Contested Representations: Revisiting Into the Heart of Africa / Edition 1

by Shelley Butler

Overview

Contested Representations examines the controversy surrounding the Into the Heart of Africa exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto in 1989-90. The exhibition was meant to travel to the US and Canada, but four major museums cancelled their contracts due to its controversial nature.

With this richly textured account of the ways in which the exhibit became the site of an expansive-and explosive-discussion of representation, racism, and power, Butler asks why the exhibit failed for so many people. In the process she discusses issues of curatorial authority, institutional politics, legacies of colonialism, traditions of representing Africa, the politics of irony, and reflexive museology. The combination of race, postmodernism, colonialism, community activism, and heated debate still leaves the Into the Heart of Africa exhibit in a class by itself. It continues to be cited, debated, and used as reference points by Africanists, art historians, museologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians.

Originally published in 1994, this case study is now available in an affordable paperback edition with a new Foreword by Anthony Shelton (UBC Museum of Anthropology) and an Afterword by the author outlining recent ROM practices in relation to the Black community and in representing Africa.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551117775
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	09/01/2007
Series:	Teaching Culture: UTP Ethnographies for the Classroom
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Shelley Ruth Butler is an anthropologist and research fellow at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. She has written numerous articles on the politics of museum exhibitions and on tourism in South Africa.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword by Anthony Shelton

Acknowledgements

I. Entering the Debates

Reading the Royal Ontario Museum
Coming into the Field
Museum Ethnography
Looking Ahead
Final Notes on the Forum

II. Into the Heart of Africa and the Status Quo

The Status Quo
Toward a Reflexive Museology
Re-presenting Imperialism: A Personal Walk Through the Exhibit After the Fact
Museums Will Be Museums

III. Prelude to the Controversy

The Ambiguity of Irony
Power Relations and Public Culture
The Politics of Consultation

IV. The Coalition for the Truth about Africa: Strategies and Challenges

Performing Resistance
The Politics of Contestation
Experiences of "Otherness"
Democratizing Museums
A Counter Text: The CFTA Pamphlet
Contradictions of Resistance
Racism and Multiculturalism: Articulating a Contradiction

V. Various Positions: Responses to the Coalition for the Truth about Africa

Beyond Into the Heart of Africa
Authority at/of the ROM
Classroom Confrontations
Media Conclusions: Radicalizing the CFTA
The Academy and Complex Subject Positions
The Black Community: "Protest and Process"
Victims and Victimization
Other Voices at the ROM
Outcomes

Afterword: Canonizing an Exhibition, Renovating the ROM

Appendix: Coalition for the Truth about Africa Pamphlet

Notes

References

Index

What People are Saying About This

Jeffrey Feldman

A gold mine for teaching and the rarest of ethnographic studies, Butler's study carries us into the heart of one of the most divisive cultural firestorms to ever hit museums. The result is an insider's view of an exhibition as it shapes the lives of real people—forcing them to confront the legacy of colonialism and changing how they see the world and each other.

Ruth Phillips

Shelley Ruth Butler's meticulously researched case study helps us to understand why Into the Heart of Africa, the Royal Ontario Museum's attempt to deconstruct its own history of colonial collecting and exhibition, failed so disastrously—and also why the aftershocks of the bitter controversy that surrounded it continue to be felt throughout the international museum world. Butler's narrative makes for a gripping read, and it offers a sensitive and balanced analysis of the complex interaction of curatorial practice with race politics outside the museum and institutional politics within. This model study is a cautionary tale for those who produce public culture in our increasingly multicultural world. It should be required reading not only for students of museology, public history, and cultural studies but also for museum and heritage professionals.

From the Publisher

A gold mine for teaching and the rarest of ethnographic studies, Butler's study carries us into the heart of one of the most divisive cultural firestorms to ever hit museums. The result is an insider's view of an exhibition as it shapes the lives of real people—forcing them to confront the legacy of colonialism and changing how they see the world and each other.

Shelley Ruth Butler's meticulously researched case study helps us to understand why Into the Heart of Africa, the Royal Ontario Museum's attempt to deconstruct its own history of colonial collecting and exhibition, failed so disastrously—and also why the aftershocks of the bitter controversy that surrounded it continue to be felt throughout the international museum world. Butler's narrative makes for a gripping read, and it offers a sensitive and balanced analysis of the complex interaction of curatorial practice with race politics outside the museum and institutional politics within. This model study is a cautionary tale for those who produce public culture in our increasingly multicultural world. It should be required reading not only for students of museology, public history, and cultural studies but also for museum and heritage professionals.

Editorial Reviews

A gold mine for teaching and the rarest of ethnographic studies, Butler's study carries us into the heart of one of the most divisive cultural firestorms to ever hit museums. The result is an insider's view of an exhibition as it shapes the lives of real people-forcing them to confront the legacy of colonialism and changing how they see the world and each other.—Jeffrey Feldman, New York University
Shelley Ruth Butler's meticulously researched case study helps us to understand why Into the Heart of Africa, the Royal Ontario Museum's attempt to deconstruct its own history of colonial collecting and exhibition, failed so disastrously-and also why the aftershocks of the bitter controversy that surrounded it continue to be felt throughout the international museum world. Butler's narrative makes for a gripping read, and it offers a sensitive and balanced analysis of the complex interaction of curatorial practice with race politics outside the museum and institutional politics within. This model study is a cautionary tale for those who produce public culture in our increasingly multicultural world. It should be required reading not only for students of museology, public history, and cultural studies but also for museum and heritage professionals.—Ruth Phillips, Carleton University

From the Publisher