Fabricating a Nation: the Function of National Museums in Nonracial Re-Presentation and the National Imagination

Museum Management and Curatorship

ISSN: 0964-7775 (Print) 1872-9185 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmmc20

Fabricating a nation: the function of national museums in nonracial re-presentation and the national imagination

Sandra J. Schmidt

To cite this article: Sandra J. Schmidt (2013) Fabricating a nation: the function of national museums in nonracial re-presentation and the national imagination, Museum Management and Curatorship, 28:3, 288-306, DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2013.807995 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2013.807995

Published online: 17 Jul 2013.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 457

View related articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rmmc20

Download by: [Copyright Clearance Center] Date: 08 June 2017, At: 12:29 Museum Management and Curatorship, 2013 Vol. 28, No. 3, 288Á306, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2013.807995

Fabricating a nation: the function of national museums in nonracial re-presentation and the national imagination Sandra J. Schmidt*

Program in Social Studies Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA (Received 18 June 2012; ﬁnal version received 17 December 2012)

South Africa provides a contemporary example of a nation struggling to find and cohere a national imagination that is universally agreeable. In their effort to create a sense of self based on unity across difference, South African relies on museums to produce and spread this narrative. The success of the narrative and its adoption rely on decolonizing modern concepts of race, museum, and nation that perpetuated the apartheid agenda. This paper examines national museums in the country for their success in adopting pedagogy and curricula that break down racial structures and their location in the nation. The inquiry finds moments of promise Á a coexistence of narratives and refusals to cohere Á alongside moments of concern Á struggles to remove the deeply rooted race-based structures from society and museums. Keywords: nation-state; museum; pedagogy; public space

Introduction Museums have many meanings; each of us encounters this institution with different images and conceptions of museums. We may imagine an institution used to divide the world or as displaying images of memorial to provide moving encounters with difficult past events. We may recall encounters with artwork and cultural achievements we did not know existed. The meaning of ‘museum’ is contained by history but finding liberation in new approaches to curation and pedagogy. In the case of South Africa, the decision by the government to invest in museums is an interesting one. The nation is struggling to identify itself against a past of colonization, violence, and racial oppression. One challenge is how to remember and account for a traumatic past while employing a hopeful narrative in the present and future. The government employs language of difference, unity, democracy, and heritage as core ideologies associated with the new nation. To be adopted into the national imagination, these ideas must become more than words. They must be built into the symbols, landscape, and experiences of South Africa(ns). Museums have been designated as an essential institution in developing national identity. This paper looks critically at the implementation of the Department of Arts and Culture’s mission to create a nation ‘united in our diversity.’ Success is intim- ately affected by South Africa’s deconstruction of the discourse surrounding and experiences with the ideas of nation, race, and museum, concepts used

*Email: [email protected]

# 2013 Taylor & Francis Museum Management and Curatorship 289 interdependently to enforce apartheid society and structures. I explore the apartheid and postapartheid discourse surrounding these ideas to contextualize the inquiry. I then assess the location, curriculum, and pedagogy of the existing and newly constructed museums in serving their mission as nation-building, deracializing institutions in contemporary South Africa.

Nation and race divide apartheid South Africa Between 1948 and 1994, South Africa was governed by an apartheid ideology. Black South African encounters with domestic oppression began with the invasion of the Dutch in 1652. The arrival of British colonizers in 1795 created over 100 years of conflict between Boers1and Englishmen as to which white group colonized/ controlled South Africa. Although the Boers often identify themselves as the losers in this war, the real losers were black and native South Africans who were forced from their land and governed by different white ‘invaders.’ Independence from England in 1910 did not change the racial profile of the country as many white South Africans, having long resided there, set up permanent homesteads, and adopted identities as white South Africans, regarded this as their home. For 38 years, black (African) South Africans acquired some rights denied to them by the colonial regime but changes in the racial structures were limited. Any access to rights unraveled with the ascent of the largely Afrikaner National Party in 1948. They quickly enacted an apartheid policy built upon four principles:

First, the population of South Africa comprised four ‘racial groups’ Á White, Coloured, Indian, and African Á each with its own inherent culture. Second, Whites, as the civilized race, were entitled to have absolute control of the state. Third, white interests should prevail over black interests; the state was not obliged to provide equal facilities for the subordinate races. Fourth, the white racial group formed a single nation, with Afrikaans- and English-speaking components, while Africans belonged to several (eventually ten) distinct nation or potential nations. (Thompson 2000, 190)

The concepts of race (superiority) and nation were central to developing and maintaining the apartheid structure. Apartheid society was comprised of four racial groups, and individuals were classified as members of one group based upon embodied physical features, history, and geography and experienced society through race-group assignment. The belief that races had different mental, physical, and moral capacities generated a racial hierarchy. Intimate interaction across groups was forbidden and institutional divides limited substantive cross-race interaction in political, commercial, residential, and social spaces. Assignment of status and unequal allocation of resources turned the discourse of inferior and superior races into lived experience and justified apartheid policies. The adoption of nationalist discourse embedded racial distinctions in the geography of the country. The concept of the nation-state in this era reflected a shared commitment between people and their government:

A nation is a group of people with a perceived shared identity and attachment to particular parts of the land; a nation has a history and a geography. The state, on the other hand, is an administrative-political-spatial entity. (Short 1998, 33) 290 S.J. Schmidt

The state refers to the government that regulates peoples. The nation is a fabrication, a concocted narrative shared by the imagination of people (Anderson 1991; Cox 2002; Shapiro 2003). This collective sense is articulated when people distinguish themselves as ‘Australian,’ ‘Canadian,’ or ‘South African.’ Placing nation before state emphasizes contexts where people identify themselves collectively and consent to governance that maintains order within that society (Anderson 1991). This term described modern Europe where ethnic groups formed states and identities that differentiated groups and land on the continent (Boyce 1999; Connor 1978; Moodley and Adam 2000). National symbols, mottos, and languages were iterated discourses that linked people with their nation and produced nationalist allegiance. Apartheid South Africa may be thought of as a state-nation or context in which the state claims its citizenry and articulates the national imagination (Croucher 1998; Ma 1992). The apartheid government divided South Africa into 10 nations that drew boundaries around and between groups and aligned race groups with physical locations. Africans were (re)moved into distant ‘homelands’ where they were physically isolated from white South Africans. One outcome of this arrangement was that racial profiles were written into land (use). English and Afrikaner South Africans were given accessible land, natural resources that could be extracted for wealth, and farmland viable for producing wine. They presumed that Africans did not need ports or industry and were better equipped for areas where sustenance farming was feasible. The designation of nation was used intentionally to generate a coherent sensibility and unified social and political imagination of people within a nation, one that encouraged strong racial/ethnic identification. In these spaces, allegiance was to the homeland not to the African race. Given that Africans outnumbered whites, Indians, and coloreds combined, de-unifying African ethnic groups minimized the likelihood of unified resistance. A survey of museum history indicates their role in unifying nations and justifying the racial hierarchies that enabled colonialism. The process of curation is a process of inclusion/exclusion, categorization, and differentiation. One purpose of national museums is to allow visitors to see ‘us’/self as members of the nation. The inclusion and presentation of certain artifacts as representative of the nation share the correct way of being and belonging in the nation (Ashley 2005). A function of museums during colonialism and apartheid was to differentiate members of the nation-state from the others being colonized (Ashley 2005; Macdonald 2003). Most people could not travel to distant lands and museums were a means through which ‘travelers’ could ‘meet’ colonized peoples (Appadurai and Breckinridge 1999). As part of the justification of colonization of black and brown people, museums needed to display other races/peoples in a manner that substantiated the racial hierarchy. Scientifically constructed taxonomies cataloged race and divided cultural specimens (Coombes 1988; Macdonald and Silverstone 1999). Later, museums relied on culture storytelling rather than taxonomies (Macdonald and Silverstone 1999). While the outcome might have been somewhat different Á attaching different histories and identities to racial groups was less obviously hierarchical Á both systems differentiated self and other (deOleaga, Di Liscia, and Bohoslavsky 2011). Museums existed in South Africa prior to the apartheid era. Their colonial purposes and representations were useful to the apartheid administration. Africans were displayed as part of the premodern culture which whites were ‘correcting’ while white culture was revered in art museums, on plantation homes, and amidst scientific Museum Management and Curatorship 291 and intellectual development. This complicated intersection of race, nation, and museum highlights the difficult work to be done in South Africa in deconstructing the social structures of apartheid. Notions of race used to divide the country are deeply embedded in the institutions inherited by the postapartheid government.

Reorganizing race in the contemporary South African nation The postapartheid South African state must be legitimized by a formerly divided citizenry. In modern Europe, the nation served this function in signaling to the state how to adapt with social change. Critics question whether African ‘nations,’ born under colonial governments, are recognizable within a nation-state model. Colonial nations on the African continent, structured around land, forced together numerous ethnic groups. This structure divided people and increased dependency on the colonial regime (Brown 2001). Colonial nations were entities without an inter- dependent (hyphenated) relationship to the states that governed over them. The process describes decisions by the apartheid government in South Africa to divide the country into unique nations that prevented the formation of African alliances. The strength of the South African state was dependent upon divisiveness rather than coherence of identities. The formation/maintenance of a national identity, today, requires attending to the multicultural rather than monocultural identities of people bound by the state (Brown 2001; Degenaar 1994). Theorists, critical of the ability of the national concept to account for racial complexity, propose that South Africa integrates its people into a state but not a national imagination. These authors purport to build a democratic culture and sense of ‘constitutional patriotism’ (Degenaar 2000; Pieterse 2002). Rather than belonging through shared civic/social identity, constitutional patriotism measures belonging- ness through the actualization of citizenship rights and responsibilities (Boyce 1999). The activities of the citizen transcend cultural and ethnic identity (Degenaar 1994; Pieterse 2002). The release of culture from the political domain allows people to respect other cultures and coexist without asserting racial hierarchy or requesting that marginalized2 groups assimilate into a dominant culture (Pieterse 2002). This paradigm places racial groups side-by-side without proposing remedies to the racialism inherent in state structures. The South African government recognizes the need for racial transformation and agrees that a narrative of sameness will result in undesirable assimilation (Croucher 1998). They seek to unite national imagination around an identity that is multiracial:

One of the goals of nation-building in South Africa should be to achieve individual, group, or communal identification within an independent state. Nation-building as it has transpired in other post-colonial nations, as the assimilation of other ethnic groups to a dominant one, will fail in South Africa because ‘there is no single contender for the role’. This is in my opinion South Africa’s greatest advantage. (Boyce 1999, 236)

To achieve this, the African National Congress (ANC) has made a philosophy of nonracialism central to the diverse, but united state and the reallocation of resources and power. Nonracialism is not synonymous with color-blind. It is an assertion that society cannot be divided and organized by race (ANC 2001). It responds to a set of power relations in which one race was dominant and proclaims that no race is 292 S.J. Schmidt superior in the new South Africa. In effect, it deconstructs the way nation and race were used in the apartheid era. Can this sense of the nation become grounded in the imaginations and validated by people across ethnic groups while simultaneously producing faith in the state (Boyce 1999). Meiring is dubious: ‘The success of nation-building is also based on the democratic ideal of making the public feel that they are shapers of society and history and not mere bystanders or victims of social change’ (cited in Guyot and Seethal 2007, 4). A government-constructed narrative is difficult to instill in the imagination of the people. The intersection of national identity and nonracialization locates social change in institutions. Institutional change reinvents the symbolic landscape from which people draw their national imagination while indicating a commitment to structural and social change. Removing race from institutions, the ANC inherited, will be difficult. Race was thoroughly integrated into all aspects of society meaning that African and colored South Africans continue to have less access to power, wealth, and fundamental resources and infrastructures like education, running water, paved roads, etc. The state does not have the economic resources to remedy these problems quickly. Furthermore, political and economic redistribution may be read as a reversal of and threat to power rather than an attempt to redress race problems. The ANC has diverted monies to institutions that can reflect the desirable social relationship and political structure. The museum is one such type of institution. Recent museology produces paradigms for curation and pedagogy that may reimagine rather than reproduce racial consciousness. Critical consciousness around

representation and fluidity of identities and textual meaning have changed museology. The objectivity associated with museums, curation, and resulting exhibits is questioned. The politics of display and representation are increasingly critiqued and draw attention to the worldview of the curator (Bennett 1995; Trofanenko 2006b; Witcomb 2007). New museologists have challenged the pedagogical design and intentions of museums, accepting that visitors are affected by displays and use previous experiences in their meaning-making (Handler 1993; Huyssen 1995; Tofanenko 2006a, 2006b). This view of the visitor suggests that identity of the nation is not contained in the exhibit, but learned through engagement with it (Appadurai and Breckinridge 1999; Ashley 2005; Dean and Rider 2005). The curator may attempt to subvert, revert, or invert the gaze of the viewer between self and exhibit as one way of shaping experience with/learning from the exhibit (Bennett 1999). This understanding destabilizes knowledge. In national history museums, identity becomes fluid and hybrid (Davis 2007). Macdonald (2003) highlights the challenge of actualizing this instability given that objects and categories are used in the production of exhibits. Nation-states such as South Africa that struggle with how to represent ethnic diversity seek museums as potential spaces to destabilize representation. It accepts that museums are situated within overlapping communities of identity and politics. Noting that some groups will be overrepresented while others linger on the perimeter, new museology proposes attention to pedagogical practices within curated exhibits that allow participants to engage with rather than merely view difference (Davis 2007; Macdonald 2003; Witcomb 2007). They raise questions about what it means to construct and address difference: Museum Management and Curatorship 293

When we speak of difference, we are not just referring to what is different (the ‘other’ as a unity), but to the marks that this difference has left on what has happened, to the difference that allows history to be read from another place. When we speak of difference, we are talking about that diversity or otherness that displaces, examines, appeals to, and casts doubt upon the certainties of the individual, about her own self and about that that belongs to her. (deOleaga, Di Liscia, and Bohoslavsky 2011, 68)

One sense of difference that cannot be silenced in this endeavor is race. If nations are unified around difference, these authors suggest that curators give increased consideration to who belongs, how people belong, how the identity of a nation is to be represented and experienced in the museum (Ashley 2005; Davis 2007).

Decolonization as the missing link Critics of nationalism in South Africa and colonial representations in museums both cite a postmodern worldview as a way of expressing the limits of these constructs. Dismissing and replacing the existing constructs do not erase their presence in South African society. The word ‘nation’ is still uttered and museums are still passively toured. The concepts remain trapped not merely in modernity but in their attachment to colonial and apartheid discourses. Unless troubled, nations as units of exclusion remain exclusive; such usage is inherent in the writings of critics. They are trapped by the lingering worldviews that shaped colonialism (Blaut 1993). These ideologies are embedded in institutions and identities of the colonized and colonizer (Wa Thiong’o 1986) Decolonization attends to confronting, unpacking, and removing the apartheid ideology from the mindsets of people (Schmidt 2010; Subreenduth 2006; Wa Thiong’o 1986). The process of liberation requires transforming worldviews that privilege Western ways of knowing the world. Critiques of the nation adopt a Western epistemology for understanding government’s function in society (Blaut 1993; Subreenduth 2006). One must step outside to imagine other ways of knowing. The process of decolonization is one of shifting the discourse and positionality of central constructs. To reimagine race, we must redress the role of race in the nation and the positionality of race in museums. In the remainder of this paper, the theoretical framing from decolonizing practices is used to analyze how national museums in South Africa respond to critiques about the use of nation and the intentions of a new nation.

Investing in museums and investing in a nation In an effort to fuse the chasm between locational and racial groups at the dawn of a new South Africa, the leadership of the ANC took immediate action to solidify the nation, lest some groups choose not to recognize the transformed state. The organizing narrative of united through diversity accompanied by nonracialization policies was designed to dismantle the apartheid racial structure that organized the state, nations, and relationships between individuals and groups. The Department of Arts and Culture plays an important role in this objective as it is commissioned to create institutions that denounce racialism, celebrate resistance to apartheid, recognize the country’s multiple ethnic and racial groups, and promote democracy and human rights (ANC 1994). A major departmental undertaking was to design 294 S.J. Schmidt national museums that serve the agenda of heritage and culture. This involved adapting the existing museums and creating new museums. The analysis that follows uses decolonizing theory in conjunction with nonracialism to examine the location, content, and pedagogy of the museums. While all museums play a role in constructing the nation, I propose that the intention of history and cultural museums make them more relevant to and richer data for this discussion. It is also of value to differentiate between museums that existed during apartheid and those constructed postapartheid. While both rethink the practice/power of museology in general, apartheid era museums must also contend with their role in oppressive racial hierarchies. This section separates a discussion of how the notions of nation, race, and museum emerge and function into three threads. The first focuses on the physical landscape produced by the intersection of typology and location. The second examines how the existing museums have been (re?)signified for the postapartheid era. The last seeks to understand how new museums have shaped the terrain of race and museum in South Africa.

A landscape of South African museums Theories of decolonization and nonracialism emphasize identity politics and social structures. Spatial analysis is missing and yet landscapes constructed to reflect racial hierarchies, create difference, and limit/encourage types of interaction were critical to apartheid policies. The Department of Art and Culture inherited many museums. The process of incorporating these and creating new ones developed two paths for recognition as national museums. The Ditsong Museums in Tshwane3 and the Iziko Museums in Cape Town are amalgamations of museums, united to educate the public around their transformative mission. Thirteen individual museums are spread across the country. Maps 1 and 2 place locations of national museums alongside an apartheid map of South Africa. It is accompanied by Table 1 which names the typology and founding date of each museum. National museums are predominantly located in areas occupied by whites during apartheid. This largely reflects the transformation of the existing museums whose target audiences were white South Africans and international visitors. Even though urban areas were racially diverse, they were intensely segregated. The exceptions, museums located in KwaDakuza, Pietermaritzburg, and Mthatha, are recently constructed. Most museums do not have ‘national’ in their title because their designs reflect local persons, events, and culture. Bloemfontein and Kimberley were significant sites of colonial conflicts between Boers and English-whites, a theme reflected in their museums. Both cities contained concentration camps for Boer women and children. Tshwane and Bloemfontein, where most ‘national’ museums are located, were administrative capitals during apartheid and retain this distinction. There is racial symbolism in the allocation of museums. The relationship between what and who of museums and their location produces a map of racial patterns.4 The addition of the Nelson Mandela and Luthuli Museums to the existing landscape reaffirms the blackness of these locations. The absence of museums in large swaths of the country raises questions about lives worthy enough to be represented in museums. Natural history museums strongly reflect this concern. Natural history museums are located in Pietermaritzburg, Bloemfontein, and Cape Town, racially segregated but diverse urban areas far distances from where artifacts were collected. These museums Museum Management and Curatorship 295

Figure 1. National museums in South Africa. Key: Cities with pre-1994 museums. Cities with pre-1994 and post-apartheid museums. Cities with post-partheid museums. Source: http://d-maps.com/carte.php?num_car=4417&lang=en present animal and plant origins and systems and also contain cultural artifacts of premodern people. The human artifacts displayed in these museums largely come from the Northern Cape or Northern Province. Such archeological remains are the only representations of many ethnic groups in national museums, retaining a premodern identity of African groups in these areas that is set in stark contrast to the modern ways of their urban visitors. The spatial divide and dislocation perpetuates notions of racial inferiority. The absence of alternative narratives in the landscape of contemporary museums undermines the nonracial intentions of the department. Apartheid museums were predominantly only accessible to white South Africans. If the concept of museums is to be decolonized, one manner of change must be the target audiences. The limited location of the museums means that much of the country, largely African, do not have access to the museums. Museums that highlight African experiences are located outside of white populations and major urban areas. Mthatha is accessible, but is distant from white and Indian areas of the country; Robben Island requires a ferry ride. Locational issues suggest a continuation of the functions of museums in the country; they divide people based on who might be 296 S.J. Schmidt

Figure 2. Black homelands during apartheid.

Table 1. Typology and date of national museums in South Africa.

Location Museum Year Type

Bloemfontein National Museum 1877 Natural History Culture Art Bloemfontein War Museum of the Boer Republics History Cape Town Iziko Museums Bertram House 1903 History Bo-Kaap Museum 1978 History Groot Constantia History Koopmans-de wet house 1914 History Maritime Center Commerce Michaelis Collection 1914 Art Planetarium Natural Science Rust en Vreugd 1965 Art SAS Somerset 1988 Maritime Slave Lodge 1998 History Social History 2010 History South African Museum 1825 Natural History Cape Town Robben Island Museum 1999 History Grahamstown National English Literacy Museum 1972 Language Kimberly William Humphreys Art Gallery 1952 Art Museum Management and Curatorship 297

Table 1 (Continued )

Location Museum Year Type KwaDukuza Luthuli Museum 2004 History Mthatha and Qunu Nelson Mandela Museum 2000 History Paarl Afrikaanse Taalmuseum (Afrikaans 1969 Language Language Museum) Pietermaritzburg Natal Museum Natural History Cultural History Pietermaritzburg Msunduzi Complex Voortrekker Museum 1912 History Ncome Museum 1990s History Tshwane/Pretoria Engelenburg House Art Collection Art Tshwane/Pretoria DITSONG Museums National Museum of Natural History 1892 National History National Museum of Cultural History Cultural History National Museum of Military History 1947 History Pioneer Museum History Sammy Marks Museum 1986 History Tswaing Meteorite Crater Natural Science Kruger Museum History Willem Prinsloo Agricultural Museum History Tshwane/Pretoria Freedom Park 2001 (incomplete) Cultural deemed a visitor. This is complicated by museums that have traveling exhibits carried into areas where museum learning was not previously available. It takes museums to the people in an effort to transform both what a museum looks like (it is removed from an architectural structure) and the audience. It intensifies the educational and democratic messages of these museums. If the potency of apartheid policies rests in how they structured the national landscape to represent racial beliefs, then this section highlights the dangers in the decisions about what to call a national museum, who to represent in such museums, and where to locate the museums. The following sections look closely at what happens in these museums.

Symbols of race in existing museums Pre-1994 museums intentionally functioned to present knowledge about self and other that justified an imperial (and racial) worldview. They assumed various roles in unification and some have acquired new names in efforts to recognize black heritage in the nation (Guyot and Seethal 2007). They are incorporated into an institution with different intentions. This section looks at the curricula of cultural and historical museums, curricula commonly framed as counter to narratives of democracy and 298 S.J. Schmidt cohesion. This section considers them within a national/holistic framework and the lens of decolonization. Many existing museums showcase the grand achievements of white South Africans. The permanent exhibits reflect little change to the content of these spaces. The Ditsong and Iziko Museums have acquired homes of British or Boer families that made significant artistic, industrial, or political contributions. The exhibits reproduce particular eras in South African history. The Ditsong Museums include the Pioneer Museum which resurrects life on the nineteenth-century frontiers, the Sammy Marks Museum which showcases life in a European treasure-filled Victorian era mansion, and Paul Kruger’s House with original furnishings, letters, and medals. Kruger was a Boer leader and president of Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. The Iziko Museums include similar homes: the private art collection of William Fehr is housed in the former home of Willem Cornelius Boers, the Koopmans-De Wet House is of neoclassical architecture and houses extravagant silver and furniture, and the Bertram House is a maintained nineteenth-century home that emphasizes the lifestyles and attire of women. Unlike the Ditsong Museums, African and Malay people are represented in the Iziko Museums for the role of their slave labor in the Cape economy and lifestyle. The Groot Constantia Museum places together the lives of Boers, Africans, and Malay peoples in depicting winery estate life in the late 1700s/early 1800s. The Bo- Kaap Museum is devoted to Muslim life in South Africa. Similar to the white houses, it celebrates the lives of Muslim families following the end of slavery in the Cape and tracks the lives and culture of Muslims in the Cape of South Africa today. Two national museums are dedicated to upholding languages. The Afrikaanse Taalmuseum is a celebration of the Afrikaans language, a language its speakers fear will be lost amidst the dominance of English and African languages. The National English Literacy Museum celebrates English through the accomplishments of its masters. There are no comparable museums for any of the nine recognized African languages or less common ones at risk of evaporating. Museums use a history of conflict between the British and Boers to trouble war and portray a peaceful present. The War Museum shares the context and events of the Anglo-Boer War. The memorial and dioramas depict lives of women and children in concentration camps and men captured as prisoners of war. The vision of the museum intends to share ‘the message that negotiation is preferable to war.’ This is in stark contrast to the museums that highlight, protect, and honor lifestyles of English and Boer peoples in South Africa. These museums perpetuate the idea that English and Boer life are remarkable and worth preserving. There are no museums for African, Indian, and Malay people that attach comparable value to their lives. The lives of black people remain in the cultural history exhibits. Visitors to the Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg can explore 10 rooms of cultural history, each displaying an ethnic group and their premodern ways of life and then view a final cultural exhibit Á a civilized street from the Victorian era. Visitors can tour a street with shops or step into a cave. There is a stark contrast between these ways of life and the sense of civilization. A similar issue arises in the National Museum in Bloemfontein which displays cultural and natural history. There are four exhibits Á animals, geology, premodern and prehistoric African cultures, and the modern, white, developed city of Bloemfontein. The images of the ordinary life of ‘people’ in the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century contain Museum Management and Curatorship 299 only white persons with the exception of a lone black woman sitting sadly in front of a store. The culture of Africans is valued to the extent that it was brilliant in the long ago past. Recent histories hold limited representations and contributions of black/ African and Indian. Thus far, the description and analysis of each museum has been written, and likely consumed, as concrete narratives. The stories of past and present they tell are largely those of the oppressors/victors in South Africa. At first glance, these museums retain the tradition of putting cultures on display and allowing passive interaction, a process that relies on notions of racialism wherein white South Africans hold an elevated social position. Their architecture, content, and geography enable this hierarchy to remain unquestioned. They appear and can be read as static. Across the racialized past/present of many museums, the Department of Arts and Culture has laid a curriculum of disjuncture. Temporary displays highlighting African lives and stories of resistance bring the contemporary mission of nonracialization into these historic sites. The Groot Constantia Museum displays the legacy of slavery in the era/area while detailing life on a winery. An exhibition of San artifacts is on display at the Bertram House. The Bo-Kaap House depicts Muslim life, but adopts a social justice stance highlighted through displays on women and social justice advocacy. The old Slave Lodge largely exhibits art from China and Egypt, but visitors view these while learning about and walking through the horrendous conditions of slavery. Such exhibits emphasize the long history and deep roots of racial discrimination in the country. While the intersections are not substantial, these moments of disjuncture are important. The plethora of stories and

contested images give reason for pause. Visitors cannot help but feel the contrast between images of slaves and the wealthy estate owner or between San artifacts and imported china. These disruptions serve important pedagogical purpose in allowing encounters with an other. Individually, these museums may be perceived as painful reminders of an unjust past that tug at social cohesion but they were not intended to be experienced individually. The network of national museums collectively represents the narrative of difference. The mission of the Iziko Museums illuminates the words spread across the department’s sense of purpose:

‘Iziko’ is an isiXhosa word, meaning ‘a hearth’. Since the hearth of a typical African homestead usually occupies the central space, Iziko symbolises both a hub of cultural activity, and a central place for gathering together South Africa’s diverse heritage. (Iziko Museums 2012)

The decision to have multiple museums may have the effect of racial differentiation but the design is intended to support a national narrative that refuses singular identity. Claiming a multiplicity of cultures and languages is symbolic of the claim for a multilingual and multicultural nation. Diverse museums can cohere into a national collection while diverse peoples cohere into a unified nation. Is claiming that every group has a relevant culture and history sufficient for deconstructing racial hierarchy and ‘oppressive’ relationships between groups? If we take seriously the language of nonracialization, the demands of decolonization, and the moments of disjuncture lose their sheen of change and hope. These museums are representations of the nation and the manner in which race is still largely implanted 300 S.J. Schmidt within and across the museums elevates the high culture of white South Africans and allows black culture to be gazed upon as other. This statement is given added strength when we consider location/anticipated visitors alongside their curricula. The boundaries around and between races become reified. Even though black South Africans have significant political influence, the sociocultural structures have not been displaced or altered; blacks remain marginalized with the white narrative of society. The fears of white South Africans that the museums will erase their lifestyles and language in the new nation are not realized.

Pedagogical shifts in post-apartheid museums Since 1994, five new museums have joined with transformed, existing museums to produce a collection of national museums. The recent museums differ significantly in their use of artifacts, space for education, and pedagogical intentions. The employ- ment of critical museology practices allows confrontation with past racialism. Two museums are dedicated to lives of famous black leaders Á the Nelson Mandela Museum located in Mthatha and his childhood home in Qunu and the Chief Luthuli Museum in KwaDukuza Á who embraced the rainbow nation. These museums display few artifacts but open their spaces as community and educational centers. Their pedagogy and purposes are distinct from the existing museums; they de- emphasize knowledge about something or someone and emphasize the education of new leaders utilizing the legacies of two men who fought to achieve the nonracial state of today. These museums, likely mistaken as traditional based on name and architecture, reflect a break in the signification of museum and the knowledge produced/acquired therein. Different interruptions are explored through the remaining new museums. The Voortrekker Complex in Pietermaritzburg attempts to embody the idea that history lacks a single truth. The complex commemorates a bloody battle between Voortrekkers and Zulus. The museum could attempt an objective rendering of the battle and the philosophies that bred conflict but the site chooses not to merge the sides into a rational story. Instead, the complex houses multiple museums dedicated to remembering different stories:

The Ncome-Blood River heritage site is probably one of the most unique battlefields in South Africa. The site witnessed a major battle between the Voortrekkers and amaZulu on 16 December 1838, and is named after the nearby river known as ‘Ncome’ in isiZulu and ‘Bloedrivier’ in Afrikaans. The site is unique in that it has two museums in close proximity re-interpreting the same events. Visitors are therefore exposed to different interpretations and points of view. (Ncome Museum 2011)

The museums are situated at the site of the battle. On one side of the river is the Bloedrivier (Blood River) memorial to the Boers. The site reproduces the scene at the moment of attack. East of the river are the Ncome and Voortrekker Museums. The Ncome Museum is a Zulu heritage site that uses Zulu architecture to house exhibits explaining the circumstances that led to battle and the impact of lost Zulu lives. The Voortrekker Museum puts Voortrekker culture on display alongside narratives of struggle and democracy. The ‘Seven Days War’ and ‘Church of the Vow’ explain Voortrekker experience in the attacks. The History of Pietermaritzburg Museum Management and Curatorship 301 offers a multicultural telling of how the city came to be and ‘The Birth of Democracy’ highlights the struggle of black South Africans to end apartheid. Boer and Zulus peoples rarely coexisted peacefully. Their adjacent representation here is symbolic of the unity envisioned in the new South Africa. This museum complex tackles the complicated task of allowing competing histories to exist. Another interruption is an emphasis on pedagogical experience over content. Rather than being spaces to learn about something, museums are ways of reflecting upon the past as a means of creating something different for the present. Robben Island, the island on which Nelson Mandela and other apartheid resistors were imprisoned for 27 years, embodies the desire to place the past and present into conversation:

While we will not forget the brutality of apartheid, we will not want Robben Island to be a monument of our hardship and suffering. We would want it to be a triumph of the human spirit against small minds and pettiness, a triumph of courage and determination over human frailty and weakness, a triumph of the new South African over the old. (Robben Island Museum 2008)

The Robben Island Museum has few artifacts or formal exhibits. Instead, the island and its spaces of oppression are accessible to tourists. Visitors begin with a 7-km boat ride to the island, a reminder of the distance at which prisoners and lepers were kept from other South Africans. On the island, one can (re)live the experience of imprisonment by sitting in Nelson Mandela’s cell and walking in the quarry where he and his peers labored. Former prisoners guide tours and share stories of isolation and hardship. The only traditional exhibit is of lepers, the insane, and prisoners of war who were quarantined here at different times. A church, seemingly a place of compassion, displays narratives, letters, and photos of separation and margin- alization which speak to a long history of oppression and intolerance. New buildings contain common spaces, a library, and dorms where people come together to develop curriculum and participate in leadership camps and other programs that support economic development and democracy. Seating areas near the dock encourage interaction among visitors. These are critical moments in the celebration of difference as a stable condition. A final interruption is reflected in Freedom Park in Tshwane. This museum is designed to allow physical encounters with peaceful coexistence while encouraging contemplation, reflection, and healing in the construction of a desirable South Africa. The park is adjacent to the Voortrekker Monument, which is either a memorial to the surprise attack by the Zulus at Blood River or a distasteful commemoration of the loss of 3000 Zulu lives. Freedom Park is designed to celebrate the opposite: ‘Freedom Park stands as a monument to democracy, which was founded on the values of human dignity, rights, and freedoms.’ It celebrates South Africa wherein peaceful coexistence has emerged from a tumultuous past. Elements of the park include a resting place for spirits, a war memorial, a stage for storytelling, a garden for meditation and contemplation, and a body of water symbolizing serenity. Linking together the elements is a path designed as a space for reflection while people travel between experiences. The space for people to engage with themselves and others is essential to the museum’s purpose. The experience is not 302 S.J. Schmidt about content; a narrative display and an archive are the only points of curriculum about the country and its past. Instead, the pedagogy is designed such that people are reminded of the concepts and asked to engage personally with them and locate/ commit themselves to the present. These last three museums are not easily recognizable as museums. They disrupt the fixedness of representation and identity often associated with museums by devaluing ‘objects,’ embracing pedagogy of experience, creating space for civic development, and encouraging reflection upon objectification and social structure. They value contemplation as key to understanding and meaning-making. Most importantly, these museums refuse the colonial project of teaching about and representing the other. In contrast to other museums, they are designed to decolonize South Africa, free the minds of people, and allow difference to sit peacefully. This has implications for the other concepts this paper interrogates. These museums embody the idea that multiple stories of past and of self can belong to the narrative of South Africa. Efforts to bring together a diverse range of national museums and to refuse one museum as the national museum speak to a willingness to live in diversity. Colonial homes, sites of oppression, and language museums are all part of South Africa. Different ways of being and of remembering coexist without need for resolution. The newer museums participate in nonracialism by allowing groups to sit together without objectifying or privileging one race, at least not through the content. The geographic distance and entry costs limit who can visit museums, creating an otheredness inherent in the existence of the museums but not their representation. These new museums create moments of hope for what it might mean to place colonial concepts into the ruins and perform them differently in the present.

Fabricating a nation Nations are fabrications requiring shared imagination. If we consider the fabric of the nation rather than the resulting fabrication, we must ask what constitutes fabric. Fabric is made of various threads woven together in such that they are essential to the beauty of the whole but not invisible. South Africa faces a daunting task in changing a violent and exclusionary past into an inclusive and harmonious present. The task is not unlike that of countries trying to create a sense of self in the postmodern world where identities increasingly refuse signification. The task of becoming is further complicated by people and countries struggling to decolonize race- and place-based social hierarchies engrained in the consciousness of people and the country. The paradigms utilized to unify people under and around the state are modern constructs that stabilized colonial structures. There are few models to expand the imagination of state-building without mobilizing a nationalist identification. Long-standing nation-states in Europe and Asia cohere around a dominant ethnic group. Heterogeneous countries in North America are scrutinized for their nationalist claims because assimilationist ideologies create cohesion. Resistance by excluded groups reflects the difficulty of this effort. South Africa asks, can a nation be unified through difference? Croucher (1998) argues that social constructs need a focal point. What happens when the focal point of the ‘nation’ becomes difference rather than sameness and simultaneously belonging rather than exclusion? This focal point contains a Museum Management and Curatorship 303 decolonizing ideology that confronts the institutions and narratives of colonization and racial hierarchy. Early critics of the nation as a tool of oppression represented the margins. In South Africa, writers making a comparable claim belong to groups displaced from power in the overturn of apartheid. Under apartheid, the national identity rested on elevating white as a superior race and African as inferior. If South African identity organizes around African identity and others are asked to belong, assimilate, or withdraw, can white South Africans ever identify as African or is such an epistemological shift around racial hierarchies unimaginable. The claims of the ANC and its actions as an inclusive rather than race-based party suggest that they are disinterested in creating a new racial hierarchy or embracing assimilationist values (Price 1997). People have been displaced but not replaced. Realizing this requires a discursive shift around the construct of a nation, a shift that relies upon changing epistemologies and releasing the nation from racial ideologies that demanded distinct apartheid nations. Western ideology and philosophers propose that civic and cultural citizenship are distinct (Degenaar 1994; Habermas 1996); different African epistemologies integrate human culture and civic society through philosophies such as cosmopolitanism and ubuntu (Appiah 2006; Degenaar 2000). Museums play an important role in shifting the discourse of the nation, displacing racial hierarchies, and making way for a nonracial society in which people see themselves with and in one another. The review of South Africa’s museums indicates moments of de-signification and re-signification of race and nation. The symbolism of the nation and its racial profile are changing faster than the landscape in which they are embedded. Weaving a nation is more complex than weaving a piece of cloth with different colored threads. The nation holds threads not just of different colors but different lengths and textures which would test the skill of even the best seamstress. But with the continued threat to the existence of the nation and people’s engagement with one another across race, we must examine what it might take to use these threads together. Rather than trying to fuse them, something useable can be made with the unique pieces. This is what South Africa is trying to accomplish through museums. The Department of Arts and Culture is assertive about the role museums play in remembering the past and building the present. The diversity in and contestation among these museums reflects the national narrative. The nation welcomes this and encourages museums to be spaces for public scrutiny and dialogs that deconstruct the tumultuous past. I do not want to presume these museums are perfect; implementing a mission is more difficult than writing it. Although critics are concerned that nonracial policy has not been actualized, this shortcoming may be a strength of museums. The raced ideologies woven through the museums, and thus the nation does not conform. Difference truly coexists as narrative. Theorists contend that nations will thrive when people can evaluate decisions based upon the interest of the whole rather than being constrained by group or self-interest. These museums in their choices of pedagogy, content, and activity provide promising ways to envision interaction that builds trust in one another through knowledge about the self and other. Perhaps other nations can learn about their own strangers within from the lessons in these museums. 304 S.J. Schmidt

Notes 1. I have chosen to use Boer in the eighteenth- through twentieth-century South African history to distinguish an Afrikaner subgroup who left the Cape settlements and encountered the British in their Western migrations. 2. The theorists proposing this are white South Africans who identify themselves as members of marginalized groups. This is contentious since they still hold most of the economic, cultural, and intellectual capital in South Africa. 3. I have chosen to use the name Tshwane to reflect the metropolitan area in Gauteng Province and the city of Pretoria. The official renaming of Pretoria to a noncolonial name is contested and under regular review. Given the support of decolonization as a principle in this manuscript, I reflect that in my decisions around names such as Tshwane. 4. There are many local museums also affiliated with the Department of Arts and Culture. I show in this paper that museums often reflect local character, but local museums are envisioned and developed locally. Mapping these alongside national museums would provide stronger evidence of the racial landscape produced by museums.

Notes on contributor Sandra Schmidt is an assistant professor of Social Studies Education in the Program of Social Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests include critical geography, citizenship and democracy, and public space. Both her teaching and research are informed by postcolonial, feminist, and queer theories. These frameworks question how knowledge and research position researchers, subjects, and students in particular manners and to question how structures and institutions affect the imaginations of space and discourse.

References

African National Congress. 1994. ‘‘Department of Arts and Culture: Draft National Cultural Policy.’’ http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id269. African National Congress. 2001. Non-racialism in Action: Acknowledging the Past, Changing the Present, Building the Future. Report presented at the World Conference against Racism NGO Forum, Durban. Anderson, B. R. O. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reﬂections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso. Appadurai, A., and C. A. Breckinridge. 1999. ‘‘Museums are Good to Think: Heritage on View in India.’’ In Representing the Nation: A Reader: Histories, Heritage and Museums, edited by D. Boswell and J. Evans, 404Á420. New York: Routledge. Appiah, K. A. 2006. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W. W. Norton. Ashley, S. 2005. ‘‘State Authority and the Public Sphere: Ideas on the Changing Role of the Museum as a Canadian Social Institution.’’ Museum and Society 3 (1): 5Á17. http://www2. le.ac.uk/departments/museumstudies/museumsociety/documents/volumes/ashley.pdf. Bennett, T. 1995. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. New York: Routledge. Bennett, T. 1999. ‘‘Useful Culture.’’ In Representing the Nation: A Reader: Histories, Heritage and Museums, edited by D. Boswell and J. Evans, 380Á393. New York: Routledge. Blaut, J. M. 1993. The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New York: Guilford Press. Boyce, B. P. 1999. ‘‘Nation-building Discourse in a Democracy.’’ In National Identity and Democracy in Africa, edited by M. Palmberg, 231Á243. Cape Town: Capture Press. Brown, D. 2001. ‘‘National Belonging and Cultural Difference: South Africa and the Global Imaginary.’’ Journal of Southern African Studies 27 (4): 757Á769. doi:10.1080/03057070 120090727. Connor, W. 1978. ‘‘A Nation is a Nation, is a State, is an Ethnic Group is a ....’’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 1 (4): 377Á400. doi:10.1080/01419870.1978.9993240. Museum Management and Curatorship 305

Coombes, A. E. 1988. ‘‘Museums and the Formation of National and Cultural Identities.’’ Oxford Art Journal 11 (2): 57Á68. doi:10.1093/oxartj/11.2.57. Cox, K. R. 2002. Political Geography: Territory, State, and Society. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. doi:10.1002/9780470693629. Croucher, S. 1998. ‘‘South Africa’s Illegal Aliens: Constructing National Boundaries in a Post- apartheid State.’’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (4): 639Á660. doi:10.1080/014198798329801. Davis, P. 2007. ‘‘Museums, Identity and Community.’’ In Museums and their Communities, edited by S. Watson, 53Á75. New York: Routledge. Dean, D., and P. E. Rider. 2005. ‘‘Museums, Nation and Political History in the Australian National Museum and the Canadian Museum of Civilization.’’ Museum and Society 3 (1): 35Á50. http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/museumstudies/museumsociety/documents/volumes/ deanrider.pdf. Degenaar, J. 2000. ‘‘Multiculturalism: How Can the Human World Live its Difference?’’ In Race and Reconstruction in South Africa, edited by W. E. V. Vugt and G. D. Cloete, 155Á170. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Degenaar, J. 1994. ‘‘Beware of Nation-building Discourse.’’ In Democratic Nation-building in South Africa, edited by N. Rhoodie and I. Liebenberg, 23Á30. Pretoria: HSRC Publishers. deOleaga, M. G., M. S. Di Liscia, and E. Bohoslavsky. 2011. ‘‘Looking from Above: Saying and Doing History Museums of Latin America.’’ Museum and Society 9 (1): 49Á76. http:// www2.le.ac.uk/departments/museumstudies/museumsociety/documents/volumes/oleaga-1.pdf. Guyot, S., and C. Seethal. 2007. ‘‘Identity of Place, Places of Identities: Change of Place Names in Post-apartheid South Africa.’’ South African Geographical Journal 89 (1): 55Á63. doi:10.1080/03736245.2007.9713873. Habermas, J. 1996. Between Facts and Norms. Boston, MA: MIT Press. Handler, R. 1993. ‘‘An Anthropological Deﬁnition of the Museum and Its Purpose.’’ Museum Anthropology 17 (1): 33Á36. doi:10.1525/mua.1993.17.1.33. Huyssen, A. 1995. Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. New York: Routledge.

Ma, S.-Y. 1992. ‘‘Nationalism: State-Building or State-Destroying?’’ The Social Science Journal 29 (3): 293Á305. doi:10.1016/0362-3319(92)90023-B. Macdonald, S., and R. Silverstone. 1999. ‘‘Rewriting the Museums’ Fictions: Taxonomies, Stories and Readers.’’ In Representing the Nation: A Reader: Histories, Heritage and Museums, edited by D. Boswell and J. Evans, 421Á434. New York: Routledge. Macdonald, S. 2003. ‘‘Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities.’’ Museum and Society 1 (1): 1Á16. http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/museumstudies/ museumsociety/documents/volumes/oleaga-1.pdf. Moodley, K., and H. Adam. 2000. ‘‘Race and Nation in Post-apartheid South Africa.’’ Current Sociology 48 (3): 51Á69. doi:10.1177/0011392100048003005. Ncome Museum. 2011. ‘‘Ncome Museum, Nquthu, Both Sides of the Story.’’ http://www. ncomemuseum.org.za/. Pieterse, H. 2002. ‘‘In Search of a Nation.’’ Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 3 (1): 1Á18. doi:10.1080/17533170200203102. Price, R. 1997. ‘‘Race and Reconciliation in the New South Africa.’’ Politics and Society 25 (2): 149Á178. doi:10.1177/0032329297025002002. Robben Island Museum. 2008. ‘‘Mission Statement.’’ http://www.robben-island.org.za/index. php?optioncom_content&viewarticle&id3&Itemid22. Schmidt, S. 2010. ‘‘Bringing the Other Closer to Home: Geography Education in the Post- colonial.’’ Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices 4 (1): 29Á47. http://criticalliteracy. freehostia.com/index.php?journalcriticalliteracy&pagearticle&opview&path%5B%5D 53&path%5B%5D38. Shapiro, M. J. 2003. ‘‘Nation-states.’’ In A Companion to Political Geography, edited by J. Agnew, K. Mitchell, and G. Toal, 271Á288. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Short, J. R. 1998. New Worlds, New Geographies. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Subreenduth, S. 2006. ‘‘‘Why, Why are We Not Allowed Even ...?’: A De/Colonizing Narrative of Complicity and Resistance in Post/Apartheid South Africa.’’ International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 19 (5): 617Á638. doi:10.1080/09518390600886403. Thompson, L. 2000. A History of South Africa. 3rd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 306 S.J. Schmidt

Trofanenko, B. 2006a. ‘‘Interrupting the Gaze: On Reconsidering Authority in the Museum.’’ Journal of Curriculum Studies 38 (1): 49Á65. doi:10.1080/00220270500038511. Trofanenko, B. 2006b. ‘‘The Public Museum and Identity: Or, the Question of Belonging.’’ In Social Studies Á The Next Generation, edited by A. Segall, E. E. Heilman, and C. H. Cherryholmes, 95Á110. New York: Peter Lang. Wa Thiong’o, N. 1986. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Witcomb, A. 2007. ‘‘‘A Place for All of us?’: Museums and Communities.’’ In Museums and their Communities, edited by S. Watson, 133Á156. New York: Routledge.

Appendix 1: Web addresses and complete listing of South African museums:

Afrikaanse Taalmuseum. http://taalmuseum.co.za/english/. Ditsong Museums. http://www.ditsong.org.za/index.htm. Freedom Park. http://www.freedompark.co.za/cms/index.php. Iziko Museums. 2012. http://www.iziko.org.za/. Luthuli Museum. http://www.luthulimuseum.org.za/. Natal Museum. http://www.nmsa.org.za/index.php?optioncom_contentandviewfrontpage andItemid1. National English Literacy Museum. http://www.ru.ac.za/static/institutes/nelm/. National Museum. http://www.nasmus.co.za/. Nelson Mandela Museum. http://www.nelsonmandelamuseum.org.za/. Robben Island Museum. http://www.robben-island.org.za/. Voortrekker Museum. http://www.voortrekkermuseum.co.za/. War Museum of the Boer Republics. http://www.anglo-boer.co.za/. William Humphreys. http://www.whag.co.za/.