Museums appeal to me more than other ordinary amusements. It is a place that records and saves the collections of history for us. Since I was a child, when my parents and I were on a trip, we would always plan and visit one or more local museums. My father loves history, and therefore every time when we visit museums, he will always use vivid ways to explain the story, which makes me feel even more interested towards this place. Therefore I decided to use the idea of “Museum” as the foundation for my visual essay, and to discuss the topics that are closely related, which is problems of the museum nowdays.
Museum, this word came from a Greek word, Mouseion. The meaning of this word is the “seat of the Muses” which usually refers to a place for philosophical purpose or place of contemplation.
The museum was used to represent only as a place for collection of objects before 1677, until Elias Ashmole from the University of Oxford donated his collection to the University and the college built a building for the collections’ exhibition and made it available for public viewing. At that time, which was during the 17th century, it already attracted many visitors. Ashmole says the existence of places like a museum “‘is very necessary to humane life, health, and the conveniences thereof.'”
However, nowadays the museums are facing problems that are related to some ethical issues. Although it might seem ridiculous, people also found out that there are even sexist biases that appear in museum like the Natural History Museum. A study made by NHM researcher Dr Natalie Cooper found out that the collections that the museum holds has significantly more male specimens than female specimens, which by some chance this unbalanced situation may lead to irrelevant results to any studies or investigation that utilizes those specimens, including the ones in the past.
A human right campaigner, Caroline Criado Perez, said “We all have this bias of seeing male as the neutral, the default, the baseline – those are the words that get applied to men.” This shows that even now people are still subconsciously male-dominated, probably not because they discriminate against women, but because it is a long-standing fact that cannot be easily changed.
Moreover, according to an article written by Amy Hollander, she mentioned how most of the objects collected in today’s popular and well-known museums convey another meaning, that of the trophies of the victorious side, a record of their glorious moments in the past, which in a way portrait the situation that the British statesman Winston Churchill said that “History is written by the victors”.
A well-known example would be the famous attraction located in London, British Museum. It is a treasure trove of culture and history with valuable collections from all over the world and from all eras. However, It is constantly being doubted that their collections were seized by force by the former British, which some people think they should be returned. Geoffrey Robertson, who is a human right barrister, accused the museum of “The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property,”He believes that this cultural heritage belongs to other countries, and that Britain has seized it through wars or other unjustified channels.
A more specific examples are the ivory and bronze artifacts of the Benin Kingdom in the British Museum.
Starting from the late 1600s to 1900s, Britain kept on expanding its empire, which soon took away a quarter of the world’s land. The Kingdom of Benin was used to be part of it. It was a wealthy kingdom that produced a lot of unique and beautiful art pieces including the few that are exhibited in the British Museum.
During 1897, due to Benin refusing to trade with Britain, it led to a crisis that a Benin guard killed a lot of British emissions and guards, known as The Benin Disaster. In retaliation, Britain launched a mission called The Benin Punitive Expedition, which, in addition to solving the preceding events, also secretly took a large number of artifacts and sold them around the world
A professor from Nigeria, where Benin kingdom originally were at, Chika Okeke Agulu said, “1995, in London, that was my first time seeing an original ancient Benin artwork”. He said he was proud to see them, but at the same time angry. He believes that the British seizure has denied those without passports or visas the opportunity to see these antiquities from their own country.
But on the other hand, a group of people still think it’s great to be able to visit those precious historical artifacts in one museum at one time. This issue is still being discussed and we still need more time and effort to solve this problem.
Overall, these are just the tip of the iceberg of the museum problems. In addition to museums in the England, large museums around the world are facing the same problem. We still need time to eliminate possible biases and to bring in more voices from different peoples, groups, and eras, so that in the future our museums can really become an impartial repositories of history.