Mick Hartley

From the Telegraph:

A University of Oxford museum will not display an African mask because the culture which created it forbids women from seeing it.

The decision by the Pitt Rivers Museum is part of new policies in the interest of “cultural safety”.

The museum has also removed online photos of the mask made by the Igbo people in Nigeria, which would originally have been used in a male-only ritual.

Masks are a central part of Igbo culture, and some masquerade rituals carried out by men wearing the ceremonial objects are entirely male-only and carried out in secret away from female spectators.

The new policy, a first for a major British collection, comes as part of a “decolonisation process” at the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is aiming to address a collection “closely tied to British Imperial expansion”.

An online trigger warning on the museum’s collection database states that the Igbo mask “may be culturally sensitive” and “not normally be used in certain public or community contexts”.

The wooden mask has been given the label “must not be seen by women”, is not on display, and has no photographs available to view online.

A note on the museum website explains that, while photographs exist, curators “are unable to show the media publicly”.

This effort to ensure that women do not see the mask follows a suite of policies aiming to ensure “cultural safety” with regard to taboos around secret ceremonies, human remains, nudity and gender roles.

Concerns have been raised.

Ruth Millington, an art critic and author, whose book Muse tackles the female subject, has raised concerns about the push for synergy creating a dangerous precedent.

She said: “To deny all women, of all cultures, sight of something because that is a taboo in one particular culture seems an extreme stance, particularly given that this country is a modern, liberal and enlightened society.

“Surely women should be given the right to decide, after reading about any cultural sensitivities, if they wish to look upon the artefact or not. When it comes to art, we should all have equal rights, regardless of sex, to view what we would like to.

“Does this position also imply that only male curators in the museum can handle, care for and interpret this object? This stance seems to imply that no woman has ever seen the mask, which I think is highly unlikely.

“As a feminist art historian, I now want to see it all the more.”

You can see the dilemma. To put the mask on show to the general public – members of, as Ruth Millington puts it, a modern, liberal and enlightened society – would imply that we are now in a superior postion to the Igbo, and look, with a degree of colonial condescension perhaps, on the artefacts of a more primitive society. That would never do in a time of decolonisation and cultural sensitivity. On the other hand to put the mask on display to men only, thus respecting the cultural significance of the mask, would be even worse – living as we do in that, yes, modern, liberal and enlightened society.

Hmm. So we stick it away in the bottom drawer….to show how, um, modern, liberal and enlightened we are.

Update: see statement from Prof. Laura Van Broekhoven, Director of the Pitt-Rivers (link in comments). "This is a non-story…."