Beneath his affable exterior and behind a mischievous glance, André Gob finds it hard to hide a suppressed anger. It is because ‘his’ institution, the subject of a whole life’s research, is in danger. Because some people think that it has had its day, because others think it has lost the right to keep developing, and others want it to be out-and-out profitable, in line with a society where everything is to be bargained over. And because the institution’s eminently social function, its disinterested mission in favour of human ‘progress,’ must constantly be resignalled. He has thus produced this lively essay, obviously aimed at the largest number of people possible, in which the nuanced nature of the arguments in no way prevents him from taking up very firm positions.

Like the book’s title (1), each of the chapter headings is in the form of a question. And the first one is logically ‘What is a museum?’ André Gob cites the definition given by the International Council of Museums (ICOM), a NGO linked to UNESCO.  ‘A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment’ (2). But, as André Gob reminds us, the museum was not born as an institution. At the beginning it was born from private collections and collecting. ‘It was thus not an instrument for sharing, but an instrument by which the collector gains distinction.’ But quite quickly, fortunately, the museum became ‘institutionalised,’ notably under the impact of the Enlightenment: the museum was no longer the logical result of the private collection, but the fruit of a project within which the public would have more and more of an important position. The museum as such was thus born in the period of the Enlightenment as, writes André Gob, ‘a disinterested instrument of education and culture, which developed its activities over the very long term,’ (p.15). The museum thus broke loose from the private collection and was now conceived for the public: ‘It was a question not only of breaking the restricted circle of the privileged who had access to collections in order to open their doors wide open to all, but and above all to convert what had up until then been used to discriminate into an instrument of education against obscurantism and decadence’ (p.21). The museum conserves, exhibits and studies, but its three essential missions only come to life in society thanks to a fourth function: orchestration and stimulation, which aims to attract the public, to interest it in the activities of the museum, to help it to gain the maximum in terms of pleasure, construction of self and culture. Because, says André Gob, ‘it is one thing to open the doors, it is quite another to make the museum really accessible. And there the museum has always had progress to make. And it still has today.’

Born in the century of the Enlightenment the museum thus embodies the idea of progress. Throughout his book André Gob brings to mind this obvious fact whenever it comes to evaluating the evolution of the institution: ‘The museum must continue to evolve, but it must never abandon this starting idea.’ And the museum has not stopped evolving. Around the middle of the 19th century the ‘classic model’ was established. It is thus a well identified multifunctional institution, which has undergone great typological diversification (to the initial museums of art were added museums of archaeology, ethnography, weapons, sciences and technology, etc.), which is installed in a building and designed around a collection of objects which it exhibits, conserves and studies around the figure of the curator but…in which the visitor occupies a marginal place! ‘It’s all the fault of the nineteenth century bourgeois. A return to the museum as an instrument of discrimination,’ explains André Gob. ‘The curators manage the collections as if they belonged to them in their own right and scarcely trouble themselves about the public. The latter is moreover often excluded from the museum’s very architecture. The museums are often built on podiums, at the top of gigantic staircases: everything seems to be done to dissuade people from entering!’

(1) André Gob, Le Musée, une institution dépassée?, Paris, Armand Colin, 2010.
(2) According to Art. 3, section 1 of the ICOM Statutes, adopted during the 21st General Conference in Vienna, Austria, in 2007.