Dani's Day Two Reflections

June 8th, 2016

History of the Penn Museum by the Director and Alex
10am-12pm

The presenters emphasized the museum's dedication to telling the human story through research, teaching, stewardship and public engagement. Throughout the presentation, I found myself questioning the historical and current methods and motivations behind accomplishing this goal. For one, the director explained stewardship as the necessity to preserve the collections because they belong to everyone. I found myself questioning that notion and the ability for the museum to have performed excavations in "other" places, claim to have "discovered" something, and then practice the right to "claim" a specific peoples' cultural heritage for world heritage. I question who this ultimately benefits. Who ultimately has the ability to "consume" this heritage? Who has the right to represent it? How do you ethically and respectfully represent something that isn't yours? At times, I felt that the use of words like "protection" and "preservation" were code for "consumption" and "cultural imperialism." For example, the presenter explained how the museum was born out of the idea that, as a world power, the U.S. was failing to compete with other countries who (through colonization) had already been investing in acquiring cultural heritage. I think it's important to remember how acquiring cultural heritage has been part of US foreign policy.

These critiques were exemplified in many ways throughout the presentation. For one, the language used to describe specific peoples' throughout the presentation was an issue (ie. eskimo, "they're so Black, they're blonde"). The museum also did not seem to be interested in addressing their past and current issues with diversity, which is ironic being that it's an anthropological and archaeological museum. Even though the director emphasized the museum's dedication to making the collections accessible to everyone, the following presenter explained that the museum has always been poorly visited by Philadelphians. I'm curious to learn more about their outreach efforts.

Penn Museum's Imagine Africa and other exhibits
1pm to 2pm

The museum clearly sought to begin a conversation about the ways the continent has been constructed in our imaginations. The exhibit directly addressed common misconceptions of Africa and African peoples. Its intentions were almost too obvious, as seen below:

Although most of the content was informative and useful, I could see how visitors could become distracted by how obviously educational it was. It was boring because it felt like school. Children were playing around, with and without adult supervision. Given the academic setting, it makes sense that the exhibit would be received in this way by the public. There are clearly pros/cons to this form of representation of African art. Unlike the PMA, Penn's attention to detail was more effective in complicating the audience's perceptions of Africa, but it risked losing members of the audience who weren't interested (for whatever reason) in engaging the exhibit in an academic way. As opposed to the PMA's 3 Photographers/6 Cities gallery, the Penn Museum's use of detail could be helpful in confronting the ways in which African countries and the experiences of African peoples are often homogenized when represented in these historical and artistic institutions. The exhibit clearly challenged the audience and evoked an array of responses. This can be seen in some of the comments on the walls.

In comparison with the prompts in the Look Again exhibition, the prompts in Imagine Africa were more direct and concise. They were obvious and sometimes leading because of their instructive nature. Look Again's prompts were long and the objective was unclear. Furthermore, the visuals (photographs and videos) used in Imagine Africa seemed to more effectively blur the line between past and present, as seen below:

For me, the desire to place the contemporary with the historical always comes at the risk of representing countries and peoples as atemporal. In the case of Africa, I think putting the historical and contemporary in conversation with each other is a slippery slope that could easily lead to representing its countries and peoples as primitive and stuck in time, as seen in the ways Africa has  been represented by many western institutions. When done correctly, this blur is effective in representing continuity, creativity and self-determination.