Public programs facilitate dialogue between academics and professionals, informing scholarship and strengthening practice.
Multiple day conferences, year-long colloquia, individual lectures, “conversations” between individuals, hands-on workshops, and Museums at Noon talks featuring our graduate students all contribute to the remarkable richness of MSP offerings.
Video recordings of some MSP lectures are archived for viewing in our Media Gallery.
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Competing Interests: Examining Identity Politics in the Display of Ancient Egypt
November 30, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Competing Interests: Examining Identity Politics in the Display of Ancient Egypt
Heidi Hilliker, PhD student in Middle Eastern Studies
November 30 from 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Eldersveld Room, 5670 Haven Hall
In recent years, there has been a movement to decolonize Western museums, calling for a practice of self-reflection and transparency paired with a recognition of their Western-centric and criminal foundations. This has led institutions with collections of ancient Egyptian art and artifacts to revisit the ways in which they classify, interpret, and display their collections. These shifts in museum practice have revealed many competing interests, exposing the complex ways in which inclusion, identity, and ownership are deeply intertwined. I witnessed these competing interests first-hand this summer during my MSP internship when a new exhibition highlighting the influence of ancient Egypt and Nubia in contemporary black music debuted at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquity in Leiden, the Netherlands.
In this talk, I will discuss this and other curatorial and institutional case studies that reflect current trends and the complicated discourses developing from them. Additionally, I will consider the future of these movements and how they may affect museum practices.
