“Museums are a gateway drug” - Cody

Museums are typically a place of history, but museums have their own histories, which are also tied to cultural histories of imperialism, colonialism, capitalist exploitation, and white supremacy. How should museums care for our past, present, and futures? 

We talk about The Met, Cultural Resource Management archaeology and construction, and The Witness Blanket. 

Sources

Should museums return their colonial artefacts?

Tristram Hunt

A look into the Met museum’s collection reveals heaps of shady acquisitions

Miyo McGinn

‘The stuff was illegally dug up’: New York’s Met Museum sees reputation erode over collection practices

Spencer Woodman, Malia Politzer, Delphine Reuter and Namrata Sharma

Primitive Art in Civilized Places

Sally Price

Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West

E Cram

The Witness Blanket, an installation of residential school artifacts, makes Canadian legal history

Marsha Lederman

Culture and materialism

Raymond Williams

Decolonizing Ethnographic Documentation: A Critical History of the Early Museum Catalogs at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History

Hannah Turner

Geontologies

Elizabeth Povinelli