What does decolonial curatorial practice look like in a Global and Southeast Asian context?
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 12/10/2021

This event is part of the Decolonising Curating and the Museum in Southeast Asia lecture series.

Speaker:  Stephen A. Murphy (SOAS)
Discussant: Pattaratorn Chirapravati (California State University)
Chair: Conan Cheong (Asian Civilisations Museum)

Increasingly, there are calls worldwide to decolonise museums. This lecture discussed the key issues in this regard and explore initiatives that have attempted to decolonise curatorial practice in both a global and Southeast Asian context. Decolonisation can take many forms including, but not limited to, requests for culturally sensitive material to be re-displayed in a more appropriate manner or removed altogether, co-curation of exhibitions with source communities, restitution of human remains and looted material, to theoretical discussions on the frameworks of knowledge that museums are situated within and propagate.

Many museums in Southeast Asia have their origins in nineteenth and early twentieth century European colonialism and their collections and modes of curatorial display continue to reflect this to greater or lesser degrees. However, local forms of knowledge and ways of interacting with objects can and do exist side by side with this dominant western curatorial model. In recent years, there has been a greater acknowledgement of the problematic origins of colonial collections, the frameworks of knowledge under which museums operate, and how this is translated into methods of curatorial interpretation and display. This lecture, and the series as a whole, will thus explore what decolonial practice in a Southeast Asian context can and does look like.