There are two types of failed museums.There is the Museum of the Old Style, such as the old Museum of Natural Sciences of Madrid, such as some rooms of the National D'Histoire Naturelle Muséum in Paris or as the glorious Egyptian Museum in the Tahrir Square in Cairo.Direct descendants of Wonders (Wunderkammer) Renaissance, are a remains in the exhibitions, a riot of warehouse air with crystal stores.In the Egyptian museum, for example, you do not find an arc: there are fifty, from different eras, piled up in immense showcases with hardly any labels, without any explanation.A side room can be full of the tools with which the pyramids were built but no scheme of how they were used or manufactured appears.
This type of museum is fantastic, if you know what you are talking about, because you can see uncommon pieces, analyze the variation over time, enjoy differences and details.But if you do not know how to distinguish a cartridge from the VI dynasty from a Hellenistic graphite, you are dead: it is impossible to cover the variety or discover a guide.
The other type of museum is much more fashionable, and the most striking example is perhaps the young Inhotep Museum in Saqqara, in Egypt.It is a museum-Joyro in which the variety for the exceptionality of the pieces is sacrificed: in an ultra-modern building and with a precious and minimum exhibition lighting and assembly, only a handful of pieces of an absolutely exceptional nature are exhibited.It is the museum as an exposure of a few treasures of incalculable value at which the most aesthetic game is taken out: the renunciation of any didactic intention in favor of the contemplation of wonders without context, without explanation, with hardly any historical support.The museum as an exclusive tourist attraction, aesthetically spectacular, empty.
Man, the palace of wonders
The new exhibition of the National Archaeological Museum (MAN) in Madrid belongs to this second type: it is a show, an exhibition of treasures, a deployment of beautiful wonders.It is a way to show the world the treasures that the past has left in our country.It is a farm that will enchant tourists.But if you go to him wanting to learn about the history of the Peninsula and the peoples that inhabited it, you are ready.Because there are wonders of antiquity, but there are no people.
What there is, and I am aware that I repeat myself, they are treasures.But there are many: that of Jávea, that of the Aliseda, the one of the Puebla de los Infantes, that of Salvacañete, the various of Palencia, that of Cangas de Onís-Vegadeo, the one of the tower of Juan Abad, the dishesof Abengibre, the Visigoth of Guarrazar, that of Recópolis, that of Mogón, that of Bentarique, that of Priego, that of Pamplona ... accumulations of coins or jewels, typical of moments of instability and social fear;Wealth warehouses for when times of bonanza that tell us about families and clans in crisis, frightened by the future, wanting to guarantee the survival of their position and their lineage.
And the fact that there are so many, and that they were abandoned so that we could find them today, it tells us about the many ages of fear that the lands of Spain accumulate, and their many victims.Because finding a treasure today shows that someone wanted to save their wealth, and then could not pick it up again.It tells us about people, terrified individual people, and then dead.It tells us about feelings.
In the beautiful and elegant showcases of the new man we will not see those people, or their fears, or their failures, or their disappearance.We will see primarily restored coins, splendidly illuminated, aesthetically irreproachable.We will see beautiful weapons and tools, jewelry, beautiful ceramic, or metal vessels.We will see objects of aesthetics rapturely who has taken the most aesthetic.What we will not see is people.No history.
We will see, yes, wonders.Elche's lady and severe ancient elegance of her, with her escorts the lady of Baza, Galera and the statues of the hill of the Saints.Nuclei of the flint workshops of the Manzanares terraces in Vicálvaro, when Madrid was the center of the world paleolithic.The bronze bulls of the Sanctuary of Costitx, in Mallorca, modern in its severity and elegance.Roman mosaics with faces that seem portraits based on irregular tiles, such as Medusa and the stations found in Palencia.Sarcophagi such as the oestyed, of spindles, which prefigure the Capomista capitals.The statue of Livia, of beautiful classic invoice.The Pollentia banner, emblem of a Hispano -Roman youth school.
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Zamora's boat, an intricate ivory work of the Andalusian era.Arc covers in plaster of Al Andalus.Romanesque capitals of exceptional beauty.The 'dessert' of Carlos IV, miniatures of Roman ruins in original materials.The Neperian abacus with the shield of the Jerónimos de Madrid, in reality two mechanical calculators for large numbers of the seventeenth century.Romanesque capitals forests with their dances of saints and monsters carved by artisans from all over the peninsula.
The labyrinth of the audioguías
What is missing are other things.As a sense of history and the passage of time;The only visible temporary scale is at the entrance, coded in beautiful colors that later are useless;It is difficult to know which of the elegant showcases corresponds to the subsequent time, or follow a chronological order unless one is guided by the numbers for audioguías, which are not easy to see either.People who try to learn history with the visit are frequently lost.Nor is there an interconnection of the various departments that helps to understand the context of each moment in time.The phenomenon of veracos and bichas is not explored, so widely extended throughout the peninsula, and its more than probable oriental influence.
The splendid collection of attic vessels of the Department of Classical Antiquities is not related to the tombs of the Iberian era in which such ceramics was used as burial urns.The various Egyptian times do not connect with the North African and Oriental influences of the Carthaginian colonization era.In the Middle Ages the exposure of Christian objects is separated from that of the Islamic, even if both were contemporary and influenced.Often the best explanations are in the abundant special exhibitions for the blind, which can be touched.There is no sense of historical moment, or a clear tour.
But the most clamorous absence is that of the people;The people behind the objects.Those who carved those statues;Those who handled those plows or hunt with those tips of flint.The blacksmiths who tempered the irons, the weavers who used the looms whose weights abound, the children who played with the marbles and dolls.There are no signs of arrogance that undoubtedly wore the bearer of the sword with gold knob of the Average Bronze Age found in Guadalajara, or the fearsome Arab jineta of the fourteenth century.
As soon as a personal flash appears in the collections of funeral urns, or of ceramic vessels, or the Iberian silver dishes.We are not even told about the reeyzuelo that was buried in the Pozo Moro monument that presides over one of the museum's courtyards.Even the reconstructions of 3D towns, cities and constructions lack human silhouettes;It is as if the monuments had sprouted from the ground spontaneously.
Ghosts of the past
There are people in the MAN, but they are hidden in the small details, in the corners of the showcases.In the iberas and stigils of the stigils, scratches that Greeks and Romans used in the bathrooms to clean themselves.In the very delicate fabric cestillos with esparto of the Cave of the bats in which the people of the Neolithic hung talismans around the neck.In the Bullae pendants that marked the childhood of Roman children.In the immense attention to the detail of those who carved the oculated idol of Extremadura, of the Chalcolithic.
In inscriptions of Roman tombstones, often full of love and genuine pain.In the curse plates (Tabellae Defixiorum) that Hispanorromanos used to take revenge on enemies.In import sword pods with rings to hang them modified to adapt to local fashion.In the tillage and trade tools.In perfume jars and buckles of clothes.In the stealthy ceramics used to eat in the domestic environment.In the elaborate burials of all eras, axis of one of the thematic tours ('Archeology of death').
Appearance above the essence
There are even, if not errors, yes peculiarities.As the Neolithic Ceramic Colator of El Sabinar, which is not said to be used to make cheese.Or like the 'chains' in the Roman mining showcase that are, in reality, shackles for slaves.Opportunities are allowed to link the life of the ancients with the current one, as in the mosaics that celebrate the victory of the Red Quadrigas team, which could announce a Ferrari victory with four horses.Or as the gladiatory table found in Italica that reproduces a speech by Emperor Marco Aurelio complaining of the high prices and excessive income of the show organizers and sports, which also do not pay the treasury;The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Archeology smells like ground, and sweat.Recovering remains of the past is a fairly physical task that, as in any work, is composed mostly of rewarded routine very occasionally with an exceptional finding, with a flash of beauty or truth.People who excavates, sometimes with brush, sometimes with beak and shovel and even with pneumatic drills, what they look for is other people.Treasures, such as ceramic fragments enough, buildings of buildings or bone shift.
Archeology intends to know history, which is the lives of millions of human beings who lived before us;Like us and different from us.In the new National Archaeological Museum there are no smells, nor people, nor almost history.It is like a return to the idea of Indiana Jones movies, an archeology understood as treasures hunting with name and surname.There are jewels, and treasures, in an aseptic environment and with a studied lighting.There you can put from history, but not learn it, because the appearance is above the essence.Maybe because the problem is not from the museum;Maybe because the new exposure of the MAN is just the exhibition we deserve.
