Kim Siebert Interview

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I'm happy they exist. It's a totally fascinating story. They're marketing, branding is impressive.

People are so into them. Television is very difficult to compete with. That's the problem of live theater.

13. What was the museum’s Touch Taiwan project with shadow puppetry? You worked with Aboriginal stories?

Yeah we asked the tribes to give us their stories. We wrote a play in Chinese, gave it back to the tribe, they translated it into their native language. Then we went back and the children performed it for their own tribe in their tribal language.

[Stephanie Huffman] Aboriginal culture didn't have puppets originally?

No. It was my idea because I remember everything I did in elementary school in French or other languages. So you remember the songs you learned, you remember the theater pieces very well.

It's a great way to learn a language. It was sort of a theater native language project that lasted three years. We published a documentary, two books.

14. You're working with the French culture association in March and performing the French Sailor play?

Yeah, we'll just perform yeah. It's the French month around the world.

[Stephanie Huffman] Did you get approached for that?

Yeah they saw the show.

15. Do you think that puppets can be used as cultural diplomacy?

Absolutely. Especially for Taiwan. We've done it around the world, 50 countries. It works very well as soft power.

16. What was the audience feedback for the shows you took abroad?

It's always been quite positive. Slowly, you're getting more and more recognition because we're not the only group going out. Now there's lots of groups. People have studied this type of theater.

17. What do you think is the future of Taiwan glove puppetry?

I don't see many big changes. As long as there's not going to be a school or education program things will just continue. Not much, I don't see anything creative or new coming out, the new shows of course but so so.

18. Do you have any museum statistics?

I don’t think so.

19. Is it hard to travel because China's pressuring so much?

No. We don't notice anything; we're just too small. We're flying under the radar.

7.5 Kim Siebert Interview

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I would say cultural diplomacy in a way is a summary of the museum's functions. Because that's happening on many different levels. If you are doing a good job of representation you would be including the community in the formulation of your exhibitions and content if at all possible.

Presumably your identity as a cultural institution would also include identifying yourself in an international context. Local cultures are a microcosm of something bigger.

For example if you're talking about Taiwan it's always in relation to say Southeast Asia or Mainland [China]. Or indigenous as opposed to immigrant, indigenous as opposed to colonial.

You need to identify yourself in that context for whatever project for whatever you say. You might be able to purchase an object, you might get an objection through donation, but that does not make that artifact yours, which obviously resonates with cultural identity. You don't claim that cultural identity if you're smart unless it really is your own. Every single nuance of

difference and sameness should be on some level acknowledged and negotiated if you're doing a good job. It might not be overt, but it should be in the process.

I don't see how else you can negotiate heritage. I feel very strongly about it. And as I said before, I moved from being a curator of African art at the South African National Gallery at that point and at that very first interview I said I want to find a replacement because I come from a white settler community and I don't want to be in that position of representing an African continent.

Not in my country which was facing democratic elections for the first time. So that's why I elected to move into conservation. By conserving heritage I would be able to support a new generation of debate, discussion and contextualizing. To hold onto a position when at that time there was such a dominance of white academics-I just felt I could not do it. I could not

uncritically join those ranks in an opportunistic way, no matter how much I'd actually been part of a voice that had expanded the acquisition policy of the national gallery to move out of a Eurocentric framework.

2. How do museum’s act as contact zones?

That's what that was. This was in the 1990s when certain white curators were taking up positions as curators of African art were people beginning to express this in the community and in

America for example. So it's been interesting that like twenty or thirty years later [people are]

saying is she really the best candidate?

One thing that is very clear to me is that you cannot separate the integrity and the values of the people involved. It is your willingness to negotiate. The distinctions of who is witnessing, who is observing, that changes the dynamics of what is happening in front of them. So much is about curation and collection development. As a conservator that's why we worked so hard in the costume exhibition to include a puppeteer in our presentation. It was absolutely central to our positioning as conservators because we don't' want to have a hierarchical relationship. We want to have a relationship of fluidity and conversation.

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We discuss methodology and approaches because when you're working in conservation as a very new profession, developing ethics and methodology, such as preventive conservation, is so important. Where you look at the whole environment rather than this emphasis on restoration, to really preserve the object as much as possible including things like deposits of dust and dirt and wear and tear to show that integrity of the process of a living object.

3. How do museums create effective space for cultural exchange?

What a conservator is doing is they are preserving an object so that there will be many multigenerational discussions about that object. To see yourself as having the last word on anything is very arrogant and short sighted.

[Stephanie Huffman] So you are keeping the door open for conversation?

Completely. This is why there's sometimes a loggerhead between a curator with a very strong will and vision and a conservator because the conservator is hoping to keep the backdoor open for many different discussions. This idea of this is the most important object in the collection-the conservator knows, and certainly some museum professionals know as well, and appreciates that there are things that can emerge in museum collections that become important that we would never anticipate. So in terms of collection management and how you understand your collection you really have to be terribly aware of the bias of an ideology of a particular age. You want to be very open to any possible nuance, to keep that possibility in mind.

4. Why are puppets valuable items for international travelling exhibitions (ITEs) and for cross-cultural collaborations? When the museum had an exhibition in South Africa was that an ITE?

It was and was government funded with local institutions. This museum has used a lot of that and has been quite successful in securing that kind of funding. So obviously this museum is seen to be doing that quite effectively. And I think it was particularly important because we had

puppeteers, we had a performance company and we had a museum collection. We could build a very deep and complex program for a foreign institution and represent Taiwan very well. We also had the strength of a director [Ruizendaal] who has an academic profile as a recognized scholar in the field of puppetry. And his fluidity in French, German, English and of course Chinese. That's very important-that fluidity in the director is certainly a strength.

For Taiwan they [ITEs] are very important because they seem to be...so there was a

survey...where people chose. That surprised us. That was after the museum was started. That was a very nice surprise to see that Taiwanese people generally would identify a puppet as being an emblem in a way that represented Taiwaneseness.

5. What is the difference between a larger museum such as the National Palace Museum and a smaller museum like the TAPTM engaging in ITEs?

The collection of the National Palace Museum has a very specific history with the KMT government. And they are the National Palace Museum so it's always a sensitive and political collection. You cannot avoid it. You might detract from that by focusing on thematic exhibition in your curation but essentially it's a very specific collection of a very specific history. And that is Mainland Chinese so that's a different meaning.

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I think that this institution has this range of responses which is puppetry, education and the authority of the collection with a world recognized scholar. The internationalness has put it in a very strong position. Paul Lin was saying we are a museum of international reputation. We have clearly delivered so much of that in regards to travel and transculturalism. We have been

successful because we have managed to secure government funding time and time again for exactly this. And we've done it again, we'll be going to a museum in Toledo, Spain next year.

It's difficult to compare the National Palace with a puppet museum. You don't understand a puppet until it's activated in a performance. Where's the National Palace Museum there are artifacts that might be functional, they might be beautiful, but they're also and always have been about taste and contemplation. This highly discerning artifacts of a very important legacy through control and leadership. It's weighted completely differently.

I think for Taiwan to export puppetry is so much easier-it's family friendly and it's dynamic. It literally moves. If you're giving it, if you're presenting it through performance. And storytelling is inherent in it.

[Stephanie Huffman] Even though it could lead to political discussions it's not overtly political.

It's not in your face.

6. When museums create an exhibition of Taiwanese puppetry, or host a Taiwanese ITE, how have they balanced the display of the physical object with the corresponding narrative and history of the object?

It depends on the kind of museum. With the National Gallery in Capetown it was minimal and I felt it was a less successful exhibition because of that. I think we had too many objects. I think when you want to move towards a more sculptural focus on puppetry then you really have to present objects in isolation and really develop this idea of contemplating a single object without context. It's a different way of looking rather than this clustering. We were doing that in South Africa and I think it was less successful. I think the room was too crowded. It needed serious editing in my opinion. But I come from a fine art background. That was my old institution. I'm very used to a fine art context.

Clustering of many objects of particularly traditions and even a set-one of the strengths of this collection is that we have collected sets. The narrative I have always felt was extremely successful here.

In fact I like small museums because for me there is a kind of humanity to a small museum, if they are well presented and well conceived, especially in the public galleries. A big museum can be very much like a mall in the sense that it's exhausting. If you are a visitor from out of town where you can't return regularly to see updated galleries, people feel they have to get their bucks worth. They trudge through the whole huge monolith of an institution which is a huge meal that leaves you exhausted in the end. Hence the success of the dining halls and the coffee shops in museums. So with a small museum it's more like a really good perfectly sized meal.

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[Stephanie Huffman] It always feels to me like it's more intimate even if it's more crowded.

I think that this sort of storytelling in the curation, Robin's storytelling with the designer Raintree, I think there's a lovely quality. And that certainly attracted me to this museum at the beginning.

So I'm very interested in small museums and those who do it well. There are more smaller museums that big museums actually. I don't think that being a small museum is something to apologize for. I think it's a lot about connoisseurship. It's interesting when you say it feels intimate. It's like holding a little Netsuke in your hand. [Japanese toggle] It is an intimate relationship. If it's working really well you're able to examine a small subject. There's small museums that allow you to have more in depth relationships with particular subjects or angles.

Not that big museums can't do that, of course they can do that. But I'm just saying they usually have multiple shows. And a whole bank of curators and traveling shows. It's a different thing.

7. Is there an exchange of power inherent in cross-cultural collaboration?

It depends on who's at the table. You can mess it up! Well look at the genuflecting that's Germany's doing now to Africa. [The Linden Museum returned artifacts belonging to Chief Hendrik Witbooi to Namibia in February 2019.] And the British Museum is a perfect example of egg on your face and really arguments that are so insulting to the nations of origin. [There have been numerous controversies involving the British Museum collection in regards to the country's colonial past.]

[Stephanie Huffman] What's necessary to do it well?

You have to have some empathy to start with, it would help if you weren't arrogant. And there's also this issue of who's funded the most. Because there's a legacy loosely of colonialism or war or some huge macro context which is why you are not already embedded in the institution. Why do you need this relationship with an outsider? It's because you're not represented within. Do you know what I mean?

You have the capacity to represent if you have black curators and women curators and Chinese curators and whatever in these great institutional collections. So you build up your authority through partnerships. Because I'm trying to highlight the tension. To not always place it with the communities that are obviously being consulted with but to look at who is initiating that

relationship and why. So there's a shortfall in internal representation. It's not only going in and getting the data that you want. I would say it's an acknowledgement that there's a shortfall. So you have got to complement yourself with the respectful relationship not just a relationship of acquisition. Acquisition of data-if you're doing consultation without this kind of power

relationship you'll be very happy.

8. Is new culture created when two different cultures collaborate?

To add your team of advisers and if they're non advisers they would be partners. How much better to have partners? So that's where Rosie and I were at, that we wanted a paper [and exhibition] that was a partnership with the puppeteers. We could say we consulted with certain puppeteers. But you know this is a person who has an academic background, why shouldn't he be represented in the paper with us? I mean we all are involved in preservation there's no question about that. So it's very much about who frames the relationship. And how inclusive you're going

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to allow that relationship to be. So it's a decision you make. And if you're very conventional you're not going to be inclusive.

9. How do we measure the impact of an international travelling exhibitions (ITEs) and cross-cultural artistic collaborations?

Well, I think there's...first of all it would be difficult to do that. How do you quantify that? I don't know. And sometimes when you're exposed to a culture for the first time...I find I'm particularly interested in puppetry because I think puppetry has tremendous and ancient gravitas. And sacred functions. Really any three dimensional figurative and symbolic piece of sculpture can be

compared to a puppet in a way. A puppet is an animated form and that is profound because if you look at the functions of puppets often they are embodying deities, sacred energies, ritual,

community continuity, life or death and the future. And the safety of a community. There are many, many things that puppets are able to embody because these experiences of life, sometimes mysterious and dangerous. Who else better to embody those ideas than a moving puppet? It's so much more universal and fluid than a person would be for example. It offers possibilities that are profound.

10. In regards to cross-cultural collaborations is there a danger of glove puppetry going through cultural displacement?

Because of this Eurocentric way that we've framed heritage we have this hierarchical framework where paintings are more important than embroideries. Where a pot does not have the same gravitas necessarily as a figure of a deity for example. We inherit these things and puppetry because it's practiced by marginalized communities like theater performers, the heritage of theater performers in most societies have not necessarily been revered. In some cases they have been-there have been important performances that have been linked with the elites, palace performances to royalty and so on. But often puppetry is about the hoi polloi, often it's been a vehicle for political critique of the status quo. Because it has these improvised opportunities for the puppeteer to express something in more traditional storytelling and so on. The little local flavors that have always made performances more interesting and edgy.

It's almost like because the way that it's structured and because certain art is valued more than others or communities it's almost like how can you measure the value of this. We have to change the entire paradigm of measurement. It's also interesting to look at the Mingei movement in Japan during the 1930s. There were a small group of intellectuals in Japan, including Bernard Leach who's an English potter, and Shﾅ綱 i Hamada. And they started like William Morris in the 19th century in England identifying local unknown craftsmen as being a profound expression of local culture. And they saw it at risk. The impact of industrialization and internationalism that was moving through as markets were opening up and moving through societies. They started writing critically about this and collecting so that whole Mingei movement evolved. Some

people have said that it served Japanese fascist imperial ideas in the end so they're very critical of it but it has a mixed flavor about it. That is not overt but they weren't particularly uncritical either.

So it's complicated but this idea of living treasures, people that embody [that], is very much from that movement.

[Stephanie Huffman] How do you put a price tag on a living treasure?