Cultural Appropriation and the Power of Museums and Art Questions

We broke down and bought an umbrella today.  The last two nights we got home in the rain.  While it's not that hard most of the time, it is pretty steady and we're walking around a lot.  They say the good weather we had in Berlin was in London too, but now it's chilly (high 40's low 50s - 8˚-12˚C) and the wind smacks you on the face with one gust while it robs you of your warmth with another.  By 3pm the rain had left, but the wind stuck around.  The British Museum was jammed.







I'd been thinking about the meaning of all the Greek and Egyptian pieces that are here and the controversy about whether they should be repatriated, but thought perhaps the museum has some books that touch on that subject.  The bookstore was a little better and the woman working there found me several interesting books to look at. 

This first book - Christine Sylvester's Art/Museums:  International Relations Where We Least Expect It looks directly at art and museums and their political consequences.  The opening chapter makes it pretty clear she's thinking what I'm thinking.  The museums play a huge role in shaping how we think.  Of course, I was already musing about this when we were walking around Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC and how this subtly or not so subtly reinforces the sacred place that soldiers hold in the United States.  "We're against the war, but we support the soldiers."   Soldiers hold a hero place in the US these days so soldiers who go bad are excused through war related stress or termed the exception.  The underlying story is that soldiers keep our way of life safe and you question that story at your peril. 

In Berlin I was musing about the Egyptian and Greek treasures being there and not in Egypt and Greece.  I've heard it argued that if these objects hadn't been taken and so carefully preserved, they'd be gone.  Perhaps that is true sometimes.  A lot of Yupik pieces that were taken would have disappeared forever - it was part of the cultural tradition to let them naturally be recycled.  After all, a couple of hundred years ago, they didn't know that thousands of years of traditional activity was going to end and these objects and the knowledge of how to make them and what they meant would soon end.  But I also saw the Ellora and Ajanta Caves in India and they make much more sense where they are than inside a building in London or Berlin.

But I also began spinning another thought as I looked at the incredible pieces in the museums.  How can so many of the British see these works of art and still look down on the rest of the world as less civilized or less competent than they are?  Is it

• the need to be better than others to feel better about oneself?
• that they see this and say, "We defeated these people so we must be the best"?
• that 'art' is seen as frivolous compared to technology?
• that not enough Brits have been to the British Museum?  

Those are just a few stabs at understanding this.  And why I felt I needed to find out more about the topic.  Normally, I'd google, but I had the British Museum two blocks away.  I have to read these books, but I skimmed today, and let me whet your appetite.  Here's Sylvester's first page of the first chapter:

And here's the beginning of Young's conclusions:

He makes the distinction between cultural appropriations and object appropriations. That's reasonable on the surface. But what about cultural appropriations not for art, but for commerce? Should GM have paid for the name Pontiac? He has a chapter on Cultural Appropriation as Theft. I'll have to read that to see if he covers this.

By the way, I bought two copies of both the books. Even without buying the books, I think Young would agree I have the right to use the ideas as part of a discussion of the ideas.