Museum as a Space for Colonization and Decolonization and ‘What to Teach’

Museums, which began to become popular in Western Europe around the 19th century, have now been institutionalized and are still playing a role as a necessary space in society. However, the form is diversifying. Here lies reflection on the fact that previous museums justified colonization, and it is because of the efforts to come up with various alternatives for decolonization. The reflective museum captured the risks inherent in concepts such as “collection,” “exhibition,” and “viewing,” which were typical of museums. According to them, the concept of ‘collection’ made it an object of viewing, separating something from daily life and giving it a new meaning. ‘Exhibition’ embodies a sequential time progression of the past, present, and future through the arrangement of collections, and has aspects that made the world read in a structure of advanced and backward according to sequential temporalization. In this way, it is pointed out that the museum helped justify colonization. Accordingly, new types of museums have newly emerged concepts such as “community,” “echo,” and “living” as museum-related concept. In doing so, they sought ways to solve the problem of separation and objectification between the subject and the object, to reveal the locality by preventing separation from the local context, and to remember and deal with the past as a present problem. Through this concept, the meanings of “collection” and “exhibition” are being renewed, and at the same time, a decolonization museum with new contents and methods is being created.<br/> What can be understood from these examples is that when a museum creates historical knowledge with specific content and methods or presents a perspective and attitude toward life, the relevant concepts created by the museum and those make the museum exist play a role in determining its structure. Therefore, this study considered that in order for students to be able to read the work of the museum, that is, to have museum literacy, the meaning process of concepts related to museum exhibitions should be identified and analyzed based on them as ‘what to teach.’ This can help students examine what and how museums make and present knowledge, perspectives, and postures necessary for our lives from a more structural and meta perspective. Furthermore, if this is used as an analysis framework, it could lead to an opportunity for students to analyze museums everywhere on their own and raise new questions.