Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula by Karen Exell

Author:Karen Exell [Exell, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Archaeology
ISBN: 9781317279013
Google: wQu4CwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-03-10T02:53:27+00:00

5

KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN THE REALM OF CULTURE

Introduction

Peggy Loar, the American Director of the planned National Museum of Qatar who stood down in 2013, stated in her reflection on her role that ‘the bond between the local expert and the “international visionary” was essential and complicated’ (2013, p. 191); explicit is the understanding that the Western expert brings knowledge and vision that are essential to the success of the local project. Where the postcolonial project may have desired the liberation of the museum from the ‘hegemony of the management regimes of Eurocentric museology’ (Kreps 2003, p. 5) in the wealthy Arabian Peninsula states, as discussed in the previous chapter, the desire is to appropriate this hegemony and be active agents in its construction from a new centre of global cultural power. In order to do this, thousands of foreign business and heritage professionals are employed on planned museum projects in the region. In addition, architectural restoration projects and archaeological projects are designed, directed and implemented by foreign experts. These professionals impact on the local and regional evaluation of heritage and the implementation of preservation, interpretation and restoration projects, with decisions based on Eurocentric or universal value systems, i.e. the dominant heritage systems created and disseminated by transnational entities such as UNESCO and ICOM (see Exell & Rico 2014). The use of foreign expertise across many sectors – finance, oil, construction – has become the norm in the Arabian Peninsula for two reasons: the need to fast-track development to meet or exceed international requirements in various sectors where local expertise is currently lacking; and an embrace of universal or international norms as a demonstration of modernity. This latter reason is particularly relevant to the museum and heritage sector, and has also proven to be particularly sensitive. The numbers of foreign nationals in this sector reflects government policies on workforce nationalisation. For example, in Bahrain, which has a relatively low level of foreign residents (around 60 per cent in 2011; Ulrichsen 2011, p. 89) public sector jobs are not available to foreigners as part of a robust policy of nationalising the workforce, but they can be employed through consultancy contracts, whereas in the UAE foreign residents, a proportion of whom work in the cultural sector, make up 81 per cent and in Qatar around 88 per cent (Gardner 2014, p. 4; Snoj 2013; see also Ulrichsen 2011, p. 89). Local unease about identity dilution is concomitantly higher in states with a higher proportion of foreign residents (see Chapter 6).

Across the Arabian Peninsula there have been differing levels of engagement with Western expertise and knowledge systems in the museum sector. The Saadiyat Island Cultural District projects in Abu Dhabi discussed in the previous chapter, franchises of the Louvre and Guggenheim brands (Wakefield 2014), bring with them associated universalist philosophies of art, while the British Museum is consulting on the content of the Zayed National Museum, arguably producing, on request, a similarly hegemonic Eurocentric approach to the past. These projects embed their own networks of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.