Aindrea Emelife Instagram – Culture cannot be trapped as spectacle.
One strangely sunny October day I took the train to Oxford to explore the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. After diving deep into Brutish Museums by Dan Hicks, and engaging in incredible conversations with him and his colleagues over the past few months, revisiting the museum further confirmed some things for me. Restitution is not a heritage sector problem; it’s an everyone problem. The removal of ones culture is so unsettling I think we must rethink how we hold culture in the first place.
I type this in Lagos amongst people who have never seen these objects and whose family might never see them.
Seeing objects like these catalysed a love of art and history and culture in me as a young girl and seeing them as I grow older sparks an inherited nostalgia – a cultural history and a memory that as a Nigerian diaspora, continues to impact the way i embrace my heritage. I cannot help but imagine the impact when they return.
Holding space for different cultures within the museum context is finally been embraced by museum pedogagies – but the hows and whys are important.
I cannot wait to see the cultural regeneration and invigoration that will happen when these important – in both sacred and aesthetic terms – objects return.
Watch this space. | Posted on 09/Nov/2022 22:29:03
