- cross-posted to:
- artdesign
- cross-posted to:
- artdesign
At its core, an art museum is essentially a narrative of empire. If, as Napoleon quipped, history is a set of lies agreed upon, a museum is their physical manifestation. Aptly, the Met—the grandest, most august museum in a city that likes to think of itself as the center of the world—boasts all the baubles that connote having made it, including a few once owned by Napoleon himself. Cleopatra’s needle, the Temple of Dendur, Greek goodies faded polychrome or ghostly blanched, Persian carpets, Old Masters, Estruscan jewels, Japanese lacquer, South Asian sacred sculpture, Chinese vases, Senegalese masks, Polynesian canoes. The good, old stuff! All in one place, the best of it all from every corner of the globe.
But the best according to whom? The Met is a museum of objects rich people, like Shelby White, value; it is a narrative of wealth and what signals it. Accordingly, the place has no shame at trafficking in stolen goods, and enlisting lawyers to stonewall the looted parties (e.g., Greece) with reams of contracts and receipts to establish provenance. It’s a Red State mentality with Blue State wall text. The institution has the dirty opioid money and the dirty oil money. Its worldview is unabashedly human-centric, each wing featuring a different culture trying to figure out what the hell it all means—most often, a whole lot of fucking, being born, and dying. Religious fanaticism is rife. Social hierarchy abounds. Women are mostly subjugated and objectified. The Hall of Arms and Armor would make any 2nd Amendment enthusiast blush with delight. Inveterate elitists, the Met celebrates the winners. It doesn’t have time for the downtrodden or the poor because they didn’t leave nice enough shit behind. Or any shit at all.
I have visited many museums not too long ago, to name a few:
I’m sure as the author says, these are all dirty opioid/oil money-funded, filled with religious fanaticism, stolen goods, and feminine objectification.
There’s a children museum down town where I live. Probably uses child labor.
Seriously though, they have some great stuff to expose kids to science and art.
The local native American History museum near me that’s on ancestral land and sponsored by the tribal council probably stole the artifacts smh
You joke but just because a group is a local native american organization (such as the local tribal council you mentioned) doesn’t mean they behave ethically or that they have the rights/ownership of everything they’re displaying. It’s more likely than, say, a british museum lol. But they should still be scrutinized!
Aight.
Most “children’s museums” i’ve seen aren’t really museums but rather “interactive learning” spaces of sorts. They’re borderline playgrounds, they don’t curate historical objects that one can’t touch generally. It’s kind of a misnomer tbh
They did have some dino bones, and some artifacts from the past hundred years, like here’s how people washed clothes in the 1800’s, with the real ones behind glass and the recreations you could play with….
But I get your point. My point, and I think the point of others in this thread a is that this is a very complex issue and claiming that all museums are unethical is a gross over simplification and wrong.
There are clear ethical issues with some museums, especially how they acquired their pieces and how some wealthy abuse them to save on taxes. (and probably a bunch of other stuff too.) However to start with ‘all museums are unethical’ is a bad starting place as it’s going to be dismissed out of hand because it’s preposterous. Instead of having a conversation about the unethical things some museums do, we get easy counter examples, jokes, and yet another thing conservatives will point to when they claim liberals are crazy.
The childrens museum by me has loads of things you can’t touch, the exhibits are just more generally interactive. There’s a real human skeleton where you press buttons to light up various bones, and a polar bear taxidermy with a thing that shows you how the fur keeps them warm with a cold surface and a range of materials on it including a square of polar bear fur so you can see the different warmths.