Reflexive Museology Lost and Found PDF

Reflexive Museology: Lost and Found
in Museum Theory / Disciplines and Politics (Part II)

from The International Handbooks of Museum Studies
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Shelley Ruth Butler is a cultural anthropologist who studies museums and public history in settings
characterized by diversity, inequality, demographic change, and shifting power relations. She teaches at
the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University and was Acting Director of the Centre for
Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence (2013–2014), where she is currently a
consultant and research affiliate. She is the author of Contested Representations: Revisiting “Into the
Heart of Africa” (Gordon & Breach, 1999; Broadview, 2008) and has coedited with Erica Lehrer Curatorial
Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions (forthcoming with McGill‐Queen's University Press).
critical museology
irony
postmodernity
power
reflexivity
Abstract This chapter explores the contemporary status of critical reflexive museology in theory and
practice. I begin by discussing the canonization of Into the Heart of Africa, a landmark case of flawed
reflexive museology, and then trace what has happened to reflexive museology since the mid‐1990s. I
argue that a specific notion of postmodern reflexive museology has receded from contemporary
museological debates. However, two decades of practical experimentation with reflexivity, alongside a
global proliferation of museums and an increasingly heterogeneous public sphere, has meant that many
tactics associated with reflexivity – such as self‐critique and multivocality – are now quite mainstream,
and are incorporated into the broader paradigm shift of new museology. I argue that, while reflexivity's
association with postmodernism is complicated, the end result is exhibitions that are less monolithic and
more visitor‐centered. At this juncture, it is necessary to evaluate on a case‐by‐case basis, not only
curators’ and educators’ effectiveness at translating reflexivity into practice, but also the impact and
afterlife of their interventions.
In t heory
Critical, reflexive museology appeared as a theoretical project in the late 1980s as scholars based in
North America, Europe, and Australia published articles, books, and edited volumes critiquing Western
museums and their role in civic society. Foundational volumes include Museums, the Public and
Anthropology (Ames 1986), The New Museology (Vergo 1989), and Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and
Politics of Museum Display (Karp and Lavine 1991). Essays were the building blocks of critical museology,
and contributors researched and taught in a variety of disciplines and departments, from anthropology,
history, and cultural studies to literature, performance studies, and art history. The social sciences, the
humanities, and fine arts were all implicated. Some scholars, such as Michael Ames, Ivan Karp, Anthony
Shelton, and Susan Vogel, combined museum administration and curatorial experience with critical
scholarship. From the start, there was a productive tension between critical museum studies and the
possibility of translating it into curatorial practice.
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This chapter explores the contemporary status of critical, reflexive museology in theory and practice. My
starting point is to describe a landmark case of a flawed reflexive exhibition, Into the Heart of Africa,
which showed at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, Canada, in 1989–1990. I describe the
exhibit's controversial use of irony and its canonization in the museum literature, and ask what has
happened to reflexive museology over the last two decades. In my chapter title, I refer to reflexive
museology as being lost and found. It is lost, I argue, in the sense that the specific notion of postmodern
reflexive museology has receded from contemporary museological debates. Yet, reflexivity is also
found, implicit in exhibition designs that engage visitors by presenting evocative displays that render the
museum's authority less opaque. I trace multiple post‐Into the Heart of Africa trajectories, paying
attention to broad developments and specific exhibitions. My lines of inquiry include: critical exhibitions
about colonial museology and ideology; the use of irony to confront power; new expressions of
reflexivity in postcolonial museums; and the relative paucity of critical museology in museums that
display “unmarked” dominant cultures. I will argue that reflexivity has found a permanent place in
museological theory and practice but, at its best, it is sharpened by other theoretical, political,
demographic, and activist currents such as postcolonialism, urban diversity, and participatory and
experiential models of democratic citizenship. It is incorporated into a broader paradigm shift, known as
new museology.
In to th e H e ar t of A f r i c a : A ref lexive experiment

Curated by white cultural anthropologist Jeanne Cannizzo, Into the Heart of Africa attempted to display
the ROM's African collection in a critical and reflexive fashion.1 Working against the ROM's authoritative
and traditional aura, Cannizzo chose what was at the time an unconventional approach, using the
African collection to explore three divergent themes: imperialism and collecting; Western traditions of
exhibiting Africa; and, finally, African culture. Had the exhibition explored only African culture, history, and
aesthetics, it would probably have been uncontroversial. It might still have been a significant exhibit
since the ROM's modest African collection had never been displayed in the institution's 100 year history.
Yet, the ROM developed with the ambition of becoming a global cultural and natural history museum.
This gap is all the more striking since Toronto, and the surrounding southern Ontario region, has a long
history of African diasporic settlement, dating back to pre‐Confederation Canada and including decades
of immigration from Caribbean and African countries.
Cannizzo also had links to Africa, via her fieldwork conducted in Sierra Leone. Her desire to explore
imperialism, collecting, and Western display traditions at the ROM reflected a zeitgeist of the era, which
is associated with reflexivity in museum studies and with postmodernism more broadly. Writing in
response to cross‐cultural collections and ethnographic display traditions, critics such as James Clifford
(1985), Brian Durrans (1988), and Marjorie Halpin (1978; 1983) articulated the potential for reflexive
exhibitions to teach audiences about “ourselves” (museum visitors) and others. (This binary opposition
was evoked in this period but, from a contemporary perspective, it lacks nuance since it does not
recognize hybrid identities.) Building on these theoretical insights, some critics called for exhibitions to
address reflexivity by exploring historical relations of power inherent in collections and display (Clifford
1985; Shelton 1990). These critics recognized the pedagogical and visual power of artifacts that reveal
histories of cross‐cultural exchange and recontextualization. This was a reaction against traditional
museology's practice of rigid classification of material culture as fine art, ethnographic specimen,
functional artifact, tourist curio, and so on, a process that denies objects their agency and
embeddedness in social relations.
Calls for changes in curatorial practice, however, took place on the margins of the museum world. As
Peter Jenkinson noted during this period, in the mainstream museum world there was “no sense of the
cultural fragmentation and crisis of legitimation that [had] affected other, more theoretically alert, areas
of cultural production” (1989, 143). This quote hints at the broader intellectual and theoretical context of
postmodernity, within which critical reflexive museology developed. Postmodernity's loss of faith in
Western master narratives (such as evolution and Eurocentric histories of art) undermined the traditional
architectural and metaphoric image of the museum as temple (Cameron 1971) and truth‐teller.
Intellectually, the door was opened to discover multiple meanings, narratives, and social relations
through material culture, all of which contrasted with the traditional image of collections as being static
and dead. Anthony Shelton names these developments “postmodern museography” (1990, 94).
Although Cannizzo never used this term, it will become clear why Into the Heart of Africa is associated
with postmodernity (see below).
As a first‐time curator, Cannizzo attempted to translate her theoretical orientation into practice. She was
influenced by the “culture as text” metaphor that Clifford Geertz (1973) introduced to anthropology, via
the influence of literary theory. Cannizzo used this metaphor to articulate a reflexive, meta‐perspective
on museums:
A museum collection may be thought of as a kind of cultural text, one that may be read to understand the
underlying cultural or ideological assumptions that have informed its creation, selection, and display. Within
such a collection, objects act as an expression not only of the worldview of those who choose to make and
use them, but also of those who chose to collect and exhibit them.
(1991, 151)
In anthropology, and later in museum studies, this reflexive perspective on interpreting and
representing other cultures undermined traditional notions of objectivity and objects as unproblematic
truth‐tellers (Marcus and Fischer 1986). The presentation of an authoritative account of another culture
was viewed as unattainable; rather, it was necessary to explore multiple points of view and to expose
power relations inherent in acts of representation. Following this logic, Into the Heart of Africa sought to
reveal museological and colonial practices of representing Africa and to teach visitors about Canadian
complicity with the British Empire. Specific curatorial goals included countering negative stereotypes and
misconceptions about Africa, and attracting a more diverse audience to the ROM, which at the time had
a reputation as an elite WASP redoubt. Thus, reflexivity was seen as a tool for educating traditional
ROM visitors, as well as an approach that would appeal to new audiences, perhaps by complicating the
ROM's status as a pillar of civic society. Cannizzo's position as populist and critic was informed by her
research on museums, in which she critiques community museums for presenting sentimental, uncritical
visions of local heritage, and also warns against gatekeeping by professional curators:
The question is not one of truthfulness as I see it. That is, it's not which model more fully represents the facts
of the matter. What's at issue is the role of increasing professionalization in the museum field, a process
which runs the risk of promoting a standardized vision of history.
(Cannizzo 1982, 8)
These critiques were directed toward the establishment and carried an implicit promise of
empowerment through the democratization of knowledge production.
The exhibition was originally called Into the Heart of Darkness, quoting Conrad's controversial,
ambiguous novel about Belgian colonialism in the Congo. Herein lay a hint of what was to come. Into the
Heart of Africa immersed its audience in the language, tropes, and atmosphere of imperial domination.
The original title of the exhibition was changed after a marketing survey concluded that it was
considered offensive by various representatives of the black community. But the exhibition itself was
never changed, despite feedback regarding concerns about insensitivity. The introductory panel read:
Africa in the 19th century was still “the unknown continent” to most Canadians. Ignorance promoted powerful
images of a mysterious land full of “barbarous” peoples. But Canadian soldiers and missionaries became full
participants in the New Imperialism of Queen Victoria's later reign. They ventured through savannah and
rainforest, encountering unfamiliar cultures with world views radically different from their own.
As this example illustrates, quotation marks were used to signal historical terms that are Eurocentric and
racist from a contemporary perspective. In this way, much of the exhibition deployed textual irony;
visitors needed to read the texts in a reflexive, knowing manner and appreciate that certain words now
had a repudiated historical status. This subtle use of irony was risky, especially since visitors typically
understand monumental museums to be authoritative truth‐tellers. Many visitors read phrases such as
“savage little wars” literally, rather than historically, or they did not read the texts at all. Moving through
the Imperial Connection, the Military Hall, and the Missionary Room, visitors repeatedly confronted
imperialistic and propagandistic images and messages. Central to the controversy that developed was a
large historical image titled “Lord Beresford's Encounter with a Zulu,” which depicted a white soldier
mounted on horseback, protected by his pith helmet and sword, overpowering an African opponent.
Before confronting this difficult image, visitors had already encountered a pith helmet – ironically
displayed in a glass case, as if it were a precious object – in the opening room of the exhibition. In this
instance, the irony was based on visual incongruity. Visitors were meant to sense the absurdity of a pith
helmet displayed as jewel, and then question how value is established in contexts of unequal power
relations. Visitors also “participated” in a re‐creation of a lantern slide show in a Protestant church in
Ontario around 1919, in which the Reverend Charles Ashby spoke about his travels up the Zambezi river
and his missionary successes. Many visitors missed the textual and aural cues (recorded by Cannizzo at
the beginning of a seven‐minute slide show), which warned of the “paternalism and cultural arrogance”
that infused the missionary discourse.
Another reflexive aspect of the exhibit was its subtle visual exploration of the contrasting ways in which
the West has collected and curated African material culture. In the Military Hall, Cannizzo wanted to
stress the “regimentation” that Europeans imposed on African objects; spears and other weaponry
were displayed as ethnographic specimens, formally organized in old‐fashioned walnut cases. In an
adjoining area, there was a reconstruction of a Victorian parlor, in which African weapons were
displayed as exotic souvenirs. In another area called “Civilization, Commerce and Christianity,” visitors
encountered a life‐sized mimetic model of an Ovimbundu compound from Angola in 1895. Designers
built a thatched roof house and furnished it with objects from the collection, creating a tableau of a
traditional rural lifeway. This display, when juxtaposed with the Victorian parlor, reinforced a stereotype
in which Africa is poor and rural, while Europe is wealthy and cosmopolitan. Yet, the curatorial intention
was to positively highlight how the diorama provided contextual ethnographic information in contrast
with the decontextualized, fragmented displays located in the Military Hall. However, visitors were not
explicitly directed to look at the displays in this comparative fashion, and the reflexive museological
subtexts were largely unnoticed. Nor did the exhibition address epistemological problems associated
with ethnographic dioramas, which are a mode of display inherited from natural history museums.
Cannizzo's reflexive curatorial strategy was a weak echo of Susan Vogel's groundbreaking exhibition,
ART/Artifact, about the contingency and artifice of representing African culture, which showed at the
Center for African Art in New York in 1988 (Vogel 1989). A lesser known precursor was an installation by
artist Fred Wilson called Rooms with a View, which showed at the Bronx Council of the Arts in 1987–1988.
Exploring how museums shape visitors’ perceptions of material culture, Wilson placed the work of 30
artists in three distinct spaces, simulating an ethnographic display, a Victorian salon, and a contemporary
art gallery. Objects in the first room were classified according to medium and their makers remained
anonymous; in the Victorian room the objects were presented as antiquities; and in the minimalist white
gallery the works signified fine art created by individual artists (Corrin 1994, 8).
It was Cannizzo's use of irony that was most controversial, since it contributed (along with other
curatorial and marketing decisions) to the exhibition's political and semiotic ambiguity and volatility.
Some visitors appreciated the exhibition's critical intentions, such as journalist Christopher Hume (1990),
who wrote: “More than any show I can recall, this one dealt with openly and honestly with the ‘cultural
arrogance’ – these are the words used in the display – of our well‐intentioned ancestors.” In contrast,
an anthropologist writing in Christian Week understood the exhibit's intentions, but argued that it
stereotyped missionaries unfairly. Still others questioned the curator's motives and methods.
Constructive suggestions were offered, such as the need for a clear historical statement explaining the
cultural and social impact of British imperialism in Africa, and an exploration of resistance to colonial
domination. Most seriously, the newly formed Coalition for the Truth about Africa (CFTA) accused the
ROM and Cannizzo of racism. For the CFTA, the exhibition presented “subliminal and obvious
statements and suggestions of Europeans civilizing and developing Africa. Terms like ‘Savage’ and ‘Dark
Continent’ are buzzwords of this sad and disgraceful presentation” (CFTA pamphlet, quoted in Butler
2011[2008], 125). Many academics recognized Cannizzo's curatorial intentions, but expressed concern
about the ROM's insensitivity toward the opinions of protestors (I return to this below). Some academics
– including one who was a member of the CFTA – understood Cannizzo's curatorial intentions, but felt
that her strategy was inappropriate given the ROM's general audience, which includes children. Sadly,
Cannizzo alienated and hurt much of the constituency that she had hoped to empower.
Canonizat ion
Into the Heart of Africa is canonized in two ways: as a test case of postmodern museology and as an
example of failed community consultation. While some critics argue that ironic exhibitions can work as
cultural critique (see below), for others postmodern museology is politically suspect. Eva Mackey, for
instance, uses the Into the Heart of Africa controversy to argue that postmodernism is a tool that elite
cultural producers deploy “offensively and defensively … when their authority is being challenged by
less socially or politically powerful groups” (1995, 425). Aspects of the controversy, and the responses
that it engendered, support this argument. The lack of community consultation, which reflects Cannizzo's
failure to translate theory into practice, is pertinent. Also suspect is the defensive response by the ROM
and Cannizzo (and the mainstream media) toward protestors. Mainstream media presented the
protestors as being politically correct barbarians at the gate, rather than making an effort to appreciate
their concerns about racism encoded in the exhibition and racist exclusions and injuries (protestors
linked the exhibit to racist policing and education). The ROM responded to protestors by asserting a
discourse of objectivity and academic freedom, values which had not informed the making of the
exhibition. Cannizzo was equally defensive, contradicting her earlier theoretical pronouncements: “The
generation of scholarly aspects of the exhibition must be done by experts, however those experts are
defined. For me, it's not a race issue, it's a question of expertise” (quoted in Da Breo 1989-1990, 37).
However, other contextual details of the controversy undermine the argument that aligns
postmodernism with elite authority. In brief, Cannizzo was an untenured independent curator who was
aggressively harassed by male protestors in a University of Toronto classroom following the
cancellation of the exhibition's tour to four North American museums.
Debates about the politics and meaning of the exhibition echo those concerning postmodernity in other
disciplines, especially anthropology. Responses to the seminal book Writing Culture: The Politics and
Poetics of Ethnography (Clifford and Marcus 1986) are instructive. The volume explores epistemological,
ethical, and political predicaments associated with ethnographic representation by drawing from literary
theories of representation, cultural studies, and colonial critiques of anthropology. The volume also
proposes new approaches to writing ethnography that are sensitive to power relations between the
anthropologist and her interlocutors. Experiments with collaborative and dialogic ethnography grew out
of this critical moment. But there was also a backlash against Writing Culture. Critics argued that the
project was merely textual – that it was apolitical, and divorced from concrete problems that social
scientists and humanists should address (James, Hockey, and Dawson 1997; Zenker and Kumoll 2010).
This argument resonates with critiques of Into the Heart of Africa that characterized it as an academic
exhibition, detached from everyday struggles.
Writing Culture influenced the development of critical museology, including the landmark volume
Exhibiting Cultures, mentioned above (Karp and Lavine 1991). In his introduction to Exhibiting Cultures,
Ivan Karp notes that the volume extends insights provided by reflexive anthropology into the public
realm of museology. Nevertheless, an often repeated critique of reflexive museology is that it is rooted
in theory and divorced from material conditions, such as the underrepresentation of visible minorities on
museum boards, in management, and in curatorial roles. In these debates, we sense a struggle within
the academy to translate knowledge and theory into the public domain in a meaningful way.
As noted, the lack of community consultation was a key component of the reception of Into the Heart of
Africa. This fact leaves us with a provocative question: Was this failure a result of the theory that
informed the exhibition? In other words, is reflexive museology biased against community consultation
and the concomitant practice of democratizing knowledge production? In good postmodernist style,
Cannizzo described having discovered multiple narratives as she researched the ROM's African
collection. But this exercise remained textual and Cannizzo did not interact with “live” communities to
learn about their personal and collective relations to the ROM and its African collection. Ironically, during
this period, the ROM, alongside other Canadian mainstream museums, was reorganizing its ethical and
legal relations with aboriginal communities and their material culture. The negotiation of more equitable,
collaborative, and sensitive relations between establishment museums and aboriginal communities has
been the major development in museum practice in settler societies during the last few decades
(Simpson 1996; Peers and Brown 2003). While some critics suggest that this has occurred
independently of critical museology (Shelton 2008, 2), others view reflexivity as a crucial first step
toward creating collaborative models of representation and creation:
reflexivity in the humanities and social sciences associated with postmodernism has raised awareness
among museum anthropologists of the ways in which earlier, objectifying traditions of material culture display
have supported colonial and neo‐colonial power relations.
(Phillips 2003, 158)
This proposed complementarity between collaboration and critical museology resonates with
Cannizzo's stated goals, but Into the Heart of Africa is not the case study with which to argue this point.
Irony, post modernism, and ref lexivit y
In assessing the impact of Into the Heart of Africa there is a problem of scope, since we can focus on
irony as a specific curatorial strategy, or on the idea of postmodern museology, or on the broader, less
charged, notion of reflexivity. Before turning to a discussion of specific exhibitions and developments
post Into the Heart of Africa, I will briefly specify how I view the interaction of these terms. Irony and
postmodernism are related through tone and style. Note the centrality of irony in the following seminal
definition of postmodernity:
Postmodernism takes the form of self‐conscious, self‐contradictory self‐undermining statement. It is rather

like saying something whilst at the same time putting inverted commas around what is being said. The effect
is to highlight, or “highlight” and to subvert, or “subvert,” and the mode is therefore a “knowing” and ironic –
or even “ironic” one.
(Hutcheon 1989, 1)
Postmodern cultural forms, whether in film, architecture, or exhibitions, are associated with pastiche,
bricolage, juxtaposition, paradox, and irony, particularly in relation to inherited traditions and practices.
Thus, rather than assert new canons, postmodernism destabilizes authority and undermines the very
idea of a canon. In museology, if modernity's grammar is the declaration of truth, postmodernity's is the
interrogative question. But, for many critics, postmodernism's posing of questions and its unsettling of
truths does not go far enough. Postmodernity, it is argued, is characterized by duplicity, ambivalence,
and nostalgia. A concrete example of this is found in Cannizzo's reflections on Into the Heart of Africa,
when she mixes her metaphors and describes the blue of the Imperial Connection room as evoking
British imperialism, but also her own nostalgia for West African skies (Butler 2011[2008], 30).
While postmodernism has a strong association with irony, the latter is not an easy trope to pin down. It
encompasses a wide variety of emotional registers, such as playfulness, humor, incisive critique,
disbelief, haughtiness, noncommitment, and corrosive sarcasm (Hutcheon 1991). Irony can be strong or
weak, successful or uninteresting. Consider the hit pop song from the 1990s, “Ironic” by Alanis
Morissette, which includes gems such as “It's like rain on your wedding day.” In playful moments, irony
merges with parody; in its more critical form, it moves toward incisive satire. Irony is also context‐
dependent; ironic cultural productions that are successful in one institutional or social context may not
be elsewhere. Below, I will discuss institutional and personal contexts that shape successful ironic
exhibitions, which treat repudiated ideologies such as colonialism, racism, and Nazism.
Irony excludes those who do not get (or are offended by) the joke or critique. This exclusionary
potential was heightened in Into the Heart of Africa, where the exhibition's promotional materials
implicitly addressed a white audience. A brochure invited visitors to discover a “turbulent but little‐known
period in history,” yet many African Canadians experience legacies of colonial history in a “painfully
intimate way” (Philip 1992, 105). Another promotional “invitation” sent to readers of Equinox (a magazine
similar to National Geographic) presented Africa as mysterious and exotic, despite the exhibition's (albeit
minor) inclusion of contemporary photos of cosmopolitan urban scenes. This invitation positioned
visitors as following “in Livingstone's footprints” in order to discover an unknown Africa (I return to this
“artifact” below). Again, the implicit assumption was that ROM visitors did not know Africa and could
approach it by inserting themselves (ironically) in the imperialist and missionary imagination.
Irony is reflexive, since it responds to prior practices, images, and discourses. But reflexivity, as it is
practiced in museology, is not necessarily ironic. The Mutter Museum of the College of Physicians of
Philadelphia offers an example: its dated collection no longer works as an informing museology – that is,
for training doctors – but it has embraced a “performing museology” in which the subject becomes the
museum itself and its history of medical education (Kirshenblatt‐Gimblett 2000, 11). This self‐referential
exhibition is more earnest than ironic. Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant‐Garde in Nazi Germany,
shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1991, explored Nazi ideology and aesthetics by
reconstructing the Third Reich's 1937 exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art), which ridiculed pre‐
World War II visual art, including so‐called “Jewish art.” The re‐presented Degenerate Art immersed
visitors in the ideological atmosphere and idioms of Germany in the 1930s, showing documentary films
of Goebbels's speeches and Nazi parades, as well as the music and voices of émigrés who fled. Visitors
witnessed how Nazi ideology penetrated the German art world, but understood the contemporary
exhibit's critical and pedagogical intent (Loughery 1992).
Exhibits may also be “gently reflexive,” a term that James Clifford (1997, 156) uses to characterize
Paradise: Continuity and Change in the New Guinea Highlands, which showed at the Museum of Mankind
in London in 1993. This exhibition addressed cultural change by displaying “tribal” objects that are
characterized by hybridity by incorporating local and global commodities. Stereotypes of the tribal as
either unchanging or contaminated by progress were successfully undermined. This is an example of
how the very institution that contributed to the creation of primitivist stereotypes can also use its
authority to demystify them. The exhibition hinted at the irony of the incongruities on display, such as
metal shields decorated with beer labels. But irony was not its main impulse. This suggests institutional
sensitivity toward constituencies who may see no irony in the hybridity of contemporary “tribal” material
culture.
A critique of Recycled, Re‐seen: Folk Art from the Global Scrap Heap, which opened at the Museum of
International Folk Art in Santa Fe and traveled in the United States until 2000, reveals skepticism about
irony and a contrasting hopefulness in the analytical power of reflexivity. In his ironically titled review
essay “Scrap Irony” (1998), Peter Welsh argues that Recycled, Re‐seen aestheticizes poverty as it
celebrates the global poor as bricoleurs par excellence, using garbage to create utilitarian objects and
“art.” Some exhibition viewers may get an ironic charge on seeing toys made from industrial trash such
as Nestlé tins and beer cans. There is a potential insensitivity and lack of awareness embedded in this
ironic mode, which does not address the real dangers of recycling waste in social conditions of poverty.
Reflexivity, Welsh argues, should push curators and visitors alike to address the social conditions that
inform these ironic moments, whether this means an exploration of how the museum sanitizes and
anesthetizes garbage, or exposing the health consequences of Nestlé's legacy in the developing
world. This critique illustrates my point that irony, postmodernism, and reflexivity have overlapping, but
not identical, identities.
Exposing colonial museology and ideology

How have museums fared with the reflexive goal of exposing colonial museology and ideology? The
mixed reception of the reflexive exhibition Miscast: Negotiating Khoisan History and Material Culture,
which showed at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town in 1996, had an uncanny resemblance
to that of Into the Heart of Africa. Miscast re‐presented colonial histories and ideologies (in domains
such as archaeology, ethnography, museology, and missionary work) and was curated by Pippa
Skotnes, a white South African artist and academic. However, whereas Into the Heart of Africa relied on
a textually subtle irony, Miscast was visually provocative and its critical intentions were forceful (Butler
2000).2 Visitors encountered various installations – casts of body parts mounted on pedestals; a stack
of rifles; colonial photos of subjugated and naked Khoisan; boxes of colonial archives with labels such
as “Human Remains. Not Suitable for Display”; and old medical and scientific instruments used to
measure racial difference. Printed in very large letters, and placed high on the walls (like an installation),
were epistemologically sophisticated but precise sentences such as: “There is no escape from the
politics of our knowledge, but that politics is not in the past. That politics is in the present” (Dening 1992,
178). As counterparts to the display of colonial violence, there were exhibits of Khoisan material culture,
copies of rock paintings, and contemporary photos of Khoisan by documentary photographer Paul
Weinberg. Responses to the exhibit varied deeply. A self‐described “ideal” visitor (an archaeologist)
was deeply affected, noting that he experienced the “recontextualization of [his] professional ‘culture,’
and all the mixed emotions of pain, disbelief and denial that can accompany an encounter with another's
view of one's identity” (Lane 1996, 5). In contrast, some descendants of Khoisan felt that the exhibit's
display of nudity was culturally insensitive and hurtful. The exhibit was also critiqued for offering “faddish
lip service to post‐modern notions of self‐aware representation” (Kozain 1996, 14). This same critic
asked if the “ironisation of representation could have been politically interesting and not fashion‐driven”
(14).
Once again, the politics of irony was questioned, even though this exhibition was less ambiguous than
Into the Heart of Africa. What exactly was ironic about Miscast? Skotnes intended for the fragments of
body casts mounted on pedestals to speak to the well‐known “Bushman diorama” – a model of a
nineteenth‐century hunter and gatherer camp, created by using plaster casts made in the early 1900s –
which was a popular display at the nearby natural history museum. Skotnes disliked the diorama for its
display of the Khoisan as being “cast out of time, out of politics, and out of history” (1996, 16). Miscast
implicated visitors in this history by forcing them to walk over a laminated floor covered by a montage of
photographs, documents, and newspaper clippings related to colonization and the exhibition of Khoisan.
But this immersive strategy begs the question of how descendants of victims would experience it. When
Miscast was accused of being postmodern and aloof, the problem related to a lack of sensitivity toward
experiences and memories of key stakeholders (no significant community consultation took place, but
this is not unusual in artist‐curated exhibitions).
Is there an emotionally safe way to re‐present traumatic colonial histories, with or without irony?
Remembering the ironic display of a pith helmet in the opening of Into the Heart of Africa, and the
controversial Lord Beresford image, consider how another museum, the Navajo Nation Museum in
Window Rock, Arizona, displays similar artifacts related to colonial power. In a permanent exhibition
called Hwéeldi Baa Hane: Our Stories of Fort Sumner, visitors encounter a glass box containing a
Spanish breastplate, helmet, and sword, as well as a Leman Lancaster musket rifle that belonged to a
Navajo Scout who served with the US Cavalry. Hwéeldi Baa Hane refers to the Long Walk of 1863, when
some 8000 Navajo people were forced on a 300 mile, two‐month‐long march to be imprisoned at Fort
Sumner, New Mexico. During five years of imprisonment 3000 people died. This exhibition addresses
“difficult knowledge” (Britzman 1998), but its treatment of colonial conflict is more poignant than ironic.3
Nor is colonial language and pride recreated. Rather, the subject of the exhibit is “we” the Diné, who
are also its primary audience. The museum website articulates its goals of community heritage work and
healing:
We introduce our twelve Diné Chiefs and seventeen Council Headmen who signed the Treaty of June 1, 1868
with Commissioner General T. Sherman and Samuel F. Tappen representing the United States … The
purpose of the exhibit is to “educate our Diné people, youth and leaders in understanding their history and for
our Diné people who survived and prevailed in maintaining their way of life.”4
Experiences and memories of resistance and suffering by Diné are central in this text. The display of
colonial power, which is juxtaposed with a comparable display of a Navaho shield, bow, quiver, and
arrows, provides solemn historical context, but it is not glorified. Perhaps the aesthetic power of
juxtaposition could have been similarly deployed at the ROM to destabilize the pith helmet's ironic status
as valued artifact. The ROM collection includes a wood and iron sculpture of a protective “power figure”
wearing a pith helmet, which is suggestive of indigenous appropriations of colonial symbols and
resistance. What effect might have been achieved had this figure been displayed beside the pith
helmet?
Evaluating what constitutes success for a critical and reflexive exhibition is not obvious. The West as
America: Re‐interpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820–1920, which showed at the Smithsonian's National
Museum of American Art in 1991, deconstructed the myth of Manifest Destiny in America. While critically
acclaimed, the exhibit angered conservative constituencies, especially senators from western states
who viewed it as unpatriotic. Despite the fact that the exhibit's power pivoted on the disjunction
between iconic paintings and deconstructive textual interpretations, its tone was more critical than
ironic. It critically re‐presented propagandistic, popular art created in the service of western expansion.
Debates about The West as America resonated with broader culture and history wars over education
and postmodernism that peaked in the United States at this time (Berman 1992). The exhibition
“successfully” tapped into tensions between conservative and progressive forces in a rapidly changing
society.5 This was not the case for Into the Heart of Africa, which generated constructive debate, but
also misunderstanding, miscommunication, and hurt.
Conceptual art installations that ironically critique colonial museology have a successful track record of
clearly communicating their point of view. The well‐known example of this mise‐en‐scène tactic is the
avant‐garde installations carried out at the Musée d'Ethnographie, Neuchatel. For instance, the
exhibition Le musée cannibale (2002–2003) parodied ethnographic museum processes of
appropriation, collection, storage, and historical and contemporary display paradigms via metaphors of
consumption, appetite, and museological recipes. The exhibition has been described as a “heady mix of
social criticism and visual spectacle” (Lidchi 2006, 107). The museum was turned inside out, such as
when visitors confronted storage containers that would normally be hidden from view. And visitors were
implicated in the displays, such as when they walked from a cozy domestic setting toward a chaotic
urban one. In this instance, the exhibit confronted Swiss visitors, whose lives are fairly sheltered from
contemporary social conflict and heterogeneity. In contrast with Into the Heart of Africa and Miscast, Le
musée cannibale did not attempt to provide alternative or better ethnographic interpretations of the
experiences of the colonized; rather, the unambiguous critical focus was on dominant culture, the
museum, and its agents, such as colonial travelers.6
The politics of appropriation has been explored ironically and reflexively in contexts other than
ethnographic museums. At The Curator's Egg (also known as The ?Exhibition?), which showed at the
Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at Oxford University (1991–1992), the politics of exhibiting
ancient Greece and Rome was explored through irreverent, parodic, and colloquial interventions (Beard
and Henderson 1994). Text labels from the exhibition read: “Please don't touch the ceiling”; “Don't miss
the window view”; “A museum has no sense of humour”; “What noises does a museum make?”; “The
label writer's agenda might not be your agenda”; and “This label fills this space.” These labels did not
bolster this museum's trustworthy aura. Rather, the exhibition was designed to pique curiosity and
provoke reactions by parodying the instructive museum. The guest curators from Cambridge University
envisioned the exhibition not as “oppositional,” but rather as revealing the museum, by making its
operations more transparent. This is a stance that anticipates the Internet age, in which audiences are
less passive and deferential toward information sources. In this case, the independent curators
positioned themselves as standing apart from the institution. “What aren't they showing you?” read one
label. Breaking the custom of anonymity, the curators introduced themselves: “Who are we? … What
difference does it make if you see who ‘we,’ the organizers of The ?Exhibition? are? Are we part of The ?
Exhibition? too? And part of the museum?” Portraits of the curators were included in a series of 24
cutout heads of famous characters of the ancient world such as Pompey the Great, which were placed
on top of cabinets. In short, all kinds of museological conventions were ironically inverted: labels were
treated as displays in their own right, the curators were present in the exhibition, and visitors saw
themselves in the museum, literally, as they wrote in comment books situated in front of mirrors. While
the exhibition was not controversial, it provoked diverse reactions. Some rejected its reflexivity: “Own
up – you did a communications course, then took some recreational pharmaceuticals,” and “God help
Cambridge,” read some entries in the visitor's book. This expressed a preference for traditional
museum labels. But the problem of historical and political insensitivity that was central to Into the Heart of
Africa and Miscast was not in play. Though repatriation issues are important in relation to ancient
Greece and Rome (pace the British Museum and the Elgin Marbles), this political struggle does not spill
over into contemporary ones.7 Many visitors entered into the exhibit's reflexive spirit: “The questions
are effective; they make you think” and “I hope this [comment] book isn't filed away and lost” (quoted in
Beard and Henderson 1994, 40–41). In sum, these comments reveal that no exhibit can please
everyone. Alternatively, many banal, innocuous exhibits may “please” a majority of visitors, but not
contribute to critical museology or public debate.
The art ist as ironic t rickst er

Miscast and The West as America highlight the potential and power of reflexivity in art galleries. In
publicly and privately funded galleries, artists and curators can make provocative gestures, though this
“freedom” is regularly tempered by political censorship battles in the United States. Inviting conceptual
and performance artists into ethnographic and historical museums has proven to be a potent source of
reflexive, critical, and ironic museological intervention (Shelton 2006). Fred Wilson's installations are
particularly well known and their visual power and clarity has been positively compared to Into the Heart
of Africa (Schildkrout 1991). In his exhibition called The Other Museum (1991) Wilson assembled objects
and texts to mimic a natural history museum and explore the colonial roots of ethnography. Ironic cues
were obvious, dramatic, and playful: visitors received a black and yellow brochure that parodied the
National Geographic, in which Wilson introduced himself and his project. Colonial era photographs were
entitled “Photography by Others,” while more sensitive photos taken by Latino, African, and aboriginal
photographers were entitled “Photographs by Ourselves.” The words “Other” and “Ourselves” were
displayed upside down. These cues positioned the curator as part of a diasporic community of
descendants of colonial rule (Wilson is of African American and Caribbean descent). This raises a tricky
question: Is Wilson's subject position crucial to his successful use of irony vis‐à‐vis dominant institutions
and traditions? It would be essentialist and reductionist to answer this question affirmatively in a blanket
fashion. Yet, we must acknowledge the success of ironic interventions in mainstream museums by
female and male artists whose experiences and histories have been excluded or diminished by these
same institutions. The epitome of this genre of work is Fred Wilson's installation Mining the Museum
(1994), which took place in the conservative environment of the Maryland Historical Society. Making use
of the society's own collections and displays, Wilson used irony and juxtaposition to create provocative
mise‐en‐scènes that interrupted visitors’ viewpoints, both literally and metaphorically. Three empty black
pedestals labeled Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Benjamin Banneke were juxtaposed with
three white pedestals bearing white marble busts of prominent historical figures, Napoleon Bonaparte,
Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson (Corrin 1994). Shadowy background figures in dimly lit historical
paintings literally spoke to visitors, such as the voice of a boy wearing a metal collar, asking “Am I your
brother? Am I your friend? Am I your pet?” A Ku Klux Klan hood was placed in a baby carriage. The
“innocent” collection of the Maryland Society was turned inside out in an act that was critical and
recuperative. Visitor responses were varied, and included accusations of racism and “artsy pretension”
as well as resistance to the exhibit's mode of posing questions rather than providing answers. But most
visitors appreciated the exhibit, even if their experience of it was visceral and difficult.8 An introductory
video, in which the artist spoke about his curatorial intentions, served as a crucial framing device that
made explicit the exhibit's mode of critique. Though this is an effective device (which should be
commonplace in museums), I do not believe that a similar strategy could have rescued Into the Heart of
Africa from its semiotic ambiguity.
Representational strategies by a new generation of artists in response to the Holocaust offer insight
into the subversive potential of irony (Alphen 2001). American artist David Levinthal staged scenes from
Auschwitz using miniature figurines in his Mein Kampf series (1993–1994). Ram Katzir, of Israeli and Dutch
origin, turned Nazi photographs into coloring books and invited audiences to draw in them for his series
Your Colouring Book (1996). And Polish artist Zbigniew Libera created LEGO Concentration Camp Set
(1996), perfectly mimicking the brand's packaging and construction techniques. These playful and ironic
interventions are arresting precisely because they break a taboo about the ethics of representing the
Holocaust. Their work is contested and protested, particularly by Holocaust survivors. But the artists
(and their allies) defend the playful strategies as an affective antidote to routinized, narrative‐driven
Holocaust education and remembrance (Alphen 2001, 77). Art and irony are deployed to shock status
quo morality. But these immersions and identifications with perpetrators are playful and miniaturized,
which makes them less frightening. Compare this to the ROM, where visitors who misread or rejected
the exhibit's irony felt alienated and hurt by a civic institution in which they should have felt trust.
Irony lends itself to the production of societal critiques from the margins. It is recognized as an important
aspect of Canadian humor, which includes a common tradition of ironic, satiric, haughty, and parodic
takes on American culture and mass media (Rasporich 2006). In Canada irony is also a tool that
“others” use vis‐à‐vis the center and mainstream, whether this be a Newfoundland comedy troupe
(CODCO) speaking back to the mainland, or the rich tradition of Aboriginal artistic irony in response to
colonial legacies (King 1993; Phillips 1998). Yet, while irony enables Canadians to negotiate and express
multiple identities and allegiances, this backfired with Into the Heart of Africa. Still, irony could have
worked at the ROM. In Figure 9.1, in an act of what I call “curatorial dreaming” (Butler 2005; 2012; Butler
and Lehrer, forthcoming), I juxtapose against Cannizzo's “handwritten” Equinox invitation to Into the
Heart of Africa (discussed above) excerpts from a narrative by M. NourbeSe Philip, entitled Looking for
Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence (1990).9 The narrative describes a woman traveling to Africa to follow,
as she says, in Livingstone's footprints. I've chosen excerpts that satirize Eurocentric notions of
discovery, as well as obsessive and controlling aspects of museology. And, unlike Into the Heart of
Africa, this narrative articulates the constructive resistance and agency of the colonized.10 Implicit in my
imagined curatorial intervention is the inclusion of other voices – in this example, that of a local author
and activist. Here, critical reflexivity and shared curatorial authority intersect. While Into the Heart of
Africa did not need to be curated by a nonwhite curator to succeed, it absolutely needed to include
other voices to deepen and humanize the critique offered.
M. NourbeSe Philip, excerpts from Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, 1991 and Royal Ontario Museum
invitation.
Reproduced by permission of the Royal Ontario Museum and M. NourbeSe Philip.
Artists’ interventions in museums and display traditions are not limited to ethnographic and historical
museums. There is a long line of artists for whom the gallery is muse, canvas, and laboratory (McShine
1999; Putnam 2001; Macdonald 2006). Conceptual artists replicate museum collections, invent archives,
expose donors and deaccessioned objects, and literally insert themselves into the museum as objects
of display (pace James Luna). Contemporary artists’ relationships with galleries are less adversarial than
in past decades (McShine 1999, 23). In the work of Jin‐me Yoon, we witness the possibility of a
nonoppositional, inclusive irony. For A Group of Sixty Seven (1996–1997), Yoon took formal portraits of
Korean Canadians standing in front of famous Group of Seven paintings at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
The subjects face the audience in some portraits, and the paintings in others. The series includes 67
portraits, perhaps an allusion to the lifting of immigration restrictions for certain Asian nations in 1967, or
to Expo 67, which marked the one hundredth anniversary of Canadian Confederacy and was a turning
point for the country to become more global and cosmopolitan. The creation of the portraits was
preceded by a banquet in the gallery). As process and product, A Group of Sixty Seven did not reject the
gallery or the Group of Seven (Arnold et al 1996). But it (literally and metaphorically) invited new
participants to the table, to join in the communality of eating, viewing art, and being seen in the art
gallery.
Post colonial ref lexivit y

How does critical reflexivity play out in history and general museums with post‐colonial origins? These
museums, whether they are community‐oriented national institutions or global tourist destinations (or all
of the above), are not weighed down by colonial museological traditions and practices. Is reflexivity
necessary in such a context and, if so, how does it work? The short answer is yes, reflexivity is
productive, but it works in new ways. Consider the District Six Museum in Cape Town, South Africa,
which opened in 1999. Unlike the old establishment museums of the colonial and apartheid era, the
District Six Museum did not implicitly or explicitly buttress previous regimes. Quite the contrary; located in
a Dutch Methodist church on city land that was declared a “White Group Area” and razed in 1966, the
museum emerged from the ruins of apartheid. It began as a temporary exhibition, displaying recovered
street signs to remember the texture of that community's multicultural “vibe” and to honor prominent
past residents and civic leaders. A warm, intimate museum that speaks to former residents and their
descendants, as well as to local and global visitors, the District Six was an instant success in the
optimistic era of the new “rainbow nation” (Butler 2002). The museum stands as an indictment against
apartheid. But, more subtly, it developed a “self‐critical and reflexive pedagogy” that seeks to
“transcend uncritical frameworks of triumphalism and celebration” (Mpumlwana, Corsane, and Pastor‐
Makhurane 2002), which flourished in the “new” South Africa in museums and public culture. In this case,
reflexivity operates in relation to contemporary cultural politics. This position is similar to that of many
South African artists who, in the postapartheid era, shifted from struggle art to engaging with identity
politics and complicating state memory, influenced by revisionist history and keenly aware of
contemporary ironies and contradictions (Williamson and Jamal 1996). A major thrust of the reflexivity at
District Six focuses on the process of knowledge production and its control. Its participatory ethos and
valorization of orality and experience have two effects: the museum has the warmth and sensuality of a
community hall or domestic interior, and it sets a standard for museological transformation and
democratization in establishment museums.
The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), which opened up on the Mall in Washington, DC, in
2004, also practices reflexivity in a new way, positioning itself in relation to the colonial past,
monumental museums, state desires for reconciliation, and tribal museums. Like the District Six Museum,
NMAI has “grown up” surrounded by critical conversations about museology and identity. The
institution's birth and development have been monitored and debated as is evident in a plethora of
media attention and academic publishing (Lonetree and Cobb 2008). Reflexivity and postmodernity are
minor elements in the mix of theory and practice that informs the NMAI. The museum is discussed in
relation to postcolonial and postmodern paradigms, but its theoretical recognition of multiple
subjectivities is tightly linked to practices of collaboration and multivocal displays. This level of
integration of theory and practice is the norm in postcolonial museums, as well as in mainstream
establishment museums undergoing renewal.
Multivocality has emerged as a standard curatorial solution for destabilizing master narratives
associated with traditional place‐centered museums. For example, in African Worlds, a permanent
exhibition at the Horniman Museum in London that opened in 1999, historical artifacts are interpreted by
people of African and Caribbean descent living in London. Interpretations are personal, local, and
particularistic. This curatorial strategy revisions Africa, so that it is no longer an exotic, faraway, and
unchanging place. A lack of multivocality in renewed museums is “radical” for going against the grain.
The ROM's first permanent African Gallery – officially part of the Shreyas and Mina Ajmera Gallery of
Africa, the Americas, and Asia‐Pacific – which opened in 2008, is a case in point. The gallery includes
some 400 objects, framed as a celebration of diversity and recognition of the power and presence of
aesthetic objects in everyday life. A subtle reflexivity points to the alienating effects of museum
conventions. But the main goal of the gallery is to present an authoritative ethnographic account of the
ROM's collections, providing safe scaffolding (Butler 2010). Though the gallery was developed with
community consultation, this process is unacknowledged, perhaps a result of post Into the Heart of Africa
inhibition. Into the Heart of Africa was absent from the ROM's website until 2013, when it appeared in
conjunction with the museum's centennial ROM ReCollects project.11
Concluding remarks: Int egrat ing ref lexivit y and pract ice
Early iterations of reflexive museology were shaped by critiques of museums’ colonial legacies and
their representational power. The museum and its exhibitions were the focus of attention, while
audience and reception remained background concerns. Reflexive exhibits assumed “ideal” visitors
who would read the exhibit as the curator intended and, when this did not occur, controversy ensued.
Two decades of experimentation with reflexivity have taken place alongside a global proliferation of
museums, increasingly heterogeneous public spheres, and calls for socially relevant public scholarship.
Contemporary visions of reflexive museology have evolved accordingly and are incorporated into
broader transformations in museum culture, which are variously described as new museology and
critical museum theory (Stam 1993; Ross 2004; Marstine 2006).
The contemporary reflexive museum is associated with self‐awareness and self‐critique, but it also
“transforms itself and invites the visitor to democratically participate in this process” (Schorch 2009, 28).
Arguably, this ideal of transparency and inclusion was implicit in early critical reflexive analysis and
curatorship but, as Into the Heart of Africa and Miscast show, “ideal” critical visitors were taken for
granted. The imagined public was deferential and the museum and curator retained an opaque authority
(Lindauer 2007). In contrast, cutting‐edge reflexive exhibitions in urban democracies assume plural
audiences, who are viewed as coproducers of knowledge and exhibition experiences (Kirshenblatt‐
Gimblett 2000; Chakrabarty 2002). This democratization has made encountering culture and history
through multiple (and previously underrepresented) points of view an accepted norm. Community
consultation or collaboration is a de facto aspect of cross‐cultural exhibition design in mainstream
museums. The inclusion of information about collectors and collecting practices in ethnographic and
even historical displays does not rock the boat. The display of objects that trouble traditional
classifications and values (such as tourist art) is increasingly common. So too are artistic interventions in
ethnographic and a few historical museums.
A question that haunts these developments is how reflexivity is “deployed and how unsettling it's
allowed to be” (Basu and Macdonald 2007, 20). Reflexive interventions are infinitely repeatable, though
the best ones are highly site‐specific, the product of deep research into an institution's culture and
history. A paradox emerges: on the one hand, reflexivity is a key element in democratic practices of
emerging museums and establishment institutions committed to reinvention. The risk in these cases is
that exhibitionary strategies become pro forma interventions. Or the reflexivity may be limited to a
spectacular architectural intervention in an old museum (captured by the neologism “starchitecture”) – a
popular strategy for reinvention that taps into the global cultural tourist economy (Phillips 2005, 85).
Alternatively, there are still many museums (cultural and historical ones in particular) that remain
relatively untouched by reflexivity and other theoretical and demographic forces for change. Too much
of the work of transformation and critique is carried out by emerging museums, by community and tribal
museums, and by ethnographic museums, thanks largely to postcolonial politics. But reflexivity has
barely touched many traditional museums that represent “dominant” cultures, as opposed to cross‐
cultural frictions. One danger in this development is that aboriginal and other “special interest” museums
that are doing the critical work may be vulnerable to conservative backlashes and budget cuts (Healy
2006).
Reflexivity has contributed to many successes and, while its association with postmodernism is
complicated, the end result is exhibitions that are less monolithic and more visitor‐centered. Reflexivity
was lost to bitter theoretical debates about postmodernity in recent decades, but it is found implicitly in
museums such as District Six which embody democratic knowledge production and representation, in
response to a repudiated past. Though artists have critically intervened in galleries and provocative
vernacular settings, as with the brilliant linking of the British Museum and Selfridges in The Value of
Things (Cummings and Lewandowska 2007), a critical mass of mainstream museums have not embraced
reflexivity. While the work of artists cum curators is an inspiration, the most “untouched” museums can
embark on reflexive exhibitions and practices from within, making use of curators and educators to be
sure, but also by creating opportunities for their publics to do so.
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Shelley Ruth Butler

1
For a full account of the exhibit and the explosive controversy that developed, see Contested
Representations: Revisiting into the Heart of Africa (Butler 1999; 2011[2008]). References for the following
account can be found in this ethnography.
2
For a detailed description, references, and analysis of Miscast, see Butler (2000).
3
Irony is also notably absent in pedagogical and advocacy displays associated with the International
Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience (established in 1999). Thanks to Liz Ševčenko for this
information. Nor is irony present in exhibitions analyzed by Lehrer, Milton, and Patterson (2011).
4
See http://www.navajonationmuseum.org/Exhibitions (accessed October 15, 2014). Thanks to Peggy
Lindauer for bringing this exhibition to my attention.
5
Revisionist history has sparked controversy in war exhibitions in Canada and the United States (Dean
2009). In these cases, the clash of interests is generational and based on the authority of experience,
as politically powerful veteran groups question the patriotism of critical historians and museologists.
6
While the Musée de Neuchatal is lauded in critical museological literature, there are no detailed
accounts of audience responses to its exhibitions.
7
This could change with the current economic crisis in Greece and its impact on the rest of Europe.
8
For a small selection of audience responses, see Corrin (1994).
9
The excerpts from M. NourbeSe Philip's Looking for Livingstone are reproduced in my own handwriting
for the purpose of this visual intervention.
10
Ironically, Cannizzo co‐curated David Livingstone and the Victorian Encounter with Africa which showed in
London's National Portrait Gallery and in Edinburgh in 1996. The exhibition was uncontroversial and well
focused and, while it shared many qualities with Into the Heart of Africa, it was not ironic and it did allude
to the agency of Africans in aiding Livingstone and appropriating European culture (Cannizzo 1996).
11
http://www.rom.on.ca/en/rom‐recollects/stories/into‐the‐heart‐of‐africa (accessed October 28, 2014).
Copyright © 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
APA
Butler, S. R. (2015). Reflexive museology: Lost and found. In S. Macdonald, & H. R. Leahy (Eds.), The
international handbooks of museum studies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Retrieved from
url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/wileyhms/reflexive_museology_lost_and_found/0?
institutionId=899
Chicago
Butler, Shelley Ruth. "Reflexive Museology: Lost and Found." In The International Handbooks of Museum
Studies, edited by Sharon Macdonald, and Helen Rees Leahy. Wiley, 2015.
institutionId=899
Harvard
Butler, S.R. (2015). Reflexive museology: Lost and found. In S. Macdonald & H.R. Leahy (Eds.), The
international handbooks of museum studies. [Online]. Hoboken: Wiley. Available from:
institutionId=899 [Accessed 29 January 2018].
MLA
Butler, Shelley Ruth. "Reflexive Museology: Lost and Found." The International Handbooks of Museum
Studies, edited by Sharon Macdonald, and Helen Rees Leahy, Wiley, 1st edition, 2015. Credo Reference,
institutionId=899. Accessed 29 Jan 2018.

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Reflexive Museology: Lost and Found

in Museum Theory / Disciplines and Politics (Part II)

In to th e H e ar t of A f r i c a : A ref lexive experiment

(Phillips 2003, 158)

Postmodernism takes the form of self‐conscious, self‐contradictory self‐undermining statement. It is rather

Exposing colonial museology and ideology

The art ist as ironic t rickst er

Reproduced by permission of the Royal Ontario Museum and M. NourbeSe Philip.

Post colonial ref lexivit y

Cummings, N.; M. Lewandowska. 2007. “From Capital to Enthusiasm: An Exhibitionary Practice.” In

Phillips, R. 2003. “Community Collaboration in Exhibitions: Introduction.” In Museums and Source

Shelley Ruth Butler

Copyright © 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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