Because the query of the right way to show ethnographic objects from world cultures continues to vex many Western museums, one Scottish establishment is proposing a artistic means ahead in an formidable new exhibition.
The Trembling Museum, which opens this month on the Hunterian Museum and Artwork Gallery in Glasgow, presents African artwork, artefacts and textiles from the museum’s everlasting assortment alongside works by modern artists. Objects equivalent to ornately carved musical devices, ritual clothes and home goods from Africa might be positioned amongst works by artists equivalent to Jimmy Robert, Ulrike Ottinger, Alberta Whittle and Lubaina Himid, who interact with points referring to colonial histories of their work.
Based mostly on the College of Glasgow, the Hunterian is Scotland’s oldest public museum and has a wealthy assortment of African artwork protecting 300 years, partly because of acquisitions made by Frank Willett, an anthropologist and knowledgeable on African artwork, who was the museum’s director between 1976 and 1990.
Jimmy Robert’s Frammenti V (2022) © Jimmy Robert. Courtesy of the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery, Stigter van Doesburg and Tanya Leighton
“Each time we go into the shop, we’re struck by how wonderful the objects are,” says Dominic Paterson, the Hunterian’s curator of up to date artwork. Co-curating the present with him are: Andy Mills, the museum’s curator of world cultures; Manthia Diawara, a Malian scholar and film-maker; and Terri Geis, an artwork historian and Diawara’s long-term collaborator.
“The preliminary impulse for the present was actually simply: let’s get these items out of containers and put them on show in an attention-grabbing means so the viewers can assume with us about the place they belong, what it means to have them in Glasgow, what they imply collectively as a bunch,” Paterson says.
The present poses questions concerning the methods objects are historically categorised by museums. “The thought of displaying African artwork as artwork isn’t new, however in some methods it’s additionally very provocative as a result of it’s making us take into consideration the classes museums use, about why we distinguish between sure sorts of inventive manufacturing,” Paterson says.
He factors out that, whereas the provenance of the objects within the present will not be contested, they’re “undoubtedly related with colonial relationships”. Paterson provides: “We’re not saying that we’re comfy with proudly owning these objects and classifying them. The exhibition is known as a staging of that query. It’s a proposal, a proposition, a ‘let’s see what occurs if we do that’.”
The present’s title comes from Édouard Glissant, a Martinican author whose concepts inform the exhibition. “We’re curious about Glissant’s thought a few museum bringing world cultures collectively in numerous methods, which might deal with Western artwork, for instance, as one choice amongst all of the sorts of cultural manufacturing there are. Is there a means through which we want all these histories, all these objects, to reconnect our sense of widespread humanity?”
• The Trembling Museum, Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, 2 December-19 Might 2024
