Is Antiquarianism Unnecessary?

I decided in high school that I wanted to study history and use it in the museum field. This was at a time when there were few museum studies programs around and, at least in my small high school in western Pennsylvania, little guidance to how to go about getting work in museums. I grew up around antiques, my mom called her decorating style “early attic,” and I understood in a general sense that objects connect us to history.

During my undergraduate years I started to investigate museums and who worked there and I discovered a diverse population. What puzzled me at the time was how few people had degrees in history, even though they worked in history museums. I was perplexed. How are you supposed to express accurate historical information to the public if you don’t know how to judge what comes from reliable sources or know how to do scholarly historical research? This is what concerned me in my early years.

With the growth of museum studies programs within or associated with university history departments, my concerns over the application of proper historical methods have been, for the most part, relieved. But now I have another nagging issue. What about connoisseurship? In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries it was called being an antiquarian. It is the deep knowledge about the material culture of the past that comes from studying and collecting objects.

Talking to friends who’ve matriculated in museum studies and perusing the course offerings and requirements from a randomly selected sample of museum studies programs, I note the absence of anything resembling lessons in material culture. I also found it interesting that two of the most well known and noted museum studies programs, the Cooperstown Graduate Program and the University of Delaware/Winterthur program have extensive offerings of courses relating to the study of material culture.

I’m not saying that the courses in museum ethics, collections management, exhibition creation, etc. offered by museum studies programs are not needed. Indeed, they certainly are. However, I see the potential for these programs turning out people who may have a strong grasp of methodology, policy and theory but have no idea how to tell if the federal style side chair they just received as a donation is from an early 19^th century craftsman’s workshop or from Ethan Allen .

You might say, not all museum studies students will become curators, some will go into registration, education, or management. I can argue that material culture knowledge is important in all of these positions regardless of whether you end up working at the Met or in a small local history museum. After all, the vast majority of history museums exist to collect, preserve and interpret the material culture of the past. When you get down to it, it is all about the stuff. If you don’t have the tools to identify and authenticate objects or to express why the objects are significant and valuable to our shared historical experience, what will visitors to your museum learn?