Decolonising the Museum: The Case of the Imperial and Commonwealth Institutes

摘要

This article investigates the relationship between museums and decolonisationin the under-examined middle years of the twentieth century (c. 1945-1970).Focusing on London's Imperial Institute and its successor, the CommonwealthInstitute, it argues that material culture and museums not only reflected widerpolitical change, but exercised agency on processes of decolonisation. Museumshelped multiple stakeholders in both metropole and (ex)colony to trial and enactforms of decolonisation, neo-colonialism, independence and anti-colonialresistance and acted as microcosms of wider political encounters: the practicesof display and acquisition allowed the subjects of a crumbling empire to retain asense of control over the process of decolonisation, but importantly they alsoprovided an arena for emerging powers from the former colonies to assert theirown agendas and forced staff at such institutions to take this influence seriously.Drawing on extensive archival material representing the perspectives of theInstitutes' staff and their contacts in decolonising countries across theCommonwealth, the tensions, collaborations and ambivalence inherent in therelationship between museums and the high politics of decolonisation areexplored