Looking For Non-publics

4. Publics and Non-Publics of Cultural Heritage

Chapter 4 PUbLICs AnD non-PUbLICs oF CULtURAL hERItAgE twO studies On differentiated expressiOns Of interest and disinterest Daniel Jacobi université d’avignon Jason Luckerhoff université du Québec à trois-rivières For those interested in high culture and the debate over its democratization , the issue of the public (or publics) is very important. Is the public the sum of those who, by taste or habit, read great literature, attend the theatre or art film houses, listen to the opera, visit several museums and monuments a year, and so forth? The high esteem and social regard enjoyed by this type of culture could explain why we consider its distribution and appropriation important objectives. This is why the issue of knowing how artistic or literary creation can affect the widest segment of the population has been used in constructing the ideology of democratization . The right of access to culture, even though it may be no more than a claim, still constitutes a central element in any cultural policy. 72 | Looking for non-pubLics Counting the audience at a cultural show or the number of entries into a museum or temporary exhibition is not merely a statistical obsession. It is about assessing how artistic creation manages to affect the population. It is also a way of gauging cultural demand, of predicting fluctuations or calculating the geographical distribution and size of facilities in a territory ; in short, of managing culture and ensuring its dissemination. In most developed countries, we know that the public of high culture is at the most a powerful minority, stable enough and more or less loyal. It renews itself (again, more or less) from generation to generation ensuring the transmission and perpetuation of culture. And yet, as soon as the total number of viewers of a play becomes significant, or a cultural television program attracts audiences greatly exceeding the average, or a classical symphony orchestra records a hit, we are astonished. All it takes is a temporary exhibition attracting a record number of visitors, or visits at the Louvre surpassing those at the Eiffel Tower and we declare an “art rush,” or a “museum boom.” As if the fact of drawing a larger public were almost extravagant, and it alone could sometimes suffice as proof of this culture’s universality or, more simply, as a factor in the debate over the qualities of a cultural offering. The willingness to open access to high culture to the non-public, which originated in the performing arts milieu, also infiltrated the domain of cultural heritage and museums, to the point of becoming one of the major premises of the policy of promoting monuments and collections . And thus imposing everywhere not just a revitalization of the methods of promotion and distribution (in museums, the organization of temporary exhibitions designed as events; for monuments, creating tours or interpretative tools), but also a willingness to provide the educational means and to train a new category of professionals whose duties involve facilitating the appropriation of content by placing it increasingly within the reach of the ordinary public (Jacobi, Meunier, & Romano, 2000). Mediations and mediators henceforth become the spearhead in winning over the non-practising public. The public as a social entity – since the only certitude we possess of the relevance of this designation derives from its presence here and now and the act of consenting to take part in culture – distinguishes itself from the rest of the population, which, for opposing reasons, is not there and does not participate. In other words, identifying and recognizing a small group as public is tantamount to establishing the rest of population as non-public (even if, as is most often the case, it is the bigger segment of the population). A priori, then, the most basic definition of the concept of non-public is all those who are not public, thus all those who do not pubLicS anD non-pubLicS of cuLturaL Heritage | 73 participate in any way and under any circumstance. The public is formed in constant opposition to its twin, the non-public. And it will be the latter that mediators will make their mission to court and woo.1 And yet, are we sure what a public is? How does the random congregation (resulting from all kinds of heterogeneous factors) of a group of individuals, often very different from each other, manage to provide unity and consistency to a disparate group to such an...