ART 327 - Colonial Pasts, Decolonial Futures: Museums and the Global South

This course will trace the histories of displaying and interpreting the art of South Asia from the nineteenth century to the present and explore new possibilities for curating South Asian art in the future. While focusing on shifts in the display of South Asian art, we will also interrogate the political and theoretical stakes of curating non-Western art more broadly. A study of the history of the museum from its colonial inception to its postcolonial iterations will foreground the ways in which museums were mobilized for imperial and nationalist aspirations in and beyond South Asia. We will examine key exhibitions including the 1984-85 “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art show at the MOMA, the 1985-86 Festival of India, and the 2014 Yoga exhibition at the Freer Sackler Museum. A speaking Shiva sculpture will open for us the arguments for and against the repatriation of stolen antiquities. We will conclude with a reflection on museums’ varying roles in the present and an invitation to imagine new ways to transform museums into spaces of diversity, inclusion, social justice, and anti-racism.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Prerequisite(s): ART 201
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Not offered: 2023-24
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).