Paper short abstract:

Decolonising the Curatorial Process is a forty-minute documentary which explores decolonial strategies in an academic and curatorial context. It features academics, activists and museums that are deploying critical, self-reflective forms of curatorial practice.

Paper long abstract:

Decolonising the Curatorial Process

Dr Orson Nava

https://vimeo.com/464558806

Decolonising the Curatorial Process is a forty-minute documentary which explores decolonial strategies in an academic and curatorial context. The film features academics, activists and practitioners, and contains case-studies of institutions that are deploying critical, self-reflective forms of curatorial practice. The Museum of London Docklands exhibition on slavery and the sugar industry is examined as an example of how an institution can decolonise the curatorial process, utilise the work of artists in a museum context, and critically examine East London's imperial history. The other case study is the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford who are working with InsightShare participatory video company and a group of Maasai activists from Kenya and Tanzania on a project centered on the museum's collection of sacred Maasai artefacts.

The intention of the project is to build a critical awareness of the central debates in this area among university and museum staff, as well as students of the arts and the social sciences. It was conceived as an online resource that can be accessed by universities and museums, particularly for use in teaching modules focusing on the history of 'race', colonialism, slavery and migration. It is also intended to be screened as part of panel discussions at Museums and community organisations.

I propose to show some clips from the film and expand on the points it raises about radical curatorial practices, indigenous activism and the problematics of cultural ownership in the context of museums and the academy.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the making of African diasporan heritage in the Swedish Museum of Ethnography. Drawing on an ethnographic material, the study investigates how understandings of these individuals and their entanglements with the museum is organized by museum staff, visitors and collaborators.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses how practices of heritage making in the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm are produced through a logic of entangling. The paper draws on a case study of the project Ongoing Africa, conducted at the museum since 2017. This project aims to raise new perspectives on the African continent with and by Swedes of African descent and it is organized around collaborations with researchers, artists, and activists engaged in questions related to African cultural heritage and relationships between communities on the African continent, in diaspora, and in Sweden. These collaborations in turn produce program activities in the museum, where the historical entanglements of African travelers and the museum are discussed in the public.

The presented travelers and migrants came to various communities in Sweden from the late 18th century until the late 20th century. Some of them left traces in the museum archives, others did not. Drawing on ethnographic observations of the program activities where they have been presented and 19 interviews with staff members and collaborators, this paper examines how understandings of historical entanglements are organized in the present. Through a discourse theoretical perspective combined with affect theory, I analyze how an opening up of the past allows for a re-centering of African subjects, and hence an openness to a shared future between the museum and individuals positioning within the African diaspora. In particular, the paper presents the forming of a counter-discourse, that orients with, against, and away from coloniality, whiteness and Swedish exceptionalism.

Paper short abstract:

2020 saw growing global protests around Black Lives Matter (BLM) and amplified responses from different cultural institutions. In Bristol Museums, the legacies of the Transatlantic Slave Trade had played a role before, and I will discuss two projects partnered with and aimed at the Black community

Paper long abstract:

As a response to the BLM protests, museums and the heritage sector all over Britain committed to reassess colonial legacies of their collections, exhibitions and narratives. This paper discusses two collaborative projects run by Bristol Museums that were particularly addressed at Black communities and the responses before and after the toppling of the statue. The first project, the Bristol Black History project (ongoing) started in 2018 is a digital Black Historyproject in collaboration with Black experts as well as a general public. An early survey had revealed that there was a demand to present more (positive) narratives of Black people and move beyond the history of slavery. Although the project was only a digital format, which had been criticized, it provided an advantage during the lockdown. The second project Uncomfortable Truths was run in 2019 and is also made available for online access. In this project, participants mostly of ethnic minority background unravel hidden histories of artefacts in the museum through a critical lens. Both projects not only aim to present Black history beyond stereotypical images, they are also platforms to provide agency, authority and visibility to the participants. Both projects were already started before 2020, but have gained increasing interest during the course of the global BLM movements and the toppling of the Edward Colston statue. This paper discusses both projects, the reflections of participants and the increasing interest after June 2020 also against the backdrop of tackling general racism as well as hostile environments in the cultural sector.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore Simon's Town Museum in the Western Cape, an area still scored into by the divistions of forced removals during apartheid South Africa; focussing on their recent work with community groups to record, reclaim and make audible and visible largely silenced histories.

Paper long abstract:

The legacy of apartheid is still keenly felt across South Africa. The legacy of forced removals and segregation during apartheid is still markedly visible in the division of land, distribution of inhabitants across the country, thus the access to services and resources. The Simon's Town museum is a small museum with an array of artefacts and one facing challenges of resource and access. With access to arts, educational, cultural and leisure pursuits still largely and right and purview of White South Africans, the museum as site for education, leisure or culture remains at significant remove from the locals of the Simon's Town museum.

Working with with the activist, educational and archival platform of South African History Online, facilitated by a Global Challenges Research Grant with the University of Glasgow, there has been a recent undertaking to make accessible voices affected by Apartheid and the instigation and mobilisation of oral history community groups gathering material for a newly launched website. Naturally, due to ground up instigation of these research groups in the neighbouring townships, the stories are gathered and edited by locals, both for locals and now also to a global audience. This is the start of longitudinal process with the communities it serves (both local townships and port town), with attention to revealing hidden narratives and voices; allowing for the personal and political to take the fore; undoing whitewashing of complicated archives and revealing the racial complexity of the ‘rainbow nation’ in relation to the communities surrounding this museum.

Paper short abstract:

This paper critiques four 'politically aesthetic,' anti-racist and decolonial interventions by African and diasporan artists working in museums and galleries in France, Germany, The Netherlands and UK. The featured case studies include works by Grada Kilomba, Isaac Julien, Owanto, and El Hadji Sy.

Paper long abstract:

Many of the long-established, high-profile collections of fine art, ethnographic artefacts and other cultural exhibits curated for display within museums and galleries located in Europe's major metropolises have regularly featured holdings with problematic colonial provenance, often acquired as a result of theft, exploitation and violence. Consequently, the presence of such artworks and objects with troubled histories has created - and continues to present - significant challenges for today's 21st century museum and gallery professionals striving to make meaningful decolonial interventions to positively transform their collections, exhibitions and education programmes. Some of the most innovative anti-racist and decolonial initiatives undertaken in recent decades have involved establishing collaborative and culturally diverse creative partnerships with contemporary artists, curators and other heritage professionals from the global South, as well as creatives of colour from diaspora communities in the West. This article will present a selection of these interventions, with a focus on art-political collaborations involving contemporary installationists, conceptualists, curators and arts activists from continental Africa and the diaspora. Specific successful projects from the oeuvres of the following four internationally renowned artists/artist-curators will be foregrounded: Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist, critical race theorist and arts scholar Grada Kilomba (b. 1968, Lisbon); British film-maker Isaac Julien, CBE RA (b. 1960, London); Gabonese-French contemporary visual artist Owanto (b. 1953, Paris); Senegalese artist-curator and scholar-activist El Hadji Sy (b. 1954, Dakar).