Liberating Culture

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation and Heritage Preservation

Christina Kreps

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135133139
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Antropología

Using examples of indigenous models from Indonesia, the Pacific, Africa and native North America, Christina Kreps illustrates how the growing recognition of indigenous curation and concepts of cultural heritage preservation is transforming conventional museum practice.

Liberating Culture explores the similarities and differences between Western and non-Western approaches to objects, museums, and curation, revealing how what is culturally appropriate in one context may not be in another.

For those studying museum culture across the world, this book is essential reading.

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Introduction: liberating culture

The museum idea and the practice of collecting and preserving valued objects are generally considered distinctly western cultural inventions and preoccupations (Ames 1992, Cannon-Brookes 1984, Clifford 1988, Pearce 1992). But nearly all cultures keep objects of special value and meaning, and many have developed elaborate structures for storing and displaying them as well as methods for their care and preservation. In many respects, these practices are similar to those of western museums and curatorship. As Moira Simpson has pointed out in her groundbreaking book, Making Representations: Museums in the Post-Colonial Era (1996):

This impression of museums as a purely western concept is not entirely accurate. Museum-like models have existed traditionally in other cultures for many years, and some facets of conventional museum practice conform to these indigenous models.

(1996:107)

Yet until recently, non-western models of museums and curatorial practices escaped the attention of western scholars and museologists. This lack of attention can be seen as not only a reflection of an ideology that views the museum and museological behavior as uniquely western, but also a belief in the superiority of western, scientifically based museology and systems of cultural heritage preservation. In short, this ideology has blinded us from seeing other cultures' models of museums and methods of treating cultural materials as diverse forms of museological behavior.

The growing recognition of non-western museum models and curatorial methods can be attributed to several developments that have taken place in the museum world over the past fifty years or more. One is the sheer proliferation of museums across the globe. The worldwide growth of museums has largely occurred since the end of World War II (UNESCO 1995:185). No longer confined to metropolitan centers and designed to cater to an urban elite, today museums of all sizes and forms can be found in some of the most out-of-the-way places. Museums have become part of global cultural networks, and, as Appadurai and Breckenridge have suggested, “are part of a transnational order of cultural forms that has emerged in the last two centuries and now unites much of the world” (1992:35). As western scholars have begun to investigate the forms museums take in diverse national and cultural settings, they have observed how the museum has been transformed to take on local cultural characteristics (Hudson 1987, Kaplan 1994, Taylor 1994). While some have been concerned with the “indigenization” of the western museum concept, others have begun to explore non-western people's own models of museums and curatorial practices (Clavir 2002, Clifford 1997, Simpson 1996, Stanley 1998, Rosoff 1998, Schild-krout 1999).

The growing awareness of non-western models of museums and curatorial practices is also one of the many outcomes of the scholarly critique of museums that has emerged over the past two decades. The literature on this topic is now extensive (Ames 1992, Bennett 1994, Clifford 1988 and 1997, Haas 1996, Hooper-Greenhill 1992, Jones 1993, Karp and Lavine 1991, Macdonald and Fyfe 1996, Stocking 1985, Vergo 1989, Walsh 1992). The new critical theory of museums problematicizes the museum and museum practices, illuminating their Eurocentric, epistemological biases and assumptions. Museums have come to be seen as “hegemonic devices of cultural elites or states” (Durrans 1992:1), and “technologies of classification” (Macdonald 1996:7) that have helped construct particular ways of categorizing and viewing people, cultures, and things. As a result, “the museum's position is no longer seen as transcendent. Rather, it is implicated in the distribution in wealth, power, knowledge and taste shaped by a larger social order” (Harris 1990:142). In general, museums are now viewed as “contested terrain” where diverse communities debate what culture is, how it should be represented, and who holds the power to represent culture (Karp and Lavine 1991).

Critical analyses have also revealed how museums and objects are a “potent force in forging self-consciousness” (Kaplan 1994:1), and play important roles in the construction and expression of national, regional, and local ethnic identities. The museum's capacity to function in these processes lies in its position as an instrument of education, or “purveyor of ideology” (Kaplan 1994:3), as well as custodian of objects loaded with symbolic capital. As products and agents of social and political change, museums are now viewed as sites for the struggle over and assertion of identity (Boswell and Evans 1999, Clifford 1997, Foster 1991, Handler 1988, Kaplan et al. 1994, Karp et al. 1992, Simpson 1996).

Criticism of anthropology museums, or those housing ethnographic collections, has been particularly strong, emanating not only from the scholarly community but also from the people whose cultures have been historically represented in these museums, i.e. non-western, indigenous, or Native peoples. As these communities have increasingly begun to demand a greater voice in how their cultures are presented in museums, they have also challenged conventional, museological paradigms of cultural representation and preservation. At issue are questions of power and authority concerning who has the right to speak for and represent whom. Museums are now challenged with confronting the historical imbalances of power that have marked their relationships with indigenous people, and are forced to redefine their strategies, roles, policies, and programs as they affect people and their cultural heritage. Today, museums are urged to establish “on-going dialogue and partnership with indigenous communities and to define a framework for respectful collaboration in the restoration of that inherent human right — the right to be the custodian of your own culture” (Arinze and Cummins 1996:7).

The assertion of Native peoples that they should be the custodians of their own culture has invariably led to debates over the rightful ownership of cultural property¹ (as well as human remains) in museums and the issue of repatriation. In Simpson's words, “one of the most difficult issues seeking resolution by museums in the post-colonial era is that of repatriation” (Simpson 1996:171). The demands of indigenous communities regarding these issues are bringing about dramatic changes in museum policy and practice:

Curatorial staff are re-examining museological practices and the legitimacy of their possession of materials which previously were held and displayed without question to property rights, authority or wishes of those from whom they were taken. They have to address questions of ownership, care, display, and interpretation.

(Simpson 1996:171)

Repatriation campaigns also have brought attention to the ethics of the ownership, curation, and display of sacred objects, or objects of religious, spiritual, or ceremonial value (see Simpson 1996:191—214, Clavir 2002).

Of particular importance to this study is how changing attitudes toward cultural property ownership and its curation are mirroring the changing nature of relationships between anthropology museums and Native peoples. In the United States, for example, the anthropological museum world has been undergoing profound transformations as a result of the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) by the United States Congress in 1990. In addition to protecting Native American burial sites, the Act required all federally funded museums to make inventories of Native American and Hawaiian human remains, funerary, sacred, and ceremonial objects and provide these inventories to federally recognized tribes. It also granted tribes the legal right to request repatriation of these materials. The implementation of NAGPRA has brought about a dramatic shift in the power relations between Native Americans and the museum and scientific communities. It has also influenced curatorial practices in mainstream museums. One of the many outcomes of NAGPRA is an increasing presence of Native American curators, traditional scholars, and advisors in museums. This presence is challenging the hegemony of western, scientifically based museological paradigms as Native perspectives and methods of “traditional care” have begun to be integrated into mainstream museums. “The ‘Native point of view,’ and voice, is increasingly being heard, and the attitudes and policies of anthropologists and museums are changing as a result” (Ames 1992:79).

Although NAGPRA has met resistance in some quarters, in others it has been embraced as an exciting opportunity to establish collaborative relations with Native American communities, to gain a deeper understanding of the meanings and values of certain classes of objects, and to expand our knowledge of alternative methods of curation. The establishment of museums and cultural centers on the part of Native American communities themselves has also added to our awareness of the diversity of curatorial approaches, showing us that what is appropriate in one context may not be in another. Such changes are occurring not only in the United States, but in other countries as well.

Today most self-respecting anthropology museums in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand rally around the same set of principles and practices of including native advisors, advisory boards, community councils, task forces, etc. A few have even moved beyond mere consultation and have established greater equality at the decision-making level by hiring native co-curators or native museum directors.

(Kahn 2000:58)

Consequently, cooperation, collaboration, and participation have become keywords in the vocabulary of the professional museum community.

Acknowledging the value of indigenous curation should not diminish the role of professional curatorship in museums. Certainly, it would be shortsighted and irresponsible to suggest, for example, that professional conservation techniques are categorically unsuitable for the protection of non-western cultural materials. Rather, recognition opens up possibilities for dialogue and the exchange of information, knowledge, and expertise. The point is to give credence to bodies of knowledge and practices that have been historically overlooked, or devalued. The recognition of indigenous curatorial practices and museum models is another step toward the decolonization and democratization of museums and museum practices. It reminds us that while museums are as diverse as the communities they represent, so too are the ways in which people care for and preserve their cultural heritage.

A critical theory of museum ideology and practice

This book is an inquiry into cross-cultural perspectives on the museum, curation, and cultural heritage preservation. In its cross-cultural approach, it can be broadly characterized as a study in “comparative museology,” or rather the systematic study and comparison of museological forms and behavior in diverse cultural settings. Its aim is to show that although the museum is generally construed as a modern western cultural form, museological-type behavior is a long-standing, cross-cultural phenomenon. The book provides examples of non-western museums and indigenous curatorial practices, in particular, from Indonesia, the Pacific, Africa, and Native North America, to demonstrate how these are cultural expressions that deserve recognition, study, and preservation in their own right as examples of cultural diversity. It also shows how non-western forms of curation and concepts of cultural conservation are being integrated into mainstream museums, for example, in the United States, New Zealand, and Canada. This trend exemplifies how museums are increasingly moving toward the development of more cross-culturally oriented approaches to the management, care, and interpretation of their collections.

In general, the book is intended to further the liberation of culture from the hegemony of the management regimes of Eurocentric museology. As such, it is meant to contribute to the continual reappraisal of museums and museological practice. Throughout the book museology is understood as the study of the philosophy, purposes, and organization of museums (Burcaw 1975:12) as well as museum activities such as the collection, care, presentation, preservation, and interpretation of collections. Curation, or curatorship, refers to any activity or body of practice specifically devoted to the care and treatment of objects and their protection.

In the broadest sense, the book is an anthropology of museums and curatorial practices grounded in critical theory. By this I mean it looks at the museum and curatorial practices as cultural artifacts in themselves, or rather, as cultural constructs located in specific social, political, economic, and historical contexts. It also means that anthropology itself is implicated in the study since the discipline has contributed heavily to the construction of museological paradigms, especially as they relate to the collection, interpretation, and preservation of non-western cultural materials (see Bouquet 2001). Of particular importance are how the discipline of anthropology has contributed to the formation of ethnographic collections in museums, and the historical and political conditions under which collections have been acquired. Ethnographic objects did not come to be in museums by historical accident. But rather,

their placement in museums … [is] the outcome of large-scale historical processes … The historical processes that led to the collection of … objects in museums have to do on the one hand with the forces of economic development and nationalism that transformed Europe in the nineteenth century and on the other hand, with those of imperial domination.

(Stocking 1985:4)

The post-colonial critique of anthropology has uncovered the discipline's historical location of power in relation to its subjects, and its complicity, at times, in the subjugation of colonized peoples (Asad 1973, Said 1978). In response to such critiques, anthropology, in recent decades, has subjected itself to a much-needed self-scrutiny, resulting in a “reflexive turn” whereby anthropology has become in itself an object of critical inquiry (Clifford 1988, Fabian 1983, Huizer and Mannheim 1979, Hymes 1972, Marcus and Fischer 1986, Rosaldo 1989, Stocking 1985). Thus, a critical theory of museum ideology and practice informed by anthropology must interrogate both museology and anthropology as its subjects.

The book is also anthropological in its application of research methods typical of sociocultural anthropology, in particular, those of ethnography and comparison. Ethnography is a research process “in which the anthropologist observes, records, and engages in the daily life of a culture … and then writes accounts of this culture” (Marcus and Fischer 1986:18) or some aspect of that culture. The value of the ethnographic method lies in its reliance on “participant observation,” or, the collection of data through first-hand observation. The culture in question, in this case, is that of museums and museological behavior observed in a wide range of national and cultural contexts.

I use the comparative method to explore the ways in which non-western and western models of museums and curatorial practices are both similar and different. While this approach implies that the units of comparison are of like kind, i.e. the museum and curatorial methods, each tradition is examined on its own terms and in the context of its own cultural settings. The use of the comparative method also implies that my understanding of non-western museums and curatorial methods is ostensibly influenced by the cultural logic of western museums and museological practices. However, rather than taking this logic for granted and as the referent to which all other forms are compared, the objective is to indicate how an understanding of one cultural form is extended by placing it into critical and dialectical relation to another (Kapferer 1988:xii). The aim is to show how vital dimensions of western museums and practices are thrown into general significance through the lens of other cultures and vice versa. As is true in the deconstruction of any paradigm, we begin to unravel its biases, assumptions, meanings, and implications when we place it in critical and dialectical relationship to other forms of thought and practice. By deconstructing the western museum concept and museology, we can see how exotic its constitution of reality has been. As Michael Ames, an anthropologist and former Director of the Anthropology Museum of the University of British Columbia, has urged, “We need to study ourselves, our own exotic customs and traditions, like we study others; view ourselves as ‘the Natives’” (1992:10).

Keeping Ames' suggestion in mind as well as the “reflexive turn” in anthropology and museology, the book reflects my own viewpoints and vested interests as both an anthropologist and museum professional. I have been investigating the museum and the museum profession as a cultural phenomenon for some fifteen years, conducting ethnographic research on museums in the Netherlands, the United States, and the Republic of Indonesia. Much of the data presented in the book is derived from these studies. I have also had the opportunity to work in several museums in the United States in a variety of positions over a period of some twenty years. This dual position of both scholar and museum worker has given me a wide range of insights, perspectives, and experiences from which to draw. This position has allowed me to see how theory does or does not play out in real practice. Thus, my task has been not only to deconstruct museums and museum practices, but also to attempt to construct new and alternative approaches. In this respect, I concur with Ames' following remarks regarding the limitations of scholarly, detached critical analysis and the need to examine our work within the context of real-life situations.

It is easy enough to criticize museums for being what they are or for failing to be what one thinks they should be, and to judge from one's own moral perspective the actions and inactions of others. It is more difficult to propose changes that are feasible, and to ground both criticism and reform in an understanding of the situation, economic foundations, and sociopolitical formations of the museums to be gauged … Useful criticism needs to combine assessment with the empirical examination of real situations, recognizing the complexity and intermingling of interests involved, as well as relations between the individual and the social, and the conditions within which they operate.

(Ames 1992:4)

My outlook on museums and curatorial practices also has been shaped by theoretical frameworks and methods of analysis that take a decidedly critical stance, such as Marxist, postmodernist, and deconstructionist approaches as well as post-colonial critiques of western forms of cultural representation. Central to these approaches are issues of power and authority, and attempts to illuminate the contradictions embedded in dominant ideological structures. It has also been influenced by trends in several fields such as cultural studies, international development, as well as those of the “new museology.”

Discourse analysis has become a popular tool for interrogating the biases and assumptions embedded in dominant ideological structures and forms of practice. The work of Foucault on the dynamics of discourse and power in the production of knowledge and representation of social reality has been especially important. “It is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together” (Foucault quoted in Alasuutari 1995:115). The concept of discourse refers to

the way in which a certain phen...