(Download) "Such a Man would Find Few Races Hostile': History, Fiction and Anthropological Dialogue in the Melbourne Museum." by Arena Journal " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Such a Man would Find Few Races Hostile': History, Fiction and Anthropological Dialogue in the Melbourne Museum.
- Author : Arena Journal
- Release Date : January 01, 2004
- Genre: Religion & Spirituality,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 222 KB
Description
The recent review of the National Museum of Australia (NMA) addresses the way in which ideas about museums have changed in recent decades. 'The main change,' the review states, 'is towards a conception of a national museum as an institution that somehow projects a society's sense of itself, its major and defining traits. Its focus has increasingly become national identity'. (1) I would qualify this statement somewhat by inserting 'explicitly' before 'projects'. Major museums have always projected a society's sense of itself, but before the so-called postmodern era they did not have to be explicit about the foundational narratives they wove. For, as the NMA review states later on, the humanist principles that drove museum practices up until the latter part of the twentieth century invariably contained a subtext; namely, 'the celebration of enlightenment and progress in [any] particular nation ... and collectively under the canopy of European civilisation and its diaspora'. (2) Nowadays, there are probably fewer subtexts and certainly many more 'supertexts'. Postmodern pluralism, with its emphasis on difference and contestation, has raised the concern with foundational narrative to a far more self-conscious level. The NMA review does not especially endorse a pluralistic vision, (3) even as it recognizes its limited relevance, but it is indicative of the times that its authors found it necessary to quickly engage with the idea that museums, like nations, might be multivocal or multicultural in character. I wish to engage these themes in relation to the new Melbourne Museum which opened in October 2000, the Museum's Aboriginal Centre (Bunjilaka) and the filmic dialogue that was produced for the permanent exhibitions housed there in the Jumbunna Gallery. I will briefly discuss some reactions to this dialogue before exploring certain issues to do with the nature of narrative and representation in museums and allied institutions. I am particularly interested in the intersection of historical and narrative truth in the dialogue and in what it implies about the politics of representation. I will contend in the latter part of the paper that some commentators have misunderstood the historical significance of the film and that such misunderstanding arises partly, if not exclusively, because of fundamental differences of opinion about the roles contemporary museums should play in public life. These differences are not simply ones of interpretation in relation to historical fact, but rather, political differences about the role that Indigenous profiles might play in Australian museums, and about the degree to which museums should tolerate critical forms of multivocality and contestation.