Thirteenth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Upon entering many Asian homes, you remove your shoes at the door and notice two very characteristic smells: freshly cooked food and the burning of incense. The experience of these smells are reminders of generativity and vitality of life in the present, while honoring those who have passed into the next life. The scents simultaneously come together in the air you breathe as you enter. In this same way, the bringing together of the past and present imagines a generative rebirth and recreation of arts and cultural spaces. The honoring of ancestors and the acknowledgment of present moment and history is part of a long cultural legacy often overlooked in twenty-first century museums. In this paper, I examine the innate connection of cultural workers and our ancestors. It investigates the impossibility of overlooking ancestral legacies in the contexts of art and culture museums and universities, as well as how legacies such as colonialism, racism, disenfranchisement, gentrification, and intergenerational trauma are upheld and maintained when unaddressed and unacknowledged. This study focuses on the embodiment of ancestral trauma in museum labor, the non-profit industrial complex, gentrification, land acknowledgments, and repatriation of objects. I also posit how the reflective and contemplative space within art and culture institutions can be compared to a temple or altar that have the potential to be disassociated with a colonial, canonical model from centuries past, and become spaces for healing and meditation when addressing past and present harm, in hopes of restoration in the present day.