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.
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
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.
