What would it mean to decolonize museums?
Reflections on a monthlong series of events on “Decolonizing Art.”
As part of the Lepage Center’s six-part event series on “Decolonizing History,” in March we explored the theme of “Decolonizing Art.” We began with a talk by Dr. Monique Renee Scott, Director of Museum Studies at Bryn Mawr College and a Consulting Scholar for the African Section of the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. We continued with a roundtable involving Cháedria LaBouvier, curator, art historian, writer and organizer who curated “Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: The Untold Story,” held at the Guggenheim Museum in 2019; Dr. Dan Hicks, Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Curator of World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum; and Dr. Ruba Kana’an, Assistant Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture in the Department of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto. We concluded with a conversation between two individuals who worked on curating “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists,” which opened at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) in June 2019: Teri Greeves (Kiowa) a critically acclaimed artist who specializes in beadwork, and Dr. Jill Ahlberg Yohe, associate curator of Native American art at MIA.
How has colonization impacted museums?
Though museums have changed a great deal since their origins in the late-19th century, we might imagine a traditional neoclassical structure with dioramas and exhibits depicting natural or cultural topics. Our speakers for this month, however, argue that the representations held in such museums are not neutral and can in fact be dangerous.
One reason for this is the way many museums obtained their collections. Because of the colonial plunder from colonized areas of the world that led to the violent acquisition of many museum objects, including many funerary objects and human remains still on display, Dr. Dan Hicks argues that “We need to recognize that these are war zones.” Hicks called for us to see them as sites of conscience and memory rather than a presentation of the truth.
Teri Greeves sees the colonial impact not only on display, but behind the scenes as well. Going on collections tours of “acres and acres of…dark cabinets” was, to her, an offensive experience. Though the Kiowa people see objects as living, many of their cultural artifacts are lying static in storage, preserved according to a particular curatorial worldview rather than being repaired or used. “That’s what was shocking to me is how mistreated they are,” she said of museum collections. Rather attempting to highlight active or vibrant cultures, many museums place certain groups of peoples and their objects squarely in the past.
This perspective is reflected in the categorization museums use to narrate history. Dr. Monique Scott noted that “teleological color-coded progress narratives…still reside in museums today,” particularly in dioramas at natural history museums, but in cultural institutions as well. Displays presenting certain humans as more advanced or evolved than others, based on ideas formed in the period when imperialism was at its height, can be dangerous. At the New York Museum of Natural History, for example, Scott said that “Millions of schoolchildren are seeing African peoples confined to these jungles and plains.”
Scott noted that “These objects didn’t just kind of drop into these museums.” So, who decides what gets displayed?
What role do curators play?
Curators play a huge part in creating and sustaining popular images of particular cultures. The objects and artworks they choose, and how they arrange them can impact what people take away from a museum. Yet, Cháedria LaBouvier argues that though it is a relatively new discipline, museum curation has become an exclusive and hierarchical field. She addressed the paradox of curatorial practice, which is “by definition and by training” transmitted through an oral history and hands on experience, yet “we’ve kind of hermetically sealed it off.”
Some of our speakers experienced this exclusionary practice firsthand. Dr. Jill Yohe recalled that when she was selected to curate the Minneapolis Institute of Art exhibit, “I was told over and over again: ‘Jill, you must maintain curatorial authority’…. What does that mean?” Rather than heeding this advice, she practiced co-curation, partnering with Greeves and inviting many Native women artists to provide input on the exhibit. “I had authority to be a great facilitator,” she said, “From the very beginning, we talked about curating as a process…This isn’t about us…it’s about legacy.”
A transparent process is key for curators seeking to decolonize. Dr. Ruba Kana’an spoke of one of her colleagues in Canada faced with a decision to let an elder of a Native tribe handle a ritual object on display to demonstrate it at a meeting, or to follow the prescribed curatorial protocol and not allow it. Ultimately, she decided to let him use the object and as a result, Kana’an argued that this scenario flipped the typical hierarchical mode of conservation to involve community. She said that in order to achieve this on a wider scale, museums should get rid of the “secular curatorial view that we as experts impose on objects.”
Yet some, like LaBouvier, questioned whether collections are even necessary in a decolonized museum, since “Collecting is at its root an imperial enterprise.” Would such a fundamental change be possible? Is this the way forward for those seeking to decolonize?
What does a “decolonized” museum look like?
With this context in mind, what can curators who want to decolonize museums do? How does decolonization go beyond the curatorial staff? Our speakers for this month had a variety of opinions on this topic, but laid out several strategies for museums seeking to decolonize.
Some speakers drew from their own experiences. Greeves’s curatorial strategy was to ask herself how she would feel in the exhibit. “I didn’t want one native person to walk into this exhibition to feel bad,” she said. The rest came naturally to her curatorial team. “Suddenly the narrative starts shifting focus…it happens organically.”
Scott, meanwhile, laid out the research questions that she and her colleagues at the Penn Museum have used to reframe the Africa galleries: “How can the collection archives uncover the colonial practices that produced ‘ways of seeing’ Africa that have persistent visual residues in museums (and popular/political culture) today?” Considering groups usually depicted in past settings in a contemporary light is key. She believes that providing context and labels and “letting those of us who work in museums see that process” of how they are researched and produced is necessary to display objects and photographs in a museum space.
Hicks, however, believes we must go beyond labels to repatriation and restitution, even when this is complicated by the involvement of non-state actors with claims to objects. He said museum workers have to “physically dismantle” the colonial foundations of museums. “What we need to do is to…foreground…the voices that have been calling for this dismantling,” he said. He also disagreed with a popular notion that museums need to provide education to the groups they return objects to: “Let’s not get into the idea that we sort of have to train the world,” he said.
Though Kana’an agreed that restitution would be a key component of decolonizing museums, she emphasized that education and training for museum workers receiving returned objects should indeed play a part, if only a small one. “After all,” she said, “those artifacts have had a different life in their colonial contexts.”
Beyond the actions that curators and museum executives can take, LaBouvier believes that decolonizing the museum means involving all museum workers. She cited examples of museums that pay their upper-level employees six figures but have other staff members barely scraping by. She believes all employees should be involved in museum processes. When security guards are considered experts on the art they protect, she said, “that is a decolonized space.”
The work proposed by our speakers would take time and significant effort, yet they agreed that even if it is difficult, museums should at least attempt it. “I’m not nihilistic, I don’t think we should not do anything because it’s not possible,” Scott said. But where to begin? Our speakers offered so many suggestions that it might seem overwhelming. Kana’an noted “I think we need to be working on all levels at the same time… and activism is a big part of what we’ve got to be doing.”
Despite the unwieldy nature of decolonizing museums, Greeves offered encouragement. She emphasized that decolonization would ultimately lead to a fuller interpretation of our rich history. “It’s expansive, it is not taking away.”
Resources:
The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence, and Cultural Restitution by Dan Hicks.
“Necrography: Death-Writing in the Colonial Museum,” by Dan Hicks.
“Museums Matter in the Current Climate of Anti-Black Racism,” by Monique Scott.
Hearts of Our People Native Women Artists edited by Jill Ahlberg Yohe and Teri Greeves.
