The Ministry of Culture presents the challenge to decolonize the Museum of America and the Anthropological Museum with an “anti-racist and gender perspective” | Culture | EUROtoday

The decolonization challenge of the Anthropology and America museums enters the subsequent part. The work of the 2 committees of specialists created by Ernest Urtasun, Minister of Culture, to “overcome and question the Eurocentrism” of those two establishments, has concluded after half a yr of labor with the supply of two tasks with particular tips to resume the museographic discourses of those establishments. That is, to incorporate an anti-racist, gender perspective, with social justice and able to eliminating all of the biases with which till now these facilities have instructed the story of a continent and part of the historical past of humanity, as learn within the proposals. The stories don’t ignore, due to this fact, any of the phrases which have entered into debate, if not into partisan battle, for the reason that Minister of Culture introduced nearly two years in the past his intention to “overcome a colonial framework or one anchored in gender or ethnocentric inertia” for state museums.

In the presentation of the tasks this Wednesday in Madrid, Urtasun harassed that “the objective is for national museums to be children of the present and builders of the future. They are going to explain cultures as something living and contemporary, which challenges us. And we are also going to recognize the agency of the native peoples.” What has turn into one of many nice Culture tasks has, within the phrases of the minister, additionally the objective of “being up to the democratic and cultural needs of societies and building a country project that responds to contemporary questions.”

The skilled committees delivered their conclusions on the finish of 2024 and for the reason that starting of this yr the museums, in collaboration with Culture, have finalized two tasks that will probably be put out to tender beginning in December for 4.4 million euros, for Anthropology; and in 2026 for 9.2 million, for America. The forecast is that the definitive transformation of the rooms the place the everlasting collections are housed will probably be accomplished in 2028.

“This is a milestone,” says Mercedes Roldán, deputy common director of State Museums, “both had a clear and evident need to renew their museology with an average age of three decades.” That of America modified within the Nineteen Nineties, nevertheless it didn’t embody, to present an instance valued by specialists, “the impact of the trafficking of enslaved people.” In the case of Anthropology, created within the nineteenth century, “a comprehensive update was pending due to the way in which this discipline has been linked to the colonialism of that century,” the group of specialists state. “They are the two installations of national museums that most show obsolescence and the need to update their stories,” provides Ángeles Albert, common director of Cultural Heritage and Fine Arts, “in this way narrative preparations and social justice are guaranteed in accordance with the new definition of museum approved by UNESCO.”

The Museum of America turns 85 in 2026, and has had the identical everlasting exhibition for 30 years, with small modifications. “We must show the plurality of American cultures and put an end to the colonial gaze,” explains Andrés Gutiérrez, director of the museum. To obtain this, the establishment will develop a program articulated in 4 sections with which it would attempt to change the imaginary constructed solely from the so-called European collectors’ cupboards: all these objects introduced from the American continent, configured as an illustrated encyclopedia, the place a single studying of people and pure assets was made.

That view has reached the current day by way of stereotypes reminiscent of people who have been deliberately connected to ladies and that the museum defines as the results of “the coloniality of being typical of slavery.” “Barbaric, illiterate, savage,” remembers Gutiérrez, “racist prejudices that we intend to deconstruct in a critical and rigorous way.”

There was a primary foray into this new decolonial path in 2024, when the museum modified 200 indicators to make them “more respectful of some of the people and towns represented,” Urtasun defined then. Derogatory phrases have already disappeared and correct names have begun for use, as within the case of the emblematic portray The mulattoes of Esmeraldas, which for greater than a yr has been known as Don Francisco de Arobe and his sons, chiefs of Esmeraldasremembers the director.

The resistance processes of the indigenous and Afro communities, the state of affairs of management or dominance of ladies and “the violence exercised during the Conquest” can have a selected place within the museum. These tales won’t be instructed chronologically, warns the director of the Museum of America, “the story based on temporal linearity is dispensed with.” “America does not begin or end with the Hispanic presence,” is harassed in this system for the middle, which advances three sections that may cope with migrations and slavery – additionally modern ones –, how language and politics are used to rename and reappropriate meanings, “the business for Europe that was America” and the way evangelization and scientific expeditions have been additionally methods of “domination.”

The National Museum of Anthropology has the ambition, within the phrases of its director, Fernando Sáez, to turn into an area for “community participation and social mediation.” This interprets into the transformation of the three flooring of the establishment not solely by way of a brand new association of items, the usage of know-how and new methods of narrating by way of, for instance, rotating show instances; but in addition with the intention of involving communities in “telling their own stories”, simply when the middle turns 150 years previous.

“Anthropology itself throughout its evolution has developed and promoted theories with political and social interests that have legitimized a world order now in question,” says Sáez to situate the problem confronted by the museum he directs. It goals for the customer to ask themselves all these questions once they enter the brand new everlasting exhibition and, to the extent attainable, provide them the solutions with the model of the communities originating from totally different territories on matters reminiscent of “the plundering of natural resources, the hierarchization of people by their ethnic traits, raising whether race exists, the climate emergency and restoring the narratives marginalized by the Western gaze,” based on the challenge.

Their problem even goes as far as to attempt to make clear one of many issues that the CIS contains in its barometers and that the intense proper has made a pillar of its campaigns: migration. “Human beings have always moved,” he remembers.

“We want to remedy the present with laboratories of social imagination,” bets Sáez, who has additionally been taking steps on this path for months. The Anthropological Museum is the second with probably the most human stays in Spain, which have been eliminated in compliance with the Letter of dedication for the moral remedy of human stays in state museums, of the Ministry of Culture.

At the second, neither of them faces the restitution and return of elements. “We do not believe that there are works of questionable origin,” says Sáez. Although the managers don’t rule out attainable requests and anticipate that, in the event that they happen, these calls for will probably be included and defined within the exhibitions. “There are ethical and legal claims and they must be raised as part of the discourse, regardless of what happens next. We have taken the bull by the horns,” provides Gutiérrez.

It is already occurring with the Quimbaya Treasure, which is exhibited within the Museum of America. The assortment of 122 items was claimed by the Government of Gustavo Petro in 2024, however has not obtained a response from the Spanish authorities, who’ve all the time settled this case as a result of they thought-about the works nationwide heritage because it was a present from Colombian President Carlos Holguín to Queen María Cristina of Habsburg-Lorraine.

“All of these are not problems of the past, that is why we have a social responsibility that contemporary museology demands,” the managers agree. To convey these debates to the current, the 2 museums will obtain works of latest artwork acquired by the Ministry of Culture. “We have been buying pieces for months to fill in gaps, always according to the reasoned requests of the museums,” says Ángeles Albert, who clarifies {that a} particular buying finances has not been allotted for these facilities.