Organizer: SOAS Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme and the Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore

Increasingly, there are calls worldwide to decolonize museums. This lecture will discuss the key issues in this regard and explore initiatives that have attempted to decolonize curatorial practice in both a global and Southeast Asian context. Decolonization can take many forms including, but not limited to, requests for culturally sensitive material to be re-displayed in a more appropriate manner or removed altogether, co-curation of exhibitions with source communities, restitution of human remains and looted material, to theoretical discussions on the frameworks of knowledge that museums are situated within and propagate.

Many museums in Southeast Asia have their origins in nineteenth and early twentieth century European colonialism and their collections and modes of curatorial display continue to reflect this to greater or lesser degrees. However, local forms of knowledge and ways of interacting with objects can and do exist side by side with this dominant western curatorial model. In recent years, there has been a greater acknowledgement of the problematic origins of colonial collections, the frameworks of knowledge under which museums operate, and how this is translated into methods of curatorial interpretation and display. This lecture, and the series as a whole, will thus explore what decolonial practice in a Southeast Asian context can and does look like.

Bios:

Stephen A. Murphy is Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art at SOAS University of London. He specialises in the art and archaeology of first millennium CE Buddhism and Hinduism in Southeast Asia and and looks at connections between this region and the wider Indian Ocean world. His museological focus engages with issues surrounding colonialism and post-colonial studies, and debates surrounding the decolonising of museums.

M.L. Pattaratorn Chirapravati is a professor at California State University, Sacramento, and former Director of the Asian Studies Program. She specialises in Buddhist art and Southeast Asian visual cultures. She has published extensively on ancient Buddhist art and modern Southeast Asian art. She co-curated two major art exhibitions at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco entitled The Kingdom of Siam: Art from Central Thailand (1530–1800) and Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam and Burma (1775–1950).

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