Museums in Arabia

Transnational Practices and Regional Processes

Karen Exell, Sarina Wakefield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317092766
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Bibliotheks- & Informationswissenschaft

Museum activity has, in recent years, undergone major and rapid development in the Arabian Peninsula, with the regeneration of existing museums as well as the establishment of new ones. Alongside such rapid expansion, questions are inevitably raised as to the new challenges museums face in this region and whether the museum, as a central focus of heritage preservation, also runs the risk of overshadowing local forms of heritage performance and preservation. With contributions from leading academics from a range of disciplines and heritage practitioners with first-hand experience of working in the region, this volume addresses the issues and challenges facing museums in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen and the UAE. It focuses on the themes of politics, public engagement and the possibility of a new museum paradigm which might appropriately reflect the interests and culture of the region. The interdisciplinary approaches analyse museum development from both an inside and outside perspective, suggesting that museums do not follow a uniform trajectory across the region, but are embedded within each states' socio-cultural context, individual government agendas and political realities. Including case study analysis, which brings the more marginal nations into the debates, as well as new empirical data and critical evaluation of the role of the museum in the Arabian Peninsula societies, this book adds fresh perspectives to the study of Gulf heritage and museology. It will appeal to regional and international practitioners and academics across the disciplines of museum studies, cultural studies, and anthropology as well as to anyone with an interest in the Gulf and Middle East.

Part I
(Identity) politics and the museum

1
Dictating history, narrating legacy

Ali Abdullah Saleh’s museum in Yemen

Stephen Steinbeiser

Introduction

In late 2011, Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh left office. Though it was a year of remarkable events region-wide, perhaps none was more unexpected than that in the heavily armed, impoverished, and tribally affiliated Yemeni capital, Saleh would peacefully transfer power to his vice-president after 33 years of leading the nation. In fact, Saleh was the only leader who was not killed, jailed, exiled, or enmeshed in a civil war following the events of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’; his departure came as part of a negotiated agreement, the Gulf Initiative, brokered by the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Saleh initially seemed to abide by the delicate balance of political arrangement in early 2012 that allowed Yemen to appear as a regional model of relatively peaceful change. In fact, one of his first public actions was ostensibly apolitical: founding a museum dedicated to himself. While this may sound like an attempt to burnish the reputation of an egomaniac, it actually complements other democratic institutions in the country and provides a forum for debating the legacy of its controversial founder.

This chapter explores the meaning of that museum in the context of Saleh’s lengthy but controversial legacy, positing that its creation adds to a fragile but persistent democratic tradition in Yemen. Using US presidential libraries – unique institutions that serve archival, museological, and commemorative goals – as a model, it discusses how the generally self-serving, innocuous collection of a former president in the Yemeni capital, strategically situated, could eventually serve as an important step in the nation’s democratic evolution. It focuses on a central exhibition in the museum that commemorates Saleh’s attempted assassination on 3 June 2011, to comment on it as a metaphor for the country’s imperfect but resilient democracy. The museum itself contributes to Yemen’s recent democratic tradition, though perhaps unintentionally on the part of its founder, by opening a space for public scrutiny of its former leader in an urban area that is physically and symbolically central to the country’s national history.

A presidential museum in Yemen

Despite a ruler who stayed in power for over three decades and a negotiated, not electorally contested transition, Yemen remained mostly within the democratic tradition during Saleh’s reign. He won office via free elections, not according to principles of hereditary succession, and the nation contains the institutions required for modern democratic practice, including a constitution, ¹ due process, a ministry of justice, a court system including an appellate level, administrative agencies, and even a ministry of human rights. While none of these agencies is particularly robust, owing to a combination of poverty, outside influence, and other factors, they do exist. The mere fact that large numbers of Yemenis assembled and protested largely peacefully in 2011 illustrates the tolerance that the nation’s government had towards free speech, compared to countries ruled by monarchs, emirs, or more violent strongmen.

Saleh tried his best to control all reins of power, but he did so mainly through patronage, influence, or threat, only occasionally resorting to more violent means. In 2011, violence marred protests, but did not immediately lead to the bloody chaos and reprisal attacks of Egypt, Syria, or Libya. When Saleh left office and the National Dialogue Conference – the government’s attempt to move beyond 2011 and re-establish democratic order – commenced, Yemen became the regional model for enlightened, democratic transition, ² even though Saleh himself was seen as corrupt and autocratic (Burrowes, 2012) and suspected of having blood on his hands.

Stereotypical views of Yemen as poor, ‘tribal’, and gun-laden aside, much of the surprise surrounding the agreement stemmed from the controversial provision granting Saleh immunity for his role in quashing protests early in 2011 when many Yemenis, including youth, protested in the capital’s Change Square. The immunity provision in the Gulf Initiative was so controversial that it stalled the National Dialogue Conference’s attempts to examine issues ranging from transitional justice to national unity; concerned delegates discussed revoking it (NDC, 2013).

Saleh’s immunity deal allowed him to leave office safe from prosecution or interrogation, with his estimated $32 billion fortune intact (Sahajwani, 2012), and even to remain at his palatial compound in Sana’a. The Gulf Initiative, then, acted as a type of early retirement deal, allowing Saleh to retain his money, his proximity to the presidency, and the possibility of leveraging influence accumulated through decades of presidential power. He used these advantages initially in much the same way as a departing US president: to establish a museum in his honour, the Saleh Museum, which opened in early 2013, roughly a year after Saleh’s departure from office. Every US president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has created a similar type of museum, officially called a ‘presidential library and museum’. Generally referred to as ‘presidential libraries’, they function simultaneously as the official archive of a president’s tenure, a collection of tangible effects ranging from personal items to official gifts from heads of state, and exhibitions that situate his term in historical context. They establish a space for visitors to interact with his legacy, including its more controversial aspects, while also enshrining it historically and physically, usually through dramatic architectural elements. Such libraries set a tone of accessibility, transparency, and reverence for political ‘saints’, all of which buttress the perception of an open, accessible democratic process.

For the purpose of this chapter, I use the terms ‘presidential library’ and ‘presidential museum’ interchangeably. The US term ‘presidential library’ originated because of the archival component of a multi-functional structure designed to preserve documents and memorabilia, legitimise legacy, and symbolise historical greatness. Most casual visitors are likely to engage more with the museum component of such structures, which is increasingly important for funding and popular relevance, and which more correctly corresponds to the nature of the Saleh Museum. The Saleh Museum currently falls far short of serving the same functions of US presidential libraries, having, for example, no publicly accessible archive. Yet the institution itself is a crucial step towards creating a public memory of democracy in Yemen, enriching efforts to germinate this inclusive form of government on the Arabian Peninsula, distinct from neighbouring emirates, kingdoms, and sultanates.

Presidential temples

In Presidential Temples, Benjamin Hufbauer (2005) observes, ‘Inevitably, presidential commemoration is not merely about the power of presidents… but also about questions of race, gender, national identity, and even national destiny’ (p. 7). As the title of Hufbauer’s book demonstrates, religious terminology lends itself to descriptions of presidential libraries, especially when considered in light of the Rousseauian term ‘civil religion’, first used in The Social Contract (first published in French in 1762) and adopted again in the US by Robert Bellah in 1967. Bellah believed civil religion was a reality in the US, engrained and enhanced through sacred texts (the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence), revered leaders (Washington as Moses), and national events like the Civil War (1967, pp. 1–21). Catherine Albanese (1999) sharpened this focus in the 1980s, asserting that civil religion has four elements: ‘saints’, sacred places, sacred objects, and ritual practices (cited in Hufbauer, 2006, p. 119). Politicians receive the reverence of civil saints; memorials enshrine sacred places. Sacred objects range from documents and transcripts to cars, clothes, and personal effects, while the rituals are pilgrimages to public sites and other events undertaken to commemorate a departed leader’s legacy. ‘[P]residential libraries are an attempt to construct sites that have all four of the elements of civil religion’ (Hufbauer, 2005, p. 7).

Scholars debate whether presidential memorials are better understood as centres for critical education about the nation’s history or as tools for promoting and glorifying a particular historical perspective (cf. Hufbauer, 2006; Zimmerman, 2015). While interpretation of the memorial remains open, the practical effect is to provide public access to a democratic ‘saint’ through the intersection of civic ideals, often-controversial history, and human nature. As Hufbauer notes:

Presidential memorials can be nodal points for the negotiation of who we are as a people and where we are going, politically and culturally. Each presidential museum not only represents that president, but also projects an image of the nation, and an ideology, into the future. The museum exhibits in presidential libraries are… meant to reify reverence for the presidency.

(Hufbauer, 2006, p. 131)

Hufbauer speaks only of US presidential memorials, but the argument that these memorials encapsulate an ideology and project an aspirational vision of the nation’s future applies similarly to the Saleh Museum. In the case of Yemen, such a memorial may one day serve the crucial function of educating Yemenis about their recent past as a united national body politic and allowing them insight into the contentious history of its most dominant president, as well as offering space in which to debate his legacy. Forging political unity has not come easy to the Republic, and many Yemenis still identify more locally as Sana’anis, southerners, Hadhramis, Houthis, or tribesmen, inter alia. A presidential museum in the capital – particularly one situated as Saleh’s is, near a site of national memorial, inside a mosque complex – could symbolise the country’s strength through unity, coherent national identity, and openness to a unique democratic tradition with Islamic values.

President(s) Saleh

Saleh ruled for 33 years, time enough to allow him the legacies of several presidencies combined. He became president of North Yemen in 1979 and then, in 1990, became the first head of a politically unified Yemeni state. He maintained this office during a civil war four years later, which the country’s unity also survived, thanks largely to his tactical victory. He eventually left the presidency more or less on his own terms in 2011, despite heavy international pressure and the violent events of that year in Yemen, some of which he is accused of instigating, including the Day of Dignity, 18 March 2011. On that fateful day, at least 52 unarmed protestors were murdered during demonstrations ³ in the capital’s Change Square.

Saleh’s personal responsibility for these deaths remains murky, but it is clear that pro-regime forces – both regular army and plain-clothed thugs – opened fire on peaceful protestors who supported the revolution. Whether Saleh himself ordered the murders may be debated, but the blood is ultimately on his hands, as the deaths occurred during peaceful protests against his regime, which at the time tightly controlled security forces in Sana’a. These events were uncharacteristic of Saleh’s rule, which relied more on the dexterous use of patronage politics than on brute force; he famously compared ruling Yemen to ‘dancing on the heads of snakes’ (Clark, 2010, Kindle location 125), politics one scholar exposed as that of ‘permanent crisis’ (Philips, 2011, Kindle location 150).

During Saleh’s rule, Yemen was relatively free and open compared to countries with more pernicious political security apparatuses. ⁴ Saleh presented a modern, non-tribal, civil, even secular image of his country, in contrast to Yemen’s presentation in both regional and Western media as ‘backwards’, ‘tribal’ (pejoratively used), and, more recently, ‘extremist’. Clearly, despite controversy, Saleh was satisfied enough with his legacy to commemorate it. And why not? Saleh is at once the first president of unified Yemen, its longest-serving president to date, the leader who most modernised it, as well as an important ‘wartime’ president and US ally at a crucial time in the ‘war on terror’ that the US led in Yemen. He also happens to be the country’s most controversial, perhaps bloodiest leader to date and is widely perceived to be its most corrupt (Shakdam, 2013), a reason often cited for the youth-led revolution of 2011. Regardless of the politics of patronage and dysfunction that he both created and exploited, he will always remain a towering figure in Yemen’s history, whether revered or reviled.

Expressed as a function of US presidential legacy, Saleh embodies the primacy of George Washington, the indelible influence (though not the economic progress) of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal programs, Richard Nixon’s controversy and corruption, and George W. Bush’s ‘wartime presidency’ with its thrust against terrorism. This is not to suggest that Saleh’s policies or presidency were as effective as those leaders in uniting a country and inspiring economic progress. They were not, and many Yemenis suffered serious setbacks under his rule (Burrowes, 2012). But in terms of nationalistic historical stature, the comparisons exist.

Saleh’s presidency also superficially resembles some of Ronald Reagan’s because of the Iran-Contra scandal, where profits from selling arms to Iran facilitated guerrilla war in Nicaragua, embroiling the latter’s presidency in scandal. The spectre of Iranian involvement also haunted Saleh’s presidency, as he fought seasonal wars against the Houthi rebel movement, widely believed to be agents of Iran in Yemen. Recently, though, in a perfect illustration of ‘dancing on the heads of snakes’ who tried to bite him, Saleh appears to have cooperated with this same movement as it precipitated a coup d’état to come to power in the north (Al Jazeera, 2015). Also similar to Reagan, Saleh survived an assassination attempt, the memory of which plays an important role in his museum. Furthermore, each of the US presidents mentioned has a museum in his honour, except for Washington, whose enormous memorial complex dominates an entire corner of the US capital.

Saleh’s museum gives him one additional important distinction in the world of Arab leaders, for better or for worse: Yemeni museum officials boast that it is the first museum of any freely departing president across the region (Qarni, 2014). This implies two conditions that are true for the first time in the Arab world: a democratic leader has left office voluntarily and peacefully, and a museum stands to commemorate him. While these facts may leave observers convinced that Saleh was a model democratic president, the reality is more complex. Saleh was unable to prevent or contain the most serious systemic challenges to Yemen’s fledgling democracy, like Al-Qa’eda in the Arabian Peninsula, rapidly dwindling natural resources, exponential population growth, and the entrenchment of crippling poverty. In fact, his allies have assisted in the country’s first coup, undermining any democratic aspirations (The Economist, 2015).

Presidential mosques

Discussion of US presidential libraries has often inspired allusions ...