Museum Information
The following are some helpful definitions and useful information concerning both museums in general and this museum in particular.
Speaking of museums, museums are more than just a conglomeration of objects placed together haphazardly. Museums have a number of functions, which are guided by certain ethical standards. A museum must educate. Hopefully this page of my museum will serve to educate you. You will find below more detailed descriptions of the exhibits in this museum. You will also find information on museums and gargoyles in general. A museum must also entertain its visitors. This is done through both exhibits and sometimes through games. Finally, a museum houses objects and information that are used for research. However, this is not all that a museum accomplishes. Museums must classify what they have, and this process is based upon the museum's metanarrative.
My own personal metanarrative will focus on the idea that the conception of the Middle Ages as a culturally dark period in history needs to be debunked. This can be shown through the free form art and work of the time. Gargoyles are a prime example of this, as is Gothic Architecture.
You may begin to wonder just what a gargoyle is. According to Russell Sturgis, writing in Sturgis' Illustrated Dictionary of Architecture and Building, a gargoyle is: A water spout, especially one projecting from a gutter and intended to throw the water away from the walls and foundations. In medieval architecture, the gargoyles, which had to be very numerous because of the many gutters which were carried on the tops of flying buttresses, and higher and lower walls, were often very decorative, consisting, as they did, of stone images of grotesque animals, and the like, or, in smaller buildings of iron or lead.
These should be distinguished from chimeres, which Lester Bridaham defines as: Fabulous monsters includ[ing] the imaginary animals found on the cathedrals which are not water carriers. They may be found perched on the pinnacles of buttresses, or entwined with the leafwork of portals.
Every museum must have an ethical statement that clarifies to some extent how the museum will behave when faced with an ethical dilemna. Ethics are a set of standards which govern the way in which an entity acts within its world. The ethical statement with regards to this museum's behavior is as follows:
1. There exists truth in history and this truth can be best approximated by taking into consideration all of the materials at hand and evaluating them as objectively as possible within their own contexts. For a further examination of this idea please aquaint yourself with the Rashomon Effect as it is employed in sociological and ethnohistorical pursuits.
2. The public must be taken into consideration when it comes to exhibits. However, this will not be done at the expense of historical fact.
3. Any group or individual with a valid grievance will be heard and their complaint will be judged according to its validity. If the complaint is deemed valid, it will be the cause of change if not, it may be the cause of compromise. However, again, history will not be infringed upon.
Anthropological Terminology
Functunialism:
The idea that all artifacts, including modern day items, and actions of a society can be defined solely on their use, or function.
Metanarrative:
The underlying story that a museum is trying to show through the arrangement of its exhibits and the descriptions thereof. return
Rashomon Effect:
The idea that every story or history has a truth. However, when looking for this truth one must take into consideration each person's background who is telling the story. For instance if a blue individual is telling of the war between the blue people and the yellow people, one should consider that it is after all a blue person telling the story and they may have a certain bent. For that matter they may have been a loyalist to the yellow cause. To know where the blue person is coming from (and hence what can be ascertained truthfully from their story) one must consider the blue person's background. return
Structuralism:
The idea that all items and actions of a society can be based upon the structure within which they are used or accomplished (an example of such a structure is language). return
The Literary Front
Understand this clearly: You can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool.
-John Ruskin speaking on why Gothic Architecture was better for the mind and soul of the working man than were the factories of Victorian England in The Savageness of Gothic Architecture as found in The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. vol. 2. 6th ed. 1993 p.1283. return
Femme je suis povrette et ancienne,
Qui riens ne scay; oncques lettre ne lus.
Au moustier voy dont suis paroissienne
Paradis paint, ou sont harpes et lus,
Et ung enfer ou dampnezsont boullus:
L'ung me fait paour, L'autre joye et liesse.
La joye avoir me fay, haulte Deese,
A qui pecheurs doivent tous recourir,
Comblez de foy, sans fainte ne paresse:
En ceste foy je vueil vivre et mourir.-Francois Villon was an extraordinary French writer of the late 1400's. This poem and the follwoing translation are from Ballade: As a Prayer to Our Lady in a collection of his known as The Testament as found in The Complete Works of Francois Villon. Ed. Anthony Bonner. 1964. p.68-69.
I am a woman old, poor, and ignorant,
who has never learned to read.
In my parish church I see
a painted Paradise with harps and lutes
and a Hell where the damned are boiled:
one frightens me-the other gives me joy and happiness.
Let me have that joy, high Goddess,
to whom all sinners in the end must come,
filled with faith, without idleness or pretense.
In this faith I wish to live and die.
Moreover he perceived that at best only copying, patching and imitating went on here; which he fancied to be owing to some temporary and local cause. He did not at that time see that mediaevalism was as dead as a fern-leaf in a lump of coal; that other developments were shaping in the world around him, in which Gothic architecture and its associations had no place. The deadly animosity of contemporary logic and vision towards so much of what he held in reverance was not yet revealed to him.
-Thomas Hardy, the main character's thoughts on a stone mason's yard in Jude the Obscure in Chapter II of the section At Christminster.
In case you entered the museum by a route other than the Introduction and need further explanation of the terms Streaker, Stroller and Student, please refer to the Introduction. Thank-you.
Visitor Comments Introduction Gargoyles and Chimeres of Notre-Dame de Reims Notre-Dame de Reims
