Christina F. Kreps, Liberating Culture—Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation and Heritage Preservation (2003, Routledge, London/New York) ISBN: 0-415-25025-9, 185 pp, $32.00 (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2022
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.
Museums, Colonialism and Identity: A History of Naga Collections in Britain
The Nagas of India and Burma (Myanmar) have had a somewhat sensational and "exotic" relationship with the British public ever since the Nagas entered their imagination during British colonialism from the mid-nineteenth century onward. The main reason for this perception, argues Andy West, is museum collections of Naga artifacts and their displays in the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford), which houses the largest collection, followed by other substantial collections in the British Museum, the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and the Horniman Museum. Alongside these, smaller collections are scattered in around 45 museums all over Britain, demonstrating the size (estimated to be anywhere between 7,000 and 12,000 pieces) and the popularity of the Naga collections in Britain compared to the other hill tribes of India/Burma that the British also administered. Why so much about the Nagas, and why were the Nagas so popular among the British? Who are the Nagas in the first place, and what role did the British have in "classifying" Naga artifacts that would eventually crystallize and simplify Naga identity for public ease and consumption? Andy West navigates through these complex questions in this impressive and lengthy monograph (209 pages, coffee-table style, with illustrations and color and black-and-white photographs). He presents the various materials-both theoretical accounts of museum studies and material culture and various ethnographies on the Nagas-through a deft handling of sources
Reassessing the curatorial treatment of Indigenous cultural material in Western museums
The history of collections and acquisition of cultural materials is fundamental to the issue of the heretofore-accepted prerogative of Western museums to collect, display, and preserve non- Western objects. It is a history that reflects the Marxist theory of commodity fetishism in Western capitalist society in which the value of an object is determined by the social relations that constitute the context of production, and imbue the object with an accepted, abstract and intrinsic economic value. Such a phenomenon underpins an established ‘capitalist system of objects’ through which value is generated and objects are fetishized. Within the Western museological context, value encompasses that which is not only commercially lucrative, but which has a certain degree of aesthetic and/or scientific value. As such, exotic cultural artifacts, particularly those of distant origin - temporally or geographically- are deemed particularly interesting and unique, and have, historically, been highly prized by collectors and curators. Against the background of European colonialism, this Western value system, coupled with the notion of commodity fetishism, constitutes the milieu within which the object-oriented fields of anthropology and art converge and are elevated into the realms of high culture, where they occupy the role of arbiter in the cultural exchange that results from the collection and display of non-Western cultural materials in European museums. The issues inherent in such practices, which find their genesis in the colonial age and early ethnographical study, raise important questions that reflect a postcolonial sensibility. Such questions examine the reasons behind the long accepted circumstance in which non-Western objects are stored and displayed in European museums, and ask what moral and political measures can be taken to ensure culturally sensitive and responsible museological practices, as well as questions regarding the appropriate value of scientific analysis and public display when dealing with highly sensitive cultural material and human remains. I will be exploring these issues in relation to the custodial, museological, and ethnographic practices of westernised Australian museums in the treatment of Indigenous art and culture, and the ramifications of such practices on the identity and social and cultural integrity of Indigenous Australians in a postcolonial context.
Decolonising the Museum. New perspectives for the XXI century ethnographic collections
Thesis of the Master course in Public and Cultural Diplomacy, 2020
Museums are experiencing an era of profound transformations urging them to redefine their relationship with society. In a globalised word, crossed by migrations and multiculturalism, the museum becomes the arena where the conflicts and the challenges of contemporaneity take place: among these, the decolonisation of the museum surely holds a pivotal role as it is source of heated debates at the present time. Nonetheless, confusion and vagueness envelop the very meaning of the term, which is addressed in regard to issues of repatriations as well as to the subversion of the narratives within the museum. Therefore, this thesis aims to discern what does it really mean to decolonise a museum and how this can be accomplished, according to the contributions given by scholars and to the European museums’ practical responses to the issue’s growing relevance: the thesis' focus regards the decolonisation of European museums displaying items from Sub-Saharan Africa. To pursue this goal, the thesis divides the concept in two components, which highlight the duality of arenas in which the challenge of the museums’ decolonisation is played: outside the museum, and inside the museum. The former deals with the issue of the artefacts’ restitutions and relates with the broader problem of property. It has been called outside the museum because, although the contested objects are displayed in the collections, the final decisions over their destiny - and destination - belong to the Nation States. Therefore, while the former addresses property, the latter rather regards representation, and concerns the intervention on the old ethnographic narratives inside the museum space in favour of an inclusive approach toward the people and the cultures represented by the displayed objects. This part, that includes a historical-comparative analysis of ethnographic museums in Europe, is integrated by a case study conducted on the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren (Brussels) and its profound renovation concluded on December 2018. The case study will clearly exemplify which are the challenges of future European ethnographic museums in their path toward decolonisation.
Complementary Contributions to Critical Museology
Book review article of Moira Simpson's 1996/2001 book 'Making Representations: Museums in the Post-Colonial Era' and Christina Kreps' 2003 book 'Liberating Culture: Cross-cultural perspectives on museums, curation and heritage'.