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Cultural Diversity, Social Memories and Communities (VII)

Tensions and opportunities

The tensions of globalization and critical decolonial thinking have been fertile instruments that reveal the ways museums have shown themselves, not only as places of encounter and cultural creation, but also as a space of confrontation and conflict between cultures. And this cannot today be forgotten as future challenges.

That is why the question that museums want for the future cannot help but be considered as to what professionals are needed for the museums of the future.

Museum professionals in the future must be equipped with heritage education work tools for diversity. They must be prepared to work with the community, from their memories, in dialogue with a culture of peace and diversity.

But this statement is not easy to realize: First, the question of who represents the community raises questions of legitimacy. The community is not something immutable and pre-existing. It is composed of memories and identities in process that carry tensions and compromises. It is therefore necessary to take into account the need to mobilize the main actors and seek to include subordinate communities.

Secondly, the idea of ​​heritage relevance, also not necessarily the same in all cultures. If this is the case, the extreme situation of the destruction of the Buddha Statues in Afghanistan by the Islamic State, which denied the valuation attributes as patrimony. But outside of this most extreme case, there are situations that still raise doubts about patrimonial processes, when they are removed from their original contexts, to be placed in museums. It is, for example, the case of indigenous artifacts, which today, appropriated the patrimonial tools by these communities, allow for a new museology based on the values ​​of these communities.

One must not forget that among museum professionals there are quarrels between traditionalists and modernists, between families and regions between sovereign nations and nations without states; between communities within state. Often these quarrels arise from agendas and narratives that develop in the context of heritage institutions. The world is a complex reality and in each place, minority communities play against majorities. States seek to consolidate their hold on society through culture, which can in many cases collide with traditional practices.

It is therefore necessary to be alert to good intentions. It is not enough to proclaim universal principles and to use them as instruments of transformation, as it is necessary to be alert to the traditions, so that these traditions do not allow people to lock up and prevent them from assuming their destiny according to their convictions

After all, the Heritage of Humanity can be an instrument of education for difference. To show that aquili that is a treasure, and that often is only enjoyed by some of the community, can become a common good.

It should not be forgotten that museums were in their time a process of making public access to private goods.

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Cultural Diversity, Social Memories and Communities (VI).

The disagreements of the current museums in Portugal.

It is said that nobody knows the Museum of Polyphonic Choirs of the South. It is natural, because the nation little recognizes itself in the museums to the south. Among the 15 national museums and National Palaces none is south of the Tagus. This is one of the mysteries of cultural policie in Portugal.

The DGPC has in its dependence these equipments. But many other relevant equipment is scattered throughout the country, with national relevance, under other tutelas. It is enough to speak of the Sintra parks complex (Vila Palace, Sintra Palace, Queluz Palace, etc., under concession to a PPP), or the Bragança Palaces (Guimarães, Estemoz and Ourém) or the Sagres Promontory in dependence the DR Culture of the Algarve, and the Pantão Real in the Church of São Vicente de Fora, as well as several of the national monuments that can be visited in this country, which find different forms of management. But that will be theme for another postcard in the future.

Here we try to analyze the contexts of Portuguese museum narratives and their current challenges. We are left with the ways in which they can surpass the visions of competitive nationalism of the nineteenth century to position themselves as modern, multicultural state actors with respect for cultural diversity.

These museums today face the issues arising from the tensions of globalization and the emergence of decolonial thinking.

These are questions as prosaic as the return of cultural goods (which has a small dimension in our country); the need to rethink the forms of presentation of the colonial collections (which, for example, the Museum of Ethnology tried to do without great success); the phenomenon of gentrification of urban centers and tourist flows (which in our country is very visible in Belém, for example, without measures still known); the emergence of the demand for patrimonial spaces for events, public or proved (that some years ago in ours the country ignited controversy about an event sponsored by the WEB Summit in the National Pantheon); or the production of a clear thought about the meaning of the transformation of cultural products into services to the community, be they public or private or even associative (issues that in our country are still sensitive, by the nature of an instrument of memory power); on issues arising from the metamorphosis of what is heritage and how it is preserved and replicated (an issue that is still at an early stage of discussion in the country); or the relevant issues such as migrations, religious quarrels and violence, climate change, which are important for the creation of futures in local communities, are still not very interrelated with museums, particularly in Portugal.