forces on the other, and are embedded within the emergence of the phenomenon dubbed by some authors as the ‘cultural industry’ (or cultural industries) (Martin, 1992; Tremblay & Lacroix, 2002). Denouncing the subordination of Art to the rules of a capitalist market reflects the tensions that artists endure and often deplore. This denunciation is not new. Adorno and Horkheimer (1972), as well as all the philosophers of the Frankfurt School, were the first to raise their voices against mass culture. They indicted this culture of stultification of the population, focused solely on the profit generated by mass culture in a market economy. Generally speaking, is Adorno’s criticism still valid? Is it possible to meaningfully accommodate what is symbolic (cultural values) with the management and production of goods (industrial values)? In 1978, Augustin Girard, Head of the Study and Research Division of the Ministry of Culture in France, published an article that caused quite a stir in the cultural community. He declared: ‘progress in democratization and decentralization is being achieved to a much greater extent through accessible industrial products on the market than through the “products” subsidized with public funds’ (1978, p. 598). In France and Quebec, as in the rest of the world, government supports many of the cultural industries. As Girard wrote in 1978, mass techniques ‘have their anti-cultural inevitabilities, but there is probably no alternative if devoted custodians of culture wish to broaden their contact with the majority of the population’ (p. 603). This tension between cultural enhancement based on cultural criteria, and submission to market forces, is present even in cultural policies with the deliberate objective to afford access to culture