Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/13500775.2022.2234192
Lucia Patrizio Gunning, D. Challis
Abstract During the colonial period, museums did not just passively benefit from the plunder of human remains and culturally sacred items. When Britain sent a punitive military expedition to Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1863, it was accompanied by Richard Holmes, a staff member of the British Museum, whose purchase of loot from the expeditionary force institutionalised the plunder of cultural heritage. His inclusion in the expeditionary force was carefully planned, though the belongings he took — mainly manuscripts, religious items and emblems of power belonging to the Ethiopian royal family — were not the intended focus of his participation. Whilst the UK’s 2004 Human Tissue Act had a beneficial impact on the treatment of human remains in museums, objects belonging to colonised people are often still positioned as artworks or artefacts, evidencing ignorance of the deep personal and spiritual links that connect them back to their communities of origin. This article draws on our professional experience of curation and research in museums and libraries, as well as the impact of ICOM’s new Museum Definition on our practice. Joint research on the Maqdala expedition led us to question assumptions about the legacy of empire in museums and to scrutinise unexpected connections in the history of museum collections. This article addresses the problematic relationship between collecting and imperial power, the false dichotomy between ‘artefacts’ (belongings) and ‘human remains’ (ancestors) and the need to decolonise collections through further research and the recognition of ongoing cultural and physical violence.
{"title":"The Plunder of Maqdala: Ethical Concerns Around Belongings and Ancestral Remains in Museums","authors":"Lucia Patrizio Gunning, D. Challis","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2234192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2234192","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract During the colonial period, museums did not just passively benefit from the plunder of human remains and culturally sacred items. When Britain sent a punitive military expedition to Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1863, it was accompanied by Richard Holmes, a staff member of the British Museum, whose purchase of loot from the expeditionary force institutionalised the plunder of cultural heritage. His inclusion in the expeditionary force was carefully planned, though the belongings he took — mainly manuscripts, religious items and emblems of power belonging to the Ethiopian royal family — were not the intended focus of his participation. Whilst the UK’s 2004 Human Tissue Act had a beneficial impact on the treatment of human remains in museums, objects belonging to colonised people are often still positioned as artworks or artefacts, evidencing ignorance of the deep personal and spiritual links that connect them back to their communities of origin. This article draws on our professional experience of curation and research in museums and libraries, as well as the impact of ICOM’s new Museum Definition on our practice. Joint research on the Maqdala expedition led us to question assumptions about the legacy of empire in museums and to scrutinise unexpected connections in the history of museum collections. This article addresses the problematic relationship between collecting and imperial power, the false dichotomy between ‘artefacts’ (belongings) and ‘human remains’ (ancestors) and the need to decolonise collections through further research and the recognition of ongoing cultural and physical violence.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43541898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/13500775.2022.2234190
Leticia Pérez Castellanos
Abstract This article presents some of the practices of the experimental project La Casa del Museo and their long-term results. This project exemplifies the exploration undertaken by various professionals at the Museo Nacional de Antropología (MNA) to reconsider the role of that institution in relation to society, coinciding with the rise of decolonial criticism. It also allows for a reconsideration of museum experiences and actions to reimagine the role of museums in a postcolonial world. Between 1972 and 1980 the project operated an outreach programme undertaken in barrios, that were (at that time) located on the outskirts of Mexico City. It arose as a practical response to the series of discussions that were ongoing within the museums sector in the 1960s, and which questioned the modern museum of the type scattered across the world as a legacy of colonialism. The implemented actions illustrate the construction and exploration of new ideas and assumptions regarding the work of museums in relation to groups normally excluded from cultural participation. To begin, I revisit some of the key debates of the last quarter of the twentieth century on the role of museums in relation to society in order to analyse the context that gave rise to La Casa del Museo. I then define the key elements of its practices with regard to the postulates of the Integral/Integrated Museum, given that it aimed to ‘implement its dynamic’. Following this, I discuss the project’s long-term effects, understood as ‘resonances’.
{"title":"La Casa Del Museo: A Museum Outreach Project at the Outset of Decolonial Criticism","authors":"Leticia Pérez Castellanos","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2234190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2234190","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article presents some of the practices of the experimental project La Casa del Museo and their long-term results. This project exemplifies the exploration undertaken by various professionals at the Museo Nacional de Antropología (MNA) to reconsider the role of that institution in relation to society, coinciding with the rise of decolonial criticism. It also allows for a reconsideration of museum experiences and actions to reimagine the role of museums in a postcolonial world. Between 1972 and 1980 the project operated an outreach programme undertaken in barrios, that were (at that time) located on the outskirts of Mexico City. It arose as a practical response to the series of discussions that were ongoing within the museums sector in the 1960s, and which questioned the modern museum of the type scattered across the world as a legacy of colonialism. The implemented actions illustrate the construction and exploration of new ideas and assumptions regarding the work of museums in relation to groups normally excluded from cultural participation. To begin, I revisit some of the key debates of the last quarter of the twentieth century on the role of museums in relation to society in order to analyse the context that gave rise to La Casa del Museo. I then define the key elements of its practices with regard to the postulates of the Integral/Integrated Museum, given that it aimed to ‘implement its dynamic’. Following this, I discuss the project’s long-term effects, understood as ‘resonances’.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43573339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/13500775.2022.2234199
Laura Phillips
Abstract In this article, drawing on my perspective as a settler of white Euro-Welsh/English/Irish ancestry, I discuss words and concepts that are crucial to decolonising and Indigenising museums, with a particular focus on the lands now known as Canada. Museums, heritage spaces and other memory institutions are only beginning to grapple with decolonising and Indigenising approaches that place unacknowledged and unstated colonial norms under scrutiny (despite calls for such actions from Indigenous scholars, curators and activists for many decades if not centuries). The decades of genocide attempts documented in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Report and Calls to Action (2015) amplified the need for this work. Conversations around what ‘Reconciliation’ means for non-Indigenous people are slowly gaining momentum as museums, and the wider GLAM sector, look at how to implement decolonising and Indigenising actions in meaningful ways. I discuss Nerida Blair’s concept of Lilyology and la paperson’s institutional internalisation of scyborgism as part of my discussion of how museums and museum professionals can undertake actions for decolonising and Indigenising their practices and collections.
{"title":"An Incomplete Glossary of Change to Activate Decolonising and Indigenising Practices in Museums","authors":"Laura Phillips","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2234199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2234199","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article, drawing on my perspective as a settler of white Euro-Welsh/English/Irish ancestry, I discuss words and concepts that are crucial to decolonising and Indigenising museums, with a particular focus on the lands now known as Canada. Museums, heritage spaces and other memory institutions are only beginning to grapple with decolonising and Indigenising approaches that place unacknowledged and unstated colonial norms under scrutiny (despite calls for such actions from Indigenous scholars, curators and activists for many decades if not centuries). The decades of genocide attempts documented in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Report and Calls to Action (2015) amplified the need for this work. Conversations around what ‘Reconciliation’ means for non-Indigenous people are slowly gaining momentum as museums, and the wider GLAM sector, look at how to implement decolonising and Indigenising actions in meaningful ways. I discuss Nerida Blair’s concept of Lilyology and la paperson’s institutional internalisation of scyborgism as part of my discussion of how museums and museum professionals can undertake actions for decolonising and Indigenising their practices and collections.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49649675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/13500775.2022.2234196
Eduardo Briceño-Florez, Kathryn Eccles
Abstract This article asks what we can learn about the role of technology as a tool of resistance in a post-conflict society by examining a case study of a museum under construction, and in the shadow of a still- unresolved conflict. We show how the virtual staging of the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica in Colombia has been crucial to its success in challenging more recent political events and in crafting national memory narratives during a period of fragile peacebuilding. We analyse a series of technologically mediated provocations and interventions mobilised by the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica in order to show how digital tools and media enabled the museum to commence its storytelling at a time of ongoing tension and dissensus. We argue that despite, or perhaps because of, the limitations of digital technologies in a predominantly rural country, these have proven a key tool in building a historical narrative around the Colombian conflict and in managing the tensions inherent in a fragile peacebuilding process. In this case study, we draw parallels between transitional justice initiatives and ongoing decolonial activities in museums, in order to reflect on the ways in which the use of technology might disrupt hegemonic narratives and traditional mnemonic practices and hierarchies.
{"title":"Museums as Platforms of Resistance: The Use of Technology in Conflict Memory, Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding","authors":"Eduardo Briceño-Florez, Kathryn Eccles","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2234196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2234196","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article asks what we can learn about the role of technology as a tool of resistance in a post-conflict society by examining a case study of a museum under construction, and in the shadow of a still- unresolved conflict. We show how the virtual staging of the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica in Colombia has been crucial to its success in challenging more recent political events and in crafting national memory narratives during a period of fragile peacebuilding. We analyse a series of technologically mediated provocations and interventions mobilised by the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica in order to show how digital tools and media enabled the museum to commence its storytelling at a time of ongoing tension and dissensus. We argue that despite, or perhaps because of, the limitations of digital technologies in a predominantly rural country, these have proven a key tool in building a historical narrative around the Colombian conflict and in managing the tensions inherent in a fragile peacebuilding process. In this case study, we draw parallels between transitional justice initiatives and ongoing decolonial activities in museums, in order to reflect on the ways in which the use of technology might disrupt hegemonic narratives and traditional mnemonic practices and hierarchies.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45062352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/13500775.2022.2234193
Ricardo L. Punzalan, Deirdre de la Cruz
Abstract The University of Michigan’s role in US colonial expansion resulted in the accumulation of one of the largest Philippine cultural and natural history collections in North America. It is time for the university to address its colonial complicity in the formation of these collections by developing decolonial practices so that the institution can provide reciprocal and reparative access to these Philippine collections. In response, the ReConnect/ReCollect project is currently developing and testing relative approaches for culturally responsive and historically minded stewardship of Philippine materials at the university. Our overall goal is to create both the framework and the corresponding set of practices that will intervene in contemporary scholarship and curation to pursue what constitutes reparative work for Philippine collections. We engage in three interrelated interventions: reparative curation, reparative connections to community and reparative scholarship. Our anticipated outcomes include a full inventory of the university’s Philippine collections, opening our collections for iterative and inclusive community engagement and the creation of a multiplatform toolkit for reparative actions. The first project of its kind for Philippine collections, this work holds far-reaching implications, offering a new vantage point from which to engage scholarly conversations around decolonising collections. Our project builds on recent efforts to decolonise collections, which foreground Indigenous perspectives and community collaboration, consultation and dialogue to construct a model of relationality and shared stewardship.
{"title":"Reparative Approaches to Philippine Collections at the University of Michigan","authors":"Ricardo L. Punzalan, Deirdre de la Cruz","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2234193","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2234193","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The University of Michigan’s role in US colonial expansion resulted in the accumulation of one of the largest Philippine cultural and natural history collections in North America. It is time for the university to address its colonial complicity in the formation of these collections by developing decolonial practices so that the institution can provide reciprocal and reparative access to these Philippine collections. In response, the ReConnect/ReCollect project is currently developing and testing relative approaches for culturally responsive and historically minded stewardship of Philippine materials at the university. Our overall goal is to create both the framework and the corresponding set of practices that will intervene in contemporary scholarship and curation to pursue what constitutes reparative work for Philippine collections. We engage in three interrelated interventions: reparative curation, reparative connections to community and reparative scholarship. Our anticipated outcomes include a full inventory of the university’s Philippine collections, opening our collections for iterative and inclusive community engagement and the creation of a multiplatform toolkit for reparative actions. The first project of its kind for Philippine collections, this work holds far-reaching implications, offering a new vantage point from which to engage scholarly conversations around decolonising collections. Our project builds on recent efforts to decolonise collections, which foreground Indigenous perspectives and community collaboration, consultation and dialogue to construct a model of relationality and shared stewardship.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47376427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/13500775.2022.2234198
Sofia Karliner
Abstract In this article I locate myself within the scholarly conversation on museum decolonisation through an investigation of existing literature concerning contemporary Native American museums, both mainstream and tribal. Orienting my research within the historiography of museums’ entanglement with colonialism, I examine decolonisation efforts in the United States by analysing the role of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), a collaborative mainstream museum, together with smaller tribal museums and centres across the country, positing the latter group as complementary yet radical alternatives. Primarily drawing on the works of Susan Sleeper-Smith, Amy Lonetree, Amanda Cobb and Jennifer Shannon, I closely examine the histories, actors and epistemologies of contrasting approaches to Native American museology, and ultimately maintain that tribal museums come the closest to radically postcolonial spaces and are thus imperative to the wider agenda of museum decolonisation.
{"title":"Reclaiming the Other: Tribal Museums as Postcolonial Spaces","authors":"Sofia Karliner","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2234198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2234198","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article I locate myself within the scholarly conversation on museum decolonisation through an investigation of existing literature concerning contemporary Native American museums, both mainstream and tribal. Orienting my research within the historiography of museums’ entanglement with colonialism, I examine decolonisation efforts in the United States by analysing the role of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), a collaborative mainstream museum, together with smaller tribal museums and centres across the country, positing the latter group as complementary yet radical alternatives. Primarily drawing on the works of Susan Sleeper-Smith, Amy Lonetree, Amanda Cobb and Jennifer Shannon, I closely examine the histories, actors and epistemologies of contrasting approaches to Native American museology, and ultimately maintain that tribal museums come the closest to radically postcolonial spaces and are thus imperative to the wider agenda of museum decolonisation.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48942795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/13500775.2022.2234191
Oluwatoyin Sogbesan
Abstract Museums in Nigeria, as in other colonised countries across the globe, are often perceived as stemming from a Western social construct with origins in colonial administration. However, such a general notion fails to consider local ways of recording, presenting and preserving traditional artefacts: ones that specifically represent a people and its culture. During the colonial era, the establishment of museums was born out of the necessity to preserve immense collections that reflected the country’s diversity and to encourage the understanding and study of Nigeria from an interior, rather than exterior, colonialist, perspective. Another motivation behind establishing museums during the colonial period was to deter pillaging and theft and encourage the repatriation of objects that were illegally removed by ethnographers and researchers in the then-British colony (Murray 1967). Nevertheless, establishing museum institutions during the colonial era catered more to white settlers than to Indigenous audiences in Nigeria, since they showcased various cultures of the host community for the enjoyment of foreigners. As a result, various communities became hesitant to release their sacred objects to western collectors and institutions; they resisted colonial collection practices because they negated local identities, sacredness and value systems. Artefacts became effectively ‘encased’ in museums and storage spaces, alienating them from their original identities and owners, even while held in their country of origin. This paper investigates how recontextualising the past can aid in decolonising museum spaces, specifically highlighting how the inclusion of local languages in museum exhibitions and materials can serve as one such tool. Using a case-study approach, the paper investigates how the incorporation of local languages in two public museums in Lagos, Nigeria play an important role in efforts to decolonise these institutions — and might be applied to museums elsewhere.
{"title":"Reframing the Present by Recontextualising The Past: Towards Decolonising Nigerian Museums","authors":"Oluwatoyin Sogbesan","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2234191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2234191","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Museums in Nigeria, as in other colonised countries across the globe, are often perceived as stemming from a Western social construct with origins in colonial administration. However, such a general notion fails to consider local ways of recording, presenting and preserving traditional artefacts: ones that specifically represent a people and its culture. During the colonial era, the establishment of museums was born out of the necessity to preserve immense collections that reflected the country’s diversity and to encourage the understanding and study of Nigeria from an interior, rather than exterior, colonialist, perspective. Another motivation behind establishing museums during the colonial period was to deter pillaging and theft and encourage the repatriation of objects that were illegally removed by ethnographers and researchers in the then-British colony (Murray 1967). Nevertheless, establishing museum institutions during the colonial era catered more to white settlers than to Indigenous audiences in Nigeria, since they showcased various cultures of the host community for the enjoyment of foreigners. As a result, various communities became hesitant to release their sacred objects to western collectors and institutions; they resisted colonial collection practices because they negated local identities, sacredness and value systems. Artefacts became effectively ‘encased’ in museums and storage spaces, alienating them from their original identities and owners, even while held in their country of origin. This paper investigates how recontextualising the past can aid in decolonising museum spaces, specifically highlighting how the inclusion of local languages in museum exhibitions and materials can serve as one such tool. Using a case-study approach, the paper investigates how the incorporation of local languages in two public museums in Lagos, Nigeria play an important role in efforts to decolonise these institutions — and might be applied to museums elsewhere.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47972835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/13500775.2022.2234200
Lauran Bonilla-Merchav, Bruno Brulon Soares
{"title":"Arriving at the Current Museum Definition: A Global Task and a Decentralising Exercise","authors":"Lauran Bonilla-Merchav, Bruno Brulon Soares","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2234200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2234200","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43650531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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