Contested Representations examines the controversy surrounding the Into the Heart of Africa exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto in 1989-90. The exhibition was meant to travel to the US and Canada, but four major museums cancelled their contracts due to its controversial nature. With this richly textured account of the ways in which the exhibit became the site of an expansive-and explosive-discussion of representation, racism, and power, Butler asks why the exhibit failed for so many people. In the process she discusses issues of curatorial authority, institutional politics, legacies of colonialism, traditions of representing Africa, the politics of irony, and reflexive museology. The combination of race, postmodernism, colonialism, community activism, and heated debate still leaves the Into the Heart of Africa exhibit in a class by itself. It continues to be cited, debated, and used as reference points by Africanists, art historians, museologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians. Originally published in 1994, this case study is now available in an affordable paperback edition with a new Foreword by Anthony Shelton (UBC Museum of Anthropology) and an Afterword by the author outlining recent ROM practices in relation to the Black community and in representing Africa.
Contested Representations examines the controversy surrounding the Into the Heart of Africa exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto in 1989-90. The exhibition was meant to travel to the US and Canada, but four major museums cancelled their contracts due to its controversial nature. With this richly textured account of the ways in which the exhibit became the site of an expansive-and explosive-discussion of representation, racism, and power, Butler asks why the exhibit failed for so many people. In the process she discusses issues of curatorial authority, institutional politics, legacies of colonialism, traditions of representing Africa, the politics of irony, and reflexive museology. The combination of race, postmodernism, colonialism, community activism, and heated debate still leaves the Into the Heart of Africa exhibit in a class by itself. It continues to be cited, debated, and used as reference points by Africanists, art historians, museologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians. Originally published in 1994, this case study is now available in an affordable paperback edition with a new Foreword by Anthony Shelton (UBC Museum of Anthropology) and an Afterword by the author outlining recent ROM practices in relation to the Black community and in representing Africa.
List of Illustrations
Foreword by Anthony Shelton
Acknowledgements
I. Entering the Debates
Reading the Royal Ontario Museum
Coming into the Field
Museum Ethnography
Looking Ahead
Final Notes on the Forum
II. Into the Heart of Africa and the Status Quo
The Status Quo
Toward a Reflexive Museology
Re-presenting Imperialism: A Personal Walk Through the Exhibit
After the Fact
Museums Will Be Museums
III. Prelude to the Controversy
The Ambiguity of Irony
Power Relations and Public Culture
The Politics of Consultation
IV. The Coalition for the Truth about Africa: Strategies and Challenges
Performing Resistance
The Politics of Contestation
Experiences of "Otherness"
Democratizing Museums
A Counter Text: The CFTA Pamphlet
Contradictions of Resistance
Racism and Multiculturalism: Articulating a Contradiction
V. Various Positions: Responses to the Coalition for the Truth about Africa
Beyond Into the Heart of Africa
Authority at/of the ROM
Classroom Confrontations
Media Conclusions: Radicalizing the CFTA
The Academy and Complex Subject Positions
The Black Community: "Protest and Process"
Victims and Victimization
Other Voices at the ROM
Outcomes
Afterword: Canonizing an Exhibition, Renovating the ROM
Appendix: Coalition for the Truth about Africa Pamphlet
Notes
References
Index
A gold mine for teaching and the rarest of ethnographic studies, Butler's study carries us into the heart of one of the most divisive cultural firestorms to ever hit museums. The result is an insider's view of an exhibition as it shapes the lives of real people-forcing them to confront the legacy of colonialism and changing how they see the world and each other. -- Jeffrey Feldman, New York University Shelley Ruth Butler's meticulously researched case study helps us to understand why Into the Heart of Africa, the Royal Ontario Museum's attempt to deconstruct its own history of colonial collecting and exhibition, failed so disastrously-and also why the aftershocks of the bitter controversy that surrounded it continue to be felt throughout the international museum world. Butler's narrative makes for a gripping read, and it offers a sensitive and balanced analysis of the complex interaction of curatorial practice with race politics outside the museum and institutional politics within. This model study is a cautionary tale for those who produce public culture in our increasingly multicultural world. It should be required reading not only for students of museology, public history, and cultural studies but also for museum and heritage professionals. -- Ruth Phillips, Carleton University
Shelley Ruth Butler is an anthropologist and research fellow at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. She has written numerous articles on the politics of museum exhibitions and on tourism in South Africa.
A gold mine for teaching and the rarest of ethnographic studies,
Butler's study carries us into the heart of one of the most
divisive cultural firestorms to ever hit museums. The result is an
insider's view of an exhibition as it shapes the lives of real
people-forcing them to confront the legacy of colonialism and
changing how they see the world and each other.--Jeffrey Feldman,
New York University
Shelley Ruth Butler's meticulously researched case study helps us
to understand why Into the Heart of Africa, the Royal Ontario
Museum's attempt to deconstruct its own history of colonial
collecting and exhibition, failed so disastrously-and also why the
aftershocks of the bitter controversy that surrounded it continue
to be felt throughout the international museum world. Butler's
narrative makes for a gripping read, and it offers a sensitive and
balanced analysis of the complex interaction of curatorial practice
with race politics outside the museum and institutional politics
within. This model study is a cautionary tale for those who produce
public culture in our increasingly multicultural world. It should
be required reading not only for students of museology, public
history, and cultural studies but also for museum and heritage
professionals.--Ruth Phillips, Carleton University
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