"Some sketches for a Postcolonial Theories for Museums handbook", Qalqalah, #1, April 2015, p. 51-63. [English version] (original) (raw)

To be or not to be colonial: Museums facing their exhibitions

redalyc.uaemex.mx

This article first gives an insight at what the idea of museum meant before the modern era, to set the global, historical and political context in which modern museums emerged. It then analyzes the conditions that paved the way for institutional change as the weakening of the national setting has allowed other layers of histories -local, regional, community, indigenous, minority- to be expressed. Finally, it explains why handling colonial heritage in contemporary exhibitions -through the historical contextualization of the collections on display- is of paramount importance to museums small and big, and look at the extent to which they succeed in adapting to change, through various examples taken from Europe and Australia.

DECENTRING THE MUSEUM. Contemporary Art Institutions and Colonial Legacies. Chapter 1 / First published in 2023 by Lund Humphries

Decentring the Museum. Contemporary Art Institutions and Colonial Legacies, 2023

Nina Möntmann’s timely book extends the decolonisation debate to the institutions of contemporary art. In a thoughtfully articulated text, illustrated with pertinent examples of best practice, she argues that to play a crucial role within increasingly diverse societies museums and galleries of contemporary art have a responsibility to ‘decentre’ their institutions, removing from their collections, exhibition policies and infrastructures a deeply embedded Euro-centric cultural focus with roots in the history of colonialism. In this, she argues, they can learn from the example both of anthropological museums, which are engaged in debates about the colonial histories of their collections, about trauma and repair, and of small-scale art spaces, which have the flexibility to initiate different kinds of conversation and collective knowledge production in collaboration with Indigenous or local diasporic communities from the Global South. For the first time, this book identifies the influence that anthropological museums and small art spaces can exert on museums of contemporary art to initiate a process of decentring.

National Museums, Globalization, and Postnationalism

Museum Worlds, 2013

In recent years it has been asked whether it is time to move ‘beyond the national museum’. This article takes issue with this assertion on the grounds that it misunderstands not only museums as cultural phenomenon but also the ways in which globalization, nationalism, and localism are always enmeshed and co-constitutive. The article begins by considering theories of globalization, postnationalism, and cosmopolitanism and their relevance for national museums in the European context. Specific theories of cosmopolitanism are subsequently further explored in relation to two museum examples drawn from the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin. In different ways both examples demonstrate the potential for museums to engage visitors with ideas of cosmopolitanism, globalization, and postnationalism by revisiting, reframing, and reinterpreting existing national collections and displays. In the process the article makes the case for the merits ...

Decolonising the museum? Dilemmas, possibilities, alternatives

Culture Unbound, 2021

As institutions that arose during the European age of imperial expansion to glorify and display the achievements of empire, museums have historically been deeply implicated in the colonial enterprise. However if we understand coloniality not as a residue of the age of imperialism, but rather an ongoing structural feature of global dynamics, the challenge faced by museums in decolonising their practice must be viewed as ongoing. This is the case not just in former centres of empire, but in settler-colonial nations such as Australia, where "the colonisers did not go home" (Moreton-Robinson 2015: 10). As a white, Western institution, a number of arguably intrinsic features of the museum represent a significant challenge to decolonisation, including the traditional museum practices and values evinced by the universal museum. Using a number of case studies, this paper considers the extent to which mainstream museums in Australia, Britain and Europe have been able to change their practices to become more consultative and inclusive of Black and Indigenous peoples. Not only this, it discusses approaches that extend beyond a politics of inclusion to ask whether museums have been prepared to hand over representational power, by giving control of exhibitions to Black and Indigenous communities. Given the challenges posed by traditional museum values and practices, such as the strong preference of the universal museum to maintain intact collections, this paper asks whether community museums and cultural centres located within Indigenous communities may represent viable alternative models. The role of the Uluru Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre in Australia's Northern Territory is considered in this light, including whether Traditional Custodians are able to exert control over visitor interpretation offered by this jointly managed centre to ensure that contentious aspects of Australian history are included within the interpretation.