How to Decolonise the Museums

[sufi]

I read this book

The Brutish Museums

New York Times 'Best Art Books' 2020 'Essential' – Sunday Times 'Brilliantly enraged' - New York Review of Books 'A real game-changer'– Economist W...

www.plutobooks.com

(written by the Pitt Rivers curator, proposing sending the Benin Bronzes home to Nigeria) and completed it in time for this talk just now at the London Library

It's been obvious for a long time that there are no grounds for keeping the Benin loot, and that would extend to the Magdala treasures, the elgin marbles etc etc etc
there are obviously practical implications for museums around the world and it would be good to see some more practical conversations about how to actually do the repatriation now

feels like the ground is shifting despite steadfast colonial refusal to engage from the UKGov, BM, other cryptofascistic organisations, but also important not to let hem pull the discussion down into so called culture war where they can ignore it

 

[sufi]

The talk started with a recital of this piece

TUSK | Tusk

mmbenintusk.wixsite.com

 

[pattycakes_]

Just ask each country if they want them back and give it to them if they say yes

Do everything they can to transport more delicate items with care and where suitable, provide required equipment as a show of good will

 

[sufi]

Just ask each country if they want them back and give it to them if they say yes

Do everything they can to transport more delicate items with care and where suitable, provide required equipment as a show of good will

if only

 

[Leo]

one of the reasons I've rarely gone to the metropolitan museum of art, such mixed feelings: amazement at unbelievably rare and beautiful artifacts from hundreds/thousands of years ago, tainted by the fact that few of them were probably donated by those cultures and most were plundered. makes you feel complicit in the plunder, supportive by buying an admission ticket.

 

[sufi]

it would be great to plan out for example:
- how to make and share copies of artifacts,
- how to fund exchange of knowledge - students and artists,
- how to loot these rich institutions as reparation,
it would be brilliant if that was a conversation led by Nigerians, Ethiopians, Greeks ... and welcomed by the post-colonials.

but

British Museum says controversial objects WON'T be removed

In a leaked letter, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said that Government-funded museums and galleries risk losing taxpayer support if they remove artefacts.

www.dailymail.co.uk

I think that probably there is a hard core of private collectors and dealers who fear the implications if institutions come clean and are hell-bent on preventing that.

 

[version]

I read something a few years ago about the Chinese state and various wealthy individuals hiring people to steal back stolen art.

The Great Chinese Art Heist

Is the Chinese government behind one of the boldest art-crime waves in history?

www.gq.com

 

[Murphy]

Too many curators with too much to lose (large pension pots, niche specialities) in a shrinking sector

One of the other problems is the volume of artefacts in ‘storage’ never even exhibited

Repatriate everything possible, bin the belligerent against decency

 

[version]

One of the other problems is the volume of artefacts in ‘storage’ never even exhibited

 

[sufi]

I read something a few years ago about the Chinese state and various wealthy individuals hiring people to steal back stolen art.

The Great Chinese Art Heist

Is the Chinese government behind one of the boldest art-crime waves in history?

www.gq.com

wow that's interesting, but sad if those items disappear from the world even if they are reclaimed in some sense.

there was that video someone posted about a group pf young germans who nicked a thing and took it back to tanzania wasnt it? and that african guy who got nicked for staging a reclamation of a heritage item somewhere in babylonia europe iirc?

 

[version]

There's got to be some bad energy to having a load of stolen artifacts locked up like that.

 

[sufi]

There's got to be some bad energy to having a load of stolen artifacts locked up like that.

when i was a student, i got to visit the british museum vaults, where 90% of their loot languishes in darkness unseen, beautiful ethiopian treasures lost for centuries

in the Brutish Museums book it goes on about how there's actually no argument that the museums have been good stewards as they also sold off or lost plenty of important stolen goods over the years, the BM itself is increasingly bypassed in the "debate" as it doesnt have anything to say any more, and it's getting undercut by other countries and institutions doing the right thing

It comes back to that familiar situation where power and money are shoring up past injustices or is that just my lens

 

[version]

The bit at the start of Capitalist Realism where Mark talks about the art collection in Children of Men and the stuff in the British Museum being like trophies on a Predator ship,

"We do not need to wait for Children of Men's near- future to arrive to see this transformation of culture into museum pieces. The power of capitalist realism derives in part from the way that capitalism subsumes and consumes all of previous history: one effect of its 'system of equivalence' which can assign all cultural objects, whether they are religious iconography, pornography, or Das Kapital, a monetary value. Walk around the British Museum, where you see objects torn from their Iifeworlds and assembled as if on the deck of some Predator spacecraft, and you have a powerful image of this process at work. In the conversion of practices and rituals into merely aesthetic objects, the beliefs of previous cultures are objectively ironized, transformed into artifacts."

 

[pattycakes_]

Let's get the Q lot to storm the Vatican's underground library and release all the books pilfered from the Great Library of Alexandria so we can finally all fly around in our own DeLorean fuelled by unlimited free energy

 

[sufi]

This repatriation ceremony is brilliant

Manchester Museum @McrMuseum

Repatriation of Cultural Heritage with @AIATSIS #RoCH — Manchester, England, United Kingdom

www.periscope.tv

talking about how the objects have been sleeping and the spiritual dimensions of their repatriation, the healing process as well as the science and law of demonstrating custodianship
practical and positive and easy to see the contrast with the imperialist mentality
making connextions between people along the chain of restitution and creating history together

 

[Mellsman]

The wealth locked up in the basement of a museum like the Met in NYC is staggering.

 

[Corpsey]

Interesting that quote from Mark about objects "torn from their lifeworlds". Would the same argument apply to listening to roots reggae as an atheistic European, for example?

 

[Corpsey]

My feelings of ambivalence on this issue can only be selfish. I love visiting the British Museum, and I think there is an argument to be made that it stimulates interest in and respect for other cultures.

But I also recognise the larcenous origins of their collection so I couldn't morally object to them having to send it all back.

 

[Murphy]

Huge paradox. Did part of a postgrad course in Dublin and there wasn’t the onerous sense of colonialism. Time is the great healer (apparently). Chunks of stolen loot from British museums could and should have been returned. Museums work when they seek to involve the inhabitants of the city or region they’re located in. School trips for free, further education access. Instead, departments often involve stale, moribund curators, desperately holding on to their fiefdoms

Maybe now this generation of royals are checking out some movement/recompense will slowly dispense back artefacts that sit in royal hands too

 

[sufi]

The wealth locked up in the basement of a museum like the Met in NYC is staggering.

basically it's like having a store of unpleasantness on every level - kidnapped spiritual and cultural artifacts, ongoing imperialist and racist symbolic and actual domination, disgusting capitalist perversion values all stacked up in the heart of every city, but at the same time so obvious what should be done ...

the guy in the book calls it necrology and necrography - converting life objects into dead voyeurism subjects or something