Changing Museum Practices: Towards a Community Centered Approach?

“SOURCE’ COMMUNITIES AND ‘RESOURCE’ MUSEUMS

Since the 1980s (Tythacott 2010, 4230) the museological praxis has demonstrated a dramatic change in the matters of redefining their audience, reassessing their mission and altering their curatorial and display practices. This paper will discuss, the ways in which the relationship between museums and source communities evolved. First, I will define source communities and museums, followed by a historical background of the relationship between the two entities. Then I will move on to analyze the ever-changing relationship between museums and source communities. I argue that in recent times there are more attempts of creating museum displays that are inclusive of the source communities’ as audience and as collaborators in the process of exhibition making. In addition, the commitment to the sharing of authority held by museum collections and displays, render the relationship between museum and source communities dialogical. However, it is important to note that the sharing of authority happens in varying degrees, changing depending on the context. To further illustrate my arguments I draw upon two case studies with varying degrees of source community involvement: the National Museum of Indian American (NMIA) and Into the Heart of Africa exhibition at Royal Ontario Museum. Finally, I will argue that collaboration with source communities does not necessarily render exhibition practices ‘ethical’ since the possibility of mutual exploitation remains (Clifford 1997, 210).

Source Communities and the Contact of the Indigenous People with the West

Source community or originating community is used to refer to the group of people who were the owners’ of the material heritage both in the past when the objects in museums were acquired and their descendants today. Even though the term applies to any religious, ethnic, local, diaspora and immigrant communities the museum collected from, it is often used to refer to the communities in the Americas and Pacific regions (Peers and Brown 2003, 2). Through their contact with the West, the indigenous cultures of Americas and New Zeland were destroyed. Indigenous people lost their lands, their cultural practices were banned, and their materials were taken Material culture was taken, studied, classified and hidden from them in museums. People were objectified through photography/world fairs. Indigenous peoples have experienced disinheritance and disconnection with their pasts

As museums attempt to be self-critical, they first started to identify source communities and later engage with them. However, source communities are not homogenous. For example, there is diversity of burial practices among Native American tribes. The heritage institutions that are involved in the storage, collection and display of the source communities extend to cultural centers, social history collections, and tribal keeping houses (Peers and Brown, 2003). Ethnography museums are central to the debates concerning the display of source community’s material heritage (Tythacott 2010, 4236), since as they have becoming increasingly controversial since 1980’s for their control of knowledge and representation of “other” cultures. In the face of increasing criticisms, museums sought ways to give voice to “Other cultures”, which they conceptualized as being achieved through the help of source communities. Thus, museums as sites of cultural heritage developed a new function: acting as contact zones between source communities and the material culture from which they are historically and geographically separated from (Clifford 1997, 192).

The cabinets of curiosities, the precedents of modern museums, in the sixteenth century, had a very limited audience, accessible only to a small portion of the society and stood as symbols of wealth and prestige. (Tythacott 2010, 4230) However,starting the nineteenth century and onwards, with the spread of national museums all over the Europe, museums were made open to public , with the goal of modifying public behavior, and legitimizing the cultural authority of the ruling class. (Tythacott 2010, 4230). Furthermore, the nationalization of museums occurred during colonial expansion, which meant that they also served to educate the European public about “Other” cultures through Western museum practices. Museums became and continue to be politically charged spaces where the general public was indoctrinated with “proper” knowledge and ideologies. (Tythacott 2010, 4230).

Since the 1960s scholars such as Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault have criticized museums as an instrument of status quo and as a domain in which dominant classes exercise their power “to name, define, classify, and represent” (Tythacott 2010, 4232). However, i since 1980s museums’ power to represent other cultures and present one-sided historical narratives have been challenged by the communities who are misrepresented in the museums (Peers and Brown, 2003) The timing of the scrutinization of the museums can be attributed to accumulation of political means by indigenous communities that now enabled them to conduct campaigns to challenge the curatorial authority of the museums. One example is the involvement of Native Americans Rights Fund in 1970 in the establishment of NMAI , a museum which encourages the participation of African Americans in design of the building, operation of the museum, and display and conservation practices.

Until the last three decades, the relationship between the museum and the audience could be read as a one-way relationship in which the curatorship of the museum acted as the ultimate owner of the objects they exhibited, and were insensitive to the ways in which they displayed “Other” cultures. As outcry from public and general audience increased , museums grew more sensitive to the needs and perceptions of their audience. Even though there is a variety of ways how museums have been tackling with the redistribution of power and issues of representation, the following are key means towards more inclusive museum practices: sensitivity, consultation, collaboration, sharing of authority and finally repatriation (Clifford 1997, 210). While repatriation is the end of a series of actions that can potentially give authority to source communities over their material heritage, the involvement of the source community in process of consultation and collaboration varies greatly across museums and happens at different levels. Source communities could actively get involved in selection of objects for display, the writing of label text, the conservation practices especially of collections with sacred objects, development of educational programmes, the selection of gift shop items (Peers and Brown, 2003).

NMAI is one example of an attempt and commitment by museum authorities to ensure the involvement of the source community in every aspect of the museum, from architecture to care of the sacred objects. It is possible to observe the participation of the community at multiple levels within the NMAI. First, employment of Native American staff enables the NMAI to incorporate insider voices mitigating the central authority of the museum administration. Second, the museum also attempts to pay the sacred objects and the source community their due respect by seeking the advice of the source communities on how to implement the traditional care for the sacred objects, and asking their permission for the display of the sacred objects. For example, in attempts to follow the tradition, the vault in which human remains are kept is smudged with tobacco and sweetgrass everyday. Besides consultation, the sharing of authority comes in the form of granting special access to source communities and repatriation. At the NMAI, sacred objects are lent to the Native Tribes for use in ceremonies on certain occasions. By 1996 ,161 human remains were repatriated to Native American tribes. In cases where there is no guidance from the community on how to handle sacred objects, Native American staff members become responsible for the treatment of the objects (Rosoff 2003,75). The sharing of authority with the community is an ongoing process for the NMAI. There are still human remains that deserve repatriation and the NMAI encounters the challenge of which Native tribe’s voice will be heard. Nonetheless, the desire to give voice and authority to the Native community is evident.

The collaboration with the source community comes in different forms. It is also possible that a source community’s suggestions will be sought but will not be implemented. An infamous case of the lack of collaboration is the Into The Heart of Africa exhibition at Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, an exhibition that displayed artifacts and paintings that are associated with colonial history. There were five rooms in the museum “The Imperial Connection”, “Military Hall”, “Missionary Room”, “Ovimbundu Compound” and “Africa Room”, all of which perpetuated colonial narratives. (Schildkrout 1991, 18) Specifically, The display of “ Lord Beresford’s encounter with a Zulu ” a painting which depicts the spearing of a Zulu by Lord Beresford epitomized the lack of sensitivity of the museum towards the negative experiences of the Black community. The exhibition was perceived to be racist and offensive particularly because (Schildkrout 1991,18) the voice of the Black Community was lacking, and the curatorship did not take the Black audience into account. Even though the curator might have intended to employ irony there was not much room for the voice of the Black Community, and the curator had almost complete authority over how the past of a marginalized community was represented.

Recently, museums have become more considerate of the cultural diversity of their audiences. Nonetheless, the new, evolving, and relatively more participatory dialogical museological approaches and practices are not free of what James Clifford calls the “mutual exploitation” (Clifford 1997, 200). As Clifford notes, a museum might as well collaborate with a source community in order to share the responsibility of an exhibition that will otherwise could be controversial. By the same token, a source community could approve the exhibition of sacred objects and the transaction of reproduction of cultural and religious objects in the museum gift shop for gaining representation in the public sphere. As noted by Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown, most of the studies on the relationship between museums and source communities point to positive aspects of collaboration for both parties. (Peers and Brown 2003, 10) However, a number of writers, such as Deborah Doxtator, are critical of the display of their material culture in museum, which is a distinctly Western mode of display:

“For the most part, aboriginal museums probably have no interest in producing for the general public the kinds of object-focused exhibitions that non-native museums produce about aboriginal cultures. The tasteful lighting of the objects, which for Western society is culture,-beautiful baskets, spoons and clothing items, for example- illuminate far more about Euro-Canadian aesthetics than they do about cultural views of the people who made the objects. Such an exhibition within an aboriginal world view completely ignores the basic values and the cultural principles that the objects represents” (Doxtator 1996, 64)

As Doxtator expresses, while museums attempt to be self-critical and willing to share the authority over the objects to be displayed/kept, the very practice of taking an object out of its context and reappropriating it in a museum setting is problematic. Even though source communities collaborate with the museum in the exhibition process, an object displayed in a museum setting is re-evaluated and charged with Western epistemology and ontology. In other words, an object taken outside of its situated context, inevitably losing some of the meaning prescribed to it by its original community. In addition, Western viewers who privilege their own ways of ‘knowing,’ inevitably impose upon these objects their own biases and stereotypes. An object or design that may have once been used for a sacred ritual can be co-opted and reduced for the purposes of mass consumption into to a mere fashion statement. Thus, while museums may attempt to involve source communities, they cannot fully control how the object displayed are perceived and co-opted for other uses.

In conclusion, source communities consist of both living and deceased people who have historical and cultural attachments to objects displayed or stored in museums.Historically, museums have been markers of wealth and prestige, and instruments of power in the service of state and ruling classes. Recently, museums are taking a self-reflexive approach and trying to create a dialogical relationship with the communities they represent in the museums. NMIA is a prominent attempt where the Native American community is participating in the representation of their culture both at administrative level and as audience. However, in Royal Ontario’s Into the Heart of Africa exhibition,an exhibition that was supposed to be self-reflexive ignored the feelings and perceptions of the Black Community, and resulted in a public outcry. As evidenced by the two case studies, in order for collaboration between museums and source communities to be successful, a willingness to build trust and relationship with source community is vital. Self-reflexive museological approach can serve as an initial attempt to empower once marginalized communities. However, there is an inherent problem in that museum displays are not suitable for certain objects, as expressed by Deborah Doxtator. In other words, some objects cannot be separated from the rituals and/or experiences associated with them. In displaying them within museums, we lose an understanding of their importance as related to their context. While the dialogical approach within museology can serve to empower source communities in the present, it is debatable whether such an approach fully respects the source communities from displayed object originated.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clifford, James (1997) ‘Museums as contact zones’, in Clifford, James (1997) Routes: travel and translation in the late twentieth century. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, pp 188–219.

Doxtator, Deborah (1996) ‘The Implications of Canadian Nationalism for Aboriginal Cultural Autonomy’, in Segger, Martin (1996) Curatorship: Indigenous Perspectives in Post-Colonial Societies. Quebec and Alberta: Canadian Museum of Civilization with the Commonwealth Associations of the Museums and the University of Victoria, pp 56–76

Peers, Laura and Brown, Alison K. (2003) ‘Introduction’, in Peers and Brown (eds.) Museums and source communities: a Routledge reader. London and New York: Routledge, pp 1–15

Rosoff, Nancy (2003) ‘Integrating Native Views into Museum Procedures’, in Peers and Brown (eds.) Museums and source communities: a Routledge reader. London and New York: Routledge, pp 72–79

Schildkrout, Enid (1991) ‘Ambiguous Messages and Ironic Twists: Into the Heart of Africa and The Other Museum’, Museum Anthropology, 15:2, 16–23.

Tythacott, Louise(2010) ‘Politics of Representation in Museums’, Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Third Edition, 1: 1, 4230–4241