Contribution short abstract:

If empire is an unfinished project, and if abolition, as we learn, is far from over, then we must surely attend to the places that were created to make it endure. Museums are one such place. What would it mean to abolish the museum?

Contribution long abstract:

Empire is not over. Just open a newspaper, or doom-scroll your social media feed, and it’s immediately clear that what an older academic language described as “post-colonial” is far from in the past. Even Stuart Hall’s equivocal account, back in 1995, of the question “When was the post-colonial?’, feels hard to comprehend today.

If empire is an unfinished project, and if abolition, as we learn, is far from over, then we must surely attend to the places that were created to make it endure. Museums are one such place. Abolition of course was never about destruction but about countering destruction. For these reasons this paper asks: for those who find themselves working in legacy institutions, with legacy thought, legacy practice: What would it mean to abolish the museum?

References

Hall, S. 1996. When was “the post-colonial”? Thinking at the limit. In Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti (eds) The Post-Colonial Question: common skies, divided horizons. London: Routledge, pp. 242-260.