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Cultural imperialism in european imperialism
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Cultural imperialism in european imperialism
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“Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship” by Carol Duncan: A Response to Western Cultural Imperialism and the “Ritual” of Modernity in European/American Museums Duncan’s (1991) analysis of western museums is defined through the theme of “durable objects” as a criterion to judge the heritage of American and European art as a ritual of the modern state. In this manner western art museums are built like “temples” as a symbolic and figurative representation of greatness of western culture throughout the world: “[They] are more like the traditional ceremonial monuments that museum buildings often emulate—classical temples” (Duncan 90). This interpretation of American/European museums defines a dominant source of cultural heritage that ritualizes …show more content…
In this manner, western cultures command great power by being able to represent their own heritage as a higher ranking than the “primitive” art of Third World nations that is often exhibited: “It also means the power to define and rank people, to declare some as having a greater share than others in the community’s common heritage—in its very identity” (Duncan 102). These are the important findings of Duncan’s (1991) analysis of cultural imperialism, which I agree with in terms of the greater influence of American and European museums to ritualize their status as a first world modern nation. More so, American/European museums get greater funding to superimpose their culture over museums in third world countries, which defines the overt power of the museum as a “temple” for first world art. These are important aspects of Duncan’s view that the disproportionate presence of western art throughout the world is based on a primarily imperialistic notion of cultural superiority in the presentation of American and European heritage on a global scale. In my opinion, I feel that western museums deliberately impose their cultural values in terms of “modernity” as a means of ranking themselves above lesser nations. Certainly, the increasing popularity of “primitive” …show more content…
“Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship.” in Exhibiting Cultures. Eds. Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. Print. Presentation Outline: I.Opening Statement: The Cultural Imperialism of Western Musems “Duncan’s (1991) article provides an examination of western museums as a vehicle for the “modern state” to project imperialistic values over art objects of the Third World. The American/European art museum is a type of “temple” that is used to ritualize western art objects as a projection of modernity over the “primitive” art of Third World cultures.” II.The Western Museum as “Temple” for Cultural Imperialism 1.European and American museums are designed as Greco-Roman Temples to worship the "origins” of civilization in the western mode. 2.Therefore, western art musems as places of “worship” for the dominant First World culture. 3.Western museums are dominant art institutions around the world, which defines the cultural imperialism of American/European power. III.The Political organization of the “Modern State” in Western Museums 1.First World western nations created public museums to promote western values for the modern
...ons. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre in Paris, and all other western museums contain vast collections of work from other parts of the world. These marbles symbolize the cultural property in all of the world’s museums, and this debate affects them all.
The display of Benin art in museum and galleries reflect the attitudes and perceptions of Europeans towards non-western artefacts, especially African. Thus as European attitudes change towards non-western art since the discovery of Benin art in 1897, Benin art has been revaluated and re-categorised.
There are two books The pursuit of Quality: The Kimbell Art Museum written by Harry Abrams, and The 1939 Building of the Museum of Modern Art: The Goodwin-Stone Collaboration, written by Dominic Ricciotti. These two books investigate the change in architectural feats, and the layouts in which architects like Louis I. Kahn and Goodwin and Stone used in the changing times in which they lived. These two books and the chapters within them, showcase the change in the architecture and layouts of museum buildings. Yet, these books also show the change in museum models worldwide to alter the way individuals look at architecture and artwork. Both books speak of the ever changing museum models which took places from the early 1930s until the 1960s. The following quotes and instances mentioned in the history of the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Kimbell Art Museum describe how these two museums changed the course of how architects and artists design and fill museums.
For years on end, countries have been fighting with big museums from other countries for ancient artifacts that belong to the original countries. The argument of whether or not the museums should be able to keep them still remains. It is the right of the country to have their own artifacts. It is imperative for countries to be able showcase their historical artifacts, therefor museums should return them to their rightful owners.
Historically, museums and galleries have excluded too many people. I want to eradicate the pervasive assumption that “certain people just don’t visit museums.” In a modern era of public discourse characterized by instantaneous updating and dynamic participation, a savvy public shares knowledge and relays experience with the click of a mouse. The Internet, digital media, video games, and social networking offer new approaches to learning and understanding others. Regrettably, many museums – the giants of knowledge – have fallen behind in regard to inclusiveness, technological innovation, and representation of diverse experiences. Museums and galleries shape nationwide educational curricula and discourse. If they fail to resonate with wide audiences, then the public will go elsewhere to learn, despite these institutions’ long-established reputations. Particularly now, when most sentences are prefaced with “In this economy,” I believe that museums and galleries risk obsolescence without fundamental change and a renaissance of innovation.
This review questions Maurice Berger´s assertion that “white [museum] curators, administrators, and patrons” seldom accept art outside the “mainstream” or art that “challenges dominant values.” Paradoxically, this quote supports the point of an article—Lisa C. Corrin´s “Mining the Museum”—rich in examples of exhibitions, curated by white artists and curators, and aimed at overcoming standard practices.
Art is a key element in understanding history and culture. It is the written words, drawings, constructions of a nation. Eric Mortimer Wheeler, an archaeologist and British officer, was part of one of the first efforts to conserve art during the war. A fellow officer asked Eric Wheeler how important the destruction to buildings in Leptis Magna, a great city of a Roman emperor, by the British army were. His words were, “They’re irreplaceable. They’re history. They’re… It’s our duty as soldiers to protect them, sir. If we don’t, the enemy will use that against us (Edsel 35)”. Another example of art’s importance is seen when Walter Hancock gave a Torah to a Jewish chaplin. It was previously thought by Jewish survivors at his previous service that all Torah scrolls were destroyed. When the Jewish chaplin brought it to his next service, the scroll received great emotional response, “the people weeping, reaching for it, kissing it, overcome, with joy at the sight of the symbol of their faith (Edsel 310)”. Art protection was crucial during World War II. “This was the moment of art conservation; there was not a second to lose if the world’s cultural patrimony was going to be preserved (Edsel 27)”.
One pleasant afternoon, my classmates and I decided to visit the Houston Museum of Fine Arts to begin on our museum assignment in world literature class. According to Houston Museum of Fine Art’s staff, MFAH considers as one of the largest museums in the nation and it contains many variety forms of art with more than several thousand years of unique history. Also, I have never been in a museum in a very long time especially as big as MFAH, and my experience about the museum was unique and pleasant. Although I have observed many great types and forms of art in the museum, there were few that interested me the most.
Living in Northern Virginia allows me to visit a plethora of culture-enhancing sites around the Washington, D.C. area. For this assignment, I visited the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. which is located a few blocks from the National Mall which features the more popular Smithsonian Museums such as the Museums of American History, Air and Space, Natural History and the National Gallery of Art. Information about the Museum can be found on their official website: https://americanart.si.edu/.
The questionable influence and dominance of western culture is at the forefront of a new form of seemingly ephemeral diplomatic history that is termed ‘new internationalism’. Internationalism itself is not really a new concept, and is basically a system based on equality for all people and cultures on a global scale. In the global art world ‘new internationalism’ is an active topic and was the focus of a 1994 INIVA Symposium entitled, A New International Symposium. The topics discussed included: Recording the International; Art, History and the Modern Museum; Beyond Diversity and Difference; Curatorship and International Exhibitions.1 During his lecture at the symposium, sculptor, essayist and poet Jimmie Durham puts forth the idea that, “…Europeans seem to think that, as art is their invention, effective art is within a developed vocabulary and accent…”2 This kind of statement emphasizes the enormous task of disuniting ‘actual’ art history from that recorded under the influence of western culture, and it demonstrates the long-standing influence of imperial thinking.
In “Whose Culture Is It, Anyway? ”, Kwame Anthony Appiah begins by pointing out that some of the museums of the world, particularly in the West, have large collections of artefacts and objects which were robbed from developing and poor countries. He then raises a question: who owns these cultural patrimony and properties? Our first answer may be that since they make up the cultural heritage of a people, they belong to the people and culture from whom they were taken. Appiah has doubt about this and argues that if some cultural artefacts are potentially valuable to all human beings, they should belong to all of humanity. He thinks that when they make contribution to world culture, they should be protected by being made available to those who would benefit from experiencing them and put into trusteeship of humanity.
Smith, Roberta. "Should Art Museums Always Be Free? There’s Room for Debate." New York Times. 22 Jul 2006. Web. 20 Feb. 2014.
A museum gives us insight on the culture from an out standing point of view, and the things we are shown are supposed to be looked at from the outside. The people who decided what things to exhibit did not belong to that community saw it, and decided what they considered is different to what we are used to, and what we would be interested in learning from that. The display of things in a Museum are things that we look at as something that is outside from normal. In contrast to the movie or movies, where scenes substantially show how the person felt and dealt with situations and tools from their own perspective, with their own knowledge and experience and through different means such as real images, sounds, language and others produces a different knowledge on the racial discourse. When looking at exhibitions in museums the other culture is unknown, and almost uncomfortable to us, but in movies we can be standing in their
They have a point – one that exhibition halls have overlooked for a really long time. It stays very regular to see social works by indigenous people groups regarded as characteristic history, to be recorded with rocks and fledgling bodies, as opposed to regarded as an imperative society in its own particular right. (When I was an understudy of craftsmanship history, I recollect the stun of finding a native Australian painting in my college's regular history historical center instead of at the workmanship display, despite the fact that the artistic creation dated from 1988.) As numerous anthropologists have appeared, there is nothing "normal" about the assignment of a social item as a "curio" or a 'fine art', as living or dead. The refinement is a generally freighted, always debatable move. In Paris, for instance, pre-Columbian figures have moved again and again: from the Louver and the Musée Guimet in the ahead of schedule to-mid-nineteenth Century, where they were displayed as ancient pieces; to the ethnographic Trocadéro in the late nineteenth Century, where style were unimportant; and now to the Musée du Quai Branly, which gladly calls itself a workmanship exhibition hall. What ought to be restored? A few cases are clear – outstandingly the instance of human remains, which were
‘Savage Beauty’ was an exhibition that pushed the boundaries of museology, in its artistic, social and critical undertakings. The questions brought to bear by the exhibition of contemporary art and culture in various situations is something I am interested in researching further with a degree in curating.