Reflecting on London Museum Visits
Andrea Guttormsen Wetzler
Students Dina Famin, Emily Yoder, and Andrea Guttormsen Wetzler with Direction of the Global Medieval Studies program Professor Sunil Sharma and Professor Roberta Micallef of the World Languages and Literatures Department at The British Library’s “Alexander the Great: the Making of a Myth” exhibit.
It wasn’t until I arrived at the museums in London last fall that I realized just how much my approach to museums has changed after studying the ethics of museum spaces. It felt surreal to see objects that I had read about, in articles specifically concerning the ethics of museum acquisition, and objects that simply carry such cultural significance that I have learned about them through other means, such as Cyrus’ Cylinder. It was truly awesome, in the older connotation of that word, to step into the British Library exhibitions, as I had never before seen so many bound manuscripts. Especially when I think about classical Persian manuscripts, it felt foreign to see all these manuscripts, as my prior interactions with Persian manuscripts have only been through dispersed pages as is the norm in North America. I felt a need to mourn those manuscripts that have been ripped apart at the same time that I wanted to celebrate the British Library’s collections; and yet I knew that of Western Institutions, British museums are some of the worst perpetrators of harm in terms of acquisition policies that relied on imperial status. In many ways, it is impossible to reconcile those two aspects of awe and horror that I felt in seeing the exhibit on Alexander. It almost made me want to cry, asking whoever would listen to tell me who gave the British the right to own all these objects of cultural significance. Yet, even with this background knowledge, which I know is not something most museum goers have, I felt compelled by the magnitude of these collections to marvel in a more or less uncritical sense. In some ways, isn’t this what an Islamic artisan would want, that we marvel at their creation as a reflection of God’s magnificence? In other ways, it is also expressly what a Western museum would want, i.e. that we marvel at these images so as to appreciate the collection and curation such that our appreciation extends to the museum institution as a whole.
When I turn to the specific museum institutions we visited in London, each comes to reveal various aspects of this ethical question on museums. I want to first comment upon the British Museum, as that institution perhaps asks the question of museum ethics in its most acute form. As many comedians have come to say, the British Museum is perhaps the world’s biggest crime scene. It is astounding just how many objects they have in their collection, especially when we recognize just how many of these objects are not just merely exemplar works from various time periods and regions, but in fact some of the most valued objects in existence. The Elgin marbles perhaps comes first to mind for most who visit the museum and understand at least a bit of the looting history inherent to the museum’s founding. Yet, there is something very ethically different about Westerners looting from other Western nations than Westerners looting from non-Western regions as part of a colonial, imperial agenda. Therefore, although I understood the Greek plight at having their Parthenon divided and conquered, I could not help but feel a little bit like who cares, let the Western nations quibble amongst themselves, especially when it relates to the legacy of the Greeks and Romans. To me, the harm caused by the British looting of the falling Benin dynasty, for example, is an offense in need of much more discussion. The loss of the Benin Bronzes is not only a horrid example of the way Britain continues to use art institutions to present their world hegemony founded upon the theft of natural resources and labor from their colonies, but it demonstrates the total ridiculousness in the way museums claim that holding onto these objects of theft are important in the name of preservation. If preservation was so important to the British, they would not have destroyed all these nations in the name of economic expansion, and they certainly would not have taken the bronzes out of context, destroying the narrative of history those bronzes had presented. There is also a needed discussion on the museum’s display of iconic objects, such as those on the lower level as examples of Hindu and Buddhist artistry. However, for brevity’s sake, I will focus on the way the British Museum had a woefully small section for objects from the Islamic world. It did not help that the museum is set up like a labyrinth from hell that would make even the most invested scholars feel overwhelmed. It was chaos incarnate, and frankly quite disturbing to witness, as I had a creeping sensation that perhaps that chaos was meant to make the space less inviting for those that may level critiques against its agenda. But who knows, the British Museum curators would not act with such maliciousness, right?
Next, I want to speak about the Victoria and Albert museum, as they are well known for their Islamic collection. We had talked a lot in my Early Modern Islamic Art History course with Prof. Emine Fetvaci about the Victoria and Albert Museum. From class discussions, I most remember the massive rug as centerpiece – however, even after seeing photographs, I could never have imagined its immensity of size. It felt, in some ways, like a celebrity sighting – seeing all these objects that I had learned about in one capacity or another. It was interesting to note the way the V&A distinguished itself from the British Museum, as I felt I could palpably see that the V&A evolved from an ethos of collecting what the Victorian era considered curios more so than other museums I had visited. Perhaps it was the feverish state I feel we all found ourselves in by the time we visited the V&A, but I remember all the upper hallways full of ironwork that felt so jarring in comparison to the cast rooms with the biggest columns any of us had seen. Although there naturally was somewhat of a method to the madness, it truly felt quite disjointed and unorganized in theme. In some ways, that perhaps aided my comments on our department, when I found that we are in some ways area studies in disguise with the languages leftover after you take away African dialects, Classics, and Romance. Yet even our department has a stronger throughline than the V&A, though perhaps Prince Albert is supposed to be the one connecting string through it all. It was also disappointing to see that the Islamic wing at the museum put precedence on textiles over manuscripts, since I know the V&A has quite the diverse collection of manuscript pages, and such a display implies to the untutored viewer that there are simply less examples of manuscript work for the region.
Finally, I want to turn to the British Library, the raison d’être for our Atlantic journey. As a library first and foremost, it obviously has an entirely different agenda from the other two museums. Yet, its impressive collection of manuscripts rivals essentially, if not, all museums. It is especially insane to me, when I acknowledge that, as is the case with most modern museums, the British Library only shows a miniscule percentage of its collection at any one time. But other than just sheer awe at all the bound manuscripts they house, the true reason for all this was the Alexander the Great exhibit. It was truly a cross-cultural collaborative effort, integrating the Eastern narrative of Alexander for an audience that for the most part would only be familiar with the Western one. To a large extent, that integration was successful, not only in the way no room was solely from the Eastern or the Western worlds, but in the way all the texts together created the narrative the museum wanted to tell. Still, I think the museum should have perhaps done a bit more legwork in that area. Museums need to recognize their role in shaping the narrative of various cultures and time periods, and so the more explicit they are about the importance of something which has not been regarded as such in their home culture, such as the role of Alexander in the East. Nevertheless, it was a truly engaging experience and I can absolutely see the appeal of the curation for a wide range of audiences, including school children as we witnessed on our second trip there.