Why Do Museums Exist?
Museums are notoriously known for being sophisticated places where important moments of human history are filed and stored. They propose to be spaces that catalyze critical dialogue and stimulate academic endeavors, but they have not always been as such. Previously defined by the International Council of Museums (ICOM), museums are spaces that "conserve, collect, communicate, and exhibits the tangible and intangible objects of our human history and its environment for the purposes education, study, and enjoyment." With the expectation of displaying histories to inform and entertain the public, some human histories are only superficially explored, some memoirs merely mentioned, or indefinitely omitted. Although filled with educated individuals diligently creating exhibits intended to teach, museums still face systemic barriers that do not allow them to uphold and sustain ethical curating practices. Rather than being an intellectually neutral site, museums persist in being physical representations of the lingering aftermath of colonialism.
Although the previous definition is somewhat prolix and seems moderately correct, it fails to address the social, ethical, political, economic, and environmental responsibilities that museums must uphold as an intellectual institution within a modern 21st-century society. This was until recently. In September of 2019, ICOM proposed to edit the current interpretation of museums and reconstruct a fresh definition that embraced cosmopolitanism and a transnationalism identity. The new description reads as follows:
"Museums are democratizing, inclusive, and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artifacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people.
Museums are not for profit. They are participatory and transparent, and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the world, aiming to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality, and planetary wellbeing."
The conception of this new ICOM definition of museums inspired the production of this specific art exhibit that centers on pieces sourced from the Berea College Art collection and the Special Collections at Hutchins Library. Intentionally curated in the "relational approach," first proposed by Ella Shohat in the author's article titled "Area Studies, Transnationalism, and the Feminist Production of Knowledge," and offered by Maura Reilly in her book published in 2018 titled "Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating," this exhibit intends to directly address the systemic barriers that museums must tackle, question the functions of curatorial practices, and examine the integrity of a museum in a way that allows viewers to think about the systematic obligations of museums in our contemporary moment.