ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE IVORY TOWER

In so much as museums are seen, and see themselves, as being a part of 'academe' they have also been seen as existing within 'The Ivory Tower Paradigm.' As the 20th C progressed this view has been changing – and likewise has been challenged.  

Originally the term Ivory Tower came to us in Biblical references to the Song of Solomon and later  for Mary Mother of Jesus. However, by the 19th C it was used to describe a kind of academic world view where there was a perceived disconnect between the practicality of everyday life and academe. 


Indeed, the term Ivory Tower has come to carry pejorative  connotations of a willful disconnect from the everyday world, the esoteric, overly specialised cum useless research and academic elitism. Typically it carries the negative connotations of outright condescension. In globalised English usage it has become the shorthand for 'academia' or 'the university' – particularly departments of the humanities.

Against this background, and in so much as museums are perceived as being a part of academe, it can be seen that some museums both set themselves apart from the everyday and/or are seen as being separate from the mundane concerns of  ordinary life – albeit that this may be a misconstruction in a great many cases. More crudely put, many museums seemed to understand themselves as  closed shops of a kind and thus unaccountable to anyone not deemed as having jurisdiction over them – most members of the public etc.

Therefore, for many observers, museums carry the burden of being seen as self determined, self defined and largely unaccountable. Along with this comes the perception – internal and external – that museums are by-and-large unaccountable in line with  19th C imaginings of museums and their place in the world. For better or worse the 20th C saw great changes in the ways museums operated and were understood as well as what might be understood as a museum – along with changes in the ways in which they have increasingly become more accountable. 

Museology in the 21st C has, and is, taking on and promoting new dimensions of accountability against the background of the international political thrust for greater levels of democracy in once autocratic states, jurisdictions, etc.   The Ivory Tower Paradigm as it may apply to museums no longer has any credibility in a Western cultural context even if there are still adherents to the thesis that museums are separate and apart – and therefore only required to be 'relatively accountable'.