Session Name: [Humanities Across Borders] Care, Custody, Conservation I
4 - Decolonising Museums Through Care and Dialogue
Monday, July 29, 2024
14:00 – 15:45 (GMT+7)
Presentation Abstract The concepts of collection, conservation, and management that are fundamental to museum activities are influenced by modern Western values. Maintaining these collections in good condition has been an integral part of museal practice. However, recent calls for the decolonisation and repatriation of objects have challenged the idea of museum ownership. The disputes over cultural heritage restitution illustrate how challenging it is to ‘let go’ of one’s ‘possessions’, which have long been the core and identity of museum institutions. Furthermore, it is difficult to deconstruct the Western values inscribed in these returned objects through daily museum practices. The sacred objects of worship to which people had once offered flowers, food, incense, or coins would not be treated similarly after their return from glass cases or storage rooms where they were labelled, classified, and preserved. The practice of collecting and conserving objects according to Western standards has today become the norm even in the non-Western parts of the world. Their tradition of living with those objects has disappeared with the hegemony of Western coloniality. An important inquiry revolves around how museums can unravel such irreversible modern practices of possession. It is worth examining if the idea of possession itself can be decolonised. Drawing on non-Western and non-museum practices, this study aims to determine whether an alternative to extant practices is possible in contemporary museum practices.
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