I get the post about wanting to save museums and Aquariums and zoos but. I think any talk about museums needs to be handled very carefully since there is a good portion of displayed items that never should’ve been in the museums care at all. Personally I don’t care if every museum has to shut down if it means that culturally significant pieces are returned to the people they were stolen from. I just don’t see how a museum can be compared to an aquarium or zoo that contains living creatures
So, I could talk quite a lot about the museum field and the evolving attitudes that mean this is a really complicated issue, but right now, my main focus really is on saving these places, and I don’t particularly want to detract from that. Here is what I will say though.
The definition of “museums” that are threatened right now ranges from small local history centers, to science museums, to places that display art, oddities and more. There are museums of pop culture and museums dedicated to obscure historical events and hands-on experiential learning museums, planetariums and rocketry centers, and everything in-between. Only a fraction of these places have the kind of artifacts you’re talking about in the first place. Do they deserve to die because they’re part of a broader category? I certainly don’t think so, and I’d ask you to consider that question.
The other thing that is a little harder to explain but that I hope makes sense is this: if what you really care about is artifact repatriation, it’s actually even MORE important that even the museums you don’t like survive this crisis. There are important laws around returning artifacts (including some that basically say you have to return them -- it’s not all red tape), which is its own discussion but is good thing in a lot of ways, because it means there is a methodology to make sure that things end up in the right place. Some of the kinds of museums you’re talking about are already in the process of doing that with parts of their collections. The museum I was working for prior to all this has a working relationship with our local Native tribes, communicating with them about returning certain things and about the most respectful way to display -- or in some places, not display -- the things in their collection that they either haven’t been able to return yet or have been told they could hang onto, since some of these groups have said they would like those things to be displayed, alongside donated, modern works of art, in order to educate people about their cultures. If these sorts of places make it through and can continue the work that they’ve been doing, I can 100% promise that more art and artifacts will make their way into the hands of Native tribes. However, if they have to close suddenly, that won’t happen. Because of all the laws and regulations to make sure things end up in the right places, if these museums can no longer afford to pay their staff, there won’t be anyone left to do the necessary work to get those things back into the hands of their original owners. And if hundreds of museums close across the country, there also won’t be enough other collections left to accept those artifacts and continue their work. What you would most likely see happen is the absolute worst case scenario -- private collectors snatching up things that don’t belong to them and making them inaccessible to the people they should be going back to.
I’m not asking you to change your mind on the issue of these museums as a whole, since I think we agree on some core concepts and I think that the ones we don’t agree on are a result of artifact repatriation being such a complicated issue. But I hope I’ve helped you understand why even if we do disagree on some things, it’s absolutely critical and in the best interest of both of our ideologies that these places get the support they need. If they’re able to ride out this crisis, we can continue to have important conversations about the purposes museums should serve and the kinds of things they should display. If they vanish suddenly, however, we’ll lose a lot more than their physical buildings. And I don’t think either of us want to see that happen.