Museums and Muses

American Museum of Natural History © Bekah Swope

Museums have had numerous meanings throughout time. The word "museum" comes from Latin and originated in Ancient Greek as Μουσεῖον or Mouseion. It was originally a temple or other place dedicated to the (nine) Muses. The Muses, in turn, were considered to be the personification of knowledge and the arts. They "watched over the welfare of the epic, music, love poetry, oratory, history, tragedy, comedy, the dance, and astronomy" (Museums in Motion, Alexander & Alexander, 2008, p. 3). Invocation to a muse or the muses can be found in many writings, from Homer and Virgil to Shakespeare and Milton. This invocation was a call to the muses, usually at the beginning of a piece, so that the author can accurately and with the greatest of craft, represent and share the forthcoming narrative. Thus, a museum would be a place for the muses to inspire and make knowledgeable.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

One of the most famous museums would certainly be the Mouseion of Alexandria. It's library, the Library of Alexandria, is more widely known in popular culture, but the the library was actually part of a larger Mouseion. In addition to the repository of written materials and the very active attempt to collect the entirety of the written word, the institution "had some objects, including statues of thinkers, astronomical and surgical instruments, elephant trunks and animal hides, and a botanical and zoological park, but it was chiefly a university or philosophical academy--a kind of institute of advanced study with many prominent scholars in residence and supported by the state" (Alexander & Alexander, p. 3-4).

Alexander and Alexander also make a lovely point: "Bearing in mind that musing and amusement are interrelated and reflect pondering and deep thought as well as diversion and entertainment, it is no surprise that museums have long been considered to be places of study as well as repositories of collections" (p. 4).

They continue with a quote from Didier Maleuvre stating that "[T]he museum does give free time--freedom to loiter and tarry, to indulge the long double-take, the retracing of steps, the dreamy pause, the regress and ingress of reverie, the wending progress that is engagement. It is a tempo of consciousness disarming to modern audience conditioned to fear open-ended silence as a forerunner to boredom" (p. 4).

The need for time to reflect, think, learn, and pause as part of the learning/studying process in our modern age has been something David M. Levy has been speaking and writing about for some time now. (Dr. Kahn has some great resources in her blog post, too.) In Levy's No Time to Think article, Levy states that: 

"We would seem, then, to be losing the time “to look and to think” at the very moment we have produced extraordinary tools for investigating the world and ourselves and for sharing our findings. How might we understand this seeming paradox? The question becomes all the more intriguing, and perhaps puzzling, in the face of this fact: Much of the inspiration for today’s digital tools came from a proposal made by a man named Vannevar Bush sixty years ago; his aim was to augment the scholar’s ability to think. By proposing technologies to automate the more routine aspects of thought, Bush hoped to free up more time for scholars to devote to the creative aspects of their work. How has it come to pass that technologies developed to make more time to think have seemingly had the opposite effect, and what does it mean for the academy" (p. 2)? 

This loss of a vital component of the learning process coupled with the technology that has is paradoxically shortening and increasing our work times is, I believe, what leads to information overload and frustration.

I want to bring myself back towards the importance of musing. The longer stroll towards knowledge and understanding is delightfully appealing in contrast to classes that cram 12-16 weeks worth of study into just 4. How much can one really comprehend and retain with such an overwhelming amount of information coupled with the demand for replies of substance? Taking the time to muse makes sense and truly feels right to me.

Ode to Psyche by Keats

[...]

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

  In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branchèd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
  Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees
  Fledge the wild-ridgèd mountains steep by steep;
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
  The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,
  With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
  Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same;
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
        That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
        To let the warm Love in!