ICOM International Council of Museums - International Institute for ...

History as a filter for contemporary experience is a useful way to think through theproblems of museums and history. For Western Australians, the dispossession ofindigenous people and their subsequent harmful treatment is a painful and on-goingpublic issue which is debated endlessly. Seemingly intractable contemporary issuesfor Aboriginal people have flowed from the colonisation process including endemicpoverty, cultural disruption, poor health and short life expectancy. It is clear that theseproblems are the results of the colonising process and some of these are covered inKatta Djinoong, for example, disproportionately high rates of imprisonment, but it couldhave been done more powerfully had the museum not distanced itself from colonialactions. Had the museum used its own role as one of the filters for analysing the issuesthen it could have produced a very strong statement about the filtered connectionbetween past and present. However, although the museum has tackled some of thedifficult issues and, indeed, reconsidered some of the myths of history, for example in“The Massacre of Pinjarra”, one of the overall meaning effects of Katta Dijoong is thatthe museum has not examined its own role in the production of history and, indeed,has pushed responsibility for history away from itself.As laudable as it is to have consulted Aboriginal people on the topics of the exhibitionand to have included their voices on each topic, it appears that the museum has simplychanged one interpretation of history to another - from a version which favoured thetechnological and cultural achievements of European ideas to one which focuses onthe suffering of dispossession. One interpretation thus replaces another withoutinterrogating the museological effects of the change.ConclusionMany museums have rethought their approaches to history in the light of the NewMuseology and this is reflected in changing exhibition styles and content, however, aninstitution never achieves a complex, sophisticated understanding of itself without selfanalysis.Examination of a small part of Katta Djinoong reveals on-going problems ofcuratorial articulation as the dramatic changes of dealing with different versions ofhistory seem to stand in for all necessary museum change. In the context of vigorousdebate in Australia about the colonising process, Katta Djinoong makes a significantcontribution by reassessing many aspects of previously hegemonic history, especiallyan episode such as “The Massacre of Pinjarra” which was presented to generations ofWestern Australian school children as a necessary event in the achievement of asecure society. The retelling of this clash at the museum must be very confronting forolder European Australians.The next task for museums is to examine the history, morality and politics of theircollecting and exhibiting processes in order to reveal their own roles in history.BibliographyBennett, Tony, Out of Which Past?: Critical Reflections on Australian Museum and Heritage Policy,Brisbane, Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith University, 1988Habermas, Jurgen, ‘Concerning the public use of history’, New German Critique, pp.40-50, 1988Griffiths, Tom, Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia, Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge, London and New York, Routledge,1992Horne, Donald The Great Museum: The Re-Presentation of History, London Pluto, 1984Macintyre, Stuart and Anna Clark, The History Wars, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 2003Reunion des Musees Nationaux, Dominique-Vivant Denon: L’oeil de Napoleon, Paris, Editions de laReunion des Musees Nationaux, 1999Riegel, Henrietta, ‘Into the heart of irony: ethnographnic exhibitions and the politics of difference’, inMacdonald, Sharon and Gordon Fyfe, (eds) Theorizing Museums, Oxford, Blackwell, 1996Vergo, Peter (ed.) The New Museology, London, Reaktion Books, 1989296