https:/.../2020-07-08_arh303_art-colonialism-museums.mp4

Okay, let's continue our discussion
of art and colonialism and this time

we're going to look at museums.

And you know, naturally museums
that, like the British Museum or

the Louvre or the Pergamon
Museum in Berlin, these,

we talked about how these museums
were colonial because these were

objects that were basically taken
out of the country under either

less than great conditions or
else a treaty or an agreement

that maybe shouldn't have been
made by the host country.

So museums, what we call encyclopedic
museums, that is, large museums that

have, don't specialize in one thing
or another but try to show you

the whole range.

These are particularly, there are
issues with these museums

and sometimes wanting to
fill out their collections and

sometimes getting works in ways
that maybe are not best.

So, the other thing about art
in museums is the context

is taken away.

And this doesn't necessarily
per se have anything to do

with colonialism but so much
of the context from so many

of these works has been taken
away that it has certainly impacted

the way we view these objects.

So for instance, we have this
object which is the standing

couple, it is a pinnacle -- it's
a part of the pole, okay so

we've seen a lot of these ancestral
poles and this is from Madagascar.

And the reason I have a map is
because this region of, this large

island of Madagascar, as you
can see is basically African,

it's part of Africa here but
there is the wide open sea

here and there's been a lot
of trade over the years and

a lot of cross-cultural influences
between Oceania and India and

Africa and the Middle East
and so Madagascar has been

at the point of interaction
with all of these different regions

because of where it's located.

And so we, if we look at this,
this idea that you would have this

wooden pole that would have
ancestral aspects to it, should

remind you of some of the things
we saw in Oceania and it certainly does.

And this was a great -- when the
Metropolitan got this, this was a

great hue and cry or it was a
great "ta-da!" because they

didn't really have any examples
of African art from Madagascar.

This is from the, the Hazomanga,
it's from the Sakalava group or tribe

as you can see here,
17th to 18th century.

This would have probably
been at the base of it

and then you can see it
has this feature at the top,

there would have been an
additional part of the pole

with additional carvings in this.

There's a little bit of
pigment left on this.

This certainly would have been
quite a bit more brightly painted.

But this is an object now that
has some very interesting ties

both to Africa but also some
interesting ties with Oceania.

The problem is we
don't really get a sense

when it's in a room--
this is the room that it's in.

I haven't been able to find it
in this picture of the room

but if you can look at
the room right away we can see here

we have a (inaudible) and
various other objects.

We have all these objects that are
thrown in this room that are African

or from Oceania, Africa and Oceania
are lumped together in one collection

at the Metropolitan Museum
in New York.

Again there's some
commonalities

between these being ritual
and participatory events.

In this case the (inaudible)
didn't have a spot.

It's a very different object because
it was something that was--

it had a particular role
at a particular circumstance.

An object like this, and some of
the other objects from Oceania,

were very specific
to a certain place.

You know, you think
about those objects

the Moai from Easter Island,
they were placed in a very specific place

and they had meaning
in that place.

Much of this then is lost when
we see things in museums

and all categorized, and, certainly,
museums are trying their hardest

to be sensitive about this.

Now in this case, this isn't
necessarily absolutely colonialism.

I mean the Metropolitan, I'm certain,
bought this on the market

in some sort of
relatively legal fashion.

But we certainly do
have examples, as I said,

in some of the other collections
in Europe in particular

that were--
these are ill-gotten gains.

These are colonialist gains.

And almost certainly should
be sent back to the countries.

And that's not just my opinion,
there is a growing consensus

that we should be thinking
about these things.

So again, here's that infamous
picture that I keep dragging in

of the British punitive expedition,
I sort of can't get over the horror of it.

You can see these--
Oh, I guess they're lions.

I'm not really sure. They're supposed
to be leopards probably, with the spots.

Those are sort of inlay pieces of,
I don't know, shell or something

and here they are here,
you know?

They're sort of sad,
they're in their case

and they're not, where would
they have been before?

Would they have been heraldic?
Would they have been part of a complex?

Would they have been
guardians of an altar?

Lots of times these objects
were guardians of an altar.

One of your reading images,
it shows the recreation of an altar--

an altar basically that people have
made from some of these objects.

You know it's always good to
actually read the note cards

(laughs) on some of these when
you go into these collections

because, as I said, sometimes you
have things in the Metropolitan

that were legally bought
on the marketplace

you can decide for yourself whether
they were really legally bought.

Was there, at some point in their
record, were they ill-gotten gains?

Or you can look at something
like this which is like,

oh yeah, one, two - one, two.
There they are.

You know museums have a--

You know art in general, but
museums, it's art and money

and collectors and prestige,
all of these things

rolled up, roll up sometimes into some
unsavory behavior so.

This is certainly not just
the case with African objects.

There is a lot of unsavory and
unethical trade in pre-Colombian objects.

I'll show you just a couple of objects.
We have this Olmec, a very old

900 B.C.E pre-Maya object over here,
sold for a lot but lots of fakes also sold

Where did they get it?
This idea of provenance,

where did it come from?
That sometimes is lost

in the museum world
because things are sold

and their records are
"sanitized" over time

as we get less and less
information about this.

We also have the issue of,
sometimes in particular,

this has been the case
for African objects,

but this has particularly been the
case for pre-Colombian objects

and Meso-American objects
is that they are at times

displayed in what were called
"ethnographic" museums.

Something like this was a
study of ancient peoples.

This Maya figure right here was, at one
point, in the Texas Memorial Museum

in their ethnographic
collection upstairs.

Now they just mostly have rocks
and dinosaurs and things like that,

and this is now part of the
art and art history collection,

the same collection that
the textiles are from.

These things would be put in,
you know, "Oh, you know,

"those people would
make these things."

Whereas, items of probably
the same period of time

with very similar functions
and were put in art museums.

So you have something like
the little figurine on the left

that's in the Blanton, almost
certainly at some point was stolen,

and again, had gotten one of those
"cleansed" provenance along the way.

But this is just a little clay figurine
and it's in an art museum.

And here we have a little clay figurine
and it was in an ethnography museum.

So, you know, the whole
sort of what is high art

has been something that has
influenced museums greatly.

And then, even a vase,
even a beautiful vase like this

is nevertheless something that --
a vase, or an object like this

if it were pre-Colombian it would
probably be in an ethnography museum.

This particular vase;
it's a crater which is a kind of vase,

is also interesting because there was a --
the man whose name I'm going to forget,

just passed away, but he was an Italian
lawyer I think, and he started

getting interested in antiquities and
he was able to trace back

to some illegal deals and found out that
the Metropolitan in New York

had basically illegally bought this
Greek vase.

This was once centerpiece in the
collection at the Metropolitan

and it is now back in Rome at the
Etruscan Museum.

Even Western art in museums
will sometimes have iffy provenance.

Sometimes well, this was in a collection.
Well, was it in a church?

Did a family sell it, whatever.

And oftentimes the other things about
so many of these objects is that

in this case if it's three dimensional,
it will usually at least be in a vitrine,

that is, a little case.
And it won't just be stuck up on a wall.

So, I think that if you can see something
in three dimensions

and you can see it in a vitrine,
you can get a sense of how big it is,

how it was handled, how it was used.

And one of the things we see oftentimes
with Western art is particularly this one

that's at the Blanton, is it's hung up on
the wall so that you view it

like it's a painting, the way you normally
see painting.

But in fact, that sort of ritualistic
aspect of this,

the fact that it was a triptych and you
folded the wings in

so that you could carry it off to your
country house,

or carry it here and there.

It had this functionality to it
that is entirely denied by

the way that it is hung on the walls.

Museums play a really important role
in our relationship to art and colonialism

In our next segment we're going to take
one last look at an object

and this is the very curious case of
the buffalo hide painting.