Decolonizing the Museum

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Museums have become prime venues for promoting a newly self-reflective colonial memory culture, and raising questions about the obligations former imperial powers have for the places and people they colonized. The course will survey the transformation of museums into institutions supportive of indigenous people and ethnic minorities as authors of their own, long-suppressed stories. Both in settler colonial nations such as the United and States and Canada, and former European colonial powers, museums have begun to respond to demands of repatriating parts of their collections, to serve more demographically diverse constituencies, and perform new civic functions. This class will examine the agents of decolonizing the institution, the politics of repatriation, apology, and reparations, and the role of museums for instigating larger processes of economic and social justice and repair. The course is divided into three parts: the first will introduce students to the role of museums in the colonial era; the second will examine their transformation into engines of diversity; and the third will explore recent exhibitions as case studies for decolonizing museology. Here we pay special attention to the work of artists. Students will investigate representations of violent colonial pasts at museums in the region in their own research projects.