Museum Island Final

Object Biographies:

A Discussion of Semiophores, Symbols, Stories and Status

At the start of this course, I chose “Object Biographies” as my final topic because I was curious about the relationships between cultures, objects, collections, exhibits and museums. I started out interested primarily in how objects gather biographies for themselves and so acquire value. Increasingly, however, I have become interested in how individuals use objects in building their biographies. I intend to pull all of these interests together in this paper, considering finally how the nature of object biographies and the history of their importance are intertwined with museum value, historical memory, identity creation and questions of restitution.

To say that objects have biographies seems perhaps strange, but as human biographies are simply maps of our interactions across time and space it makes sense that any common denominator of interactions across time and space also have similar maps. Essentially, if it exists, it has a story. Objects can be either natural or man-made, and their stories begin in different places accordingly. Thinking of a fossil and a painting, one can see that both objects are somewhat explicated when the circumstances of their origins are considered. With a natural object like a fossil, the life of the being that shaped it influences it as much as the time in which it was created and the conditions of climate and soil that preserved it over time. With the painting, the world and technologies that influenced the artist should be considered along with the subject and the medium used for the same effect. After this point, the stories of the two kinds of objects can merge. They have a life cycle in which they interact only with their natural environments as they are left alone, with people or animals as they are used, with other people or animals as they change use or ownership, and with time as they wear down with age.

Sometimes, though, the object is at some point ‘discovered’ and attributed value. At this point, Krzysztof Pomian would argue, the object is taken out of economic circulation and becomes a semiophore with no practical use. One theory of how this process works suggests that the divisions implied by language are the reason that we attach meaning to objects. Language names the visible and suggests the invisible, so that we perceive the mysterious invisible as the source and destination of all phenomena. This subjugates the visible to the invisible as something more easily understood and so implicitly simpler.

These explanations do not necessarily put my mind as ease. I disagree with Pomian on two major points and question a third. First, I would argue that the objects in museum collections, semiophores that have apparently been taken out of economic circuit, are still pawns in the alternative economies present in the worlds of international affairs, art collection, and archeology. Second, I would challenge him as to whether these objects truly also have no practical use once they become symbolic links to the invisible. Albert Barnes would disagree, as his foundation continues to use assemblages of impressionist paintings and African masks—among other objects of undeniable value—to teach color and composition theory. As a somewhat converse example, jewelry frequently acquires symbolic value as it is passed down through generations, but one can wear a necklace as much for its color as for the social status it communicates or its association with a past era. Finally, I would question the theory that language prompts us to superimpose value on symbolic objects by suggesting an invisible world. Since words, letters, and sounds are themselves simultaneously the basis of language and symbolic invisible units themselves, it seems absurd to say that they create symbolic links to the invisible which we then value. So do we then value or collect language? This could explain why Western academia values the written word more than the spoken word: writing gives another dimension to the symbol by making it almost tangible. So it becomes something that can be possessed and worked into part of a social economy. Does our putting value, symbolism and narrative onto objects indicate a need to communicate or is it still a sign of a longing to touch the invisible, to find the source and understand the destination as Pomian proposes? Or is it both…another version of the phenomenon we instigate when we link sound to lines by writing? I don’t actually have answers to any of these questions, but these are what I see as the weak points in his theory.

To continue, then, objects to which value has been attributed continue dynamic interactions even once afforded their semiophore status. This is important, because it can seem sometimes as if these objects rest in museums and archives and so make these static places outside the influence of current events and mindsets. Of course this is not true, as evidenced by the lootings of Egyptian museums this semester and by the ongoing struggles for restitution of nation-defining objects.

In describing the objects that take on value in this way, Pomian explains: “…[T]hese are, of course, merely empty compartments capable of containing the most diverse of beings, from ancestors and gods to the dead and to people different to ourselves, as well as events and circumstances…”(24). Because the objects are considered links to the invisible, they are also seen as bridges or transport pieces which can open dialogues between audiences of living, dead or deified beings. Typical objects of this kind include funeral objects, offerings, gifts, booty, relics, sacred objects, and royal treasures. These are some traditional examples, but Pomian’s comment indicates that any variety of objects can take on a range of symbolic significances. This can be seen when one looks at collections and what composes them depending on whether they belong to institutions or to individuals.

Interactions with collectors, curators, exhibitions, other objects, and institutions are frequently part of the biographies of semiophores. This is because they tend to become parts of collections. Collections are groups of objects that have value, are outside of the traditional economic circuit, are afforded special protection as a group, and are usually put on display. One might build a collection in hopes of financial gain, due to a hoarding instinct, for aesthetic pleasure, out of nostalgia, or as part of a quest for knowledge. One of the oldest and most common reasons for collecting, however, is the accumulation and expression of power.

Early on, collectors gathered semiophores to make themselves more powerful by increasing their proximity to the invisible. The demographic that collected and the types of objects collected changed through the years as the locus of power shifted from religious to secular and royalty to celebrity. As the middle class grew in size and strength, they too demanded access to collections. This led to the importance of the museum as a place of ritual and socialization. It was hoped that in the museum the display of upper class culture and social relics would give the middle class a model to imitate in order to become more sophisticated. With this shift of power, the institutions responsible for public display began to collect collections. Certainly the artifacts and collections were still important for the private collectors; they were still the legal owners, gaining prestige and a symbolic immortality when their names appeared near their pieces in the libraries and museums. Importantly, though, the display institutions also begin to more obviously gain the same prestige from these collections.

Taking this as my point of departure from the Pomian text, I would like to consider the implications of this shift as they relate to Can Bilsel’s “Zeus in Exile” article. Bilsel’s article discusses how the question of the restitution of the Zeus alter of Pergamon is a question of international memory politics. The article concludes that museums must look at such cases as more than questions of legal acquisition and ownership; he would have them considered struggles over who can claim control of the capturing of the object biography in language.

When the collectors first handed collections over to museums, the power-by-association impact of the objects was not diminished by these transactions. On the contrary, the benefits of association multiplied enough to then cover both the individuals and the institutions. This result points to the pattern of micro-/meta-perspectives involved when considering symbolic value. Presence of certain items gives value to a collection. Ownership of a collection gives value to an owner. Control over collections gives value to a museum.

I do not wish to imply that quantity is the only factor that matters in developing museum value. Small museums that specialize can earn reputations as places of expertise, becoming valuable to researchers and scholars as places of potential discovery. These places become attributed with proximity to the invisible as places of knowledge and understanding, qualities which are considered to bring one closer to the source/destination through interaction as semiophores do through acquisition. In larger museums that do rely on the collection of collections for developing their reputations, the objects in each collection contribute different values to that collection. This means that some collections are more prestige-granting than others. And of course, the presentation of the collections becomes vital because the ability of a display to confer power is dependent upon the presence of an audience.

Responsibility for the accessibility of an exhibited collection to visiting audiences today falls on curators, meaning that they too now benefit from association with the collections. Care of the trend towards democratic social structures in the Western world, the efficacy of a museum is also now tied to how well those in charge of the museum arrange it to facilitate visitor-semiophore interaction. It was never enough to control the objects and be near the invisible; someone must give power in order for another to acquire it. As collectors were pushed to share their collections with institutions, institutions now are pushed to share their privileged position with visitors, all in order to maintain the presence of an audience.

Audiences explore collections in the hopes of increasing their proximity to the invisible as well. The expansion of the internet has increased accessibility to images of objects and collections—with consequences for museums seeking to communicate their control over collections via control over production of images of the collections—yet people still go to museums. Part of this is tied to the ritual aspect of museum visiting, which I don’t have space to discuss here. Part of this also may be a result of a desire to increase personal understanding through interaction with the objects and collections, another route towards proximity with the invisible, as mentioned above. I would suggest, though, that a large part of the reason people go to museums brings this whole discussion back to where it started: the biographies of objects. People want to take their own pictures of objects. They want to pass their own subjective judgments on the aesthetic value of objects, and they want to be able to say that they have done so. In short, people seek to touch their own biographies to those of different objects.

Such intersections of histories are, of course, intangible invisible things. Also, many such intersections can exist simultaneously. Multiple intersections can be true without the value of any one being diminished by the presence of the other. In each case, the intended audience of the interaction may be as small as the self or as large as a celebrity fan-base. To establish ownership and control over an interaction for display purposes, the individual must transform the interaction into a visible entity. If the intended audience is the self, the memory of a fixed image from the interaction may be concrete enough. This is particularly true if the memory-image is a classical one documented and shared with many others. Otherwise, the interaction is pinned down through symbolic means: language, sketches, or photographs…semiophores. Over a lifetime, one likely collects many of these semiophores and develops a personal narrative around them. The narrative includes other stories, symbols, and myths, and this narrative is what the personal perception of identity becomes tied to.

To conclude, I would suggest that people are the smallest units of audience that interact with semiophores in this manner. Though larger units of audience—towns, cities, nations and regions—may have different patterns of engagement and interaction, I would propose that some of the important basics remain the same. First, they are moving to define their identities through communicated interactions. The most valuable interactions for this are those that bring proximity to the invisible. It is also important that the interactions can be crystallized into a shared memory-image or a tangible symbol, because only then can the interaction be communicated to an audience.

The last of these fundamentals, though the one with the most consequences for Bilsel and restitution struggles, would be that the symbolic value of the object is not diminished by the number of interactions associated with it. Think of how many biographies have touched that of the Mona Lisa! Yet there is no value lost from the size of the number. The only time multiple interactions becomes a problem is when the two parties are in competition for the most or most meaningful interactions…for power conferred through closeness to the invisible. The parties may then attempt to alter the value of an interaction by stressing the duration of it or the amount of control expressed during it. They do so by creating new myths and writing new narratives, the authority of which are determined by other factors of the parties’ identities, which again I don’t have space to discuss here.

The invisible represented in museum objects is frequently that of past times, persons, or places. These invisibles are attached to objects through narratives that symbolize their interactions, and current audiences use the transitive property to reach through the objects and touch the invisible. This interaction then becomes symbolized…it is a never-ending process. I had considered arguing that the creation of symbols and semiophores is a form of capturing the invisible, of declaring it to be finite, possessable, and so lesser, by Pomian’s original reasoning. Through this process, audiences reassure themselves that they are not finite; rather, they are dynamic enough to be creating. They exist, are alive, and have value as generators of meaning. Considering Mauss’ theories on the nature of gift exchange—in which gifts also become semiophores of a sort in that they symbolize interactions and transactions—my argument may have to be edited a bit to consider circumstances in which the semiophore is a bridge between two present audiences, though each would still be something of an invisible to the other. If anything, though, such editing would just make an even stronger case for the conclusion that audiences rethink their competitions. Power is not the ultimate goal according to these theories; it is desirable only because it indicates closeness to the invisible behind all symbols. If this is so, all audiences are reaching for the ultimate source and destination, for the ability to transcend time by compressing it into symbols and touching one’s biography to that of such a collection. And so the narratives of interactions with a semiophore should be able to exist with equal voice regardless of whether they were composed in Turkey or Prussia, and the physical location of an object is not as important as the ability to compose symbols of interactions with the ever-growing biography of the object.

Sources:

Bilsel, Can (2000): “Zeus in Exile. Archeological Restitution as Politics of Memory”. Working Paper No. 13. Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Princeton University.

Pomian, Krzysztof (1990): Collectors and Curiosities. Paris and Venice, 1500-1800. Cambridge: Polity Press, chapter 1: “The Collection: between the Visible and the Invisible” (pp. 7-44).