Paper short abstract:

This paper attempts to discuss what it means to decolonise museums in its transdisciplinary framework and the idea of decolonising knowledge-mechanism, challenging “what do we know” by discussing two experimental exhibitions; one was done in 2018, and another one is in the planning stage.

Paper long abstract:

Decolonising museums is by no means a new topic, not only in the Museum Studies field but also in the framework of other disciplines. Furthermore, it evokes the larger realm of decolonising knowledge-mechanism which is extremely broad, complex and often emotional, as it challenges “what do we know” requiring us to shift our “ways of thinking” and “ways of knowing”. Inevitably, academic institutions and researchers are a part of this issue. However, what are these different ways of thinking and knowing? How can we practice those? This presentation introduces two experimental exhibitions based on UCO collections that aim to reinvent exhibition practices in the vein of decolonial thinking. The first attempt was the Art of the Americas exhibition (March - July 2018), which questioned the categorisation of material cultures into art, ethnographic, anthropological, and archaeological objects. We will analyse its successes and failures. The second attempt is an ongoing project started in December 2021, planning to open in the Summer or Fall 2022 at UCO. We will discuss how this project addresses the failures from the Art of the Americas to further experiment with new ways of curating exhibitions and to answer the question: What does it (actually) mean to decolonise the museum?