Why Are My Country's Treasures Sitting in Your Glass Cases?

How the RISD Museum’s website reflects its colonial foundations

published October 30, 2020

This article is not meant to criticise the RISD Museum specifically, but rather provide a critical lens to the “Museum” space as a whole. 

Nestled in between College Building and the Metcalf Building of RISD on North Main Street sits the sandstone-orange, Bauhaus-looking building called the Chace Center: home to the RISD Museum. Founded in 1877, the RISD Museum has one of the most extensive collections of historic and contemporary art in the United States, which includes paintings and sculptures; decorative arts; prints, photographs, and drawings; as well as costumes and textiles. I was particularly fascinated by the vastness of the collection of textiles and costumes in the museum, and my love for fabrics has made me a frequent visitor to that section of the museum.

During my very first week as a RISD student in the fall of 2019, I remember seeing the most beautiful Indian textile mounted on a wooden plank in one of the main galleries. It was a fine Palampore, almost 10 feet in length, that dominated the room despite its faded ivory base, which was speckled with subtle hints of old rose and madder-colored buds in the form of a beautiful blooming bush. At first sight, the style of the painting and imagery on the Palampore closely resembled the style often employed in the Far East, in contrast to the imagery I had often seen employed in traditional Indian textiles. I quickly went to the RISD Museum’s website after my visit, seeking more details on this piece that had sparked so much confusion in my mind. However, to my dismay, the information I found was even more scarce than the few lines that outlined the exhibited work in the physical museum space itself. This beautiful historic textile was cataloged minimally: 

Indian

Palampore, 1775-1799

MAKER: Unknown

CULTURE: Indian

TITLE: Palampore

YEAR: 1775-1799

MEDIUM: Cotton plain weave, hand-painted

DIMENSIONS: Length325.1 cm (128 inches)

A few months later, I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in New York City, and by some great coincidence, one of the exhibits I saw had another Palampore textile proudly on display. A quick visit to the MET’s website gave me much more insight into the origin and story of Palampore textiles: 

Palampore

Late 18th century

This type of dyed cloth, known as a palampore (from palangposh, the Hindi term for bedcover), was made in abundance in India for foreign markets in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their decoration, often with a central tree laden with fruits and birds, combined patterns from English embroideries, Chinese decorative objects, and Indian textiles. In Europe, they were used as bedcovers and were also hung on the walls of bedrooms. In Southeast Asia, where this piece might have been traded, such textiles were displayed during religious ceremonies.

This incident begs the question: why is it that the museum of an educational institution as well-known as RISD doesn’t seek to elaborate and educate audiences about the cultural and historical significance of the works they keep in their archives? 

One possibility might be an absence of extensive research conducted on the history of these works. This seems unlikely, considering that most well-known museums do keep sufficient information about the works in their collections. I would believe that the museum, one of the most public spaces at RISD, would strive to keep in-depth information about the works they hold, considering that the museum is one of the greatest resources for RISD students. Additionally, when I purchased the RISD Musuem’s Selected Works book, I realized that it contains a more detailed account of the culture and history of many of the works held within the walls of the museum. This discrepancy makes the website resources seem lacking in their attention to the art.

The decision to keep such information off the face of the website could also be purely logistical. A museum of such scale has thousands of works in their collections and tucked away in the archives and the task of presenting so much information can be a challenge. However, I would argue that this challenge is of topical importance in this time of social distancing where almost everything has shifted to a virtual space. People currently value the accessibility of an online resource as more of us confront the limitations of physical space itself.

These challenges serve as a reminder of many of the challenges of the museum space itself.  The ‘Museum’ as an institution is a product of a colonial idea of cultural exchange. The fact that objects from all around the world have been removed from their geographically native spaces—from the hands of their makers themselves—and placed within the pristine confines of the white walls within a museum space for a distant public to behold is a sharp parallel to the entire expedition of colonialism itself. The balance of powers that be in this equation rests strongly in the hands of the colonizers. Even today, the voices of the white-dominated Western society seem to echo most resonantly within the museum space. 

The museum is nevertheless a ubiquitous institution in our world. I find myself angered when I come across artwork that has been looted from India now sitting in the MET, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and even the RISD Museum. Thousands of creations are packed away in vast underground archives, while few lie delicately displayed in these grand white rooms. These creations are praised, adored, appreciated for their ability to enrich the sensibilities of the West. It seems unfair. The value of this work to the communities for which it was created, where it was stolen from, should not be left unspoken because western countries take ownership over the work itself.

While the damage of the past cannot be undone, it is somewhat comforting to see the websites of the MET, Smithsonian, or LACMA, and the manner in which even the most minute of artifacts from my country have been documented and preserved in their digital commons. These museums have, at the very least, made strides in presenting information to the public as best they can. However, the same cannot be said about the RISD Museum. I feel disappointed when I log onto the RISD Museum’s website and see a beautiful Chamba Rumal, which is part of their collection, catalogued on the website as merely a ‘Rumal (Cover)’ with no further information. The RISD Museum’s publication Selected Works proves that they already possess the information within their system, as seen in the description of another textile known as Chintz Tent fabric.

However, when I open up the website to the catalogue of that very same work, I don’t see any mention of the fact that the textile is a Chintz in the first place. 

Why does the RISD museum solely provide this information to the person who chooses to buy a physical copy of their book? Why is this enriched cultural learning not available to those interested in virtually researching the subtlety of the works held in the United States’s 20th-largest museum? This act of reserving nuanced knowledge to those who are privileged enough to visit the museum space and buy the book only exacerbates the RISD Museum’s foundational problems in the way it chooses to present art and cultural artifacts. The power of an art museum lies in its ability to connect people to knowledge and beauty that was historically the privilege of a wealthy few. This also brings with it the responsibility to present the artworks not just as objects of aesthetic appeal, but also as objects which hold a certain cultural and historical value.  

It is important that RISD, as a fairly influential educational institution, takes on these challenges. Recently, after the Black Lives Matter Movement, the RISD Museum worked tremendously to decolonize the museum, evidently seen through their extensive initiatives  outlined in the article “Confronting Ourselves Together.” I also commend the museum’s resilience to treat their online collection as a living archive which is frequently revised and enhanced. As seen on their website the museum is open to receiving feedback about their digital curation. This process of inclusion, that the museum already engages in, can be continued through the process of updating each and every catalogued work on the museum’s website. The information provided can also be developed with intellectuals, scholars, or enthusiasts from the works’ countries of origin to make sure the information  echoes native voices, rather than reinforcing a western, colonial perspective. A personal suggestion in this regard would be to work with the students on the RISD campus and collaborate with institutions across the world to create a nuanced database that not only provides refined information to the audience but also brings to the foreground native voices. 

Finally, it is important to remember that the appetite for knowledge and justice of the coming generation is always larger than the one before . I write this as a response to seeing a lack of adequate representation of art that I recognize and cherish, which begs the question: how many others feel the same way about how their culture is represented? While the RISD Museum is not the only museum that faces this challenge, it is one of the few that has the resources, support, and access to many individuals with the necessary skills to take this on and bring about change. For those who have taken advantage of it, 2020 has given the world an opportunity to reflect on its complicated relationship with colonialism and work toward new solutions. It is past time to decolonize the ‘Museum’ space and make it a place of celebration for diversity, inclusion, and cultural immersion.

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Before I sign off, I want to present the cultural significance of two works which I mentioned above—the Chamba Rumal and the Chintz Tent—because I believe that these works deserve to be viewed and appreciated with their intrinsic cultural and historical value and not just in isolation as works with mere aesthetic appeal. 

Chamba Rumal (information from the MET Museum website, and other books on Indian Textiles) 

“In the foothill kingdoms of Himachal Pradesh, in northern India, rumals (Hindi for handkerchief) were decorated as presentation cloths. No more so than at the court in Chamba, where a tradition of silk embroidery developed. The majority of Chamba rumals depict scenes celebrating the life of Vishnu in his avatars (divine appearances on earth) as Krishna and as Rama. These embroideries served as covering cloths during the presentation of offerings and gifts. Chamba rumals are embroidered with a technique known as ‘dophar’ where the front and the back of the cloth have the exact same appearance. The use of deities as imagery on the cloth made the napkins a sort of mobile shrine which were popular around the region. Today, there is only one family in the village of Chamba, in Himachal Pradesh, who still practices the craft. 

Chintz Tent Hanging (information from the RISD Museum Selected Works Book) 

“Entirely hand painted, this tent hanging is an example of the finest seventeenth-century Indian chintzes. It is one of a group of nine panels that were originally joined to form part of a movable wall used in the tents of a sultan's encampment whenever he traveled. Together with a summer carpet now in the Cincinnati Art Museum, the set can be traced to the collection of the Mughal general Mirza Raja Jai Singh, who ruled in Jaipur from 1621 to 1667. The exuberance of line and soft, saturated color of this important piece are characteristic of the best work produced in the Deccani sultanate of Golconda, where chintzes made for domestic and foreign markets added to the fabled wealth of this diamond-rich kingdom.”

 

 

YUKTI AGARWAL B/RISD ‘24 and DWAY LUNKAD RISD ‘24 can’t believe they finally memorialized one of their fervently heated 3 AM debates in writing.