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Did you know the Mona Lisa only got world-famous after it was stolen from the Louvre? In 1911, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece was just another portrait in the Salon Carré, shoved between a bunch of other Renaissance paintings. But when a former museum worker stole it, the public flocked to the museum to stare at "nothing," the blank space on the wall.
This phenomenon fascinated Susan Crane, a history professor at the University of Arizona and author of "Nothing Happened: A History."
In 2026, the Mona Lisa's status could not be more different: It has a wall entirely to itself behind bulletproof glass, drawing millions of visitors who wait behind stanchions to catch a glimpse & maybe take a selfie.
Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, Susan questions our relationship to famous works of art in museums, and explains how to cultivate genuine surprise as a visitor. She also explores how museums have been reshaped by technology and politics, the ongoing debate of the Smithsonian versus the White House, and whether school field trips are actually worth the effort. Plus: The absolutely wild way the literary elite used to experience museums in the 19th century.
Full transcript of this episode
Susan’s book: Nothing Happened: A History
Subscribe to the newsletter
This episode was hosted, produced, and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod
Chapters
Music: www.purple-planet.com
This phenomenon fascinated Susan Crane, a history professor at the University of Arizona and author of "Nothing Happened: A History."
In 2026, the Mona Lisa's status could not be more different: It has a wall entirely to itself behind bulletproof glass, drawing millions of visitors who wait behind stanchions to catch a glimpse & maybe take a selfie.
Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, Susan questions our relationship to famous works of art in museums, and explains how to cultivate genuine surprise as a visitor. She also explores how museums have been reshaped by technology and politics, the ongoing debate of the Smithsonian versus the White House, and whether school field trips are actually worth the effort. Plus: The absolutely wild way the literary elite used to experience museums in the 19th century.
Full transcript of this episode
Susan’s book: Nothing Happened: A History
Subscribe to the newsletter
This episode was hosted, produced, and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod
Chapters
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (04:04) - The Meaning and Early History of Museums
- (07:58) - How Photography Became Fine Art
- (11:52) - Stealing and Photographing the Mona Lisa
- (18:14) - Why Museums Matter
- (23:58) - Who Decides What Belongs in a Museum?
- (29:12) - Goethe's "Gallery Dialogues"
- (31:13) - Politics, Control, and Change
- (40:37) - Exit Through the Gift Shop
Music: www.purple-planet.com
Images:
Videos:
Creators and Guests
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What is Call 'Em Like Museum with Eric Johnson?
Call 'Em Like Museum is a weekly podcast exploring how museums really work, and why we love them. Host Eric Johnson talks with museum directors, curators, experts, and passionate fans about what drives them, from homegrown passion projects to world-famous institutions. Each episode digs into museum curation, exhibit design, and the visitor experience — plus the essential question: What's actually worth buying in the gift shop? Season One spotlights museums in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Walt Disney Family Museum, the de Young Museum, and the Winchester Mystery House.
There's a fun story about how
the Mona Lisa became famous.
Do you know that one?
No, I don't.
She disappeared.
So this is a very famous story about
how a somewhat obscure portrait of
a woman became the most valuable
piece of painted art on the planet.
This is Susan Crane.
She's a history professor at
the University of Arizona.
I got interested in it because
I was looking at blank walls.
Susan is also the author of the
book "Nothing Happened: A History."
I was looking at what artists do with
nothing in front of them or how they
make art with and out of nothing.
In 1911, there was a theft by
somebody who worked at the museum.
And when the Mona Lisa was gone, people
flocked to the Louvre to the blank space
on the wall to see where she had been.
It was a big reaction in the press, big
reaction in the society at the time.
People said, "We can't go into the
museum and see this blank space on
the wall." And then she came back
and became this venerable object.
The weird thing is, if you went
back to the Louvre in 1911, you
probably wouldn't have noticed if
the Mona Lisa was there or not.
So it used to be that the
walls were very crowded.
The walls were stacked with
paintings, one on top of the others.
It was a statement of, "I own
all this. I am in control."
Today, you would definitely notice
if the Mona Lisa were missing.
About 9 million people visit the Louvre
every year, and I would bet all of
the euros in my pocket that a lot of
them are there to see the Mona Lisa.
Why does everyone need their
picture of the Mona Lisa?
We've got excellent digital
versions, better photographs
available to the world online.
Really, why do people make such an effort
to see and photograph this painting?
They travel from all around the world
to see it, even though before it got
stolen, no one really cared about it.
This is Call 'Em Like Museum,
a podcast about how museums
really work and why we love them.
I'm Eric Johnson.
I wanted to kick off the podcast by
talking to Susan Crane because she
has a really keen understanding of
what museums do to us and for us.
Today on the podcast, we're going to
talk about how museums have evolved
in the past 200 years, how they were
radically changed by the introduction
of photography, and why controlling
what goes on the wall of a museum is so
important and sometimes controversial.
So why do we go to museums anyway?
We'll hear from historian
Susan Crane right after this.
This episode is sponsored
by transistor.fm.
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Have you ever left a museum
without hitting the gift shop?
Yeah, me neither.
Tote bags, hats, desk toys,
all these specific magnets.
I love it all.
And now I'm giving some of it away in the
Call 'Em Like Museum gift shop giveaway.
To enter, all you have to do is sign up
for our free newsletter at likemuseum.com.
That's likemuseum.com.
I met Susan through her sister, my
friend and colleague, Elizabeth Crane.
Before we started recording, Susan
told me that she had often been
gobsmacked by things that you
could only encounter in a museum.
That happens to be one of my favorite
words, which is why I said this: I'll just
say I'm gobsmacked to be talking to you,
in the best way, so thanks for being here.
Oh, that's great.
Thank you.
I'm glad to be here.
Well, I want to start with a
couple questions that I'm going
to ask everybody I talk to.
The first is, what is a museum?
And what does that word mean to you?
All right.
So the scholarly answer is that
it was a temple of the muses.
And then for some people, we then have
to backtrack and say, who are the muses?
And that gets amusing, right?
So it is to honor the muses that
inspire and guide knowledge and wisdom.
Yeah.
What is it to us?
It's a place we go where we expect to be
entertained, educated, see cool stuff that
we might not see anywhere else, and then
have a nice meal or coffee afterwards.
And there's always a gift shop.
The cafe and the gift shop, those are
an important part of the experience.
I'm going to have to do
an episode about those.
Yeah.
Just those.
I would love to know when the
first gift shop was created.
I honestly don't know.
I haven't looked that up yet.
What's the first museum that you remember
going to when you were growing up?
What was your first exposure to museums?
Right.
It was probably my dad took me and
Elizabeth to the Natural History
Museum in Los Angeles and also to
the LA County Museum of Art, LACMA,
and the La Brea Tarpits, which
—
Ohh.
Right?
I know it's got a big museum with it now,
but what I remember is going as a kid
and just seeing the stuff in the ground.
So yeah, it was probably a combination
of natural history and art museums
that were my first exposure.
When you were little, when you were
going to these museums, did you
think that you'd be studying museums
in some fashion in the future?
Yeah no.
[laugh]
Was that on the radar?
Honestly, it's a little bit of a
problem for people in the museum field.
In a way, it ruined my wanting
to go to museums all the time.
So instead I've become more
focused as a museum-goer.
I go see one thing.
I don't try and do a whole museum anymore.
But at the same time, obviously the
fascination has never gone away.
I still love museums.
You study the theory and practice
of history, including how technology
changes the way we remember the past.
So if I were to pop in my time machine
— which I have here, definitely, right
off camera — if I were to go back to the
18th or 19th century in Europe, would
I recognize what they called a museum?
Actually, it would depend
on where you landed.
Okay.
But yeah, you probably would, especially
if you stayed in Europe and especially if
you stayed in a familiar context or what's
familiar to you given your background.
Would you land in a place where
normally you were restricted from?
Because if you go in the 18th
century, unless you're royalty,
you're probably restricted from any
collection that you might want to visit.
On the other hand, if you land in the
1790s in Paris — and you're adequately
protected — you could go into the
first public hours of the Louvre when
it was first opened to the masses.
So it really depends on where you land.
You could still land
in a curiosity cabinet.
You could still land in a palace, but
you could also land in the Louvre.
I've heard the term "curiosity
cabinet," but refresh my memory.
What does that mean?
Yeah.
The German is great.
It's a wunderkammer.
Oh my gosh, I love that.
A cabinet of curiosities is
a place filled with wonder.
There are so many terrific ones.
In Europe, starting as early as the
16th century, but even earlier, it
was a place where somebody who had a
particular interest and the particular
means or elite status with the money that
goes with it to collect unusual things.
So rare things.
Could be natural history objects,
but could also be maybe things that
hint at the mystical or mysterious.
Maybe they're one of a kind.
And then they'd be kept in
drawers or a purpose-built
cabinet in a purpose-built room.
But again, highly secluded, open
only by invitation, etc. Yeah.
So curiosity cabinets, they still exist
and people still put them together.
Really?
But they are in a lot of
ways forerunners of museums.
One of the things Susan has
studied is how the invention
of photography changed museums.
I'm really interested in
19th-century photography.
And I got interested in photographs as
historical objects, as three-dimensional
things, some of which we are
still fortunate enough to have.
They've lasted this long.
But then what I was also looking
at is, well, for instance, could
you have gone back in your time
machine into the 19th century and
landed in a photography museum?
No.
Really?
They really didn't exist.
The big museums don't start
collecting photography until the
late 19th century and into the 20th.
You don't get a department of photography
until the mid 20th century in New
York at the Museum of Modern Art.
So this is a, shall we say,
late-blooming art form.
The photographs in the 19th
century were privately owned.
Some people were assembling
them to look at in albums.
Other people were seeing them in public
displays like slideshow lectures,
especially stereograph, [which is]
when you have two images that are
blended into one when you view it.
That's how the public would've encountered
photographs in the 19th century:
on display, not really in museums.
And then they started getting
used in the background.
Photographs were seen as things
you could tear up and reproduce
on a wall to create context.
I'll give you an example
that I've written about.
The University of Arizona where
I teach has a museum called the
Arizona State Museum on the campus.
And they have a terrific collection
of the photographer Edward Curtis.
So a few years ago they did an Edward
Curtis exhibit and I went into the
museum to see these beautiful images.
What they had also done, though,
historically at the museum is they'd used
Edward Curtis's images as background.
So they have a very famous collection
of pots — Southwest, Native American.
It's a terrific collection and
they have a wonderful way of
displaying it in big glass cabinets.
But in those same big glass cabinets,
there'd be a picture, for instance,
of a woman with a child she's holding
and a Mojave water basket on her head.
And the caption of the exhibit says
"Mojave water carrier." And the first
time I looked at it, thinking as I do now
about photographs in the background, I
was like, well, is that a picture of her?
Is that a picture of the basket?
Is it a picture of a woman in what
looks like the basin of the Grand
Canyon with a basket on her head?
Or is this just about the basket?
The basket in front is not the
same basket that's in the picture.
This only bothers people like me.
[laugh]
Most museum-goers will go, "What a
great photo. Wow, she's carrying a
basket like that one and I can see the
basket." And that's the museum experience
that the curators are going for.
So I looked at it and I said, "Why
is that photograph in the background?
That's a famous photograph by
a famous photographer." Okay.
But it was never about the photograph.
It was about the basket.
So that is the way, for the most part,
photographs have been used in museums
in the 20th century and into the 21st.
When did we start seeing photography as
artworthy of being hung in a museum in
its own right, not being used as context?
When did that shift happen?
It starts at the turn of the century
and it was a big argument between famous
photographers who were advocating for
photography should be considered a fine
art and therefore it should be collected
and valuable and you spend money on it
and then you exhibit it in an art museum.
And then other people who said, "It's
just a practical tool. It's a practical
tool that produces a document." Okay,
we put those in libraries and archives.
Why do we need them in a museum?
Oh, they're beautiful?
Oh, okay.
Well, but they're reproducible.
So if they're reproducible,
they're not unique.
And an oil painting can be unique.
There's one Mona Lisa, no matter how
many times it's photographed and copied
and put on mugs or whatever, yeah.
There's a fun story about how
the Mona Lisa became famous.
Do you know that one?
No, I don't.
She disappeared.
Really?
She disappeared from the museum
wall and people freaked out.
And it was a big reaction in the press,
big reaction in the society at the time.
People said, "We can't go into the
museum and see this blank space on
the wall." And then she came back
and became this venerable object.
In case you're watching the video
version of the podcast, I am currently
showing a painting of how the wall of
the Salon Carré looked before the theft.
And here's a photo from after the theft.
The Louvre did hang a work by a rather
famous Renaissance painter named
Raphael, and people were disappointed,
even though it's a beautiful work
of art by a really famous painter.
There have been many, many instances
of art theft over the years.
The Louvre itself recently suffered
another high-profile robbery, the theft of
eight of the French crown jewels in 2025.
I wonder if there's something about
the status of museums, the fame of
the institution that kind of lends
itself to every object that's in it.
So anything you steal from the
museum is then particularly valuable
because you stole it from a museum?
But when there's hundreds of
thousands of objects to choose from,
why do you zoom in on that one?
I mean, it could be that that has a
very particular meaning to the thief.
This idea of people coming to see nothing,
and you said they were disappointed when
the nothing was replaced by something.
This is really striking at the heart
of one of the big ideas of this
podcast is that we're putting these
things in these places and we are
attaching all this meaning to them
because they're in these places.
How would you characterize the
role of nothing in this story?
Well, nothing is always happening.
There's always nothing going on.
And then suddenly someone pays attention
to it and then it becomes something.
And so that was the premise of my
entire project was noticing all the
somethings that were getting made.
What people seemed to remember
in her absence was this ambiguous
smile, something about her face
that was unreadable, something
that was titillating, something
that was fascinating, that nobody
could quite put their finger on.
And then somebody did put
their finger on it and took it.
So that makes it noteworthy or noticeable.
So in other words, as soon as
the painting was gone, people
were remembering she was smiling.
No, she wasn't smiling.
They were debating about what used to be
there and that added to the allure, that
added to the mystique of this painting.
When the picture disappeared, the
museum staff at the Louvre initially
was … Well, they didn't even
notice it right away, for one thing.
But when they did notice it, there was
some confusion within the administration.
They said, "Oh, wasn't the painting
being taken somewhere to photograph it,
to make a record of it, to document it?"
Museums were making copies of the art
that they owned pretty much since the
invention of the camera, certainly since
the second half of the 19th century.
So maybe there was a particularly good
photo or a particularly good drawing
of the Mona Lisa that then became part
of what was circulated in the public
to remind people of what had been lost.
The aura of the original is
everything and irreplaceable.
Ask any forger who's tried
to replicate it perfectly.
Let's look at that photo from after
the Mona Lisa was stolen again.
There are two paintings on either
side of the blank space, one
by Titian and one by Correggio.
And above all of them is a huge work
of art by Paolo Veronese, "The Feast
in the House of Simon the Pharisee."
What I am intrigued by as a scholar
of the 19th century is the way
that display changed in museums.
So it used to be that the
walls were very crowded.
The walls were stacked with
paintings, one on top of the other.
So what you saw at eye level was
just two or three of the hundred or
whatever that were visible in the room.
It used to be more common to
present so many things in one room.
It was a statement of, "I own all this.
I am in control. I'm demonstrating the
largesse of my generosity of sharing it
with the public, but look at how much
I own." That seemed to be kind of the
way of presenting either contemporary
art or Renaissance art, depending
on what you cared the most about.
If you go to the Louvre today, you
won't find the Mona Lisa jammed
between three other paintings.
The frame is itself framed by a huge
black border behind bulletproof glass.
It's a blank wall, nothing on
it except for the Mona Lisa.
Stand in the line, queue up
like you're waiting to purchase
something at the busy gift store.
And look how small the Mona
Lisa looks on that wall.
Oh, exactly.
Because there's nothing else on
the wall, it really focuses your
attention in this tiny little point
and you can't get that close to it.
And I am not an art historian.
I'm not an artist.
No one should listen
to my opinion on this.
Personally, I think this looks terrible.
I hate this.
Well, I hate it too.
I mean, we all know what the line
really looks like on a daily basis.
It's a hugely crowded room
and I don't like crowds.
I don't like standing in crowds.
This would completely put me off
going in to look at the Mona Lisa.
Why does everyone need their
picture of the Mona Lisa?
We've got excellent digital
versions, better photographs
available to the world online, right?
But this is your proof.
I was there.
I'm taking a picture there.
I stood in the crowd.
I braved the crowd.
I stood in front of the Mona Lisa.
Therefore, I got to see the
original, and here's my record
of having seen the original.
Even though I'm not showing you the
original, I'm showing you a crummy digital
smartphone photograph of the original.
Hey, if you're enjoying the episode,
then make sure to follow the podcast
in whatever app you're using right now.
It's free, and it makes sure that new
episodes will show up automatically.
If you're on YouTube, then
hit subscribe there too.
Thank you so much.
On this podcast, we believe that
everyone's experience with museums
is deeply personal, and that's why
we want to hear your museum stories.
If you've got one, and I bet
you do, please submit it at
our website, likemuseum.com.
Just go to the website likemuseum.com
and click "submit a museum
story" at the top of the page.
It might just make it
into a future episode.
Thanks.
Let's talk more about the
purpose of going to a museum.
I want to go back to 19th century
Europe where I traveled to.
You said that in some places I wouldn't
be able to get into certain galleries,
but let's assume that I have the
privileges to enter into a space where
art is being displayed, where let's
say paintings are being displayed.
Why are people there?
Why are people going to
museums in this time?
The 19th century is when
museum-going just explodes.
So you get purpose-built
buildings for museums.
You get collections being
brought together and displayed.
Art and painting is just that much.
And then there's history museums
and there's natural history
museums and then there's overlap.
And then there's an
interest in local heritage.
And so people are starting to bring
together the art, the objects, the things
they want to remember from their locale.
So this kind of explodes and
expands in the 19th century.
So when you say, what
are people going to see?
If you start with the big museums, the
British Museum in London, the Louvre
in Paris, go to Washington, D.C.,
and see the Smithsonian Institution.
You're going to see what
is considered great art.
So you're going to learn
something about high culture.
That's why you're going.
You're going to see something that
is considered valuable, important,
and you shouldn't underestimate the
monetary value and the rarity value.
You're seeing something
great because it is unique.
Something great because somebody's willing
to spend billions of dollars on this one
thing and you get the chance to see it.
And then there's the monumentality of it.
This comes up in the discussion
of monuments, which also
explode in the 19th century.
Big public sculptures
get bigger and bigger.
Right.
Size matters.
So you get big public museums,
you get big institutions, and
then you can have a larger public,
but you can also display more.
So why are people going to museums?
It's a place to further an education.
It's a place to experience or learn about
high culture, whether or not you consider
yourself a participant in that culture.
It's a little bit of an entree.
You can say, "Well, I've seen that
stuff too. I can have my own opinion
about it." And then there's the whole
aspect of, for the 19th century — this
is so hard for 21st-century people
to appreciate — what other chance
would you have to see this stuff?
You might see a lithograph or you might
see a reproduction of an image in a
book if you have a membership at a
lending library or you've subscribed to
a circulated catalog or a circulating
library where you might get a book
sent to you once in six months.
It's a lot harder.
And those reproductions are expensive.
So there's an aspect of
this is your only chance.
Access is difficult still
in the 19th century.
And that's why you get traveling
shows instead, like panoramas or
dioramas were how a lot of people
saw images or photography like
landscapes and things like that.
So there were other forms of exhibition in
the 19th century that might go to people.
But for you to go someplace,
it's a long way to go.
It's expensive.
It's a difficult trip.
So even though there are new public
museums, it's going to take some
funds for people to get there.
One of my formative experiences
with museums as a kid was going
on field trips from school.
I grew up in the D.C. area.
So today we're going to the Air and
Space Museum and then next year we're
going to the Natural History Museum.
I did not know how good I had it back
then because I was just a kid on a trip.
Right?
Because you were just a kid on a trip.
And as a parent, this is also
a question that came up for me.
Do the kids really remember it?
I remember my dad taking me to a museum.
But if you start going to a whole
lot of museums, does it become,
oh, my dad and mom are dragging me
again to another boring place where
I don't know what I'm looking at.
So on the one hand, you want to
increase awareness of culture.
And so you want to expose kids to it.
And on the other hand, you know full well,
they're never going to remember all of it.
So you're kind of building a
foundation and an expectation that
this is valuable and important.
And even if you don't get it all when
you're 8, maybe when you're 16 or
17, you're like, oh, now I know why
that painting is considered famous
because I know the history behind it.
Or, oh my gosh, now I understand why
that dinosaur was a significant find
and they were able to put it together.
That's huge.
Right.
So you need a little context.
So you start exposing kids early, hoping
that it makes sense, and then you have
to count on what they know from school.
And that's another big question,
gosh, that every museum
professional has to deal with.
How much can you assume your public knows?
Exactly.
You don't want to talk down to
them, but you also want to educate.
You may also want to
reeducate.
And so at what point can you connect
with the public that you're anticipating?
And they're publics.
I mean, there isn't just one
monolithic, hegemonic, one thing public.
There's lots of us and we all bring
different things to the museum.
I think that's one of the things
I've come to learn actually from
working on this over the years
is that what I see is going to be
different from what other people see.
And what I expect to see is
going to be different from what
other people expect or want.
And museum professionals have staked a
lot in a career of trying to anticipate
and guide that, but it's tough.
This is really what interested me in
making this podcast was the fact that two
people could go to the same museum, same
day, same time of day, have completely
radically different experiences there.
Being in this physical space
that's designed in a certain
way, we experience the art, the
information, the history differently.
It fundamentally changes the experience.
It fundamentally changes the experience.
And then there's the part where, oh,
there's a list of museums I'm supposed
to see because I'm in Madrid or a
list of museums because I'm in London.
But then why?
Why those museums?
Who put together the list?
So we all have different stakes in it.
Is it an achievement to say
I've been to these museums?
Or is it, oh, I've always wanted
that experience of being gobsmacked.
Hey, there we go.
The more museums you put yourself
in touch with, the better chance
you have of being surprised.
So there's the list, the famous
stuff, everybody has to stand
in front of the Mona Lisa.
At this point, I think the experience
of standing in front of the Mona Lisa
is why most people go to the Louvre.
Are you going to be gobsmacked by that?
I really, really doubt it.
It's like checking a box for
some folks, I'm sure, where it's
like, well, I'm already in Paris.
I guess, yeah, okay, I got time to
go see the Mona Lisa, one of the
greatest works of art ever made.
[laugh]
The chance of being surprised is better
if you're willing to stumble onto things.
So if you go into the room that's less
crowded, or if you go to the museum that's
not on the list, or if you let yourself
sit in front of one thing for a little
while, chances are you'll see something
that you would've missed otherwise.
This is something else actually that
I thought was really interesting.
If you try and ask any collector, but if
you try and imagine what people who've put
together some of the big collections that
have been the foundation for some of the
big museums, if you ask them, "Why that?
Why those objects?" Chances are they're
not going to say, "Well, scholars
have shown that …" Dot, dot, dot.
They're just going to be, "I loved it."
Yeah.
So there's probably this
emotional connection to it
that made them want to have it.
And one of the really ironic things
that happened over and over again in
the history of museums in the 19th
century is that a collector might
try to specify how their collection
was supposed to be kept together.
And most of the time after they
die, it's either not kept together
or it's not displayed together,
or you get a very idiosyncratic
museum that does stay together.
But it's something that collectors
really worried about because it
had been so meaningful to them.
Okay.
Well then you think about us in
the 21st century encountering those
collections and you're thinking, I'm
supposed to imagine that one man's
fascinations are really important.
Why?
[laugh] Why this one guy got to say
that we now have to all look at this?
Who gave them that power?
Who gave them that authority?
The other really interesting
thing is about the objects.
In the history museums that I
was particularly interested in
looking at in Germany in the 19th
century, one thing became clear.
The most valuable objects had a story.
So the reason you wanted that belt
buckle or that vase was because it
had been touched by, owned by, created
by, created in the moment of something
else that was really significant.
And without that backstory, without
that context, the modern viewer
is just going to look at the thing
and go, "It's a belt buckle."
I want to get to one of the key
themes of the podcast, which
is why we go to museums now.
In the 19th century, right, you
said this may be someone's only
chance to see some of these things.
And now, at least in terms of seeing
reproductions of it, we have access to so
much information, so much culture online.
We can get everything almost immediately.
So why is it, you think, that
people are still going to museums?
What do they mean to us now in an era
when we can get everything on demand?
Gosh, that's the psychology
of the museum-goer.
I'm not sure I'm equipped.
Yeah.
[laugh]
But I guess I'll go with a couple of
things I've noticed when I visit museums.
And first of all, that is how
quickly people walk past things.
How long somebody might
spend staring at one thing.
How few people read the tags, which is
painful to all museum professionals,
and what they talk about with
each other while they're visiting.
So in a lot of museums now you're
wearing a headset or you're
listening to a phone and you click,
you dial and you get information,
then you walk to the next thing.
I would say in a sense, you're getting
a little bit less of interaction among
people who visit a museum together.
I wonder, are people talking with
each other as much if they're dialed
into the information that they're
getting on the audio from the museum?
So in a way it's quieter in a
museum and in a way it's lonelier.
But at the same time, there's huge crowds.
So that's a real dichotomy there.
Why are people going?
I think they've heard about things
they want to see for themselves.
So does the museum still offer evidence
as well as the possibility of, "Well,
when I see it, I will be transformed."
Or, "When I see it, I'll know something
in a way that I could not know otherwise
by just looking at pictures online." And
in that sense, nothing has changed because
…
I'm thinking of Johann Wolfgang Goethe
who wrote back in the late-18th,
early-19th century, he wrote some
lovely dialogues, and he was considering
how some other people he knew were
also writing these gallery dialogues.
It was a genre that was kind of
popular among a literary elite.
You walk into the Dresden Royal Picture
Gallery — this is a palace with a
famous art collection — and you're
supposed to go into a particular
room and be so overwhelmed by the
sublime beauty of what you're seeing
that you're almost inarticulate.
And then as soon as your
inarticulateness manifests itself,
you need to talk to somebody.
And so you need to have somebody
who is in dialogue with you
about what you're experiencing.
So you need to have a conversation
like a podcast with somebody else
who's seeing the same thing you are.
And so this got scripted.
This was a famous writer like Goethe
scripting it for other people so that when
they went to the Dresden Royal Picture
Gallery, they could have the same kind
of conversation that the famous poet or
writers had had when they were there.
Wow.
So there's a form of reenactment going on
that all of us as tourists are guilty of.
And I don't mean guilty in a bad sense.
I mean, we've probably heard about
this or been exposed to it, whether
we saw somebody in a film or we saw
somebody in a video or we read something
about how they felt when they saw
that or when they went to that museum.
So as visitors, we then want to reenact
that other person's experience because
it was so meaningful and now it's your
chance to have the meaningful experience.
Okay, then imagine how disappointed you
are when you don't have [laugh] the exact
same reaction, and you have to cover it
up by saying, "Oh wow, isn't that great?"
[laugh]
Maybe you and your friend keep — or your
partner or whoever you're with — you keep
walking into another room and then you get
to have that sublime experience, I hope.
That's what I mean by gobsmacked.
I think it's still possible.
What you bring into a museum with you
matters, but what if you bring in an
understanding of the real world that
disagrees with what you're going to see?
That's not a hypothetical question.
In Washington, D.C., the historically
independent Smithsonian Institution
has recently found itself fending off
accusations of bias from the White House.
As of the time of this recording, the
president has said the national museum of
American history had used the country's
history as "a political instrument
to divide, dispirit, and discourage
our citizens." Could you speak to the
politics of controlling museums and why
authoritarian leaders care about this?
Why does control of this
—
That's a really interesting question.
Let's put this in a historical context:
Why have authoritarian leaders in the
past cared so much about art museums
especially, but also about how the nation
is represented in a historical museum?
Maybe the easiest way to put it
is democratic regimes as well as
authoritarian regimes have had
investments in how they are represented.
So any museum that is representing
a national history or perhaps a
colonial history or perhaps an
imperial history has a particular
stake in how they are represented.
And it's no different from anybody who,
say, cares about how their portrait looks.
Do I want to be remembered by the
photo of me on my driver's license?
Probably not.
Would I rather be remembered by a
photograph that was made by somebody
with the skill of Edward Curtis?
Yeah.
Well, okay, that's the
small-scale version of what we're
looking at in the large scale.
So any place that is representing us to
ourselves, we have a stake in how we look.
So it's like holding a mirror up to us.
And sometimes the mirror is
more messed up than others.
It's also not uncommon for museums to
change a museum tag to reflect better
information or to reflect or to — how
should we say — repair misinformation.
That's always going to be going on.
The problem we have right now, and
this has been argued about at the
Smithsonian since its initial founding.
I bet.
It took them 10 years after they
got the money for the Smithsonian,
they still hadn't put together the
board of it because who's in charge?
What's it going to include?
How's it going to represent what?
It took them years and years and years.
So in a sense, this is endemic to
the history of the Smithsonian.
What feels wrong right now to scholars
of museums and to curators and museum
professionals is the way that the
federal government's oversight over
the scholarly level of research.
It's [encroaching] on it.
And it's not okay for someone who's
not a scholar and not done the
research and also rejects facts and
research to out of nowhere say, this
is how you have to represent things.
Because that is crippling to people
who have invested the time to do
the research and to consult with
each other, to conduct peer review,
to follow all of the proceedings
that belong to academic freedom.
It's just hanging a black sheet over
all of that and saying it's gone.
It's as if nothing is there.
Yeah, right.
Whenever someone says nothing
is there, something is going
on so you got to pay attention.
Absolutely.
It's painful to watch this happening.
At the same time, I have a lot of
respect for the museum professionals at
the Smithsonian who are trying to hold
up the standards under which they have
been trained and under which they have
authority to be managing the institution.
It's a tough fight and they're doing it.
The silver lining is because the contents
of these placards and of these exhibits,
right, because they are mutable,
they're not fixed: If they're changed
one way, they could be changed again.
They can easily be changed again.
So if we could just say, with
regime change comes relabeling.
And that's nothing new.
And that's not just
authoritarian or democratic.
It's with regime change
can come relabeling.
Well, and I guess it's not
just about the regimes.
There can also be grassroots pressure.
There can be folks who are not in
any sort of political power, but they
get together and they lobby a museum.
I think the British Museum is probably
the most notorious example where
there's been a cultural shift in people
critiquing why do you have all these
artifacts that were looted or whatever
verb you would like to use there?
They were taken from their homes
and are being exhibited in England.
There are these popular movements
trying to change museums from without.
Do you have a sense of how effective
[these are] ? Are those able
to really connect and to make a
difference in how museums operate?
Absolutely.
And just to give a few examples,
in my lifetime, the fundamental
change that came with NAGPRA, for
instance, the Native American Graves
[Protection and] Repatriation Act.
So that's from 1990 and
we're still working on it.
But the idea that somebody could challenge
the authority of a museum to own human
remains, to display human remains.
And again, we're back to
the Mojave water carrier.
The photograph was never
just of that woman.
It was representing the baskets.
Those bones are in a natural history
collection or in the Army Medical
Museum that was part of the Smithsonian.
Some of that was taken from battles that
were fought in the American West without
any of the permissions of the relatives
of the people who died on the battlefield.
So is that loot?
Is it plunder?
Well, guess what?
A whole lot of what 19th-century
museums were founded on was loot
and plunder and sometimes bought
under questionable circumstances.
That's a legacy that we are now coming
to terms with, and we are looking
at those materials differently than
people did a hundred years ago.
And so that's part of the
mutability of a museum.
But again, that's happened
within museum cultures and
within the management of museums.
Attitudes have shifted or changed
in response to public demands, not
just a federal government's order,
but to grassroots pressures and to
scholarship changes of people looking
at the past in different ways and
evaluating value in different ways.
I think these are positive kinds
of changes that happen in museums,
and the public isn't always
aware of why that's valuable.
I think sometimes people feel like … To
give one example, this was in Amsterdam.
There was a famous figure in a … I think
it was a canoe that hung over the entrance
to a major natural history museum there.
And when curators said, "Uh,
that's actually a human figure
up there, we need to probably
take it down." People said, "No!
You can't take him down.
He's great.
He's the museum!"
It's history.
Well, but he represented — and
we're talking about "he" like
we know who he is, right?
But this human figure was something
symbolic of the entire museum to, it
turned out, a very large general public.
So it then became incumbent upon
the museum professionals and the
scholars to explain why they felt
that this was now inappropriate.
In today's parlance, people would
say, "Oh, that's ridiculously
woke," or something like that.
No, this is a response to changing
attitudes towards how we identify
historical objects and remnants
from the past and how we value them.
And it does change and
it's always been changing.
It's possible a hundred years
from now, no one's going to
want to look at the Mona Lisa.
Have we already changed how we might or
might not want to look at human remains?
Yeah, I feel very differently about
it now than I did when I was a kid
going to a natural history museum.
Maybe we don't want to still look at
those sculptures that were made in
the 19th century of famous generals.
Maybe we don't still want
to look at the Mona Lisa.
I fully do expect that to change.
I fully do expect it to change.
Why do you think it's going to change?
What gives you that sense?
Because I'm a historian.
Because if things didn't
change, there would be no
history, no past to write about.
So change is essential
to the study of history.
If it didn't happen, well, we wouldn't be
here, but we also wouldn't have memory.
I once interviewed the American historian
Gordon Wood, and he said, "History
doesn't teach us any great lessons. No
one should ever really learn from history.
The only lesson it teaches us is that
nothing turns out the way you expected."
Nothing!
I knew it!
We were going to come back to nothing.
I didn't even intend that.
Nothing's everywhere.
Nothing is always happening.
This has been an incredible conversation.
I've really loved talking to you, Susan.
The last question I have for you, this is
the hardest question I'll ever ask you.
When you're in a museum
gift shop, what do you buy?
That's an easy one.
Postcards.
Postcards?
I always buy postcards, and
that's usually all I buy.
Sorry, museum gift shop, but I
usually only want the postcards.
And I get really frustrated when
the thing that I thought was the
coolest isn't on the postcards.
[laugh] I read an article about this once,
about how they do all sorts of analytics
behind the scenes to figure out what
should they put on the tote bag, what goes
on the postcard, what's going to sell,
what's going to move, because they only
have limited space in that gift shop.
I have a collection of postcards
and it goes way back into the '70s.
Oh my gosh.
Fantastic.
Well, actually, there's a bunch that
are older than that, and I've used
them in my research, but I'm talking
about the ones that I've purchased.
I don't send them.
Well, I used to.
I used to send them.
Now mostly I keep them.
All right.
I'll send you a postcard when this
episode comes out, but — [laugh]
Thank you very much.
That would be much appreciated.
I do collect them.
Thanks again to Susan Crane
for coming on the podcast.
You can find a link to her book, "Nothing
Happened: A History," in the show notes.
That book is also in one of the
prize packages, which you might
win in the gift shop giveaway.
To enter, all you have to
do is sign up for our email
newsletter at likemuseum.com.
Call 'Em Like Museum is hosted
and edited by me, Eric Johnson.
It's produced out of my podcast agency
in San Francisco, Lightning Pod.
Our marketing specialist is Julia
Wilde, artwork by Rhe Civitello.
Special thanks this
week to Elizabeth Crane.
Thank you so much for
listening to this episode.
I'll see you at the museum.