Liberating Culture: The Museum as Weapon, Discourse, Medium, is an essay I wrote advocating for museum reform in the way it addresses colonial histories and art objects, and the necessity to facilitate connections with communities by giving up narrative control.

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Abstract

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'This research report explores a museum's moral and ethical responsibility to address the continuing colonial legacy enforced through White biased curation, representation, and narratives, resulting in a museum’s responsibility to use their institution for the education and reconnection of cultures and their artworks. The report discusses ‘Weapon’, ‘Discourse’, and ‘Medium’, as three ways the museum communicates cultural narratives, examining the way these are employed, and the consequences on the communities represented. These are communicated through various case studies by Native, Indigenous, and Black artists who each address the oppression of the White narrative and Western aesthetic in the hegemony of Eurocentric museology.

This study finds that the museum is not a historical environment or an emblematic and static preservation of history, but a transformative apparatus that must continue to evolve to reflect the current sociocultural climate. The consideration of the museum as a ‘Weapon’ exposes the ongoing cultural violence extended by the institution that maintains colonial values by following a White monolithic frame of reference. The museum as ‘Discourse’ recognises the benefits of cross-cultural collaboration in communicating multiple narratives and the curational benefits of decentring the curator. Examined in its final form, ‘Medium’ evidences how museums can adapt for the future by giving up institutional power and control to liberate culture from its existing biases and become a palette for cultural sustainability. These findings conclude that the museum has exponential potential in terms of equitable cultural redevelopment, to secure its future the museum is urged to embrace it.'