WTNTK: Africa - Ep. 11 Exhibiting Africa: The Politics of Museums

What Teachers Need to Know

Museums make the world of human creativity and expressiveness accessible to the public. It is through curation and display that museums play an important role in constructing meaning and understanding of Africa’s histories, societies, and belief systems. Throughout Europe and the United States, there are museums exhibiting material culture originating in Africa. Yet, the history of “exhibiting Africa” intersects with colonial exploitation and is fraught with problems. From theft and coercion to control over narrative formation, there are numerous critical questions that must be addressed in order to understand what is found in museums. In this episode, we examine the history of how African cultural products made their way into Western museums and discuss the politics and possibilities of reckoning with this history today.