The Problem with Museums

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Are museum collections ethical? How did these institutions end up with their vast array of artifacts and remains from every corner of the globe? Well, chances are there was some definite shadiness involved. Today, Danielle examines this complicated debate and looks closely at the cases of Saartjie Baartman and Chang and Eng Bunker. What do you think? Should objects be repatriated, left on display, or something in between?

Created and Hosted by Danielle Bainbridge
Produced by Complexly for PBS Digital Studios

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Origin of Everything is a show about the undertold histories and cultural dialogues that make up our collective story. From the food we eat, to the trivia and fun facts we can’t seem to get out of our heads, to the social issues we can’t stop debating, everything around us has a history. Origin of Everything is here to explore it all. We like to think that no topic is too small or too challenging to get started.

Works Cited:

Neumeier E. Mediating legacies of empire in the post-imperial museum. History & Anthropology. 2019;30(4):406-420. doi:10.1080/02757206.2019.1611573

MacRae, Christina, Abigail Hackett, Rachel Holmes, and Liz Jones. 2018. “Vibrancy, Repetition and Movement: Posthuman Theories for Reconceptualising Young Children in Museums.” Children’s Geographies 16 (5): 503–15. doi:10.1080/14733285.2017.1409884.

Wilkins, Annabelle. 2018. “The Ethics of Collaboration with Museums: Researching, Archiving and Displaying Home and Migration.” Area 50 (3): 418–25. doi:10.1111/area.12415.

Burritt, Amanda Maree. 2018. “Pedagogies of the Object: Artifact, Context and Purpose.” Journal of Museum Education 43 (3): 228–35. doi:10.1080/10598650.2018.1469909.

Gann, Jack, and Lauren Padgett. 2018. “Understanding the Victorians through Museum Displays.” Journal of Victorian Culture 23 (2): 170–86. doi:10.1093/jvcult/vcx016.

Lester, Peter. 2018. “Of Mind and Matter: The Archive as Object.” Archives & Records 39 (1): 73–87. doi:10.1080/23257962.2017.1407748.

Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display Jennifer Tyburczy

Duncan F Cameron “The Museum, a Temple or the Forum”

Clifford, James. “Museums as Contact Zones.” Routes: Travel and Translation in the late 20th Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Macdonald, Sharon. A Companion to Museum Studies. Malden, MA ; Oxford: Blackwell Pub., 2006. Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies ; 12. Web.

Monstrous Intimacies Christina Sharpe

[ilovebats]

I think about how the parthanon museum in Athens has big empty displays with signs saying something along the lines of "This is where we would display the sculptures from the parthanon if the British museum would give them back to us." And I think that example really drives home some of the unethical nature of museums, because the British museum can't even argue that they are preserving the artifacts better when the Greeks have a spot in their own museum to put them.

[yaqub]

Professor: “How did England get such great and filled museums”

England: “The secret ingredient is crime”

[colemarie]

They literally cut up Baartman's corpse to investigate her as a missing link between animal and think about that for a second.
After an adult life stripped of all human dignity, she wasn't even be allowed to die with some.

I know that history is full of this stuff and worse, but that one just really gets to me.

[alejandramoreno]

It depends. There are many museums in my country, and due to the fact that my country did not invade any other country in it's history, our collections are entirely from our own cultures. The problem lies when imperialistic countries keep artifacts that were stolen or trafficked. Mexico has been asking Austria to give back Moctezuma's headdress for years, and the argument is that Mexico cannot possibly care for the object like they can. Wrong and patronising.

[wesleyrm]

I love how every time Killmonger made a good point, they had him murder someone to remind you he was the bad guy.

I’ve recently been to a museum in Cambridge and found their solution very clever - they returned the original items that had been unethically taken from the Sami people and then paid Sami artists to recreate those items for the museum. I thought that was a great approach because it actively supports the culture and its peoples, and at the same time still allows people who cannot travel to Norway to still learn about that culture. However, the downside of course is that museums unfortunately don’t have much money, so they probably cannot afford to do that for all their artefacts.

[charevandenheever]

I'm from South Africa, the fact that Saartjie's body was kept in a museum kinda breaks my heart. I'm so glad she got burried here.

[angieschimara]

Native Americans have been asking for spiritual and ancestral artifacts back since Europeans arrived.

[giustinosuarez]

This video could be summarized in a line from Disney’s movie Atlantis the lost empire. When Milo protests how commander Rourke is willing to steal the Atlantian life force crystal, Rourke responds with something along the lines of “come on Milo, as an academic you should understand that if you returned every stolen artifact in a museum, you’d be left with an empty building”. I’m 22 now but that line stuck out to me as an 11 year old.

[shariwelch]

I'm an art historian. My personal view as that each item (or sometimes, collections of items that go together) should be evaluated on a case per case basis. Human remains and sacred objects should be given highest priority. Sometimes, there is no community left to return objects to, sometimes there is. Often, objects are displayed with no context and stripped of any meaning. So many things in museums were obtained through looting or other shady means, it's hard to even estimate their numbers. But it's only ethical to try and correct at least some of these wrongs. Some people worry that our museums will empty out, and there will be nothing left, but that clearly won't be the case. If the past was a mad obsession with collecting at any cost, the future can be rectifying mistakes, ethical means of displaying what we have, returning things that make sense to return, and building relationships with the cultures that provided those objects.

[Hallows]

LOVE IT! I worked in museums for many years and minored in art history during college, so this conversation came up numerous times. Personally, I'm not opposed to having accurate replicas in museums and repatriating the originals to the places of origin, as long as they are clearly indicated as replicas.

[soopperson]

I’m Nigerian and went to a museum to other day, like 50% of the artefacts were “acquired” by the British empire from my country

[maibimbum]

This is exactly the type of conversation people who like museums need to be having. Past mistakes need to be openly acknowledged, the public needs to be educated, and better practice/updated procedures need to be put in place. There’s absolutely a need for museums, but problematic acquisition practices of the past need to be left there...in the past.

[alexn.]

People want to say colonialism was long time ago when it is not the case. If we look at them by generations rather than years, history is pretty recent. For instance, my grandparents were born under colonialism and most of them are still alive.
When I saw a French documentary about human zoos, I couldn't help but wonder. Is one of my ancestor's remains locked in a closet of an European museum ?

What I think about this is that they definitely should get repatriated. When 90% of African cultural heritage is not in Africa, there's a huge problem.

[sve]

South African here, Nelson Mandela asked for Sarah remains and she was brought to her native land in the Eastern Cape and was buried by her descendants

[joryjones]

0:02 “If your a big old history nerd like me?”
Answer: Yes

[honeyqueen.]

I never did consider the ethics of musuems until that scene in Black Panther. Huh. Thank you for the info!

[ilikestuff]

Easy answer
Just make replicas and display those

That's how countries like ours handle artifacts

[leonardofontenelle]

What? No mention of Indiana Jones breaking into a temple to steal an idol and take to a museum?

[kushastea]

the moment when you go to the British Museum and see huge China plates broken into pieces for transportation. people died making those plates. and the oldest chinese painting damaged beyond repair because the brits didn't know how to preserve Chinese paper. they only display it two months out of twelve I believe. and there I was in a foreign country checking the calendar to see if I can glimpse at a piece of my own culture. while also learning that some British young don't even know about the opium wars.