Anyone with even the slightest inkling of the histories of the colonized world will recognize the klaxon call to decolonize the museum. It is a documented fact that many of South Asia’s historical artefacts have been pillaged by colonizers and are now languishing behind the glass fronts of Western museum cabinets.
The heart of the problem lies in the fact that the collections, no matter how beautifully curated and preserved, can symbolize tremendous historic trauma, even in the way collections are described and catalogued. What gets seen and what remains curtained in museum basements reinscribes imperialist visions. Quite often, these histories are inaccessible to their own communities.
In fact, the very institution of the museum seems at odds with the idea of a post colonial world; the dawn of the museum came, in part, via colonialism after all. Many of its exhibits reached their European or North American homes through violence, or outright theft – it was quite common, for instance, that the British simply swiped artefacts from archaeological digs in India and across large parts of Africa. Some communities, such as the First Nations and the Maori, have been appalled at coming face to face with the physical remains of their ancestors, and treasure that they deem sacred.
So why then, knowing all this, are we still drawn to these bastions of imperial legacies?
The obvious answer is that museums are still mantled in the aura of learning. As disseminators of cultural and anthropological histories, there is still something essentially valuable about them. Their ability to position objects beyond particular cultural identities, curate them within a broader lineage, and situate them within a wider, richer framework of relationships still feels crucial.
Besides, as possessors of enormous purloined wealth, museums such as the British Museum still hold massive collections of artefacts that are beautifully preserved and presented for our consumption. Could we say the same of a smaller museum situated in a country whose resources have been plundered by the British? Debatable.
What then, might be the way to reconcile the two?
One way of course, is restitution. US museums have been more forthcoming with their permissions – for example, the American Museum of Natural History has returned a large collection of Māori and Moriori ancestral returns to New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Meanwhile, much UK heritage legislation appears to have been inked with the specific purpose of preventing the return of priceless items taken during colonialism. For instance, the British Museum Act of 1963 bars all repatriation without exception, only allowing for a temporary transfer of objects to other institutions.
While Government machinery sluggishly inches forward, a host of individuals have begun sleuthing and advocating for the return of these artefacts to their ancestral homes.
A few examples. As part of the research team of Recover, Restore, and Decolonize, Dr Dolly Kikon and Dr Arkotong Longkumer are working to repatriate ancestral Naga remains from the Pitt Rivers Museum. The activist group, India Pride Project, has long been campaigning for the return of Indian artefacts plundered during (and after) colonialism. Jarat Chopra, the great-great-great-grandson of the former ruler of the southern Punjab, has been petitioning to get back a sword that his ancestor Diwan Mulraj Chopra surrendered to General William Whish. Slok Gyawali of the Nepal Pride Project and Sanjay Adhikari were instrumental in the return of sacred statues to Kathmandu.
Another way might be to plough funds into existing or new institutions in previously colonized countries, perhaps through a public-private initiative. For example, the Museum of Black Civilisations in Dakar, Senegal opened its gates in 2018, with capacity for about 18,000 objects, alongside a clear demand for some of that space to be filled by items currently housed in European museums.
For museums situated in the Western world, access should be free to all (as it is at the British Museum) and at the very least, the curators of exhibits should represent the communities whose artefacts they are curating.
Most important of all though, museums needs must position themselves as learning communities, not impenetrable centres of self-validating authority. If they do not, museums run the risk of becoming culturally irrelevant artefacts.
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