Post-conference Reflection
Rhea Blem
Arriving in Edinburgh from
Berlin on the 27th of April, I was not sure what to expect. The 2022
MEG Conference was the first larger event I would be attending in person since
before the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Looking forward to and simultaneously
feeling slightly nervous of human-to-human conversations, I consoled myself
with the thought that we were all a little bit “out of practice” when it came
to social interactions. I felt excited to spend the following days among people
who shared an interest in thinking about museum pasts and presents in order to
shape better futures within and beyond museums. Having only recently applied
for MEG membership, I knew no one else and was initially quite overwhelmed with
the number of people who turned up at the National Museum of Scotland on
Thursday morning. Quite soon though, I realised I was not the only one feeling
this way and adjusted to the new space, which was already buzzing with lively
discussions, and people greeting old friends. The collective excitement at
finally meeting up again in person was palpable and contagious. I quickly found
myself involved in numerous conversations in what I experienced as a warm,
welcoming, and open-minded environment.
What followed were two
intense, very interesting days of talks, discussions, exchanges, reflections, which
I have decided not to summarise in detail. Instead, I want to revisit the
beginning and end of the conference, touch upon recurring themes, and share
some thoughts on what struck me as particularly important, what moved me and continues
to accompany me now, almost two months later.
In the introduction to
the conference, Dr Samuel Alberti (NMS) asked how we can make world culture
museums relevant for contemporary and diverse audiences. This served as a point
of departure for the subsequent “provocations” panel, which explored the
question: How can we make museums relevant for social and environmental justice
today?
The respondents spoke
about the enduring legacies of colonialism, empire, enslavement, and racism.
They stressed the need for museums to be held accountable in addressing and
actively disproving these legacies. Sheila Asante (Museum Galleries Scotland) observed
that museums, which had been part of a conscious effort to subjugate people
historically discriminated against, frequently continue to perpetuate
exclusionary and racist narratives. These ways of telling “history through the
lens of white [middle class] people” continue to feed the assumption
that museums are for certain people and not for “Others”. Museums, Sheila
Asante argues, need to develop “racial literacy” and anti-racism needs to be
embedded in work structures and museum practices. Miles Greenwood (Glasgow Life)
recentred the educational value and responsibility of museums to confront the
challenges faced by our societies today (racism, poverty, structural
inequality, climate change…). Miles Greenwood also questioned what value is
created through increasing the perceived relevance of museums and whom this
value serves, asking: What are museums doing to provide social justice for
marginalised communities?
This question was echoed by Nelson Cummins (Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights), who criticised the lack of engagement with questions of empire, colonialism, and racism in some museums, as well as a frequent failure to mention anticolonial resistance and agency of (formerly) colonised peoples. Insisting that museums can be sites of learning and critical engagement, Nelson Cummins argued that museums need to acknowledge not only the history of racism and colonialism, but how these continue to shape our present. Dr Peter Loovers’ (University of St Andrews) contribution reminded of the need to bring social and environmental justice together in tackling issues such as global heating, and of the central role of indigenous peoples in this process. This point resurfaced in subsequent papers that addressed ethnographic collections as “environmental archives” with capabilities to facilitate intercultural and interspecies knowledge dialogues (Rosa Dyer, Birkbeck, University of London and Pitt Rivers Museum), collaborative approaches to research on and conservation of “biocultural” collections (Dr Mark Nesbitt et al., Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Birkbeck, University of London), and indigenous (creative) responses to addressing the colonial dimensions of climate change (Dr Karen Jacobs, Sainsbury Research Unit).
The provocations
discussed the challenges and structural problems of the museum sector, but also
highlighted the possibilities for museums to potentially function as spaces for
learning about and furthering the cause of social justice, for (re)building
trust, for community engagement, for healing, for reflection, for restitution[1],
for reparations, for forging new narratives, for imagining and shaping better
futures, locally, as well as on a planetary level.
Many of the papers
presented over the following days would pick up on these aspects, notably the participation
of historically marginalised and/or descendant
communities. Several speakers reiterated the necessity for sustainable,
long-term partnerships and relationships based on trust, and long-term funding in
efforts to put these principles into practice. The equal (re)valuation of and exchange
between different forms of knowledge was another returning theme. This should entail
equivalent and adequate value (including financially) for participants
contributing “indigenous knowledges”. Yet how can this be ensured within
ongoing structures of (global) inequality and asymmetries of power? I have also
been wondering about the value afforded to the emotional labour invested by
descendant and creator communities in these processes. We heard about
collaborations, co-curations, and co-production of knowledge(s), about
interdisciplinary approaches to provenance research, about repatriation as a
historically situated practice, about how social and environmental (and perhaps
epistemic) justice need to be thought in conjunction, about reactivations and
reanimations of “objects”, emotional and spiritual aspects of working with
“colonial collections” and ancestral remains, about museums as process and the
potential of impermanence.
It was interesting and also
personally relevant to me to hear Dr Giovanna Vitelli (The Hunterian), Dr Briony
Widdis (Queens University Belfast), Dr Jeremiah Garsha (University College
Dublin) and Mark Hall (Perth Museum and Art Gallery) speak about the
specificities of addressing legacies of empire and colonialism in (Northern)
Ireland and Scotland. Although I grew up for the most part in Switzerland, my
family on my father’s side are white South Africans of mostly British,
and, (perhaps not) incidentally, predominantly Scottish descent. Understanding
how I am implicated in (ongoing) histories of colonialism and racism, and how
this informs and motivates my research, is an ongoing process. I therefore
appreciated Briony Widdis’ frank self-positioning regarding her own colonial
ancestry as an introduction to her talk. Thinking further about particularities
of Scottish or Irish participation in projects of empire and colonialism seems
crucial, if issues related to social justice, racism and structural inequality
are to be addressed.
As someone who has spent many
years observing museums from the “outside” as a student and university
researcher, but who aims, eventually, to work in the museum sector, gaining
insight into some of the practical challenges, which museum professionals
encounter on an everyday basis, was an especially helpful aspect of the
conference. Even though I am aware that implementing theoretical approaches to
the “ethics” of curation, display, and “care” of “colonial collections” is
rarely straight forward, hearing directly from museum professionals about the
complexities, challenges, and affective dimensions of their work, is fascinating
and humbling. Contributors reflected on
the practicalities of restitution, storage, conservation, and questions of
classification with critical self-awareness and humility. Dr Lucie Carreau and Sam
Daisely’s honest account of their attempts to respectfully interact with human
remains, acknowledged not practical as well as emotional aspects of the “Stores
move” project at MAA, Cambridge. Hearing these testimonies touched and
impressed me.
I was especially
heartened by and would like to highlight the “work-in-progress” papers of the “early-career”
PhD researchers (Melissa Shiress, Amy Shakespeare, Nathalie Cooper, Alba
Ferrándiz Gaudens, but also Rosa Dyer), who presented convincing approaches to
dealing with cultural heritage collected in contexts of colonial injustice.
In a talk on the South
African collections at the Horniman Museum, Nathalie Cooper (University of Warwick)
referred to Dr Wandile Kasibe’s description of the museum as a colonial “crime
scene”, and ethnography as tool of empire and racist violence. These violent
legacies are still very much alive in our institutions, in our methods, and in
ways of seeing and representing formerly colonised people and places. As we
heard at the outset of the conference, these legacies need to be addressed and repaired by museums,
who continue to profit from the absence of cultural heritage in places “of
origin”.
For institutions built on
dispossession and violence (symbolic, structural, and physical), whose
self-image as places that accumulate, store and ostensibly “care for” the
cultural heritage of people who continue to be constructed as “Other”, what
does “decolonisation” actually mean?
Possible ways forward
were proposed in Dr Johanna Zetterstrom-Sharp’s (Horniman Museum and Gardens) talk
on the “anti-collection”, which questioned the very nature of museums as spaces
with and for collections. The paper offered suggestions for museums to move
beyond the logic of accumulation and retention that has shaped their identities
and actions. Similar questions were addressed by PhD researcher Amy Shakespeare
(University of Exeter), who proposed a “return and explain” approach and
explored the potential of engaging with “empty spaces” left behind by objects when
they return to places or communities of belonging. These presentations raised
questions about the role of restitution in a wider anticolonial framework.
It is absolutely crucial to
celebrate every small step in the direction of more equitable relations between
museums and descendant communities as well as the growing awareness about
colonialism and racism. Nonetheless, I was left with the overwhelming
realisation of how much still remains be done. Notwithstanding the comforting
examples of “successful” projects, such as the first restitution of “Benin
Bronze” from a UK institution by the University of Aberdeen (Neil Curtis) or
the possibilities offered by digital technologies to facilitate and enhance encounters
and connections between people, places, and things (Louisa Minkin et al; Alice
Watterson et al; Dr Ali Clark et al), it seems vital, at this point, not to
become complacent. As Neil Curtis admitted, “if you’re more than a hundred
years late there’s no sense in saying you’re ‘first’”. The work that lies
before us is essential and long overdue. It is unsettling, uncomfortable, and
leads into the unknown. Keeping in mind that “decolonization is not a metaphor”[2],
as Jeremiah Garsha and Amy Shakespeare cautioned, we need to ask ourselves what
museums and what, in particular, white museum and university
professionals, including myself, are willing to give up, to further the cause
and urgent need for decolonisation? “True” decolonisation must lead to social-economic justice, i.e., restitution
and reparations, and is, ultimately, “not about museums” (Neil Curtis). It has thus
become clear, that for museums to be(come) relevant, they need to become
instruments of social and environmental change. And this change must serve the
needs and wishes of those who have been negatively impacted by the often
violent extraction of natural and cultural resources under colonialism, empire,
and racism.
I was moved and motivated
by the varied and sometimes vulnerable accounts of people’s experiences of
working with or on “ethnographic collections”, increasingly together with
descendant communities, and of how they are addressing colonial continuities in
their institutions. In concluding, I want to recentre questions of
positionality and representation by revisiting a prescient statement made in
the closing discussion: Mario Tuki (Museo de Rapa Nui, Isla de Pascua, Chile)
observed that although repatriation had been mentioned in many of the talks,
there had been a lot of talking about and talking for indigenous
and marginalised communities. The assertion that there were “communities who could
speak for themselves” and the consequent call for a “more balanced testimony of
people doing the work on repatriation” was met with an uneasy silence. This
silence lingered on and stayed with me after the conference. It reinforced, for
me, the urgent need for fundamental and structural change as well as the
importance of listening to and actually hearing the voices of people who
have been marginalised through European colonial narratives and actions. The
recognition that this was still a very white space, also made me
question my own position as a white, middle class educated, “early career” researcher who wishes to contribute
to processing colonial history with and perhaps at some point without “world
culture collections”.
Prioritising antiracist
work on a personal, institutional and societal level and striving for
structural change, seems even more urgent in the light of these remarks. Returning
to the questions posed in the introduction – “how can we make world culture
museums relevant for contemporary and diverse audiences?” and “how can we make
museums relevant for social and environmental justice today?” – the
participation of people from communities who have been negatively impacted by
colonialism, empire, and racism, is key. “Contemporary and diverse audience”
need to be part of shaping the futures of museums, not only as audiences or
external advisors but on all levels.
Nonetheless, as was made
apparent through the provocations, and by the remarks outlined above, museums
continue to function as spaces of exclusion and, in some cases,
re-traumatisation. As Sheila Asante rightly asked, “Why would you want to
participate in a racist museum?” Considering the history of museums,
ethnography, and other colonial disciplines as tools of empire and racial
violence, and the fact that museums still often re-enact or fail to deconstruct
this violence, maybe we should be asking ourselves a different question. For
museums to be(come) relevant and accessible to “contemporary and diverse
audiences”, and for them to contribute to social and environmental justice
today, they need, first and foremost, to become safer, less violent, and more
inclusive. So, how can we make world culture museums safer places, not only for
“contemporary and diverse audiences”, but for fellow researchers,
collaborators, and co-creators, including for members of descendant
communities? This question could and should, I think, be extended to events
such as this conference where we discuss possible futures of museums.
Realising that the same
ideologies and structures that enabled the removal of “objects” from people to
whom they belonged, continue to shape our border regimes that violently restrict
people’s freedom of movement today, and the added injustice that formerly
colonized people and places are disproportionately endangered by the effects of
global heating, re-affirms the responsibility of museums and other institutions
with colonial histories, but also the need for political action and change. This
is a vast and intimidating task, but one which I believe is already underway,
and one which people all over the world understand to be essential and are
committed to being a part of. The wide range of institutional affiliations of
people attending the 2022 MEG Conference attests to the will of many
individuals to confront the colonial legacies and racism in their institutions,
to focus resources and skills on building trust, to learn and unlearn, to
repair. Attending the conference impressed upon me the significance of community
for this work, of forming mutually supportive relationships through knowledge
exchange and social interactions.
It was incredibly special
and a privilege to be able to take part in the 2022 MEG Conference. I am very thankful
for the opportunity. I am happy for the many friendly and engaging
conversations, grateful to those who charmingly coaxed me out of my shyness,
who made me feel part of this community. I look forward to joining again in
subsequent years, to seeing new and known faces, and to contributing to
creating an open, inclusive environment for discussing and drafting visions of
how to build better futures, both within, and beyond museums.
[1] During the conference, the term “repatriation” was mostly frequently used. I choose to use the term “restitution”, which alludes to the actual act of “taking” as well as the act of “giving back” to a place or people of “origin”.
[2] Tuck, E., Yang, K. W., “Decolonization is not a metaphor”, in: Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2012), pp. 1-40.
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