The role of Z.Z. Stránský in present-day museology

Abstract

ABSTRAKT: The demise of significant Czech museologist, associate professor Zbyněk Zbyslav Stránský, raised interest in his work and in its competent evaluation. The authors of individual texts mostly agree with each other in their opinions, but sometimes they have different views, which is understandable. However, several opinions clearly show that their authors misunderstood some of Stránský’s fundamental postulates. This text analyses the international discourse and comments on disputable statements. It explains, extends and critically evaluates the concept by Stránský, and thereby shifts the whole studied problem to a higher level. Místo Z. Z. Stránského v současné muzeologii Odchod významného českého muzeologa docenta Zbyňka Zbyslava Stránského vyvolal mezinárodní zájem o jeho dílo, respektive o jeho zhodnocení. Autoři textů se ve většině svých tvrzení shodují, někdy mají odlišné názory, což je zcela pochopitelné. Objevily se však i názory svědčící o nepochopení některých dosti podstatných postulátů. Tento text mezinárodní diskusi vyhodnocuje, sporná tvrzení komentuje. Vysvětluje, rozšiřuje a kriticky vyhodnocuje Stránského pojetí, a tak celou zkoumanou problematiku posouvá na vyšší úroveň. https://doi.org/10.5817/MuB2019-2-2 opinions, which is understandable. In some cases we can find certain misunderstandings or small mistakes in these texts. Therefore I consider it necessary to analyse the previous discourse, summarize the knowledge and thereby shift the whole studied problem to a higher level. In the core of this text I am dealing with reasons for the rejection of Stránský’s concept rather than with its acceptance. Most authors indeed consider Z. Z. Stránský a significant world-renowned museologist and they accept his approaches with major or minor reservations, in the most cases only partially. General accordance exists that his ideas significantly influenced museology in former Eastern Bloc, inclusive of Yugoslavia. His concept penetrated on a limited scale to Asia and only a bit also to Africa. However, we could also mention Scandinavia or other countries. Stránský’s influence was relatively distinct in Switzerland (Martin Schärer), in West Germany and Austria, above all due to works of professor Friedrich Waidacher1 1 Waidacher’s Handbuch der allgemeinen Museologie was translated into Slovak, Chinese, Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Hungarian, which undoubtedly considerably boosted the dissemination of Stránský’s approaches. Stránský, in my opinion, unfortunately spent too much time commenting on texts of his significant promoters (Waidacher, Schärer), who in fact were influential disseminators of his ideas, although they did it in their own style. Stránský’s review of the book Die Ausstellung. Theorie und Exempel by Schärer consists much empty and critical philosophising, but the reader learns in fact nothing about the content of this book, which, in my opinion, is a very good piece of writing. STRÁNSKÝ, Zbyněk Zbyslav. Schärer, Martin R. Die Ausstellung: Theorie und Exempel. Museologica Brunensia, 2012, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 39–40. KEYWORDS/KLÍČOVÁ SLOVA: museum – museology – Z. Z. Stránský – Marxism – postmodernism muzeum – muzeologie – Z. Z. Stránský – marxismus – postmoderna The demise of significant Czech museologist, associate professor Zbyněk Zbyslav Stránský (26 October 1926 – 21 January 2016), raised an international interest in his work and in its competent evaluation. One entire issue of the Brno journal Museologica Brunensia (2/2016) was devoted to the personality of Stránský, and ICOFOM issued in Paris a whole collected volume Stránský: uma ponte Brno – Brasil for the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO). Stránský is particularly often mentioned in the collective monograph A History of Museology, which also was published in Paris and was edited by Bruno Brulon Soares. A series of obituaries, texts and personal memories appeared in print. A brief anthology of Stránský’s texts was published in French by François Mairesse – Zbyněk Z. Stránský et la muséologie: Une anthologie (French Edition), with a foreword by Bernard Deloche. The authors of all these works count among recognised prominent members of the international museological community. They agree with each other in many of their comments, but sometimes they have different MUSEOLOGIC A BRUNENSIA 16 from Graz and activity of publisher Christian Müller-Straten from Munich. Stránský’s influence in French-speaking countries (André Desvallées, Bernard Deloche) and in Spain (J. Pedro Lorente) was rather ambivalent. Quite positive was the response to Stránský in Latin America. We can name for example professor Anaildo B. Freitas from Rio de Janeiro, who even defended a doctoral thesis dedicated directly to the personality of Z. Z. Stránský. Stránský’s influence in Englishspeaking world was negligible. Museologists from these countries were familiar with his ideas but they mostly did not accept them (Patrick Boylan, Gaynor Kavanagh,2 Susan Pearce and others).3 Zbyněk Z. Stránský was one the leading figures in museological thinking which began to form in Central Europe since about the mid-1960s, with significant contribution of experts from Latin America but also from other parts of the world. I will designate this “school” as “Central European”, fully conscious of some inaccuracy of this term. At that time, the Moravian Museum in Brno was directed by Jan Jelínek – a visionary, who knew very well that museums must get rid of daily routine and be able to look not only “into the showcase” but also “above the showcase”. He felt the need to apply general methods of work in museums. To make his ideas a reality, he 2 One of the few Brits who used the term musealisation of an object. KAVANAGH, Gaynor. Current Research in Museum Studies in Britain and the Future Research Needs. Papers in Museology, 1989, vol. 1, pp. 92–103. 3 Peter van Mensch names correctly a British book, which in the passages about “museum theory” mentions only English written sources, while the “new museum theory” began for the authors only with the publishing of the book Peter Vergo – New Museology in 1989. See MENSCH, Peter van. Metamuseological challenges in the work of Zbyněk Stránský. Museologica Brunensia, 2016, vol. 5, no. 2, p. 23. It might be a display of cultural arrogance or only a “democratisation of geniality” (a concept by the contemporary Czech philosopher Václav Bělohradský), i.e. a display of present self-confidence of many authors, who are writing anytime about anything. found the academic researcher Z. Z. Stránský who established museology as a university subject and began to maintain appropriate domestic and international contacts.4 Stránský’s museology thus acquired a fundamental “genetic” defect. It arose “from below”, in contrast to the other sciences. When geologists found animal fossils, they recognised the necessity of establishing palaeontology. The initial broadly conceived research into human past resulted in specialisation and emergence of archaeology, ethnology etc. Historians cannot do without an at least partial knowledge of ethnology or archaeology. But which representative of presentday social or natural sciences needs the results of museological research in his/her scientific work? Stránský’s museology exhibited a sort of “insularism”; in Czechoslovakia it was totally unconnected with culturology or cultural anthropology, which led to its frequent non-acceptance or to opinions that it should only serve as a sort of training for museum workers. Stránský’s museology has not been “daughter” of some other scientific discipline. Stránský’s ideas gradually became more known and more accepted within ICOFOM. The 1980 ICOM General Conference in Mexico was partly devoted to “the systematic and the theory of systems in museology”. In the early 1990s, ICOFOM formulated its mission: “establishing museology as a scientific discipline”.5 Nevertheless, it must be remarked that ICOFOM was by far not ideologically heterogeneous and its influence was not omnipresent. Many influential and frequently cited museologists did not search for the scholarly foundations of museology, did not participate in 4 Speaking of this, we could ask the question how many visionaries lead the world museums today. 5 The 1989–1993 President of ICOFOM was Peter van Mensch. the activities of ICOFOM and did not use its production. This second “non-ICOFOM” stream, in my opinion, is dominant today. Well, what is the present view on the work of Z. Z. Stránský like? Professor Peter van Mensch, who took an active part in the Brno Summer School of Museology (ISSOM) even before the fall of the Iron Curtain, has probably rightly been considered the major expert in “eastern”6 museology. Still before Stránský’s demise he correctly wrote that unlike the concept of musealisation, Stránský’s concept of museality was not widely accepted.7 We can add that the term musealisation became known due to Western European thinkers (e. g. Hermann Lübbe) rather than by Stránský’s effort. Stránský himself did not contradict this statement, either. Van Mensch shifted the term “muzeality” into the history of museology,8 claiming that it would only be suitable for a breakfast talk, moreover, one with a touch of nostalgia.9 The significant Dutch museologist bases his rejection on a never published lecture held by Stránský in Leiden in 1986, which I consider insufficient from a methodical perspective, and on Stránský’s text for the Summer School of Museology in 1995.10 6 I deliberately put the frequently encountered term “eastern” in quotation marks. This way it is mainly used by colleagues from Western Europe. As if the “east” began somewhere on the border between Germany and Bohemia and ended as a homogeneous area somewhere in Shanghai. Despite many mutual influences it would be unnatural to mingle the Central European (East European) approaches with the concept of museology for example in Japan, India, China or o