Museums and art galleries should only display works that depict the history and culture of its own country, not the culture from other areas of the world. How far do you agree with this?

Museums and art galleries should only display works that depict the history and culture of its own country, not the culture from other areas of the world. How far do you agree with this?

Museums and art galleries have a very unique place in the cultural life of any society — they are not just custodians or history, but also the educators for generations to come, as well as help create bridges between cultures. Q: The argument that these institutions ought to limit their mission to the history and culture of their own nation — not engage with “world” (international) collections — speaks needfully into a world where social, economic and cultural borders are increasingly meaningless. I find this view at odds with my own, that sees the very best of museums and galleries as reflecting a strong commitment to our national heritage alongside an authentically global curatorial perspective.

There are aspects of the case for national cultural focus that are likely worth straight up admitting. Hence the worry in many countries, especially those towards the south of the globe rich in hitherto-marginalised cultural traditions, that their own indigenous or national heritage has suffered through a bias towards showcasing artforms from the West, or dominant international alternatives. In those situations, a conscious redirection of at least partial national cultural content governance is an important corrective: making certain that citizens can relate meaningfully to their own heritage and that home-grown forms of creativity gain institutional stature. Museums based on national pride can have a strong unifying or distorting effect in contexts where multiple post-colonial cultural identities are being contested.

But the argument for confining museums to national content only is finally unpersuasive and rests on an understanding of culture as static, bounded and self-sufficient which is both ahistorical and intellectually insipid. Human cultures have always cross-pollinated — centuries of trade, migration, conquest, diplomacy, and artistic exchange render the lines of national and international culture essentially permeable. An ancient Egyptian history museum that teaches about Egypt but does not teach about the great and lasting Greek, Roman, and Nubian influences on Egyptian civilisation presents a very limited and skewed story. The same goes for a gallery of European Renaissance art that leaves out the Islamic mathematics and philosophy that made the Renaissance possible in the first place, conveying an unrealistically isolated story of cultural progress.

Furthermore, museums and galleries fulfil an important educational role which goes beyond national identity formation. Exposure to the artistic traditions, religious practices, historical experiences and aesthetic values of other people helps develop the empathy, curiosity and intercultural competence that are becoming ever more necessary in a globalised society. The literature in cultural psychology supports data that repeated experience with diverse cultural perspectives leads to decreased prejudice, greater cognitive flexibility and improved quality of intercultural relations. This phenomenon explains, in part, why institutions that confine themselves to national content do not just impoverish their collections, but actively reduce their ability to live up to the larger educational mission.

There is a concrete aspect also to keep in mind. Some of the most revered museums in the world — the British Museum, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art — derive their stature from exactly how expansive and international their collections are. These provide millions of visits each year, bringing huge economic boosts to their local economies but also are some of the most effective tools for global diplomacy and international understanding. This dual function would be radically incompatible with a policy of national exclusion.

In summary, although I am enthusiastically in favour of efforts to ensure museums and galleries treat national cultural heritage with due prominence and resources, I vehemently oppose the idea that international collections should be off the table. The most valuable, educational and culturally rich institutions are the ones which place national heritage within a richly global context — one that shows linkages, exchanges, and common humanity that unite rather than divide the civilisations of this planet.