CHAPTER 5. CONTESTED PLACE AND CONTESTED MUSEUMS
5.2 The Natal Museum – an anglophile monument?
5.2.1 Transforming the Natal Museum
Towards the end of apartheid in the 1980s museums functioned within an overall racially exclusive framework. An example of this is the multiracial children’s group between the ages
71 This shows how the evolutionary classification system stipulated the way in which museums and displays were to be visited.
of three and six which was turned away from a film show in the Natal Museum. The organisation hosting the function did not have a permit from the Department of Community Development for Africans to attend the function, only for Whites, Coloureds and Indians. The Natal Museum was always open to all groups, but the lecture theatre where the film was shown was legally restricted by the authorities (The Natal Witness 1980-10-15). The museum could not at this time act autonomously from the structures under which it functioned. The structural restrictions spatialised issues of belonging and power and made them tangible. My informants spoke with condemnation and regret about this (Ada 2006-03-21, Nigel 2006-04- 11), but since the decision was in the hands of the authorities there was little the museum could do. This envisages the bureaucracy under which the museum operated and which they wanted to break away from. During the 1980s the museum applied for permission from the Department of National Education to remove the non-white/whites signs above the toilets.
They were never granted written approval for this, but made an oral agreement and promised not to make a statement about it. When granted the go-ahead they renovated the toilets, which were in a poor state of repair, so that they would all have the same standard and would make visitors feel that they were all equal (Ada 2006-03-21, Nigel 2006-04-11). These are important alterations and initiated a quest by the museum to become more applicable to a broader spectrum of society. These initiatives from staff-members started a journey for the museum to improve, create and negotiate a multicultural place.
Central to Transformation is the discussion and attempt to change the meaning associated with museums among those who are unaware of their existence and relevance in order to attract a new audience. This has been resolved by different strategies. During the late 1980s the Natal Museum tried to resolve its physical constraints and to change its meaning, orchestrated by the education department´s work with township learners. The museum initiated a process of bringing children from Edendale into the museum and exposing them to the displays and collections. Educational officers pointed out that the museum was now the children’s place. These children narrated and acted out new meanings and transformed the concept of the museum.
My informants Ada (2006-03-21) and Nigel (2006-04-11) held that the museum building was intimidating to Africans. Others thought that it was not, and that African children got a ‘wow’
feeling visiting the museum for the first time (Lindiwe 2006-04-10). The discrepancy between my informants shows the multiple associations that agents have. Lindiwe´s (2006-04-10)
expression about African children’s perception of the place deconstructs the assumption that the place is an imposing symbol of oppression to them. The meaning of museums must be considered, narrated and acted on to be experienced; a meaning does not exist on its own but in relation to the agent’s actions ‘in’ time. If symbols of oppression were not narrated to African children they could not act on this meaning and therefore the museum would not be a symbol of oppression to them.
Transformation cannot be regarded only in relation to the physical aspects of the museum, but must also be seen in relation to the agents. The education department´s work with children in Edendale extended the sense of place beyond its physical premises, and the agent´s activities became part of the meaning of the museum. The museum is therefore not just a physical place, but is the activities acted out at, or in relation to, the place by agents. The people that use and are associated with the place become important; therefore associating the museum with one group, or changing its composition, e.g., with staff members from different ‘cultural groups’, alters how the museum is perceived. A multicultural workforce has come to imply that the museum is multicultural and democratic, which in turn changes how the physical premises of the museum are perceived, acted on and narrated. Transformation therefore relies heavily on who is employed in the museum.
A building erected and narrated as a monumental symbol of White colonialism, apartheid and western scientific knowledge is difficult to transform. In 1992 the Natal Museum held discussion groups to investigate how to make the museum more welcoming (Working Group 1 1992: 2-3). The aim was to encourage people who would normally not visit the museum, but the physical location in the urban landscape was impossible to transform unless the museum moved to a completely new building. Due to previous racial zoning people were constrained from visiting the museum, and transport and economic limitation dislocated the museum from those who needed it the most as an educational resource.
People recognise and collectively maintain certain places that express socio-cultural identity (Knapp & Aschmore 1999: 14-15). Places are the connected cultural constructions of society and the myths that society rests upon (Shields 1991: 6). To fully understand Transformation one must understand the meaning of the museum as a place. Museums located in the urban landscape were narrated as symbols of oppression mainly by Whites. This was expressed within the group and to other groups because it had significance to Whites; it expressed both
the positive and negative sides of White dominance. The museum was physical evidence of achievement and belonging for Whites. To other groups this was associated with exclusion.
Narrations have to be acted out within and between groups to be understood and maintained.
Therefore all ‘cultural groups’ were responsible for narrating and maintaining the museum as a symbol of oppression.
Multiple meanings form part of the understanding of museums and Shields (1991: 7) holds that the conception of place is central to one´s conception of self and of one´s reality. Pred (1984: 279) argues that place always involves an appropriation and transformation of space that is inseparable from the reproduction and transformation of society, time and space.
Museums are inseparable from socio-political structures which could only be altered when democracy was achieved and all people were legally equal; then the museum could be equally shared and mediated. The advocates of Transformation wanted to continue to use the museum but also to break with its eurocentric meaning; they constructed an ambivalent position for the museum because they continued to use and criticise the place at the same time.
The meaning of the museum is not static, though treated as such, but is subject to temporal shift. In line with Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga (2003: 1), I claim that time affected the behaviour of the visitor. Visitors perform a ritual when visiting, and bodily actions are joined with socio-political structures and affect the narrations of the place. The visitors act out in words and movements the meaning which they associate with the place. The museum, through entrenched thinking and repetitive rhetoric in government speeches, became associated with apartheid and was locked ‘in’ that time. If not actively altered by both agents and visitors, it will continue to exist ‘in’ apartheid time. The narrative of museums alters slowly, as structures and time change, and it therefore receives extended and conflicting meanings.
The advocates of Transformation cannot change how the museum is perceived as long as they lock it in a discourse of subjugation and witness to it as evidence of White domination. Such racial block-thinking entrenches the separation between the ‘cultural groups’. If all South African physical manifestations are embraced as part of a complex historical legacy, it will form a united South African heritage. It is not the physical building itself that discriminates people; it is the system in which the building functioned. The people living within the system apply meaning to the place and it becomes contested. Changing the meaning of the place
means changing the perception of the people and their perception of other cultures, whoever the people might be.