Museums as places for intercultural dialogue - Network of European ...

In the British context, however, the term “ethnic arts” is only appliedto what is created by those of non-European origin. The term alsosuggests that what they are creating is not “art,” to rate with the artof Europe, but “arts,” a humbler activity that deserves less seriousnotice, if indeed it deserves any notice at all. When the Arts Council,the Gulbenkian Foundation and the Community Relations Commissionsponsored a report entitled The Arts Britain Ignores, Rasheed Araeencommented that it is not that Britain ignores these arts, but that itrefuses to accept them.Kwesi Owusu commented that in seeking a solution to what is definedas the problem of ethnic arts, the report dealt with the huge historicalquestion of cultural domination and appropriation by proposingcommunication. But “communication” is not enough: there must berecognition. And it must be recognition that these arts are innovativeand dynamic. They must not be marginalised ‘by relegating them topast histories, as if they were some contemporary form of “primitiveart”.’Bibliographic referencesS. Amin, Eurocentrism, Zed Books, London, 1989.R. Araeen, Making myself visible, Karia Press, London, 1984.M. Bernal, Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, vol. 1, FreeAssociation Books, London, 1987.E. Iverson, Canon and Proportion in Egyptian Art, Aris & Phillips, Warminster, 1975.N. Khan, The Arts Britain Ignores – The arts of ethnic minorities in Britain, Arts Councilof Great Britain, 1976.C. McCarthy and O.W. Critchlow, Race Identity and Representation in Education,Routledge, London, 1993.K. Owusu, The Struggle for Black Arts in Britain, Comedia, London, 1986, p. 60.E. Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered”, in Race and Class, vol. XXVII, 2, 1986, p. 2.E. Said, Culture and Imperialism, Vintage, London, 1993.R. Taylor, Educating for Art: Critical Responses and Development, Longman, London,1986, pp. 107-33.A. J. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, Meridian, New York, 1958, p. 11.R. Williams, Culture and Society, 1780-1950, Chatto & Windus, London, 1958, p. 376.What we have to consider is how (to use Edward Said’s definition),‘the production of knowledge best serves communal as opposedto sectarian ends; how knowledge that is non-dominative and noncoercivecan be produced in a setting that is deeply inscribed with thepolitics, the considerations, the positions and the strategies of power.’The oppressed peoples of the world have continued to contributeto art. Modern art in Latin America, Asia and Africa is vibrant anddynamic. Their cultural systems are not frozen, nor do they have a fixedstatus. Educators and art historians need therefore to challenge themuteness imposed upon the artistic images of oppressed civilisations.Without working in a particularistic manner, specialist fields or discretedisciplines, educators should try to establish more progressive waysof interpreting other cultures and other arts. The first process theymay have to consider is to ‘unlearn,’ as Raymond Williams says, ‘theinherent dominative mode,’ avoiding the portrayal or the containmentof those outside the dominative framework, be they blacks, womenor “Orientals,” and letting “the other” speak for itself. This is not,however, an issue of “political correctness” or of relativism of Englishspeaking “multicultural policies,” but of redressing substantive historicalexclusions within world art.Thus, by developing ‘an oppositional critical consciousness,’ arthistorians and curators can not only assist in dismantling the mythicalnotions of the mysterious Orient, the uncivilised African, or the curiousAmerindian, but can also be asking fundamental questions aboutartistic endeavour at the human level as a whole, without being lockedinto the discourse of a single discipline. They can interrogate andchallenge what is normally taken for granted. And so, in learning fromthe artistic history of humanity as a holistic community, we may be ableto avoid the ‘seductive degradation of knowledge.’12 13