Decolonization and museums: a political and economic as well as a cultural problem

Decolonization is a product of the contradictions of a postcolonial society struggling to find points of contact between conquerors and conquered, in a contemporary context that demands a critical analysis of the history of European imperialist power. This is a political and economic problem as well as a cultural one. Museums, and especially ethnological museums, are institutions that since the 19th century have conveyed colonial rhetoric, amplified the view of colonized peoples as backward, and denigrated them to legitimize Western cultural hegemony. Hence the need to review the role of museums, the inescapability on the part of curators of actions and policies, not only exhibition, capable of expressing different content. The museum, from being a container of objects narrated in a self-referential way, needs to become a place of encounter and dialogue with the cultures to which the same objects belong or have belonged in the past. European cities, moreover, are increasingly multicultural, and newcomers, in addition to being included in the processes of representation that affect them, should be able to exercise their right to a reparation, which also passes through a narrative that is not the exclusive one of the colonizers. The objects preserved in museums should therefore be studied, contextualized and interpreted together with those who hold their experiences, recovering the link between the objects and the cultural environment that generated them. In essence, the attempt is to concretize that contrapuntal reading that Eduard Said talked about, to give birth to a place where the stories of colonizers and colonized intertwine to form a new history.

The new way of understanding the museum must necessarily be aimed at reparation, inclusiveness, and restitution, concepts aimed at the communities of origin of the artifacts but also fundamental to the educational perspective that museum institutions set out to achieve. Reparation is the focal point of the debate on museum policies of decolonization. Indeed, it is clear that every object preserved in European museums is revealing of some degree of violence perpetrated, if only by being uprooted from its place of origin. Museum curators must then be prepared for the explication of new paradigms, which can change the existing exhibition setup. How often have our ethnographic museums succumbed to the temptation to elect certain artifacts as works of art by privileging their aesthetics, and how often do we admire isolated objects in display cases, illuminated, exalted to the point of making them “artistic” according to our taste, while sacrificing and ignoring their original meanings. Collaboration with our home communities could lead us to redesign the logic of our representations.

In the context of the processes of “collaborative anthropology,” that is, the enactment of shared activities with the source communities of artifacts, we speak of “ambassador objects” for artifacts whose study is shared. While we are aware that reconciliation processes involve complex efforts, mediation generally produces original results.

One of the cases of collaboration initiated by the Florence Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology (SMA) is with the Museo Verde, an association that works alongside indigenous cultures in the South American Gran Chaco. The Museum has made available photographic images of some preserved objects belonging to the Yshir ethnic groups, still residing in northern Paraguay, Wichi, in the Argentine Chaco, and Ava Guarani, in Bolivia. The images, compared with reproductions of ancient artifacts from the peoples of the Gran Chaco, have generated much interest among members of the indigenous communities, evoking knowledge about the traditional use of the artifacts and stimulating the recovery of otherwise endangered manufacturing techniques; at the same time, the Museum has obtained more correct indications of the origin and significance of the objects themselves. In other cases, the Florentine Museum has initiated a long-distance dialogue with the original communities, mediating the display of artifacts, “approved” by the natives through a kind of permission, in exchange for forms of self-representation of the communities themselves and requests for support in struggles for rights, land or access to resources by highly threatened groups.

Museums must then address issues related to “sensitive artifacts,” which imply a more general reflection on the musealization of human remains: cataloged “objects,” stored in museums, often in collision with cultural and religious apparatuses of the cultures of origin. Of these instances, relating to the complex of spiritual values of communities that are often reconstructing their identities threatened by colonial experiences, we certainly cannot disregard. The ICOM (International Council of Museums) code of ethics provides guidance in the section on the display of these materials, recommending respect for the interests and beliefs of the communities from which they come, and also calls on museums to respond promptly to requests to withdraw from the display of human remains or sacred and ritual objects. Most Western museums have incorporated ICOM’s guidance.

Another issue that needs to be addressed concerns the physical return of objects stored in Western museums to their places of origin(repatriation), an increasingly topical and pressing issue in the areas of museum facilities. Requests for repatriation from native communities impose historical, ethical and, no less important, legislative reflections. Currently, from a regulatory point of view, the permanent transfer of assets across borders is prohibited in Italy; however, this cannot and should not reduce the issue of ownership claims by native communities, the legitimacy of knowledge and the meanings of the assets owned by museums. Some European countries in recent times have chosen to return objects to requesting communities. International agreements exist for the return of stolen or otherwise illegally obtained artifacts where it can be determined. In ethnographic museums, determining how collections are acquired is enormously complex.

The challenge of decolonization, however, cannot be limited to a paternalistic process of transferring ownership of collections but it would be fruitful for it to take place through shared heritage arrangements, confronting first and foremost the meaning of ownership and cultural appropriation.

In Italy, a working group within ICOM has just been formed to address these kinds of issues. Founded by representatives of five museums, it can count on some 20 scholars, engaged, among other things, in strategies facilitating public enjoyment and transparency of collections, with the aim of making access to our museums’ collections more shareable.

This contribution was originally published in No. 23 of our print magazine Finestre Sull’Arte on paper. Click here to subscribe.

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