Universalism and the new museology: impacts on the ethics of authority and ownership

Abstract

The emergence of the new museum studies in the late twentieth century forged a rearticulation of museum ethics with respect to the prerogative of diverse stakeholders to claim authority and ownership of museum objects. Stemming in part from indigenous claims to collections, the incipient representational critique accepted (if critically) the ethical foundations of repatriation and shared authority. The recent Declaration of the Importance and Value of the Universal Museum, augmented by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah's discussions of cosmopolitanism, substantively contradicts this ethic by creating a divide between the universal and the local in the ownership of cultural property and the definition of knowledge. These ambiguities engender conflicting reactions in an author sympathetic to indigenous repatriation claims, but invested in museums as didactic and preservative sites. True to the claims of the universal museum, local claims to material culture do problematize the idea of the museum, but the ethical commitments to the representation of non-Western communities inherent to the new museum studies require it. This paper examines the intellectual foundations of this contradiction and the resulting impact upon the ethical collection and display of museum objects.

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