The celebration of the bicentenary of the abolition of slave trade in Britain is the occasion of a large programming of series of exhibitions, talks and events.
Between Worlds, Voyagers to Britain presents in a neat display portraits of travellers from faraway lands visiting Britain between 1700 and 1850. It is a rather enthusiastic display, of characters posed in lavishly rich costumes, it is pleasantly presented and looks like a rather charming encounter between two cultures. Then you stumble upon that terrible representation of the Hottentot Venus Sarah Baartman, and the charming impression is somewhat chattered. Baartman, who was brought from South Africa to Europe in 1810, and quickly nicknamed the ‘Hottentot Venus’ because of her large buttocks and conspicuous female features. The unfortunate woman was exhibited like a freak in fairs, attractions and public spectacles in England and France. The infamy reached a summit when at her death her body was dissected, her genitalia and skull being kept, to this day, at the Musee de l’Homme in Paris [I shall add that the description of her sexual features was used by ‘scientists’ like Cuvier to insist on the ‘animality’ of the Hottentot ‘race’ as a ‘proof’ of the existence of a scale of races where the Hottentot was the link between the man and the Orang-Utan. Charming.)[on the Hottentot Venus Sander L. Gilman's Difference of Pathology: Sexuality, Race, Madness, as well as Sadiah Qureshi’s article )
As Oku Epkenyou (history teacher), who was participating in the panel of the ‘What should Museums display’ adjacent talk, puts it, she found it is a rather embarrassing sight when she came to visit the exhibition with her class, among whom young black teenagers undoubtedly felt uneasy. But the main cause of the image’s inappropriateness was not so much its content (after all, one must bear the sight of history for its worst and best),but the way it was displayed. ‘What should museum display?’ sounded like a most interesting discussion choice. As a postgraduate student mostly interested in representations of colonialism and race, the option of such a discussion alongside a display arguably meant to reflect upon the slave trade, was most titillating and promising. One of the most important chapters of my thesis concerns the programme of paintingsin the Salles d’Afrique in the Musée Historique de Versailles, rooms which have been inaccessible to the public for decades because of the non-politically correct content of its discourse upon the conquest of Algeria. What should, really museum curators take into account when they face questions of ethics, race and national sensitivity? Is censorship the best solution? Should we show anything on the grounds that one must reflect upon any sides of history, the best and the worst? (that would be, very much, my point).As you would imagine, it was rather expectantly and excited that I went to this talk.
The panel, interesting, varied, multi-ethnic and coming from various intellectual and museal backgrounds promised an attractive discussion. The debate started by a ‘short’ slide presentation of the exhibition by one of its curators, Jos Hackforth-Jones, a pleasant lady who did her job pleasantly but somewhat did not really raise the issues one was expecting. As soon as Oku raised her concerns over the place of Sarah Baartman in the display, the debate concentrated on this image. Oku pointed out, very sensibly, the negativity of the representation, isolated in the display both by its very critical, caricatured approach, and by its actual isolation, in a sole case, from the other objects. One could sense Oku’s pain in her words. Strangely, I do not recall the word ‘racist’ nor ‘racism’ being uttered once during the debate, but that may be an effect of my over-critical imagination. Nor was the exotic, picturesque aspect of the, apparently more positive, other portraits. I however believe that those bore the prejudicial gaze of the western eye, perhaps not as much as Sarah Baartman’s ‘portrait’, but quite still, evidently.
But this did not interest the audience nor the panel. How the Western gaze constructed racial representations was not raised either.
The discussion soon derived onto a questioning of whether or not a museal institution should exhibit human remains [I do agree with some of the speakers, notably Claude Ardouin, curator, British Museum, that those should be made as ‘restricted collections’]. Many opinions were offered from both public and speakers, but when one of the members of the audience (a PhD student from Birkbeck whom I unfortunately did not catch the name) raised the question of the trauma lived by some cultures (e.g. Kanak) at seeing remains of their ancestors exhibited in museum, this inexplicably raised no further comments, while being a fascinating issue: how can one culture (here Western) exhibit another (here Kanak) without disrespecting that very culture? can we, with impunity, displace objects from the culture they belong to?
I was hoping to find something being said about the use of propaganda discourse in art, and whether it was acceptable to display things that are now thankfully condemned [such as, say, Nazi art, or even, my Versailles example, that I mentioned to the audience] but this did not aliment the argument.
Some very interesting matters were however brought into question, such as how the choice of artworks may reflect the ethnicity of the curators (and how a multi-ethnic curatorial team can be positively productive); how do we balance curatorial choices with choices of policy (this was however passed upon rather quickly)? How should we deal with the visitors’ shock (should we ‘educate’ the public’s gaze and perception? Should we rather consult the public? but then, to what extent is a consultation process possible or is it a hindrance?) Whose consent does one ask for exhibition of human remains? How to choose artefacts respectfully with an open historical perspective?
Some necessary questions were only raised, much too quickly, as a matter of conclusion (or opening for further reflection?) How to fill in the gaps in historical narratives caused, say, by the colonial encounters (how to insert the ‘colonised’ often un(or under)-represented take of the event into the visual history. How does one explain Immigration and Imperialism to an audience with little knowledge of history? What about this aura of ‘specialness’ our culture has attributed to ‘works of art, that mediates our reaction at first encounter? Shall we alter a works of art meaning to make it acceptable? (one member of the audience mentioned the covering, after the end of the Apartheid, of ideologically loaded murals in official buildings in south Africa with a layer of glass to which were added ‘comments’). Can we put an object in isolation of his context, can it tell a story by itself? To what extent do visitors control ‘us’ (curators and art historians), and to what extent do ‘we’ control ‘them’?
