Should museums give Africans back their artifacts?
What is a museum? The dictionary defines a museum as “a building in which objects of historical, scientific, artistic, or cultural interest are stored and exhibited.” But if you imagine a museum, you don’t imagine one as this robotic dictionary response to the human world. We imagine museums in many different ways, filled in the mind’s eye, not with stone, brick, glass and metal, but nature, beauty, and wonder. Do you imagine art as an ancient artifact of natural history and science, or a conveniently converted private home, or how about a purpose-built treasure box?
Museums are more than just physical places designed to house collections of stolen artifacts, but to shape identity and memory. They do not and will not tell full stories, but the distilled narratives they propose often contain the most treasured and contested facets of identity and national heritage. A museum is a place where we can go to tell stories about ourselves and others. It’s not the only home for knowledge, but it is one that holds a national curriculum of identity and mainstream narratives. Just remember, however invisible the artifacts may be, there is someone directing you around that place, shaping your interpretations, choosing what you may look at and how.
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A strong argument I hold is, ownership is different from who should see it. Africans have been asking for their artifacts back for years, and the fact we are denying them their heritage and right to discover and explore that, just goes to show how countries who colonized Africa still uphold their bigoted and oppressive views. Humans think in stories rather than facts, a story is simpler and better. Every group, nation and race has their own tales and myths, and that is exactly what a museum does, they coerce our emotional and intellectual responses to the things they display. We can understand museums as spaces built with ideology’s and begin to read their texts of inconclusions and exclusions. There is always more than one way of looking at it.
We can still look and become amazing and enchanted by these artifacts, just in the hands of their rightful owners. If we loan out artifacts, like we do with many western paintings we can still become educated and adapted to other cultures and the world around us. Africans have been crying out for several years for the Queen of England to give them back the jewels in her crown. Is this not a key opportunity for the British to come to terms with their horrific colonial past and begin to make amends and move forward? What is this really saying about the society we live in?
If you feel overwhelmed and confused by this global predicament, you are on the right track. Global processes have become complicated for one single person to understand and tackle alone. How then can we truly understand the world if we don’t challenge it? How do we avoid falling victim to propaganda and misfortune? Through the means of communication, we live in a world where old stories have collapsed, and new ones have not been written. Through one step at a time, like giving Africans back their artifacts we can write a new story of peace and understanding, where in an age of bewilderment we can now start to make sense of the past, and not make those same mistakes.
