Museum Transformations. Группа авторов

it is also an essential resource for projects of restoration, and collaboration with museums has thus been integral to the work of the Git Hayetsk. By the same token, collaboration with Indigenous artists and researchers has become essential to museums as they seek to decolonize. The Git Hayetsk dancers regularly perform in museums so that they can revivify the “objects” and “artifacts” in the glass cases and on the storage shelves (Dangeli 2011). “Recently,” Dangeli has written, “we have become compelled to acknowledge the nax nox, those ceremonial beings who remain confined in museums and archives by creating new masks in their image to be brought to life publically with songs and dances” (2011, 44).

      The effort we make to have our presence known, as living peoples and cultures, by dancing in museums aims both to disrupt the static nature of their display and to bring strength to our ceremonial beings, whose lives have been severed from the human interaction, sound, and movement that makes them and us whole. Further complicating our relationship with museums is the fact that, although our ability to engage with our ceremonial beings is stifled by the way institutions distance them from us, the willingness of museums to support our efforts (for example, by inviting our dance group to perform and allowing us to research their archives) contributes to my ability as a halaayt and Mike’s aptitude as a gitsonk. There is no doubt that the history of our cultural oppression permeates the power dynamics inherent to these relationships … our belief in and practice of nax nox and halaayt has the power to subvert the parameters of confinement of our ceremonial beings. (Dangeli 2011, 45–46)

Nax nox beings, Dangeli writes, “have the ability to bring change into the world – to strengthen, to defeat, to scare, to make peace, to give hope” (2011, 38). Her critique and the agency she claims for the Git Hayetsk dancers return us to the potential for transformation of the museum itself through its commitment to democratization and decolonization. Both work to reanimate histories that have been silenced, collections that have been ignored, and dimensions of cultural diversity whose disappearance has been prematurely declared. The move to transform museums is one that aims to establish new sites for mutual recognition, healing and knowing that acknowledge and respect difference and share authority. These processes are incomplete and subject to episodes of arrest and retreat. The gains that have been made are fragile. Yet the case studies set out in the chapters of this volume evidence important and precious steps that have been taken and trace a path whose permanence we must work to ensure.

       Notes

      1 1 Milestone exhibitions that raised the level of debate concerning colonialism and representation through the controversy they created would include Primitivism in Twentieth Century Art: Affinities of the Tribal and the Modern (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1984), Les magiciens de la terre (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1989), The Other Story (Hayward Gallery, London, 1989), The Raj: India and the British 1600–1947 (The National Portrait Gallery, London, 1990), Into the Heart of Africa (The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 1989). A later example which is discussed in detail by Johan Lagae in Chapter 7 of this volume is Memory of Congo: The Colonial Era (Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, 2005).

      2 2 Now classic critiques of the art and artifact paradigms include Redfield (1959); Clifford (1988); Vogel (1988).

      3 3 Under threat of closure after the Dutch government withdrew its funding in 2013, the decision was taken to combine the collections of the Tropenmuseum with those of the Volkenkunde Museum in Leiden and the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal and to reorganize the existing museum, possibly using the museum of world cultures model.

      4 4 “250 Years On: What Does It Mean To Be a World Museum?” was a speech given by Neil MacGregor in January 2009 on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the public opening of the British Museum (MacGregor 2009).

      5 5 The radio programs began on January 18, 2010.

      6 6 See, for example, the catalog and critical reviews from the blockbuster exhibition, Africa Art of a Continent at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, which is discussed at length in Coombes (2001).

      7 7 Initiated by the Mozambican Christian Council under the auspices of Bishop Dinis Sengulane, Transforming Arms into Tools was supported by the NGO Christian Aid. The BBC website claims that “over 600,000 weapons were surrendered in exchange for tools.”

      8 8 Sophie Beissel, comment on “Throne of Weapons.” A History of the World in 100 Objects, October 22, 2010 (11:23 am). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/97OnxVXaQkehlbliKKDB6A.

      9 9 The signatories were the directors of The Art Institute of Chicago; Bavarian State Museum Munich; State Museums, Berlin; Cleveland Museum of Art; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Louvre Museum, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Prado Museum, Madrid; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and The British Museum, London.

      10 10 A very similar justification had been made in 1984 by David Wilson, then director of the British Museum, when in the face of heated restitution claims he argued that the museum’s political neutrality and its internationalism gave it the right to hold “material in trust for humankind for the foreseeable future” (Wilson 1984). See also The Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums, 2002, and, for an elaboration of some of the debates it provoked, Tom Flynn ([2004] 2012). The text of the Declaration is reprinted in ICOM News 1 (2004), p. 4, http://icom.museum/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/ICOM_News/2004-1/ENG/p4_2004-1.pdf (accessed May 12, 2014). The responses of several museum directors are given in Lewis (2004).

      11 11 Neil MacGregor’s speech is reproduced in full in “The Whole World in Our Hands,” The Guardian, July 24, 2004.

      12 12 The Heritage Lottery Fund (2014) is the largest dedicated funder of heritage projects in the United Kingdom. It is a “non-departmental public body accountable to Parliament via the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.”

      13 13 See, for example, the scholarly journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies: An International Journal; Sharpley (2005); Stone and Sharpley (2008).

      14 14 http://www.sitesofconscience.org/approach/ (accessed May 12, 2014).

      15 15 http://www.sitesofconscience.org/about-us/ (accessed May 12, 2014).

      16 16 The distinction between the museum as temple and forum was made by Cameron (1971).

      17 17 See Phillips (2005) for Canadian examples of the use of the museum to rehearse larger grievances.

      18 18 For the implications of actor network theory to museums, see Harrison (2013) and Phillips (2011).

      19 19 See, for example, the critiques of the Royal Museum for Central Africa’s (Tervuren) attempt to address the long-denied colonial history of Belgium’s exploitation of the Congo, La Memoire du Congo: Le Temps Colonial: Adam Hochschild, “In the Heart of Darkness,” New York Review of Books, October 6, 2005 and the response to this in the letters pages of the New York Review of Books, January 12, 2006.

      20 20 The projected text includes a section that reads: “Any Indian in the province of Manitoba, British Columbia, Saskatchewan or Alberta, or in the Territories who participates in any Indian dance outside the bound of his own reserve, or who participates in any show, exhibition, performance, stampede or pageant in aboriginal costume, without the consent of the Superintendent general” (section 149, article 2).

      21 21 Haudenosaunee, meaning “People of the Longhouse,” replaces the older term “Iroquois” and includes six modern First Nations: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca,