There’s No Such Thing as an Ethical Museum
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There’s No Such Thing as an Ethical Museum
the Modern West has bred new strains of iconoclasm. It did, after all, give rise to the museum, which arguably attenuates images’ political force. Pivotal in this history was the transformation of the Louvre Palace into a museum for housing political and religious artifacts of the old regime as objects of formal value.8 Just so, the museum both pro
... See moreNatalie Carnes • Image and Presence: A Christological Reflection on Iconoclasm and Iconophilia (Encountering Traditions)
In the West, modern museums evolved from so-called Cabinets of Curiosities, which typically displayed wondrous artifacts of the natural world—shells, fossils, plants and organisms—taken from their context and mounted inside. The natural world is sampled and split apart, studied and displayed.
At Japanese Museums, Art and Nature Merge - WSJ
In the past few years, museums across the US, Europe, and Australia are trying to tackle the challenge of decolonizing their institutions. Museums are taking on this important work to try to make their museums reflect the diversity and the voices of the people within their collections and around them.
Museum Next • What does it mean to decolonize a museum?
Laura Pike Seeley added
university. The museum had a definitive moment during the French Revolution, when the revolutionaries discovered an alternative to vandalizing the images and icons of the old regime: neutralizing them by placing them in the Louvre, which was transformed from a palace into a museum.
Natalie Carnes • Image and Presence: A Christological Reflection on Iconoclasm and Iconophilia (Encountering Traditions)
Visiting the museum is a unique experience unlike other leisure activities today. Through the careful selection and placement of objects in space, the foundation is set for visitors to think about their world in new ways.
Jonathan Brandel • Write with Open Access
Tanuj added
History has been gathered up and presented as heritage of a meaningful past that should be remembered and more and more buildings and other sites have been called on to act as witnesses of the past” (Macdonald 2009, p01).
Theory | uniformnovember
Jenna Guarascio added
We are formed by the structures of modern society to be insatiable consumers of an increasing range of commodified things and experiences and services. There is no art in this, because the tacit assumption that we must buy into along the way is that there is no limit to what we can consume.
L. M. Sacasas • The Art of Living
Instead of decolonising museums, the new practices echo and reinforce a racial discourse. They present an idea of culture as fixed and immutable – something people own by virtue of biological ancestry. This racial view of the world should trouble us.
https://aeon.co/ideas/does-one-ethnic-group-own-its-cultural-artefacts