ICOFOM Study Series

49-2 | 2021
The Decolonisation of Museology: Museums, Mixing,
and Myths of Origin

Introduction. Decolonising museology or “re-

formulating museology”
Yves Bergeron and Michèle Rivet

Electronic version
URL: https://journals.openedition.org/iss/3500
DOI: 10.4000/iss.3500
ISSN: 2306-4161

Translation(s):
Introduction. Décoloniser la muséologie ou « re-fonder la muséologie » - URL : https://
journals.openedition.org/iss/3503 [fr]
Introducción. Descolonizar la museología o “reformular la museología” - URL : https://
journals.openedition.org/iss/3508 [es]

Publisher
ICOM - International Council of Museums

Printed version
Date of publication: 31 December 2021
Number of pages: 15-28
ISBN: 978-92-9012-446-7
ISSN: 2309-1290

Electronic reference
Yves Bergeron and Michèle Rivet, “Introduction. Decolonising museology or “re-formulating
museology””, ICOFOM Study Series [Online], 49-2 | 2021, Online since 24 May 2022, connection on 03
June 2022. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/iss/3500 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/iss.3500

ICOFOM Study Series

 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

Introduction

Decolonising
museology or
“re-formulating
museology”
Yves Bergeron
Holder of the UQAM Research Chair in Museum
Governance and Cultural Law

Michèle Rivet
Secretary of the Board of Directors of ICOM
Canada and Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees
of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

The Decolonisation of Museology

The 44th ICOFOM symposium, held March 15-18, 2021, was well attended.
Although the meeting was planned in virtual mode, we received nearly 1,000
requests for registration to follow the symposium online on the web platform
offered by the technology department of the Université du Québec à Montréal
(UQAM). At the same time, the general public was able to follow the scientific
papers live, especially the major keynote speeches that opened each day on
the ICOFOM Facebook page. Long after the symposium, this page was widely
accessed thus indicating that the impact of the symposium was particularly
significant. The members of the scientific committee and the organising
committee were pleasantly surprised by the interest the professional museum
community and the academic world had in the theme proposed by ICOFOM.

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 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

These four days have shown that the question of decolonisation is at the heart
of the issues that animate and transform the museum world.
The 3 M’s of museology: “musées, métissages et mythes d’origine” (in French,
or “museums, mixing, and myths of origin” in English).
Let us recall that the call for papers targeted three major themes around
decolonisation, i.e., the transformations induced within museums themselves;
the delicate question of the mixing of cultures and, more precisely, the place
of cultural communities in collections and programming; and finally, the
questioning of museum’s myths of origin. If we first consider the proposals
selected for this symposium, it is clear that questions related to indigenous
issues and, more specifically, to the restitution of collections are among the
issues raised by the researchers.
The focus of the 44th symposium: questioning the heritage of European
museum culture
Well before structuring the texts selected by the scientific committee, a
few observations were quickly made at the end of the symposium. When it
came time to take stock, we noted how enthusiastic the museum world was.
Indeed, there are many questions and complaints about the role of museums
in society. Addressing the theme of colonisation has opened the door to a host
of criticisms about their fundamental role in social debates. There are many,
sometimes bitter, criticisms of museums, as if they were being blamed for
not contributing more to a new social order. Indeed, it is often felt that the
challenge of social justice falls more to museums than to governments, whose
primary obligation it is. On the other hand, one wonders why museums want
to take on this disproportionate responsibility. Clearly, culture is becoming
a central issue for society and the museum, as an institution that touches on
the arts, sciences, and society, seems to be the privileged stage for debating
and promoting living together.
To some extent, we had the feeling that we were reliving or simply witnessing
the aftermath of the International Council of Museums meeting in Kyoto,
which focused the museum world into two diametrically opposed clans. This
polarisation seems, at first sight, to be similar to the quarrel between the
Ancients and the Moderns that spread through the cultural world in Europe
in the 17th century. The contestation around the proposed definition of a
museum calls into question the museum tradition and in particular those
who define themselves as “curators”, in the true sense of the word, i.e., people
who are attached to the original mission of European museums centred on
material heritage and the validity of learned culture. In a way, it is the heritage
of European museum culture that is under attack. In fact, there no longer seems
to be a consensus on this common heritage, as mentioned by Krzysztof Pomian
in his synthesis on the world history of museums (2020; 2021). Yet, should we

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 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

not first of all recognise that without this European contribution to culture
we would not be debating the role of the museum today?
In Kyoto, we had the feeling that we were witnessing a kind of trial of classical
museology and an indictment of various accusations directed at the large
museums that are only just beginning to consider the possibility of returning
collections to the communities of origin. It is also important to understand
that these criticisms are aimed at the initial cultural and scientific undertakings
of museums. If the critical posture is healthy in any discipline, we must
acknowledge that the museum world is overflowing with well-being. Beyond
the tensions, what does this protest movement reveal? Doesn’t it indicate a
desire to question the museum institution? Ultimately, we believe that the
museum is not doomed to disappear, as some participants in the Kyoto meeting
suggested, but there is no longer any doubt that museums are most certainly on
the road to reform, while a conservative faction seems to be moving towards
counter-reform. In other words, is this protest movement not a rejection of the
museum, as one might think, but rather a desire to re-formulate the museum
based on new paradigms of emerging museum culture? Is it not a movement
that consists in reappropriating the museum in order to give it a new mission
and a new integrity? In other words, there is a form of symbolic reappropriation
of the museum institution. This is one of the hypotheses that we propose and
which deserves to be explored. The meeting of the International Council of
Museums in Prague in 2022 will certainly provide us with answers about the
future of the international museum network.
What the texts tell us
This thematic issue brings together the proposals selected by the scientific
committee, as well as texts by speakers specially invited for the symposium,
including Élisabeth Kaine, Ruth B. Phillips and Bruno Brulon Soares. The
corpus of these texts selected by the scientific committee has inspired us in this
introduction to group them in three sections. The first section brings together
four texts that reflect more specifically on the decolonisation of museology
as a discipline under the title Museology in Question. The second section, First
Peoples, brings together three texts that address the delicate and sensitive issue
of the place of Aboriginal cultures in the North American museum world.
The third section, Some Examples from Different Continents, consists of five case
studies that demonstrate the international character of the decolonization
of museums. Finally, the text by Brulon Soares, which closed the symposium,
offers a critical synthesis and avenues of reflection for the ICOFOM scientific
community based on five major myths of museology.

1. Museology in question
For this section, four texts address the theme of decolonisation from the
perspective of questioning museology as a discipline. François Mairesse identifies
the major issues from a historical perspective by proposing a return to the history

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 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

of museology. As he clearly shows, the decolonisation of museology is more

complex than the decolonial process, which is expressed in particular within
the international network of museums through the repatriation of objects. He
mentions specifically the violent character of colonisation associated with the
colonial empires, mainly European, which more particularly concerns Great
Britain and France, but also Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands
or Portugal. Thus, he suggests deconstructing the founding myth of the colonial
museum, that is, the museum that fundamentally embodies its link to the
Enlightenment and its discourse, the power in place, originating from the
metropolis. Rather than considering the problem from the point of view of
colonisation, he invites us to analyse the propagation of museology, whose
ideas spread progressively, during the interwar period, at a time that was still
effectively colonial, from the metropolises towards the peripheries. He reminds
us that the postcolonial discourse on museology is above all centred on circuits
of diffusion. Mairesse gives the example of John Falk who is the most quoted
researcher. Clearly, the distribution of publications in English facilitates the
dissemination of his thought. He also cites Tereza Scheiner, who questions
the hegemony of thought in the production of Anglophone and Francophone
discourses to the detriment of other languages. This point of view seemed to
be widely shared at the ICOM meeting in Kyoto, where English occupied all
the discussions. Furthermore, Mairesse draws our attention to the leadership
and influence of certain ideas that are more easily disseminated in certain
languages. He highlights the fact that only a small number of researchers
aspire to develop exchanges in a more global way. The former, from a research
perspective, prospect around the world to discover new ideas in the museum
field; the latter seek to make their ideas known to a wider audience (some
authors may fall into both categories).
In a way, the leadership of the researchers is decisive, but the dissemination of
their vision depends on the place of languages in the propagation of knowledge.
In this sense, the recognition of the researchers’ contribution remains relative.
Mairesse suggests that the geopolitical approach, which integrates political and
military power (hard power), economic power, but also diplomatic and cultural
power (soft power), makes it possible to question current power relations in a
much more relevant way. This perspective would most certainly allow us to take
a fresh look at the colonial relations of museology by focusing on hegemonic
issues and strategies.
In the same spirit, Fabien Van Geert explores and nuances the terms postco-
lonial and decolonial museology. His analysis insists on the need to master
and nuance these concepts. He also invites researchers not to oppose these
two visions of museology. His interpretation of this movement is relevant,
as it is based on his dissertation project (2020), which enabled him to ana-
lyse in detail the movement of questioning and transformation in the world
of ethnographic museums. The fields he has carefully explored allow him to
take an enlightening look at the decolonization movement in Europe, North

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 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

America, and Latin America. Van Geert agrees with Mairesse’s interpretation
when he concludes that it is essential to return to the very essence of these
theories in order to understand their application to specific contexts (since all
knowledge is necessarily situated). He rightly concludes that if we wish to be
able to use terms that are heuristically and universally valid for understanding
the world of museums, it is therefore important to reflect on these questions,
which go far beyond a mere linguistic exercise. This is undoubtedly one of the
first intellectual tasks to be undertaken if the project of museology is truly
to decolonise itself. The Dictionnaire de muséologie project developed within
ICOFOM is certainly a convincing example that demonstrates the need to
clarify concepts that sometimes seem simple, but which are at the same time
complex and require nuances depending on cultural aspects.
Marília Xavier Cury proposes a reflection based on metamuseology using the
Kaingang collections that were gathered at the beginning of the 20th century in
the context of the colonisation of western São Paulo in Brazil. It questions the
concepts of “musealia” and “museality” because of the context of the collection
of the objects which, as elsewhere in America and on other continents, took
place in a violent manner. The study of these objects makes it possible to
re-examine the initial process of musealisation as well as the re-reading of
these objects by Kaingang groups, which proposes new interpretations. This
type of approach, which can be observed elsewhere in the world, shows that
museology must integrate anthropological and sociological perspectives so
that museum professionals can avoid ethnocentric or sociocentric approaches
that consist of favouring the interpretation of a group to which one belongs
to the detriment of the communities concerned. Ethnocentrism tends to lead
to misinterpretations that may be similar to forms of racism. On the contrary,
museology must include in its general training an openness to the other and
to difference. In other words, the anthropological approach would make it
possible to become aware that one’s own culture cannot be the norm.
In the text from her lecture, Ruth B. Phillips argues that the colonial and
decolonial dialectic is too polarising. Instead, she suggests that the museum
should adopt a society museum approach, i.e., one that is multidisciplinary and
encourages plural interpretations. This change of posture means that museums
must break with the Western museological tradition. She argues that museums
must revise the value regime that has hitherto governed Western interpretations
of culture. In a way, one wonders whether museums should not break with
the very idea of interpreting objects and culture. She discusses the problems
of “foreignization” and “thick translation”, and recounts examples of translation
demonstrating that in some cases it must be recognised that museums are
facing cases of untranslatability. Phillips suggests that society museums should,
as art museums and especially contemporary art museums do, exhibit objects
without mediation on the basis that the work or object speaks for itself and
that the museum should not come between the object and the visitor. Here
we find the lively debate that ran through the museum and academic world

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 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

when the Quai Branly Museum opened in 2006. Ethnographic objects from the
Musée de l’Homme were then under the influence and authority of curators
who favoured an aesthetic approach that transformed ethnographic objects
into works of art. This problem of translation and interpretation does not
seem to be new insofar as each generation periodically revisits the collections
and proposes new readings.

2. The First Peoples

François Mairesse shows that it is the current structures of power that must be
analysed in order to understand the stakes of the decolonisation of museology.
In this sense, it is appropriate to focus on the influence of First Peoples, who
have not only been involved in the transformation of museums for several
years, but also, more generally, in the decolonisation of museology and, to a
certain extent, its indigenisation (Phillips, 2011).
Several papers at the symposium attempted to answer the questions posed
in relation to First Peoples. These papers, some of which have been selected
for publication, and the discussions to which they gave rise throughout the
symposium attest to a growing awareness among museums of the need to engage
in a critical dialogue about the interpretation of history, to better realize that
indigenous peoples from Asia roamed, occupied, and transformed the North
American territory for millennia before the arrival of Europeans. All of these
reflections are part of a breakdown of the museum as traditionally conceived
and even of New Museology as defined in the 1980s. These reflections also
indicate that while such structural changes have sometimes been implemented
in museums, some answers are only conceptually formulated and questions are
still unanswered. These different papers show us that the inversion of these
power relations, as Mairesse rightly notes in the conclusion of his text, cannot
be analysed simply by studies, whether they be museological or postcolonial.
Museums’ awareness of the reality of First Peoples is recent, as is the assertion
by Aboriginal people to control their history and culture through international
instruments. This phenomenon is reflected in the United Nations Declaration
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General Assembly
on 13 September 2007. Four countries were opposed to it at the time: Canada,
which will accede some three years later, the United States, Australia and New
Zealand, countries where the importance of First Peoples is significant. This
affirmation necessarily implies the establishment of links between, on the one
hand, the First Peoples who claim control over their tangible and intangible
heritage and who thus recover their soul, their culture, their identity and, on
the other hand, the museum that holds these cultural objects.
In Canada, it was following the Cree boycott of the Glenbow Museum’s 1988
exhibition, “The Spirit Sings” (Le souffle de l’esprit), that a working group was
created, made up of members of the Assembly of First Peoples and the Cana-
dian Museums Association, which submitted a report in 1992: “Turning the

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 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

Page: Forging New Partnerships between Museums and First Peoples” (Tourner la
page : forger de nouveaux partenariats entre les musées et les Premières Nations). This
report arrived at three main sets of recommendations: increased participation
of Aboriginal people in the interpretation of their culture and history by
cultural institutions; improved access to museum collections for Aboriginal
people; and the repatriation of sacred objects and human remains contained
in museum collections, as Maranda and Van Geert discuss in this volume.
The 1990s marked a heightened awareness of First Peoples in Canada in their
relationship with museums. As Andrea Laforêt, a Canadian ethnologist, notes,
cultural objects within Aboriginal societies have a meaning that is part of the
life of the society itself. They tell the story, they establish the genealogy of the
society and the transmission of authority (2004). The First Peoples have an
entirely different conception of cultural objects than that traditionally held
by a museum that possesses them, Phillips asserts in her text. These cultural
objects often have a sacred character and must be treated as such. Over the
years, ethnology museums or ethnology departments of history museums as
well as society museums and even fine arts museums have learned to work
in collaboration with First Peoples. This collaboration has been and still is,
however, fraught with difficulties and is far from being completed.
From the outset, as the symposium’s opening speaker and in her text “Narrative
of an Aboriginal incursion into museum territory”, Élizabeth Kaine, Aboriginal
curator from the Wendake nation, questions the difficulties encountered
by First Peoples in achieving real participation in the development of an
exhibition that concerns them. Indeed, for Kaine, the exhibition is one of the
most powerful tools of empowerment, a tool of self-construction for peoples
in a minority position, victims of colonialism. Thus, Kaine led a very broad
consultation with the eleven Aboriginal Nations of Quebec in the development
of a synthesis and reference exhibition on the First Peoples of Quebec. What
power is granted to the First Peoples, she asks, if it does not concern the
content, the aesthetics, the circulation of the visitor through the content, the
choice of mediums through which it is expressed, or the choice of objects? For
Kaine, the control must be over both the message and its expression. How can
we ensure that indigenous visitors to an exhibition about them develop a sense
of identity? As Hugues de Varine reminds us, we must stop believing that we
can talk about the culture of others from our own perspective.
It is in this sense that Lynn Maranda also asks the question: how can we
decolonise the museum, a product of colonisation, without removing all the
museum structures and their services from the scene? It is necessary, in a
spirit of collaboration, to be able to tell the truths, even the most sensitive
or painful ones, to convert sites of oppression into places that matter and to
share indigenous knowledge. Like Kaine, Maranda wonders why not achieve a
partnership where First Peoples not only have a voice but also control aspects
of museum activity in matters that affect them. This is a decolonial approach,
as Van Geert calls it, which is a radical desire to deconstruct the Western

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 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

approach to museums by giving all their places to practices and ontologies,

especially indigenous ones.
Despite the obstacles, certain steps have been taken in this inevitable partnership.
In Canada, museums have given First Peoples a voice in various ways: shared
responsibility for Aboriginal exhibits, inclusion of Aboriginal perspectives,
creation of permanent advisory committees or councils, and policies that
include at least one Aboriginal representative or decision-maker on the boards
of directors. As a symbol, museum institutions in Canada very often include
at the beginning of their meetings the recognition of the Aboriginal territory
where the meeting is taking place.
But under what conditions can we speak of the decolonisation of museums?
Some authors even mention the trap of neo-colonialism. Should we not speak
more of a “site of translation”, as Phillips proposes in her text, or recognise
museums as “contact zones” as Clifford (2013) has so eloquently developed in
his writings?
Museum relationships with First Peoples must be based on respect and
reciprocity, Kaine and Phillips assert in their chapters. Decolonization thus
re-establishes the traditional worldview, culture, and ways of life of First Peoples;
it replaces Western interpretations of history with Indigenous perspectives
by dismantling the power structures that have paralyzed and subjugated First
Peoples.
In this sense, the recognition of the validity of different worldviews, knowledge
and perspectives of First Peoples and the integration of these ways of knowing
and doing in museums can be analysed in terms of museology, which is both a
theoretical reflection on the museum fact and, as Van Geert states in his text, a
field of interdisciplinary research analysing the museum from different scientific
approaches, but also as a reflexive approach developed by institutions regarding
their role and practices. At the forefront of this reflexive approach, the role and
practices of the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum in New Zealand allow us to push
the theoretical reflection on the museum fact further. It brings together, in a
bicultural and bicephalous structure, the Māori, the First People, and the Pākehā,
the descendants of Indo-European immigrants. Mana taonga is an enabling
principle that allows Te Papa Museum to recognise the richness of culture,
diversity and to design and disseminate models of cooperation, collaboration,
and co-creation. Mana taonga is first and foremost an indigenous principle to
restore Maori rights to their material culture. As a guiding principle, taonga
mana recognises that taonga – which includes objects, stories, and all forms of
cultural expression – have ‘mana’, meaning power, authority, and prestige. Thus,
respecting and expressing the knowledge, worldviews and learning systems
formulated by the Māori are important dimensions of mana taonga. Over the
years, the principle of mana taonga has been extended to all museum activities
at Te Papa Museum, to facilitate the collaboration of all source communities
in the management and use of their cultural heritage, and thus to other non-

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 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

Māori collections at Te Papa Museum. This is also a principle extended to

other museums around the world (Hakiwai & Schorch, 2014; Hakiwai, et al.,
2016). Māori-led changes in governance, management, policy, education and
curation have transformed aspects of professional practice and led to interesting
museological cross-fertilisations of European and Māori culture. Picking up on
Van Geert’s analysis, the principle of mana taonga as developed at the Te Papa
Museum allows us to reflect on the scope and role of indigenous approaches as
a vehicle for museum transformation. For McCarthy (2019), these approaches
will potentially provide routes to help decolonise and reshape the foundations
of museology on a global scale, transcending so-called ethnological and so-called
society museums.
In parallel, museums have also established policies for the return, repatriation
of cultural objects, such as the restitution of sacred objects or human remains.
In the Americas, these requests from First Peoples are on the agenda. Africa
and Oceania are also requesting the return of cultural objects from European
countries, returns that are sometimes framed in Europe in legislative texts or
following reports, including the one submitted in France by Flewine Saar and
Bénédicte Savoy in 2018. Whether in the Americas or in Oceania with the First
Peoples, or in Europe notably with African or Middle Eastern societies, this
phenomenon is based on the same premises; in so doing, the Americas and
Europe are coming together, as Van Geert argues in his text.
For Camille Labadie, at the international level, despite the panoply of
instruments devoted to the restitution of illicitly exported goods, few have
proved useful in regulating the return of cultural objects to First Peoples.
Therefore, many restitutions are nowadays the result of alternative processes,
voluntary restitution, mediation or arbitration, which are measured against
the relevant moral, ethical or deontological principles in order to arrive at
equitable solutions adapted to each situation. Maranda also notes, in the
absence of satisfactory legislation, the emergence of a practice of restitution
that stems from a moral and ethical feeling and the need to repair injustices.
These restitutions apply to cultural property as well as to sacred objects and
human remains, such as, for example, the repatriation of toi moko (tattooed
mummified heads) belonging to French and Quebec museums. The Museum
of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa has been responsible since 2003, on behalf
of the New Zealand government, for the repatriation of Māori kōiwi tangata
(human remains). As Labadie notes in conclusion, when dealing with human
remains, sacred objects or objects associated with unique ancestral skills,
restitution cannot constitute full redress in the face of dispossession of the
very foundations of their culture.

3. Some examples from different continents

The papers presented at the symposium and the discussions that followed
show the extent to which the decolonisation of museums is a polymorphous
notion with variable geometry. Some are based on empirical studies. Asia,

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 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

Africa, South America, and Europe are all involved. Different approaches to a
complex question: given societal values, how and to what extent do museums
give a voice, a right of citizenship to the populations whose cultural objects
they hold in trust?
In China, as Lin Li points out, the return of Chinese cultural objects lost
between 1840 and 1949 in an illegal or unethical manner is an important issue
for the China Foundation for the Development of Social Culture, while the
return of cultural objects within China is not. For Lin Li, based on an empirical
study, the return of cultural objects is not part of a decolonisation approach.
As a useful propaganda tool for the State, Chinese museums are exactly the
kind of institution that should be decolonised – she concludes.
Victor Zaiden and Ana Avelar examine how demands for recognition of
plural identities and redress of colonial dispossessions are being carried out
in Germany and Brazil, two countries with different trajectories and, therefore,
two quite dissimilar approaches. While in Germany, demands for the restitution
of cultural heritage seem to guide the agenda of historical corrections, in Brazil
it is the struggle for the visibility of marginalised groups and the recognition
of a failed attempt at cultural homogenisation that is at stake.
This is not far from the conclusion reached by Maria De Simone Ferreira
when she examines the role of Brazilian museums in taking into account the
reality of the society they serve, analysing how the Archaeological Museum
of Itaipu incorporated the claims of fishermen who sought recognition of
the importance of their centuries-old traditions. Although the museum may
not have considered the fishermen of Itaipu when it was created in 1977, the
cultural heritage narratives established by the institution have allowed for a
re-characterisation of the historical condition of the indigenous fishermen
group, to the extent that today it is the community members themselves who
ask to participate in the museum’s activities and even in its management,
rather than the other way around.
Christine Bluard, who has studied the Royal Museum for Central Africa in
Belgium, notes the importance of the part played by the source communities
from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi in the process
of transforming the museum and the role of contemporary art and artists. She
discusses the appropriation of the collections by the source communities, the
value added by the contemporary anchoring in old collections and finally the
role of artists and external actors in the transformation of a museum institution.
Bluard concludes that the diversity of approaches and views is gradually taking
precedence over classification and questions the colonial fact at the origin of
this categorisation, a process that is now working towards a redefinition of
the museum’s mission.
Simbarashe Shadreck Chitima analyses the decolonisation of museums in
Zimbabwe from the perspective of museum education for primary school
children. He notes that the colonial discourse continues to permeate museum

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 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

activities. For Chitima, the decolonisation of museum education is about

providing balanced narratives and offering realistic and relevant content that
contemporary societies can find meaningful. The decolonisation education
service of museums must include multiple voices representing a wide range
of perspectives and bodies of knowledge.

In conclusion
Providing a synthesis at the end of a symposium is always a challenge. Bruno
Brulon Soares has succeeded in synthesising the major issues of decolonisation
in an original way. The ICOFOM Chair took the gamble of approaching
decolonisation by dealing with the theme of myths, which in a way remained
on the side-lines during the four days of the symposium. Without going into
an exhaustive summary, let us recall here the main lines of his analysis. He
distinguishes the decolonisation of the museum from the decolonisation
of museology as a discipline which was created, he recalls, as a means of
examining the diversity of museums through a single scientific lens. Behind
the assumption that museology could be a science – one that was the basis of
this international committee (ICOFOM) – there was the idea defended by
some of our founding figures that a single branch of knowledge could be used
to study the plurality of museums. It shows that there is an initial founding
myth at the origin of ICOFOM. There is the common value that museology
is a science with the objective of producing a single conceptual basis with
defined theoretical centres for the investigation of museums, both in theory
and in practice. Brulon Soares postulates that the decolonisation of museums
and that of museology depend on a triple and interdependent process that
encompasses deconstruction, reconstruction and redistribution. Rather than
the mere restitution of heritage, by considering these threefold processes,
he believes that it is better to decolonise the mind, that is, to transform the
culture of museums in order to denounce the historical violence produced by
these institutions.
Brulon Soares identifies five myths. He proposes to start by deconstructing the
founding myths in order to bring about a new conception of museology. In his
view, the problem is not to have the museum as an object or the man-reality
relationship, but to apprehend the museum. The first myth is that of museology
as a science, which has been disseminated by researchers such as Peter van
Mensch and Zbyněk Stránský, who have tried to define it as an autonomous
scientific discipline whose object of knowledge is a specific approach of man
to reality. He suggests that we should abandon the myth of a single museology
without taking into account differentiated conceptions of the museum and
diversified practices. Echoing Villy Toft Jensen, he points out that there is no
such thing as a common museology. In other words, museology in its European
conception cannot be universal. The third myth he identifies is that of museum
theory separated from practice. He demonstrates that there is a higher form of
authorised knowledge, in many ways divorced from practice. The International

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 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

Council of Museums community wanted to standardise knowledge, leading

ICOFOM to develop concepts and a standard basis for theory. This process was
set up by separating theory from practice, thus contributing to the creation
of a normative museology, validated in particular by European countries. This
reasoning leads him to the myth of the object/visitor dichotomy, which brings
us back to the founding myth of European museums and more particularly
to the cabinets of curiosities associated with colonialism. Museology quickly
became rooted in the artificial separation between subjects and objects so
that we still find ourselves faced with the old dichotomy of the museum’s
focus on material objects and its focus on visitors. Finally, the fifth myth
is that of decolonisation. In a way, a significant part of the international
museum community has started to denounce “post-colonialism” and to claim
“decolonization” of museology as if it were an antidote to colonialism in
museums, when in fact the decolonial project wants to propose a critical look
at colonization and modernity, perceiving them as irreversible phenomena.
The president of ICOFOM asks pertinent and unavoidable questions: “Is it
possible to reverse slavery in the Americas? Is it possible to reverse genocide
in Africa? Or the exploration of limited resources through imperial expansion
and plunder?” Are we going to solve the question of colonisation once and
for all by inventing the idea of a post-colonial museum and getting rid of the
remains of this haunting past? Clearly, it seems that these objectives must
be shared by both the museum world and the scientific community. This is a
common responsibility, since it requires profound changes in museum culture.
Moreover, shouldn’t these changes be adapted to each cultural context and
take into account geopolitical factors?
Furthermore, several examples show that First Peoples’ museum approaches
are part of museum transformation strategies. Following the example of the
mana taonga principle developed at the Te Papa Museum, these approaches
are part of itineraries that allow for the decolonisation and remodelling of the
very foundations of contemporary museology. Wouldn’t museums, as well as
museology, do well to draw inspiration from these approaches to openness?
The dark side of the symposium: reform and counter-reform of the
museum world
Although the ICOFOM symposium in 2021 was rich in research avenues, it left
two themes in the shade. There was very little mention of cultural mixing and
this theme deserves to be revisited. Furthermore, considering that the status
of cultural communities in public collections remains a highly topical issue,
especially in the perspective of museums rethinking their social role, we believe
that it would be appropriate to propose a new ICOFOM scientific meeting on
this theme, which deserves to be discussed collectively. The same goes for the
question of the founding myths of museology, which were not discussed much
in this symposium. Brulon Soares was one of the few to consider decolonisation
and foundation myths. As he well demonstrates, decolonisation implies, among
other things, a re-examination of the founding myths of European museology

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 Introduction • Decolonising museology or “re-formulating museology”

that have been exported around the world and adapted to new geopolitical
contexts.
If the decolonisation of museology consists of breaking with the straitjacket of
a borrowed model, it is also a question of adapting the principles of museology
to specific cultural contexts. It should be remembered, however, that the process
of breaking with the dominant culture is always difficult and takes time. This
is what the history of the New Museology movement, which emerged half a
century ago, tells us. We can also think of the position of Jacques Hainard of
the Musée d’ethnographie de Neuchâtel, who tried to decolonise ethnographic
museums by freeing themselves from the objects and questioning the role of
curators. Let us mention in passing the collective work Le musée cannibale
(Gonseth, et al., 2002) which proposes a reflection that is still relevant today
on the role of ethnographic museums in the world. Although his vision of
museology has inspired a generation of museologists, the museum world has
been careful to keep him on the sidelines.
In tackling a subject that has long remained taboo, one has the impression
that a movement is taking shape that bears similarities to the Protestant
Reformation movement, which in the 16th century proposed a profound
transformation of Catholic Christianity. If it was the dogmas of the Church
that were questioned then, today it is the fundamental values of museums
that were thought to be universal that are being challenged. There no longer
seems to be a shared museum culture. By forming a common front at the Kyoto
meeting, the countries that have remained faithful to the original values, i.e.
collections, research and preservation, are embarking on what could look like
a counter-reform of museology. Many national associations cannot conceive
of the museum without its primary mission being to preserve the tangible and
intangible heritage of humanity. One thing is certain, however: museums are
indeed undergoing a transformation. This is why it is necessary to look beyond
the debate on decolonisation to the real issues at stake in the value system of
museums, for is it not precisely the common culture of museums that is at
stake behind the debate on decolonisation?

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