The migrated museum: restitution or a shared heritage

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2021

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Thebele, Winani W

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Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The ‘migrated museum’ is a self-developed concept that I as the researcher use to explain the presence of cultural materials from ex-colonial countries found in foreign museums and art galleries. The concept of migration is heavily infused with meanings and so is the idea of a migrated museum. Migration refers to movement for economic, trade, family, religious, educational and social purposes. There is also forced migration, as in the case of refugees and exiles; and this also applies to objects. This concept is, therefore, not easy to define because it has multiple layers of meanings. It is this sense of ambivalence and multi-layering that makes it a very interesting topic for study. The research study is using this to show how some objects have been forcibly removed from their original human contexts and are today in foreign museums. But there is also the historic process whereby they were removed, which were in situations that could be broadly defined as colonial. How are such collections to be curated in an era where there are calls for decolonisation? Should they be returned to their places of origin, or can responsibility for them be shared between the institutions of formerly colonising and colonised peoples as is often now proposed as an alternative to restitution? The topic of this thesis is, therefore, important in the field of museology and cultural property. It covers a range of issues related to notions of sharing, gift giving, reciprocity and exchange, national and local identities, heritage, culture, museums, alterity, and mimesis. Addressing the illegal trade in stolen objects and other heritage is a difficult exercise to undertake. The above discussed issues cut across a number of other disciplines in the social sciences, such as humanities, economics, and museological studies. Being a professional museologist in Botswana places me to explore this topic from the point of view of a museum practitioner who has witnessed its ramifications through the continent and in museums and collections of former colonial and imperial powers. As a museum practitioner, I have also used first-hand knowledge of the African museum context in issues of repatriation and sharing. This could appear as allowing advocacy to intrude in what should have been impartial observations, reflections and analysis, but it was done in an effort to highlight aspects of the African experience that needed more clarity and have not been covered in other writings. This also explains the reliance of the thesis on the practitioner’s perspective. This project, therefore, brings together a number of topical issues that are currently seen as separate aspects of heritage and the practice of its display on the continent of Africa. These include repatriation of human remains and artefacts taken under the legal regimes of the colonial era. Also, worth noting is the heritage stolen under the guise of conquest and imperial order in the form of punitive expeditions as well as illegal trading and excavations in the postcolonial period. The study also touches on the difficult issue of the contemporary global drive to share through exchanges between museums and other institutions and their heritage in the light of UNESCO’s commitment to promoting knowledge of human differences, similarities, and the values of cultural tolerance...

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A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) for the Faculty of Humanities, Department of Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand, 2021

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