A couple of days ago, my RSS feeds tracking museum news came up with a lot of uproar regarding a statement that Te Papa museum in Wellington had made regarding pregnant/menstruating women accessing collections. Naturally it has been misunderstood and blown out of proportion - so i'd like to talk a little bit about what it all means. Apologies if it gets a bit cumbersome, but I just want to get this out and I don't really have time to fine tune it right now.
This AFP article is pretty representative of a lot of the other news around, so i'm going to quote from it (but you can read more here, here & here, for a variety of samples).
To begin with, the AFP's article lead is extremely misleading:
New Zealand's national museum on Tuesday warned pregnant or menstruating women to stay away from some of its exhibits or risk an encounter with angry Maori spirits.
I guess it's a bit sensational with the "angry Maori spirits" part, and definitely just wrong when it says people had been warned away from exhibits. It sets people up to be angry and misinformed from the get-go. If they do read on, they'd at least see the following:
Te Papa spokeswoman Jane Keig said the policy was not an outright ban, rather it was strong advice designed to protect pregnant and menstruating woman from exhibits which Maori, New Zealand's indigenous people, believed could hurt them.
"Pregnant women are sacred and the policy is in place to protect women from these objects," she said.
Regardless, most people see this as "pregnant or menstruating women are not wanted at this museum because of Maori cultural beliefs". One quote the AFP article uses shows how knee-jerk the reactions can be:
"I don't understand why a secular institution, funded by public money in a secular state, is imposing religious and cultural values on people," she told the New Zealand Herald newspaper.
Miscommunication leads to this sort of thing - it's not necessarily the museum's fault, nor those reacting, but it is the fault of those misrepresenting the issue (ie. much of the media). When you look at what Te Papa actually have to say on the nature of the issue it becomes clear this is not about imposing rules or banning any member of the public from visiting the museum.
Statement regarding guidelines of access to Māori collections at Te Papa clarifies a lot of what was misrepresented and caused so much trouble. Firstly, the areas that were to be visited were collection areas, never accessible to the general public, and definitely not 'exhibits'. It may come as a surprise to many people, but the material on display in public galleries is usually a small percentage of any museum's collection.
Next of all is the "cultural imposition" - which is actually just a consideration, sort of a formality. If you will read these quotes from the statement:
One of these cultural considerations is that hapu (pregnant) or menstruating women (mate wahine) should consider entering the taonga Māori collection stores at another time...
‘While we inform visitors to the collection stores of cultural considerations, no visitor would be stopped from continuing the tour if they wished to.’
Again, this is in regard to collection areas and no general display in the museum itself. Secondly, this is a cultural consideration and it's not a blanket rule that because the items are Māori then everyone must take on Māori cultural rules when visiting the museum. This is called cultural relativism (or sensitivity, I suppose) - taking a step back from your own cultural norms and perceptions to understand that everyone's life and the objects within them can have different meaning and prescribe different behaviour. Even if you don't identify with that culture, you can still take a step back and see what might be respectful even if you don't share the belief. There is no reason to see this as that culture "imposing their beliefs" on you at all.
‘Te Papa, as the kaitiaki (caretaker) of taonga Māori and a bicultural museum, embraces Māori tikanga and kawa when caring for those collections’, Ms Hippolite said.
I wanted to end with this quote as representative of Te Papa's policy and action - although the statement goes into it further and is worth reading, too. Te Papa, more than any museum I know of and have visited, has gone out of their way from the beginning to have a strong contribution from Māori communities when it comes to caring for collections, and displaying those collections, amongst everything else that Te Papa care for and exhibit. It's a mark of a responsible and forward curation and management team to see a museum do this. When you see so many museums throughout history and now have imposed their cultural beliefs and norms, it's nice to get the balance back a little.
I have worked in museums that have 'sensitive' areas of the collection which have been limited in who can access and care for them because of cultural respect and relativism - as my personal choice I didn't buck that trend, and let others who fit the bill interact with those particular items. There is no one truth, there is no one culture that deserves to be respected more than another, and there is always balance in what is appropriate for you and what is appropriate when accessing and viewing things that are important to other cultures. This is what Te Papa try to do, not to prescribe importance over Māori culture more than anyone else's.
People need to step back from their privilege and see that Te Papa's policies are reasonable and responsible, and appreciate them for all they do not just for Māori communities, but New Zealand's communities as a whole.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Cultural Relativism, Ethnocentrism and Museum Collections: Te Papa Controversy
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Deaccessioning in museums - a link that inspired a ramble
I update this blog so sporadically now that it's almost a farce. But today is International Museums Day, so i've been kickstarted. I also found this link i'd been meaning to write about for, ooh, months now: What should museums throw out?
The link itself goes to a small gallery highlighting some items that were on display in an exhibition at University College London called "Disposal" - one I would've really loved to have checked out. None of the images themselves are particularly striking, but the little slideshow gives a bit of fodder for thought and discussion.
The process of accessioning objects into a museum collection is not that difficult - it comes in, you document it, you store it, you give it a place where it should belong. It is part of the order-making that I love so much about collection management. Deaccessioning, on the other hand, is a much trickier process.
At the surface of it all is the question, how? How can someone (or even a group of someones) decide what stays and what goes from any collection, big or small? Someone had to make the decision to take the object on in the first place - in many museums this was a decision made long ago by a person who no longer works for the same museum (or who has passed away long ago, if your museum's collection goes back far enough - which many do!).
This is where museum collecting rides along the fine lines of fetishism and hoarding. Everything seemed like a good idea when it was brought into the collection - and indeed much of it is a great idea to have in there - but how does a curator or museum board weigh up one object's usefulness as part of a museum collection over another?
One object may have amazing research potential, the other may be not necessarily unique but an excellent piece to display. One object could be kept "just in case" it's needed for either, its potential being the key. Some objects may indeed still be part of museum collections simply due to the fact that some important person many years ago felt that it should be. Why have a box full of pottery sherds when one as a representative sample is enough? Who needs 30 different tapas cloths when one can illustrate the type of textile that it is?
Every object has a story. In and of themselves, and then a story as a museum object. While two boomerangs may look superficially alike, when you look at their histories you may find that both are equally relevant to have in your museum collection.
To say, "yes, that piece is something we need for our museum collections and/or displays" is easy. To say no is usually very hard. There's a reason why policy on this from museum to museum is tricky in its wording. There's a reason why deaccessioning happens so very rarely. Saying no is hard to do.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
"Museum of Nicole"
It's so weird, approaching bits of your life like this. An interesting experiment, anyhow; and certainly not as well-documented as I would make objects in REAL collections! Hit the jump to see it all.
[Object type: Audio cassette]
Object type: Audio cassette
Size: Cassette - W65mm, L100mm. Case - W70mm, 107mm.
Materials: Plastic, paper, magnetic tape.
General description: This audio cassette is a dual-sided 90 minute tape of the kind that can be purchased blank and recorded onto. Side A has a paper label that reads "Nic's punk tape" handwritten in black pen. The plastic case has a paper insert with a tracklist handwritten in black pen (some writing has been covered with white-out). It reads:
A:
1969/I wanna be your dog/Search + Destroy - The Stooges
Holidays in the sun/Pretty vacant/EMI - Sex Pistols
USA/White Riot/Janie Jones - The Clash
Anger burning/Protest + Survive/Ain't no feeble - Discharge
California Uber Alles/Holiday in Cambodia/Haloween/Nazi punks fuck off
B:
Terminal Preppie/Soup is good food/MTV Get off the air/Pull my strings - Dead Kennedys
Rise above/TV Part/Police Story - Black Flag
Filler/I don't wanna hear it/Straightedge/Out of Step (with the world)/Salad days/Good guys - Minor Threat
God Song/Generator/American Jesus/Fuck Armageddon/Punk rock song - Bad Religion
The spine reads: Puhnk.
Provenance/history: This tape was compiled by the donor and gifted to the collection early in 1999.
Donor: Dave K.
Condition: The paper label on the tape is worn, however the casing of the cassette itself is in good condition and not cracked. The magnetic tape is in good condition. The plastic case and paper insert are both in poor condition - the plastic casing is cracked and some pieces have cracked off, while the paper insert is slightly worn and dogeared.
Publications/references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_rock
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mix_tape
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_audio_cassette
Storage location: Museum curator's desk. (Formerly: museum curator's car tape deck.)
Images:
[Object type: Ephemera]
Object type: Ephemera
Size: Various.
Materials: Paper, cardboard.
General description: This small collection of ephemera has been registered as one object and not assigned part numbers. It consists of a variety of items including stickers, whole tickets and ticket stubs, membership cards, postcards, flyers, and miscellaneous paper and cardboard.
Provenance/history: Collected at various times and places by the museum curator, some gifts.
Donor: Nicole H.
Condition: Various. Some paper in good condition, other pieces of paper and cardboard extremely faded from constant exposure to high UV levels. Other paper/cardboard has warped in high temperature and humidity levels, or has been marked/stained by blutac/putty.
Publications/references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemera
Storage location: Shoe box 01. (Formerly displayed on one side of a door.)
Images: Please see the photo with notes at Flickr.