Race, Racism, Antiracism – What can/should museums do? II

Following on our first conversation with Secretary Dr. Lonnie G. Bunch III, Melanie Keen, Nawal Mustafa, Quinsy Gario, Stijn Schoonderwoerd and Wayne Modest; this conversation focuses on the notion of institutional racism and how we might reimagine our institutions to better cater to anti-racist work. 

Some of the questions we hope to engage with, are: 

• How might we fashion anti-racist futures and what type of institutions do we need? Or what type of work must be done to make these futures possible? 
• What are the ongoing repercussions of the colonial foundations of our institutions?   
• What role can curation play in anti-racism and how might we imagine an anti-racist collection contributing to an anti-racist world? 
• Are there alternative modes of organizations that people have been setting up to unlearn racism and do anti-racist work? 

While the scale and intensity of the current anti-racism mobilization were undoubtedly exceptional, the critique of museums could be seen to form part of a much longer history of institutional critique that have questioned their role in perpetuating colonial ideologies. 

Image: A Hindustani dancer in women’s dress, Suriname, photo by J. Dzn. Blaauboer, 1952. TM-10019258. This image may be a depiction of the Londa ke naach tradition that takes place during Hindu weddings in the Hindostani diaspora in Suriname and the Netherlands. In this tradition, a Hindostani man, the nachaniya, dances while dressed up as a (Hindostani) woman. Louise Autar, an interdisciplinary researcher, teacher and intersectional feminist who will also participate in our event Un/Engendering the Collections: Rethinking Gender in the Ethnographic Museum I, has been researching postcolonial memory-making in relation to this dance tradition as practiced in the Netherlands. In practicing and sustaining this tradition, Dutch nachaniyas make decisions in balancing their sustainment of the tradition on the one hand, while also being accused of polluting or diluting the culture with suspected or perceived queerness, commercialization and westernization. The research highlights new knowledge about how diasporic cultures resist, evolve and relate to the various cultures they deem themselves to be a part of in travelling traditions.